The Ghost Horse

by Joe Layden

  Every so often, though, the engineering reveals its flaws, and a catastrophic breakdown is the result. Some we remember—the magnificent filly Ruffian suffering a compound fracture of her right ankle in a match race with Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure at Belmont Park in the summer of 1975—most we don’t. Regardless of the venue, the purse, the size of the audience, what follows a racetrack breakdown is a well-orchestrated death march familiar to anyone who has spent much time around the sport. An equine ambulance appears on the track, a screen is erected around the fallen animal, and a lethal injection is quietly administered. Then the carcass is hauled away and the show goes on.

  It is this aspect of the business that riles animal rights groups, provokes feelings of guilt in spectators, and weakens the knees of owners, jockeys, and trainers. But if you are around the game long enough, you understand death is a cost of doing business. Some people—trainers, mostly—steel themselves against the sadness by refusing to allow themselves to get close to their stock. Ask a veteran trainer how he feels when a horse is put down, and he might tell you that it hurts; he might also tell you that it’s no big deal.

  “It’s just a damn horse.”

  “That’s true,” Tebbutt said. “Some people are like that. Not me. I have a different attitude about it. When I have to put a horse down, I hold it in my arms. I’m in love with the horse, not the game. Lisa was like that, too. Timmy wasn’t. He was very good with horses, an excellent horseman who understood and appreciated his animals. But he did not allow himself to get attached to them. Lisa couldn’t help herself. She was so kind and compassionate to everyone—including her horses. She loved them all, whether they could make money or not.”

  If theirs was a life unrecognized and unwanted by the blue bloods of the thoroughbred racing world, it was a happy and successful life nonetheless. Lisa and Tim were professional horsemen; they were owners and trainers. For them, that was enough.

  “The horses became her children,” observed Carol Calley. “We didn’t talk about it too much, but I know she always wanted to have kids; she just couldn’t because of all her health problems. That always made me sad, because Lisa would have been a wonderful mother.”

  Added Tim: “We talked about adopting. Then, with a laugh, he added, “Well, Lisa talked about it, mainly. She told me one day, ‘We’re gonna find us an orphanage, go adopt a couple kids about fifteen years old, and get them to do all the work!’ She was kidding, of course. I think she missed having children and that’s why she threw all her energy into the horses. I mean, I like horses, but Lisa loved them. And she took care of them like they were children.”

  Like children, horses require a combination of love, discipline, and patience to reach a healthy level of maturity. Unlike children, they need custodial care throughout their lives, a fact ignored by most racing fans, who are either too enamored of the beauty of the sport or too busy chasing a gambling buck to recognize the grit beneath the surface.

  “Horses require constant care,” Tim noted with a solemnity born of experience. “You ever look at a horse’s feet? Probably not. Who the hell looks at a horse’s feet, unless you own one. Well, let me tell you, they’re packed with shit. Not just dirt and mud, but shit. Horseshit. They crap all over the place and stomp around in it, and every day you have to get in there and pick it out; if you don’t, they’re gonna get sick. You want a horse with thrush? Don’t clean the shit out of its shoes. Then the whole barn gets sick, and pretty soon you’re out of business. Lisa understood that part of it, too. It doesn’t matter how pretty they are, they’re still horses, and what goes on at the barn in the morning is what really matters. All that other stuff—the braided tail, the colorful silks, the guy wearing a suit in the paddock, in the afternoon, before the race? That’s all window dressing.”

  * * *

  They waited damn near too long to reconnect.

  Warren Snyder had moved to the West Coast in the late 1970s. At the time he was broke and broken, drinking himself into an alcoholic stupor on most days and seemingly bent on following his wife to an early exit. If not for an extraordinary effort on the part of his daughter, he might well have succeeded. Through an intermediary in Boston, she found her father, managed to get him on a plane bound for San Diego, and picked him up at the airport, still reeling from his latest bender. Cheryl took him in with no real plan, not knowing then that he would spend the last twenty years of his life under her roof. But she adapted to his presence and his needs, converting a garage into an apartment and creating a home for the father she barely knew. Slowly he came around, his health and temperament improving with the passing of time.

  Tim kept his distance from all of this, had no real interest in seeing the old man or forgiving him or engaging in any cathartic reconciliation. They were at opposite ends of the country, separated by three thousand miles and a lifetime of anger. Tim had a decent life now. He had a business. He had a barn full of horses. He had a wife and friends and family. And if sometimes he wasn’t the easiest guy in the world to get along with, well, at least he was loyal. He didn’t run at the slightest inconvenience or flare. Not anymore. It had taken most of his adult life, but that influence, at least—the urge to flee—he had learned to shake.

  The old man had dried out? Good for him. Tim was happy for his father and proud of his sister. She was strong and compassionate. She had patience, frankly, that Tim couldn’t imagine. But he didn’t need to be part of his father’s resurrection. He had his own life and his own responsibilities. There was no need to complicate matters.

  One day, though, in 1998, Cheryl called to tell Tim that their father was sick. He had colon cancer; had it for some time, in fact. If Tim had any interest in seeing the old man before he died, now would be a good time to make some plans. So Tim gave it some thought and decided to acquiesce. His mother had died in estrangement; no point in letting things end the same way with his father. Lisa wanted to make the trip with him. She’d heard a batch of wild stories over the years, but had never met Warren Snyder. She wanted to know a little bit more about her husband’s past, about the family tree from which he’d fallen.

  Not a chance, Tim told her. You don’t need to be part of this.

  “He was dying of cancer and so skinny and sick. Lisa had enough of her own problems, with the seizures and cancer. I didn’t want her to see him like that. I knew it would be too scary for her.”

  But there was something else that drove Tim’s decision, something a bit less noble than a desire to shield or protect his wife. For the very same reason that Lisa wanted to meet Warren Snyder—curiosity over her husband’s background—Tim wanted to prevent that meeting. She loved him and respected him and cared for him; maybe, he thought, if she meets my father, something will change. Then she’ll know what I’m really like, and what I’m destined to become, both physically and emotionally.

  “My dad had been on borrowed time for a few years by the time I saw him,” Tim recalled. “He wasn’t a drunk anymore, and at least he’d learned how to function. But he was still my father. On one hand I was proud of him for the rider he was and what he’d accomplished. But on the other hand…”

  Tim’s voice trailed off. He searched for the right words.

  “I guess I was embarrassed to say, ‘That’s my father.’”

  Yet, as it turned out, the things that shamed and frightened Tim—Warren’s diminished state and checkered past—were overshadowed by what he perceived as strength in those waning days.

  “Christ, he weighed fifty-one pounds when he died,” Tim said. “Just disgusting, a sack of bones. But he wouldn’t give up. By the time I got there he was beyond any sort of treatment. He’d been through chemo and all that, and they were just trying to keep him comfortable, had him hooked up to IV bags filled with fluids and painkillers ’round the clock.”

  For several days Tim sat by his father’s side, sharing old stories, showing him videotaped footage of races featuring horses that he and Lisa had bought over the years. Warre
n was under hospice care at the time, and one day a nurse approached Tim with a smile of admiration.

  “Your father is the toughest man I’ve ever met,” she said.

  Tim nodded.

  You’re goddamn right he is.

  * * *

  She was sick before anyone realized it.

  That’s one of the challenges faced by someone who suffers from a seizure disorder: “sick” is normal and not necessarily even cause for alarm. It’s a challenge for their families, as well. They grow accustomed to the disruptions, to events that might seem frightening and traumatic to the uninitiated. Lisa was by nature a strong and optimistic person, prone to offering reassurance to those around her even as she endured pain and discomfort and unpredictability. She was not inclined to share her concern when a new symptom presented itself, or a seizure strayed from the usual course. Those closest to her were forever trying to squelch the urge to ask if she was okay, and to intrude on her independence, for always the response was the same:

  I’m fine … don’t worry.

  In 2001 Lisa and Tim rented a town house within walking distance of Beulah Park. It would be their base of operations for the duration of the meet, and they treated it with the appropriate degree of indifference.

  “We were hardly ever there,” Tim remembered. “We were always at the track, so we basically left it empty. There was a double-wide couch in the living room, covered with white leather—looked like something you’d find in a doctor’s office—and we pushed it into the bedroom and slept on it. It was fine. We didn’t need much.”

  The couple hadn’t been there more than two weeks when Lisa suffered some sort of neurological episode. Tim was downstairs at the time; Lisa was in an upstairs bathroom, getting ready for bed. Tim could hear a faucet in use, and at first thought nothing of it. But then the water continued to run.

  Five minutes.

  Ten minutes.

  Ever frugal, and easily irritated by the thought of money running down the drain, Tim went upstairs to investigate. He walked into the bathroom and found the sink half-filled with water, the faucet wide open, toothpaste splattered everywhere: across the porcelain, the floor, and the walls. Tim turned off the water and began anxiously tracing the toothpaste trail down the hall.

  “Lisa?” he said.

  There was no response.

  Streaks and puddles of toothpaste led him first to the bedroom, and then finally into a closet, where he found Lisa slumped to the floor, a wet toothbrush by her side.

  “Damndest thing,” Tim said. “Must have had a seizure while she was brushing her teeth, then turned and walked all the way into the bedroom, and then fallen into the closet. Who knows? She didn’t remember anything.”

  It struck Tim as he picked up the toothbrush how lucky she had been, how random these things were, and how circumstances wildly beyond anyone’s control could determine not only the severity of a seizure, but the consequences that would follow. What if she had swallowed the toothbrush? What force had intervened to prevent her from choking to death … or hitting her head instead of slumping benignly to the floor?

  Fate?

  Luck?

  Tim could only shake his head and hold his wife and wait for her to come around, as she always did. Then everything would be fine.

  The following morning Lisa went back to work, joining her husband at the barn despite his protestations. She dutifully went through the day’s chores, but Tim noticed she was less animated than usual. He asked if she was okay. She nodded, explained that she was a little tired but otherwise fine.

  The next day he noticed a hitch in her step. Occasionally she would roll her shoulders as if trying to release tension; sometimes she’d rub the small of her back. With growing unease, Tim watched her struggle to get through the day. Before they left the track, he made a decision.

  “Pack your shit,” he told his wife. “We’re going home.”

  * * *

  At first they thought that Lisa’s problems were limited to malfunctioning kidneys—a result, perhaps, of her previous battle with cancer or her ongoing struggle with seizure disorder. She’d spent a lifetime, it seemed, under the care of physicians, her body absorbing near-toxic levels of medication, all filtered through the kidneys and liver. It wasn’t uncommon for patients in Lisa’s condition to experience systemic breakdown of one sort of another, and that seemed to be the most likely scenario. It wasn’t a good thing, of course, but it beat the alternative: a return of the cancer that had nearly killed her a decade earlier.

  In April 2002, after many months of feeling lethargic and vaguely ill, Lisa underwent a procedure in which a stent was inserted into her lower back in an effort to rescue her failing kidneys. But she continued to wither, prompting a second round of surgery at the end of May, this one far more aggressive and, ultimately, revealing.

  “They called it exploratory surgery,” Carol remembered. She paused, letting the full weight of that word—exploratory—sink in. “It was supposed to last forty-five minutes, but it ended up being six hours. It was a full hysterectomy … and a lot more.”

  Afterward—after she had nearly died on the table—doctors explained that the cancer had returned and metastasized. There were tumors throughout her back and abdomen, pressing against her kidneys and liver, invading space that was intended to be occupied by healthy organs. The surgeons had carefully excised as much of the marauding tissue as possible, but further treatment would be necessary if Lisa was to beat back the disease again. So they sent her home to recover, to regain her strength before embarking on the second phase of the battle: radiation and chemotherapy. She endured both in the sweltering summer months of 2002; a series of scans afterward revealed that all of the tumors had been destroyed. For the time being, Lisa was cancer-free.

  It didn’t last. By Thanksgiving the cancer had taken root again. Another round of chemotherapy and radiation was recommended, this one much more potent.

  “It was awful,” Tim said. “First they practically cut the poor kid in half, then they nearly kill her with chemo. She’d be sick for five hours after the treatments, throwing up so hard she almost passed out.”

  A habitual list-maker and note-taker, Lisa kept a journal of sorts during those months, just as she had for much of her life. What’s interesting is not what the journal reveals, but what it does not reveal. Rather than a grisly, depressing, blow-by-blow account of a young woman’s combat against cancer, it is for the most part a collection of thoughts and notations on the daily minutiae of life, as experienced by a horse trainer, scribbled on the pages of a three-by-five-inch flip calendar:

  January 3—Snowed all last night into today. Roads were bad.

  January 6—Mom and I went to Grandma’s for dinner.

  January 7—Cielo rode beautifully. He’s really beginning to figure out how to carry himself balanced!

  Then, on January 9, there are descriptions of horses brought out of the barn, a typical morning’s work, followed by this:

  Came home and got sick. Throwing up all afternoon. I stayed in bed and felt better by 9!

  There it is—the exclamation point (literal and metaphorical) at the end of a brutal day. Not a “fuck you” to cancer—that wasn’t her nature—but more of a thank-you offered for another day survived, another little fight won.

  By February Lisa had completed her treatment and been given a reasonably clean bill of health. She felt good enough to make a trip to Florida with Tim, who had thrown himself into work as a means of coping, both financially and emotionally, with his wife’s illness. As he had in years past, Tim began selling off horses and filling his days behind the wheel of a horse van, a hired hand hauling stock all over the Eastern Seaboard. It allowed him to feel useful, put some much-needed cash into their dwindling bank account, and (when he was honest with himself) it gave him an excuse to avoid some of the grim reality of living with a cancer patient.

  “It was hard for Timmy to see her so sick,” Carol said. “He’s not good with that kind of
stuff.”

  By the springtime, Lisa’s blond hair had grown back and she’d regained enough of her strength to put in full days at the barn on her parents’ property, where she and Tim now lived. A scan on March 26 showed no new tumors; there was, however, a small spot on her lung. Probably nothing, the doctors said, but they’d have to keep an eye on things. A follow-up scan on April 15 revealed another spot, this one in her pelvic region. The doctors gave her a choice: continue to monitor the situation, or undergo another round of chemo.

  She chose to wait.

  May 3—Funny Cide, New York–bred gelding, won the Kentucky Derby today!

  May 8—Tim left this morning to pick up three horses at Pimlico and bring them to N.Y.C. One of the horses is an asshole. He fought on the trailer!

  May 16—Tim arrived home around noon. He brought Mom a cute little mini-goat; she has long horns and likes to butt!

  Journal entries throughout late May and early June focus heavily on friends and family, as well as Lisa’s devotion to her favorite horse, Cielo’s Surprise. There are numerous entries about her husband, and her concern over his health. Tim had grown almost obese during this period, a result of twenty-hour days as a long-haul trucker fueled by mountains of coffee, soda, and junk food. And all that time spent in such close proximity to horses had also resulted in Tim picking up some sort of nasty parasite—lice or fleas, most likely. They ravaged his skin, destroyed his clothes, and left him unable to sleep, a dangerous condition for a man driving 800 miles at a stretch.