If Wishes Were Horses, New Horizons

Written by John R. Perrotta; art by Jen Ferguson
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So Hialeah seemed like a paradise to Hamilton Greer, the kid who’d grown up below the granite crags of the Green Mountains and now found himself looking up at palm trees filled with flocks of squawking wild parrots.
Royal palms lined the roadway into the track, tall and straight as Doric columns, and there were coconut palms and foxtail palms, date palms and pygmy palms scattered about the grounds as well as the bougainvillea and jasmine blossoms that framed the stands. You could pick the fruit right off the orange and lemon and banana trees and nobody cared.
And every day, there were horses … the finest horses a man could hope to see.
 
The epicenter of the equine world in winter was at Hialeah, and in the months of January and February, when football fever abated, horses again took over the newspaper sports section, and if President Nixon hadn’t been talking about the conflict ending soon in Vietnam, Secretariat might well have been on the front page.
Willie cast a cynic’s eye on the politics of war:
“Greatest scourge of mankind, that’s what Thomas Jefferson called it.” 

Secretariat won the Horse of the Year title hands down and he was certain to be the overwhelming favorite for the 1973 Kentucky Derby, lots of believers hoping for a Triple Crown winner.  It had been more than 20 years since Arcaro booted home Citation in the red and blue Calumet silks, and they were ready for another.  
And of course the nonbelievers said Big Red’s breeding wasn’t right for him to get the longer distances of the classics, but Willie said those folks are going to get re-educated for sure and they’ll all change their tune by the time he crosses the finish line next June in the Belmont Stakes.
But Secretariat wasn’t going to run in Florida at all that winter, trainer Lucien Laurin already on record that he’d make his first start in March in the Bay Shore at Aqueduct, then go in the Wood Memorial Stakes, so the winter focus fell on those other 3-year-old colts who might be up against him later in the spring, the horses that would prep in the Bahamas Stakes and the Everglades and Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah or later at Gulfstream Park in March when they honed up in the Hutcheson and the Florida Derby. 
Each of those races was worth big money, with every eye on the prize in Louisville for the first Saturday in May, yet all still knowing that a lot of things have to happen just right for you before you even get in the gate for that one.

The Evans’ barn, which was now actually the Alexander barn, still had the red-and-yellow wall plaques and the stone jockey outside, but Bogie didn’t seem to be too anxious to run any of the horses, like he was waiting for something to happen, and most got moved to other trainers before he got a chance to run them anyway.
Bogie kept training the horses the same way he always did, but Ham came to understand what Willie meant when he said some guys make great assistants, but not great trainers.
“A lot of what the trainer does is more about training the owners than it is training the horses. Horses can just about train themselves if you keep ’em happy. And owners can get to thinking they know more than you do really fast, but the truth is they aren’t happy unless they winnin’,” said Willie.
 
Their barn was last in the row of barns and sat at the end of the stable area farthest from the action, so it was quiet and peaceful but still not that far a walk for Ham on those afternoons when he’d head over to the grandstand and blend in with the other fans. 
He liked to go to the paddock to make notes on his program for each horse, like a trainer getting ready to claim one, and then he’d take the escalator to the second floor to a spot at the end of the free seats opposite the eighth-pole. That was where most of the action took place in any race, where the horse on the lead would either push on gamely or run out of gas when the late-runners closed in.
Sometimes, Willie would go up there and sit with him and point out things Ham wouldn’t have picked up on by himself, like riders switching their sticks or a horse getting shut off at the rail, or the one time when they stood at the outside fence and could hear the faint hum when a renegade jockey used his buzzer.
“He’s pluggin’ that one in,” said Willie, and he explained to Ham that there would always be a few cheaters in every game as long as money was involved, and anyone who’d been around as long as he had knew who they were and avoided them as much as possible. 
“Lay down with dogs, you’re gonna get fleas,” said Willie.

It was almost sunset and Willie and Ham were on the way back from shooting some baskets when a car with blacked-out windows raised a cloud of dust as it pulled away from their barn, heading toward the stable exit. 
“Somebody’s in a hurry,” said Willie.
When they got to the barn, they went right to their tackroom and the door was still locked but the door to the room at the other side of the barn was open wide.
They looked inside and the cots were askew and there was wood paneling that someone had ripped off the walls scattered all over the place.
“Looking for something,” said Willie. “I hope they found it.”

On a quiet weekday, Carla came to the races with her brothers Raul and Felix, who were nice enough, but flanked her like a pair of bodyguards wherever they went and Ham knew there wouldn’t be any hand-holding today.  He got them some passes and seats through Buddy, one of the clerks in the racing office, and he wore a new shirt with his best jeans when he showed them around. 
Willie was running Delilah in the feature, and he told Ham that Toady could carry the bucket and to go on and bring that pretty girl and her brothers to the paddock, ’cause the man who owns Delilah loves to have a lot of attention and shake a lot of hands.
The brothers had some beginner’s luck picking a couple of winners, but Carla was more taken with the beauty of the place — the park-like grounds, the aquarium full of tropical fish and, of course, the flamingos. 
Each day between the seventh and eighth race, someone dressed as a Seminole Indian paddled a canoe across the infield lake and the entire flock, a couple of hundred birds, would take to the air and do a couple of loops over the track as soft music played on the public address system.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the world famous flight of the flamingos,” said the announcer.
Carla told Ham how it had been a big deal back in the days, when the U.S. and Cuba got along, when the track owner arrived in Cuba to get those flamingos before Castro came in the 1950s and their family fled to Miami, not trusting him and Che Guevara, who they knew were communists.
They went to the paddock, and when Ham introduced Carla and her brothers to Deliah’s owner, he did like Willie had said to and made the man feel good when he told them all that she was the best horse in the barn, even if it wasn’t true.
The owner had flown in just for the race and made them come and sit in a box seat with him, and for luck he gave them each a $2 win ticket on Delilah. Willie’s mare strolled out of the gate like she always did and everybody in the place could see she would have won if the jockey didn’t have to take her so wide.
Even though, the man was happy enough with second and having such a nice-running mare, and he bought them all a drink before he rushed off to the airport to catch an Eastern Airlines flight back to New York.   
By the end of the day, each of the brothers was a hundred dollars ahead, and Raul said he thought Ham was a pretty nice guy to have invited them and maybe they’d let him hang around their little sister for a while longer.
 
It was noontime on a dark day, meaning there weren’t any races so the barn was very quiet when the black Crown Victoria parked at the end of the barn. Two big guys in dark suits walked into the shedrow and started looking in every stall until the taller of the two tried to pet one of the maiden colts and it took a bite at him, ripping the shoulder of his jacket.
Ham spotted them from the other end of the barn and hurried to head them off before they had any more misfortunes.
“Can I help you?” asked Ham.
“The boss here?” asked the detective with the torn jacket, flashing a badge.
“Mister Alexander’ll be back at feed time, about three o’clock,” said Ham, and the other man took out a pad and a ballpoint pen.
“And you are?”
“Hamilton Greer, sir.”
“What do you do, Hamilton?”
“Groom, sir, I’m a groom.”
They asked Ham if he was in the barn the night of the raid and a lot of questions he wasn’t sure how to answer, but when they finished one of them gave him a business card that said Dade County Public Safety Department and told him to call if he thought of anything else.
After they left, he wondered why they had come to their side of the barn when the room they broke into was on the other side and another trainer’s grooms were the ones that got taken away that night. The whole outfit had disappeared the day after the raid, and the stalls had all been filled by the end of the week. Until now, Ham hadn’t given the event another thought. 
He told Willie what happened, and Willie said just give that card to Bogie and hope you never see those guys again. 

Mighty’s win first-time out attracted plenty of attention, and every day someone new would come by the barn, asking was the trainer there and if that big, bay colt might be for sale. Bogie liked to tell them they had to come back when Mr. Evans was there, making them spin their wheels, since he wasn’t the least interested in having a horse like that leave his barn. 
Willie said they were bloodstock agents, guys who sold horses for a living and took a commission or percentage of the price, and he sure hoped he got to run that colt a few times before he got snatched away for big money.
Willie was putting the tack on Mighty just as the sun came up on a Saturday morning when Bogie and a bent-over old man with a cane came to the stall door.
“There he is Mr. Russo,” said Bogie.
“That’s my baby,” said the old man, and Willie held Mighty by his halter, squared him up to face the man.
“Pretty good, is he Willie?” asked Mr Russo.
“Best these hands ever touched, boss,” said Willie.
“How many years you been rubbing my horses, Willie?”
“I think Mr. Eisenhower was president,” said Willie, and the man laughed.
“You think I should sell him?”
“You should if you thinks you can get a better one,” said Willie.
 
Willie and Russo followed down the horse path as Ivan rode Mighty next to Bogie on the pony, heading toward the paddock. When horse and rider went through the tunnel to the track, the two men stopped to admire the bronze statue of Citation that stood in the middle of a pool with hundreds of goldfish swimming among the lily pads.
“A man offered me a quarter of a million dollars for that colt, Willie,” said Mr. Russo.
“That would be a considerable sum,” said Willie.
“Know what happened when the two fools met?” said the old man.
“The one that offered too much and the other one that turned him down?” asked Willie.
“Count me one of them fools,” said the old man. “Waited too long for a good one, and I’m too old to spend the money anyway. Plus, my old friend Willie would never speak to me again.” 

A month had passed since Suzie’s Song ran in the stakes at Tropical, and she’d had a couple of stiff works in the interim, so it seemed logical that Bogie might be getting ready to put her in again. Ham studied the condition book and guessed an allowance race going five furlongs might be one she could win, but when he picked up the Saturday entries, there she was, back in a stakes race.
“Dang,” said Ham. “Looks like some killers in there.”
“Your girl’s the one who’s the wolf in sheep clothes,” was all Willie said.
   
This time there was barely a mention of Suzie in the Morning Telegraph, and all those smart horse pickers that made her best bet of the day last time didn’t give her a chance, since the race was longer and she’d shown nothing last time.
“Trouble with that thing,” said Willie, pointing at Ham’s Morning Telegraph,
“it tells you where they been, but it don’t tell you where they be goin’.”
Ham laughed, but he wasn’t about to get overconfident like last time, especially since Suzie had trained just as well then as she was now and she never ran a step, and besides, she was going to have a new jockey since Fires’ agent said he needed to ride another horse in the race that just happened to be the favorite.
 
There was a huge crowd that Saturday, mostly there to see the horses in the Everglades Stakes, lining up to try and make it to the Kentucky Derby.
Jimmy Croll trained Royal and Regal, and he looked like a cinch to win it since he’d taken the Bahamas Stakes at seven furlongs, and he’d even put another horse in as part of an entry, which was that rabbit Willie talked about to keep the pace honest. 
Ham and Willie had Suzie’s Song on the horse path to the paddock well before the announcement came over the P.A. calling for the horses in the seventh race.
Willie showed Ham how to stall a little when they walked her around the ring and let her pick at the grass, and when Bogie put her saddle on, she was so relaxed that she barely turned a hair. 
Mike Manganello had won a Kentucky Derby a few years before, and he was the leading rider up at Tampa, but the purses were a little light there and the one here was $20,000, making it worth the road trip even if he finished in the top three.
 
“Good luck,” said Ham to the jockey as he handed Suzie off to the pony boy, but Manganello didn’t answer, so stone-faced was he and so absorbed into his task at hand.
The race began in the seven-furlong chute in a grove carved out of those tall Australian pines, and this time Suzie flew from her outside post, clearing the field before they were on the main track. 
The jockey took a long hold and let the filly make her own pace as she kept a few lengths between her and the second horse all the way to the top of the stretch before the late runners came after her.
Fires had the favorite Lazy Belle in a drive and she was making up ground with every stride as the announcer’s voice rang in Ham’s ears, and he felt himself floating higher than the crowd and looking down as the sounds beginning to echo:
“Suzie’s Song … Lazy Belle … Lazy Belle … Suzie’s Song …”
 
The “PHOTO” sign was on and the wait seemed to take an eternity and a half, with Ham and Willie and the favorite’s groom and hot walker all there on the track as the two horses circled, none of them knowing who’d get to go in and have their picture taken, until the board went dark for a moment and the numbers lit up ...
“DEAD HEAT” it said, Suzie’s number beneath Lazy Belle’s, only because it was a higher number. Willie laughed and told Ham that was one he had on him now, never having a dead heat in 50 years on the track.
“What do they do about the money?” asked Ham.
“Add first and second together and split it down the middle,” said Willie with a wink,
“Better than getting beat a nose.”
    
Mid-week and Ham was in his spot in the grandstand and the Morning Telegraph seemed to make as much sense as the Rosetta Stone when someone behind him cleared her throat.
“Hello, darlin’,” she said.
He knew it was Lizzie, but her long blonde hair was cropped and dark now and she hid under a big straw hat like one of the tourists.
“Call me Shirley,” she said with exactly what a person from England would imagine was a Brooklyn accent.
There wasn’t another horseplayer within 50 yards, so she took off her sunglasses and sat in the seat next to him.
“I thought you got deported,” said Ham and she told him the story of how she was sent to Canada and supposed to go home to England but managed to slip back through Vermont and how she’d thought of him when she did. 
She said she’d had an ex-husband who liked to drink too much and knock her around, and there’d be icicles on these palm trees before they got her to go back to London. 
“Plenty of us illegals around,” she said, and she told him she hoped to get back on some horses at Gulfstream, knowing a couple of the trainers there were Brits and friends from a while back. 
Lizzie gave him a match book with her phone number written in it and said to call sometime and they’d have a meal, and she still hadn’t forgotten that he brought her flowers in the hospital. Before she left, she gave him a kiss square on the mouth and shortly thereafter he gave up trying to read the paper.

The next two times when Mighty had his workouts Mr. Russo came out to watch, and he and Bogie decided they’d run the colt the following week if the race filled for non-winners of two races at seven furlongs.
“Take a monster to beat him,” said Willie, and Ham thought that was serious talk for a guy who never bragged. 
The race did fill and Mighty won in hand that Saturday, Vasquez taking the big bay back to last in a full field and letting him get some education and a little dirt in his face, since the races were only going to get tougher from here on. 
And old man Russo hopped down to the winner’s circle like he didn’t need that cane at all. He said he’d take the trophy home to Chicago with him and be back in a couple of weeks if Mighty was running in a stakes race and that Big Red had better watch out now.

They were at the Cuban place, just Ham and Willie in early for their usual celebration dinner, and it was a slow night but Carla was off, so they took their time and talked a bit while Willie sipped his coffee, in no hurry to get back to the barn.  
Ham asked Willie what he thought they should do in a couple of months and the stable broke up, seeing as there was no chance of Bogie leaving Florida and most of the horses belonged to owners from up north, so they had to go.
“I’ll stay with my big horse, long as I can keep the job,” said Willie, “and so will Bogie. Don’t kid yourself,  a good horse is hard to come by.”
Ham told him that the vet was asking did he want a job and maybe that would be a good idea, what did Willie think, and the old man didn’t take a second but said:
“Race track’s a good life if it suits you, and some ways it’s like the circus, got its own animals and jugglers and clowns. You just keep moving on, doing the same thing a different way. But sometimes it’s OK to go away for a while ’cause it is a place you can always come back to.”

Ham walked Avalanche and her rider out to the quarter-pole gap for her last breeze before she’d run on the weekend, and Ivan jogged her off the wrong way to back up to the half-mile pole.  Bogie liked to have his horses warm up a little before a workout and Ham could see him in the distance, up in the stands with his binoculars trained on the gray mare.
Ham was leaning on the outside fence when Spider passed, galloping a grand looking chestnut, and noticed the older man there, too, a stopwatch in his hand.
The man nodded and when he moved in Ham’s direction he had a bit of a limp.
“You’re a friend of Kevin’s,” he said.
Ham told him he didn’t know anybody named Kevin and the man said maybe you know him as Spider, that was what he’d been calling himself since he started hanging around the track. Ham said, “Oh yeah, Spider.”
“He told me you ran away, too,” said the man, and he introduced himself as Arlen Quinn. He said he’d been a jockey himself but he’d gotten hurt and didn’t want his only son to be one, and that’s what they’d fallen out over.        
First it was bickering, then fighting more and more after Spider’s mother died until the boy had taken off, gone for over a year before he came back and they patched things up.
“Sometimes, fathers and sons need to bang heads,” he said.  
And he said Spider had ridden some races at the bush tracks in Louisiana, where they didn’t have many rules but they sure could horseback, and he’d decided to get a stable together and help his kid instead of battle with him.
“He looks good on a horse,” said Ham.
“He’s been around them since he was two,” said Mr. Quinn.
Spider had his horse at a walk on the outside fence as he approached them, and when his father turned away, he held his hand to his face, thumb and little finger spread, signaling Ham to “call me.”
Ham couldn’t wait to tell Willie about Spider and his father, and how maybe the little guy was really going to be a jockey and how he was bred for it. 
And how his father was a rider, too, who started a horse transportation company that shipped racehorses all over the world and got rich after he took a bad fall and couldn’t ride any more.
Willie seemed surprised, just said, “Huh, is that right?”   

Next: Time to Think ...
© 2015  John R. Perrotta