by Dick Francis
Chick could have made a reasonable job of it if he’d been trying. Instead, with nausea and mental exhaustion draining what skill he had out of his muscles, he was busy proving that he’d never be much good.
At the second jump he saw in his mind’s eye the chestnut somersaulting through the air, and going round the bend his gaze wavered across to the broken rail and the scuffed-up patches of turf in front of it. The chestnut had died there. Everyone in the stable would be poorer for it. He had killed the chestnut, there was no avoiding it any more, he’d killed it with that carrot as surely as if he’d shot the bolt himself. Chick sobbed suddenly, and his eyes filled with tears.
He didn’t see the next two hurdles. They passed beneath him in a flying blur. He stayed on his horse by instinct, and the tears ran down and were swept away as they trickled under the edge of his jockey’s goggles.
The green hurdler was frightened and rudderless. Another jump lay close ahead, and the horses in front went clattering through it, knocking one section half over and leaving it there at an angle. The hurdler waited until the last minute for help or instructions from the man on his back and then in a muddled way dived for the leaning section, which looked lower to him and easier to jump than the other end.
Prom the stands it was clear to both the small trainer and Arthur Morrison that Chick had made no attempt to keep straight or to tell the horse when to take off. It landed with its forefeet tangled up in the sloping hurdle and catapulted Chick off over its head.
The instinct of self-preservation which should have made Chick curl into a rolling ball wasn’t working. He fell through the air flat and straight, and his last thought before he hit was that that stupid little sod of a trainer hadn’t schooled his horse properly. The animal hadn’t a clue how to jump.
He woke up a long time later in a high bed in a small room. There was a dim light burning somewhere. He could feel no pain. He could feel nothing at all. His mind seemed to be floating in his head and his head was floating in space.
After a long time he began to believe that he was dead. He took the thought calmly and was proud of himself for his calm. A long time after that he began to realise that he wasn’t dead. There was some sort of casing round his head, holding it cushioned. He couldn’t move.
He blinked his eyes consciously and licked his lips to make sure that they at least were working. He couldn’t think what had happened. His thoughts were a confused but peaceful fog.
Finally he remembered the carrot, and the whole complicated agony washed back into his consciousness. He cried out in protest and tried to move, to get up and away, to escape the impossible, unbearable guilt. People heard his voice and came into the room and stood around him. He looked at them uncomprehendingly. They were dressed in white.
‘You’re all right, now,’ they said. ‘Don’t worry, young man, you’re going to be all right.’
‘I can’t move,’ he protested.
‘You will,’ they said soothingly.
‘I can’t feel… anything. I can’t feel my feet.’ The panic rose suddenly in his voice. ‘I can’t feel my hands. I can’t… move… my hands.’ He was shouting, frightened, his eyes wide and stretched.
‘Don’t worry,’ they said. ‘You will in time. You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be all right.’
He didn’t believe them, and they pumped a sedative into his arm to quiet him. He couldn’t feel the prick of the needle. He heard himself screaming because he could feel no pain.
When he woke up again he knew for certain that he’d broken his neck.
After four days Arthur Morrison came to see him, bringing six new-laid eggs and a bottle of fresh orange juice. He stood looking down at the immobile body with the plaster cast round its shoulders and head.
‘Well, Chick,’ he said awkwardly, ‘it’s not as bad as it could have been, eh?’
Chick said rudely, ‘I’m glad you think so.’
‘They say your spinal cord isn’t severed, it’s just crushed. They say in a year or so you’ll get a lot of movement back. And they say you’ll begin to feel things any day now.’
‘They say,’ said Chick sneeringly. ‘I don’t believe them.’
‘You’ll have to, in time,’ said Morrison impatiently.
Chick didn’t answer, and Arthur Morrison cast uncomfortably around in his mind for something to say to pass away the minutes until he could decently leave. He couldn’t visit the boy and just stand there in silence. He had to say something. So he began to talk about what was uppermost in his mind.
‘We had the result of the dope test this morning. Did you know we had the chestnut tested? Well, you know we had to have it put down, anyway. The results came this morning. They were positive…Positive. The chestnut was full of some sort of narcotic drug, some long name. The owner is kicking up hell about it and so is the insurance company. They’re trying to say it’s my fault. My security arrangements aren’t tight enough. It’s ridiculous. And all this on top of losing the horse itself, losing that really great horse. I questioned everyone in the stable this morning as soon as I knew about the dope, but of course no one knew anything. God, if I knew who did it I’d strangle him myself.’ His voice shook with the fury which had been consuming him all day.
It occurred to him at this point that Chick being Chick, he would be exclusively concerned with his own state and wouldn’t care a damn for anyone else’s troubles. Arthur Morrison sighed deeply. Chick did have his own troubles now, right enough. He couldn’t be expected to care all that much about the chestnut. And he was looking very weak, very pale.
The doctor who checked on Chick’s condition ten times a day came quietly into the small room and shook hands with Morrison.
‘He’s doing well,’ he said. ‘Getting on splendidly.’
‘Nuts,’ Chick said.
The doctor twisted his lips. He didn’t say he had found Chick the worst-tempered patient in the hospital. He said, ‘Of course, it’s hard on him. But it could have been worse. It’ll take time, he’ll need to learn everything again, you see. It’ll take time.’
‘Like a bloody baby,’ Chick said violently.
Arthur Morrison thought, a baby again. Well, perhaps second time around they could make a better job of him.
‘He’s lucky he’s got good parents to look after him once he goes home,’ the doctor said.
Chick thought of his mother, forever chopping up carrots to put in the stew. He’d have to eat them. His throat closed convulsively. He knew he couldn’t.
And then there was the money, rolled up in the shoe-cleaning tin on the shelf in his bedroom. He would be able to see the tin all the time when he was lying in his own bed. He would never be able to forget. Never. And there was always the danger his Ma would look inside it. He couldn’t face going home. He couldn’t face it. And he knew he would have to. He had no choice. He wished he were dead.
Arthur Morrison sighed heavily and shouldered his new burden with his accustomed strength of mind. ‘Yes, he can come home to his mother and me as soon as he’s well enough. He’ll always have us to rely on.’
Chick Morrison winced with despair and shut his eyes. His father tried to stifle a surge of irritation, and the doctor thought the boy an ungrateful little beast.
THE GIFT
The Gift is the story published in Sports Illustrated’5 Kentucky Derby issue of 1973. The magazine re-named the story ‘The Day of Wine and Roses’, referring both to the blanket of real flowers thrown over the withers of the Derby-winning horse, and to the fictional alcohol flowing on the pages.
The Gift given to Fred Collyer, though, was worth far more than roses.
When the breakfast-time flight from LaGuardia was still twenty minutes short of Louisville, Fred Collyer took out a block of printed forms and began to write his expenses.
Cab fare to airport, $40.
No matter that a neighbour, working out on Long Island, had given him a free ride door to door: a little imagination in the expenses de
partment earned him half as much again (untaxed) as the Manhattan Star paid him for the facts he came up with every week in his Monday racing column.
Refreshments on journey, he wrote, 525.
Entertaining for the purposes of obtaining information, $30.50.
To justify that little lot he ordered a second double bourbon from the air hostess and lifted it in a silent good-luck gesture to a man sleeping across the aisle, the owner of a third-rate filly that had bucked her shins two weeks ago.
Another Kentucky Derby. His mind flickered like a scratched print of an old movie over the days ahead. The same old slog out to the barns in the mornings, the same endless raking over of past form, searching for a hint of the future. The same inconclusive work-outs on the track, the same slanderous rumours, same gossip, same stupid jokes, same stupid trainers, shooting their goddam stupid mouths off.
The bright-burning enthusiasm which had carved out his syndicated by-line was long gone. The lift of the spirit to the big occasion, the flair for sensing a story where no one else did, the sharp instinct which sorted truth from camouflage, all these he had had. All had left him. In their place lay plains of boredom and perpetual cynical tiredness. Instead of exclusives, he nowadays gave his paper rehashes of other turf writers’ ideas, and a couple of times recently he had failed to do even that.
He was forty-six.
He drank.
Back in his functional New York office, the Sports Editor of the Manhattan Star pursed his lips over Fred Collyer’s last week’s account of the Everglades race at Hialeah and wondered if he had been wise to send him down this week as usual to the Derby.
That guy, he thought regretfully, was all washed up. Too bad. Too bad he couldn’t stay off the liquor. No one could drink and write, not at one and the same time. Write first, drink after; sure. Drink to excess, to stupor, maybe. But after.
He thought that before long he would have to let Fred go, that probably he should have started looking around for a replacement that day months back when Fred first turned up in the office too fuddled to hit the right keys on his computer. But that bum had had everything, he thought. A true journalist’s nose for a story, and a gift for putting it across so vividly that the words jumped right off the page and kicked you in the brain.
Nowadays all that was left was a reputation and an echo: the technique still marched shakily on, but the personality behind it was drowning.
The Sports Editor shook his head over the Hialeah clipping and laid it aside. Twice in the past six weeks Fred had been incapable of writing a story at all. Each time when he had not phoned through they had fudged up a column in the office and stuck the Collyer name on it, but two missed deadlines were one more than forgivable. Three, and it would be all over. The management were grumbling louder than ever over the inflated expense accounts, and if they found out that in return they had twice received only sodden silence, no amount of for-old-times-sake would save him.
I did warn him, thought the Sports Editor uneasily. I told him to be sure to turn in a good one this time. A sizzler, like he used to. I told him to make this Derby one of his greats.
Fred Collyer checked into the motel room the newspaper had reserved for him and sank three quick mid-morning stiffeners from the bottle he had brought along in his briefcase. He shoved the Sports Editor’s warning to the back of his mind because he was still sure that drunk or sober he could outwrite any other commentator in the business, given a story that was worth the trouble. There just weren’t any good stories around any more.
He took a taxi out to Churchill Downs. (Cab fare, $24.50, he wrote on the way; and paid the driver eighteen.)
With three days to go to the Derby the racecourse looked clean, fresh and expectant. Bright red tulips in tidy columns pointed their petals uniformly to the blue sky, and patches of green grass glowed like shampooed rugs. Without noticing them Fred Collyer took the elevator to the roof and trudged up the last windy steps to the huge glass-fronted press room which ran along the top of the stands. Inside, a few men sat at their laptop computers knocking out the next day’s news, and a few more stood outside on the racetrack-side balcony actually watching the first race, but most were engaged on the day’s serious business, which was chat.
Fred Collyer bought himself a can of beer at the simple bar and carried it over to his named place, exchanging Hi-yahs with the faces he saw on the circuit from Saratoga to Hollywood Park. Living on the move in hotels, and altogether rootless since Sylvie got fed up with his absence and his drinking and took the kids back to Mom in Nebraska, he looked upon racecourse press rooms as his only real home. He felt relaxed there, assured of respect. He was unaware that the admiration he had once inspired was slowly fading into tolerant pity.
He sat easily in his chair reading one of the day’s duplicated news releases.
‘Trainer Harbourne Cressie reports no heat in Pincer Movement’s near fore after breezing four furlongs on the track this morning.’
‘No truth in rumour that Salad Bowl was running a temperature last evening, insists veterinarian John Brewer on behalf of owner Mrs L. (Loretta) Hicks.’
Marvellous, he thought sarcastically. Negative news was no news, Derby runners included.
He stayed up in the press room all afternoon, drinking beer, discussing this, that and nothing with writers, photographers, publicists and radio newsmen, keeping an inattentive eye on the racing on the closed-circuit television, and occasionally going out onto the balcony to look down on the anthill crowd far beneath. There was no need to struggle around down there as he used to, he thought. No need to try to see people, to interview them privately. Everything and everyone of interest came up to the press room sometime, ladling out info in spoon-fed dollops.
At the end of the day he accepted a ride back to town in a colleague’s Hertz car (cab fare, $24.50), and in the evening, having laid substantial bourbon foundations in his own room before setting out, he attended the annual dinner of the Turfwriters’ Association. The throng in the big reception room was pleased enough to see him, and he moved among the assortment of press-men, trainers, jockeys, breeders, owners and wives and girlfriends like a fish in his own home pond. Automatically before dinner he put away four doubles on the rocks, and through the food and the lengthy speeches afterwards kept up a steady intake. At half after eleven, when he tried to leave the table, he couldn’t control his legs.
It surprised him. Sitting down, he had not been aware of being drunk. His tongue still worked as well as most around him, and to himself his thoughts seemed perfectly well organised. But his legs buckled as he put his weight on them, and he returned to his seat with a thump. It was considerably later, when the huge room had almost emptied as the guests went home, that he managed to summon enough strength to stand up.
‘Guess I took a skinful,’ he murmured, smiling to himself in self-excuse.
Holding on to the backs of chairs and at intervals leaning against the wall, he weaved his way to the door. From there he blundered out into the passage and forward to the lobby, and from there, looking as if he were climbing imaginary steps, out into the night through the swinging glass doors.
The cool May evening air made things much worse. The earth seemed literally to be turning beneath his feet. He listed sideways into a half circle and instead of moving forwards towards the parked cars and waiting taxis, staggered head-on into the dark brick front of the wall flanking the entrance. The impact hurt him and confused him further. He put both his hands flat on the rough surface in front of him and laid his face on it, and couldn’t work out where he was.
*
Marius Tollman and Piper Boles had not seen Fred Collyer leave ahead of them. They strolled together along the same route, making the ordinary social phrases and gestures of people who had just come together by chance at the end of an evening, and gave no impression at all that they had been eyeing each other meaningfully across the room for hours, and thinking almost exclusively about the conversation which lay ahead.
The two men went through the glass doors and stopped just outside with the light from the lobby shining full upon them. Marius never drew people into corners, believing it looked too suspicious.
‘Did you get the boys to go along, then?’ he asked, standing on his heels with his hands in his pockets and his paunch oozing over his belt.
Piper Boles slowly lit a cigarette, glanced around casually at the star-dotted sky, and sucked comforting smoke into his lungs.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘So who’s elected?’
‘Amberezzio.’
‘No,’ Marius protested. ‘He’s not good enough.’
Piper Boles drew deep on his cigarette. He was hungry. One-eleven pounds to make tomorrow, and only a five-ounce steak in his belly. He resented fat people, particularly rich fat people. He was putting away his own small store of fat in real estate and growth bonds, but at thirty-eight the physical struggle was near to defeating him. He couldn’t face many more years of starvation, finding it worse as his body aged. A sense of urgency had lately led him to consider ways of making a quick fifty thousand that once he would have sneered at.
He said, ‘He’s straight. It’ll have to be him.’
Marius thought it over, not liking it, but finally nodded.
‘All right, then. Amberezzio.’
Piper Boles nodded, and prepared to move away. It didn’t do for a jockey to be seen too long with Marius Tollman, not if he wanted to go on riding second string for the prestigious Somerset Farms, which he most assuredly did.