If Wishes Were Horses, New York, New York

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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The vans left Kentucky before dark and followed the direct route east through the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia and Northern Maryland across the length of Pennsylvania.
“Fifty thousand men lost their lives yonder,” said Willie when they passed the turnoff for Gettysburg, and when they passed Antietam he said another 23,000 died there and next time they were at Saratoga he’d show Ham the battlefield where the Americans won their first battle in the war for independence.
The trip went so smoothly that it was barely mid-morning when Willie had all the horses put up in their stalls at Belmont and the help got to enjoy a big breakfast spread that J.B. paid for.
“That’s why everybody wants to work for this outfit,” said Willie. “The man is first class.”

And Willie did what the boss told him, he trained the horses easy and the few they did run were entered in tough spots that they didn’t figure to win. He told the riders not to beat them up for nothing, but if they could win, he said go on ahead and try, but none did.

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
If Wishes Were Horses, Chapter 8

Spider had an agent that Willie liked who kept coming around asking for mounts, so Willie put him on a 3-year-old colt named Homestead that he said would need a couple of more sprints before they sent him around two turns, which was what his pedigree said he wanted. 
The horse dragged Spider to the lead and opened up a couple of lengths before fading, and Willie said that was just what the doctor ordered, but he didn’t put the kid on any more horses. 
Ham was rubbing a pair of maiden 2-year-olds, a chestnut filly called Blitzie and a bay colt named Truly Hot and they each looked like they might be runners. And he had an old gray gelding named Bolder Dan, who only ran on the turf and was the one that J.B. said was his favorite horse in the barn because he’d cashed so many bets on him. 
Ham figured they’d all be ready to run when the boss got back and in the meantime he busied himself helping Willie shape up the barn, which meant flowers in the flower beds and fresh sod and sand for the walking ring. And they shined up the purple wall plaques outside the barn and the ones by each of the horses’ stalls.
When J.B. showed up, he had the back of his Caddy filled with coolers, all stuffed with butchered ribs cut from the prime cattle he ran on his spread in Kansas, and right away he had a party at the barn for not just his help but their families, too, and Ham watched as he spent time to visit with all of them and knew everyone’s name. 
J.B. seemed energized from that respite in Kansas, and he went to running horses in every spot he could find, sometimes shipping one down to Monmouth Park or up to Rockingham, where the great Jack Van Berg was the leading trainer. 
They had a purple six-horse van and it seemed like they were loading a runner on it every day. For the next month and a half, Ham got to be a travelling man, driving the van and taking whatever horse was running to the paddock, where either J.B. would show up or Willie would put the saddle on. 
For a short spell things went dry and nothing would win, no matter how many new pennies Willie threw in the infield lake or how many little kids Ham rubbed on their heads. It seemed every time one of the horses made the lead, they ran out of gas and got caught or, if they were charging from the back of the pack, they’d get to the finish line one jump too late.
  
Ham drove the van up to Rockingham on a Sunday. When Bolder Dan got headed at the sixteenth pole Ham thought sure he was beat, but the old man charged back and stuck his nose in front just as they hit the wire like he knew right where it was, and that turned the streak around. 
J.B. and Willie were both busy, so Ham got Mr. Van Berg to saddle, and when they took the winner’s circle photo Ham was alone in the picture with the horse and rider and one would have thought he was the trainer, there with that big smile plastered on his face.
For the next two weeks, it seemed as if all they had to do was take a horse to the paddock and put the saddle on and it would win, and J.B. went to betting big on everything they ran even if he thought they couldn’t win, ’cause what did he know anyway, and when the racing gods are in your corner, nothing can stop you.
 
One morning, Ham spotted a blonde girl at the end of the shedrow and thought for a second it was Lizzie and he called out hey to her, but it turned out it was another girl, one who worked for the tack company, trying to get some business from J.B.  
They were there for almost a month and Lizzie still hadn’t showed, and Willie said maybe she married a rich guy and went to live in a big, fancy house. Ham laughed but he didn’t really know how he felt about that. 
Ham talked with the tack girl a few times when she was dropping off new brushes or some of those white bridles J.B. used so he could always see where his horses were in the race, and she told him her name was Holly. When Ham asked her if she’d like to catch a movie sometime she said maybe.
After one of the 2-year-olds jumped a dark spot on the track in the middle of a workout, J.B. sent Ham to the tack shop to get a shadow roll. Holly was there and he heard her call the old man behind the desk “daddy,” and that made it clear how things stood right away.  
Ham made sure to say, “have a good morning, sir” to her daddy before he left and he thought maybe that was a good thing by the wink he got from Holly, and the next weekend she went with him to see the new James Bond movie. 
She said it was almost her favorite because it was set in New Orleans and she and her dad went there to the Fair Grounds track every winter, but the James Bond she really liked was that Scottish guy that played 007 before.                                                       

Blitzie and Truly Hot were only 2-year-olds, and 2-year-olds don’t usually run a lot before July, but these were ready to run early because of the way J.B. liked to get his babies out before the competition got too tough. Willie said every once in a while he would even have them ready at Keeneland in April, so watch out. 
J.B. told Ham he was going to enter Blitzie the next Saturday coming, which was Belmont Stakes day, and figured to be the biggest crowd-draw in racing coming up with only four horses trying to stand between Secretariat and Triple Crown history.   
Secretariat had whipped everyone so badly in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness that Willie said he’d be 1-to-9 and that was the only day in history you could make a case for betting on a 1-to-9 shot since Big Red could fall down and still get back up to beat any of those horses.
In any case, he said you should go buy a $2 win ticket and not cash it, just to remind you of the day you saw a Triple Crown winner, ’cause there won’t be many of those that you do see in your lifetime.
Ham suspected J.B. might be getting ready to make a bet on Blitzie after he’d told him to take the filly over to the paddock and school her between races. That was because he didn’t want her to get shook up on Belmont day when the crowd would be five deep around the walking ring and some fans who didn’t know better would hoot and holler at the horses like they were at a rodeo.  
But what made Ham sure they were going for the money was right before they left the barn and Willie showed him a set of blinkers and said oh boy we’ll be having some fun today. So Ham went to the tack room and climbed up to the rafters and he dug into his stash and pulled out $200 for a win bet and another $200 for the place and stuck it in his left-front shirt pocket.
 
Sixty-something thousand people packed themselves into Belmont that June afternoon, folks giddy at the chance they’d be seeing the first Triple Crown winner in a long generation, and they were everywhere, camped on the landings and sitting on the stairs and some with blankets spread on the ground like they were having a picnic or a day at the beach. 
The banner planes were back and the mood was ecstatic, almost as if Secretariat had already won, so enraptured were his fans.
 
Blitzie was on her toes, bouncing when they left the barn, but halfway over to the paddock Willie told Ham to hold up while he put her blinkers on and she settled down nicely with her game face on. 
They passed the horses coming back from the first race and Ham asked one of the grooms who’d won it. He said that bug boy Spider did, and when Ham looked in his program he saw the horse had been a big longshot on the morning line, so he asked what had it paid. 
“Sixty-four dollars,” the guy yelled back over his shoulder as his horse dragged him down the ramp that went through the tunnel to the stable area.
 
There’s always a buzz on the big race days, those days when the track is packed and there’s a festival feeling to the place, and in some way running in any race on that day has a bit of the same electricity of the big race. That was what Ham was feeling with Blitzie even though she was just a maiden.
When J.B. tightened the girth, Ham felt her take another breath and he stretched her front legs and rubbed her cheek to make sure she’d know he was right there, still connected to her with the shank.  He gave her a turn around the walking ring before the other horses got out and she stepped lively, not with any nervousness, just intent on getting on.
 
Angel Cordero took advantage of being in the inside post as they left the gate at the five-furlong pole and he sent Blitzie right out and hugged the rail to open up a couple of lengths. When a big gray that was at least a head taller came to her at the top of the stretch, Cordero eased her off the wood to float his pursuer wide and then wider, but they never made contact as they straightened in the lane and he hung on to win by a long neck.
J.B. was arrayed in purple from head to toe, except for the white cowboy hat that he took off and waved at the crowd from the winner’s circle. And the following week when Ham saw the picture, he pointed out to Willie that everyone in it had the exact-same toothy smile.
 
They never rushed the horses after a race, giving them a bath and some time to graze before they put them away, so it was lucky for Ham and Willie that their only runner was in an early race. That allowed them enough time to get back over to the frontside in time to watch Secretariat perform.
And it was a good thing that Ham and Willie were tall guys, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to see over the crowd at the paddock and be part of the gentle roar that went up when the big chestnut passed by, the one who had become the people’s hero. 
They got a spot right on the outside fence to watch the race, there by the starting gate and they both sang along with the crowd: “East side, West side ... all around the town ... ” and there was another gentle roar when the five horses broke from the gate. 
But Willie said afterward that in all his years on the track, nothing he had ever seen before prepared him for the race he saw that day, Secretariat loping along on the lead, putting away Sham halfway through the race and widening his lead with every other stride he took from there to the finish.
“Race horses come and go, but the great ones stay in your heart forever,” said Willie and as Secretariat crossed the wire. Ham felt himself floating above the crowd, looking down on the chaos.
 
Ham preferred to go for his jogs late in the day when the sun was low and he could feel alone in the vastness of the long, broad Belmont track. 
It was almost half again as long as Hialeah and Keeneland and probably twice as wide, so he’d do two laps before supper most evenings and three every once in a while.  By the time he finished, he was all sweated up and he started wearing a towel around his neck like the jockeys who were doing the same thing to keep their weight down. 
Once in a while he’d run with them, but those guys were serious athletes, and even if his legs were a lot longer than theirs he still had to push himself hard just to stay close.  
He’d finished three times around and was by the winner’s circle running water from a hose over his head when one of the jockeys who was wearing a rubber suit to pull some weight asked him if he’d like to come to a party and said you can count on plenty of food there, ‘cause the rest of us are on a diet.
The jockey’s house wasn’t that far away, over in Floral Park where a lot of racetrack people lived, so Ham walked over and thought he’d hang around for a couple of hours. As he walked in, who was there among the others but Spider, wearing a white, silk shirt and dark, linen slacks and alligator shoes. He was drinking whiskey from a crystal glass at the bar by the swimming pool, pouring the Crown Royal for himself, and he had a girl hanging all over him, one that might have been even prettier without the dyed-black hair and darkened eyes.
“Down to five pounds,” said Spider, meaning that his weight allowance would be cut to half of what he’d started with now that he’d won his 35th race. Spider was feeling high on himself and the rest of their conversation was mostly a critique of his fellow jockeys, how some didn’t get low enough, some didn’t finish strong like he did. 
“You shoulda called me when I told you to,” said Spider, “we made a ton on those ones my old man ships from down south.”
 
Ham wasn’t sure if it was just the whiskey talking when Spider told him another Argentine horse he’d ride next weekend would ring the bell, then drew another drink before he lurched off toward a couple of guys a lot like the ones Ham had seen him with in Florida the day he won that first race.
On the patio deck was an eclectic group of everything from older men in Italian silk suits to young women in short skirts and heels mixed in with the jockeys and wet bikini-clad girls fresh from the pool. Rock music pounded from the stereo speakers and there was a smell of reefer mixed in with the cigarette smoke, and some of the girls laughed that nervous cocaine laugh.
Ham felt about as comfortable as a boy scout in a biker bar around those guys in the suits when their women looked him up and down and smiled.  
“You got a girlfriend, honey?” asked one.
“I did, but she went to California,” said Ham, and when she asked him if he wanted one, he said not now and moved away.
A couple of times he got that old feeling of being a foot taller than everyone and the sounds modulating, but he hadn’t had any drugs and just sipped at a beer, so he figured it was just one of those things that came and went and he never thought about it again.
After an hour or so of small talk with the few folks he’d recognized from the track, he put the rest of the beer he’d been nursing on the bar, said his good-byes to the jock that invited him and slipped out the door.
 
Willie was sleeping hard when Ham got back to Belmont that night, so it wasn’t until breakfast in the track kitchen next morning that he told him about the party. 
They talked about that high-flying lifestyle that those drinking, smoking, drug-taking people were living. 
“A lot of those people believe in heaven and think you can have it in this life or the next, but they’re not the kind that have much faith so they take it in this one in case there isn’t any next,” said Willie.
“Spider kind of fit right in,” said Ham.
And he told Willie that Spider had bragged about those big payoffs on horses that looked on paper like they had no chance at all and said he had another one coming up soon that he planned to make a big score on. 
“Your boy Spider might have layed himself down with some bad dogs,” said Willie, and he reminded Ham what he said before about fish keeping their mouths shut and how that might apply to Spider, especially with the kind of gentlemen he was choosing to spend his time with.                                                             

Something Ham always had on his mind was what Willie told him about the racetrack life, how it was just like the circus and no matter how you did at one meet, pretty soon you’ve got to pick up your tent and go to the next.
He wondered if that was how racetrackers reconciled the fact that most horses lose more races than they win, but that didn’t make you a loser. Quite the contrary, he thought, considering that on the face of things a trainer who won 20 percent of their starts was considered a huge success, even though that meant he was losing 80 percent of the time.
Their outfit was rolling along fine at Belmont, winning at a good clip and horses were paying good prices when they did bet, and some of the ones that were losing going off too short anyway, which was saving them money.  
Everybody said Fourth of July weather was going to be as hot as a firecracker and that’s when the track folks started talking about Saratoga, how it was so much cooler up there in the mountains and how August couldn’t come soon enough. 
Ham knew that it could be just as hot and humid up north, but pretty soon he bought into the notion, too, and found himself just as anxious as everyone else, besides he wanted to get back closer to home. 
Before they left Belmont, J.B. did something almost nobody else would, running Truly Hot first time out in a stakes race, and the little bay showed himself well, making the lead and only getting beat a couple of lengths. J.B. said that was a good way to get our feet wet, now we’ll go hunting big game up at the Spa.
 
After Secretariat won easily in Chicago, Ham read Joe Hirsch’s story in the Morning Telegraph to Willie, the writer saying how Big Red’s folks were planning to bring him back to Saratoga and that would be like a native son coming home, since the Spa was where he broke his maiden and they might break all the records for attendance that day and maybe have 30,000 people there.
Willie just said: “You and me, Ham and Eggs, we’ll be up on the second floor.”

J.B. stabled his horses in the main barn area at Saratoga, not over at Oklahoma where Mr. Evans kept his, and as the vans rolled up U.S. 9, Ham happened to be looking out the left side of the trailer as it passed the bus stop in front of the Spa City Diner, where he’d disembarked on his journey from Vermont. 
The vans turned off before they got to Canfield’s Casino and the park where Hamilton Greer had slept on a wooden bench, but seeing that diner and the bus stop and the path he’d taken made it feel like a hundred years had passed instead of just one. He nearly couldn’t imagine it had been him, the kid that walked down that hill and stood on the corner of Caroline St. and Broadway.
 
They were there for about a week when Willie asked Ham if maybe he wanted to take a couple of days off to go home to see his mama. Ham had been thinking about just that ever since they arrived in Saratoga, but he kept putting it off, not sure how he’d feel when he saw everyone, that maybe he’d become a different person and that it might be strange and uncomfortable. 
Both of Ham’s 2-year-olds were going to run in stakes races, so he tried to rationalize that reluctance to leave, saying J.B. was counting on him. 
“Get on up there and see your family,” said Willie, pointing out that a two-hour bus ride wasn’t a trip to the moon and besides, those horses would still be there when he got back.   

Ham phoned to tell his mom he’d be coming on a Sunday but he made her promise not to say what time he’d arrive because he wanted to make it a surprise for Abby and Ella and Jennie and Anna, and he’d take the noon bus so as to be there when the girls came home from working brunch at the Inn. 
His mom said Abe Lincoln’s great-granddaughter still lived at Hildene, the family estate about a mile from where Hamilton grew up, and the Orvis shop was right where it always was and so was the Manchester Inn, but he grimaced when he saw that the old Equinox hotel was shuttered and closed.
And he was excited to bring his sisters the gifts he brought from Florida, trinkets like orange snow-globes and fake alligators, since none of them knew anything more about the south than what they read in the encyclopedia. 
But they were already home when he got there, his sisters and step-sisters waiting on the front porch, screaming when he walked up the driveway like he was either a war hero or the prodigal son, and his mom and Steve ran right out, too, when they heard the ruckus.
He wasn’t sure how it would go, coming home to the place he’d left in such a hurry, after some words exchanged that both sides might now regret. 
But his mother couldn’t stop talking, so much that was she crying and laughing at the same time to see her boy, grown up and filled out so, and Steve did the respectful thing, treating him like a man and shaking his hand and telling Ham they’d all missed him.
 
Hamilton’s mom made his favorite, roast leg of lamb and mint jelly with potatoes and string beans, and they lingered at the dinner table for a while as they finished off the apple pie his stepsister Jennie had made. 
After dinner, Steve made a point of getting everyone to walk together down the hill to town center to work off the heavy meal but mainly to give them all a chance to chat. 
Most of the time, Ham felt he was the only one talking, going on about Willie and J.B. and the horses he’d taken care of in the past year, and he told them about Spider and mentioned Lizzie and Holly, which drew question after question from the girls, but he didn’t say anything about Carla.  
By the time they got back to the house, the lightning bugs were glowing on the front lawn and Steve brought out some extra rocking chairs. Soon everyone had parked themselves there on the front porch, right where they were when Hamilton arrived.  When they were alone in the kitchen for a few minutes, he gave his mom an envelope with $500 in it and told her to put it toward the girls’ college fund, and she looked in the envelope and cried.
It was near midnight when he told them he was going to catch the noon bus back to Saratoga and if they wanted to make an outing, he’d get some passes for them and maybe they’d come on down and watch his horses run.

Secretariat was a 1-to-10 favorite on the odds board when he went in the gate for the Whitney Handicap, and carrying only 119 pounds, and Willie said it should be a walk in the park, but Vasquez sent a little horse named Onion to the lead and that crowd of folks there to root for the champ was so shocked you could have heard a cricket chirp after he hung on to beat Big Red.
Willie just shook his head.
“Shoulda known it would be him that would beat him, he already done whipped Kelso and Buckpasser. He kills all the giants, that Mr. Jerkens.”
 
Three more times that fall Ham and Willie got to see Secretariat run at Belmont, once when he won the Marlboro Cup by 3 1/2 lengths and another when he finished five in front after a mile and a half on the grass in the Man o’ War.
But between those two victories he went to the post odds-on in the Woodward on a rainy, sloppy day.
“Got me a bad feeling today, son,” said Willie. “Big Red better watch out Mr. Jerkens don’t upset his apple cart again.”
And that was just what Mr. Jerkens did when he told Jorge Velasquez not to be shy, just go on and take it right to him and send that Prove Out, maybe you’ll get the mile and a half better than he does today. 
And that’s exactly what he did. 

© 2015  John R. Perrotta