Authors: Mark Wisniewski
JAN
AT FIRST TO HONOR MY FATHER,
I took to running every night, sometimes well past sundown, and if I hadn’t gone with
Tug and Tom to the track I’d run away a few afternoon hours, too. You might say my
running was simply me doing what most jocks, wannabe or otherwise, did when they weren’t
riding. But for me, gliding away from that lake house and later cruising back was
how I assured anyone who cared that I’d not only ride soon, I’d also someday mess
with a track record or two set by the man himself.
Then one day, after an all-out sprint over the last hundred feet of a jog into town,
I was opening the screen door to the feed store on Main when the talk inside went
silent. I headed on in as if I hadn’t interrupted a thing, and Jasper and Bill Treacy,
the owner of the feed store, were both sitting behind the glass counter staring at
me as if the other weren’t there. Usually I loved the smell of
that feed store—a sweet, magic mixture of cedar, dog chow, and caraway—but this time
breathing it in made me about gag, so I nodded at Jasper’s raised eyebrows, bought
three strings of licorice to keep myself from fainting, and walked out. I stood on
the plank wood porch with my back to the bug-eaten clapboard and my eyes closed against
sunshine, nibbling a licorice string half an inch at a time, wishing all sorts of
things, none of them involving my life remaining as it was.
Then I heard Bill Treacy say, “Why the silent treatment?”—and I chewed a little faster.
“Because that was Jamie Price’s daughter,” Jasper said.
“Oh,
was
it now.”
I stopped chewing to hold a breath.
“And Jamie’s spill didn’t happen the way most people believe it happened. The way
it happened was my son was supposed to be holding back Cold Cash.”
“Ronny was already riding back then, huh,” Bill Treacy said.
Jasper paused. I pictured him nodding. “And this Cold Cash he was on was the favorite,”
he said. “In the first race, the race they usually fixed. And it was Jamie’s turn
to win.”
Now I knew I would listen. The only question was how not to be heard.
“They had it that organized back then?” Bill Treacy asked.
Again, Jasper paused. “And when they come around the last turn, the leader was tiring
and the trailers were in a pack. And Ronny’s horse Cold Cash was on the outside of
the pack, looking to the grandstanders like he was set to fly wide and win. Then the
colt Jamie was on—I believe he was called Red Sox—got daylight to leave the rail.”
“He’d taken the rail by choice?”
“He’d been boxed in. When he saw an opening, he moved Red Sox off the rail and found
himself behind Cold Cash and a bit to his left. And Cold Cash was full of run, so
Ronny eased him slightly using the left side of his reins—so the crowd wouldn’t see—and
Cold Cash stepped left and
stopped
. I mean, that horse killed a full run in two strides, and he did so right as Jamie
whipped Red Sox, so Red Sox shot ahead with nowhere to go except Cold Cash’s behind.”
“And Jamie didn’t jump off?”
“He jumped,” Jasper said. “Smack in front of eight stretch-running horses. He was
lucky all he lost was the use of that hand. Though from then on he figured himself
unlucky.”
Something squeaked: Bill Treacy leaning back in his chair?
Bill himself then said, “Proves luck is all how you see things. A jock that good should’ve
known that.”
“Jamie wouldn’t have believed that if he
did
know it,” Jasper said. “I mean, after that spill, he was just not right. Because
his days were all of a sudden too long for him. He was so used to traveling an eighth
of a mile in twelve seconds, he now had no patience for anything. Fact it’s lack of
patience why he ain’t around.”
I shifted my weight and a porch plank creaked. I pictured Jasper and Bill Treacy raising
their chins in my direction. I considered running off, but Bill Treacy said, “How
do you mean?”
“I mean the man,” Jasper said, “couldn’t wait for
death
. I mean before they drug him up from the bottom of the lake, he tried to
bring it on
with painkillers and a jug of grain alcohol. Because, see, Cindy—who he still hadn’t
married—was with child. And he believed that Ronny had slept with her.”
“He thought
Ronny
had?”
“Probably because he held Ronny accountable for that spill.
Told his bourbon pals that Ronny had stopped Cold Cash on purpose—in order to ultimately
win over Cindy. Course, Ronny would never do that. Because, see, Ronny
respected
Jamie. Respected him as if he were the king of the world.”
“Even after the spill?”
“’Cause of the way Jamie had with thoroughbreds. What Jamie
didn’t
have was the patience to see if his jealousy made sense—couldn’t wait to even see
the color of that baby. He was so sure that baby wasn’t his, he tied that caught muskie
to his ankle and swam out into those weeds. With a belly full of hundred-proof hootch.”
“You know this as fact?” Bill Treacy asked.
“Bill, that fish wasn’t big enough to pull
any
man into those weeds. Not the smallest jock in racing, not the drunkest drunk you
know, not the biggest fool on God’s earth. That fish was only as long as my arm.”
“Says who?”
“I was one boat over when they drug the man in. And I know he’d been drinking because
I saw his jug laying on its side empty on the shore. A jug that, Lord forgive me,
I funneled a quart of mash into the night before—for a lousy five-dollar bill.”
Bill Treacy and Jasper fell silent. I worried about my breathing: I was sure they
would hear it. Get on home, I thought. Run like hell as soon as one of them speaks.
The porch creaked—by itself, it seemed—and Bill Treacy said, “Does Jamie’s daughter
know this?”
“I doubt it.”
“How ’bout Tom Corcoran’s son?”
“Doubt he knows either.”
“Probably better,” Bill Treacy said.
Jasper coughed. “You know, Jamie’s daughter’s maturing this summer. Having quite the
womanly growth spurt, I mean.”
No, I’m not, I thought. My growth, I’d believed until then, had always been late and
slow—the opposite of a spurt—and, for the past year or two it had slowed to the point
that I’d quit measuring.
“As I see it,” Jasper continued, “she’s grown both wider and curvier in the last few
weeks.”
“And I figured her a natural-born jock,” Bill Treacy said.
“Maybe natural-born,” Jasper said. “But she’s more of a woman than a jock now. Could
end up fleshier than your average grandstander.”
Then he and Bill Treacy laughed, and then they laughed harder, in that obnoxious way
old, know-it-all men like them could, and I spit out what licorice was still in my
mouth and walked off without caring about planks creaking or anything. I didn’t care
because I knew why Jasper and Bill Treacy were laughing—because, among the truest
horsemen, grandstanders were nothing but laughing- stock.
I jogged toward the canopy of elms at the end of Main.
Grandstanders are losers
was how Tom Corcoran had put it at the track a few days earlier.
Because they’re either gamblers or on their way to being gamblers, and in the long
run, gamblers always lose.
And after the elms, I ran so fast I was sure I’d fade to walking long before I reached
the Corcorans’ house.
Grandstanders are behind before they even sit down,
Tom had said, with damned near resentment.
The suckers pay just to get in.
And with those words in mind, on top of what Jasper had said about my father, I did
not fade. Instead, fueled by rebellion against pretty much the whole world, I accelerated
through the opening in the Corcorans’ milkweed hedge and onto their driveway, then
sprinted to where my mother was hanging sheets on a clothesline
slung between pear trees. She glanced over her shoulder at me as I stayed all out
toward the lake, a wooden clothespin between her teeth, her face more worn than usual,
it seemed, her upper lip raised slightly. Since we’d moved in with the Corcorans,
she had this faint way of crinkling the corners of her eyes, and I pulled up and stopped
at the Corcorans’ orange forty-gallon drum, which I touched, as I always did, before
I cooled down: my own personal finish line.
“Hey, Jan,” my mother called softly, facing the laundry.
I aimed my shoulders in her direction, hoping she’d say more than that, since I was
winded enough to need to grab my knees.
“They all inside?” I finally asked, my scalp itchy against my cap.
She shook her head, grabbed up a pair of jeans. “Tom’s at the track; Colleen’s getting
groceries, I think. And Tug just headed into the woods saying he’d work on his farm.”
“He’s got a boarder?” I asked, and the thought of a horse now out on that meadow,
whether it proved to be a thoroughbred or a standardbred or just some aging mutt,
recharged my insides.
“I don’t think so. Just repairing it to make a horse more likely, I expect.”
“You see it yet?” I asked.
“See what.”
“The horse farm.”
She brushed a ladybug off her forearm, shook her head no.
“Not much of one,” I said.
“Is that right.”
“Pretty small, to begin with.”
“Then why don’t you help make it bigger?”
“You trying to get rid of me, Mama?”
Here she held an old blouse of Colleen’s by the hem, well below
her own chest, both sleeves touching sprigs of crabgrass, one of the rare times since
we’d moved, I then realized, that she was looking me in the eye.
“
Baby,” she said, “I just want you to be happy.”
I smiled at her more than was honest, a sort of Tom Corcoran smile, I thought. “And
you figure my talking to Tug is the straight path to happiness?”
She smirked, the clothespin possibly to blame for the absence of a full-fledged grin,
and then she returned to hanging up clothes, so I headed off, past the Corcorans’
royal blue hydrangea and into the south woods.
In sunlight, the maple trunks along the way appeared thicker than I remembered, and
the huge boulder on the right seemed less unnatural during the day, the meadow less
promising and lonelier, and there was Tug, kneeling near the gap in the fence. The
lean-to, I noticed, had lumberyard spray paint still on it. I ducked under a birch
log on my side, walked across the meadow, stopped just short of Tug.
“Hey.”
“Jan?” he said, without a glance up. He was wearing rawhide gloves and an old button-down
that sweat kept stuck to his back. He raised a sledgehammer above a loose fencepost,
and it was clear to me now that, physically speaking, he was a far better natural
candidate to jock than I was.
“Not to imply that I know horses more than you do,” I said. “But if you ask me, you’re
spending good energy on the least important part of your farm.”
“I’m sorry?” he said, and down came the sledgehammer, with no small amount of anger,
it seemed, since the fencepost split in half.
“It’s that lean-to over there,” I said. “You should, you know, make it so it’s got
four walls and a roof and a door you could close when it rains or gets cold.”
“Then it wouldn’t be a lean-to,” he said. “Then it would be a barn.”
I let him enjoy that one for a while. Then I said, “Precisely my point, Tug Corcoran.”
He kept working on, as if I weren’t there. If this were some recommended legal-schmegal
tactic he’d learned from one of his secondhand law books—tapping into your opponent’s
insecurities by ignoring her—well, it did get my goat a little, but it sure wouldn’t
get me in bed.
“It’s like with
people
, Tug,” I said. “If they feel cared for when they’re around you, they’ll never
think
about walking away.”
He went on working, now and then studying the outskirts of his farm to address the
question of which nearby birch might make for a new fencepost, but possibly, I suspected,
just to ignore me. For a while there, I wondered if my desire for a barn with four
walls was rooted in my lack of privacy on the summer porch, which did, like the lean-to,
have only one solid wall. But Tug said nothing about that, and soon I felt stupid
for the times I’d imagined sleeping with him when I couldn’t sleep at all.
“Anyway,” I said. “I’m not up for fishing this afternoon. Maybe I’ll go this evening.”
“What, you haven’t heard?”
“About what.”
“The secret sprint.”
I had no idea what he meant. He kicked at an intact log as if bent on breaking it,
too. “Jasper’s driving us out past Geneseo tonight,” he said. He stared at my face
so unrelentingly I was sure
licorice had stained my teeth. “Some rich contractor claimed a horse. And the guy
wants to have his friend ride it in a match race against a horse Bill Treacy’s buddy
just claimed.”
“Ridden by?”
“You.”
I folded my arms to hide my hands. “I’m not so sure that’s the best idea.”
“Why not?”
I was tapping one foot repeatedly, an expression of defiance I’d despised seeing my
mother use—until I’d adopted it myself. “I’ve never ridden in an actual race, Tug.
Not to mention I think I’m getting a little too . . . you know . . . thick.”
“Now don’t go being that way,” he said. “Guys around here don’t race their horses
for shits and giggles. In fact it was Jasper who set up the sprint, and Jasper’s seen
you most every day this summer, so why would he have you ride without confidence in
you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, though already I was constructing theories.
“Well, think about that.”
“Maybe he wants me to ride once for money,” I said, “because he feels sorry for me.”
“He doesn’t feel sorry for you, Jan. No one does. You were
born
to be a jock—it’s in your blood, and that’s a fact.”
“If you think so,” I said, but only because he’d taken on a sort of lawyerly tone
of voice, and the last thing I wanted to do with anyone right then was argue for the
sake of argument.