If Wishes Were Horses, Changes

Written by John R. Perrotta; art by Jen Ferguson
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Ham walked Buckeye toward Mr. Evans and Doc Kennery on the hard dirt road between the barns.
“Jog him,” said Evans, and Ham did.
“Faster, son,” said the vet.
Buckeye was almost pulling Ham off the ground when they got to the two men, and he was thankful that the big bay had pulled himself up rather than run them over.
“Good with me,” said the vet, “That’s the soundest I’ve ever seen him.”
“Put him away,” said Evans, nodding agreement.
Ham led Buckeye back to his stall and was dusting him off with a rub-rag when the trainer came to the door.
“I’m going to enter him to run on Friday, Ham,” he said.
“Yessir,” said Ham.
“If he gets in, we’ll breeze him an easy half tomorrow and keep our fingers crossed.”
“Yessir,” said Ham.
 
On the way back from supper at the track kitchen Ham swung by the rec hall to get an overnight and check if anyone had abandoned a Morning Telegraph but there were none of either to be found, just the same bunch of trainers and jockey agents that were always there playing racehorse rummy, so he headed to the stable gate and got one from the guard. 
He shivered when he saw Buckeye’s name listed in the second race for Friday, a $35,000 maiden claimer like the one Starlight ran in, only this was for colts and geldings, and seven furlongs instead of six. That meant they’d be taking him to the track at dawn tomorrow as soon as it opened, so he could have a nice, smooth track for his workout. 
When Ham showed Willie the overnight, the old man grinned from ear to ear.
“That’s a man amongst boys ’you be running there, Ham and Eggs,” he said. 
Ham figured he meant because Buckeye had cost so much and said so and Willie told him he was right, plus Buckeye’s father was a big-time stallion and his mother a stakes-winning mare, both things that Ham wasn’t aware of.
“His daddy, First Landing, sired the Derby winner last May. Ought to be enough to make him beat them ill-bred rascals,” said Willie.
 
Ham was the first one in the shedrow the next morning, eager to get Buckeye ready for his breeze and was just combing the last bits of straw from the gelding’s tail when Jake draped Lizzie’s exercise saddle over the webbing at the front of the stall.
He ran his hands over Buckeye’s ankles one last time to reassure himself there was no heat and sure enough they were ice cold, just like they had been last night when he put him away. But he’d heard enough stories from Willie about horses that were sound as a dollar one moment and limping lame the next, so he wasn’t about to let his guard down.
Mr. Evans was quiet on the way to the track, and Lizzie, too, kept her usual chatter to a minimum, waiting for instructions on how the trainer wanted the workout to go. Ham stroked the big bay on his chest and shoulder as they walked, trying to keep him relaxed, although you could tell Buckeye knew something was up, the way horses do when they sense any change in their routine.
 
“Fifty flat, perfect,” said Evans as he clicked his stopwatch. He clicked it again and winked at Ham as Buckeye galloped past the seven-eighths pole.
“Out in 1:03 and three. … Let’s hope he doesn’t do anything stupid between now and tomorrow afternoon,” said the trainer. 

Ham wore his red shirt to the paddock and Toady lugged the bucket since Willie had Momma’s Boy running in the third race and he was busy, or he’d have been walking alongside, proud as a papa of his protégé. 
As they made a couple of laps around the walking ring, Ham snuck a peek at the odds board and had to look again to be sure what he saw up there was right.  Buckeye was 12-to-1, which was much higher a price than he thought he’d be and more than double the morning-line odds. Ham wasn’t sure what to make of that, but it made him nervous about the 40 bucks he planned to bet, 20 to win and 20 to place.
Buckeye was on his toes as the field left the paddock, doing a little buck-jump and making a few owners step back to get out of the way. 
“Good luck,” said Ham to the rider.  
Johnny Mallano was a dark-eyed, handsome Italian kid, popular with the fans at Belmont and still only a bug boy, but Ham felt good about him riding Buckeye, figuring he and Mallano were both apprentices and maybe that was why the odds were high, folks preferring to bet on Vasquez or Baeza or Cordero, those guys who won all the big races, but it was OK with him since, like Willie said, everybody had to start someplace.
 
Ham tucked the tickets in his left-front shirt pocket where he always did, getting more and more superstitious like a true racetracker. And he wouldn’t let himself look at the odds on the tote board again until the horses went in the gate, thinking of the time Willie told him about when he was running a horse in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, and he’d made the mistake of looking at the trophy before the race and he was sure that was the reason his horse got beat that nose. 
Ham and Toady found a spot on the grandstand apron near the fence where they had a clear view of the starting gate at the other side of the track, right where it straightened out for the backstretch. There were a few other first-time starters in the race and one of them pitched a fit behind the gate, delaying the start and that didn’t help the stomach ache Ham was feeling again.
 
Mallano turned his stick down a hundred yards from the finish line and coasted home about five lengths in front, and this time Ham didn’t have a dry mouth as he jumped up and screamed, “Yee-haw” when they crossed the wire and he and Toady hustled out on to the track to wait for Buckeye. 
Ham had a strange feeling come over him as he stepped on that loamy Belmont track, that he was about a foot taller than everyone around him, as if they were all moving in slow motion and speaking strange garbled sounds but he had to move quickly to get his horse and didn’t have time to dwell on it. 
The jock shook his whip toward the stands and tossed it to his valet, meaning that all was well, and when Ham threaded the brass chain of the shank through Buckeye’s bridle and led them into the winner’s circle it was close as to who had a bigger grin, him or that bug boy.  
All the time Ham had worked for Mr. Evans, he’d never seen the man show even a trace of anger, but right now as the photographer took their picture his face was as red as the jockey’s silks and he looked like he might explode when the steward’s assistant hung a plastic tag on Buckeye’s halter. 
It said “CLAIMED” …
 
An hour later when Ham got back to the barn, all he had was his shank and Buckeye’s halter so he was surely relieved to see Willie waiting for him. 
“I never even thought about them taking him,” said Ham.
“I didn’t think they would either,” said Willie, “him waiting ’til he’s almost five to get to the races, but you never know.”
“Mr. Evans sure was mad.”
“More’n likely that horse just lost his best friend,” said Willie, meaning that a maiden was the easiest race for any horse to win and it only got tougher after that, and as Ham mulled it over he knew the old man was probably right, but at the moment it stung pretty bad to lose the big gelding that was his very first winner and the one that left him with a scar on his butt.
 
They went to dinner at the Italian place that night, but it was a nearly silent repast, and when they toasted Buckeye, it felt more like a wake than a wedding. And although he’d won a sizeable bet and Ham was going to miss Buckeye, he could tell Willie was disappointed that Momma’s Boy ran out of the money, maybe fearing that the old gelding was getting to the end of his career. 
There wasn’t much small talk over dinner and after they were done, as Ham paid the check, he remembered how Willie liked to say a little quiet was good for the soul. That particular evening Ham knew what he meant.
When they got back to the barn, there was a letter waiting, stuck in the tack-room door. It was addressed to Ham in his mother’s handwriting and sent to him in care of the Belmont stable gate, so she had figured out where he was, probably by the postmark on his letter to her.
Mom said everything was good back home in Vermont, that his sisters and his step-sisters were well and that they all missed him and that she was excited that her husband had found a new job, one that might have some future there at the resort, which was beginning to prosper since they’d started to promote year-round instead of depending on it to snow for the skiers every winter. 
His mom made no mention of him coming home, just told him that she loved him and hoped he was happy there working with the horses and how she’d loved horses, too, when she was a girl, something he’d never heard from her before but for some reason gave him a good feeling. He put the letter in an old cigar box where he’d been keeping his losing tickets, not ripping them up and throwing them on the ground like a lot of bettors did. 
Willie said it was good to keep some losers around to remind you of the times when you weren’t that smart, ’cause when you win you always think you’re a genius. 
He told himself he’d write again soon but, as a matter of fact, it would be a long time before he did.

Ham was in the tack shop, buying himself a pair of those brown leather Kroops boots with the zipper in the front that a lot of folks on the backside wore, when he saw Spider. 
“Hey,” said Ham.
“Hey,” said Spider.
“We all thought you hit the road again after Saratoga,” said Ham.
And just like before, Spider didn’t look him in the eye as he shrugged. Ham hadn’t given it much thought before that moment just how small the kid was, that maybe he wore a size five shoe and probably got his clothes in the boy’s section at the department store.
“I heard you were going to be a jockey.”
“Yeah, working for Bucky Layne,” said Spider. 
“Cool,” said Ham.
Bucky Layne was what Willie called a “gyp” trainer, meaning he always cut corners and did everything as cheaply as he could, even if it meant skimping on things that were good for his horses, which was why they always looked so shabby and undernourished. 
Layne didn’t care too much what he, himself, looked like either, always in dirty jeans and a T-shirt and missing a couple of teeth, and being a wild gambler who bet on every race, whether or not he had a horse in it, but seemingly calm except once in a while when his eyes would flash and you could see how he might be a crazy person. 
It was a known fact on the backstretch that Layne and his wife took care of two dozen horses with one groom as their only help, and Ham figured Spider was working more for promises than he was for money.
“Galloping the whole barn,” said Spider in a boasting way as if that were a good thing.
But Spider appeared pretty prosperous for someone who probably wasn’t making much money, wearing new boots and jeans and a plaid, western shirt like a lot of the jockeys did and paying for a Caliente helmet with a hundred-dollar bill. 
Maybe he’d cashed a bet, but Ham reckoned that more likely he had another job like a lot of stable folks, maybe one of those sidelines not too legal but nonetheless profitable.
“See ya,” said Spider, grabbing his change from the counter.
“See ya,” said Ham, wondering if a lot of things about Spider didn’t add up.

Ham told Mr. Evans he didn’t think it was right that he got paid the same now as he was only taking care of two horses, that maybe he should take less as one of them was a pony, not even a moneymaker for the barn, and the trainer laughed out loud.
“Forty years, I never had anybody tell me they were overpaid,” he said.
Later that morning, when Ham busied himself raking the gravel parking lot, the trainer called him into his office.
“We’re going to claim one out of the first race,” he said, “Meet me at that hedge by the paddock where the horses come in.” 
He didn’t say which horse they were taking, but Ham figured that wasn’t his business and he’d better just do what he was told since Willie always liked to say even a fish wouldn’t get in trouble if it kept its mouth shut. 
Mr. Evans told him to bring a shank and a halter, and hopefully he’d have a new horse to take care of by the end of the day.
 
Ham stayed close by Mr. Evans, listened as the old man spoke behind the back of his hand in a low voice, like he didn’t want anyone to hear them. The trainer was focused on the path from the barn area, making notes on his program and seeming to check out every horse, but when a big gray mare appeared, practically dragging her groom into the walking ring, he nudged Ham.
“That’s her,” he said, “… Avalanche.”
“Yessir,” said Ham.
“Got those front bandages on, trying to make you think they’re hiding something, but I’ve been watching her on the track in the morning and she’s sound,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Ham followed him to the racing secretary’s office, and he showed Ham the claim blank he’d filled out before he put it in the envelope and stuck it in the machine that stamped it with the time and dropped it in the slot in a locked wooden box. They weren’t alone in the room and stood aside while they watched three other trainers do the same thing.
“Looks like we’re going to shake for her,” said Evans.
Ham didn’t know what that meant, so he asked.
“They put numbered pills in a cup and if your number comes out first, your claim’s the one that gets her.”
The claims clerk put the three blanks side by side on the counter and said, “One is Evans, two is Burke and three is Colletti.  Good luck, gentlemen.”
He shook the cup and out rolled a red pill with the number “1,” and Mr. Evans perked up with a smile. He took the receipt from the clerk and passed it to Ham as overhead on the television horses broke from the gate. 
The gray mare flew to the front and was still up by four when she passed the finish line.
                                                              
Ham felt a little uneasy, waiting at the test barn while Avalanche’s groom finished walking her, but when he was done, Ham handed the receipt to the man in charge and headed back to the Evans stable with his new horse. Halfway there, she planted her feet and he could have sworn she was looking him up and down as if she was deciding whether or not to like him. 
He reached in his pocket and pulled out the peppermint Willie had given him before he went to the paddock.
“All the girls like it when you bring them candy,” he had said, and there was Willie waiting with Mr. Evans as they got to the barn and when they went over their new horse she was clean and healthy as could be.
“Not a pimple on her,” said the trainer.
“Sound as a bell of brass,” said Willie.
And Ham thought about it as he put Avalanche in her new stall, how many times he’d heard those same words, even in the short time he’d been around, and how the racetrack world had its own language, full of quirky expressions and how much he loved to hear them.

Since Chester was a working pony and Mr. Evans spent most of the time riding him back and forth to the track, Ham would have him ready first thing with the big western saddle on and tied to the hitching post outside. Most mornings Evans liked to just sit there on the big palomino by the half-mile gap, clocking horses with an old, gold stopwatch he’d won for being the leading trainer at Latonia, which was an old track in Kentucky where he said he’d helped Eddie Arcaro get his start as a jockey. He said they didn’t make them like Arcaro anymore, and Willie agreed, saying that was why they called him “the Master.”
Avalanche had raced the day before, so she didn’t go to the track and Ham just walked her, first in the shedrow for a while, then outside on the walking ring, getting her used to the new surroundings and she was perfect. She’d had rings around her eyes when they came back last night and did spook a few times, and when he mentioned it to Mr. Evans he said that the other trainer probably had lit her up with a cattle prod at the barn before the race, something he didn’t approve of and they’d be treating her like a lady, not some Angus steer.
Ham had just put the mare back in her stall and was heading for the feed room to fetch her some alfalfa when a loose horse came wheeling around the corner and ducked into the shedrow and a good thing he was looking or he’d have gotten run over. Instead, he dropped the flake of hay and grabbed the dangling reins and walked the horse outside to hand her off to Jake. 
“Lizzie got dumped,” said Jake.
“Is she OK?” Ham asked.
“Ambulance took her,” said Jake, shrugging.
 
It wasn’t that far to the hospital, but Ham put on a clean shirt and took the bus instead of riding the bike he’d bought from one of the other grooms, as he didn’t want to get sweaty. He got some flowers at the gift shop and the lady at the information desk asked him if they were for his wife, which embarrassed him considerably, but when he got to her room Lizzie wasn’t there. It was a two-bedded room and there was an old lady watching television, her eyes glued to “As the World Turns.”
“I’m looking for my friend, Lizzie,” said Ham.
“She was out cold until about an hour ago,” said the lady, “They just took her for an   X-ah-ray.”
Ham was pretty sure that wasn’t good.
“Is she OK?”
“Looked OK to me,” said the lady.
 
Ham woke with a start when Lizzie’s gurney bumped the door as it came into the room. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep in the chair but the old lady was gone and her television was dark. 
“Aren’t you sweet,” said Lizzie when she saw the flowers.
“How do you feel?” Ham asked.
“Got a little headache, but I’m OK,” she said, “I was on the Never Bend filly, the two-year-old, and she jumped the fence, I guess. I don’t really remember.”
“Out cold, they said.”
“I needed that nap,” she said, “And so did you.”
Lizzie looked well enough, although she still had a smudge of track dirt on her face, and he didn’t want to let on how concerned he’d been.
“They say the food is great in these places.”
“Yeah,” she said, “people throw themselves off horses just to get in here.”
Before he could ask, she told him they were making her stay overnight. When he said he’d stop back later, she said maybe could he bring her a few things from Tina, the other exercise girl she lived with. They had an apartment not far from the track and Tina was home nursing a broken leg so she wouldn’t be able to come over, and Ham said sure, see you later.
“Thanks for the flowers, darlin’,” she said, and he blushed.

The Champagne Stakes at Belmont is usually the biggest race of the year for two-year-olds, the one that makes the champion, and there was no doubt that Secretariat would be just that and maybe, like a lot of folks said, he’d be the Horse of the Year, although that honor almost always went to older horses. 
If the press had been crazy for Big Red before the Futurity, now they were certifiably insane, and Willie said had Secretariat been running for President next month, Nixon and McGovern would both be fighting for second place.
Every day when Stop the Music went to the track to gallop, the path Miguel took home brought them right past the Evans barn. Usually, grooms didn’t walk each of their horses back and forth to the track, but in the case of stars like Secretariat and aspiring ones like Stop the Music, the trainer would take no chances and have them do it just to make sure nothing went wrong. 
Miguel would whistle to Ham when they passed, then sing a few lines of his favorite song: “Bye-bye, Miss American Pie … drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry …” and Willie and Ham would laugh at that boy for thinking there was any way his horse was going to get by Secretariat.
 
The Wednesday before the Champagne marked two months since Hamilton Greer’s 16th birthday, the day he climbed on a Greyhound bus in Manchester, Vt., and in his mind he marked that as the day he became a man.  He had himself a little money saved now, hidden and secure, and he dressed himself well in the new clothes he’d bought, and he went every two weeks over to the grandstand barber shop and got his hair cut, like a man should if he expected folks to respect him. 
He listened when Willie gave him advice, liking the way it was done, not didactic or preachy or talking down to him, just man to man, or perhaps like father to son, and always spoken in a kindly manner, so he took that advice to heart and remembered it when he was trying to behave like a man.
After he cashed his bet on Buckeye, Ham went to an appliance store over in Elmont and bought a transistor radio for Willie, telling him it was how he’d like to show his appreciation for all the things Willie taught him, and for what he hoped he’d teach him in the future, and the old man’s eyes were wet when he said, “Thank you.”
Because they have to be up so early, racetrackers hit the sack early, so they listened to the radio every evening, or if Willie went out for a meeting or Ham went to a movie at the rec hall, the one who stayed in would listen and tell the other what he’d missed and mostly it was news, all the parts of the other world they’d never know about outside the stable gate. 
Sometimes when Willie dozed off early, Ham would tune it down low and listen to Jean Shepherd tell him stories until he fell asleep, too.

A week later, Jake put Ivan’s saddle over the webbing as Ham was putting polo bandages on Starlight, and Ham asked him why Lizzie wasn’t getting on her like she usually did. 
“Lizzie’s gone, back to England I think,” Jake said.
“When?” Ham asked.
“Immigration got her last night, they must have figured out she didn’t have papers when she was in the hospital.”
“So she’s gone? Just like that?”
“Deported. Happens all the time,” said Jake. “Too bad, she was a good rider.”
Ivan took the mare to gallop and Ham went and knocked on the open door of Mr. Evans’ office. He asked him if there was anything anyone could do about Lizzie, and he was a loss at what more to say when the trainer told him, no, but he’d hired a new rider to be there in the morning, just like he didn’t even care if she was gone.  
Ham moped around the rest of the day, reading and listening to the radio in the tack room, and Willie told him don’t you worry son, those pretty girls are like buses, if you stand on the corner long enough another one will come by. Ham thought that was a little cold.

Neither had anything running on Saturday, so Willie and Ham got to the paddock right after the sixth race so they could get a spot near the rail in order to be close by when the trainer gave jockey Ron Turcotte a leg up on Secretariat.
All the parking lots off Hempstead Turnpike were overflowing and banner planes flew above dragging signs that read; “GO BIG RED,” and folks pressed through the turnstiles dressed to the nines, like they were going to the biggest party ever — the men all wearing suits and some of the ladies with hats that matched their dresses.
Ham caught Miguel’s eye as he passed, giving Stop the Music an extra turn around the walking ring and Miguel gave him a “thumbs up,” as proud as a peacock of the big bay, whose dapples were shining like translucent mirrors in the afternoon sun, but when the paddock judge yelled “riders up,” Miguel’s smile disappeared, meaning he was all business. His trainer’s assistant gave Johnny Rotz a leg up, and Willie said how good they looked, the flashy colt with his rider in the bright pink and black silks.
As the horses left the paddock, hardly anyone paid attention to Angle Light, the number “1” horse since all eyes were on Secretariat wearing “1A” on his saddle towel because he was part of an entry, both horses trained by the same trainer.  Willie said he thought it was a waste of the other horse, and that Secretariat didn’t need what he called a “rabbit” to go out and force a fast pace. 
“That big horse’ll run down anything they put in front of him, going fast or slow,” he said.
 
Ham thought maybe they would have a bet today since Secretariat’s odds were hanging around even money, but Willie said, “just you wait boy, he’s gonna be 3-to-5 and we don’t bet no 3-to-5s.” But when Willie went to the men’s room, Ham slipped over to the hundred-dollar window and bought a ticket, figuring that would be the easiest way he ever got to double his money. 
With a furlong left it looked to be only a matter of how far Big Red would win by, and Ham didn’t pay much attention to Willie’s grunt when Secretariat ducked in on Miguel’s horse as he made his run from last, passing the other horses like they were a picket fence. And when he crossed the finish line two lengths clear of Stop the Music, Ham whooped along with the crowd. 
But Willie didn’t whoop, instead he pointed at the toteboard as the red lights lit up on the “INQUIRY” sign. 
 
Ham touched the shirt pocket where he always stashed his tickets and had that dreamy, slow motion thing again, sounds garbled while the lights on the result board were dark for a few minutes before they lit again, and the number “5” was up there on top and “1A” in second and he heard the announcer saying:
“… by disqualification … winner of the hundred and first running of the Champagne Stakes … Stop the Music, a bay colt by Hail to Reason out of Bebopper, by Tom Fool … ” before his voice tailed off.
 
Walking back to the stable area, Willie said it was a dang shame, the stewards taking down the best horse, but that was why we don’t bet no horse alive at 3-to-5, and Ham knew that Willie knew he’d bet his money.

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© 2015  John R. Perrotta