Pieces of the Frame

by John McPhee

  Aestheticians who show quarter horses for their conformation are enraged by the expanding infusions of Thoroughbred blood. Meanwhile, racing owners adapt their breeding programs to the apparent requirements of speed alone. The rift in the quarter-horse world is a wide one now, and there are even sub-rifts among racers—those who tingle to the cowpoke story and the valued idea of the quarter horse as a unique breed, and those who don’t give a damn. Speed, to the latter, is the controlling word, and with speed the truest definition of a racing quarter horse must virtually end. Most quarter-horse races finish up with differences—first to tenth place—expressible in noses and necks. In a major race last August, about a week before the All-American, a colt named Truckle Feature—by a Thoroughbred and out of a registered quarter-horse dam—took on nine other horses, representing the best competition alive at the three- and four-year-old levels, and crossed the finish line three lengths in front. The time over the classic four hundred and forty yards was twenty-one and eight-hundredths seconds, a track record. (There are no world records, because surfaces vary.) A quarter-running horse, as the animal is often called, is—what else?—a horse that has at least a few drops of blood recognized in the studbook and can run a quarter of a mile somewhere near the standard of that colt.

  Secretariat won the 1973 Kentucky Derby in record time, running five quarters at an average speed close to twenty-four seconds flat. Hence Secretariat was cruising at about thirty-eight miles an hour, while Truckle Feature, in his big race, was doing forty-two. Secretariat, of course, was running for distance. Heaven knows what he might do if he were trained to sprint. “He would follow these horses down the track and then they’d have to get out of his way somewhere around the finish,” Dean Turpitt said one day. “They would have to get out of his way or he would run right over them. Take Secretariat out for half a year or so and retrain him, and he could run with the quarter horses. You shorten him up and train him like a quarter horse, and I don’t believe these horses could outrun him. He might even be able to do it without the retraining, he’s such a superhorse.”

  Despite the advancing role of the Thoroughbred, quarter-horse sires are still dominant in their field. Nine of every ten horses that ran in the 1973 All-American trials had quarter-horse sires. As it happened, about half the total field were the offspring of just five major studs. Among these, the greatest was Go Man Go. A son of Top Deck, a Thoroughbred, and Lightfoot Sis, a quarter-horse brood mare, he was the foremost money-making quarter-running horse for three straight years in the nineteen-fifties, and his prepotency was such that his get had followed where he had been, winning more money and races than the colts and fillies of any other stallion.

  Go Man Go stands at stud at Buena Suerte Ranch, in Roswell, New Mexico, his life an apparent idyll. Firm white fences surround his private paddock. His name is writ in gold on his private barn beside his own demarcated pastures. When the time comes for him to serve his purpose, though, he is led around to the clinic, where a group of mares has been prepared by teaser stallions. Handlers—halters in hand—hold the mares and hold the teasers. A teaser is not restrained as he moves close to a mare. He nuzzles her. He rubs against her. He makes deep sexual sounds. His heart pounds. His blood courses. Her blood courses, too. Nostrils flaring, he tries to mount. Forcefully, he is pulled down and away. He is dragged off to a corral. The mare has ovulated and is ready. Teaser stallions do not last long. In a matter of months, they break down psychologically.

  Now, with fourteen or so mares teased up, Go Man Go is brought to the scene. He will not cover one love in a pasture, but fourteen mares in a clinic. One of them is presented to him and, without preliminaries, he mounts. A vet stands beside him. At the ultimate moment before penetration, the vet diverts Go Man Go into an artificial vagina. A heavy leather tube, lined with plastic, it is about two feet long and has a suitcase handle. In its outer walls are two valves, one for compressed air and the other for water heated to a hundred and sixty-seven degrees. Injected hot water bubbles with air, giving Go Man Go a sense of grand reception. (“He doesn’t know what is happening,” the vet explains. “He thinks he is inside the mare.”)

  A bottle in the artificial vagina catches the sperm and semen, which are immediately placed in a spectrometer. Fifty million sperm are counted off, and syringed into a teased-up mare. Fifty million more go into the next mare. One ejaculation will more than cover the entire group. Go Man Go is led back to his private pasture, dragging behind him his shattered metaphor: Go Man Go, standing at stud.

  The stud that resides next door to Go Man Go is known around the farm as a bad horse, because he recently went after the vet, bit him, shoved him around, and sent him off to the hospital for nine stitches in his arm. The name of this hero is Tony B Deck, property of Anthony Buford, of Caledonia, Missouri, and it is explained that Tony B was spoiled when he was racing and that he is now “schizo.” Tony B Deck was happy when he was racing. He was a big winner, a flying horse. Now—great stud—he must play his role with a fake vagina made from the hide of a cow. And he is considered insane because he took a piece out of the vet.

  Tony B Deck’s father, who stood in Perry, Oklahoma, was murdered in his stall there on an August night in 1971. Three men, reported to have come from Colorado and to have been hired for the job, spent several hours in the horse’s stall gradually dosing him with barbiturates through the jugular vein. His name was Jet Deck. After certain litigation, the American Livestock Insurance Company paid the full face value—three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars—of a policy on his life. His actual value when he died was almost two million. He was clearly one of the great quarter horses of all time. Winner of twenty-two races in thirty-one starts, frequently setting records, he was the best runner of the early sixties, and some said the best that ever ran. At stud, he sired about six hundred colts and fillies, and their statistical record was so impressive that one did not have to extrapolate far to see that Jet Deck would before long surpass Go Man Go as the greatest sire of all time. He was killed, though, and he left only seven crops of foals, the last of which would come into racing, as two-year-olds, in 1974. His name is cited in any discussion that calls in question the wisdom of artificial insemination, for without it his progeny would number only a hundred and fifty or so. Possumjet, winner of the All-American in 1972, was a Jet Deck filly. Flaming Jet, winner of the seventh trial heat and now a finalist in the 1973 All-American, was a Jet Deck colt. The murder of their father was never solved. It is said that the owners had suspicions about who planned the killing, and why, but no accusations were ever made. Meanwhile, in the Ruidoso barns, with the big race near, human beings stayed with the horses around the clock. Jimmy Grimes slept in the barn with Calcutta Deck. Mike Wilson, a young assistant to Jerry Fisher, slept beside the stalls of Rich and John. Dozing beside Wilson was a German shepherd.

  Bill Smith had not gone to a breeding farm to have his mare mated to a celebrity. Unique among the owners of the ten finalists, he owned both the dam and the sire. Calcutta Deck was bred, born, and raised in Pea Ridge. One of the other owners was a horse-and-cattle auctioneer from Henderson, Texas, a man of unspectacular wealth. Most of the rest were millionaires. On the day of the post-position draw, Wayne Laughlin was already brushing up a lather of excuses. He said, looking mournfully at Smith, “You can see what the odds are for an old poor boy hitting this deal.”

  It had happened, though. On the edge of Norman, Oklahoma, is a milkshake-hamburger drive-in called Jonesy’s, not far from a pasture where Jonesy keeps his horses. Jonesy won the All-American in 1967 with a filly named Laico Bird. Possumjet, winner in 1972, was owned by a man named Jack Byers, who drove a county bulldozer around Blanchard, Oklahoma, and, before his horse won, had never owned an automobile, only pickups. A horseman by avocation, he had bred a mare to Jet Deck, and had trained the resulting filly himself. Stud fees in the quarter-horse business are not forbidding. Jet Deck commanded three thousand five hundred dollars. Go Man Go gets seventy-five hundred
. Artificial insemination keeps the price low, putting the great studs within occasional reach of the poor. This, among other reasons, is why Thoroughbred stallions must actually cover their mares. Fewer can be served, so the price can be kept high—as high as fifty thousand dollars. Thoroughbred conception, though, is not a liaison in a sea of bluegrass. The mare is hobbled, to reduce chances of injury, and is kept firmly in place by handlers.

  The draw was held in the All-American Turf Club, a posh loft of the grandstand, where many owners maintain permanent box seats. Bill Smith missed the draw, because he did not know where the All-American Turf Club was. He was hunting for it while numbered pills were being shaken in a red plastic bottle and dropped out, one at a time, to be matched to the shuffled names of horses. Rich drew the 3 hole. John drew the 7 hole. Azure Teen the 1 hole. Dancer’s Queen the 4 hole. And so on until the last pill, numbered 9, matched the last name, Calcutta Deck. Smith finally found the Turf Club, just in time to be jolted by the network man in charge of the television coverage of the race, which would be broadcast to about three-quarters of the United States. The TV man lectured the assembled owners on the importance of making a good appearance on national TV, told them to be sure to dress nicely and to prepare something interesting to say—at all costs to avoid what happened last year. On a monitor, he showed clips of what happened last year. Jack Byers, the winning owner, stood there in the winner’s circle in a hat that had lost its Western brim curl, an open green shirt with a T-shirt visible at the throat, and bluejeans that had no belt, let alone a Texas buckle. When he talked, he seemed confused with excitement, and he did not use impressive grammar—and he was as interesting and true to self as anything ever seen on the home screen, but that was unacceptable to the network, whose representative now again reminded the owners to dress and behave not as they ordinarily would but within the margins of a “perception” that TV wanted them to project. He urged them, too, to thank the advertisers. The owners, for the most part in Western hats and Levi’s, their millions hidden up their legs somewhere, were amazingly docile, heifers to a man, nodding assent to the electronic master. Bill Smith felt scared. He remembered Jack Byers’ telling him that while he was facing television his mouth had been so dry he could not roll a cigarette. It occurred to Smith that he might well find himself standing in the winner’s circle with television looking at him. He worried that he might faint.

  Toward the back of the room sat a tall man with large bones, dark hair, a big grin, and youthful eyes. He was fifty-five and appeared to be forty. His clothing made him look like a rich cowboy, which, in a sense, he was. Across the small of his back, brass studs, embedded in his belt, spelled out his name, Vernon Pool. He had put millions into the All-American. Over the years—since 1959, when the race began—he had paid up nearly sixty horses; he had not yet had a winner. He came from Shawnee, Oklahoma, and his profession was the building of airports, dams, roads—long stretches of Interstate 40, Interstate 35. In the middle nineteen-fifties, he had begun vacationing in Ruidoso, renting a cabin in the mountains, finding rest and relaxation at the fifty—dollar window. It was not at all unusual for him to go there and buy ten tickets on a single horse in a single race. In fact, his betting range ran from fifty to a thousand dollars a race, depending on mood and the vagaries of the program. “The philosophy of gambling,” he once explained, “is; Never change your way of betting. If you’re a two-dollar bettor, stay there. If you’re a fifty-dollar bettor, stay there. Don’t try to catch up. Bet the same on each race all day long. You break about even. Always bet them to win. If they’re not going to win, they’re not going to get nowhere.” He once bought ten hundred-dollar tickets on a 7-1 shot and exchanged the tickets after the race for eight thousand dollars.

  Pool formed a friendship, early on at Ruidoso, with Audie Murphy, who owned quarter horses, and one day in 1959 Murphy called Pool in Shawnee to ask his help with the purchase of a four-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar breeding farm that was for sale. Murphy got lost somewhere in the negotiations, and Pool bought it all himself—fifty head of horses, including eleven prime brood mares (one of which had been the quarter-running champion a few years before) and, to boot, almost the entire first crop of Go Man Go. Pool, in his life, had not owned so much as one colt until a few months before, and now, with a single signature, he became the premier owner of running quarter horses. To complete this conquest, he bought the remainder of the first crop of Go Man Go. His brother said to him, “You remind me of a man who bought a bottle of beer and liked it so well he bought the brewery.”

  Pool moved the horses to Shawnee and established his farm on four hundred and twenty acres running in an L shape along two sides of the Shawnee Country Club. His home is there now, and so is the home of his daughter and his four grandchildren. His son-in-law minds the Interstates for him when he is in Ruidoso. Jerry Fisher had once worked for Vernon Pool. Pool’s trainer now was William Thompson. Pool’s horses had run in the trials for every All-American, and five had been finalists. Two had been in a final together. A horse of his had been the favorite in 1972. The best he had ever done was third.

  After the death of a major quarter horseman not long ago, there had been much speculation in the business over who might become the new owner of Vansarita Too, a great brood mare he had owned. While others maneuvered and planned formal offers, Pool saw the owner’s widow at Ruidoso, sat down beside her, and said, “Neva, I’d like to buy your horse.”

  Neva said, straight back, “You couldn’t afford her, Vernon.”

  Pool said, “why?”

  “Because I’d want a hundred thousand dollars for her,” Neva said, and Pool reached into his pocket, took out a check, and wrote it. When he went to Pawhuska, Oklahoma, to pick up the mare, he noticed her filly Gotta Go Too. For forty thousand dollars more, he took the filly home as well. To the 1973 All-American he had brought four horses. In the trials, one broke down. Another had sore legs and faded away. The third simply did not run fast enough. The fourth was the filly Gotta Go Too, who qualified for the final.

  Pool had lately acquired a semi-silent partner in his horse ventures, a rich private eye from Dallas. His name was Grady Hopper, and he was a dark-haired studious man with an excited manner. As an investor, he had tried Thoroughbreds for a few years but had now gone in for straight speed. He deferred unequivocally to Pool. He was having, above all else, a lot of fun; and at the All-American draw, when Gotta Go Too’s number appeared and the horse drew the 10 hole, Hopper got so excited he turned a cup of coffee upside down. “Now, take it easy, Grady. You’ll have a heart attack,” Pool told him. Later that day, Pool and Hopper went over to a yearling sale that is held annually at Ruidoso, and bid on a brown filly who was a half sister of Truckle Feature. She had twelve pink carnations on her mane, one on her forehead, and two on her tail. Pool kept nodding at the babbling auctioneer as if he were listening to a long story. He bought the horse for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars—the highest price ever paid for a yearling quarter horse.

  Bobby Adair flew in for the All-American on the eve of the race. He had been racing in California. He travelled a lot, as the best of jockeys will, coining money. Ten per cent of a race was his, and if he won this one he was going to get thirty-three thousand dollars. Like an airline captain, he would not have a drink with his dinner tonight, for he was flying tomorrow. “Having a drink the night before could slow a person down,” he said. “And I sure don’t want that He would turn out his light at eleven and try to sleep for twelve hours, if possible, but such a feat was unlikely, because the race meant too much to him and lately he had not been sleeping well. “It’s difficult to explain the feeling a rider has about a race like this,” he said. “It’s money, but it’s prestige, too.” For much of a decade, Adair had been the established leader among quarter-horse jockeys. He had won hundreds of thousands of dollars and almost every big race there was, but never an All-American. Four times before, he had been in the All-American final. He had lost by a neck in ‘
71, by part of a nose in ’66. He had run fifth in ‘70 and ninth in ’67. He had long been in a position to pick the horse he would ride. Any owner who got him was lucky. He was a student mainly of bloodlines, but when he looked over a colt or a filly he also took into account the racing conformation. His horse this year was Coca’s Kid, a filly that had previously run seven times, winning five, placing twice. Her time in the All-American trials—running under Adair—had been the best among the two hundred and seven horses. Sired by a Thoroughbred, Coca’s Kid was a California horse. Her owner, a medical doctor named Edward Allred, had paid the penalty fifteen thousand dollars to bring the horse late into the eligible field. The Doctor’s specialty was human abortion—”a hundred a day, the biggest in California“—and the jockey helped him invest the proceeds. The two sat side by side at yearling sales. Of late, the Doctor had become nervous, upset, cranky, and irritable, Adair said, and so had he. The pressure of this big race was so great. “The horse, though—she is like a child’s pony, a nice, quiet filly. But she’s high-strung, too. She changes into a bomb on the track. The farther she goes, the faster she gets. If others are in front of me for a while tomorrow, I don’t feel I should panic.”

  Slender and not short, with blue eyes and curly blond hair, a diamond ring on his finger, Adair was Nordically handsome, and he spoke in a soft, cultured voice. He had grown up in a small town less than a hundred miles from Ruidoso. His father, a schoolteacher, insisted that Bobby get off his horse and study, and finish high school before disappearing into racing. Bobby started out by doing chores at Ruidoso Downs, sleeping in the tack room, looking for someone who would allow him to gallop a horse. The horses were too valuable, though, and for a long while no one would let him get on one. Finally, he got to know an owner who allowed him to take a horse to the track for an exercise gallop. Adair moved on with the owner to the track at Raton, three hundred miles to the north, his only chance to gallop horses, and then on to Denver, where he galloped Thoroughbreds for two dollars a run. He lived on free-lance galloping. He got his license. In September, 1961, he rode his first pari-mutuel race, came in second, and felt confident at once that he would one day win the All-American.