Authors: Mark Wisniewski
JAN
WHAT I WOULD TELL A JURY
from the get-go, Deesh, is that pretty much all of the horse folk you find at the
Finger Lakes racetrack, not just the Corcorans, have long lived and breathed horseracing.
For instance for pretty much all of my twenty-two years, certainly ever since I was
the gossiped-about, shabbily dressed girl born to the reticent single mother in Pine
Bluff, Arkansas, my dream had been to ride the fastest of thoroughbreds in upstate
New York, seeing as that’s what my father did when he was still alive.
A jury would also need to know that thoroughbred racing often comes down to the keeping
and telling of secrets. Matter of fact, for my entire life—until just a few months
ago—all my mother had ever told me about my father’s death was that it happened three
weeks before I was born, and that he had drowned well upstate from here, in a tangle
of sun-bleached weeds near a shoreline owned
by Tom Corcoran and his wife, Colleen. And that because of all this we were poor to
the point that we should be grateful for her job working the counter at the Rexall
on Main in Pine Bluff.
See, it wasn’t until the night before my mother and I left Arkansas to head for that
lake—because the Rexall was forced to close thanks to a Walmart Supercenter two miles
up Main—that she let me in on details beyond those. Like how when the search party
of sheriffs and wardens and divers gaffed my father’s corpse, one of his legs was
wrapped twice with thick black fish line leading to a huge prehistoric-looking fish.
Like how this fish was a muskellunge—or, as people upstate would put it, a “muskie.”
How this particular muskie was a monster, easily six feet long. How this muskie then
lay in a sheriff’s outboard like guilt in the guts of a killer, and then, after the
sheriff took photos, was dropped into the lake for dead by my mother, who, as soon
as she headed off toward the Corcorans’ house, heard a splash and turned—only to see
the muskie’s tail propel it back into those sun-bleached weeds.
“It was like that fish was death itself saying
‘See y’all later’”
was how my mother put it, her point, I figured, being that I should remember that
I, too, will die, that therefore I should follow her footsteps when it comes to things
like religion and sticking to the straight and narrow.
But that’s getting more into me and my mother rather than Tom Corcoran’s death.
What I’m trying to say is that people out there need to know that tragic death and
gruesome injuries and need of all sorts (not just financial) and gambling and welshing
and debt and vengeful violence have long, long been a way of life around the Finger
Lakes racetrack.
People out there should also know that my father’s death left
my mother so depressed and anxious she will never board an airplane. And that, as
she and I plunked our butts down in a nasty coach-line bus for the thirty-four hours
of drudgery between Arkansas and upstate New York, I was under the false impression
that I’d stay with her in the Corcorans’ house for a few weeks to better understand
my father’s life and death and legacy, but that, after I’d proven my fearlessness
about all that, I’d move someplace where my own life could flourish, maybe someplace
west or overseas.
I actually believed that then. I believed New York State would be only a place to
visit. Somewhere in Kentucky, though, my mother began talking bluntly. And telling
me things as though I were a normal adult rather than the daughter of a sex-deprived
widow enamored of preachers. Things like how my father had gotten tangled up in those
sun-bleached weeds in the middle of the day—not long at all after he’d sipped wine
to relax himself to sleep.Things like how for a month or so just before he drowned,
he tried to sleep as much as he could, to fight the impatience he felt while fishing,
a pastime he’d adopted because owners weren’t letting him ride mounts on account of
his recent failures to win.
Things like how these failures to win were thanks to a spill he’d taken on the homestretch
just before the finish line, a spill that caused a yelp from him to reach the grandstand
when his left hand was trampled, so that now the bones inside were just tiny pieces
floating in an ugly swollen-up mush; like how his last day was a Tuesday covered by
clouds shaped like toadfrogs, and how Tom Corcoran was the last person to see my father
alive.
Tom Corcoran—or so my mother said on that bus ride—had jocked more than his share
of horses that lost, and back then he was past the middle of his career and putting
on weight, so he’d jog twelve miles every Tuesday, the dark day at the Finger Lakes
track.
And on my father’s last morning, Tom woke and put on his sweats and looked out his
bedroom window toward the lake and saw my father sitting near the shoreline, leaning
against a young crab apple tree. Resting against the other side of that tree was a
bottle of port wine, which Tom thought odd, since my father had always told apprentices
never to drink before sunset. Tom then headed down to that shoreline to say hello,
but as it turned out didn’t say boo because my father was fast asleep, with one-hundred-pound-test
black nylon fish line not only cast out into the lake but also wrapped around his
ankle.
And see, Tom
knew
why that ankle was wrapped with that fish line: My father had already tried tying
cast fish line to the trunk of the crab apple tree—so as to leave a baited hook out
in the lake overnight—only to return the following morning to find the line snapped
by what had to have been a huge muskie.
Tom considered tapping my father’s shoulder, to wake him and ask if he wanted to study
the
Form
’s freshest charts, but he didn’t touch my father at all, because my father hadn’t
done a single thing right at the track since that cavalry charge of hoofs had mangled
his hand.
But all these details about my father’s death, as well as any lessons they held about
the effects of drinking, were
not
, my mother told me, as important as my future, and my future, she promised, would
not
require that I live in upstate New York forever. I’d need to stay there merely as
long as it took to get our feet on the ground moneywise, which the Corcorans, who
my mother had kept in touch with on and off, had been generous enough to offer to
help us do. And let me just say something that I think every public defender should
mention to just about any jury: If you ever wonder why people do twisted things, just
remember that, more often than
not, it comes down to someone losing or needing or otherwise wanting money.
Anyway wouldn’t you know that, right then, my mother added her “little” kicker detail
about the Corcorans. About the fact that they had a son named Tug, who’d recently
turned twenty-two just like me, and who now managed a horse farm on their acreage
while he saved for college tuition.
A spoiled smarty-pants, I thought, but to be polite given all those stuck-on-a-bus
miles ahead of us, I took enough interest to ask, “This farm is for racehorses?”
“Can’t say I know for sure,” she said. “When it comes to racehorses, Tom Corcoran
tends to hold his cards pretty close to his vest.”
DEESH
BARK SLAMS THE TAILGATE CLOSED,
works his toolbox and scrap wood to make sure the drum won’t move. No way are we taking
it to the dumps we sometimes hit, even the unguarded one that isn’t supposed to be
a dump. The woman has her back to us, facing the creek. I’ll never see her again,
but I need to. Finally she walks toward the crawl-space hole, hooks its screen window
back onto it, and heads into the house. While she’s inside, James flicks a horsefly
off his neck. She returns and walks toward us with her lips pursed. She’s even finer-looking
with sunshine on her face. She gives Bark a handful of cash folded in half. He counts
it, mostly twenties, then nods, slips it into his shirt pocket, and says, “Anything
else?”
“Nope,” she says.
“Any ideas about where we should take it?” he says.
“That’s your business,” she says. “Anyone asks me, I never seen that drum in my life.”
“Right,” Bark says, and the way he gets in his truck—without a handshake or a good-bye
or even a nod—tells me he wishes we could just roll the drum back down the lawn and
give back the cash. But he starts the engine, lets it eat gas while James and I get
in beside him, me in the middle. After we back up and ease out onto the road, I notice
the woman’s gone—inside her house, I guess. And we’re not backtracking to return to
the Bronx. Instead we’re headed north. Farther upstate. Two miles an hour under the
speed limit, none of us making a sound. The radio’s off.
I think to ask Bark where we’re going, but it’s like the three of us have made a side
deal not to talk. And if anyone’s going to break that deal, I’m guessing, it’ll be
James, but James doesn’t say jack, and neither do Bark and I the whole time we cruise
over tar-striped highways zigzagging us toward tree-covered hills. I imagine it’ll
take hours to reach those trees, and maybe it does, but maybe it doesn’t because my
gazing at them helps me remember Madalynn, this tall, willowy woman from my past and
Bark’s, that one and only woman I ever had it bad for, and when we’re finally alongside
the shadows of those trees, I’m all worked up about lovemaking with her. Behind us
in Bark’s truck bed is, as far as I know, only one shovel, and damn if I’ll be the
one to use it. We pass a farmhouse, a line of crammed-together mailboxes, a boarded-up
gas station where a rusted sign reminds us of when unleaded was $1.44. Bark is scanning
the bushy fields on either side of us, trying, I can tell by his grimace, to be more
smart than scared.
We pass a state park with no one in the guard station. Then Bark is speeding down
a straightaway. There’s no one around us,
from what I can tell, but no place for the drum. Then Bark brakes and pulls over.
There’s a hill to our right, but it’s a football field away. “How ’bout here?” he
asks.
“Where?” James says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Where?”
“Right next to the road.”
“Are you high?” I say.
“Got any better ideas?” Bark says.
“Someplace more hidden,” I say, and for the first time ever, I wish New York was one
of those middle-of-nowhere states. “With trees.”
“
You’re
high,” Bark says. “The last thing we need is someone up here seeing three brothers
walking out of some woods. They’ll follow the truck. They’ll read my license plate.
We get out now—without any cars passing us—and roll it out quick and take off, there’s
no way anyone can trace anything to us.”
“Then let’s do it,” James says. “Fast,” he says, and he’s out his door. And Bark is
out his. And again I tell myself I’m with them anyway, so I might as well make sure
I get paid. James can’t lower the tailgate so Bark slaps away his hand and lowers
it himself, and they roll out the drum, and I do what I can to help, though all I
manage is to get my fingers on the thing two seconds before they drop it on the weedy
emergency lane. I roll it farther still from the road, over a small rise and into
a shallow gulley. It gets stuck against a rock surrounded by mud, and that new yellow
lid now feels slightly loose, but Bark and James are back in the truck—and behind
me, on the highway, a car is coming. I think to run, then undo my fly as if I’m about
to piss, using this as an excuse to turn my face as the car passes, honking its horn.
It doesn’t stop, though. It’s two white women in a Prius, speeding to wherever. When
I get back in the truck, Bark says, “What you do that for?”
“To take their eyes off the drum,” I say.
“That was
stupid
,” James says.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“He might be right,” Bark tells James. Bark waits until the speeding car, shrinking
ahead of us down that straightaway, is out of sight, and I decide not to mention that
the lid felt loose—they’d blame
me
for it. Bark glances behind us, U-turns, and takes off in the direction we came from.
Now, with the drum gone, James starts talking as if he has to make up for everything
we all three didn’t say since we left the woman’s house, asking why we did it, asking
why
he
did it, saying we should have thought it over, should have discussed it in the privacy
we had to ourselves in the crawl space—one of us, he says, should have put a foot
down to keep all of us from losing our heads.
“We could have said no!” he shouts. “But we had to be greedy. We got all stupid for
bad money!”
JAN
THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER THINGS
about Tom Corcoran any jury you face should know, things I learned in confidence
because, for a stretch of some very intense days just a few weeks ago, Tug Corcoran
opened up to me like a man possibly falling in love.
Things like how, on the very same morning my mother and I were on that crowded bus
headed upstate to spend this summer with the Corcorans, Tug walked through his parents’
woods to his horse farm, then saw that Silent Sky, the only horse boarded in his care
then, was gone.
Things like how he also then noticed a hole in his horse farm’s fence wide enough
to roll a tank through.
And like how Silent Sky herself had never been a bolter, never as much as glanced
whenever Tug had opened the gate to tend to her, so the question that not only appeared
in Tug’s mind but then
seemed destined to stay was: What—or who—had prompted Silent Sky to leave?
And see, Tug first tried to convince himself that Silent Sky’s owner, Jack Silverton,
had taken her on the sly so he could euthanize her to cut expenses. But Jack Silverton
had money—old, endlessly flowing money—as well as a soft spot for thoroughbreds, a
soft spot that competed with Tug’s own.
So even before Tug finished jogging across the meadow toward the hole, he suspected
Tom Corcoran of having something to do with this. He hated suspecting his own father,
but if his father had taken Silent Sky to sell her for cash to gamble with? Well,
he damned sure hated that, too.
And see, there was no denying the fence had been vandalized. Two birch-log planks
had been cracked clear through, another yanked out toward the woods. Leading away
from Tug were bar-shoe hoofprints, wide enough to assure him they’d been made by Silent
Sky’s flat, spread-out turf hoof, and just before the hole the hoofprints were all
crowded up, meaning she’d stopped to resist whoever had haltered her and led her out.
Then Tug heard “What the hell?”—and there, across the meadow near the path through
the woods, stood his father, the same Tom Corcoran known to local gamblers as the
retired jock who still hung around the track and couldn’t, for the life of him, contain
his will to win big. Since Tom had retired from riding, there’d been plenty of moments
like that moment right then: when the sight of Tom, a man who struggled to care for
his family because his first love was to gamble, would irk the hell out of Tug. But
there’d been plenty of worse moments, too, moments when Tom’s presence had made Tug
want to strangle the man, like when Tug’s mother would ask Tom a favor and Tom wouldn’t
pay her
any mind, or when Tom would second-guess a bet he’d lost, or when Tug had gotten all
charged up talking about his dreams about breeding champions on his horse farm and
Tom would interrupt to say how proud he’d feel when Tug would finally leave the house
for law school.
But like the good son he’d always tried to be, all Tug did now was calm himself. Though
then there he was, saying directly to Tom, “Whoever kicked those logs was either large
or fairly strong. Or, I guess, pretty pissed off.”
“Why would they be pissed?”
“No clue, Dad. You mind telling me?”
Tom raised his lucky blue coffee mug just past his chin, then held it there, inches
from his unshaven face. “What’s
that
supposed to mean?”
“All I’m saying is that, of the two of us, you’re the one spending time and cash with
grandstanders.”
Which was as bold as Tug had the balls to be back in June—about how tired he was of
acting like Tom and Tom’s track pals hadn’t gone too far with gambling, fixing races,
bookmaking, and whatever else they were up to.
“Tug, those guys don’t care about jinxed mares,” Tom said. “I mean, she had no real
upside, right?”
“Yes, but why—I mean, what are you saying?”
“Just that I can’t imagine why anyone I know would’ve wanted her.”
“You can’t?”
“No.”
“Well,
I
can,” Tug said, not so much because he’d imagined reasons
specifically
. Though he still did suspect that any of the regulars in the Finger Lakes grandstand—including
Tom himself—might
have stolen Silent Sky to sell her to a rendering plant for gambling cash.
“Maybe it’s better,” Tom said, facing the hole. “Since a couple new boarders are headed
here anyway.”
He went all still then, as if considering something most crucial, and Tug went still,
too, remembering Silent Sky’s fondness for being scratched between her ears.
“Thoroughbreds?” Tug asked.
“No.”
“Standardbreds.”
“No.”
“Then I don’t get it, Dad. What, exactly, are we talking about?”
Tom gazed at an oak trunk beyond the cracked logs, sipped coffee from his lucky blue
mug. He squinted as if he’d just swallowed something bitter, faced Tug squarely, then
used an obviously put-on upbeat tone to say, “People.”