If Wishes Were Horses, Growing Up

Written by John R. Perrotta; art by Jen Ferguson
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The Sunday before Thanksgiving marked the end of their first month in Florida, and Bogie was still saying that the boss would arrive any day now. 
Willie wondered out loud why it would take the man so long to drive himself down from New York, but hopefully he was buying some horses off the farms in South Carolina to stock up the stable for next year and that was probably what it was.  
Suzie’s Song was entered in the stakes race at Tropical Park on Thanksgiving Day. It put Ham on needles and pins when he bought the Morning Telegraph and saw that she was picked as favorite by most of the handicappers, and best bet of the day by a few. Even worse, they had her picture on the front page.  
Bogie gave Suzie a quarter-mile blowout that Wednesday and he had Ivan do it, saying she was so sharp he didn’t want to risk having her run off with a jockey.   

At 7 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning, Mr. Evans pulled up to the barn and right away you could tell he wasn’t himself. His usual ruddy complexion had turned a waxen pale and he moved gingerly down the shedrow with Bogie, going over every horse from their nose to their tail while he listened to what each groom had to say. 
Ham could read the concern on Willie’s face when the pair got to their end of the barn, but at least there was a smile on the old man’s face when he saw the shining coats on their horses, dapples like shiny silver dollars scattered on Deliah and Starlight and Suzie and Avalanche, and he stepped right into Mighty’s stall to run his hands over the big bay. 
“Lovely,” was all Evans said with a weak voice they’d never heard before.
After he left, they were packing their gear to take on the van to Tropical and when Ham went to tie his shoe, the lace snapped off in his hand. “Damn,” said Willie.

They took the early van to Tropical again, and at the receiving barn Willie told Ham to put the brass chain of his shank over the top of Suzie’s front teeth, saying that feeling it on her gums would make her pay attention and not get rowdy in the paddock. It was a good thing he did, because when Ham took the filly out of her stall, she halfway dragged him down the shedrow until he gave a stern yank to stop her in her tracks.
“Good as hands can make her, son,” said Willie. “You done a man’s job with this filly.”
 
When they circled the paddock, Suzy pranced like one of those fancy dressage horses in Madison Square Garden, and she stood as still as a statue when Bogie gave Fires his leg up but Mr. Evans was nowhere to be seen. 
“Good luck, jock,” said Ham.
Fires winked and tucked his whip under his leg as he pulled out some of the rubber bands in her braided mane while they walked on toward the tunnel that led out to the racetrack.
Suzie’s odds flirted with 4-to-5 and she went in the gate at even-money in the field of 10, which made it a non-betting situation for them, so Ham and Willie grabbed a lemonade and just watched from the grandstand apron as the horses came out of the three-quarter pole chute. 
But instead of being on the lead where she was supposed to be, their filly wasn’t in front of a single horse as they ran the first quarter-mile, and when they turned for home there was no doubt that she was going to be last.
Bogie waited with them as Fires waved his whip and dismounted.
“What happened?” asked Bogie, and the jock just shrugged his shoulders and said she was sound, hitting the ground perfect but didn’t give an ounce of effort.
“I didn’t want to beat her up for nothing,” he said.
 
Ham didn’t have to walk Suzy any more after they returned from the test barn. 
“She cooled out in five minutes, like she never even ran,” he said.
He was silent for most of the van ride home, not hanging out that side window like he usually did, instead holding on to Suzy’s halter the whole trip, studying her as if he could divine the answer to her non-performance by staring into her big brown eyes.
“He said she didn’t even try,” said Ham.
“Sometimes everything is about your perspective and your expectations,” said Willie, “perspective” being a very big word for somebody who usually didn’t use them. 
“What I’m saying, the jockey jumps on and off and tells what he knows from sitting on their back for 10 minutes, then he changes his silks and gets on another one. You look at it from being with them day and night. Both got the same expectations, but you got different perspective.”

Back at Hialeah they watched Suzy prance down the ramp off the van and stroll back to the barn like she hadn’t a care in the world. Ham asked Willie to feel her legs in case there was something there he was missing, but he said they were cold and tight.
“Remember what I told you about them mares when they be horsing?” Willie asked, and Ham nodded that he did.
He was watching Suzie’s Song pick at the flake of alfalfa he’d tossed in a corner of her stall when Willie said we haven’t been out to eat since the gray mare won, so let’s get Easy and go have us some of that fine Cuban food, and Ham said sure, I guess so.
Plenty of people who weren’t home having turkey had lined up the restaurant, and Ham smiled back at the dark haired girl when she seated them right away at the table in the back where the owner usually ate. 
She asked Ham where he was from, and when he said Vermont, she said she’d never been that far north but she heard it was beautiful, and she laughed when he said then we’re even because I’ve never been to Cuba, but if all the girls there are as pretty as you, I’d sure like to go, and the old men cooed.
“Smooth, eh?” said Easy.
“Just like Desi Arnaz,” said Willie, and they both winked at the boy, tickled to see him over being upset about the race and flirting with her.   
The dark haired girl’s name was Carla, and she sat down with them after dinner and shared the flan they always had for desert with their Café Cubano. As they left, she slipped Ham her phone number.
Easy teased him all the way back to the track, telling him that if they went on a date that her grandmother would have to come with them since that’s the way the Cubans do it, but Willie just smiled, happy that the kid had finally come out of his shell.

The next morning Ham held Suzie’s Song as the veterinarian examined her and he told him that Willie was right, she’d been in heat and that would account for her poor performance in the stakes race. 
“Got a follicle the size of a golf ball,” he said, removing the plastic sleeve from his arm and he asked Ham if he knew what a follicle was, but Ham had gotten an A in biology so he had no problem understanding what the vet was describing and told him so. 
“We’re always looking for assistants, so keep it in mind,” said the vet, and that gave Ham something to think about for the next few days. When he told Willie about the conversation, Willie told him he’d make a damn good vet if that was what he wanted or anything else he decided to put his mind to for that matter.

Mr. Evans didn’t come to the barn until after the eight o’clock break when they harrowed the track, and he spent most of the morning in his office, talking with Bogie. Everyone who passed the closed door could hear them inside, their voices a dull unceasing staccato.
Ham asked Willie what he thought was wrong, but Willie didn’t have an answer except he thought the boss was under the weather, maybe he’d caught a flu up north and was still not recovered.
When the door did open, Willie had to summon courage to tell the trainer that he thought Momma’s Boy was done, sore all over and not really anything he could do about the arthritis and all the wear and tear that an old gelding turning 10 would have after 72 starts.
Evans told Willie he’d respect his judgment and keep Momma’s Boy around as a second stable pony since they’d be able to give him a proper dose of bute for that kind of work, which they couldn’t if he was running races. 
Willie choked up and said he’d be happy to keep taking care of him as well as his three racehorses for no extra money. and Evans liked that just fine and said he’d bring Willie another horse off the farm on the next van coming their way.

As the sun began to set later and later in the evening, they took to sitting outside the barn with the transistor radio if they didn’t go to shoot hoops or out for supper, and they’d listen to music on a Cuban channel while they talked. Ham asked Willie if he’d ever thought about getting married and Willie said sure, he’d been married and it didn’t work out. 
“Got a lovely daughter out of it, though. Made all the rest worth the pain and sorrow, even if it didn’t seem like it was at the time,” said Willie.
And Ham asked a couple of more questions about Willie’s daughter, and he said she went to college and got herself a master’s degree in fine arts, and he pronounced what she did as “co-ree-ographer,” and that she “made up the dances” for Hollywood stars, and then he changed the subject and Ham got the feeling that was all he was going to say on the subject.

The stable area was silent most nights, except maybe Saturday when a few of the stable help might get a bit rowdy as they came in late from roaming the clubs and bars, but it was rare you’d see a police car inside the gates.
Easy started his night watch at eight each evening, patrolling up and down the shedrow and peeking in on the horses to make sure they had water, and most of his time was spent on an old beat-up armchair outside the trainer’s office, sipping the strong Cuban coffee that helped him stay awake. 
He was a gentle soul who enjoyed the quiet of the barn at night, and he’d read a book as he surveyed the shedrow. Occasionally, he wandered out to gaze up at the splash of stars across the winter sky, like he did when he was a boy in Havana.
So it was quite an event on that night in the middle of the week as Willie and Ham nearly fell out of their beds, so loud was the commotion and so close by that the walls were shaking like an earthquake when the cops weren’t shy about rousting the occupants of the other tack room at their end of the barn.
Ham threw on his jeans and stepped out into the shedrow only to have a Hialeah policeman point a night-stick at him and tell him to get back in his room and keep the door shut, and it seemed just that quick it was all over and they were gone.
“What happened?” Willie asked Easy, who said he’d been shocked to see the patrol car pull almost into the barn when the cop told him also to get lost as they staged their raid, kicking the door off its hinges and emptying the tack room, which was now sealed with yellow crime scene tape.
“Cocaina,” said Easy.
He said he knew the two grooms who lived there and they didn’t work for Evans, but he wasn’t sure who else the cops took away, just that none of their people were in trouble and it’s a damn shame when drugs get in the barn.

It was dawn when Jacinto Vasquez parked his Jaguar at the end barn and strolled into Mr. Evans’ office. Willie already had Mighty tacked up and was walking him in the shedrow and when Bogie gave the jock a leg up and said they were going to go out through the paddock for a change.
The big bay colt was so on his toes that he did a little buck-jump as he bounced out of the barn and Vasquez laughed, saying yee-hah as Willie handed them off to Bogie on Chester the pony. Willie and Mr. Evans followed behind on the horse path.
When they came back, the jockey was telling jokes and the three old men were laughing like little kids, and Mighty was prancing like a show horse. 
Willie told Ham that the boss said his big colt was ready to roll and they’d be entering him for the next Saturday coming and pull out your betting cash kid, ’cause now is when you get your Christmas money. 

Over the next three weeks they made half-a-dozen trips to Tropical, but Mr. Evans only showed up once and Bogie saddled all the horses. 
Ham ran Starlight twice with her finishing third both times as the favorite and making it official she was going to be a 5-year-old maiden. Avalanche looked like she couldn’t lose on paper, but she stumbled coming out of the gate and got beat a dirty nose in an allowance race. 
Willie wasn’t disheartened by Delilah finishing fifth in a stakes race, which was about what he expected, saying that the little track’s turns were too sharp for her, but it was perfect to get her ready for Hialeah where she always ran well. When Carlos went home to Argentina, Willie took his place running Carlos’ old claimer, who surprised them all when he won.
But it was their last runner of the year that had everyone in the barn pumped up. Mighty drew the rail with a full field of maidens on Christmas Eve, and Willie was OK with it when the boss told him he wasn’t going to put blinkers on for the first out, that the colt was too good to start his career that way and it wasn’t about the bet, it was about the horse.    
Willie told Ham that was the “old school” way of training, to let your horse develop and not rush him, so as he’d learn to pace himself and use his energy right and not get speed crazy and besides, that big colt was good enough to win anyway.
 
Mighty broke a beat slow and spotted most of the field a couple of lengths, but he looped the bunch of them turning for home and Vasquez said afterwards that he hadn’t sat on a better horse all year, or maybe ever for that matter.
And Willie was right, they all got their Christmas money at 5-to-1 just because the leading trainer Winick, who flew to the track in a helicopter, had a good thing in the race and nobody ever thought he could lose, but he did that day.

After a dozen times of going to dinner at the Cuban place, Ham finally mustered some nerve and asked Carla if she’d like to go to the movies on Saturday night, and he breathed a sigh of relief when she said yes and didn’t say she had to bring her grandmother. 
He wore his best jeans and his red shirt and might have spent the half an hour before he left the barn making sure the part on his hair was straight.  When he knocked on her door she asked him in to meet her family, and the first thing he noticed was the tortoise shell clip she wore to hold her long hair back. 
She had told him her favorite actor was Robert Redford, and there he was in a movie about a jewel robbery playing at the little yellow stucco-walled theatre in Miami Springs, close to where she lived. After they took in the early show, they walked across the foot bridge over the canal to the ice cream place. 
It was a warm evening and they sat at a little table on the sidewalk and talked, and Ham was surprised when she said she’d never been to the racetrack, since she lived so close and knew so many track people from the restaurant. 
And even though she never did tell him how old she was, he figured she had to be at least 18, being halfway through her freshman year at the junior college, and he knew she was probably thinking he was too, being a full-time, working man. 
They held hands on the way to the house and he made sure to have her home by ten o’clock like her mother said and was glad he listened to Easy, who’d told him if he was a smart guy he’d bring some candy, not for her but for her mother and her abuela, which was what she called her grandma.
 
The mile Ham had to walk back to Hialeah that night seemed like it took two minutes. He was glad Willie was awake so he could tell him what a great time they had and about the tortoise shell clip Carla wore and did you ever notice that her eyes were so dark they were the color of that Café Cubano that you and Easy like to drink. 

Ham got a hunger pang early one morning, and when his last horse went out to the track he hustled over to the track kitchen to grab a fried egg sandwich to take back to the barn and he saw the red Camaro parked outside. 
Spider and the older man were inside, sitting at a corner table having coffee with a couple of guys who looked like they might have been grooms, one that had shoulders like he might have lifted a lot of weights and the other that looked badly in need of a shave.
Spider was wearing a helmet and boots, as if he had been getting on horses, and the older man maybe could have been taken for a retired jockey himself if the expensive looking suit and tie he had on didn’t paint him more like a businessman, a banker on his way to the office.
“Hey,” said Ham as he headed for the exit.
“Hey,” said Spider, barely looking up. 
Ham was halfway out the door when he heard Spider call his name.
“Greer, wait,” he said, following Ham out onto the steps with his whip in hand.
“Here, give me a call, I need to talk,” said Spider, proffering a slip of paper and just as quickly turning on his heel, back into the track kitchen.
Ham glanced at the childish scrawl and stuffed the phone number in his pocket as he hurried back to the barn, wondering why Spider would want to talk with him, having had plenty of chances before and never said more than a few words.   
Later, he told Willie what had happened, and Willie told him I’d stay away from that kid if I were you, he’s probably up to no good.

It was the week after Christmas, late in the morning when all the barn work was done, and Bogie told everyone that Mr. Evans wanted them to come to end of the shedrow outside his office. When they were all there, the trainer stood in the doorway and said he was having heart problems and was going to have to retire right away.
Some of the grooms had been with him for over 20 years and Jake had been his foreman for five, and they all turned somber, dulled by the thought of losing such a kind man, who’d been their leader for so long, and a couple of them began to cry.
“I’ve asked Bogie to take over for the time being and, hopefully, most of the owners will stick with him and keep the stable together. My Mary’s getting married in the spring and moving to Aiken, so I guess this is good-bye,” he said, and he started to pass out envelopes and embrace each of them as he did. 
 
Ham and Willie walked to the track kitchen in silence as each contemplated the consequences of Evans’s words. They took their trays to a corner table, and before Ham tasted his lunch he asked, “What do you think we should do?”
Willie had that furrow back in his brow, the one that once seemed permanent but that Ham hadn’t seen in quite a while.
“Dunno,” said Willie, “I was planning to stay with Mr. Evans the rest of my days. Ain’t many racetrackers get to retire, they usually stay at doing what they do until they drop over one day in the barn. Must be pretty serious for him to just up and quit like this.”
“What about Bogie?” said Ham, but he knew Bogie was already half-retired himself, keeping to Florida all year round to be near his kids and grandkids and wasn’t very likely to be going on with a stable that needed to move north in the spring.
“You got to do a lot of things in life before you find yourself, son, and some folks never do. Just follow that Golden Rule and you won’t go wrong, doing to others like you’d have them do for you. And don’t worry when things don’t work out the way you think they should. Maybe you just weren’t thinking right,” said Willie.
Ham didn’t grow up religious and he sure didn’t appreciate sermons, but he never felt like Willie was preaching to him, just putting what he believed into his advice.
“Might just be the Good Lord’s way of telling us to do something else. Maybe I’ll head back home to Kentucky when winter’s over, and you can go back to school,” said Willie.

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© 2015  John R. Perrotta