“I’m glad they got their looks from their mom,” Cracker Jack said, glancing at Randy and smiling at Dawn. Flirt, flirt.
“Yeah, well I dropped your steak on the ground and wasn’t going to tell you,” Randy said. “But don’t worry, I wiped it off.”
Cracker Jack laughed and for a moment or so, they all busied themselves with eating. “So how do you plan to turn the track around, Ben?”
“Well.” Ben looked across the table. “We’ve been trying to come up with various ideas. We raised the purses. We’re trying to do a little more promoting. Dawn’s been writing articles and doing videos….”
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do tomorrow,” Dawn said. “It’ll have to be in the morning early.”
“And I fired some people.”
“I heard,” Cracker Jack said.
“We hired Dusty here to try and police the backside. Regardless of being independent contractors, the trainers need to operate on a certain level of professionalism. We don’t want any mistreated horses. And we’re going to make some improvements in the barn area, starting with the Ginny stand.”
“That’ll be nice,” Cracker Jack said.
“We just have to take it slow, in the event…which reminds me,” Ben said, looking at Tom and Dusty. “Did you find a bigger place for Rupert?”
“As a matter of fact,” Dusty said, “I think we did. We have several possibilities. One is the old firehouse.”
“Firehouse?” Dawn said.
“It’s where they used to store the water trucks. The problem is it’s up at the far end of the backside. Rupert thinks he has to be “in the middle” of things, like where he’s at now.”
“Another possibility,” Tom said, watching the very dainty way Wendy cut her steak and chewed…chewed and chewed and chewed.
She looked at him. “What?”
He smiled. “You’re just so darn cute.”
She rolled her eyes.
“There’s also the old maintenance shed, which is clear the other side of the backside, but….” Tom looked at Dusty.
“Rupert could have the option of staying open year-round, because there’s a drive off Sycamore Street which would be another way to get in, for anyone, not just racetrackers.”
“We think he might go for that,” Tom said, “because that way he can compete on the same level as the other tack stores and be open to more customers. He could still shut down in the winter, but he could also stay open if he wanted to. Besides, you can see the racetrack from there. People might come just to see it.”
“Well, at the moment, we don’t want them seeing the backside.”
Everyone agreed, particularly Cracker Jack. “It looks pretty bad compared to most.”
“How did that happen?” Wendy asked.
“Well,” Tom said. “Fifteen or twenty years ago, the owner before Swingline, was talking about building a new racetrack about a half hour south of here. Needless to say, it never happened, and in the meantime the barn area fell into a shambles.”
“Some of the barns are still nice,” Wendy said.
“Very few,” Tom said. “We’re going to have to change that.”
“Are we talking structural or facelift?” Wendy asked.
“Both,” Dusty said. “I’ve drawn up a list of which ones need the most attention.”
Randy took a drink of water. “I fear for the racing industry.”
“Oh great, now you tell me,” Ben said.
They all chuckled, Randy included. “I’m serious though. It takes a hit every day. I read a report this morning that had me wanting to throw my hands up. I won’t say who said it, but we all know. The article went on and on. The bottom line, they claim there are 20,000 discarded Thoroughbreds each year. Define discarded? In their terms, it’s any Thoroughbred that is no longer racing. Now that pisses me off. Some of them never even raced to begin with. Come on….discarded?”
Tom looked at him. “What are you gonna do? People believe what they want to believe. I wish we could get them to come to the racetrack and see how these horses are taken care of.”
Dusty nodded. “As long as we’re sure every barn operates the way it should.”
“Which reminds me,” Tom said. “Jackson Scrimshaw called me a socialist today. He said I had my head in the clouds.”
“Yeah, well,” Ben said. “Jackson Scrimshaw is the kind of trainer we could do without.”
Cracker Jack shook his head. “I’ve gotta say, I admire you all. I’m proud to call you all my friends, even you, Darlin, whom I just met.” He paused, choosing his words. “But I don’t see how the business can heal itself, not without drastic change across the board at every racetrack in the country.”
“Right here at Nottingham would be a start,” Ben said.
“And it also could be the end.” He and Ben looked at one another, the two of them friends for life, horsemen, true horsemen. “I’m in,” Cracker Jack said. “What can I do to help?”
A momentary silence fell upon the room. No one ate, no one spoke, no one moved. A collective consciousness passed from one to the next. “For starters,” Dawn said. “You can let Dusty interview you for a thirty-second video about why you love horseracing?”
“Will I have to comb my hair?” Cracker Jack asked.
“No, I like it just the way it is. It’s you.”
“In that case, Darlin’, gladly.”
The discussion continued in earnest through dessert - delicious ice cold dirt cake and hot coffee. “You know about the proposed alliance the Jockey Club is working on, right?” Dusty asked Cracker Jack. “They plan to accredit retirement, rehoming, and retraining facilities, and they want to help raise funds for the care and retraining of the horses.”
Cracker Jack nodded.
“We might want to get on board with that,” Ben said. “I don’t think it’s a fix-all, but it’s a hell of a start.”
Wendy got out her note pad. “Done.” It was her first executive decision.
“How do we go about making sure horses leaving here aren’t going to the killers,” Tom asked.
Dusty motioned for Wendy to hand him a piece of paper. “I’ll take care of that. I hear Brigadier’s having trainers sign a no-slaughter affidavit whenever a horse ships out. We can come up with something similar.”
“Does it have to say no-slaughter?” Dawn asked.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Tom said. “Otherwise….”
“I don’t know if this would work, in regards to time and cost,” Randy said, “but maybe a vet needs to sign off on every horse shipping out.”
“That means an exam, right,” Tom asked.
“Well, that would be the sticky part, time and cost-wise. Is it just a glance? Yep, he’s on all fours, good to go. Or should it be more thorough?” He paused. “Actually, the more I think about it, this should probably be done by one of the track vets, a salaried employee, that way the trainers and owners won’t balk, and….”
“How will it work?” Glenda asked. “When you’re going to ship out, you go put your name on a list, what? What about if they’re just shipping out to race somewhere else? Would the same rules apply?”
Randy looked at her. “It would be a can of worms.”
“But worth pursuing,” Cracker Jack said. “For years, no one thought anything of sending a horse to the killers. It was considered part of the business. And so cruel.”
“All right,” Ben said. “We’re all in agreement, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure every retirement horse leaving here is going to a prospective good home.”
“Did you hear about that woman in Maryland?” George asked.
“She should be shot,” Glenda said. “And all she got was a slap on the wrist.”
Wendy looked at her.
“She was taking in horses under the guise of finding them homes and was shipping them out of the country.”
“Can’t they police the boarders?” Wendy asked.
Cracker Jack looked at
her. “If they have papers and are up to date on their shots, there’s no stopping them. Look what’s happening with people crossing the borders, let alone horses. Or even dogs for that matter.” He held up his hand. “How do people live with themselves?”
They all shook their heads.
“And look at that horse that was retired and sold without papers and ended up getting raced again,” George said. “How do things like this happen? He was like ten years old. Come on….he was eased for Christ sake.”
“People need to take responsibility for their horses when they retire,” Tom said.
“The former owner tried,” George said. “They thought if they didn’t pass on the papers, the horse would never be allowed to race again. I’ve got to be honest with you though, I never kept track of the horses we sold when Glenda and I trained. Who had time for that? And actually, most of the owners didn’t care. I’m glad they care now; I’m glad they’re being held accountable. But back then, it was nothing. You sold them or you gave them away, and they were gone. That was the end of it. I remember seeing where Giant Power was being raced a year after I gave him away as a riding horse. I remember thinking; someone must be taking good care of him to get run of him.” George paused. “Looking back on it, I don’t know if I did the right thing. He wouldn’t have made a good riding horse, I can tell you that.”
The majority of them nodded, remembering that horse. Tom especially. He used to have to pony him. “He was a mean son of a bitch.”
“Is there a limit to how old a horse can be and race?” Wendy asked.
“Not that I know of,” Cracker Jack said. “The average horse races at ages three, four, five, and six. After that, they are usually done.”
“But some race as two-year olds, right?”
“Not as many as you would think,” Randy said. “Though there are some that don’t think two-year olds should race at all.” This was a subject Randy, Ben, Tom, and George discussed often.
“I don’t like racing two-year olds,” Ben said.
“Why not?” Wendy asked.
“Well, in addition to their growing like weeds when they’re two, there’s the issue of them shin-bucking, and their knees still open. It just seems like so much of a risk to me. In my opinion, if they have issues as a two-year old, they never forget it, particularly the fillies.” He looked at Randy. “Okay, and then there’s Randy’s opinion.”
They all chuckled.
“I’m sorry, I think racing them as two-year olds is fine, as long as you know what’s going on in their knees and race them lightly. I actually think it’s good for them. Athletes across the board compete well as teenagers, which is essentially what we’re talking about with two-year-olds. In fact, they just did a study in New Zealand and found that horses racing at two-year olds had more career starts than horses starting at three-year-old, and that’s with removing the amount of starts as a two-year-old. The tally was taken from three years and up.”
“I still don’t like it,” Ben said. “You have horses out there racing and some of them aren’t even chronologically two yet.”
Wendy looked at him. “How does that happen?”
“Every Thoroughbred turns a year older every January 1st,” Tom said. “Regardless of which month they were born in, January 1st, they are another year older.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Wendy said. “So…?”
“So essentially,” Glenda said, “if you have a late foal, one not born in January or February, they’re running against horses far more mature than they are. It’d be like a thirteen year old trying to outrun a fifteen or sixteen year old.”
“Wow, that doesn’t seem fair.”
“Meg wrote to the racing commission once and proposed not starting two-year olds until September of their two-year old year.”
“And?”
“And…they said they’d take the suggestion under consideration.”
“How long ago was that?” Wendy asked.
“Oh, about twenty years ago,” Ben said. “I guess they’re still considering it.”
Glenda shook her head. “It makes perfect sense to me. That way they’d at least be about two and a half by then. Why not wait?”
Dusty leaned forward. “Because that’s the way it’s always been done.”
The irony of that comment weighed on all of their shoulders. Change. It was so hard to change things.
“Just like the whip.” Cracker Jack said.
Tom looked at him. “And what are your thoughts on that?” He already knew how everyone else at the table felt, including Wendy.
“The jocks are fighting it tooth and nail over in Britain at the moment, I don’t see it changing there or here anytime soon, if ever,” Cracker Jack said, sadly. “I think everyone’s going about it all wrong, talking about how many hits allowed, where hits are allowed, the age of the horse. That’s ridiculous. I think it has to be all or nothing across the board. I actually proposed once we cease using the whip totally in Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing in this country and practically got rode out of town on a rail.”
Ben smiled. He’d forgotten about that.
“There was so much uproar, the sponsors wanted to pull their ads. We had more call-ins that day than any other day in the show’s history. The sponsors hung in with us, but I was advised to start agreeing with the callers, mostly horsemen mind you, that maybe I had misspoken or that I was reconsidering the ramifications.”
“And?”
“I had a family to take care of, so…I ate crow.”
Everyone lowered their eyes, even Carol, who while enjoying the conversation, knew very little about horses aside from the fact that she was afraid of them, and was basically only listening out of politeness. “I think we’ve all eaten crow at one time or another in our lives, Cracker Jack.”
He raised his eyes and smiled. They all agreed.
“All right, there’s only a little bit of this left,” Glenda said, scooping out the last of the dirt cake. “Who wants it?”
“Me,” Dawn said. And they all laughed. That came as no surprise. Several of them opted for more coffee or got up to go to the restroom.
Wendy checked Ben’s new phone. The call was from the phone company, welcoming him to the new plan. She sat back down at the table next to him. “This is a test,” she said, and no sooner said than Tom’s cell phone rang. “Don’t answer it. It’s just us. Just push this button right here,” she told Ben.
He did, and up came a list of names. Dawn, Tom, Randy, Dusty, Wendy, Spears. “Use the arrow and then just click on the name you want.” He clicked on Dawn’s name. Her phone rang.
She waved to him from across the table. “Hello.”
Ben chuckled.
“Glenda, I’m going to need your phone number,” Wendy said.
Glenda gave it to her and she programmed it in. “George.” She programmed his too, and then Cracker Jack’s. “Do you want anyone else’s?”
Ben shook his head. The phone was big, not as big as a regular phone, but nothing nearly as small as his other one, the one he hated. “I like this.”
“It comes with a holster,” Wendy said.
“It does?” When Ben’s eyes lit up, they all laughed.
“It’s in my car, I’ll go get it. I didn’t know if you’d want to use it or not.”
“I do,” Ben said, resting the phone on his hip, right where he would want it.
Wendy returned a moment later. Ben tried the holster on, slipped the phone inside, and sat back. “Someone phone me.”
They all dialed their phones. Randy got through first.
Ben pulled the phone out of the holster. “Hello.”
“Is this Ben Miller, owner of the infamous Nottingham Downs?”
Ben smiled and looked around the table at his friends, his family. Most everyone had their phones to their ears. “Yes, this is Ben Miller…a lucky man.”
Tom and Wendy walked out into the night. Dusty and Cracker Jack weren’t far behind them. Both
men walked to their trucks, waved good-bye. Tom walked Wendy to her car. Off in the distance, Dawn and Randy, each carrying a sleepy child, walked along next to Carol. A horse nickered in one of the barns.
“Good night, Beau,” Dawn could be heard saying softly.
A soft breeze rustled the leaves on the trees, a wind chime tinkled. “This is an amazing place,” Wendy said.
Tom nodded. “You look good here,” he said. “’Course if we could get you into a pair of jeans you’d look even more at home.”
Wendy smiled, but it was a rather sad smile. “Is there anything about me that you like just the way I am?”
Tom smiled. “You’re about as perfect as I can imagine.” He kissed her gently, the first of many kisses, he hoped. “Are you telling me you don’t own any jeans?”
Wendy shook her head. The kiss…the kiss. “I have jeans. I even have worn-out jeans.”
Tom laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Wendy nodded. She waved to Glenda and George; coming out onto the porch. “Good night.”
Tom watched her drive away, and glanced at Glenda and George, now standing at his side. “Do you think she’s the real deal?”
Glenda looked at him. “Oh, is that romantic or what?”
Tom chuckled. “What’s happening to me?”
“Well, offhand,” George said. “I’d say you’re falling in love.”
Tom looked at him. “I don’t even know what the word means. Does it mean I’m looking forward to seeing her tomorrow?”
George put his arm around Glenda. “Yes, and it means not being able to imagine a day without her.”
They looked in the window at Ben, doing dishes in Meg’s kitchen.
“Love hurts,” Tom said. “It hurts already.”
George smiled and patted him on the back. “Take the good with the bad. It’s worth it. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tom strolled through the barns as he usually did every night, except this wasn’t a typical evening barn check. This had been a special night, their first kiss. When he walked into the kitchen, Ben was still drying dishes.”Let me see that new phone of yours.”
Ben unholstered it and handed it to Tom. “Urgent phone call?”
Winning Odds Trilogy Page 68