Golden Filly Collection One

by Lauraine Snelling

  “That’s good old L.A. smog,” Hal said in answer to her question. “Some days are clear and others are—well, others are downright awful.”

  They passed exit signs for Pasadena and Trish saw one for the Rosebowl.

  “Now watch for Arcadia and the Baldwin Avenue exit. There should be a sign for Santa Anita Park.”

  “There it is!” Trish exclaimed a few minutes later. As they left the freeway they wound through a beautifully wooded area.

  “This used to be all one estate,” Hal said. “But now this area is a wellknown arboretum and park. See, there are the stables off to our left.”

  Trish sat with her mouth open as they rounded the street into acres of parking lots. The grandstand soared green and enticing above the palm trees ahead and to the right.

  “This place is…is…” She turned to stare at her father. “It’s humongous!”

  “Baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  Chapter

  15

  Brian Sweeney’s stables?” Hal asked the gate guard.

  “Straight ahead, number 26, third barn on your right.” The uniformclad man pointed up a dirt road with low-roofed green barns butting against it. As they drove up the road, Trish could look down lanes leading to the track or deep-sanded walking areas that separated each long barn.

  “This is beautiful,” Trish whispered, trying to see everything at once.

  Since they arrived in the late afternoon, the day’s program was nearly over. A couple of horses were being led toward the grandstand. As they stopped the van at barn 26, they heard the roar of the stands. Another race had just begun.

  Trish felt like a little country mouse come to the big city. Obviously, horse racing was on a different plane here than up in Portland.

  “Brian, how are you?” Her dad shook hands with a dark-haired man who wore a ready smile. She could hear a British accent in the return greeting.

  Spitfire nickered as he heard their voices. The van shifted as the colt moved around.

  “Brian, my daughter, Trish.”

  “Good to meet you.” Brian shook her hand. “Welcome to Santa Anita. Let’s get your horse unloaded so you can move the van. We’ve a stall all ready for him.” The two men pulled out the ramp and opened the back door.

  Trish took a lead shank and met Spitfire at the door. He stared out, ears pricked forward. Sun glinted off his blue-black hide. He whinnied, announcing to the world that he had arrived.

  Horses answered from stalls around them. Spitfire tossed his head. Trish laughed as she snapped the rope to his halter.

  “You’re a show-off, you know that?”

  Spitfire blew in her face and followed her down the ramp.

  “Looks like he traveled well,” Brian said. “Why don’t you take him to that ring there and walk him for a while, Trish. Loosen him up a bit.” He pointed to an oval area between the barns, deeply sanded and with a groove worn by horse hooves.

  “You want some help?” Hal asked her.

  Trish shook her head. “I need the exercise as bad as he does. Come on, fella. You can check out the sights as we walk.”

  About half an hour later, Trish led Spitfire down the aisle between the stalls. Each barn was four stalls plus two aisles wide. The aisles had been raked earlier and the cool dimness felt good after the walk. It felt more like a summer day in Portland than early April.

  Deep straw bedded the dirt stall. A sling of hay hung on the open upper door, and green webbing took the place of the lower door half. Spitfire inspected everything, drank from the bucket in the corner, and came back to stand by Trish to get his scratching. She obliged, all the while listening to her father and Brian catch up on the years since they’d seen each other.

  I never knew he had so many friends in other places, Trish thought as she stroked Spitfire’s head and neck.

  “Let’s feed him now, Tee, and then we can get settled at the motel.”

  “You needn’t worry about a thing in the morning,” Brian said. “My men will take care of him until you come to work him out on the track. We have to be done with morning works by nine-fifteen, so you have plenty of time. Take it easy, you’ve had a long trip.”

  Trish thought back to the fog. And you don’t know the half of it.

  “We’re going to stay here?” Trish looked up at the bell in the Spanish tower of the Embassy Suites Hotel. Her father smiled.

  “All right!” She gawked even more when they walked through the inner courtyard on the way to their room. Lush greenery surrounded a waterfall and running creek. Brick walks, benches, and white-clothed tables were scattered throughout the airy, two-story room.

  Laughing children played around an outside swimming pool, shaded by stucco and brick courtyard walls. Trish knew where she wanted to spend part of her day.

  “I can’t believe all this,” she told her mother that evening after she and Hal had dinner in the dining room. “Oh, I wish you and David were here too.”

  In the morning they ate breakfast at the buffet in the courtyard and headed back to the track.

  “That parking lot is bigger than our whole farm,” Trish pointed out.

  “And that’s only one of several. Santa Anita has quite an interesting history. You should go on one of the guided tours; you’d learn a lot.” This time they parked by other trucks outside the gate.

  Spitfire announced his pleasure at Trish’s return as soon as he heard her greeting Brian.

  “He’s already been groomed,” Brian said. “We probably should clip him this afternoon. Looks pretty shaggy compared to our horses down here.”

  Trish tightened the cinch on her saddle. Yep, they do things differently in California. Once mounted, she followed the two men past lines of barns and out to the huge track.

  “Just walk him,” her father said. “We’ll be up getting a cup of coffee.”

  It was a good thing Spitfire was behaving because Trish had a hard time concentrating on him. Off to her left, across a palm tree–dotted infield, the San Gabriel Mountains seemed to butt right against the track. A turf track and another dirt working track also circled the infield.

  The stands to her right seemed to go on forever and clear up to the sky.

  Spitfire didn’t manage a flat-footed walk. He jigged and pulled at He pointed to an open restaurant area to the right. the bit. He snorted and reached out to join those horses slow-galloping or breezing by them. Trish got a better look at the stands from the far side of the track.

  “There’s gonna be an awful lot of people here on Saturday. We’ve got a big race to run.” The enormity of it all dried her throat right up.

  By the time Brian took them on a tour of the facility, Trish was even more thunderstruck.

  “This area is designed after the English paddocks,” Brian said as he pointed out over a landscaped area that looked more like a park than a racetrack. Two sculptures of horses were carved out of bushes. He called them topiary. “They do a lot of that kind of thing in Europe. And that’s Seabiscuit over there under the awning.”

  Trish saw a bronze, nearly lifesize statue of a horse on a pedestal. White-clothed tables surrounded the statue.

  “They entertain special groups there, serve fancy lunches and programs.” Brian led them through the saddling stalls and showed Trish the women’s dressing area and where to weigh in in the men’s dressing room. “We’ll bring Spitfire out and lead him through all this a couple of times during the other races. That way nothing will surprise him.”

  Or me, Trish thought. This is all so much more complicated than at home.

  She and her father registered that afternoon for their licenses as trainer and jockey in the state of California. They stood in line in the racing secretary’s office under the grandstand and paid their fees, including the final $6,000 race fee.

  “One thing about California, everything costs more.” Hal shook his head as he put his checkbook back in his pocket. “Well, come on. Let’s go get that horse of ours clipped.”


  The foreman was just finishing as they arrived back at the stables. “Good horse here.” His smile flashed bright against the tan of his face. He, like most of the grooms and stable boys, was of Mexican or South American descent.

  Trish was tempted to try her Spanish but chickened out. She’d been able to pick up some of the conversations, but they all talked so fast. She ran her hand over Spitfire’s shoulder. While the hair was short now, it still had the fuzzy feel of heavier winter coating.

  “I’m not used to someone else doing all the work like this,” she said as she and Hal walked down the aisles to the track. “But it’s nice. David would love it here, don’t you think?”

  Hal smiled at her. “Let’s watch a couple of races, then head back to the hotel.”

  “Fine with me. You still don’t feel good, do you?”

  “Not great, but better.”

  At least the race is the same everywhere, Trish thought as they watched a field break from the gates. After the horses swept by, she looked up behind them to the cantilevered roof of the stands, five stories above them. Crowds thronged both the grandstands and the infield, where there were betting windows, food stands, and a children’s play area. Better keep my mind on the horses.

  Trish fell asleep stretched out on a lounger by the pool. When she awoke in the shade, the first thing she thought of was sunburn. She felt her neck and the backs of her knees and let out a sigh of relief.

  “Dad woulda killed me,” she muttered as she gathered her towel and slipped her sandals back on. “Hope he’s ready for dinner, ’cause I’m starved.”

  Back at the track the next morning, she trotted Spitfire through the gap and onto the track.

  “Take two laps at a slow gallop, then let him out at that pole.” Hal pointed to one of the furlong markers. “We’ll clock him at three-eighths of a mile.”

  Trish did as her father said. Spitfire seemed to have understood the instructions too, at least the part about running that day. But he wanted speed from the very start.

  By the time she’d fought him twice around, Trish could feel her right arm beginning to ache. “Go for it!” she hollered as they passed the designated furlong post.

  Spitfire didn’t need any further urging. He flattened out in three strides, reaching his sprinting speed in a couple of seconds. Trish crouched high over his withers, her face blurred by his mane. After the third post she pulled him down gradually, then continued around the track, slowing to a canter, then a jog.

  “I know, that wasn’t long enough.” She sat back in her saddle and stroked his neck. “But Saturday is almost here, and then you get to show ’em what you can do.”

  At the mention of Saturday, Trish’s butterflies took a couple of test leaps. She met her father and Brian at the gap.

  “We’ve got the post breakfast in half an hour, so you better hustle.” Hal smiled up at her.

  “I think he likes running here,” Trish said. “Maybe it’s the sunshine.”

  “Whatever it is, he’s ready. Stopwatches were clicking around us, so the word will be out right away about ‘that Oregon horse.’”

  “Da-ad, we’re from Washington.”

  “I know that and you know that, but since he’s only raced at Portland Meadows, that’s where his times will come from.”

  “Oh.” Trish licked her lips. She had so much to learn.

  At the breakfast, she felt about as welcome as a toothache. It was easy to see who the jockeys were, and there wasn’t another female among them.

  “This is put on specially for the owners, trainers, and jockeys,” Brian was saying.

  Trish looked around the room again. She stopped and looked back. Sure enough. She pulled on her father’s jacket sleeve.

  “Dad, that’s Shoemaker, isn’t it?” She nodded at a gray-haired, jockeysized man across the room.

  “Sure is,” Hal answered.

  “Would you like to meet him?” Brian smiled at her. “He retired here at the track and has gone into training. Come on.”

  When Shoemaker shook her hand, Trish’s “Pleased to meet you” came out in a stutter.

  “Good luck in your race tomorrow,” the great man said. “You have a mighty strong field out there.”

  “It includes one of yours, doesn’t it?” Hal asked.

  “That’s why I can’t wish you too much luck.” Shoemaker smiled as he spoke. As another person asked him a question, Trish stepped back and watched.

  How she would love to hear some of his stories, of horses he’d ridden, of races won and lost. He’d been injured more times than anyone cared to count, but he went on to become one of the winningest jockeys in racing history.

  Number seven became their post position at the ceremony during breakfast.

  Nothing else seemed important after that.

  Until they started schooling Spitfire that afternoon. Following Sweeney’s instructions, Hal led the colt over to the receiving barn, where a farrier checked the colt’s shoes. From there they entered the line of saddling stalls where horses for the next race were being saddled. Spitfire danced some when he was led around where the spectators could look him over.

  Trish walked beside the colt, talking to him, explaining what was happening and how he should behave.

  “I think you must talk horse,” Brian teased her when she led Spitfire back into one of the open stalls. They stood there for a while, giving Spitfire all the time he needed to become comfortable.

  The next stage was the walking paddock where the jockeys mounted and again spectators could view the entrants. Spitfire walked around the circular railed area with the other horses. When the bars opened for the mounted animals to proceed to the track, Spitfire watched them leave.

  Trish watched the majority of the crowd stream back into the grandstand to prepare for viewing the race. “Something to see, isn’t it, fella?” She looked up on the grandstand where stylized tan horses adorned the forest green siding. A flashing light board announced the odds on the horses running.

  Around them, sculptured ancient olive trees offered shade to those sitting on the benches. A circular fountain, surrounded by stunning bright flowers, spouted water in a perfect arc.

  “You know you’re racing where some of the greats have been, don’t you?” Trish said. Spitfire rubbed his forehead on her shoulder. “John Henry ran here, and Seabiscuit. Aren’t you impressed?” Spitfire shook his head and acted bored.

  “I think he’s seen enough.” Hal leaned over the rail. “Let’s leave it until tomorrow.”

  Friday followed much the same pattern. By now Spitfire acted like he’d always raced at Santa Anita.

  That afternoon Trish took some time in the gift shop by the front gate to buy sweat shirts for David, Rhonda, and Brad. She couldn’t decide what to get her mother. There were T-shirts and hats, pictures and jewelry. Even jackets, all with signs and slogans about Santa Anita. Finally she chose a T-shirt with a picture of a mare and her foal on it. “Mother Love” was the caption.

  Sure wish you were all here, Trish thought as she paid for her purchases. I need all of you to tease me out of my willies.

  When she called home that night there was no answer.

  “That’s funny,” she said, turning to her father.

  “What is?”

  “They’re still not home. I’ve tried a couple of times.”

  “They must have gone to a movie.” Hal switched off his light. “How are you feeling?”

  “Scared spitless.”

  “Well, spitting isn’t polite anyway.”

  Trish threw one of her pillows at him. “You know what I mean.”

  “All you have to do is give it the best you can. If God wants you to win, you will. That’s why you don’t have to be afraid.”

  “But all those people. And if we don’t win, we won’t go to the Kentucky Derby.”

  “True, but that’s part of this business. You win or you don’t win, but you go for the glory anyway because you love racing. It gets in your blood.�
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  “But, Dad, I want to win so-o bad.”

  “So do I, Tee. So do I.”

  Trish snuggled down under her covers. Please, heavenly Father, help me do my best tomorrow. The roar of the crowd filled her ears as she finally drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter

  16

  Trish found a card propped against the lampstand in the morning. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phillipians. 4:13). Trish read it through several times.

  “Thanks, Dad.” She slid into the seat across from him in the dining room. “I needed reminding.”

  “We all do.” Hal sipped his coffee.

  “Now if we can just convince my butterflies….”

  Spitfire trotted out on the track for his morning workout like he owned the world. Ears pricked, neck arched, he surveyed his kingdom and found it to his liking.

  Trish breathed in the cool, crisp air. Bits of cloud still hovered on the mountains, but the sun was quickly drying dew that sparkled on the grass of the turf track. The weather report was for low eighties with a slight breeze.

  “No rain down our necks today, fella.” Trish rubbed his neck along the high poll. “Nice fast track. Who could ask for anything more?”

  I can, Trish thought later, after Spitfire was polished to the nth degree. Even his hooves shone. I wish David were here. And Brad on Dan’l to lead us to the starting gate. And Rhonda screaming for us.

  “I even miss Mom telling me to be careful,” she said to Hal as they walked out to the truck to get her silks and their racing saddle. “Can you believe that?”

  When the crowd roared at the start of the first race, Trish’s butterflies flipped and flopped. Sure is easier when I have several mounts, she thought. Then I don’t have so much time to stew.

  Worried are you? her nagger’s voice accused.

  No. Trish tightened her lips. Scared stiff!

  “What’s causing the tight chin?” Hal asked as he handed her a Diet Coke.