Breeding Ground (19 page)

There were steaming horses getting cooled out (getting walked in circles between the long barns), and others getting soaped and hosed off, and barn help cleaning tack in the yards while others picked out stalls.

There were people everywhere, black and white in general, but a couple from Mexico too. And everybody was working fast, tacking up horses getting ready to run, un-tacking others coming in from the track, trainers telling exercise riders what they wanted done – while Alan and Jo walked by, watching it all on both sides of the drive, Alan asking Jo questions, as people came up to Toss (grooms and trainers and owners, asking how he was doing and hoping he'd get better soon).

When they got to the north end of Keeneland's grandstand they walked around to their right, past perfect flower beds and impeccably painted signs, and stepped out onto the wide swath of sloped concrete that curved along the track just below the grandstand.

There were clusters of people standing there by the rail watching horses run – some just starting out (one, or two, or four from one training barn going out together), warming up slowly, heading left around the track, others blowing past them, finishing their workouts going hell-bent-for-election.

Trainers and owners were conferring quietly, distanced from those around them, watching for who might be listening. The usual track hangers-on were there, bettors trying to pick up the scoop on who to back, and who not to, that season. One journalist Jo recognized listened and leaned on the rail, maybe hoping to learn something for a story, or use to evaluate the three-year-old field, coming up onto the Derby.

Toss was the center of attention again, talking with folks he'd known for forty years, giving his opinion of his new crop of foals and the yearling prospects for the summer sales. Carefully, though. Because Toss knew the ropes. Who he could say what to, and what not to say to anybody, to meet his obligations to the owners who kept him working.

Alan leaned down and slipped an arm around Jo so he could whisper in her ear. “I just heard the guy over there talking about his exercise rider. The one who just ran past on the dark brown horse with four white feet. He said the jockey's ‘got a clock in his head, and I'll use him every time I can.' What does that mean?”

“Trainers want a jockey to ride the horse a certain distance at a specific speed, then increase to another speed for another distance, then step it up again, maybe. If a jockey's got a clock in his head it means he's very accurate at riding a specific distance in a specific length of time. He knows how fast he's going, in how many furlongs, and can get the horse to travel the way he's been told. Exercise riders who can do that are worth their weight in gold.”

“Ah.”

They both watched the horses work, seeing different things because of their backgrounds, but both standing there mesmerized.

That was when a deep voice behind them said, “Hey, you two. Looks like you're having fun.”

It was Spence, with his arm around Tara, smiling at Jo and Alan.

Tara wasn't smiling. She was looking at Jo as though she remembered all about her and didn't like being reminded.

The men watched the women watch each other.

Until Jo said, “Hey, Tara. It's been a long time.”

“Yeah, it surely has.” She smiled then, more or less believably, and looked up at Spence – her dark hair swirling out around her shoulders in heavy wide waves, her eyelashes thick and long, her eyes a rich dark brown, her mouth large and soft-looking, until she glanced back at Jo.

They all turned to the track then, and watched a rider get thrown and his horse sprint through the exit where a trainer and a couple of barn hands blocked her path, risking life and limb before one of them grabbed her reins, and they all worked at calming her down.

Then Alan asked Spence how his mom was doing – wanting to know, but making conversation too, as he looked from Tara to Jo.

“They operated yesterday, and she's doing really well.” Alan said, “Good,” and waited. And when nobody else said anything, he added, “It was nice of your mom to help Jack the way she is. I know he appreciates it.”

“She wants to help, but she wouldn't have hired him if she didn't think he'd do a good job.”

There was silence then, as the horses pounded by in deep damp sand, the colors on the saddle pads flashing past in bright streaks, though the exercise riders weren't wearing silks, but jeans and chaps and T-shirts, and plain dark-colored helmets.

“So.” Spencer looked from Alan to Jo. “You two want to grab a cup of coffee at the track diner before we go to work? It's always interesting watching the backside folks kid each other while they're starting their day.”

Jo said, “Thanks, Spence, but I'm waiting on Toss. And knowing him, it'll take awhile. Being here's part of the business.”

Alan said he needed to get to work right then. “But let's do it some other time.”

“Sure.”

“I hear you talked to my aunt.” Tara's voice with high and tiny, a little girl voice that encouraged coddling. But she was looking at Jo like an alpha female shoving a stick at another.

Jo stared straight at her, calm and contained, and ready to go toe-to-toe. “Betts didn't tell you that.”

“My daughter heard it from my mom.”

“Ah. It was good to see Betts. It must've been fifteen years since the last time I ran into her.”

Tara didn't say anything else. She just leaned her head against Spencer's left shoulder, her right arm behind his waist, her left hand caressing his left forearm, the big flaming solitaire flashing on her finger, as she gazed at Jo like a small-time bettor who's won the trifecta.

Buddy Jones looked at his watch while finishing up with his last broodmare at Mercer Tate's – Serena, the smart one who made him laugh – intent on getting back to the Grants' to help Jo bring the horses in for the night.

He'd just brushed Serena's face, talking to her the whole time he worked, and had started wiping her down with a towel, sweeping off the last haze of dust – when Frankie D'Amato walked into the barn and stopped in front of the open stall door, inches from where Serena stood with her lead rope tied to the six-by-six post above her water bucket.

“So I hear you got you a pretty good mare.” Frankie leaned against the door post with his hands in his back pockets.

“Nothing like they got here, but respectable. Whole lot better than I ever figured. Got her instead of back wages.”

“Bet you'd give your eyeteeth to breed her to one of Tate's stallions.”

“Well, sure, but not with their stud fees. Never in a million years.”

“You never know.”

“Yeah, I do know.”

“What's her breedin'?”

“Sharpsburg out of Mist Mirage.”

“Not bad. Not bad at all.” Frankie stepped closer to Buddy, and when he spoke it was low and quiet. “You know Tate's leaving for Europe next week? Be gone a couple of weeks or so.”

“He won't be gone for the July sales?”

“Nope. He won't be missing Keeneland. But maybe while he's gone, your dreams oughtta come true.”

“Whatta ya mean by that?”

“What would you think of you and me makin' us a deal, just between the two of us? Breed her to Lochlinnie while Tate's outta town?”

“How? I mean—”

“Git her over here some Saturday night when it's good and dark, when the rest of the fellas are off to town, and I'll get her bred for you for two hundred bucks, cash money in my pocket.”

“But—”

“When she comes up pregnant, you just say you bred her to some other stud. Like the stallion over to the Grant place. Then you just train up that foal, knowin' it's a foal worth training. You get that kinda bloodstock workin' in your favor, colt or filly, whichever one, it could make your name right outta the gate, and a big pile of money.”

“I don't think… I mean, I wouldn't feel—”

“Don't you go all innocent on me, bubba. I know who your daddy is, and he ain't got the best name around here. You just think about what I said. It's the best deal you're ever gonna get, and with your old lady about to drop, you're gonna get two more mouths to feed right quick.”

“Two hundred dollars, I mean I can't—”

“You could spread it out a little. Four payments, in four weeks. Think it over, but let me know Sunday. After that the deal's off.”

Frankie walked away, pulling a pack of smokes from his shirt pocket, stepping out into the yard, heading toward the car park, short and stocky and whistling to himself while Buddy stood and watched from inside Serena's stall.

He stroked her neck, and unclipped the lead rope, telling her she was a sweet old girl, and he'd get her fed in a minute. He shut her door, and got the wheelbarrow he'd half-filled with grain, and went up and down the aisle-way scooping grain into feed buckets. While the mares ate that, he dropped hay in their hay racks, then swept the aisle-way floor.

He checked all the water buckets and made sure the barn was neat before he walked out toward his truck.

Five minutes later, the assistant barn manager, who'd worked there for years, who'd been fighting a cold for a week, walked out of the tack room where he'd lain down for an hour on the cot that was there for waiting on a foaling.

He'd slept a little and rested more before it was time to do evening rounds in all the barns on the farm. But he hadn't been asleep when D'Amato had been there.

And now he stood in the aisle-way, his hands in the pockets of his chino work pants, watching Buddy walk away.

Saturday, April 28, 1962

It was halfway up a hill in an old working class neighborhood in Cincinnati, one of the small Sears catalogue bungalows from the twenties and thirties, part red brick and part white siding, surrounded by a small neat yard. The paint was new. The windows were clean. But no one answered Alan's knock.

He looked at his watch, and walked back to his car, and sat and waited for another fifteen minutes – until Dwayne Kruse drove down the hill and parked by the curb behind him.

He was five-ten or eleven, thin and blond and neatly dressed in khakis and a brown madras shirt, and he smiled as Alan pulled a briefcase off the seat and climbed out of his car.

“I'm sorry I'm late. I work at the Boys Club on Saturday mornings and I lost track of time.” He unlocked the front door, and waved Alan in before him. “Would you like an iced tea or a coffee? I've pro'bly got Coke too.”

Alan had set his small reel-to-reel tape recorder on the built-in table in the dinette alcove, in a bay window at the back of the kitchen, where the two of them sat opposite each other on built-in wooden benches. “So you don't mind me using the tape recorder?”

“No. You oughtta get it down word for word. This Spencer Franklin of yours, he needs to get a good idea of who I am and whether he thinks I'm reliable.”

“Right. That's what I thought exactly.”

“But you gotta remember I'm in a tough position here because I'm Giselle's dad. If what I say gets used so Tara knows I talked to you, best case, she'll make it even harder for me to see my daughter.”

“I understand. No one will tell her you talked to us or quote you directly so she'd know.”

“It has to be that way. And you have to promise not to copy the tape, and to get this one back to me after Franklin's heard it.”

“I promise.” Alan's green eyes were fixed on Dwayne's dark brown ones, and they stared at each other without moving for a minute before Dwayne nodded.

“Good. You want me to start with Louisville?”

“Sure.”

“Well, Tara was living with a friend of mine. And that was almost unheard-of for normal everyday folks. She was real young then, and they'd had a baby, and she'd been working on her G.R.E. She didn't seem real happy, and when we'd go out, a group of us together, she'd sort of take me aside and talk to me about my life and hers, and I got to feeling protective of her in a way. And then Rusty, the baby's dad, he went off and left her, taking their daughter with him.

“Well, I felt real sorry for her then. And she said he left her without a cent to her name, and she moved in with this minister and his wife. Then one day I got a call, and she told me they were throwing her out on the street. She didn't know why or what she could do, though she did have a job by then, and would I come and get her.

“I picked her up an hour later. And I thought at the time, from what I could see, that they seemed like nice folks. 'Course I knew first impressions can be misleading. Like when I first saw Tara.” Dwayne Kruse shook his head and gazed out the window before he spoke again. “I found out later Rusty'd paid the rent for six months and left her a good amount of money. She'd rented out the apartment and was pocketing what she got. Later, of course, I came to understand why he took off and left her, and took the baby too, but then I didn't have a clue.

“Anyway, I got a nurse I knew on the post, at Fort Knox this was, in Louisville, to let Tara stay with her for a month. I was getting ready to ship out to Germany, but I spent a lot of time with Tara. She kept telling me how she'd always respected the military, how her grandfather had been a career army man, and how she'd always admired folks who dedicated themselves to serving their country. And that she'd like to see Europe the way he did and live on army posts and everything, with the community feeling they have. And she was so proud to know me for one of those she admired.

“So that kind of made me feel like she was interested in me and my life, and respected me some. And I felt real sorry for her too. She was so small and so sad and seemed so defenseless, and yet when she smiled at me, the sun just seemed to come out, and I felt like my life could be different.”

“Funny, what smiles can do. They've done that same thing to me.” Alan looked at Dwayne – the serious face, the kind eyes – then checked the recorder to make sure it was working.