“You were out.”
“Who has gone to the track?”
“Just Shearwater and Virtue. Manny’s out on him now.”
“Okay.” I looked at the clock. It was only seven thirty. “Sorry I slept like that. You must still be exhausted from your whole trip thing, too. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“It’s no problem.” Kerri’s voice was thin. “We got this.”
I fell back on my pillow and pressed a hand to my forehead. Oversleeping by three hours! What the hell had I done last night? I closed my eyes, but nothing came to mind. Just the Congress, and the balcony, and getting into a shouting fight with Roddy Ellis over the way he trained horses … whoops, had that really happened?
***
Kerri was keeping up the cool distance she’d shown me on the phone.
“I have Bonnie tacked to go out next,” she said by way of greeting, hustling by with a full hay net as I ducked under the wooden railing of the shedrow. “Manny took a breakfast break.”
“Great, thank you.” I looked down the row for Personal Best, but his white-blazed face was nowhere in sight. Further down, Luna Park was gazing toward me with bright eyes and pricked ears. Her forelock fell in a little drift over one eye. Except for the funny red blotch in the middle of her blaze, she could have been mistaken for Personal Best. My redheaded children. “How’s my boy, Kerri?”
But I was speaking to empty air. Kerri was already on her way down the shed, to put the hay net outside Bonnie’s stall.
“Kerri?”
She turned, lips pursed. “Yes?”
“What’s going on?”
“What? Nothing is going on. I’m trying to do my job. Am I not doing my job correctly?”
Oh boy. “Come to the office.”
I was already in my cracked leather chair before Kerri came stomping in, her arms folded over her chest. There was hay in her hair and dangling from her shirt collar from filling the hay nets, and a streak of dirt under one eye, which only served to make her air of aggrieved worker even more pissy. “What’s the problem, boss?”
She never called me boss, not even as a joke. “Is this about my not showing up this morning, or what?”
Kerri blew out her cheeks. “Not even close.”
“Well, then?”
“You don’t know?” She lifted an eyebrow. “You seriously don’t know.” She put her phone on the desk, facing me. “Look what you did last night.”
I thumbed through her text messages. Apparently while I had been drunkenly hurling insults at Roddy’s head, he’d been repeating them to Kerri like an on-scene reporter. The accusations of cruelty. The promise to tell Kerri he was out with another woman. The demand that he stay away from my assistant, once and for all, or I’d ship her back to Florida for her own good. It looked very bad like this. “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have any right to behave this way. We’re adults.”
And that’s when I remembered Lulu. “Adults? He was there on a date with Lulu Windham. The owner? Her father has a stakes race named after him?” I got up from my chair and started around the desk. “Listen, Kerri … I know you think you have something with Roddy, but the guy is no good. He’s a heartless trainer, he’s a womanizer, he’s nothing but a—”
“You’re so selfish.”
That wasn’t the word I would have expected. “Selfish? How?”
“Selfish. You got yours, Alex. You met the trainer, you married him, you got the farm and the horses and everything you wanted. But you can’t let anyone else. Why can’t you let me have a shot? How does that threaten you? It’s not like I went after Alexander.”
“Enough.” I couldn’t believe it. This girl who shared my house and drank chocolate milk on my couch every night standing here in my office repeating the same old garbage that everyone else at Saratoga had been muttering for the past month. “Just… enough.”
I turned on my heel and marched out of the office, nearly colliding with one of Roddy’s hot-walkers, and went straight down to Luna Park’s stall. The filly fluttered her nostrils at me, a silent greeting, and I took her pretty face in my hands and occupied myself with rubbing her funny blaze, over and over, until I thought Kerri must be gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
New Tricks
At Cotswold, we started our young horses in pairs, trotting side by side and learning the very basics of dressage. Before they were asked to trot around a racetrack, they could bend around a turn. They could perform a basically round and even figure eight. They could canter on the lead they were asked for. They knew to halt when the rider sat down and went still, and to jog on when the rider shifted forward in the saddle. They were well-trained equine citizens at the tender age of nineteen months.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t necessarily the norm in the racing business. For every youngster who had been given an extensive basic training course before they were allowed to run, there were five who had been bridled, saddled, and kicked onto a racetrack to start running in circles until the rider muscled them back down to a halt. And that was certainly the case for the chestnut filly with the spotted blaze.
Running the barn without Kerri was stressful; no time to get on any horses, because I was the one to muck the stalls and prepare them for another day while Manny was out at the track. Gabe went on walking in circles, the faithful hot-walker, and I raked straw and scrubbed buckets and filled hay nets and thought about Luna.
From what I’d seen, she simply had no idea what the bit was, besides something that she could lean on in order to throw the rider off balance. She didn’t have any brakes. She didn’t have any gears. She just went.
I had to show her that the bit and the rider were there for guidance and balance. Maybe when she understood that the person on her back was there to give her direction, and that she wasn’t out there alone, she would lose that wild look in her eyes. Luna didn’t just lack education; she lacked a trustworthy leader. And horses needed someone to be in charge. They were herd animals, after all.
Flying around the little lawn that first afternoon was an experience I didn’t care to repeat. Manny was there to hold her, and Gabe was there to give me a leg up, but the moment Manny led us onto the lawn and let go of the rein, she was off like a rocket ship. The chain link fence and the hedge beyond it were looming in our faces with alarming speed, and then, as she veered to the right, there was the barn again, the board put across the gap in the shedrow to stop her from bolting back inside and into her stall again. She swung right again: more fence. And so on and so forth.
But after five minutes of hanging on for dear life, my legs out in front of me and my heels hyper-extended to balance me through all of her crazy bolting and plunging, she was tired. And that was when I felt I could get down to work.
It was about ninety degrees, high noon on a summer day during a season that was hotter and dryer than anyone could seem to remember. Despite the lack of rain, it was humid, and the filly’s coat was lathered into a foamy mess. Her veins were standing up under her taut skin, and her neck was slick and hot to the touch. She slowed to a trot, and then a walk. And then I put my legs against her sides for the first time, just behind the girth, and gave a little push.
She trotted at once, her head flying up against my hold on her mouth, throwing spittle through the air. A hot splash of white foam hit my cheek, but I ignored it and kept my legs against her sides and my hands firm on her mouth. She grunted and tried to kick out behind, thinking to buck her way to a more authoritative position, but she couldn’t get her head down. I sat deep and waited for her to figure it out.
And she did.
Baby steps, baby steps, but this was a smart horse; I’d known that from the start. And she made it clear after just a few minutes that she wanted to learn. She was dying to cooperate. She arched her neck and mouthed the bit, softening against my hand, and trotted more evenly. We made a big sweeping circle around the grass lawn, instead of a ragged square. Time to shake things up a lit
tle. I stilled my motion and sat rigid on her spine, my hands suddenly taut, and her stride grew rough in confusion while she mulled over the change; then she decided to walk, and finally to halt, and I rewarded her with a stroke on her burning neck.
“Hoo girl, you’re hot!” I told her, and she flung her head out and crabstepped across the lawn.
I turned her back toward the barn, where the boys were waiting. I noticed that Johnny had shown up and was leaning over the rail next to Manny, looking impressed. In fact, they all looked kind of impressed. I smiled to myself.
“She a different horse!” Gabe exclaimed, and Manny nodded.
“She’s smart as a whip,” I said, letting Manny take her bridle before I dismounted. “But it’s too hot to work her in midday. I’ll do her in the evenings from now on.”
“How long you gonna do this for?” Manny asked. “She gonna lose condition.”
“Not if I can help it. We’ll send her to the track as soon as possible, but in the meantime, I’ll work her hard in here.”
***
“Knock-knock!”
I looked up from the overnight book. Mason Birdwell’s gleaming head, somehow balder than the last time I’d seen it, was peeking around the office door. Great. I fixed on a smile. “Mr. Birdwell! How nice to see you.”
“Alex,” Birdwell said brightly. “Call me Mason, will you?”
“Mason,” I said agreeably. “Have a seat. Have a Coke.”
“Thank you, I will.” He came into the office, and I was surprised to see he’d traded his Wall Street costume for something more summery: a Hawaiian shirt, jorts, and a pair of sandals that must be full of sand from the shedrow. “Boy, it’s a hot one!”
“Hottest summer in years,” I agreed, playing along. “Guess I could have run them at Calder all summer after all. . . at least it would rain every day.”
“Yes, yes … ” He fumbled with a can of Coke from the mini-fridge. I waited. “Listen, Alex … I’m sorry about the sales.”
“Thank you.” I folded my hands on the desk and waited.
“Maybe you could tell Alexander,” he went on. “I would appreciate that. I’d hate to lose our partnership here.”
“Tell Alexander?”
“That I apologized.” Mason looked anxious. “He said to apologize to you in person or move the horses to another farm. He … he didn’t tell you?”
“It hadn’t come up,” I said smoothly. “But thank you. I appreciate that. You’re staying on with us, then?”
“Yes.” He looked nervously towards the open door. “Roddy … I talked to some other trainers, but I just didn’t see the same level of care for the horse. I’m not a horseman, Alex, you know that … ” He glanced at the door again.
“Roddy’s out of town. You’re fine.”
He chuckled. “Uh … yeah … well, the point is … I behaved badly this summer. I apologize.” He got up to leave. “I should let you finish your work.”
I nodded. “Have a good day, Mason.”
He made his way out and I sat back, thinking about Alexander’s interesting request. Apologize to Alex or get out! Now, where had that come from?
I toyed with my phone, thought about calling, and then decided a simple text was best. A little something to let him know I appreciated him.
***
She was training stronger and stronger every day. The dressage really seemed to be working. And it was a pleasure to get on a horse in the evenings and use the grass lawn for riding, trotting figure eights and twenty meter circles, asking for even, square halts and springy bolts into canter from those stand-still moments. I had always enjoyed riding dressage when I was a kid. The feeling of oneness with a horse, even if they were fleeting moments in a horse as a green as the filly, was really indescribable. I loved the closeness afforded by an exercise saddle and a plain snaffle, just letting a horse move in his own way, but there were some movements and athletic motions that a horse didn’t perform under saddle without a little help, and they were among the most ethereal and impossible. They transformed horses into mythological beings.
No, the chestnut filly wasn’t on her way to being an Olympic medalist, and I doubted that the airs above the ground of the Spanish Riding School were ever to be in her future, but she was a lovely long-legged little thing with a tight round hind end and an arching neck like a swan’s, and she easily mastered the very basics.
Mike Weston and his crew sat out on the lawn and watched me every evening, swatting at mosquitoes and popping cans of Coors Light, and occasionally guffawing or gasping when the filly got tired of being asked to move off my leg or to stand still and introduced an athletic maneuver of her own into the practice session, a stiff-legged crow-hop or a little prancing rear. Exciting for them, sure, but it was all part of the ride for me. I hadn’t asked a horse to move in such ways for years. I could handle a little silliness on her part. It was all part of the ride for me.
I was teaching her to rely on the rider, to put a little faith and trust in her human’s ability to guide her motion. She had been self-reliant for too long, and while that wasn’t always a bad trait in a racehorse, in her case it just made her into a runaway train. Basically, she made really bad decisions. She ran too hard, too soon. Without surrendering to her rider, she was going to run herself to death, breaking down on the track and leaving in a horse ambulance, never to return.
And she was too good for that. She was all heart, that much was for sure. Heart, class, speed, even stamina … yes, she had that too. She just hadn’t been built up properly. Mary Archer had been running her like a sprinter, assuming that her crazy head of steam in the gate and the first quarter was all that she had. But this filly had plenty of bottom, all right. She just needed conditioning. She needed long, slow gallops, something she had never done, because no one had ever been able to get anything slower than a runaway bolt out of her.
***
After two weeks of dressage training, I decided it was time to take her back to the track.
Manny rode out beside me on Bonnie Chance, who was settling into a very solid and dependable race mare. She had gotten a second in an overnight stakes the week before, nothing to get her into the record books but nothing to sneeze at either. Maybe Saratoga was too tough for her to break into the graded stakes, sure, but she would have a respectable enough record before I took her back to Florida at the end of the summer. I wondered, watching her long loping canter next to us, taking one stride for two of the little chestnut’s, if Alexander would want to go to Miami this winter, or if we’d stay home and race at Tampa. Staying home sounded nice: evenings on the front porch looking out over the fields, breakfast together after training, maybe a nap in the afternoon in our own bed, shutting the curtains against the winter sun …We hadn’t had a winter like that in too long.
I just needed him to come home. That was the problem.
But now wasn’t the time to think about it. I was sitting the canter, in a completely unorthodox seat, looking frankly insane in a jumping saddle out on Saratoga’s main track. I was getting stares. But my filly was going beautifully, tucking her nose close to her chest in her eagerness, pulling against the bit, but nothing like as insane as she had been with her other trainers. My seat was telling her to stay slow and under control, and she had learned to listen to what my seat told her. It was magical, and worth all the derision in the world. No one here liked me, anyway. What did I care what they said about me on the backside now?
“People staring,” Manny chuckled as we walked our docile fillies off the track. “You nearly caused a pile up over by the wire.”
“Probably never saw a saddle like this,” I said derisively. “Narrow minded small towners.”
“Not just that saddle,” Manny said, shaking his head. “They want to know who you riding.”
I took a glance around, noticing how quickly heads turned away when my gaze fell upon them. No one wanted to get caught staring. And that’s when I knew Manny was right. People were wondering about th
e horse. Mocking my saddle—that they would do openly. But no one wanted to admit curiosity about a horse. No one wanted to be the person that hadn’t heard about the latest big horse on the track. And certainly no one wanted to let me see that they thought the horse I was sitting on might be something special.
We rode in silence through the whispering crowds of the backside, chins up and smiles carefully subdued, while the chestnut filly arched her neck and chewed thoughtfully at the soft French snaffle I had replaced her ring bit with. And we didn’t high-five and laugh delightedly until we were safe in the confines of my office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Gate Scratch
Saratoga was sweltering in the last angry death throes of summer.
I complained to Johnny on a daily basis, as if his residency caused him to take the blame for the short-comings of New York State weather. “If we were in Florida, it would be raining right now,” I insisted one afternoon. We were preparing Idle Hour for his last shot at the big time, a Grade 2 on the grass. I wasn’t thrilled about the state of the turf, though. It was hard as a rock, brown and dead after two weeks without a drop of rain. I was missing my Florida thunderstorms, their crashing presence and the enforced break from outdoor chores, the fleeting chance of a cool-down in the evening, and the drought combined with temperatures in the nineties and still, windless days was not making me feel any less homesick. I was almost envious of Alexander, who had traded his summer for the Australian winter. It was that hot, that airless, that dry.
“You can’t prove that,” Johnny replied to my Florida weather statement, which I thought was a very silly thing to say. I could, in fact, prove it. I pulled out my phone, opened my weather app, and showed him. Ocala, FL: 82 degrees F, thunderstorm in the area.
Other People's Horses (Alex and Alexander Book 2) Page 23
