Gargantuan (13 page)

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I was inquiring about the horse for sale,” I said.

“What about her?” The woman frowned at me. She wasn’t a
great beauty to start with and the frown didn’t help. Her thick eyebrows pulled together making her face look like thunder. I was starting to regret having come here at all, but I had a feeling if I tried to back out now the first woman would get inventive with the pitchfork.

“I’m looking to buy some horses. Saw your sign.”

“Well, Clove is a bay mare. Eight years old. Fifty-two starts, five wins, and I can’t remember how many seconds and thirds.”

It didn’t sound like I’d stumbled onto Seabiscuit, but it did seem like the mare might be in my price range. I asked to have a look at her and was somewhat begrudgingly led behind the sheds where I saw a heartbreaking sight.

The mare was standing in a paddock so small she barely had room to turn around. There were flies all over her and she was underweight. She didn’t look up when we approached.

“That’s her,” the younger woman said. “My uncle Jimmy was running her at Tampa Bay Downs. He died and left her to me. I don’t have any purpose for a racehorse,” the woman said.

She opened the gate to the paddock and motioned for me to walk in. The mare finally looked up and that’s all it took. She had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. I knew that even if she was dead lame I had to buy her and get her out of there. I negotiated a price with Katrina as the first woman stood by, still clutching that pitchfork. Goats roamed, occasionally stopping to stare and bleat a little. I made arrangements to pick Clove up once I’d borrowed a horse trailer. I promised myself I would do this by the next day, so as not to leave that poor horse living in those conditions.

Clove definitely wasn’t the best investment in the world, but she proved to be a lot more horse than I’d expected. She was completely out of shape and malnourished but she was sound. I took her to a cheap conditioning farm and left her there for a few weeks to get her ready to start seriously working. I went to visit her every day and was gratified to see her coming to life. After just a few visits she started recognizing me and would nicker when I approached
her stall. Her eyes livened up as she put on weight and her coat started shining. When I finally brought her over to Gulfstream, she actually looked like a racehorse, had some muscle on her and had electricity in her body. I liked my other two horses just fine, but Clove was my favorite. And now, Lucinda was laughing at my mare—or at my blind faith in her. I suppose I couldn’t really blame the girl.

“That was a slow time for her?” Lucinda asked, referring to Clove’s dull workout, even though she knew damn well those fractions were terrible.

“A minute six would be slow for a carriage horse, no?”

Lucinda laughed, showing her small teeth. She was an attractive girl and she seemed to like me, maybe even be interested in me. I was stuck on someone else though. Ruby. I’d been a little stupid and, when the Bureau had sent me from New York down here to Florida, I hadn’t initiated an official “relationship talk” with Ruby. We’d been seeing each other for a few months but I was deathly afraid of trying to pin her down. She’d always struck me as being savage in the heart. Untamable. I knew she liked me, probably even loved me, but I hadn’t wanted to force her into any pronouncements she wasn’t ready to make. And now, I could hear in our increasingly strained phone calls that there was another guy. And I was stuck down here under endless blue skies. And so was Lucinda. We chatted on about Clove and about my other two horses. We discussed the fancy French turf horse Bobby Frankel was running in a Grade 1 stakes later that day and I could tell from the dreamy look Lucinda got that she wished she’d get to work a horse like that. Or maybe she was getting dreamy over Frankel. Women loved that guy. He wasn’t young or flashy but he was smart and funny and seemed to be the only wildly successful trainer who wasn’t a soulless conservative creep. And what’s more, he was good to his horses. Even though I was mistrustful of most trainers, I’d always had a good feeling about Frankel and evidently Lucinda had too.

I was enjoying my chat with her but I needed to get some Bureau work done. I didn’t want to be abrupt with Lucinda though.

“Well,” I said, leaving it at that.

She had her hands tucked into the front pockets of her jeans and she brought them out now. She started picking at one of her cuticles, frowning as she stared down at it.

After an awkward few seconds she looked up at me.

“What are you doing later?” she asked.

There it was.

“Well,” I said carefully, “I think I have to do some work at home.”

She looked embarrassed.

“Okay,” she shrugged, then abruptly turned and walked away.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning? You’re gonna ride Karma?”

“Yeah,” she called out, without turning back.

I watched her walk away. She was narrow but muscular and moved with a slight stiffness that I guessed was a result of her accident. I noticed a groom from the next shedrow staring after her.

I felt badly for putting her off, but the truth was I did actually have work to do. The Bureau had sent me here to look into a sponging epidemic. Sponging was a particularly evil trick involving slipping tiny sponges up racehorses’ nostrils before races. Basically impossible to detect unless you had the veterinarian dig up there. It’s not like it had a fatal impact on the horses, just impeded their breathing enough to make them run lackluster. Could demoralize the hell out of a poor horse. And, of course, cause some pretty big upsets in the outcome of a race. It pissed me off—as did anything involving people doing shitty things to horses. I wanted to get to the bottom of it for the sake of the horses and the fairness of the game. The Bureau itself was wearing thin on me though. The horse-related assignments were great, but the rest of the Bureau business I could live without. For the most part, it was just boring as hell. And now it had pulled me away from a girl I’d wanted to try going the distance with. I’d had to pack up, put on a new identity as one Sam Riverman, former Xerox salesman, and come down here, to Florida.

I decided to give each of my horses a quick grooming. I rubbed Clove some more and then did the other two, Karma Police and
Mike’s Mohawk. None of them were particularly noteworthy specimens of the thoroughbred breed—although I liked all three of them just fine. They were close to bottom of the barrel claimers but they were all three sweet, well-intended horses. Which was good since I was not only training them but cleaning their stalls, feeding, watering, and grooming them as well as walking them off after their workouts. The Bureau had dropped enough money for me to have a few horses but not enough to hire any help, apart from riders.

I finished grooming Mike and put him away. I was planning to spend the next hour or so attempting to get chummy with Roderick, head groom for Giovanni Corso, one of the trainers who, I was pretty sure, was up to no good. Roderick, a huge redheaded fellow, was slow. Developmentally challenged. Whatever the correct lingo was. I didn’t think he was actually in on any of his employers’ shady activities but I thought I might be able to learn something if I could befriend him.

Before heading over to Corso’s shedrow, I stepped into the tiny office I shared with two other trainers. Those two had both already headed home for the day since, unlike me, they could afford to pay someone to feed their string at night.

I walked into the sour, windowless office and turned on the overhead fluorescent. I glanced into the little mirror hanging above the desk. One of the other trainers, Gerald, was a real lady-killer and spent a lot more time checking his hair and sunglasses than he did training his horses. The mirror was his. And I can’t say I liked what it showed me. I’d had to change my appearance for the assignment and this had meant growing facial hair. It made me feel dirty all the time and I don’t think it did wonders for my looks. I looked like some kind of fucking hippie.

I sat down in the straight-backed chair and stared at the phone for a few minutes. Eventually, I picked it up and dialed. On the fourth ring, Ruby’s machine came on, telling me she couldn’t get to the phone but to please leave good messages. I wanted to hang up but didn’t.

“Ruby, it’s Ed. Just saying hi. Call my cell when you have a chance.”

I hung up.

The overhead fluorescent was throbbing like a migraine. I locked the office and made my way toward Corso’s barn. A radio was blaring light jazz. The music rendered all the more vapid by the volume. An old man limped along next to a chestnut horse. Though the old guy had a stud chain running under the horse’s lip, the chestnut was pulling the man, leading him to specific patches of grass that the horse would then nibble at lightly before taking offense, picking his head up, and pulling the old guy a few feet farther to a different patch of grass. The man seemed fine with letting the horse pull him around. Probably relieved at not having to decide where to go anymore.

I found Roderick in front of Corso’s shedrow, hanging bandages out to dry. I watched him carefully pull all the wrinkles out of the wet bandages then make sure they were all hanging evenly. He stood back to examine his handiwork.

“Roderick,” I accosted him, “how’s it going?”

He turned to look at me. He was frowning and didn’t seem to remember that we’d met in the cafeteria a few days earlier.

“I’m Sam. Sam Riverman? Met you in the cafeteria a few days ago? I got a little string of claimers?”

“Oh yeah,” Roderick said, less than enthusiastically.

“How ya doin’?”

“Workin’,” he stated, letting his eyes skate over the whole barn area. It was impeccably clean. Sterile. No music. No cats or goats. All the dirt was raked.

“You want to get a drink later?” I asked him.

Now the guy really frowned and I realized I’d fucked up. He probably thought I was coming on to him. There are all kinds on the backstretch, including guys who’d hit on a slow-witted meat-sock like Roderick. I should have been more careful. I guess I was losing my touch.

I tried to backpedal. “I don’t know too many folks around here,” I said, motioning around me. “I just got into all this. I’m hoping one day I can hire a little help. Word has it you’re the best.”

“Yeah,” he said, cocking his big red head, like maybe the flattery had actually had an effect. “I got my hands full as it is and you couldn’t afford me anyway.” He laughed hard at this.

“Okay,” I shrugged, knowing it was time to back off. “I’ll see you around, huh?” I turned away from the big lug. And came face-to-face with Lucinda. She was all cleaned up now, wearing dark blue jeans and a vivid blood orange T-shirt. Her long hair was loose.

Roderick suddenly came to life.

“Hi, Rod,” Lucinda smiled at him. I hadn’t realized the two of them knew each other.

“Lucinda,” he choked out.

“Sam?” She looked at me. “I thought you had work to do.” Her eyes got smaller.

“I got an hour to kill before feeding,” I said.

“Oh.” She looked down at her feet.

“Let’s have a drink,” I offered, looking from Lucinda to Roderick. Lucinda agreed. Roderick did too. Which might not have been what Lucinda had in mind but it was fine by me.

We made our way over toward the track. The announcer was just calling the seventh race and we all listened as Birthday Suit and Alacrity battled neck and neck. Birthday Suit got a length on his nearest opponent and crossed the finish line first.

“I’d like to work that one,” Lucinda mumbled, more to herself than us, but Roderick heard.

“He’s one of Will Lott’s. Probably ain’t gonna happen. Lott’s got Asha Yashpinsky. Puts her on all his big shots,” Roderick said, looking at Lucinda earnestly.

“Oh, I know it ain’t gonna happen, Rod. I can dream though, can’t I?”

I listened to them going back and forth. Hoping maybe Roderick would say something useful but not really expecting it.

We went into the clubhouse, heading for the second-floor bar. It wasn’t crowded. Most of the people hanging around were serious handicappers or low-end owners. A few heads turned when we walked in. I knew Lucinda came here fairly often to mingle with owners, trying to scrape her way back to working good horses. I didn’t think she was sleeping with anyone to attain this goal. She wasn’t really the type. Probably just talked to them a little, turning her big eyes on and making sure they got a good look at her ass when she walked away.

We took stools at the bar and we all ordered shots of Jack from Battle Annie, the brassy blonde who’d been tending bar at racetracks since Secretariat’s time. Battle Annie would be remembered long after most trainers, riders, and horses.

I put the shot glass to my lips, letting it rest there a fraction of a second, anticipating the warmth to come. I hadn’t even realized I’d felt badly until the shot hit and my mood improved. Lucinda drank hers and pink bloomed on her white cheeks. She looked pretty. Ruby crossed my mind. I ordered another shot. The eighth race was about to go off and we watched the post parade on the monitor. Roderick and Lucinda discussed one of the entries. A filly facing the boys. I ordered a third shot.

A man with a red face sat down next to Lucinda. He was overweight and looked rich. An owner. He was wearing a pink shirt that clashed with his skin. I could tell from Lucinda’s body language that she knew who the man was and had willed him to sit there. As the owner started talking to Lucinda, Rod and I sat in silence, half listening to Lucinda who was spending a few moments letting the owner think he was getting somewhere with her before steering the subject to his horses.

Eventually, Roderick announced that he had to get back to his shedrow. I said I ought to go feed my string too. Lucinda’s owner had taken off. It was unclear if she’d accomplished anything with him.

“Want some help?” Lucinda asked me. Roderick’s big face went a little slack. She hadn’t offered him her help.

“It doesn’t take long to feed three horses,” I told her.

“I don’t mind,” she insisted.

We all three headed back to the barn area. Lucinda and I bid Roderick farewell in front of Corso’s barn then made our way over to my spot in silence. The same old guy with a limp was still grazing that same chestnut not far from my barn. Lucinda greeted him. He smiled at her.