Cactus Jack

by Brad Smith

  Beside the barn the pony cart was still balanced across the saw-horses and Jodie was back at her sanding. Billie set the half gallon of paint on the ground and placed the brush on top.

  “You keep sanding and there’ll be nothing left of that cart but dust. It’s time to start painting.”

  Jodie looked at the dried paint along the lip of the can. “It’s red, like before.”

  “Of course it is,” Billie said. “Will Masterson was of the opinion that red was the only color suitable for barns, tractors, wagons, and bicycles. Pony carts, too. Make sure you clean that brush when you’re finished. I saw a can of turpentine in the shed.”

  It was past five o’clock when she drove into Marshall. David Clay said he would be in the bar of the Bellwood Hotel and that’s where she found him, sitting at a table opposite the booth where Billie had eaten lunch earlier that day, where she’d had the enlightening conversation with her father’s girlfriend. Had that really only been a few hours ago?

  “Tell me about the old man’s plans for that colt,” she said when she was sitting across from him and waiting for a beer.

  Clay was drinking bourbon and water. He’d ordered another when Billie had asked for beer. “Why would you want to know that?”

  “Why do you think?” Billie asked.

  Clay rattled the ice in his glass. “I figured the animal to be in Reese Ryker’s barn any day now. I hear that the two of you are doing business together.”

  Billie shook her head. “For a guy who has spent his whole life stretching the truth like a rubber band, I’m surprised you would pay attention to idle gossip.”

  Clay was not offended in the least. In fact, he smiled and waited until the waitress arrived with the drinks. “Your father was going to race the colt,” he said when she was gone. “What on Earth did you think he would do with it?”

  “I’m asking about specifics,” Billie said. “Where was he working it? And when was he going to run it?”

  “He’s got a stall over at Chestnut Field,” Clay said. “As for when, I have no notion. Soon, I would think. You know the thoroughbred game, Billie—midsummer you start to see the juveniles run.”

  “What little I knew I forgot,” Billie said.

  Clay poured the dregs of his first drink—if it actually was his first—into the new arrival. “What happened between you and Mr. Ryker? Don’t tell me he couldn’t meet your price.”

  “We had philosophical differences,” Billie said.

  “I can just imagine.” Clay drank from the glass. “And now you’ve come to me, seeking counsel. I hope you don’t think I can tell you how to make a go of things out there on the homestead, in light of the mountain of debt you’ve inherited.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Billie demanded. “You’re the one who got all pouty when I told you I was going to sell the place.”

  Clay laughed, his big stomach heaving. “It’s my nature to be devil’s advocate. I do it mainly for my own recreation. I’m too old and fat for sex and I hate golf. What else is there?”

  Billie drank her beer and said nothing. She’d let the old lawyer enjoy himself for a while. In due time though he would keep talking, because that was also his nature.

  “All right,” he conceded. “I would say that you are correct—the gray colt is the key if you intend to get out of hock. So you have two choices—race the animal and hope he’s got a modicum of the speed his sire had, or put him on the market today, before he runs even one time, and see what kind of a price he’ll fetch based on his lineage.”

  “On the subject of the colt,” Billie said, “is there any particular reason that you didn’t want to tell me that the fucking horse was by Saguaro in the first place?”

  “Language,” Clay lectured. “That’s twice now. Keep in mind this is a public house.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “There’s the hat trick.” The lawyer laughed again. He was having a very nice time, it seemed. “Would you have everything handed to you on a platter, Billie? If so, you should have made the deal with Ryker.”

  “Not an option,” Billie said. “What do you think the colt’s worth?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Clay said as he took another drink. “I suspect not a whole lot, untested as it is. People are going to look at the dam. You’d have to find someone willing to take a gamble on the horse being something special. Otherwise, I don’t know, you might get twenty or thirty thousand for him.”

  “That’s not going to get me out of the red.”

  “No, it’s not,” Clay said. “So sell the colt to Ryker.”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Clay drank half the whiskey in his glass and looked at Billie’s beer, which was nearly full. “Who’s paying for the drinks, by the way?”

  “You are.”

  “I’ll have another anyway.”

  “I thought you might,” Billie said. “Okay—let’s say I can’t sell him for a price. What do I need to do to get the horse ready to run?”

  “You need a trainer first,” Clay said. “I guess you could start at Chestnut Field. Your father considered that his home track. The manager there is a man called Caldwell. He’s a carpetbagger, a bit of a lickspittle, but he knew your father and might be able to point you in the right direction. How do you intend to pay a trainer, though? Do you have money?”

  “Not so you’d notice.”

  “Your father left you a little bit,” Clay said. “I don’t know if it’s enough because I don’t know what a trainer makes. If you found one genuinely excited about the colt, perhaps you could work out some sort of a contingency agreement.”

  “Do people still use the term carpetbagger?”

  “I do.”

  “Because you’re ancient?”

  “Because I’m colorful.”

  Billie took a swallow of the cold draft, thinking about her situation. Growing up, she’d spent a lot of time with her father around the various racetracks in the state, but she couldn’t say she knew much about the game. Back then, it was more about being with him. She had picked up a little, through osmosis, but she never felt as if she needed to study the business because he knew everything there was to know. Not that said knowledge ever led to any kind of financial success.

  “This all sounds pretty iffy to me,” she said.

  “What does?”

  “Betting everything on a horse that’s never run before.”

  “That’s because it is,” Clay said. “Matter of fact, some might say it’s downright foolish.”

  Billie looked at him for a moment. “Anybody ever tell you that you are an infuriating man?”

  “A number of people. Mrs. Clay mostly.” Smiling, he took another drink. “Look at it this way, Billie. You can take a chance with the horse, and if it doesn’t pan out, you still have the farm, which you can sell for enough money to get you clear on the debt. Which, I might remind you, was your intent all along. So why not take the chance? You could look at it as a challenge, maybe one that you’ve been wanting on a subconscious level. Maybe even needing, at this point in your life.”

  “Little bit of bourbon and you get all psychoanalytical,” Billie said.

  “How do you know I’ve only had a little bit?”

  Billie glanced around the room, which was filling up, people getting off work, she guessed. Many wore jackets and ties. She wouldn’t have guessed that Marshall had much of a white-collar labor force.

  “Are you suggesting that the old man set this up on purpose?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” Clay said. “He didn’t intend on dying last week. He was going to run that colt himself. No, this is more a matter of serendipity. An extremely underrated facet of life—serendipity. Don’t you agree?”

  “I’ve never given it much thought,” Billie said.

  “I have,” Clay said. “As a matter of fact, when I was a young man, I dabbled in the thoroughbred game myself. I bought a colt at the Keeneland auction one year, a beautiful chestnut sired by the great Sec
retariat. I named that animal Serendipity.”

  “Could he run?”

  “Not a lick,” Clay said as he drained his glass. “Not a lick.”

  Twelve

  CHUCK CALDWELL SAT BACK IN HIS chair with his feet on the desk and studied the woman standing across from him. He had been expecting her, after getting a heads-up from Reese Ryker the day before. Ryker had called to discuss the stalls he wanted at Chestnut Field and then casually mentioned that Caldwell might be getting a visit from Will Masterson’s daughter. Reese hadn’t said that the woman was a looker—tall and blonde, dressed in jeans and a tank top beneath a faded green work shirt. It occurred to Caldwell that Reese had called just to bring up the woman’s name. As far as the stalls went, he seemed to be hedging his bets on the subject. Caldwell got the sense he was being tested.

  “Your father did have a stall here,” Caldwell told the woman. “After he passed—we assumed it wouldn’t be needed.”

  “Was it paid for?” Billie asked.

  “I’d have to check the paperwork,” Caldwell said. “Some owners pay monthly, in which case it would lapse in a few days.”

  “Could you do that?”

  “When I get a chance, yes.”

  Billie stalled, apparently hoping he would check while she waited. He had no intention of doing that. Why check when he already knew the answer?

  “I’m in the market for a trainer,” she went on. “Could you recommend one?”

  “For that horse?” Caldwell said. “I don’t think so.”

  “And why not?”

  Caldwell leaned forward to grab a pack of gum from his desk. “I understand there were some questions about the animal. Ethical questions.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Caldwell put a piece of gum in his mouth. “With regards to timing. Your father said that he bred his mare to Saguaro a few days before Humphrey Brown sold the stallion to Reese Ryker. Reese Ryker wonders if that’s true. He wonders if he made the deal for the stallion and then Brown had the horse breed your father’s mare after the fact. Which would mean that Reese Ryker should have been paid the stud fee.”

  “That would mean that both my father and Humphrey Brown are guilty of fraud and of doing something pretty unethical,” Billie said. “Two guys who were in the thoroughbred business their whole lives.”

  “There’s a theory that it was all a joke, concocted by the two of them to thumb their nose at the game.” Caldwell crumpled the gum wrapper and lobbed it into a waste basket in the corner, a direct hit. There were other wrappers on the floor surrounding the basket.

  “Except that neither one of them would do that,” Billie said. “Funny—I’ve spent some time with Reese Ryker recently and he never mentioned this fraud theory to me. You think it would have come up. Maybe he was too busy trying to buy the colt from me under false pretenses. Maybe he came up with this new story after I told him to take a flying fuck at the moon yesterday.”

  “I doubt you spoke like that to a man like Reese Ryker,” Caldwell said. “Do you have any idea how much he’s worth?”

  “You saying I can tell a poor man to go fuck himself but not a rich one?”

  Caldwell shook his head. He wasn’t going to trade barbs with the woman. “The story is out there. If I was a trainer, I’d be wary of getting involved.”

  “But you’re not a trainer,” Billie said. “What are you again?”

  “I manage this facility and have been doing so for fifteen years,” Caldwell said. “Part of my job is to keep everything that happens here above reproach.”

  “Wouldn’t finding my father’s rental agreement fall under that category?” Billie asked.

  Caldwell smiled and said nothing, chewing the gum.

  “One other thing,” Billie said. “I need to talk to a workout rider named Skeeter Musgrave.”

  “Musgrave,” Caldwell said slowly. “I don’t know that name.”

  “For somebody’s who’s been running this place for all those years, you don’t seem to know much,” Billie said. “I’ll be back for that agreement.”

  The first person Billie ran into when she went to the backstretch knew who Skeeter Musgrave was and where to find him. The man was sitting in a lawn chair in front of one of the sheds. He was all alone, sunning himself, his eyes closed beneath a battered fedora.

  “I’ve been working the colt,” he said when Billie asked. His voice was as rough as quarry rock. He looked Billie over, but not in the lascivious manner that Chuck Caldwell had. Skeeter Musgrave was simply sizing her up, as if he might be able to judge her potential with a critical first look. Billie’s father had a habit of doing the same thing. He was wrong as often as he was right but that never stopped him from doing it.

  “I saw you at the funeral,” he said. He pushed the hat back onto his forehead, revealing a widow’s peak of steel gray. His nose and cheeks were shot with tiny red lines.

  Billie hadn’t noticed him at the time, but then there had been fifty or sixty people there and at the graveyard afterward. At five foot two or three, Musgrave would have easily gotten lost in the shuffle.

  “I thought you might come around,” he said. “Are you looking to sell the colt?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with him,” Billie admitted.

  “If I was a little bit younger and a lot richer, I’d make an offer on him.”

  “Why?” Billie asked. “Is he that good?”

  “I have no idea,” Musgrave said. “He can sure as hell run but that don’t mean diddly until you get him on a track with eight or ten other horses. That’s when you find out where the bear shit in the buckwheat.”

  Billie hesitated, then decided she could live without clarification about defecating bears.

  “Have you seen the workouts?” Musgrave asked.

  “No.”

  Musgrave got to his feet and started for a black pickup truck parked along the shed row lane, the fenders encrusted in mud, the wheel wells rusted out. He walked with the peculiar gait of most jocks and ex-jocks, slightly bowlegged, with rolling hips and a pronounced limp. He reached through the open window of the truck to retrieve a notebook.

  “Your father has these numbers somewhere but I always keep a record of my own,” he said, returning. “Don’t ask me why.” He leafed through the pages until he found what he wanted. “Cactus Jack—here we are. Three furlongs in thirty-three two. Four furlongs, forty-five two and forty-four eight.”

  “And that’s good?” Billie asked.

  “That’s good,” Musgrave said. “I mean, it ain’t stop the god-damn presses good, but the horse has got some speed. Can’t tell how it might finish, not until you get to the dance. But there’s something more than speed to consider.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That horse knows who he is,” Musgrave said. “You see that every now and again, with horses and with, I don’t know, ballplayers and the like. It seems as if the game slows down for them while it’s speeding up for everybody else. You get that colt out there on the dirt and the animal is just plain relaxed. Not a lot of thoroughbreds have that; a thoroughbred’s wound up by nature and by breeding. They say Saguaro had it when he raced. I expect that’s where this colt got it.”

  “I just talked to a guy named Caldwell who says he doesn’t think my father had a stall rented here for the season.”

  Musgrave shook his head. “That boy up there in the office knows about as much about the business as I do about the Russian ballet. Ask to see the agreement.”

  “I did,” Billie said. “He said he’d have a look for it after he finished chewing his gum. Or something like that.” She paused. “So you would recommend I run the horse?”

  “I would.”

  “I need a trainer,” Billie said. “And I don’t have much money to pay one. Can you suggest anybody?”

  “That’ll work for free?” Skeeter squinted as he considered the question. “There’s a couple here I like,” he said after a moment. “I don’t kn
ow that they’re looking to work on the cuff. But I can give you their names.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  The old man jotted down a couple of names in the notebook, then paused for a bit before adding another. Tearing the page from the book, he handed it over. “You talk to Reese Ryker about the horse?”

  Billie was looking at the names. “I have talked to Reese Ryker about a number of things. Why do you ask that?”

  “He was here,” Skeeter said. “Yesterday. He was asking about the colt and then he told me that he had a claim on the animal. Said that Saguaro belonged to him when he bred your father’s mare.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Not on your nelly.”

  “You said he was asking about the colt?”

  “He was.”

  “What was he asking?”

  “Same thing you’re asking,” Skeeter said. “About the workouts, the times, all that. I didn’t tell him nothing.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t like the way he was asking.”

  When Billie got back to the farm it was nearly noon. The pony cart was sitting in the sun by the barn, gleaming with a fresh coat of paint that was, Billie discovered when she touched it, still wet. She looked around for the little girl but she wasn’t there.

  But Marian was. Her SUV was parked by the house, the back hatch open. When Billie walked inside, she was coming down the stairs carrying an armload of stuff. There was a large cardboard box on the dining room table. Inside Billie could see books and toiletries, a few items of clothing, a pair of pink slippers. The Tony Lama boots with the red trim were on a chair.

  Billie merely nodded when Marian said hello. She wasn’t happy that the woman had walked in with nobody there. And it bothered her that it bothered her. It wasn’t a matter of trust, so what was it? Maybe just the fact that Marian was more at home in the house than she was, that she’d had more of Will Masterson these past years than Billie. But whose fault was that?