by Brad Smith
“Yes,” Kellyanne said. “He would.”
Billie wasn’t sure how she had managed it, but Jodie somehow convinced the dog now known as George to pull the pony cart she had sanded and painted. As big as the dog was it was still not quite pony-sized, but it did a reasonable job of hauling the little girl out to the road and back. The operation was much more successful with the mutt than it was ever going to be with the obstinate pony. It was midmorning and Billie watched from the back deck, drinking coffee and thinking that it was just the natural way of things. Dogs were dogs and ponies were ponies and just because the conveyance in question was called a pony cart didn’t mean that your average pony would want anything to do with it. Ponies were contrary animals that as a rule didn’t give a hoot in hell about a little girl’s wishes. The donkey was little inclined to the task, either. A dog, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to please its human counterparts. Sitting in the morning sun and considering the vagaries of the animal world, it dawned on Billie that she was now running a dog and pony show.
“Chrissakes,” she said out loud.
In truth though, she was surprised to find a feeling of contentment creeping into her subconscious of late. There was nothing to account for it; she was still in dire straits financially, with all of her hopes in that direction pinned on a horse race coming up on the weekend. And then on another race after that. And so on. To think that the colt would win every time out was impractical and probably downright delusional, but Luke had reminded her that second and third place paid decent money as well, enough to keep moving forward.
Her financial future, doomed or charmed as it might turn out to be, had nothing to do with the change in Billie’s emotional being. For some reason she was no longer restless on the farm, or at least not as restless as she had been when she’d first come back. She wasn’t convinced that the feeling would last and in fact doubted it would, but she felt at home for the first time since she was about fourteen years old. Ironically, she felt at home in the very same place as when she was that age. She wished she could tell her father that.
Watching Jodie coming down the laneway once again in the cart, she thought that it might be time to suggest giving the dog a breather. The animal seemed to be slowing down, its tongue lolling. In the course of a week it had gone from being penned up in a chain-link prison to a brand-new life as a draft animal. Billie reasoned that a career change like that needed to be gradual.
Before Billie could speak, she saw a white Buick SUV turn into the lane, heading for the barn. The car was moving slowly, dodging the holes in the gravel drive. Billie got to her feet, wondering who it was behind the wheel.
The Buick made a wide circle around the dog cart and parked. A youngish man in a blue suit got out. He glanced at Jodie and the big mutt before looking up to see Billie at the house, then reached back into the SUV to retrieve a briefcase. There was something about the man’s arrival that didn’t sit well with Billie. Men with briefcases rarely delivered good news, at least in her experience. She started down the hill.
The man said his name was something Albertson and that he was a lawyer. He appeared just nervous enough to make Billie nervous, too. He was obviously hesitant to say why he was there, which didn’t help. Billie regarded him a moment before turning to Jodie, who had pulled the cart to a stop by the barn door.
“Maybe we should give George a breather,” she said.
“Okay,” Jodie said. “He did pretty good, didn’t he?”
“He did very good.”
Then Billie turned back to the fidgety lawyer and asked what she could do for him.
They found Luke at the farm outside of Junction City. He was drinking beer on the front porch and reading a paperback novel. His hat was on the newel post at the top of the steps and his worn boots propped on the railing.
“Demand note,” Luke said. “Never heard of that before.”
“I wish I never heard of it now,” Billie said.
“What’s the story on it?”
“Some guy over in Monticello lent my father forty-five thousand dollars a few years back. The agreement was that the old man just had to keep up on the interest. Which apparently he somehow did, along with a small bit of the principal.”
“But now the guy’s calling in the note?”
“Not exactly,” Billie said. “The guy sold the note.”
“Sold it to who?”
“How many guesses do you need, Luke?”
“Well shit.”
“Yeah,” Billie said.
“Why didn’t you know about this?” Luke asked.
“I knew it was there,” Billie said. “Lawyer Clay said not to worry about it. There were more pressing debts.”
“Not anymore, there ain’t,” Luke said. “How much is owed on this thing?”
“Nearly the full boat. Forty-two thousand.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed and he looked out to the field where the Hereford steers grazed, as if the little herd might offer a solution to the money problem. After a few seconds he stood up, draining his beer.
“You want a pop, kid?”
“Sure,” Jodie said.
As Luke went into the house Billie reached over for the novel he’d been reading. It was a Mickey Spillane mystery, a tattered and dog-eared copy that looked to be sixty years old. When Luke returned he was carrying two cans of Bud and a cola for Jodie and he had the racing schedule tucked beneath his arm. He handed over the drinks and then sat on the railing where he took a long drink of beer before opening the paper.
Jodie had a drink of the soda. “Can I go look at the cows?”
“They’re steers,” Luke said. “Go ahead. They ain’t all that entertaining.”
“I like their white faces.” Jodie went down the steps and walked over to the fence line, where she tried to draw the attention of the disinterested Herefords.
“Forty-two thousand,” Luke muttered. “And we got how long?”
“Note’s due in ten days,” Billie said.
Luke frowned, scanning the schedule.
“Since when did you start reading novels?” Billie asked.
“I always did,” Luke said. “Hell, I’ve spent near my whole life living in motels. What do you think I do in my spare time?”
“Drink and chase women.”
“Shit,” he said, still looking at the schedule. Suddenly his face lit up. “Hey—we enter him in the Jamboree Mile. We take him out of the sprint and run him in the Jamboree.”
“The stakes race?” Billie asked, her voice incredulous. “How many beers you had today? We can’t run Cactus Jack in that race. That’s way out of his class.”
“Says who?” Luke replied. “We win this race on Saturday and you can have the money for Monday morning. Well—provided he wins.”
“There is that provision,” Billie said sarcastically. “We can’t step him up like that. He’s raced twice, for Chrissakes.”
“But you’re out of time,” Luke said. “Sometimes you just do something because it’s the only thing left to do.”
“And that makes sense to you?”
“Well, it don’t always work out.”
“Cactus Jack can’t compete against that field.”
Luke shrugged. “I’m listening if you’ve got a better idea.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Billie said. “The race is five days away and the field will be full. Caldwell wouldn’t let us enter him if we wanted to.”
“Chuck Caldwell will show up at that race wearing an evening gown and pearls if I tell him to,” Luke said.
Twenty-Nine
WHEN CALDWELL CALLED, REESE WAS IN his car, heading for the TV station in Louisville. He hadn’t been spending much time there of late and even though he knew that it mattered little whether he was there or not, he felt that his presence should be noted occasionally, in case somebody decided that they—and not he—were running the place.
But then he got the phone call and he turned around, heading for Chestnut
Field. He was getting tired of news from Chestnut Field and even more tired of it being bad news.
“The Jamboree?” he said. “Why the hell would they do that?”
“I assume for the money,” Caldwell replied. “Why else would they do it?”
They were standing trackside by the finish line, where a few trainers were working horses. When Reese had arrived, Caldwell had been there, talking to a video technician about the cameras.
“What’s the purse on that race?” Reese asked.
“A hundred thousand.”
That was it, Reese knew then. The winner’s take would be sixty thousand, more than what Billie Masterson owed on the demand note Reese had purchased from the old vintner in Monticello a few days earlier.
“So they pulled the horse from the sprint and booked him in the stakes.”
“That’s what they did,” Caldwell said.
“And you didn’t tell them no.”
“I did not.”
“Seems to me that Luke Walker is pretty much running this place these days,” Reese said. “Sounds as if he says jump and you say how high.”
“I guess I could tell him to fuck off and then we could all talk to a judge about certain things and certain people. You among them, Reese.”
“You can’t link me to any of it.”
“You’re the one who showed Walker the pictures of him and the stripper,” Caldwell said. “You think he forgot that part?” He paused, watching Ryker. “What are you worried about anyway? That horse is way out of his class in the Jamboree. The favorite is that big bay Jim’s Dandy. Horse has won all five of its starts. Every horse in the field can beat that horse of Masterson’s hands down. They’re doing you a favor, pulling that colt out of the sprint. They’re going to end up with zilch, which is what you want. Isn’t it, Reese?”
Reese thought about that as he drove back to Lexington, having forgotten all about going to “work” at the TV station. It sounded as if Billie Masterson was desperate, entering her horse in the stakes. Nothing short of a win would save her. And Chuck Caldwell had just guaranteed Reese that a win was out of the question, which meant that come Saturday night, Billie Masterson was out of options.
That is, as long as her horse got beat. But why was Reese willing to trust Chuck Caldwell’s guarantee on this or anything else? After all, it was Caldwell who had come up with the idea of getting the stripper to pose as the schoolteacher. It had cost Reese five grand and backfired in the end. Why should Reese trust him now?
When he got to the house, he drove over to the barns to look for Joe Drinkwater. The trainer was in his office on the upper floor on the stable, sipping green tea and going over some paperwork. Reese really didn’t know what the man did when he wasn’t actually on the track, working horses. He assumed that Drinkwater knew what he was doing and so he left him to do it. His horses kept winning.
“What’s up, Reese?” Joe asked when Reese walked in.
“We’re running Ghost Rider in the Jamboree Mile at Chestnut Field on Saturday,” Reese said.
“What?” Joe snapped. “Since when?”
“Since I just decided.”
“That’s two days away,” Joe said. “We’re not doing that.”
“Yes, we are,” Reese said and left. As he walked to the house, he called Chuck Caldwell to tell him the news. For the second time in two days Caldwell was going to have to expand the field for the race and he immediately began to whine about it. Reese hung up on him.
“That sonofabitch,” Luke said when he heard.
Skeeter Musgrave told him the news Friday morning. Skeeter hadn’t been coming around the track much of late. He had finally decided to let the doctors replace his left hip and he was waiting for a date for the surgery. He didn’t like being at the track when he couldn’t do anything constructive, so he’d been steering clear of the place. But he ate breakfast every morning at the Creekside Diner down the road a couple of miles. A lot of track workers frequented the place and it was there he’d heard about Ghost Rider.
“Only the best goddamn two-year-old on the planet,” Skeeter said. “According to Reese Ryker, that is.”
“According to a lot of people,” Luke said.
“Everybody knows Ryker has a bee in his bonnet over that colt of yours,” Skeeter said. “But dropping that horse into that race— well, that’s beyond the pale. Lot of people pissed off about it.”
Luke nodded. He was one of them, although his reasons were different than those of the people Skeeter was talking about. Those folks didn’t like Ryker bringing his horse in just to win the race. It wasn’t illegal, it was just wrong, and it would make the race a mismatch. All it meant to Luke was that Cactus Jack couldn’t win. It had been a stretch in the first place, entering the colt with just two races under his belt.
The horse in question was at that moment standing in his stall a few yards away, picking at some alfalfa. Luke had had Tyrone lope the colt for a couple of furlongs earlier but that was all he would do today, with less than twenty-four hours to race time.
“What are you gonna do?” Skeeter asked then.
“I don’t know,” Luke replied. “This was a hell of a long shot to begin with and I sure wasn’t expecting this.” He stood looking at Cactus Jack chewing the sweet hay, oblivious to his fate. “What would you do, Skeeter?”
“The Lord hates a coward.”
Billie was in the barn with Jodie when Luke pulled up in his truck. She had decided to replace the rotting boards along the back wall of the building and first they had to move the hay out of the way. They were lugging bales across the floor to the opposite wall when Luke came in with the news.
Billie didn’t say anything for a time. She sat down heavily on the bale she’d been carrying, her eyes on the scarred wooden barn floor. “I guess we should have seen that coming.”
“Nobody else did,” Luke said. “It’s a bush-league move, dropping that horse into the race, and everybody knows it. Ryker’s name is mud around Chestnut.”
“He couldn’t care less about that,” Billie said. “How did he enter him so late?”
“Same way we did is my guess,” Luke said. “He’s got his foot on Caldwell’s neck, too, I expect.”
“So what do we do?”
“We can scratch the horse,” Luke said. “Look for another race next week. Maybe even run him at Keeneland or Ellis.”
“Nothing that will pay enough, though,” Billie said. “You sure this is true? Where did Skeeter hear it anyway?”
“I checked the entries and it’s true,” Luke said. “The news was all around the track. Skeeter first heard about it at the diner.”
Billie stood and lifted the bale onto the stack against the wall. “And what does Skeeter say?”
“Skeeter says the Lord hates a coward.”
“I’ve heard that one before, too,” Billie said.
“Is Ghost Rider a brother to Cactus Jack?” Jodie asked.
“Half-brother, yeah,” Luke said.
“I bet they’ll be glad to see each other.”
Billie smiled in spite of herself. “Maybe they will.”
Thirty
COME SATURDAY MORNING JOE DRINKWATER WAS in a foul mood for the third day running. At one point Reese thought the trainer was going to quit over the matter. He’d come to the house Thursday night to plead his case.
“We had a plan,” he said. “We run the colt in three weeks in the Mercedes Mile and then we take him to the Breeders. There’s strategy here, Reese. I’m not throwing darts at a racing schedule on the wall.”
“That’s still the plan,” Reese said. “We’re just going to make a little side trip to Chestnut Field first.”
“That’s another thing,” Joe said. “This isn’t fair to the owners who run that track all year long, dropping Ghost Rider into that race. This stinks like a dead skunk. It makes us all look bad.”
Reese shrugged.
“And it’s all because of that Masterson colt,” Joe went on. He realiz
ed something. “Is that why Luke Walker was here that day? Were you trying to influence that boy somehow?”
“Not at all.”
Joe watched him a moment. “You don’t want to do this, Reese. Pull the horse now, say it was a publicity stunt, or a clerical error, something. But you don’t want to do this.”
“We’re doing it.”
The conversation had done nothing to ease the tension between the two men. They trailered the gray colt to Chestnut Field the next morning. Ordinarily a horse like Ghost Rider would be received like royalty, but not in this instance. Nearly everybody at Chestnut had a connection to one or another of the horses entered in the Jamboree, which meant they were all now resigned to the fact that their horse would be running for second. Anyone who admired Ghost Rider did it while simultaneously resenting the horse’s very existence. It didn’t help that Reese Ryker showed up on Saturday looking like he’d just stepped off the set of a 1930s movie, dressed in a white linen suit and wearing a wide-brimmed white hat. Sofia was still in Los Angeles, making music, so Reese arrived alone. He hung around the shed row for a bit but soon grew tired of Joe Drinkwater’s pout and went up to the lounge to sit with Chuck Caldwell, whose disposition wasn’t any improvement over Joe’s. He’d been taking heat for days over his allowing Ghost Rider to run in the mile. Reese ignored his petulance and ordered bourbon and water.
Billie and Jodie were at the track a couple of hours before race time. Luke had been there since early morning, even though there’d been nothing to do. He and Billie had talked the night before of pulling Cactus Jack, but in the end Billie had said no. They’d been on the back deck at the farm. Jodie had gone to bed and the moon was just showing in the eastern sky.
“I don’t care if he finishes last,” she said. “Either we show up or Ryker will think he scared us off.”
“Christ, you’re just like your old man,” Luke told her.
“There was a time I would have taken umbrage at that,” Billie said.
The Jamboree Mile was the seventh race on the card. Billie and Jodie went to the shed row to see Cactus Jack a little beforehand. Luke was there, sitting on the tailgate of his truck, looking cool as a cucumber, although Billie didn’t believe it. He turned to Jodie as she approached the horse in the stall.
