If Wishes Were Horses, My Old Kentucky Home

Written by John R. Perrotta; art by Jen Ferguson
Author’s note to our readers ...
The following three chapters will comprise the conclusion of Part I of “If Wishes Were Horses,” published courtesy of America’s Best Racing.
These, in addition to the previous chapters that you have previewed on ABR, are part of the “writer’s draft” of the novel, which is expected to be published in its entirety sometime in early fall of 2015. Please be aware that certain elements of the story may differ.
I hope you have enjoyed meeting Hamilton Greer, Willie and the rest of the characters and invite you to purchase a signed, discounted edition of the novel by visiting my author page at Amazon.com and contacting me directly.
All the best, 
John Perrotta
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Those 18-wheel vans they used for long trips could hold a dozen horses, but most trainers would only send eight, or sometimes less, and often they’d ask for a stall and a half or a box stall so the animals could stretch out. The drivers always tried to take the most direct route to wherever they were headed, since the horses had no choice but to stand for the whole ride and most didn’t mind it, but when they were racing fit some would get a bit antsy. 
Coming out of Florida in early April from Hialeah, they travelled out of the heat and humidity, up through Georgia past Atlanta and on by Knoxville, Tenn., a trip of over a thousand miles to the cooler air in Lexington, Ky. that can take almost 20 hours, so they needed someone to ride with the horses, check their water buckets and make sure they have some hay to nibble at, even if it was only to give them something to relieve the boredom.

If Wishes Were Horses, Chapter 1
If Wishes Were Horses, Chapter 2
If Wishes Were Horses, Chapter 3
If Wishes Were Horses, Chapter 4
If Wishes Were Horses, Chapter 5
If Wishes Were Horses, Chapter 6
If Wishes Were Horses, Chapter 7

Willie knew a couple of the grooms that worked for J.B. and they all seemed OK with him being the new assistant trainer, maybe more so since he rode the van along with them. They all liked that his way was to suggest things rather than bark orders like a lot of bosses do.
He told Ham to ride on one of the other trucks so he’d get to know the guys and some of the horses they’d be working with.
There were eight horses on Ham’s van and darned if Suzy’s Song wasn’t one of them, standing among the other fillies and mares with a tag on her halter that said “Spendthrift Farm.”
“I used to rub this filly,” said Ham to the guy who was looking after her.
“She’s all done racing, going off to get bred,” said the guy.
When the vans stopped and they got off to stretch their legs, Ham told Willie about Suzie being on the van and Willie said likely she was going to a fine stallion since she was a stakes winner and he bet it was Raise a Native, the best one there.  
When they got back on the road again that was something Ham talked to Suzy about as he hand fed her some alfalfa.  She never did carry much weight and Ham made sure he checked on her every once in a while, rubbing her withers and telling her what a good racemare she’d been and how pretty soon she’d have a nice baby to run along side her in those fields of long, sweet bluegrass. 
The trip felt endless and tiresome since it was nearly non-stop, not like the ride from Belmont to Hialeah, when they broke up the overnight with a respite in South Carolina. 
This time the vans left mid-morning, but after they made a pass through Ocala to swap out a couple of horses that were due for a rest for a couple that were ready to run, they rolled along at a pretty good pace through those same swamps and lowlands Ham had been fascinated by on his way south. 
When they crossed the Tennessee River and passed through Knoxville, it began to remind him of home back in New England, the dark green leaves of the hardwoods and tall pines on the sides of the Smokey Mountains, some of which were even taller than the ones Ham had known back in Vermont.  
He used his pocketknife to cut a piece of string off a hay bale, and he tied it around his wrist to remind him to write to his mom when he got to Kentucky.
 
The sun was already up for an hour or so when they rolled through Richmond, Ky. and Ham saw a road sign for Lexington, and shortly after he spotted another that said Keeneland. They took a left onto the New Circle Rd., and when the caravan exited for the Versailles Rd., Ham was lucky to be looking out the window on the right side of the van.
Between two white stone pillars each topped by an iron eagle with its wings spread wide, an elaborate gate painted bright red was guarding the entrance to Calumet Farm.  
Miles and miles of white four-board fence trailed across the rolling hills of sprawling paddocks and Ham counted 30 mares and foals before the van passed by Calumet and climbed another hill. 
There was a little airport to the left and out his window he could see the stone walls that flanked the entry to Keeneland racetrack as they passed. The driver braked softly and made a wide right turn onto Van Meter Rd. and pulled in the back stable gate to the loading ramps.
 
“First track I ever stepped my foot on,” said Willie. “Daddy brought me here when I was two and he was working for Mr. John E. Madden, out at Hamburg Place Stud over in Winchester. They called that man the ‘Wizard of the Turf’ and that’s what he was. He forgot more about a horse than most folks will ever get to know.”
“It’s kind of out in the sticks here,” said Ham.
Willie told him yessir, and it would be a hike and a half to get anywhere to go eat, but the food in the track kitchen was Southern cooking almost as good as what he made himself.
“You’re going to put on a few pounds, Mr. Ham,” he said, “when you get to eating them biscuits with that red-eye gravy for breakfast.”
 
They gave each of the horses a short walk and a little graze before they put them away, but when they did, most wanted to lie right down and doze, and some did just that for the rest of the day. 
And when a van driver came to shuttle Suzy off to Spendthrift Farm, he told Ham there were lots of mares going there to get bred and he’d take him over to see the place next time he came back to pick up another one.  
The tack rooms weren’t as big as the ones at Belmont or Hialeah, but neither Willie nor Ham were toting along much in the way of possessions. Ham’s collection of a dozen books fit neatly on one shelf in an old black steamer trunk he had found at the Bird Road flea market by Tropical Park, and he could still get the rest of his clothes in the duffel bag he’d left home with.  
When they felt like they had the shedrow looking ship-shape, Willie and Ham took a walk up the hill to see the racetrack. Ham said how come the stands face west like that, wouldn’t you have the sun in your eyes in the afternoon, and Willie said that’s the way the land lay so that’s the way they built it. 
But it had the feel of Saratoga, old and classy, and when they climbed the steps to the grandstand they sat there for a while in the open seats and watched the setting sun. It reminded Ham of how they did that the first week he came around.   
Before it got dark they walked through the paddock that was also like the one at Saratoga and had numbers on the trees, only it was smaller and had a white fence surrounding it to keep the spectators out of the way.
The other barns were filled and Willie knew lots of folks there, stopping to chat and introduce Ham, and he did it with some degree of formality. When they moved on, all of them said goodbye to “Mr. Ham and Eggs.”
When they got back to the barn, Ham cut the string off his wrist and told Willie he needed to write a letter home and Willie said since it’s to your momma, you go on ahead and do that and I’ll bring you back some supper from the kitchen.
 
Ham had a lot of catching up to do, not being in touch for the whole winter except the few lines on a Christmas card he’d sent with a hundred dollar bill for his mom to buy presents for herself and the girls and the short phone call he made on Christmas Eve when he got just a touch homesick. 
He told her that he was doing fine, that he worked for another outfit now and planned to come back to Saratoga in August, and he promised he’d take some time to come home and see everyone. 
It wasn’t as long a letter as the one he sent from Belmont but he told her all about how Avalanche had won at Tropical Park and Suzy’s dead heat in the stakes race and how that was something even Willie had never done. 
He didn’t mention Carla, probably because it bothered him to think about her too much, especially since he hadn’t heard a peep from her since she went off to California, and he for sure didn’t say anything about Lizzie telling him she wanted to get married because that was way too confusing for him at the moment. 

It seemed they had something to run every day that first week at Keeneland since J.B. wasn’t one to leave his horses sitting in the barn, because, like he said, they don’t make any money eating hay. 
The first two were off the board, but on the opening Saturday, Ham walked a chestnut colt named Daddy’s Donegone up the hill and stood next to J.B. and Willie as they watched him come from last to first and break the ice for them.  
 
And you could hardly get near the TV in the grandstand to watch as Secretariat looped those horses and took the Gotham Stakes easily, leaving the gate at 1-to-10. Willie said he’d have an easy job in the Wood Memorial before he came to Kentucky. 
 
To celebrate their first win, J.B. had one of his buddies bring a big spread to the barn and Ham filled himself up with barbecued ribs and chicken and corn on the cob, and he even drank a beer from the keg and nobody seemed to care. When he laid his head on the pillow that night he asked Willie if Kentucky might be another name for heaven.
   
Willie was right about the food, and maybe it was growing pains, but Ham found himself jogging off to the kitchen a couple of times each day for a snack, and if he hadn’t started making his late afternoon run around the track he probably would have put on those pounds Willie talked about. 
J.B. was a big guy who wore a cowboy hat and boots and jeans and a starched white shirt all the time, and he commented that Ham better get a pair of those boots so he could be looking his boss in the eye and too bad he wasn’t a football player or those Kentucky Wildcats would be dragging him off to play for the university over there in Lexington.
He drove a Cadillac unlike any Ham had ever seen, this one with the back chopped off like a pickup truck where he liked to throw bales of hay and straw back or anything else that needed toting. It was a big, fancy version of the Chevy El Caminos or the Ford Rancheros that a lot of other racetrackers drove, but it was for sure a one of a kind, especially since it was painted purple to match J.B.’s racing colors, with a yellow flame on the doors meant to evoke his last name, Burns.
 
And J.B. did like to make a sizeable bet once in a while, not the way most folks did, a hundred or a couple of hundred.  He’d bet that way at the windows, but Willie said the man might put up 10 or 20 thousand with the bookies and you’d never be able to tell by watching him since he’d never blink, win or lose. Willie remembered when he’d been standing next to J.B. when he lost a big one and the most sign he gave of being upset was to say, “Shoot, that wasn’t so good” and “Let’s go get us a hot dog and a beer.”  
Willie said he knew for a fact J.B. had bet 20 thousand one Kentucky Derby day on one of his maidens.  J.B. said that was the best day all year to lay it in heavy since everybody in America liked to gamble on horses on Derby day whether they knew a horse from a billy goat, and the betting pools were as fat as possible with what he called dead money.
Like a lot of trainers that raced in Kentucky, J.B. looked and acted like a cowboy, and folks thought he was from way out west, Montana or Wyoming or even Texas, but the license plate on his car said Kansas. He was proud to be a Jayhawk and had a farm outside of Kansas City, where he’d go to rest up every once in a while and he bred some Quarter Horses there to run at Eureka Downs.
 
It was lunchtime on a Saturday, the day of the Blue Grass Stakes, and folks were starting to get what Willie said was “Derby fever,” some thinking that Secretariat being beat four lengths in the Wood Memorial the week before might mean the door was open for anybody with a good horse.
Forego would be a slight favorite over Royal and Regal in the Blue Grass, and Willie said he was going to make a little bet on him, not risking much because of the odds, but if he won he’d parlay it back and turn a little into a lot the next time the big gelding ran.   
Ham said he’d probably watch or maybe bet five bucks on that jock Cordero that he liked so much back at Belmont.
They were just back from lunch when J.B. waved Willie and Ham into his office at the end of the barn. 
“Make a little bet for me, would you fellas?” he said.
“Yessir,” said Willie.
“Yessir,” said Ham.
On J.B.’s desk was a pile of cash.
“Twenty-five hundred to win and $2,500 to place,” he said, “on that colt My Gallant that Angel rides.”
And he told them to put the money in a few hundred at a time, since the horse was a longshot and we were talking about a lot of cash here.
 
Walking around with all those Ben Franklins in his pocket made Ham a little nervous, but he stayed close to Willie and put the bets in with a couple of trips to the $50 window while Willie went to the hundred. And they each made a bet for themselves, since Willie said you never go wrong following a lucky wagon and J.B. sure was one of those.
 
They hung at the fence as the horses loaded in the gate and nobody who saw Forego could take their eyes off him, but when the horses broke from the gate and headed into the first turn Blum sent Royal and Regal right to the lead and opened up a couple of lengths on the field.
“Mousey’s gonna try and steal it,” said Willie, and since Keeneland didn’t have an announcer, if you didn’t pay attention the race might go off and the only way you’d know the horses were running was by hearing the crowd cheer.
Ham listened to Willie but his eyes weren’t on the leader but on the horse with the white and red silks glued to the rail a few lengths behind, as Cordero rated My Gallant in hopes of getting the jump on them at the top of the stretch and that was exactly what he did, opening up some ground there and hanging on to win by a neck. 
“Ole Forego never got himself untracked,” said Willie, and it was the first time Ham had seen the old man sweating like that.
It took them until the last race was over to cash all the tickets, Ham’s five hundred turning into over six thousand and making his head swim. As they walked back to the barn he felt as if he were a foot taller than Willie, and whatever they were talking about he sure couldn’t recall by the time they got there.

Shorty made good on his promise to Ham when J.B. decided one of the maiden fillies couldn’t cut it as a racehorse because she was too slow and told the owner maybe she’d make a good broodmare for having such a fine pedigree. 
Ham rode up front in the van and Shorty turned the trip across town into a guided tour after they left Spendthrift as they continued on to drop off mares and pick other ones up at Calumet and Bluegrass Farm and Gainesway and Claiborne before they headed back to the track. 
Ham was struck by the vastness of the farms, the endless rolling paddocks fencing in mares that grazed in deep, green grass halfway up to their knees. Shorty told him they had it pretty good, but not as good as the stud horses who got pampered like kings and how it would be great to be one of them. 
And how the one you wouldn’t want to be was what they called the “teaser,” which was the male horse that got the mares warmed up and in the mood and got taken away before he got to do anything before the stallion came in for the lovemaking.  That was a rotten job, he said.
At supper that night, Ham asked Willie why some horses got to be breeding stock and others didn’t. Willie said it’s all about blood and money, why they say they breed the best to the best and hope for the best, which would mean either winning a big race or selling them for tons of cash at the auctions.

J.B. lived life like it was a stage show, driving his fancy, purple Cadillac and wearing those ostrich cowboy boots and a purple satin jacket around the track in order that everyone would recognize him. He said it was important to toot your own horn when you did something good like win a race, ’cause it wasn’t sure anyone would pay attention if you didn’t. 
But when it came to making money, J.B. liked to do the opposite of what folks would think. He’d never go wager himself, and if he did, it was likely he was trying to throw off those guys who’d follow him to the betting windows, and he said they’d all do that once, lose their money and never bother him again.  Sometimes, when he’d be leaving the paddock, one of the railbirds would come right out and ask him if he was going to win and he’d wink at them and say, “bet your mortgage, bud,” but only when the horse was going to run poorly and they’d never bother him again.
Willie said J.B.’s father taught him that, back when they raced at small tracks where the purses were so small that they had to cash a ticket once in a while just to stay in business and every point in the odds counted for a lot of real money. And when he went to the horse sales to buy young horses to resell, Willie said you could never tell which one he was interested in, ’cause he’d just touch the brim of his hat when he bid. 
  
Once or twice a week J.B. would bring folks to the barn and he’d tell Willie to pull out one of the horses he was trying to sell, talking all the while about the thrill of winning a big race to the men in expensive suits and their wives that would be wearing furs and diamonds. 
J.B. would pull a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator in his office and they’d toast to hope for some luck to bless the deal before those fancy people would step up and buy one, and that was all what he called selling the sizzle first and the steak afterwards.
But J.B. was all heart when it came to his own people. He made sure the barn help got taken care of with a few dollars when he won a race and if they got sick he sent them to a doctor and he even helped a lot of them put their kids through school.   
He asked Ham if he had been to college and when Ham said no, J.B. said that’s a shame, a smart kid like you should have an education, maybe you’d run this whole show some day.    

Keeneland’s spring meet only lasted three weeks and as soon as they closed the doors the ones at Churchill Downs were ready to open, and for J.B.’s stable that meant it was time to pack up and head back east. 
J.B. said he’d stick around for the Derby if he had one in it or something to bet on that day, but this year that wasn’t happening. 
The stable had half-a-dozen wins during the time they spent in Kentucky and everybody’s pockets were full, so J.B. gave a couple of the grooms time off to go home to Mexico and see their families before they had to show up at Belmont. He told Willie to go on ahead and train the horses easy until he got there, he was going home to the farm in Kansas for a couple of weeks to freshen up. 
 
They loaded the equipment and before they put the horses on the vans everyone sat down for a barbecue outside the barn while they gathered around a TV and watched Secretariat romp home a winner in the Kentucky Derby. Willie didn’t say I told you so but he did point out how Big Red had run every quarter-mile faster than the previous one, and said that was something no horse had ever done before.
Ham stood and tapped on his glass like he was the master of ceremonies at a banquet, ready to make a speech:
“The week I came around the track last year Willie told me that red horse’d win the Triple Crown, and I bet he does.” 
And nobody would take that bet since they all agreed, even those guys who always argued about everything, the ones Willie said would knock motherhood and apple pie.    
But they didn’t knock Secretariat.

Next: New York, New York ...
© 2015  John R. Perrotta