by Brad Smith
Beside her Jodie was in tears. Billie glanced up and saw Ryker laughing. Maybe somebody had told a joke but she doubted it. She looked for Marian but she was already gone.
Luke dutifully walked out onto the track as Tyrone brought the horse back to the finish line. Billie followed.
“I’m sorry, Billie,” the jockey said. He looked close to tears himself.
Billie shook her head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“No,” she said and she didn’t say anything else.
They turned the horse over to a hot walker and then they went back to the barns. Luke hadn’t spoken a word since the race ended, not to Billie, not even to Tyrone. Jodie was still sniffling as they reached the stall. She was the one who knew the horse would win.
“What happened?” Billie asked as they waited for the colt to return.
“Horse got beat by the field,” Luke said. “That’s what happened.”
“But why?”
Luke smiled like a man with a bad toothache. He wouldn’t look at Billie or the little girl. He had not met Billie’s eyes since the race had ended. Of course, he hadn’t looked at her before the race, either.
“You just never know with a two-year-old,” he said. “I’ve been trying to tell you that all along.”
“It’s just one race, though,” Billie said. “It doesn’t tell us much, does it?”
“Maybe not.” Luke was now staring at his truck, as if leaving were the only thing on his mind. “But it’s going to cost you money to go forward. I can’t keep working for nothing. And there’s entry fees, vet fees. Gets to the point where you’re throwing good money after bad.”
“I don’t have it to throw,” Billie admitted.
The hot walker was leading the colt along the lane toward them.
“You might get a price on him if you were to sell now,” Luke said. “Somebody willing to look past what happened today. He’s still got the blood.”
Billie watched him as his eyes flicked from the colt and out to the track and then to the grandstand. Anywhere but Billie, it seemed.
“Hell, you never wanted to be a horse farmer anyway, Billie. You run him last a couple more times and he won’t be worth an Indian nickel.”
“You saying you’re done?” Billie asked him.
“That’s what I’m saying. Been a waste of my time. Should have stuck to the quarter horses in the first place.” He went to take the lead from the hot walker.
“Leave it,” Billie told him. “We’ll take care of him.”
Luke shrugged and started for his truck. “No point in me sticking around then.”
“Luke,” Billie said sharply.
He stopped but didn’t turn. “Yeah?”
But she’d only called to him because she wanted him to look at her. And that was something he wasn’t going to do.
“Nothing,” she said to his back.
She watched as he got into the truck and pulled a U-turn and idled off along the lane. As he neared the gate, she saw his brake lights flash as the truck stopped. It sat there for maybe a minute; it seemed as if Luke were talking to somebody, but at that distance Billie couldn’t see who. Finally he drove away and she took the lead from the walker. She and Jodie were rubbing the colt down when Reese Ryker showed up, as Billie knew he would.
“Tough day,” he said. “I have to say, I thought maybe you had something for a while there, Billie. And then . . . well, then all those other horses ran right past yours.”
“What do you want?” Billie asked.
“Just thought I’d stop and ask what your plans are moving forward.”
“The sweat hasn’t dried on my horse yet,” Billie said.
“My offer still stands.”
“So does my answer,” Billie said. “Why are you so eager to buy a slow horse anyway?”
“Maybe I’m sentimental,” Reese said. “I own the sire. I might just as well own the foal. Keep it in the family.”
Billie moved around the horse to where Jodie was brushing the animal’s withers, stretching up as high as she could reach.
“What do you think, Jodie? Should I sell Cactus Jack to the sentimental gentleman here?”
“No.”
Billie looked at Reese. “There you go.”
Reese was quiet, staring at the gray colt. Billie was surprised at how desperate the man was. He had flush bank accounts and prime real estate and dozens of horses and a trophy wife on his arm, and yet for some reason his world was so empty that the only thing he seemed to care about was a two-year-old horse that had just gotten trounced. What was that about?
“The last time I talked to you,” he said now, “you told me that this little thing here was a stray that nobody wanted around. And now you’re taking business advice from her? Isn’t that interesting?”
Billie saw Jodie’s eyes and she turned on Ryker. “Really—you’re that much of an asshole? I’m having a bad day and every minute I share it with you makes it worse.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice. “So why don’t you fuck off?”
Reese held up his palms in mock surrender. “You’d better get used to bad days, you keep running that horse.”
Jodie didn’t speak a word on the drive back to the farm. Billie tried but she wouldn’t respond. She sat staring out the side window at the passing countryside, her body language suggesting that she wanted to be as far away from Billie as possible. Even that would be a problem as they pulled up to the barn and saw that the little girl’s bike had a flat tire.
“I’ll run you home,” Billie said.
“I can walk.”
“I’m driving you.”
The house was a double-wide trailer, sitting on cinder blocks. There were a number of vehicles in the yard, cars and trucks, some up on blocks, most missing engines. An older GMC pickup was parked beneath a limb of a large willow tree. A V8 engine was hanging from the tree by a chain. It had just come out of the truck or was about to go in. Two guys were standing alongside, drinking beer. A woman was with them—thin, wearing a faded blue sundress with straps. She had tattoos on her shoulder and her calves. When Billie pulled into the driveway with the woman’s daughter she glanced over and went back to drinking her beer and joking with the backyard mechanics.
“I’m sorry about Cactus Jack,” Billie said. “I know you wanted him to win.”
The girl’s eyes were on her mother and her friends. “I have a question for you.”
“What?”
“Did you say that?”
Billie looked out the windshield at the little work party in the yard. She realized now that one of the men was Troy Everson. He wore a lumberjack beard and had put on thirty pounds or more; she hadn’t recognized him.
“I said you were a stray,” she replied.
“And that nobody wanted me around.”
“No. I never said that.”
“Then why did he say you did?”
Billie looked at the kid. “Because he’s a jerk. He’s a jerk who likes to make people feel smaller than him.”
Billie had never seen the little girl so sad. It was bad enough that the colt had failed her, but now it seemed as if Billie had, too. The scene in the yard probably wasn’t helping. A nine-year-old shouldn’t have this much to be sad about.
“I got a question for you,” Billie said.
“What?”
“Who are you going to believe—him or me?”
Jodie looked at her mother, laughing with the men, then turned to Billie.
“You.”
“Good,” Billie said. “See you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow.”
Twenty-Two
BY DUSK BILLIE WAS SITTING ON the back deck, watching the broodmares in the pasture. She was trying not to think about the race and all she could think about was the race. She could shift her thoughts to Luke and his sudden transformation into a surly asshole, but that subject was as upsetting as the race itself. Why had he changed his attit
ude about the horse—and everybody connected with it—overnight? Something had happened to him and whatever it was, it had been significant. Luke could roll with the punches better than anybody Billie knew. She considered that maybe he’d had his heart broken by a woman, but then Luke was always getting his heart broken. It usually took him only a day or two to get over it. Besides, Billie had seen him virtually every day since he’d returned to Kentucky. When did he have time for heartbreak?
She finally told herself to let it go. Whatever had happened didn’t matter now. He was gone.
What she should be thinking about was listing the farm on the real estate market and moving on. She should have done it a month ago, when she knew it was the wise move. Instead she had taken advice from David Clay and Skeeter Musgrave and her father’s girlfriend and the little girl who lived down the lane. Who could have known that Reese Ryker was the one she should have listened to? Not that she would sell to him even now, but he’d been right all along. There was a reason that her father had been broke his whole life.
She heard the vehicle as it arrived out front, rolling to a stop on the gravel, the engine shutting down. Billie found she couldn’t make herself curious as to who it was. A moment later Marian walked out of the house and onto the deck. Billie glanced at her and then back to the mares at their graze.
“What’re you drinking?” Marian asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re not in the temperance league, are you?”
Without waiting for an answer, Marian reached into her purse and brought out a bottle of Woodford Reserve. She set it on the table and went inside for glasses. When she returned, she poured for them both and then sat down.
“Licking your wounds?” she asked.
“I suppose I am.”
“What are you going to do when you finish?”
“Cut and run, I’m thinking,” Billie said. “What I should have done.”
“So you’re back to plan A.”
Billie nodded. “Even my trainer agrees, on his way out the door. He says if I keep running the horse and he keeps getting trounced the price will drop to nothing. Best to sell him now. As my father used to say—it would seem the better part of valor.”
“He used to say it. I never noticed him practicing it much.”
“Well, I’m about to.” Billie reached for the glass. “Here’s to slow horses.”
Marian lifted her glass. “And the men who love them.”
Billie drank and then put her glass on the table. She had decided earlier it wouldn’t do her any good to get drunk tonight. She needed to think, and usually a thing that seemed like a brilliant idea when she was under the influence lacked significant luster in the morning light.
“Now let’s drink to Cactus Jack,” Marian said.
“We just did,” Billie told her. “Did you miss that part?”
“We drank to slow horses and I don’t think Jack qualifies.”
“You were at the track today,” Billie said. “You watched the race.”
“I watched it,” Marian said. “What did he get beat by?”
“Christ, I don’t know, thirty lengths. Might just as well been a hundred.”
“What I know about horses you could hide in a mouse’s ear,” Marian said. “But I consider myself a bit of an expert when it comes to your father. He might have been wrong about that colt but he wasn’t that wrong. He wasn’t thirty lengths wrong.”
“Apparently he was.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
Billie turned to her. “What are you saying?”
“I really don’t know what I’m saying. But I am vain enough to tell you that I’ve got good legs and good instincts. And I know goddamn well there was something not right about that race today. And now I find you sitting out here with a look on your face that tells me that you know it, too.”
Billie decided she would bring Cactus Jack back to the farm while she figured out what to do. She didn’t like leaving him in the stall at Chestnut Field, what with Reese Ryker hanging around. At home, at least she could keep an eye on him.
She was on the road ahead of the sun Monday morning. She wanted to leave before Jodie showed up and tried to change her mind. When she got to Chestnut Field there were a dozen or so horses being worked on the track. As she parked along the shed row lane, she saw Tyrone loping a long-legged bay along the rail. He dismounted by the horse’s trainer and talked to the man briefly before accepting some cash and walking away. When he saw Billie watching him, he headed over.
“Don’t you take a day off?” Billie asked.
“Got bills to pay,” he said. “Behind on my rent.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Billie told him.
They looked in on Cactus Jack together. The horse didn’t seem any worse for wear after running his first race. He was his congenial self, nuzzling Billie with his nose, looking for a treat. Luke had been worried beforehand that the race might take too much out of the animal, but Tyrone didn’t think that was the case.
“This is a strong horse,” he told Billie.
He didn’t ask again about her plans going forward. Instead, he apologized for Saturday’s race one more time.
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Billie said. “What were you and Luke arguing about in the ring?”
“I wouldn’t say we were arguing.”
“You weren’t waltzing.”
Tyrone looked away, toward the track, where just now a chestnut mare was being pulled up. The rider was off the horse and down on one knee, looking at the animal’s foreleg as the trainer hurried over. Tyrone watched as if he couldn’t think of anything else.
“Tyrone,” Billie said.
He turned back to her, picking his words carefully. “I have to do what the trainer says. That’s how it works.”
“And when it doesn’t work?” Billie asked.
“That’s hindsight, Billie. Like I said, he’s the trainer.”
“And I’m the owner,” Billie said. “I need to know what you guys were talking about.”
Tyrone shook his head. “It was about the game plan,” he said reluctantly. “Sometimes you want to take a horse out quick, set the pace. Maybe make the other horses open up too early. But a good horse most of the time likes to come out of the pack, make his move in the stretch.”
“Luke told you to bring him out fast?”
Tyrone nodded. “That was the weird part. We trained that colt to come off the pace. We knew he had all kinds of late speed. That was the plan and then suddenly it wasn’t. It was almost—” He stopped.
“Almost what?”
Tyrone exhaled heavily. “Almost like he lost that race on purpose.”
And so Billie heard in words what she had both wanted to hear and dreaded to hear. Apparently Marian’s instincts were as good as her legs.
“Luke told me to sell the colt,” she said. “Just before he rode off into the sunset, acting like he’d been the one who got screwed over. I still don’t know what the fuck that was about.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Tyrone said. “You need to let him run his race. One time.”
“I don’t know if I have that option. I don’t have a trainer.”
“Must be somebody,” Tyrone said. “Give the horse his chance, Billie.” He hesitated. “There’s something else you might want to know.”
“What’s that?”
“I saw Luke leaving on Saturday.”
“Yeah?”
“He stopped by the gate. I was walking to the parking lot and I saw him. And . . . well, he was talking to Reese Ryker.”
Billie’s stomach dropped. She recalled seeing Luke stop. “About what?”
“Couldn’t hear, but they were talking. Not for long, and when Luke left he spun his tires like he was pissed about something.”
“He was pissed from the minute he got here Saturday.”
Billie thought about it, how just a few minutes after that had happened Reese Ryker had s
howed up, which probably meant that he knew at that point that Luke had quit. But what had he known before the race? That was the question. Billie didn’t want to believe that Luke would sell her out. But something had happened to change his attitude.
“I’d sure like to get another ride on this horse,” Tyrone said. “We got untapped potential, me and him both. You too, Billie.”
“That’s just talk.”
“Tell you what—enter him again and I’ll ride for nothing.”
“No wonder you’re having trouble making your rent,” Billie said.
After leaving Chestnut Field Saturday Luke had gone back to the farm, fully intent on getting drunk. When he arrived Becky was there, showing her horses to a family of three—a husband and wife and a teenaged girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen. Becky had saddled one of the paints and was trotting the horse in the pasture field, showing the people what the animal could do. Luke had driven up to the house and gone inside, ignoring them.
As he’d been leaving the racetrack, Reese Ryker was waiting for him by the parking lot gate. He had the manila envelope in his hand, the same envelope he’d shown Luke in his office a couple of days earlier.
“See?” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Luke made no reply. He took the envelope and tossed it on the seat, knowing that having possession of it meant nothing. Ryker had copies of the pictures and so did the silent goon O’Hara. Luke wouldn’t trust either of them as far as he could throw a Clydesdale. The pictures would be hanging over Luke forever; he would always be a phone call away from being arrested.
“You’re doing the woman a favor,” Reese said. “She’ll go broke running that horse. And she’s already broke. Face it, she’s a second- generation loser. She should be thanking you.”
“I gotta go,” Luke told him.
“Hold on,” Reese said. “I might have something else for you, if you’re looking to make a couple of dollars. We both know she’s going to end up selling that colt. For some reason, she won’t sell to me. If I was to send a surrogate though, and you were to vouch for that surrogate, she’d never know the difference. I could pay you—oh, call it a finder’s fee.”