Lean on Pete (12 page)

Forestville stayed loose for more than five minutes. He ran onto the main track and a man who was galloping a horse finally caught him. I got Del out of the caf but by the time we got Forestville back he had a long cut on his leg and blood ran down it, pouring onto the dirt.

Del brought him back to the stall and I followed him. Forestville was in a panic, he was lathered with sweat and breathing heavy. Del went to the tack room and came out with a syringe. He went into the stall and it took him a while but he injected Forestville with something, then came out and threw the syringe in the garbage and took his can of chew and banged it into his leg and opened it.

“That’ll calm him down and then we can take a look at the cut.”

He put the chew in his mouth.

“I’m really sorry, Del.”

He didn’t say anything at first. He just spit on the ground.

“A guy over there fell off the roof with a big piece of plywood and Forestville spooked.”

Del spit again.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

Then he looked at me. “You know how much this is going to cost? I’m gonna have to call the vet. It’s going to cost me more than the piece of shit is worth.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Del said in a high whiny voice. “That old guy was going to sign up with me. Now he’s probably talking to Freeman or said fuck it and is driving up to Emerald Downs as we speak.”

Del started breathing heavier. You could tell he was getting more upset.

“I thought you were alright.” He spit on the ground again. “I took a chance on you and you paid me back by ruining one of my best quarter horses. I’ll probably have to put him down.”

I began thinking about them killing Forestville and tears welled in my eyes. I’d caused the whole thing, I’d ruined Forestville’s life.

Del looked over at me.

“And now you’re gonna cry?”

“No,” I said but I couldn’t help it and I started.

“Stop crying,” he said.

“I’m trying,” I said.

We stood there silent for a long time watching as Forestville calmed down.

“It’s alright,” Del said finally. “This shit happens. Why don’t you get out of here.”

“Are you firing me?”

“No,” he said. “I just don’t feel like being around you anymore today. You’re an alright kid. You just fucked up. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said, and then I left him alone.

But at the end of that week Del only gave me twenty bucks, and when the meet started none of his horses won or were even in the money. The first race was Lean on Pete in a
350
-yard claiming race. In a claiming race all the horses are for sale. They’re the horses that the owners don’t care about losing. Del said it was “like lining up a bunch fat guys to run a sprint race. It’s only fair because they’re all fat and worthless.”

Del and I walked him from the backside to the track paddock. The paddock is inside the main grandstand building so people watching can see the horses before the race. They can see the horses come in, get saddled, and the jockey mount them. The only thing between the people and the horses is a chain-link fence. There are open stalls for each horse in the race, and a circle path so the horses can be paraded.

Del told me to walk Pete around and I did and we fell in line with all the other horses. Then he called me back and we put a saddle on Pete and a bell rang and the jockeys came out of a room and Del talked to an old-man jockey and helped him up on Pete and guided him out of the paddock to the pony horses. After that we went inside and Del got a beer from the bar.

Portland Meadows was a big old place. At one time it probably held twenty thousand people, but right then there were less than a thousand showing up. Del said a lot of tracks were falling apart, that no one was going anymore. Portland, Turf Paradise in Phoenix, Arapahoe Park in Denver . . . Del had worked at all those and they were all struggling. He said Portland was the worst, though. The purses were too low, and it was hard to make any money betting when all they could come up with is five- and six-horse fields. Del said Portland was like a single-A baseball team on a never-ending slump. They were pro, but not by much.

We went outside and stood by the rail and waited on Pete’s race. When I looked back at the building I could see the entire grandstands were closed off and Del told me they hadn’t been used in ten years.

The track was beautiful though, and I felt good that Pete was racing on a real track and not a dirt road. I hoped his feet would feel alright and that he wouldn’t get hurt. I wished more than anything that he would win so Del would treat him right.

The horses went into the gate and then the race began. An announcer over a loudspeaker began calling out the leading horses and his voice got more excited as the race went on. It was an amazing thing to see, all the horses running as fast as they could, and the jockeys all in different colors, whipping the horses. The only people outside watching were three drunk men yelling for their horses and a guy who was kissing his girlfriend and an old lady sitting on a bench. Pete started out alright, he was in the lead pack and the announcer said his name twice, but by halfway through he began to fade and as he passed us he was in fifth place and he stayed there.

When the race was over Del shook his head, let out a sigh, and finished his beer. They brought the horses back to the finish line and the jockey jumped down and Del helped take the saddle off and I led Pete back to the shedrows. He seemed alright though. He wasn’t limping, he wasn’t jittery either, he just seemed tired.

After the races I decided to go back to the house to see if I could get my dad’s toolbox. I was hoping I could sell some of the stuff in it, but when I got there his truck was gone and there was a “For Rent” sign on the lawn. The broken window had been replaced. There were no cars in the drive or lights on so I walked up and looked inside and it was empty. The sheets we had over the windows were gone. I tried my key in the lock but it didn’t work. I walked around back but there were no boxes or anything of ours still there.

That night I couldn’t sleep at all. I thought about my dad’s things and what would happen to them. If they would be thrown away or given to a thrift store. I thought about him lying there dead in a freezer like on a TV show. I didn’t know what they’d do with his body, if they’d bury him or cremate him, and the more I thought about it the worse I felt. I tried to make myself lie still and I tried to think of things to relax me but none of it worked and the second the sun came up I got dressed and started working.

When the next week’s races came, Del put Lean on Pete in a maiden
350
-yard claiming race and he got second. It was a great race and even Del seemed happy about it. But later on another of his horses, Little Tramp, broke its right front leg on the stretch of a six-furlong race. He was in the back of the pack and then suddenly he stumbled and the jockey fell. The other horses kept racing but Little Tramp stopped and even from where I was I could see the bottom of his leg swinging back and forth. He stumbled around on three legs and the jockey lay on the track and he wasn’t moving.

I was standing next to Del when it happened and he swore more than I’d ever heard him. We ran out to where the horse was. They got the jockey up and they loaded him into an ambulance and then a tractor pulling a large green box on wheels came out and they loaded the horse into it. Del said they had to put him down right after that.

For the rest of that day Del was in a horrible mood. Every other word he said was fuck or cunt and then later on when his three-year-old Dash’s Dart came in fifth Del took him back and hosed him off and said horrible things to him. He sprayed water in his face and told him he wanted to slit his throat and then finally he threw down the hose and yelled at me and I came over and finished and he walked off.

An hour later I found Del in the caf. I knew it was the wrong time to talk to him but I was broke. I only had a dollar-fifty left. I asked him for my pay.

“I lost a horse today,” he said. He was sitting with two other guys I didn’t know and they were playing cards and drinking beer.

“If you even have ten bucks I’ll take it,” I said.

“Look, you’re sleeping in the tack room. I could charge you for that but I don’t.” He shook his head, then spit in a cup and started talking to one of the guys.

That night I put fresh bandages on my hand and leg and walked to an Albertsons grocery store. It was a pretty big place in a strip mall. I got a basket and walked up and down the aisles and put in canned spaghetti, canned soup, and canned chili. I had eight in all when I went out the door. I started running through the parking lot carrying the basket. I looked back to see if anyone was following me and when I did a car pulled out of a space and hit me. It didn’t hurt that bad but all the cans went flying everywhere and rolled away on the asphalt.

I got up and started running. I left the cans on the ground and ran out of the parking lot and kept going until I was in a neighborhood and saw that nobody was following me. My leg felt alright though. I checked it for bleeding but I couldn’t see any and it didn’t hurt. I walked for a while longer, then went to a mini-mart and asked the cashier where another grocery store was and he told me and I walked a long time to get to it. It was a Safeway and I went in there and got a couple plastic grocery bags and put one inside the other to make it stronger, then I went to the canned food aisle and set in six cans. I didn’t do anything after that. I didn’t look around or stall, I just went straight for the exit. As soon as I was out of there I ran as hard as I could. I turned around a couple times but no one came after me.

That night I hid the cans in the rafters, then I lay there for a long time in the tack room but I wasn’t tired at all. I got up and went out to see Pete. I stood there and pet him in the faint light and then I went into the stall and sat down and leaned back against the wall and talked to him.

I told him about a time when my aunt Margy and I went grocery shopping and how she let me get anything I wanted. We stacked the cart up to the top and then as we drove back to her apartment we passed a movie theater and she told me we should see a movie. She stopped the car in front of the theater and checked the time listing, then we raced home as fast as we could and put all the frozen and refrigerated groceries away and drove back to the theater and made the start of the movie.

I told him of another time when she and I went camping. We drove way out to a place my dad and her went to as kids. We were onto a dirt road for fifteen miles or so and then we turned on another road and parked near a creek.

“You could see a fire pit and a clearing where people had camped before us,” I told him. “There was a grass meadow. If you were there you could have eaten for a month on it. It was really nice. We set up a tent and then together we got firewood. That night she cooked us dinner on a camp stove and we sat by the fire and ate. It was really good food, too. It was macaroni and cheese with broccoli and ham. And for dessert we had s’mores. If you don’t know what that is I’m sorry. They’re good. You toast a marshmallow on the fire, then put it on a piece of chocolate and then you put that on a graham cracker. You make a sandwich out of it. The graham crackers are like the bread. Anyway, we ate, then we just sat there looking at the fire. There was no one around for miles. Just the trees and the sky and the mountains. But then we both started hearing things. Sounds of things moving and rustling around. We heard coyotes howl in the distance. We let the fire die out and we went to bed, but as we lay there we got more and more scared, and finally my aunt sat up in her sleeping bag and said, ‘Would it be alright if we left? It’s spooky out here and I’m starting to get scared.’

“ ‘I am too,’ I told her.

“She turned on a flashlight and we got dressed and threw everything in the back of her car and drove away and when we hit pavement she let out a long sigh.

“ ‘I thought we were done for,’ she said and grinned. We drove back to town and ate at a diner. She let me get whatever I wanted and when we got back to her house we set up the sleeping bags in the living room and watched TV and spent the weekend camping there.”

Pete looked at me half asleep. Once in a while he’d move his head around but that was about it. I pet him a bit longer, then put the halter on him and we walked down near the fences and I let him eat grass. After I put him back I walked up and down the shedrows. I passed the tack room where Bonnie Sparks was staying. The door was closed but I could hear a TV going and there was a light on so I knocked.

You could hear the TV shut off and then maybe a minute passed and she answered.

“What are you doing?” she said. Her eyes were bloodshot. She had dried mustard on the corner of her mouth, and she was dressed different. She had a red shirt on with white buttons and was wearing black jeans. She was dressed up.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Do you want to watch TV?”

I nodded and she let me in. She turned on the black and white and we watched a show, then she told me of a party she was going to and invited me to come along with her and I told her I would.

We walked out to the parking lot and got into an old Volkswagen Bug and she drove us pretty far out in Northeast Portland and parked us in front of a house. We went inside and everyone there was older than me, and I didn’t recognize any of them from the track. Bonnie left to use the toilet and I just stood by myself for a long time. There was music playing on a stereo, and there was a dining-room table that had a bowl of chips and some dip set out. There was also a plate of lunch meat and next to it a loaf of bread.

I waited for her to come back but she didn’t. I stood there for maybe an hour, then I went over to the food. There was a cooler on the floor underneath the table and there were Cokes and I drank one and made a sandwich. Then I just sat down on a couch and listened to the music and watched everyone talk. Once in a while they’d look at me and I’d say hello but mostly I just sat there.

A couple hours passed and I didn’t know what to do because I still hadn’t seen Bonnie. A few times I went outside to make sure her car was still there and it always was. Finally, I went from room to room and knocked on the doors. No one answered any of them so I began opening them and looking inside. I found her. She looked asleep, sitting on the bed with her back resting against the wall. She didn’t have her shirt on. There was a naked man next to her who had a needle going into his arm. He looked up at me so I shut the door. I went back out to the party and left.