by Maggie Estep
I notice that Lucinda’s giving me a skeptical look.
“What?” I ask, “plenty of people swear by it. Thought I’d try it. Seems to have helped.”
“You gonna call the animal communicator next?” she sneers, referring to the occasional “horse psychics” who circulate at the tracks.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I reply, a little wounded because the thought had crossed my mind. “What’s the matter, Lucinda?” I ask, looking into her hardened eyes, “and don’t tell me you’re just mad because I have a girl up north. You didn’t ask me anything. I didn’t lie to you.”
At first, her face tightens and she looks like she’s going to hit me, then, she softens and lets out a small sigh.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I don’t know. It’s everything. Nothing is going right. Then finding out you’re into someone other than me, that didn’t help.” She shrugs and seems so vulnerable.
“Well,” she adds, “why don’t I go get on that horse of yours.”
I look at her for a minute, feeling a mixture of things. Wishing I could help her but not knowing how. Her face is set now, trying to tell me she’s okay.
We get Mike out of his stall and, in what feels like amiable silence, head over to the track. Fists of cumulus clouds have invaded the pure blue of the sky.
I GO TO the rail and focus my binoculars on Lucinda and the gelding. Mike actually looks okay out there. He seems interested in his work and he’s moving nicely, like maybe the chiropractor did help him.
I watch the pair start cantering and, after about a furlong, shift into a higher gear. They’re going along nicely when suddenly I hear people shouting. I put my binoculars down for a minute and scan around. Then I see it. A loose horse, coming up right on Lucinda and Mike. I put my binoculars back to my eyes, trying to see if Lucinda knows yet. She can doubtless hear the horse but I’m not sure if she knows he’s riderless. The loose horse comes up to Mike’s rump and, to my horror, starts nipping at my horse’s hind end. I see Mike shy toward the rail. I panic. I don’t think Lucinda has faced anything like this since coming back from her accident and I feel my stomach knotting. I focus on her face, but I can’t see enough to read her expression. It seems like she’s keeping herself together though. She’s slowing Mike down and it looks like she’s calm even though the loose stud colt is still nipping at Mike’s ass.
To my relief, an outrider finally catches the unruly colt and gets him away from Mike. In a few more moments, Lucinda has pulled Mike up and is trotting over to the rail.
Lucinda steers the gelding over toward me, and, as she comes closer, I see that she’s grinning ear to ear.
“Hey, you okay?” I ask.
“I’m great,” she beams.
“Yeah? You handled that well.”
“I know,” she says. “I got my nerve back.” Her face is more open and relaxed than I’ve ever seen it.
“So you did, girl. So you did.”
Lucinda hops down, tells me she’ll see me later, then walks toward the grandstands. Probably going to make rounds, make sure the whole backside knows what happened to her out there and how well she handled it. I lead Mike back to the barn and find he’s none the worse for the wear, even seems a little livelier than usual, like his misadventures made him feel important. Humberto grunts at me, “You okay, buddy?”
“Yeah, we’re fine,” I tell him, not sure how he could have already heard about the incident. Humberto briefly looks from me to Mike and back. Then he turns and heads to the tack room. A moment later, he’s got the salsa blaring.
BY LATE AFTERNOON, I uneventfully finish up the rest of my horse chores, take care of a little Bureau business, and finally come home to have a long soak in the tub. Cat perches on the closed toilet seat, occasionally dipping a paw into the bathwater as if testing its temperature for me. I sink down low into the water, letting it come all the way up to my nose. I feel like several tons have lifted off me. Lucinda is going to be all right. It’s unlikely I’ll sleep with her anymore and it’s even more unlikely that she’ll care. I inadvertently helped her get her nerve back and there’s a good chance that’s all she wanted.
I decide to try calling Ruby.
BEN NESTER
22.
When the World Stops
Spinning
I woke up and turned over on Ava’s bumpy couch. My body hurt like hell. I’d taken a spill off my boss Carla’s pony horse the day before and though I hadn’t been knocked unconscious, I was damn sore. Which is probably what woke me. That or being worried about Ava lurking there. She’d done this about a week earlier. I’d woken up and felt someone’s eyes on me. It was pitch black but off in a corner of the room there was a slight glow and, as my eyes focused, I saw that Ava was standing there. She was wearing a fuzzy white bathrobe that seemed to glow in the darkness of the room.
“Ava?” I called out.
She said nothing and I started wondering if I was hallucinating.
“Don’t worry, Ben,” she said eventually.
“Worry about what, Ava?”
“Nothing is wrong,” she said, which I didn’t understand one bit. I hadn’t asked her if anything was wrong.
“I’m a little sleepless,” she added, taking a few steps toward me.
“Oh yeah?” I said, sitting up and bunching the blankets around me.
Ava came and sat at the other end of the couch. I didn’t say anything. Neither did she. She just sat there staring down at her bare feet as if they surprised her.
“Can we talk?” she said after a few moments.
“Sure,” I said, though in truth that was about the last thing I wanted. “Talking” consisted of Ava complaining about the world—and my listening. I’d mentioned Darwin to her a few times but she’d never seemed very interested. She preferred to rail on about her estranged jockey husband or the indignities of the job market—even though I’d never seen her actively look for work.
“How you doin’?” Ava asked me as if we’d just bumped into each other on the street.
“I’m doing fine, I guess,” I said, trying not to act like I thought she was a total lunatic.
“You’re comfortable here?”
“Sure,” I said. “I appreciate your hospitality.” We’d come to an arrangement. I was giving her seventy-five dollars a week for couch privileges. I would have preferred to sleep in a stall in the barn, but Carla wouldn’t allow it. So I’d agreed to rent Ava’s couch. She needed the money, I needed a place to shower and sleep.
“You’re a man that was made to take care of things,” Ava said then, out of the blue.
I squinted at her in the darkness.
“You’re destined to look out for powerless animals,” she continued. “It’s good you’re working at the track like this. Some people don’t treat their horses so good, you know.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Sure, those big-shot trainers, most of ’em got enough money they can afford to go easy on a horse when something’s bothering it. And most of the working-class humps are in it ’cause they love horses and they wouldn’t do anything to hurt their charges. But there’s a nefarious element, you know. People that go running sore horses when they know damn well they’re about to break down.”
“Yeah. I know that,” I said, wishing she wasn’t talking about it and wondering why she was. The nefarious element as she called it was something I’d picked up on as soon as I’d set foot on the grounds back at Laurel Park. I knew there was some not-so-nice stuff going on, but I’d managed to steer clear of anything like that. Nancy Cooley had been a good lady who gave a shit about her horses, and my current employer, Carla Friedman, is well intended too. If she ever ran a sore horse, it would be because she didn’t know any better.
“It bothers me,” Ava said then.
“Can’t say I like it any either,” I told her. I was beginning to feel a little nervous, wondering why she was bringing this up, wondering if somehow she knew about what had happened bac
k in Oklahoma.
“You’ve probably seen my husband by now. Attila Johnson? He’s an apprentice?”
“I’ve seen him around, yeah,” I agreed.
“You know why I’m not with him anymore?”
“No idea,” I said, praying she wasn’t about to spout out intimate details I didn’t want to hear.
“Well, technically we are still married. But not for long. That man did some bad things to some nice horses.”
I frowned and felt my blood stir. I was sure I didn’t want to hear this.
“Held some horses back in races. Now I hear it’s getting worse.”
“What do you mean?” I asked in a whisper.
“I mean I hear he’s maybe going to start doing worse than hold them back. Help some find their way into accidents. Fatal accidents.”
“How’s a rider gonna do that?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Ava said.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked her. At which point she’d just shrugged, gotten up, wished me a good night, and headed on back to bed, leaving me to toss around, worrying over what her jockey husband was up to.
The whole thing had been eating at me all week long and I’d found myself keeping an eye on the jockey. But I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Yet.
MY BODY IS aching now and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get back to sleep. I check the alarm clock propped on top of the TV and see that it’s three already and I’ve got to head to work in another half hour. I shuffle into the bathroom to urinate and, as I’m coming back out to the living room, Ava appears in the hall.
“Can’t sleep?” she asks.
“My body hurts,” I say. “I guess I’ll go in to work a little early,” I tell her, just for something to say.
“Carla must love you for coming in to work early.” She smiles.
“She likes me okay,” I say. “Excuse me,” I add as I walk past her to the living room where I start getting my things together.
I take my work clothes into the bathroom and put them on. Once I’m dressed, I go peer inside Grace’s room where Crow is curled up at the end of the kid’s bed. I make a little noise in my throat and eventually the bum lifts his head and looks at me.
I call to him softly and he reluctantly hops down off the child’s bed and follows me. Ava has gone back in her bedroom, I guess, and, without further ado, Crow and I leave the house.
My car has definitely seen better days—probably in the eighties—and is protesting the cold. I finally get it started and uneventfully drive to the backside of Belmont.
I make my way over to the barn and am greeted by a few snorts and whinnies. My equine friends are awake and ready to eat. I tie Crow up near the tack room and he shoots me a filthy look, probably wondering why I tore him away from the comforts of Grace’s bed in order to come here and lie in the cold dirt.
I get all eight horses fed quickly and, since I’ve got at least a half hour before Carla gets in, I take the opportunity to go over to Robert Cardinal’s barn and say hello to Darwin. By now I’ve made friends with most of the people Cardinal has working for him and even Sammy, the security guard who lords over this area of the backside, knows not to think twice if he sees me lurking. I walk directly to Darwin’s stall.
My colt has his head hanging over the top of his door and he nickers as I come close. I feel my heart melt as the little guy points his ears forward and shakes his head at me. Even if he only remembered me slightly in the beginning, Darwin’s definitely come to know me in these few weeks I’ve been working at Belmont.
I go over and start scratching his cheeks, mindful not to get my face too close to his since he’s hungry and pretty excitable this time of day. If I had any sense, I wouldn’t mess with him at all until he’s had his grain.
“Hello?” I suddenly hear a voice behind me. I turn around and find Robert Cardinal standing there, looking at me.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Cardinal,” I say.
“What you doing here?”
“I’m just visiting with Darwin,” I say. Even though all Robert Cardinal’s employees are used to seeing me around here, Cardinal himself probably doesn’t know about how I visit the colt every day.
The old trainer is frowning and seems on the verge of saying something but then changes his mind. He shoves his hands deep in his pockets and turns to walk away.
“Mind you don’t get bitten. He’s a mouthy one,” the trainer says.
For a minute I stare after him. Then I go back to scratching at Darwin’s cheeks—the whole damn world could stop spinning and I wouldn’t notice it.
A FEW HOURS LATER, I’ve done most of my morning work and Carla is in her office chain-smoking and yelling at owners on the phone. I decide to take a little journey over to Henry Meyer’s barn to snoop. Ever since Ava told me how her ex is up to no good and maybe on the verge of hurting horses, I’ve been keeping an eye on him. For the last week or so I’ve made it my business to learn all the little creep’s habits. Which sometimes isn’t that easy in light of the fact that there’s a big guy with a shaved head that shadows the jockey everywhere. A fact I reported to Ava. A fact that seemed to disturb her. Though not nearly as much as hearing about the small black-haired girl that Attila is unquestionably smitten with. I actually thought Ava was gonna lose it completely when I told her about the girl. She claimed she already knew about it but I wasn’t sure this was true. She didn’t eat any dinner that night, went into her room and didn’t come out and I was left to feed the child. I didn’t mind. Grace is actually a nice kid.
The thing that was worrying me now was I’d heard Robert Cardinal was going to put Attila on Darwin in a race later that week. I couldn’t think of any reason why anyone would want the apprentice doing something to hurt Darwin but you never know. I had to see to it that the guy did not ride my horse. This might be a tricky thing to pull off. But it would have to be done.
BIG SAL
23.
Vicious
I wake up with the most vicious hard-on I’ve had in months. My wife is asleep next to me, flat on her back with her mouth half open. I don’t think she’s the cause of the extreme morning hard-on though. More likely the little exercise rider got into my dreams. I’ve got half a mind to go hunt that girl down right now at four in the morning, hold her personally responsible for my physical condition but I’ve got this wife. If she wasn’t such a head case, I probably wouldn’t be getting exercise-rider hard-ons.
I turn over on my side and nudge Karen. She doesn’t move. I pull the covers back and run my hands over her chest. She moans a little but not really a sexy moan. Used to be she loved to wake up and find me inside her. Maybe she still does.
I reach between her legs, feeling her heat before putting my mouth on her.
“What the fuck?” my wife says, suddenly waking up.
“Morning, baby,” I say.
“Get away from me, Sal.”
“Karen,” I say in a soft voice, “I thought you wanted to make another baby.” I’m willing to do anything right now, including knocking her up against my better judgment.
“Fuck you, Sal,” she says, getting out of bed.
I watch her storm out of the room. After a moment, I go into the bathroom where I jerk off with a vengeance. Picturing Layla the exercise rider.
“Feel better?” Karen asks spitefully when I emerge from the bathroom.
She’s grudgingly making coffee. Her mouth is drawn down in anger.
“I don’t understand you, woman.”
“Don’t ‘woman’ me, Sal.”
“What do you want me to do to you, Karen?”
“Just drink your fucking coffee and leave me alone,” she says, violently hitting the coffee pot’s On switch before storming out of the kitchen.
I sit at the table, waiting for the coffee to brew and wondering what my wife is brewing.
A half hour later I leave the house without saying another word to Karen.
I get in the truck, put on
some Beethoven, and drive to the motel to pick up Ruby and the jockey. I start thinking maybe I’ll pull Ruby away from the jockey and bend her ear about my wife problems awhile. Ruby never offers much in the way of advice, but she listens just fine.
I leave the truck running as I go to knock on the motel room door. Attila opens up immediately. He doesn’t look like he’s in a good mood. Must be a mood virus going around.
“You guys ready?” I ask the jockey.
“I’m ready. Ruby’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone? Where’d she go?”
“Back home. We weren’t getting along,” he says in a flat, quiet voice.
“Oh,” I say. “Sorry about that,” I add.
The jockey shrugs. “Give me one minute,” he says. He turns back into the room where he grabs his down jacket and a bag.
We walk over to the truck in silence.
“You don’t have to do this anymore, Sal,” he says once he’s settled in.
“Don’t have to do what?”
“Watch my back. Ruby’s not keen on me right now. You’re her friend. You don’t know me from a hole in the dirt.”
“A hole in the dirt?”
“I mean I’m nothing to you.”
“I never heard that. ‘A hole in the dirt.’ Isn’t it supposed to be a hole in the ground?”
“My mother liked to change expressions around,” he says in the same quiet, flat voice.
I feel badly for the guy and wonder exactly what he did to invoke Ruby’s wrath.
“That’s a Southern thing, I bet,” I say then, trying for a cheerfulness I don’t feel, “playing around with words and all. Must have been nice growing up in the South.”
Attila is looking at me like I’ve got three heads.
“It was okay,” he says after a minute. “What about what I said, Sal? You don’t have to do this.”
“Like I told you and Ruby before, I’m out on Disability right now and if I stay home I’m just gonna sit on the couch popping pain pills. This is a much better way for me to spend my time.”