Cactus Jack

by Brad Smith

  “Your father considered himself an expert on two things,” Marian said. “What were they?”

  Billie shrugged. “I have no idea. Whiskey and women.”

  “I’m not going to comment on that,” Marian said. She paused as the waitress delivered the drafts. She had a drink before looking at Billie again. “He knew horses and he knew cards, particularly cribbage.”

  “I guess,” Billie said.

  “Now you know who Humphrey Brown is, right? The multi- billionaire?”

  Billie nodded. “Except I heard he gave it all away.”

  “Apparently he did, or most of it, anyway,” Marian said. “But before that, going back three years, he owned Saguaro. He made a lot of money off the horse, not that he needed any more money. And he liked to play cribbage with your father in the lounge of the old Paducah racetrack. One night they got into a marathon match—cards and bourbon, I’m sure you know the routine. Sometime around three or four in the morning, they decided on one last game. Now how can your father compete financially with Humphrey Brown? He can’t, obviously. So they set the stakes for this one game—Will’s old pickup truck against one service call from Saguaro. And Will won the game. About a month later he trailered that chestnut mare over to Brown’s stable in Louisville and had her bred. All legal and registered. The stud fee was one dollar. A week after that, Brown sold Saguaro to Double R Racing, owned by your new best friend Reese Ryker. Of course, Brown had known all along he was going to sell the horse. What did he care if Will got a foal out of the deal?”

  Billie reached for the fresh draft. “So Reese wants Cactus Jack because he owns the sire.”

  “That’s right,” Marian said. “But he more than wants it—he’s obsessed with the colt. He apparently went ballistic when it leaked out what had happened between your father and Brown. He couldn’t believe that Brown bred the top stallion in the world to one of Will Masterson’s B track broodmares. He actually offered your father a hundred grand for the mare while she was in foal.”

  Billie shook her head. “And the old man turned him down. Of course he turned him down. Why would a man ass-over-teakettle in debt want a hundred thousand dollars when he could stick with a pig in a poke?”

  “And who are we talking about here?” Marian asked. “Not only did he turn Ryker down, he named the colt Cactus Jack. One cactus begets another.”

  Billie thought about it a moment. “So—that whole song and dance last night was about the colt, not the farm. Why wouldn’t he just make me an offer on the horse? I couldn’t care less about the animal.”

  “He’s probably worried he’d find out that you’re your father’s daughter,” Marian suggested.

  “Nice try,” Billie said. “But that sentimental shit doesn’t pay the mortgage.” She turned the draft glass in her hands. “Besides, how does Ryker even know the horse can run? That’s a crapshoot even when both the sire and dam are top of the line. And three years on—doesn’t he have lots of colts already from Saguaro?”

  Marian scoffed. “Come on, he’s not going to run him. He’s going to geld him. He doesn’t give two hoots about the colt. All he cares about is the bloodline. That’s all those people ever care about. You think he wanted Will to run that colt and maybe win some races and then stand the horse at stud? Advertising him all over the world as being by Saguaro? Not a chance. And now it sounds as if he’s worried you might try the same thing. One thing he’s got going for him is your ignorance of the situation.”

  “Until now,” Billie said as she took a drink. “But doesn’t everybody in the business know about the colt? It must be common knowledge.”

  Marian shrugged. “Everybody looked at it as a joke. Eccentric old Humphrey Brown playing a prank on the thoroughbred world. Plus, he didn’t much care for Reese Ryker and I think he liked getting the last laugh on him—after he sold him Saguaro for twenty- seven million dollars.”

  Billie remembered something from the night before and smiled.

  “What?” Marian asked.

  “Apparently Ryker owns some TV station?”

  “Yeah, in Louisville.”

  “Well, he came this close to offering me a job there last night,” Billie said. “Told me I was purty enough to be on air. Pulling out all the stops, I guess.”

  “You’re pretty enough,” Marian said, “and you’re white enough, too.”

  “Really?” Billie asked. “That’s the way it is?”

  Marian, drinking, didn’t respond, but then she didn’t need to. Billie considered Ryker’s attitude toward their server at the restaurant the night before. His attitude toward everything, it seemed.

  “I could sell the colt to somebody else.”

  “You could,” Marian said. “I told your father that. He said it wouldn’t fetch a big price because of the dam. He said that nobody knows how good a two-year-old is going to be anyway, no matter what the blood.”

  “I just said that.”

  “I heard you. Your father wouldn’t sell him anyway. He wanted to run him. He thought the horse was something special.”

  Billie remembered what David Clay had said, about the colt and her father’s expectations. “That would be the latest in a long line of horses he felt that way about,” Billie said. “Like I said, he drove a twenty-year-old pickup.”

  Marian shrugged. “He liked that truck.”

  “He could have learned to like a brand-new one, if he wasn’t broke his whole life.”

  Marian took a drink. “Well, I felt an obligation to explain the situation. You do what you want to do, Billie. And you’re welcome to wear the boots whenever you want.”

  Billie smiled. “They’re nice boots.”

  Marian pushed the half-full glass aside and stood up, reaching for her purse. “I have to go to the city.”

  “I have no choice but to sell,” Billie said quickly, stopping her. “I don’t like Ryker misrepresenting himself, and to tell the truth I don’t like him, either. But I have to sell to the top bidder. That’s just business. And if a gray colt that I first laid eyes on three days ago has to lose his testicles in the process, that’s the way it has to be.”

  “Then that’s the way it will be,” Marian said. “The beers are on me.”

  Billie watched as she paid on her way out. When she was gone Billie sat there alone and finished her beer, then reached for the one left behind by Marian.

  In the parking lot her car wouldn’t start again, the battery barely turning the engine over. A man and a woman in a van were just leaving and they jumped the Taurus for her. On the way out of town she stopped at the Quikmart, leaving the car running, and picked up bread and cheese and eggs and more beer. There was a deli counter off to the side, with sandwiches made to go. She got a chicken salad on whole wheat. Approaching the farm, she drove around to the side road and into the back lane leading to the barns.

  Jodie had managed to put the wheels on the pony cart and drag it outside into the sun. She was sanding away at the buggy shafts as Billie rolled to a stop, dust in her hair and on her face. Billie got out, carrying the groceries and beer.

  “You need a dust mask,” she told the girl.

  Jodie looked at her but made no reply. Billie reached into the bag for the sandwich and tossed it on the seat of the cart.

  “I bought an extra sandwich and now I’m not hungry,” she said. “You might as well have it or it’ll go to waste.”

  Jodie stared at the package as if it might be booby-trapped. Billie put the groceries on the hood of her car and went into the pump room. She connected the charger to the battery on the shelf and plugged it in. The gauge showed it as half-charged. Leaving the charger connected, she retrieved the groceries and walked up the hill to the house. When she got to the back door, she turned to see the little girl sitting on the dusty cart, eating the sandwich.

  Eleven

  MIDAFTERNOON, BILLIE PULLED ON OLD JEANS and a T-shirt and went down to check on the battery, which now showed a full charge. She went into the machine shed for some
wrenches and when she came out the gray colt trotted over to her, putting his head over the paddock fence. She stopped to have a better look at him, reaching out to run her hand along the horse’s forehead.

  “I’ve been hearing stories about you,” she said.

  She went to work removing the dead battery from her car. The clamps were corroded and she had trouble loosening them. The wrench wouldn’t hold and twice she skinned her knuckles when it slipped.

  The pony cart still sat on the sawhorses in the drive. It looked as if the sanding were finished, or as finished as it would get. Jodie was in the back paddock. Billie had seen her from the pump room; she’d put a halter on the brown-and-white pony and had the animal on a lead, working it, talking softly as she did. Billie could hear Will Masterson in the words.

  It took a combination of penetrating oil and vise grips and swearing to remove the old battery from the Taurus, but after a half hour she had success. The new (used) battery went in much easier. After tightening the connections, she smeared the posts and connectors with axle grease to prevent further corrosion, again hearing her father’s voice in her head.

  As she worked, she toyed with the idea of calling Reese Ryker. Might as well get on with it, she thought. She had no desire to wait a few days and even less to wait a few weeks. As she was closing the hood on the car, she heard a noise and looked up to see the Porsche pulling in the front driveway by the house, rendering her concerns moot. Let him be the eager one; now she could play the reluctant seller.

  Wiping her hands on a rag she’d found in the shed, she started for the house. Reese met her by the back deck, wearing designer aviator sunglasses, black dress pants, and a short-sleeved polo shirt with the Double R Racing logo on a breast pocket from which a sheet of paper was protruding conspicuously. Approaching, Billie was aware of her dirty jeans and grease-smeared T-shirt. She was annoyed that she would care how she looked but she did.

  “I was in the neighborhood—” he began.

  “What about a beer?” she said, thinking that she didn’t need to hear once again how he just happened to be in the neighborhood. Try telling the truth for once, she thought.

  He hesitated. Maybe he didn’t drink beer. Maybe it was over-priced French cognac or nothing at all.

  “I’ll have a beer,” he said. “What do you have?”

  “Bud,” Billie said and went into the house to retrieve two bottles. When she returned, Reese was sitting down. He had removed the shades and put them on the table. She handed him a beer, then sat opposite him and took a long pull on the bottle. Watching him, with his too-white teeth and his bronzed complexion and his expensive clothes, she began to feel a little contentious, knowing now what she hadn’t before. But she couldn’t let that influence her. She reminded herself that all she cared about was settling things up and heading home. As she had told Marian, it was business. She wasn’t in the mood for small talk, and fortunately, neither was Ryker. He took the smallest of sips from the bottle before pulling the paper from his shirt pocket.

  “I was at my lawyer’s office this morning on another matter and while I was there I had him draw up an offer sheet for your farm. I might as well tell you that I did talk to a realtor who I happen to trust, and he gave me a ballpark figure on what he might assess the place at. Sight unseen, granted, but he knows the area and he knows the business. Given what he suggested, I think you’ll find this a fair number.”

  Billie glanced at the sheet, skipping over the legalese to the number at the bottom. The offer was three hundred thousand. Reese’s trusted realtor buddy was a little on the high side, unless Reese had upped the number himself, looking for a strike on his first cast. If he thought that three hundred grand was bait enough for Billie to take, he was absolutely right.

  “Did you get a chance to talk to anyone yet about an appraisal?” he asked.

  Billie, still looking at the number, nodded.

  “That offer is rock solid,” Reese added. “Am I in the ballpark?”

  Billie leaned forward to put the paper on the table. “You’re in the ballpark.”

  She told herself she wasn’t lying. After all, who knew the definition of ballpark? It seemed to her that a word used as a metaphor couldn’t have a precise definition. So she was sort of telling the truth, not that she had any particular aversion to lying. Everybody did it, under certain circumstances. If your friend gets a haircut that makes her look like a mangy sheepdog, you don’t tell her that. And in this case the man making the offer was the liar, or at least the one misrepresenting himself. If he would not tell the truth, then Billie would, in her way. She indicated the paper.

  “That’s for lock, stock, and barrel?”

  “That’s it.” Reese gestured behind her. “Like I said, I might rent the house out to one of my employees.” He turned in his chair to look down the hill. “The buildings—I don’t know. I’ll want to build a new stable.”

  “And the horses?”

  “Probably let them go at auction,” Reese said.

  “You wouldn’t want to run that two-year-old?” Billie asked. “I noticed you looking him over the other day.”

  Reese laughed. “Do you know how many two-year-olds I’ll be running this year? No offense to your father, Billie, but that horse might be a five-thousand-dollar claimer at best.”

  Billie took a drink of beer. “But the sire isn’t a five-thousand-dollar claimer.”

  She had succeeded in rattling him. To try to hide it, he reached for the beer he didn’t want and had another sip, nodding his head slightly in agreement. He could hardly disagree. And did he actually think that Billie wouldn’t know that the colt’s sire was Saguaro? But then she hadn’t known, not until a few hours ago.

  “No, it’s not,” he said after a moment. “The thing is—you need the blood from both sides of the equation when breeding. And the dam in this case—well, again, I don’t want to offend your father.”

  “The dam ain’t up to snuff,” Billie suggested.

  “That’s the hard truth of it,” Reese said. “Bloodlines are bloodlines, doesn’t matter if you’re talking about horses or dogs or people even. There’s an old saying—you can’t make a racehorse out of a pig.”

  “But you can make a very fast pig,” Billie said. “That’s from Steinbeck. Or did you think that your father came up with that one, too?”

  Reese stiffened in the chair. “I don’t know where it came from. I’m just telling you that it takes two to tango. I already own the best two-year-old in the country, in my opinion, a colt named Ghost Rider. I’m running him in the Mercedes Mile next month and then he’s going straight to the Breeders Juvenile. Which he will win. He’s by Saguaro and a mare named Lady Jane, who has Northern Dancer in her line. That’s the type of breeding that creates champions.”

  Billie felt somewhat satisfied that she had raised his ire, even if it had required insulting his father to do it. She looked down the hill. Jodie was now brushing the pony out, while the donkey and goat stood by, watching the proceedings as if they thought they would be next.

  “And you’d bulldoze the barns?”

  Reese nodded. “They look like they’re about ready for the wrecking ball.”

  “Any chance you could do something for the kid and her little menagerie there?”

  Reese regarded the scene below for a moment. “What would you suggest?”

  “I don’t know,” Billie said. “I thought you might have a couple of open stalls somewhere, with all your holdings.”

  “For donkeys and goats? I think it unlikely.” He looked again. “Is that your daughter, Billie?”

  Billie shook her head. “Some stray my father took a shine to. Lives the next road over. Typical story, broken family.” She took a swig of beer and kept talking, against her better judgment. Why not let it go and stick to the business at hand? “You know how it is. She’s got this little family of animals to love because she’s never known any at home.”

  “And the cycle will repeat itself,” Reese sa
id. “That’s the way it is with these people. I don’t know what the solution is. In the end, they certainly don’t contribute anything positive to society.”

  Maybe all they needed was a father smart enough to marry an heiress with a couple billion dollars in the bank, Billie thought, watching the smug face across from her.

  “I guess it comes down to the blood, like you said,” she suggested, baiting him. “Maybe what we need in this country is a sterilization plan.” She paused, watching him. “Start gelding some people. What do you think?”

  Reese laughed. “I’ve heard worse ideas. Looking at that girl there, I’d say her breeding was definitely in question.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That you don’t have to be a dog to be a mongrel,” Reese said smiling.

  Billie felt her blood rise as she glanced down the hill to the girl.

  “This one here is a stubborn little thing,” she said, trying to control the fury in her voice. “Got a bit of a mouth on her, too.”

  “Comes with the territory,” Reese said. “You can only imagine what she hears at home.”

  Billie nodded as she took a drink. The beer tasted like ashes. “You know who she reminds me of?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Me,” Billie said. She reached for the paper with the rock-solid three-hundred-thousand-dollar offer and folded it in half before handing it to Reese Ryker. “I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll stick around a while.”

  Billie called David Clay to make sure he was available and then changed out of her dirty clothes. Before walking down the hill to her car, she had a thought and went into the cellar of the house. The old man had always kept random cans of paint—half or quarter full—down there among the cobwebs, out of the weather if the temperature dropped below freezing. The cans were lined on a shelf upside down, his method for sealing the lids. She was counting on Will Masterson’s packrat mentality, but she really didn’t expect to find what she was looking for. She did, though. There were brushes there too, thoroughly cleaned, their bristles wrapped tightly in cellophane.