A message came right back. “I love it!”
“How are you doing?”
“Good. Me and Maria miss you all, but we’re hanging in there.”
“Keep in touch.”
By the time Wendy got back to her office, Linda had texted again. “Rec’d photo from Dawn and Glenda too. Love you all.”
Wendy smiled, sat down at her desk, and looked up when Spears walked in. He had a copy of the program in his hand. “I didn’t think you were coming in today,” she said.
“Are you kidding me?” He smiled. “You’re not the only one with things to do. Besides, Heather’s meeting me for lunch in the clubhouse. We’re going to make a day of it. She wants to see Bo-T win.”
“You’re both still coming to dinner tonight at Ben’s, right? I’m making lasagna, remember. Meg’s recipe. Ben’s all excited.”
By the time they led Bo-T over for his race, Dawn was a nervous wreck. Tom dismounted Red and led the colt into the paddock. Dawn walked alongside him as memories flashed in her mind. Beau Born, their tears the day Ben retired him. All Together, the day she broke her leg, the pain, the anguish, the triumph. Beau Together was their son, their progeny. He was their legacy.
The big colt stood looking up at the fans as he was saddled. “I think he grew another inch overnight,” Ben said, reaching for the overgirth. Johnny came out of the jockeys’ room and, for a moment, just stood looking at the colt. Memories…. He had ridden Beau Born to a win in the last race of Beau’s career. He was riding All Together the day she broke down.
“The most important thing,” Ben said. “Bring him home.”
Johnny nodded. “He’s going to make you proud, Ben.”
“Riders up!”
The bugle sounded.
Dawn gave Johnny a leg up and led Bo-T out onto the racetrack to Tom.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Bud announced. “Here come the babies! The future of Thoroughbred racing.” Bo-T, the first-time starter was the odds on favorite. “I want to remind all you race fans, as you leave here today after the last race, don’t forget to stop by a ticket window and get your free admission and parking voucher for your next visit.”
As the crowd cheered, Ben and Dawn made their way to the fence. Dusty walked down next to them. Spears and his wife Heather sat looking out the clubhouse window. Wendy stood in her glass-front office, a new pair of binoculars in hand. Randy pulled up next to the Ginny stand, got out of his truck, climbed up the steps, and took a seat inside. When Frank Nixon, a trainer sitting next to him asked, “Do you think he’ll win?” Randy shook his head at first. There was a whole lot of buzz going on about this colt. And as always he was protective of the family connection.
“I think he’s going to run big.”
The man nodded. “This is nice,” he said, holding up the program. “I ran in the first, the fans are liking it too.”
Randy smiled. “I agree.” He heaved a breath and sighed. He also was thinking of Beau Born, thinking of All Together, the hard fight she fought to live, to go on. He thought about the morning Bo-T was born, the softness of his skin and that steel look in his eyes.
“They’re at the gate!”
A collective silence descended upon the racetrack, the starting gate far, far away.
“And they’re off! …. Charging to the lead is Beau Together!”
“Is that good? Is that good?” Wendy asked out loud to herself. “Is he supposed to do that? I need to learn more about this!” She had her binoculars glued to him. “Go Bo-T, go,” she said.
Dawn gripped the fence, straining to see the horses behind the tote board. Bo-T was still out in front.
“Coming into the clubhouse turn, it is Beau Together by six. Beau Together by seven, eight….”
“Oh no! Is he going to get tired?” Dawn asked.
Ben shook his head.
“Go Bo-T,” Dawn yelled. “Go!”
“Come on, Bo-T,” Dusty shouted, up on the fence and rooting him on with each stride. “Come on, Bo-T!”
Heather was on her feet up in the clubhouse, clenching her tickets and waving her arms. “Go, Bo-T, go!!”
“With a furlong left to go,” Bud announced, “it is Beau Together by ten lengths! Bo-T! All alone! Bo-T!”
The crowd roared!
“Bo-T! pulling away. Bo-T by eleven lengths! It is Beau Together at the wire in complete command! Bo-Teeeeee!”
Dawn hugged Ben and Dusty, hugged them both hard, wiped her eyes, and looked up and waved at Wendy. She waved back, big tears running down her face. Heather waved to Dawn from the clubhouse. Dawn waved back, waved to Spears, and then turned and waved to Randy with both arms.
He waved back. Bo-T and Johnny galloped out in front of him. The big colt looked good. Tom and Red helped pull him up and turned them around.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Beau Together, better known as Bo-T is a homebred. He is out of Stakes winner All Together and the champion Beau Born.” He cleared his throat, attempting to regain his composure. He remembered both those horses, called their races, called the race the day All Together lay on the track injured. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s all hear it for your new 6½ furlong track-record holder, Bo-T!”
“What?” Ben looked at the tote board. Bo-T had bettered the track record by 2/5ths of a second. Dawn jumped up and down, waved to everyone again, and just about everyone in the crowd waved back.
Tom dismounted Red and led Bo-T and Johnny into the Winner’s Circle. Johnny saluted the Stewards. The photo was snapped. Johnny jumped down and shook Ben’s hand, shook Dusty’s hand, shook Dawn’s hand and gave her a hug.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Bud Gipson announced. “Remember this day. Remember Nottingham Downs’ commitment to the safety and success of Thoroughbred racing. Remember our commitment to the life of a Thoroughbred. Hold on to that program you have in your hand. It’s a promise. Nottingham Downs, where no Thoroughbred will ever be forgotten.”
Winning Odds Series
Book Three
~ * ~
Barn 14 – Meg’s Meadows
Ben Miller took the news rather well, considering. At his age something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. Dawn looked at the doctor. “Are you recommending surgery?”
“Yes. The quicker the better.”
“Can we put this off until the end of the month?” Ben asked. There was too much going on: The construction for the old-timers’ retirement home, the Burgundy Blue Stake, the HBPA banquet, the ongoing debate over slots….
“No. This can’t wait. Not if you to want to keep your eyesight.” The doctor made notations on Ben’s chart. “Both cataracts need to be removed.”
“At the same time?”
“No. Six weeks apart. We’ll do your right eye first. It’s the most severe.” The doctor glanced back from the door. “Look at the bright side. At least it’s not glaucoma.”
Dawn hooked her arm around Ben’s as they left the building and walked to his truck. “It’s not the end of the world, Ben,” she said.
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one that’s old and feeble. Here, do you want to drive?” He offered her his keys.
She refused them and walked around to the passenger side. “The doctor didn’t say you couldn’t drive.”
“Not yet. Just wait.”
Dawn climbed into the cab of Ben’s truck and smiled. “Are we done feeling sorry for ourselves?”
“Just about.” He reached for the “Overnight” he’d picked up earlier today at the racetrack guard shack and scanned the list of horses in the fifth race. “I can read fine,” he insisted, adjusting his glasses up and down. “I tell you, I can read perfectly.”
~ * ~
Tom walked down the corridor to the cashier’s desk, paid the boy’s bail, and stood waiting. The longer he waited, the angrier he became. “This is the last time, Junior,” he said, when the boy finally showed. “I should’ve let your sorry ass rot in jail.”
Junior, Douglas Rupert Jr
. to be exact was as the saying goes, “Trouble.”
“Get in the truck.”
Junior climbed in and stared out the side window. “You gonna tell my dad?”
Tom started the truck and looked at him. “Did you just hear yourself? Listen to you. You’re eighteen years old, a grown man. Did you get dropped on your head or something when you were a baby? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Junior held his hand up, a bandaged hand no less. “I didn’t start that fight. I’m going on record as saying that.”
Tom shook his head. “Yeah, well I’m going on record as saying you’re a piece of shit.”
Junior looked at him. “My mom says you were just like me at my age.”
“Oh really? Just shut up. Okay? Just shut up.” Tom rammed the truck into gear and pulled out onto the highway. “Where do you want to go, home or the racetrack?”
Junior hesitated.
“Well?” Tom asked. “What’s it going to be? What’s your problem?”
“Um…I’m kinda hungry.”
“Aw, Jesus,” Tom said. By the time they stopped at McDonald’s to get Junior something to eat it was after one before they pulled into the horsemen’s entrance at Nottingham Downs.
The guard motioned for Tom to stop. “Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Ferguson went skinny dipping in the infield pond?”
“What?”
“In broad daylight and drunk as a skunk! Nigh on to half an hour; kept yelling for everyone to either leave him alone or throw him a bar of soap.”
Junior laughed.
Even Tom had to chuckle, though from racetrack management’s perspective it was hardly funny. “How’d they get him out?” Ferguson was no small man. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” He had more important things on his mind.
Ben looked up from his desk when Tom walked into the tack room with Junior in tow. He stared at the young man’s battered face. “Your father’s looking for you.”
“Lucy too,” Dawn said, appearing in the door behind them. “She’s been down here twice.”
“Don’t tell her you saw me.”
Dawn looked at him and cringed.
“Please…” Junior pleaded.
Dawn shook her head. “You can’t keep avoiding her.”
“I can for a little while,” Junior insisted.
Tom reached for his chaps. He had three horses to pony this afternoon. “Remind me again why we hired you.”
Junior looked at him, two black eyes, cuts, scrapes, bruises, three stitches in his chin and all. “Because I’m the best damned exercise boy on God’s green earth.”
“And the biggest bullshitter too,” Tom said, laughing.
“Not when it comes to riding,” Junior said.
Tom looked at him. “If you’re not careful that’s going to be your only claim to fame. Nothing else. Do you actually want to go through life a piece of shit? Because let me tell you, that’s where you’re headed.”
Ben motioned for them to either shut up or leave.
Tom left. Junior left. Dawn left. Ben called after her. “Where are you going?”
Dawn laughed. “I’ll be right back.”
This morning had uncovered quite a few concerns. One of them Dawn couldn’t help worrying about as she walked over to the grandstand to talk to Wendy. Given the volatile turn of events with the Morning Banter, a local newspaper taking exception to just about everything concerning Nottingham Downs lately, now this….
Wendy looked up from her desk and shook her head. “Are these people serious? Do they actually think we rig the races?”
Dawn sat down. “Apparently so.”
“How are we going to respond? What do you want to do?”
Dawn stared out the large plate-glass windows overlooking the racetrack. “Is ignoring them an option?”
“Not really. Not with that open-letter challenge. It would be like admitting guilt. I wish Richard was here.”
Richard Spears, Nottingham Downs’ General Manager was on medical leave and not expected to return for weeks. Contrary to what the Morning Banter printed last month, he was not in rehab for alcohol abuse. He was recovering from complications brought on by gallbladder surgery.
“What does Ben think?”
Dawn sighed. “He thinks I should write an op-ed.”
“An op-ed?” Wendy smiled.
“Yep, that’s what he said.” The Ben Miller of old wouldn’t even have known what an op-ed piece was, but since this ongoing battle with the Banter, he was up on all kinds of journalistic terms.
“What do you think? Are you going to write one?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid it’ll just open up a can of worms.”
Both women paused. “Well, you know what Richard would say? The best defense….”
“Is a good offense.” Dawn nodded. “I know.”
“Do you want some coffee?”
Dawn shook her head. She and Wendy were the best of friends. Even long before Wendy and Tom were married, the two women had become as close as sisters. Both lived in houses on Ben’s farm and ate dinners most every evening together. They were like family. Tom and Wendy were known as Uncle Tom and Aunt Wendy to Dawn and Randy’s children, D.R. and Maeve. Wendy and Dawn were like daughters to Ben. Tom and Randy were like his sons. They were all in this together.
The first race was about to run. Dawn glanced down at the crowd and smiled at the sight of the people standing in line for a hotdog. It had been Tom’s idea to build an outdoor hotdog stand and it was a hit.
“Make it the best one we’ve got where you can get just about everything you want on it.” The consensus was to draw the line at anchovies. But when it came to onions, cucumbers, dill pickles, chili, relish, sauerkraut, mustard, ketchup, cheese, jalapenos, olives, coleslaw, you name it, they had it. Inside the grandstand, only the standard hotdogs were available. People flocked to the stand outside, the specialty being the Daily Double Ultimate Hog Dog grilled over an open fire and served up all day. Rumor had it business men from near and far would dash in for lunch and a daily wager and could be back to work in a little under an hour. The perfect lunch break and that was the best part. It brought in more racetrack fans and had them outside watching live horseracing.
“I’ll see you later,” Dawn said, waving over her shoulder.
Wendy smiled. “Let me know what you want to do.”
Dawn’s hands-on involvement in the daily operation of the racetrack the past couple of years was reassuring to everyone involved, albeit annoying at times like this if you asked Dawn. The Morning Banter had become a thorn in their collective sides.
Wendy stood looking out the window and watched Tom for a moment. He was “parked” over to the side of the paddock with all the other pony boys and girls. When Red; Tom’s pony, pinned his ears and nipped at the pony standing next to him, she smiled. This was just Red. She recalled riding him on the farm one day scared to death no matter how much Tom assured her the horse would be the perfect gentleman. And he was. Yet, on the racetrack he could be so tenacious.
“He has to be,” Tom said. “It’s what makes him a great pony.”
Tom glanced up and the two of them smiled at one another. She didn’t always know when Tom had a horse to pony in a race, but whenever she was in her office, she always looked before the start of a race just in case. She asked him once if he was ever going to retire from ponying horses.
“No, I’m going to be just like Mim. I’ll build a ramp so I can mount and off I’ll go.”
Wendy recalled the day she first met Mim. The old woman chewed her out. She couldn’t recall exactly what Mim was scolding her for, but surely it had to be about the backside and something she felt needed changed for the betterment of the horsemen.
Tom motioned to the starting gate and he and Wendy focused their attention on the race. The four horse was acting up in the gate. Wendy glanced at the tote board. The horse was 5-2. The favorite. He reared. He stomped. He fidg
eted. He settled.
“And they’re off!”
When the phone rang, Wendy turned away reluctantly. “Nottingham Downs.”
“Mrs. Girard?”
“Yes,” Wendy said, “speaking.”
“This is Metropolitan General Hospital. Your son Matthew has been in an automobile accident.”
Wendy stared. “Is he okay?”
The man hesitated. “You’re going to want to get here as soon as possible.”
Wendy was a good hour away and that’s if there was no traffic, no construction. She grabbed her purse and cellphone, scribbled a note to leave on her desk and hurried to her car. Matthew was her oldest, due to graduate this year and get his BA in computer science. He was a kind, sweet boy, a man actually. He was twenty-two years old.
Was? Wendy barreled down the highway with tears streaming down her face. “Don’t let him die, Al,” she said, talking out loud to Matthew’s father; her first husband now deceased. “Don’t let him die.” She swerved to miss a truck turning in front of her. “Oh my God!” She just missed it. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Please, God!”
She drew a deep breath at the light, tried composing herself. “You’re going to want to get here as soon as possible.” The man’s voice echoed in her mind, in her heart. “As soon as possible. As soon as possible.”
The light turned green. When her cellphone rang, she glanced at the caller ID. Metropolitan Hospital. “Oh my God, no.” She pulled off to the side of the road. “Yes?”
“Mrs. Girard?”
“Yes.”
“We want you to know that we are life-flighting your son Matthew to the Edgewater Trauma Center.”
Life-flight. Life-flight. Edgewater Trauma Center. “That means he’s still alive,” Wendy whispered. “That means he’s still alive.”
“Mrs. Girard?”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll be there.” Her voice caught in her throat. “I’m on my way.”
“Do you know where Edgewater is located?”
“No,” she said, “but I’ll find it.”
“Mrs. Girard, your son Gordon is with him.”
Winning Odds Trilogy Page 83