by Jane Smiley
“Well—” But Dick couldn’t say it, either to Newman or to himself. So he said, “Iffy, but not out of the question. Depends on how he heals, how he trains. Time would be short.”
“But I don’t understand how it’s all so black and white.”
“Sir?”
“Yeah?”
“You know, about July of every year, all the trainers start wondering if they’ve got a two-year-old that can get to the Derby. Lukas has fifty. Baffert has a hundred. That’s lots of horses just between the two of them. And then there are the rest of us. Among us, we’ve got maybe a hundred real prospects. Sounds like a lot. But only twelve or fourteen or seventeen of those ever even get to the post, and only one wins. There’s an expression you’re going to hear a lot, and use yourself. It’s ‘That’s horses.’ Guys who come into this game from other types of business don’t really know that the asset can crash any minute of any day. If you don’t like that part, then you should consider your lesson well learned, and, actually, cheap at the price.”
“He’s a good horse? I mean, relatively speaking?”
“One of the best I’ve ever seen. But he’s a handful. I’ll be frank with you. He’s a heartbreaker. If all you lose with him is money, then you’ll be lucky.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He’s unpredictable. Added to the natural unpredictability of horses in general, he’s got more. He can give you the moon. He’s run several quite impressive races in California. But he doesn’t behave consistently.”
“Is he crazy?”
Dick didn’t answer for a long time. He thought of the last three days, of every time he had stood in front of the horse’s stall, of what Wayne said and what Frankie said and what the vet said, and then he said, “No. I would say for a horse that crazy means tormented in some way. He’s just got lots and lots of energy and a very large agenda.”
“What should I do?”
Now was the moment to say, Cut him. But Dick didn’t say it. He didn’t even think it. He said, “Lay him up, bring him back, see what happens. Do you consider yourself lucky?”
A little abashed. “Well, as a matter of fact, yeah.”
“Well, there’s a saying in racing, better lucky than good.”
“Okay, then.”
“Okay, then.”
AND DICK HAD A HORSE running in the fifth race, one of those older mares whose second job would have been to assert mare power over Epic Steam. It would have been nice to know if it might have worked. As he saddled her for her race, he admired her. She was a tough little gray mare, with some forty starts under her belt. She ran consistently in decent allowance company and had won about two hundred thousand dollars in three years of racing. When she stopped making a profit, her owner, who didn’t breed, planned to do with her what he did with all his mares (he only owned fillies and mares), sell her for a pot of money to the Japanese. Some owners were both lucky and good, and smart to boot. But it made Dick sad to look at her. There was no excitement in her. She was everything you wanted a racehorse to be, if you were sane—sound, determined, female, competent, profitable, consistent. Five years ago he would have been happy to have a barnful of horses like her. But he didn’t know how to get back to that, how to give up this longing he had that Epic Steam had perfectly assuaged for three days, that now was back, doubled and redoubled, so that everything he had looked like nothing to him. He threw the jockey up. There were just the three of them, jockey, groom, and trainer. The mare went uncelebrated by her owner, the way everyone who went to work and did a good job day after day went uncelebrated. He watched her go out onto the track. It was a lovely day, almost autumnal. He went and placed his bet, fifty dollars on his mare to win, at four-to-one odds (second favorite), then went up in the stands. The huge track and the spread of land around it did what it always did to him, soothed, reassured, and terrified him, all at the same time.
As he watched the mare jog around to the post, Dick thought about all the good old days there were to miss in horse racing. You could miss the eighties, when, okay, the horses had been good enough but not great, but there was champagne in the office at 10:00 a.m. The owners not only had money (owners always did), they gloried in spending it. Or you could miss the seventies, a decade, the last decade, of great racehorses, or you could miss the sixties, the fifties, the forties, the thirties, Kelso, Nashua, Citation, Seabiscuit, all the times that you weren’t around for and didn’t remember, but that weren’t at all like right now.
43 / EXCUSED ABSENCES
NOW THAT HE had a man teacher, Jesse dreaded the conferences he used to not mind. For first, second, third, and fourth grades, Leo had come in with him, smiled sweetly at his teachers, made a joke or two about being a little nervous himself, don’t even mention Jesse, he, Leo, hadn’t done all that well in school, and he was here to tell you the end of that story, but for all he said, the teachers, white-haired, brown-haired, blond-haired, smiled and were charmed, and everything went well enough. They overlooked his excused absences (five to ten per semester) even after Leo admitted that they were so that he could get Jesse out to the track. Mr. Snowdon wasn’t so impressed with that idea. In fact, he wasn’t impressed at all. Mr. Snowdon, it was said, had six or nine children of his own (the kids in the fifth grade didn’t actually know how many). Jesse recognized that, as a father, Mr. Snowdon had a different take on Leo from the one a person not a father might. As it happened, today was not a full school day: some sort of teachers’ meeting somewhere in the afternoon, so leaving a bit early was not that big a deal—all they had remaining before lunch was art and recess. Even so, when Jesse told him the day before that he would be leaving early with his dad, Mr. Snowdon had called Leo and asked to have a word with him, which Jesse did not consider a very good idea.
Another thing that made Jesse dread the special conference was that Mr. Snowdon’s favorite thing to talk about was taking responsibility. Everything they did in class turned out to have something or other to do with taking responsibility. For example, one morning on the playground this kid Kevin went up to this girl Nicole, who was wearing sweatpants, and he grabbed her sweatpants by the pockets, and he pulled them down around her ankles. She lost her balance and fell down, skinning her knee and her hand. She cried a great deal. She didn’t come back from the school nurse’s office until after science, which was almost lunchtime. Since Jesse sat in the first row, he heard everything that Mr. Snowdon said to Kevin, and, he thought, took it to heart more than Kevin himself did.
Jesse would have thought that the incident was about being mean to Nicole, and causing her to hurt herself, but Mr. Snowdon told Kevin it was about taking responsibility. He didn’t ask a single time whether Kevin would have liked someone to pull his pants down, nor did he say anything about treating girls differently from boys. What he said, his very words were “Well, here you are, Kevin. You’re standing in front of me, and I have to decide how to handle this situation and what to tell your parents and what sort of punishment you should get for this. What do you think is the worst thing about that, Kevin?”
“I don’t know,” said Kevin.
“Well, say anything.”
“Uh, are you going to send me to the principal’s office?”
“I could.”
“I don’t want to go there.”
“You don’t get to say whether you’re going to go there or not, do you?”
“No.”
“Who gets to say?”
“You, Mr. Snowdon.”
“That means I have the responsibility here.”
“Yeah.”
“Who gave me that responsibility?”
“The principal?”
“Nope.”
“The school?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t know,” said Kevin.
“You did.”
“I did?”
“Yes. When you stopped taking responsibility for what you were doing, you gave it away. Now you don’t get to decide anything.
Now I have to decide, then the principal, then your dad or mom.”
“Are you going to send me to the principal’s office, then?”
“I don’t know right now, but I’m the one who gets to decide. Do you understand that?”
“I guess.”
Maybe, maybe not, thought Jesse. It wasn’t hard to get into a circular sort of argument with Kevin. Jesse, however, understood perfectly. If you took responsibility all the time, then you got to pretty much decide what you were going to do. If you forgot and did something like pulling down a girl’s pants, then someone else got to say what was going to happen to you, and it was clear in this case that Kevin would be at the mercy of at least four adults—Mr. Snowdon, Mr. Larson (the principal), Kevin’s own dad, and Nicole’s dad, too. It was like some kind of math problem. One person gave away something and then four persons got it. This was a lesson Jesse thought of as the time for the conference approached.
The other kids went out for recess, and Leo entered, car keys jingling in his hand. Maybe the hardest thing was just watching the two of them together. Leo was tall and handsome, with that face that Jesse had looked into so often that revealed everything Leo was thinking as if by flickering lights. Mr. Snowdon you wouldn’t look at twice on the street. He smiled and held out his hand to Leo, and Leo took it briskly, saying, “Well, it’s good to see you, too. Maybe. You would know, I guess?” He laughed. Jesse got up from his desk and walked forward. Mr. Snowdon motioned him to a seat at the front table.
As a preliminary, perhaps, Mr. Snowdon began to explain to Leo what the class was doing. Leo said, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. That’s good.” He was nodding agreeably.
“We are deep into fractions—”
Leo said, “Oh, I know all about fractions.” Jesse closed his eyes.
“Oh, really,” said Mr. Snowdon. “Well, the fractions these children—”
“For example, a twenty-two-second fraction in a five-and-a-half- or six-furlong race, you know, a sprint, is fairly common. But in a longer race, you want the later fractions to be the faster ones. Yesterday, in the seventh race, you know, the feature, which was a mile and a sixteenth on the turf, the winner ran the last fraction in twenty-two and a half. My own prediction, based on the animal’s past performances, is that he has a shot.”
“A shot?” said Mr. Snowdon.
“A shot at the Breeders’ Cup Classic, though, to tell you the truth, all of these three-year-olds come up suddenly these days. It’s not like when I was a kid, and you watched a great horse develop over the course of a year or more.”
“The fractions we’ve been working on—”
“It’s not the same thing, I know that. But, you know, there’s never been a time that Jesse here didn’t know his halves, his quarters, his eighths, and his sixteenths. In first grade he knew that the San Juan Capistrano is a mile and three-quarters, which is fourteen furlongs. Not a single other kid in his grade knew that.”
When Jesse opened his eyes, he saw that Mr. Snowdon was sitting back in his chair in amazement. “I’m sorry. Fractions aren’t really the reason I asked you to come in—”
“Oh. Well, sure. What’s this?” He pointed to an essay of Jesse’s that had been pinned to the bulletin board.
Mr. Snowdon smiled. “Jesse wrote a very nice piece about a book we read aloud in class called Where the Red Fern Grows. I read this book aloud to the children—”
“Some of them can’t read in fifth grade?”
“I believe that reading to the children even after they can read on their own is an important way of sharing literature with them.”
As Mr. Snowdon said this, Leo went over and read through Jesse’s essay. When he was finished, he said, “I wouldn’t have thought a book about a kid who wants to have some hunting dogs who tree helpless animals so that they can be killed for no apparent reason would be relevant to the kids’ lives here in L.A. You know, you might consider a field trip to Hollywood Park toward the end of the year. You can’t find a place that’s more relevant to these kids’ lives. For example, they would have to go through Inglewood. There’s a history lesson for you. Did you know that, during the riots a couple of years ago, they couldn’t bring the planes into LAX along the regular flight path, because they were afraid of people shooting at the planes? And, then, all sorts of people show up there, from all over the world. You hear Korean, Spanish, Chinese, English, Russian, you name it, every language. And a trip to the backside is the real experience, close up, of how this country works. Do you know how this country works, Mr. Snowdon?”
“Well, of course, I—”
“If you’ll pardon me for saying so, Where the Red Fern Grows is not how this country works.” He turned to Jesse. “How does this country work, son?”
Jesse said, “Um, there are stakes horses, allowance horses, and claimers. And then there are speed horses and routers. Mostly it’s in the pedigree, but sometimes the horse just has heart, and so he does better than his pedigree says he’s going to do.”
“For example—” encouraged Leo.
“For example, Holy Bull,” said Jesse. “He was by Great Above.”
“Holy Bull was a horse with heart,” said Leo with a sigh. “Go on.”
“It’s, uh, easier to go down in class than to go up,” said Jesse. “You don’t get to be a stakes horse all your life.” This was one of Leo’s favorite truisms.
“What about betting?” encouraged Leo.
“It’s all betting,” said Jesse.
“Now,” said Leo, turning informatively to Mr. Snowdon, “that’s the truest thing there is. When these kids come in here in the fall, you handicap them right up front. They’ve been handicapped every year since kindergarten, and by now their form is pretty well established. And you can’t help looking at their form, and placing your bets accordingly. You split them up into groups and you teach the one group, the stakes horses, something different than you teach the claimers. The kids all know who’s a claimer and who’s the big horse. What are you, Jesse?”
“I’m an allowance horse, Dad.”
“But you want to move up in class, don’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir.” Jesse didn’t dare look at Mr. Snowdon.
“A good teacher,” said Leo, “doesn’t pay a lot of attention to past performances, or to form itself.”
“Well,” said Mr. Snowdon, “predictors are of course not one hundred percent—”
“Predictors. Now there’s a word. Personally, I have more faith than you can have in predictors.” He leaned forward, ready to tell Mr. Snowdon something important. Jesse looked out the window. Leo said, “There are signs. There are always signs.”
“Signs of what?”
“Whether or not you are going to have a winning day.”
“I thought you owned a liquor store, Mr. Harris?”
“I do. That’s a going concern. But a man has to have passions, too. Do you have a passion, Mr. Snowdon?”
“I, uh, do some woodworking. I wouldn’t call it a passion. Perhaps we should get back to Jesse. Jesse in general shows a great sense of responsibility. I admire that very much in him. Well, Jesse is a fine boy.”
“Never gets into trouble, huh? Well, I’m glad to hear that.” Leo laughed cheerfully.
“I mentioned when I called you that I felt that Jesse’s excused absences to the track were not in his best interests. I have to say I do not feel a child should be taken out of school to attend sporting events of any kind.”
Leo sniffed. “But it’s clear to me that Jesse here, though he’s my boy, and I say so, is wise beyond his years. You tell me which of these other kids has a system? Jesse has a system.” He leaned forward and said to Mr. Snowdon in a low voice, “It’s the dad’s responsibility to bequeath his son a system, maybe his only responsibility. I take my responsibility very seriously.”
Now there was silence in the room. Jesse could tell that his father had been too much for Mr. Snowdon, because Mr. Snowdon was starting to put together his papers
as if it were time for the conference to be over, and it had only been about ten minutes. But it was as though there was nothing more to say, that saying things had ceased to be worth the effort. Jesse felt a collapsing in the stomach, as if Mr. Snowdon were giving up on him. He looked at the man, and saw that he was smiling at him, Jesse, and realized that Mr. Snowdon wasn’t giving up on him, but perhaps on Leo. That, in fact, was not unusual. Then the teacher put his hand on Jesse’s head and said, “You have a fine boy, Mr. Harris. I admire him.” He sounded sad, as if he were saying good-bye, although the school year was just beginning. But Leo didn’t seem to notice that. He stood up, or, rather, bounced up on his sneakers, and said, “Well, thanks for everything, those words. He is a fine boy. Nobody knows that better than I do, unless it’s his mom.” He laughed. “And thanks for giving us this ten-thirty time. Opening day of the meet today. I love Santa Anita. There’s always a little dry spell in southern California between the end of Del Mar and the opening of the Oak Tree meet. Simulcasting is all very well in its way, but a day out at the track, well, that’s an education and a pleasure. You ready, boy? I don’t want to miss the daily double.”
They strode out of the room, out of the school. Got into the car. When they were settled and had buckled their seat belts, Leo said, “Got your lucky socks on?”
Jesse nodded. Leo said, “I can’t hear a nod.”
“I’ve got them on, Dad.”
“Good boy. Now, lets see. We need some signs.”
Jesse looked over at Leo, who was driving, leaning forward, glancing around, smiling, eager, the way he always looked when they were headed out to the track, as if he didn’t remember that chances were he would be disappointed and angry at the end of the day. But how could he not know? Jesse was only eleven, and he knew. His mom never went to the track, and she knew. Jesse was used to thinking of his father as smart. No one talked like his father, no one impressed upon him all those differences in class and talent and pedigree the way his father did, and yet here was a simple thing, the simplest thing in the world, that his father didn’t know. Jesse looked out the window. They were approaching the 110.
