Homestretch (4 page)

I squeezed the rake tight, and in my bones I knew that except for Nacho, Rafael, and Anibal—who'd just got to this country—any of those beaners could have been the one who got Mom killed.

That burned inside of me, and I wondered how much you could hate somebody you'd never seen, just hating the idea of
him
. Hating that he was still alive, and breathing the air in this country he didn't deserve.

The sky was still dark and I could barely see the ground outside. But I kept scratching at it with that rake, harder and
harder, wanting to dig my way to China, or Spain, where Mom's
familia
was from.

A beaner came flying up to the barn on a bike, pedaling his ass off. He must have been really late, because he ditched the bike in the grass with the front wheel still spinning.

I was probably just a shadow to him as he bolted past, touching me on the shoulder.

“Buenos días,”
he said, disappearing into Dag's barn.

I hadn't washed in two days, so I didn't know who or what I smelled like anymore. The salt from my sweat was stinging my eyes, and I felt like I'd just crawled out of some hole.

A beaner had just mistaken me for one of his own.

That's when I knew I couldn't sink any lower.

I stood there like a statue, leaning on that rake with my emotions frozen solid.

Then slowly the darkness started to fade.

I heard a cock crow—
ererEREEEERRrrrr
.

A warm glow found the back of my neck, and I turned around.

The sun was coming up over the huge, empty grandstand, and the rays of light were reflecting off the small lake in the middle of the racetrack's infield.

The growl of engines was growing louder, heading in my direction.

So I walked down a grassy hill, maybe twenty yards.

I put both hands on the white rail and stared down the straightaway of racetrack.

A tractor came rolling past, dragging a heavy metal claw with long iron fingers that turned over the dirt, making it an even darker brown.

Then a truck came behind that, spraying a mist of water.

My lungs were breathing it all in deep, like I'd been suffocating for a long time without knowing.

Suddenly, the rhythm of hoofbeats drummed along the racetrack.

Through the sun's glare I could see the silhouette of a woman galloping a horse. I closed my eyes and listened—
brrmp-brrmp-brrmp-brrmp
—as she rode past.

For a few seconds everything I'd been holding back inside of me melted down. I wish I could have stopped time right there, in that paradise. I wanted to plant my feet into the ground and never move again, like a tree with roots.

T
HE FIRST OF
D
AG
's horses to come back from training at the racetrack that morning was Bad Boy Rising. Nacho stood him outside in the sun on a pair of black rubber mats laid side by side. Then he handed me the leather lead shank. It was like holding a huge dog on a leash—one that was a foot and a half taller than me and outweighed me by more than a thousand pounds.

Bad Boy shook his head from side to side, eyeing me like he could take off anytime he wanted, and my whole body began to quiver.

But Nacho chirped to him and turned the hose on a soapy sponge inside of a silver bucket. Then he started to scrub away at Bad Boy Rising's neck, and I could feel that horse begin to relax.

When the bath was over, I started walking Bad Boy Rising in circles around the barn to dry off and cool down his muscles.

He was tugging hard the whole way, testing me. And I had to use all my strength to keep him going in a straight line.

“Bad Boy say he's the boss of you, too!” boomed Paolo for half the barn to hear. “He show everybody how far down you are!”

Hardly any of those beaners needed
that
translated, because most of them were laughing along with Paolo.

On my last lap around the barn with Bad Boy Rising, I saw a saddle sitting on the stall door of one of Rafael's horses. It was black with a picture of a red, pointy-tailed devil holding a fiery pitchfork stitched into the side. A dark-skinned exercise rider who was talking to Dag saw me looking at it. He stopped in midsentence and stared laser beams through me, like he'd whip my ass from here to tomorrow for having my eyes on his saddle.

He was no bigger than I was and probably as old as my dad.

But his hot glare nearly turned my legs to butter. So I dropped my eyes to the floor fast and kept walking while I still could.

When I circled back around, Rafael had just finished tightening the black saddle on his horse. Dag gave a leg up to that devil rider, who clenched the whip between his teeth as he
tightened the reins with both hands. Then he took the horse down to the track, with Dag slithering alongside. And I started to breathe a lot easier with him gone.

I'd walked three more horses around the barn that morning before I noticed another hot walker taking one into an open courtyard between a half dozen different stables. That courtyard had a narrow dirt path circling a huge shade tree, where horses were walking single file.

When Nacho finished giving his other horse a bath, I took the bucket of soapy water and poured it over my head.

Nacho smiled, sniffing at his sweat-stained armpits, and said, “May-be I need.”

“
Sí.
Every day from now on,” I sniped, squeezing my nostrils shut between two fingers and wondering if beaners even had soap in their stinking country.

I took Nacho's horse, an easygoing filly named Rose of Sharon, out to that courtyard, looking for a change of scenery. I'd been walking her for maybe five minutes when that devil rider brought another runner of Dag's back to the barn. I tried to ignore him, but my eyes met his anyway, like some kind of magnetic force was pulling them into line.

Then he stood in the saddle, hocking up a wad of phlegm from his throat and spitting into the grass as he rode past.

“So you just got here, and El Diablo thinks you're clam juice,” said a soft voice from behind me. “Well, all right for you.”

I turned to see who it was, and it was like getting hit by a lightning bolt—she was that beautiful.

Her silky blond hair was bouncing off to the side in a ponytail. There was a silver cross on a chain lying flat against her chest, and the loose white blouse she had on reminded me of an angel's robes. She was an eyelash taller than me—not too short for a girl—and probably a year or two older than I was pretending to be.

I stopped in my tracks and struggled hard to find my tongue as she kept her horse a good ten feet in back of mine.

“All I did was look at him,” I finally said.

“That'll do it,” she said, jutting out her chin as a signal for me to keep walking my filly.

“Why do they call him that?” I asked, moving forward, even though every thought in my mind was on her.

“Comes from his days riding in Peru, when his horse trampled another jockey during a race and killed him, his own brother,” she said. “Then he came to the States. Trainers say he's so strong that when he whips horses, they run like the devil was chasing them. But two years ago he got caught fixing
a race—holding his horse back so a long shot could win and he could cash a bet.”

That's when I noticed an old man with his feet planted at the far edge of that circular path.

“At least it's better than doping a horse to run faster than it really can,” the old man said to me. “That's what your new boss, Dag, does. Did you know that? One day they'll start testing at Pennington for those magic milk shakes he feeds some of them, and
he'll
be gone.”

I wasn't sure what to say back to him, or what a “magic milk shake” was. But I didn't want to make any more enemies, so I answered, “I guess,” and followed the circle.

“That's my grandpa, Cap Daly. I work for him,” she said as we started back around. “He's been training racehorses here for more than forty years. And in case you haven't figured it out, he hates Dag.”

“You think Dag's a crook?”

“Think? I know it,” she answered.

“And El Diablo, he did time in prison for fixing races?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder to steal another peek at her.

“Nah. He got probation. Racing commission took his jockey's license and gave him a big fine. All he's allowed to do now is exercise horses. I hear he puts in the paperwork every
year, praying to get reinstated. They took away what he loves most—race riding. That's why he's such hell to be around. And in the mornings, out on the racetrack, he's even worse. I won't get anywhere near him when I'm on a horse.”

“You're an exercise rider too?”

“I got lots of jobs at the barn. My grandpa can't afford to hire much help these days. He runs a small stable now. Down to just four horses.”

“Because of his age?”

“No,”
she answered short as we made the curve and approached the old man again.

“This one's walked enough, Tammie,” said Cap, tipping back his Kangol hat and wiping his forehead dry.

Tammie swung her horse around mine, and I stopped.

“So, Rose of Sharon, who's your friend?” Tammie asked my filly, before she turned her eyes back to me. “She used to be in my grandpa's barn before her owner moved her to Dag's.”

“Oh. My name's Gas,” I said.

“Really?” she asked. “Because you ride a racehorse so fast?”

I just nodded my head, staring into her honey brown eyes.

Then Cap said, “Gas, I'll give you some good advice. It's for the benefit of
you
and this
filly
, not your boss. You can't turn
a horse on tight angles like you been doing. It puts too much pressure on their ankles.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Forty years, huh? I guess you know everything about training horses.”

“I'll know more when they learn to talk,” he said, half serious.

“Maybe I'll see you on the racetrack or at the cantina,” Tammie called back to me as they walked off.

I turned my head all the way around to keep watching Tammie from behind, as me and Rose of Sharon made the curve for another lap.

By eleven thirty all the horses were back in their stalls eating up, and there wasn't a pile of shit you could see left anywhere in Dag's barn. Just before we quit for the day, Dag called Nacho, Rafael, Anibal, and me into his office.

He was coiled in a leather chair, with Paolo standing next to him.

“Muchachos,”
Dag said, waving us inside. “Good day's work.
Bueno. Bueno.
”

There was a brown and white chicken on the floor, and Dag had some corn feed in his hand.

“Watch,” Paolo told us, pointing to the chicken at Dag's feet.

Dag took off his mirrored glasses, looking that chicken
in the eye. He held his hand over its head, and Paolo put his fingers in front of his mouth, playing an imaginary flute.

“Dee-de-dee-de-de. Dee-de-dee-de-dee-de-de,” sang Paolo, like Dag was one of those Arabian snake charmers.

The chicken started walking backward in circles, following Dag's hand like it was hypnotized.

Those beaners were laughing hysterical over that show, and even Paolo, who'd probably seen it lots of times before, stopped singing to slap his sides. But it was all I could do to fake a smile, thinking how I never wanted to become like that chicken, and about what Tammie and her grandpa had said about Dag.

Dag looked at me hard with his dark green eyes.

“I thought you just trained horses,” I said, almost in self-defense.

“Plenty of animals in these stables,” he answered, putting his glasses back on. “Chickens, dogs, a goat or two. They all help keep the horses calm.”

Then Dag stood up and pulled out a roll of bills from the front pocket of his denims. He gave us each forty bucks and said, “Here's an advance on your first week's pay, so you can eat and stuff.”

Paolo was translating that into Spanish before the words were out of Dag's mouth.

Nacho and his brothers shook Dag's hand, saying,
“Gracias, Señor Dag. Muchas gracias.”

I was pretty thankful too as his hand clamped around mine.

Then Dag took a fresh toothpick from a little glass cup on his desk. As he started to pick at his teeth, he told Paolo, “Go get these boys settled in right.”

Paolo walked us over to the men's dorms, where lots of the workers from the different stables lived.

It wasn't just the workers at Dag's barn who were beaners. Nearly every groom and hot walker I'd seen on the backstretch was Mexican. And it was the same with everybody I saw going in and out of that dorm's lobby.

A list of rules was printed on the lobby wall in Spanish and English.

NO MUJERES. NO NIÑOS.
NO VIOLENCIA.

NO ALCOHOL. NO NARCÓTICOS.

NO WOMEN. NO CHILDREN.
NO VIOLENCE.

NO ALCOHOL. NO DRUGS.

The backstretch dorms were rent-free and built right next to the barns so the workers could be close to the horses in case there was ever an emergency.

The man in charge of the dorms said that only two people were allowed to a room.

“No exceptions. No how. No way,” the man went on, with a Southern twang. “I've split up more Mexican families than the U.S. Border Patrol.”

That's when Paolo grinned at me, snorting, “Now, who's gonna want to be roommate with
you
?”

I wished I could tell him exactly how I felt. How I'd rather sleep in the monkey house at the zoo, or underneath a pile of garbage at the city dump, than room with a beaner. But I couldn't. I was stuck.

The three brothers looked at one another for a few seconds.

Then Nacho said, “Me. I—go with Gas.”

“Con el gringo,”
howled Paolo.

“Es un hijo de María,”
Nacho said, pointing to the bottom half of the tattoo beneath my short sleeve.
“Nuestros madre se llama María también.”