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I'm on a roll, rollll, rollllllll

                                                                                                                                                                  ***

Golden Age was looking good. Jonah felt that usual combination sense of smugness and relief that his decision to bypass the Belmont had been the right one for the colt. Wit had backed off his feed a bit over the last week and a half since the Belmont and seemed for the first time in his life, a bit tired. The Belmont winner had been bumped back to a lighter maintenance regime with sights set on a strong late summer and fall campaign towards the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Paranormal’s win in the Woody Stephens had been monumental for the colt’s psyche but Jonah wasn’t ready to put him back up just yet. The Dwyer over 8.5f would get him back to distance, after that they would see.   Golden Age, at weight and rumbling like a freight train each morning was Triple Birch’s best shot for a summer championship.

The Haskell Invitational was circled, but nothing was definite yet. Today the three year old would breeze for the first time since the Preakness, and after that Jonah would see.

Mal sat up on the big colt outside the gap waiting for their call to the inside. In the way that cowardice often turns, the Medaglia d’Oro colt had taken his fear and turned it into raw machismo. He’d become something of a bully. He didn’t nip or kick or body check people like Wit and even Paranormal tended too, but he was prone to defensive and posturing behavior. Even now under Mal he snorted and squealed at nearby horses, neck arched and teeth clacking. Mal who Jonah figured knew plenty about male posturing ignored the colt in favor of attempted distraction, jiggling on the rein, making him spin on his haunches or leg yield across the Belmont dirt. The colt had no knowledge of any of these things, really, but he was athletic and despite his behavior he wasn’t a complete idiot.

“You’re up,” Jonah said.

Mal nodded and let the colt go forward. The colt trotted for half a step and then broke forward into a big hard canter, like some heavy working hunter. Mal let the colt settle himself out for a half a mile and then collected him. The colt’s gait rounded and his ears pinned, he was about ready to blow by the time Mal set him loose at the quarter pole. The colt ripped out from Mal’s hands; going faster than Jonah usually liked to see. His gait was smooth, even, and he gained speed with each stride for another quarter then he hit it pace held it for an eighth of a mile and began to drop out. Mal let the colt run out at his decreasing pace for the remaining eighth of the set and then brought him back down.

The colt was gleaming with sweat, nostrils flared and eyes rimmed with white. No doubt his time would be one of the better ones of the day, which would cause undue press speculation. Jonah was of the opinion that the colt needed the blowout to prevent him from peaking too soon; the Haskell wasn’t for another six weeks after all.

***

Cass, who was arguably their most talented two year old simply because she had the working mind of an experienced five year old race mare, proved to possess shit luck. She worked well every morning, she had the benefit of an exercise rider who’d been a world class jockey, the benefit of one of the top jockeys, and despite all the advantages give to her up against luck they didn’t mean more than third in her first outing.

The filly next to her had been an asshole in the gate and proceeded to clip Cass on the way out the gate. Then the filly on the other side had veered out in childish fear and impending Cass’s path which set Cass way off the pace where she didn’t want to be. By the time Hallie had put the filly in a half-decent place the idiot filly from the gate had lost her pace, sunk back, and pushed Cass back farther. Cass, for the first time in her brief existence, had been frazzled.

Hallie felt the switch in the filly’s brain the second it happened, the sort of frantic frozen feeling humans experience when too many things go wrong in too short a span of time. The race wasn’t salvageable, but the filly’s sanity might be. Hallie used the turn for home as a means to get the filly on the outside and then went wide down the stretch. The filly was too far off the pace, but the open space allowed the filly to refocus, to remember what her job was, and to lose a bit of stress. She made a good rally and it earned her a hard won third.

“All things considered,” Jonah said with a shrug when they finally got back.

“Not a closer,” Hallie said, “She doesn’t mind horses in her space, but she doesn’t withstand fools.”

“Me either.”

***

Gavri’el, or Gavs, as he’d come to be known about the barn was universally thought of as a lovable pain in the ass. He was a gorgeous animal, tall and leggy and he had an excellent way of going over the grass. That was when he decided to focus

The day of his maiden was decidedly not one of those days. Jonah watched with benign frustration and amusement as the big white animal skipped over Belmont’s green with all the forward motion of a lazy turtle. In a way it was comforting after the decisive starts the rest of his two year old crew had made that this one be an utter failure. Granted if positive experience was the whole point of maidens and the horseman in Jonah knew it was even if the sportsman thought otherwise; the colt was highly successful in his first endeavor into the career world of racing. He had an absolutely fantastic time out there on the Belmont turf.

He went left, he went right, he sped up randomly around the 3rd furlong, then he slowed about the turn for home seemingly because he wanted to, he missed his lead change but somehow along the homestretch thought of switching on and off his correct lead four strides in a row. He came in dead last, ears pricked and eyes bright. Luc made his usual jockey apologies and Jonah waved them off as a grinning Estefan clipped a lead on the colt and took him for his test piss.

Jonah watched, arms folded, smiling, as the colt feigned pissing three separate times much to the annoyance of the test barn employees. The colt final dropped his dick and got on with it when Jonah’s cell rang.

“I saw that,” Travis said on the other end.

“Miserable attempt wasn’t it,” Jonah said cheerily.

“His works have been decent,” Travis said.

“Yup. He’s just a pain in the ass. The racing bug hasn’t bit him in the ass yet,” Jonah said, “He’s young. We’ll try him with blinders next time.”

***

“She’s peaky,” Maggie laughed after she reined in the lithe, dark, filly.

“Yeah?” Dean replied with a grin from atop one of the new track ponies they were trying out, a blue roan quarter pony that allegedly was called Ana.

Dean had no idea where the new ponies – of whom Ana was the only real pony – had come from. For as long as he’d worked for Jonah, which hadn’t been that long there was just Chelsea who was an ex-claimer and Geronimo who’d been a green pony hunter (and quite good at it too apparently) until he’d grown two inches over pony size, leopard appaloosa while cute for kids wasn’t a preferred color in adult hunter rings. Scout had more or less claimed the spotted thing as her own which left Dean on the ground or on Chelsea, neither of which he minded.

Jonah was expanding though, which Dean didn’t mind in the least. With Lacey’s injury they were already looking to pull another exercise rider or two into the fray, and the addition of Foster Farms looked to be just the beginning to new clients. Yesterday Dean had caught Jonah giving a tour to a very bewildered young couple and then two days prior he was wandering about with a Marilyn Monroe knockoff and her Clooney looking husband. Dean was all about expansion, expansion provided more horses which meant more purses which meant more money and fame. It also meant that instead of hanging out as the third rung trainer he’d probably get a set or two of clients as his own to manage under Jonah.

It was already feeling like Foster Farms had become his, and if Dean had to guess Marilyn and George would probably be headed his way. Dean had a reputation or at least an image; he was gregarious and handsome and charming. The press liked to talk to him and Dean didn’t mind talking to the press. Owners had always liked him, and that didn’t matter so much with people like Travis, but owners – people in it for the thrills and the game – wanted the whole package, they wanted the gorgeous horseflesh and the winners circle and the movie star looking trainer leading them to the cameras.

“You a peaky lil’ girl ain’t you,” the exercise girl laughed as she hopped down and played with the filly’s mouth.

Maggie wasn’t wrong; the filly was turned up tight. She had a maiden at the end of the month, day before they left for Saratoga, which ought to be a good first race for Ms. Vera Rose to watch. It was likely to be a win.

***

Double Up looked great. It was as if Jonah’s desire for a GI win notch in the filly’s belt had been communicated clearly to her. She ate every grain and every flake of hay with gusto, occasionally she tore her bucket off the wall in protest for more. She ran steady every workout, breezed strongly but not too strong, and she’d gotten that sharp look in her eye. Make me a millionaire, it seemed to say.

Scout felt a touch sad every time she looked at the filly, who was no longer little and soft and kind as she once had been. She was a race mare now and race mares think of one thing, racing and winning.

The Mother Goose at 8.5 f on the Belmont oval had been chosen for Double Up’s next step towards millionaire status. Should she win she’d have a GI win under her belt for the first time, which was the whole point after all. Travis and Sienna had come down a day early to take a look at everyone. Jonah, who was known to prefer working his horses as early as possible, had pushed back the sets to a more reasonable, human hour. Scout, was not complaining. Even though she still had to be at the barn at four-forty five the fact that she could take an hour after feeding to sit and sip her coffee was precious enough.

By seven am things began to set in motion. Wit, being the biggest name in the barn, was set to go first. It was his first time under tack since the Belmont and it would be the least exciting workout of the morning, consisting of mostly trotting and a slow canter about the outside of the track. Jonah and Dean had taken Travis and Sienna up to the Turf Club for breakfast with left her with the enviable job of prepping the horses and exercise riders.

With Lacey injured and the influx of two year olds they’d had to go searching for a new exercise rider. For the last week they’d been relying on catch riders and the charity of their preferred jockeys, but come the shift to Saratoga neither would mesh well with the schedule they’d be on, especially with more and more owners wanting to get into Jonah’s barn. Scout, who was in charge of these things since Jonah didn’t much like making decisions really whereas she thrived on it, had picked up a recent college graduate who was looking for some extra cash to make a post college existential crisis affordable.

Scout liked the girl, a lot, if only because it was nice to be around someone who was eager and capable of talking Foucault. She also clicked with Wit, which was funny only because Naomi was clearly so intelligent and Wit was so lacking. Two days ago when Scout had given her the compulsory shed row tour Wit had given her the equine version of a hug upon greeting. They’d tossed her up on him about the backside just to make sure he wasn’t likely to pull nonsense today in front of Travis, but Scout hadn’t ever had a real worry about it. The colt was weird and Scout had more or less given up assigning him character traits, he always seemed to subvert whatever they thought of him anyway.

Scout left the barn atop Geronimo, who she was beginning to consider her own pet horse (he had been certain of her belonging to him for some time now) with Wit in tow on the pony line and Naomi up looking cool as ice. You’d think considering she’d been hired two days ago and was set to show off the Belmont winner for his wealthy owner she’d be a bit more anxious but she wasn’t. She was a Jersey girl and had spent every summer since she was sixteen exercise riding for one of her father’s friends at Monmouth, that was how she found and afforded her horses.

“Do you have any horses left?”

Naomi shook her head, “Sold my jumper in March to a Grand Prix rider in Florida. At WEF. He’s doing very well with her. My trainer has me working some client horses in the evening and in the mornings I’m here,” she said with a shrug.

“Do you miss owning a horse?”

“Not as much as I thought I would,” she replied, “It’s hard to afford rent and board. And I got sick of the bullshit for a ribbon, at least with racing its bullshit for an actual chunk of change. It makes more sense, you know?”

“It’s exhausting, all the same,” Scout replied.

“You look tired,” Naomi said, “I’m learning life is just a whole lot of being tired.”

Scout chuckled, “I don’t think I learned that till the last year.”

“Well what are you, twenty-five?”

“My god I owe you a drink for that,” Scout said with a laugh, “No, I’m thirty-one.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“Well that’s good I suppose or not. Perhaps that’s the reason I don’t have my life together like all my thirty-one year old friends. No husband, no house, no baby.”

“Funny isn’t it, how biology and culture makes us think we have to have all that? Who knows what we really want, least of all ourselves, when we’ve got compulsory heterosexuality lodged in our throats.”

Scout paused for a moment. “I dated Mal Quinn, we just broke up.”

“Ah so it’s all twisted up for you right now. You thought you had the husband, house and baby coming to you.”

“I did.”

“How do you feel about it now?”

“Kind of relieved, to be honest.”

“Well,” she said pointedly.

They approached the gap where a small horde awaited them. Jonah and Dean and Travis and Sienna and then unexpectedly Travis’s mother, farther down was the expected throng of reporters eagerly awaiting to see Wit’s first work since the Belmont. Scout had gone over the plan with Naomi at least two dozen times, but still felt compelled to remind her.

“Trot for twenty minutes, let him out for a light canter around the-

“Boss, I know,” she smiled, “I got this. Just walk me on the track.”

Scout did as she was told. For a half mile she jogged alongside Wit and then she let the pair loose and turned back to the gap. Naomi did as she was told and Wit did as she told him, the trotted for a very long time. Scout watched the colt’s legs for any sign of weakness or waver, but there wasn’t any. She kept him on a looser rein than anyone before had ever dared and he seemed to enjoy stretching out and going like a working hunter. When she let him canter out he was eager but soft about it, lips flapping and ears flicking back and forth to catch Naomi’s every word.

“He likes her,” Travis commented.

“We haven’t the faintest idea why, but yes,” Jonah supplied.

“He looks good, bit underweight but that’s to be expected,” Travis said.

“We think by the end of August he’ll be peaking,” Jonah replied. Everyone nodded. The words wouldn’t, couldn’t, be said yet, but everyone on the rail that morning was thinking the same thing, Travers.

***

The Mother Goose was set to be a showstopper. Enthrall, the Oaks winner and the Black Eyed Susan winner, then there was Tizadarling reappearing since her third place finish in the Oaks. Then there was an unknown quality in the Gazelle (G2) winner, a big grey filly out of the G1 winning mare Confessional by Bernardini. She was a brute of a filly who’d gone unnoticed thanks to Marzanna’s complete domination of last year’s two year old filly division. She had ran second to Marzanna in the Frizette – which truth be told Jonah hadn’t even remembered – and done a gamely third in the Filly’s Juvenile considering what she was up against. They’d kept her out of things for the winter until the Gazelle in April where she ripped across Aqueduct and held the whole race from start to finish.

Jonah was of the opinion that despite the odds; Colpevole – the grey filly – was the one that Double Up was going to need to beat. Tizadarling was looking sharp every morning, and Enthrall still earned her name with her cavorting each morning on the Belmont oval. But the filly had to be tired. Tizadarling was clearly a classy filly, but since her Oaks loss Jonah had the feeling her owners had taken a more philosophical approach to their charge, it was likely next year would be her big season. Colpevole hadn’t had a race since April and she was more than ready. She was also the equine equivalent of one of those overdeveloped mean girls in all the teen movies; she was big and bad and she knew it.

If one hung with the metaphor then from where Jonah and everyone else was standing Double Up was the heroine. She’d had to toughen up the last few months, learn how to curl her hair and put on lipstick properly, but underneath it she was the good girl. Everyone loves a good dichotomy and that afternoon Belmont provided it.

Enthrall was the betting favorite, which was expected. She looked fierce as always in the paddock and strong in the warm-up. Colpevole was sitting at second because of her color and intimidating presence and Tizadarling and Double Up had been flip flopping all morning. Their filly looks good, little, but bright and unafraid. All four fillies warmed up strongly and the whole field loaded without incident. No the drama came when the gates flung upon.

Colpevole shot right to the front with Tizadarling quick on her heels. Double Up was tucked neatly into the pack, right where they had talked about wanting her. Enthrall was deep in the back right where she wanted to be.

The grey filly set blistering fractions and Double Up sunk back. Tizadarling fought to be where she liked to, right off the pace, but by the backstretch it was clear the big bay was struggling to keep up with the scorching pace the grey was countering with. Double Up was back off the pace, more than Jonah wanted to see.

“Shit,” Dean muttered under his breath. Everyone else was silent.

Suddenly Enthrall was looking like the horse to beat yet again. The brutal pace could only benefit the lithe bay. Tizadarling began to sink back, neck flecked with foam. Double Up was stuck in fifth, unable to move forward.

They all collided about the turn for home. Double Up, by virtue of the situation, made it to fourth as Tizadarling continued to fall back. Colpevole continued her charge and Enthrall came to life and tore out of dead last, nicking off the seventh and sixth place horses with ease. Double Up fired. She made it into third when suddenly Enthrall was upon her on the outside. Colpevole was ahead by five lengths, the second place horse hanging on her tail. Enthrall had her sights on Colpevole, but Double Up had her sights on Enthrall. Pitting the little chestnut against his own big bad grey filly had taught her a thing or two, namely it had made her bold. She wanted to take Enthrall down.

Enthrall flicked an ear at Double Up’s invading presence and ground her teeth at her contestation. The second place filly fell back. Colpevole wasn’t going any faster, but she certainly wasn’t giving an inch. Enthrall and Double Up, hooked up together, gained on the grey.

They crossed under wire together in a mess of limbs and tight packed bodies. The whole grandstand rumbled with excitement. Jonah let Dean lead the way down to await their filly and the results. By the time they waded through the congratulations from other trainers and owners Double Up and Frankie were back as were the other two fillies.

“I don’t know boss,” he said as he clamped Jonah’s hand in greeting, “I don’t know. It was real close. She ran brave though.”

“Hell of a race Frankie,” Jonah replied.

Colpevole and Enthrall’s trainers came up to exchange declarations of fortune and establish the quality of race their collective fillies had just run. Then the photo flashed. They had it by the fucking sliver of her delicate little nostril.

Cheers went up and the handshakes turned to shoulder patting and hugging. The filly was officially a Grade One winner.

***

Hallie had a terrible sense of timing, she knew this and she wondered how much of it was intentional. She tried to rationalize her choice in the seconds that led up to it; he’d just won a G1 so even this little bit of bad news wouldn’t damper him that much, right? Travis would take them all out to a nice dinner and there’d be partying after and no doubt something pretty would catch his eye and he could fuck his misery over her away.

She felt guiltier than she cared to admit.

She knew she was doing it in all the wrong ways, the only thing worse would be a text message and she couldn’t do that because she didn’t even have his number. He was still coated in sweat and caked in dirt from the win when she walked up to him.

“Good race,” she said.

His face, previously filled with unadulterated joy, froze. He knew. He knew then. So, she got on with it.

“We shouldn’t do this anymore,” she said quietly, too quiet for anyone but him to hear, “I’m done.”

His face seized up for the briefest moment, but in it Hallie saw a thousand things he wanted to say and how he felt and yeah this had stopped being a hook up for him and maybe for her too but she was too damaged and too set in her ways to change for him, to change now, to change for anyone least of all herself.

“Yeah,” he said then with a bright smile that could have and did tell everyone else in the jock’s room it was all a-okay, “Sounds good.”

***

Frankie felt like he ought to go to the hospital.

There was no actual reason for it. He was a little drunk and he’d done a casual line or two of coke at the after-after party, but he was fine. Cognitively he was fine and he knew it.

But he was also fairly certain he was going to die. Or was in the process of dying. Maybe both.

The more he sipped at his whiskey – which she’d gotten him drinking in the first place – the more he nursed a plan that involved driving to her place and dramatically shouting about his feelings preferably in the rain. He was also sober enough to know how idiotic he was for thinking up such a thing in the first place.

Maybe he was infatuated with her for all the wrong reasons, maybe it’d never been anything but a hook-up for her, maybe it’d all just been projection on his part. But it didn’t feel that way and that might make him insane, but he’d take being insane over wrong. Didn’t she rest her head on his shoulder that time? She brought him on walks with her dogs. She told him about her father once. About how she didn’t talk to her mother. She said things to him, things that matter, things you just don’t go around talking about. That was something wasn’t it?

Fuck it, it didn’t matter anyway.

He got up off the couch in the lounge and picked out the girl with biggest tits at the bar and decided fuck it, it didn’t matter anyway.

***

Noah liked the colt.

Cryptology wasn’t hard to dislike though. He was a touch skittish, something you’d expect more out of fillies then a three year old colt, but he was affably and kind. He liked affection well enough and he enjoyed his grooming and walking and didn’t mind the vet or farrier. His abscess had healed cleanly and today he’d get under tack for the first time in two months.

Noah put his smallest girl up on him, a ninety pounder who’d just graduated with an Equine Science and Management degree, and let her play about with him in one of the back fields.

“He’s soft for a racehorse,” she commented as she managed to get him into a decent working trot, frame and all.

“He’s a good boy.”

“Well yeah, but no offense boss but racers always tend to be stiff, they want to pull left all the time. You know get to the rail. He’s real soft, just falls in your hand like a nice hunter would,” she called out.

“Alright, well see if he keeps it up at the canter.”

She laughed as she let him loose. He had a brilliant gait, smooth and sweeping. He didn’t drag himself as low as a lot of racers tended to and his step was always careful.

“Nope, still soft. He feels sound, how does he look?”

“Sound,” Noah replied.

He let her work him for ten more minutes and then he ended things. Walking back to the barn she asked the expecting question, what next?”

“Field a few more days, then I suppose we’ll stick him on the oval. He’s got a few more dollars to make, I think.”

***

Initially the trip out started off well. The filly had loaded up with only minor incident and they had had plenty to talk about on the road; Eminence’s win, Aponivi’s stunner of a maiden, the rest of the two year olds and the people they worked with. By Delaware though silence had cut between them and Scout hadn’t the faintest idea of how to surpass it.

By Virginia she just settled for silence. He checked his phone, then when he took the turn to drive she flitted through all forms of social media as a means to distract herself from the awkwardness. They’d never had that talk and Scout wasn’t quite sure how to feel about any of it. About him. About what she even wanted. When did life stop being one existential crisis after another?

So they got to Churchill. They got Renegade settled, and Geronimo too and left them there till the morning. They checked into their rooms at the Holiday Inn and then decided to get dinner. She told him she didn’t care. He picked Applebee’s. She had a shitty margarita about it.

Three margaritas in she gained a bit of courage.

“What the fuck are we doing Mal?”

He looked up from his potato skins with wide brown eyes. Before he had a chance to answer she started again.

“We had a good thing you know. I thought for once that I had a good thing. I never had a good thing like I had till I had it with you. And you’re entirely fucked so what does that say about me?”

He glanced at her margarita –which she rolled her eyes at – and then up at her.

“That you’re fucked too?”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel better,” he replied, “I’m trying to be honest. You careen from one existential crisis to the next and you never really settle up with any of your demons, you just sidestep them by going on vacation or burying yourself in your work. I do drugs. You go into denial.”

She stared at him.

“AA has taught me some stuff.”

“I can see that.”

He shrugged and bit off a piece of his potato. Scout drained the rest of her margarita and wondered how this was all meant to end, if anything was meant at all.

***

Jungle Fever, the aptly named dark bay filly belonging to Foster Farms was ready for her first date with racing. The filly was by Pioneerof the Nile out of the illustrious Storm Cat mare Raging Fever and she seemed set to prove her bloodlines right. She’d also cost Ms. Vera Rose a pretty fucking penny. Today they’d recoup at least the expenses she’d accrued since she’d been in Jonah’s shedrow.

It was a maiden over six furlongs. It was a soft field and the filly stood out on paper, let alone in the paddock. It wasn’t any surprise that she was going off at 2-1 odds. The filly was her usual prissy and hot self; she snapped at Estefan and kicked out at Dean when he tightened her girth. Jonah tossed Frankie up on her and she reared up in the paddock as response coming down with a snort and a shake of her head. She showed off her flashy trot in the post parade and broke away to her warm-up with a customary kick at the pony horse. She was a Storm Cat to the bone and she acted as they tended too.

No, the real maiden was Ms. Vera Rose, who had been fretting all morning and was still fretting in Jonah’s box as her brutish although admittedly beautiful monster terror of a filly made a cursory attempt to maul one of the starters.

“Darling,” Jonah finally said, “If your horse could talk she’d be laughing at you right now. She’s ready, even if you aren’t.”

Dean, who was the good cop of their little routine, gave her knee a friendly if not wholly patronizing squeeze. There were woman on which patriarchal gestures were a comfort too, most of the ones in Dean’s life were not, but Southern Belle Vera Rose certainly was. She settled down until the last handful of seconds before the gate flung open. She got frantic for a moment and somehow Dean ended up holding her hand.

The filly blew to first without contest.

Vera Rose screamed and teared up, free hand on her chest.

“My god,” she said as the pair of them led her to the winners, “Wasn’t that fun?”

***

Marzanna was too skinny.

Initially she had been brought out to the training farm on the Triple Birch complex but she’d done the opposite of thrive. Despite the grazing and the quality of feed and the supplements she refused to eat more than a few bites of anything they put in front of her. Within a few weeks she had to get fluids daily. Tests were run, they came back clean and as well as one could expect considering she was undernourished and on the edge of dehydration.

Noah had suggested they send her to the broodmare farm.

It seemed to Travis at first a resignation. If the filly lived and that was becoming a more ominous and looming ‘if’ with each passing day it seemed that she wasn’t likely to ever step foot on a track again.

They stuck her in one of the small back paddocks at first. She continued as she had, listless and dull, when the barn manager suggested they put her out with the broodmare band, with her mother. Travis had dismissed the suggestion at first, it seemed too dangerous, too risky, but then he watched the filly stand in the center of her lush paddock and not eat and not eat, just stare at the ground, at nothing and he knew in his gut that this was the only chance he could give her.

So after the mares in the Alpha band, her mother’s band, had been fed and their fresh foals sufficiently worn out by one another they let the filly out. At first Marzanna hadn’t realized or hadn’t cared to realize that amid the grass sea were other living, breathing equine beings. Slowly as the mares moved back to the barn in their afternoon grazing pattern it dawned on both parties that an unknown element – Marzanna – was present.

Her dam was the first to notice, but although she saw and perhaps recognized her daughter she made no more forward but grazed peacefully amid the crest of the large hill with her new daughter who looked neither like her or her eldest. The splash filly who had no name yet outside of iterations of baby, but she had more than enough personality to make up for the lack of a moniker.

The other babies were sleepy due to her. She was a firebrand; curious and bright in all the ways all her half-sisters and half-brothers had been aloof and distant. Her playmates were nursing or sleeping, but she was full of milk and awake yet and there was something new in her field. So with the confidence only the young can possess she cavorted over to the unknown entity in her space, her elder half-sister of which she knew naught of.

Marzanna came alive at the sight if only out of shock. That was before impact.

The filly unceremoniously head butted her elder sister square in the chest and then flitted away in an expectation of revenge. Marzanna who wasn’t moved in the slightest by the attack gawked at the creature that had so boldly dared to violate her personal space. The filly took the lack of response as encouragement to charge again, which she did, this time spooking Marzanna into action. The older filly, out of shape and underweight didn’t make it particularly far but she made it far enough to disinterest the younger.

Marzanna, shaken up, but otherwise ignored by the mares and now several hundred yards off the herd, looked at a loss for what to do or how to act. For some time she stood, experiencing anxiety for perhaps the first time in her life, and watched. The foals roused from their naps and rose to nurse and then play. The mares continued their circadian grazing occasionally letting out a watchful nicker when their baby went off too far for their liking. Eventually the filly perhaps out of boredom or perhaps out of a desire to bypass some anxiety dropped her nose to the grass and began to eat.

***

The Australian mares had arrived. Although the one, the bay, was known for being skittish and spooky she and her grey stablemate arrived at Triple Birch without injury or issue. They spent their first days in the quarantine barn, getting blood drawn and tests run to ensure they weren’t incidentally bringing any sort of foreign borne illness. One they’d been cleared they took a walk each morning to flirt with Triple Birch’s teaser stallion. The grey mare, expectedly, went into season first but perhaps encouraged by her stablemate’s hormones the bay mare went into season soon enough.

By irony or perhaps fate Travis was able to be present for the breedings, he typically did so, but typically the breeding season was wrapped up by April. All his other mares had been bred and confirmed in foal. In a way it was a good thing they’d arrived so late, the Australian breeding season wouldn’t be for another few months but it was close enough yet to trick the pair into season.

The grey went first. She was on the cusp of ovulation and putting on more of a display than the bay, which convinced the vets, the handlers and Travis that if either of them were to get in foal it was likelier to be her.

Although Triple Birch’s season hadn’t yet ended (It would on July 3rd) Gunslinger hadn’t seen a mare in over a week. It was then with profound excitement that he greeted the big grey Australian mare. She received his advances well although he wasn’t the most charming or sensitive stallion (he’d always been a bit of a brute and his relative inexperience in the breeding shed meant some convincing frequently had to be done on the part of the mare handlers) and the deed was done.

For the bay mare, who despite her spook was already affectionately received by the broodmare handlers, Travis had decided the best course of action both in regards to pedigree and character was to let her visit Birchwood. Despite his sway back and age he was notably more experienced and gentle than any other stallion in the barn. Chronological was particularly rough and a biter to boot, Sultanof Swing was big and strong, Genghis Khan was prone to being inadvertently careless in his own excitement, and although Suspicion wasn’t mean or rough he was quite loud and aggressive. Birchwood was quiet and quick and unfailingly polite. Also with Seattle Slew on top and Pleasant Colony on the bottom you had to get runner.

The mare wasn’t a maiden, but her nature had them handle her as such. Birchwood was his usual considerate self, no biting, no squealing, no kicking. The deed was done and the mare, a bit dazed from it all, was shipped back down to the broodmare sector. Fourteen days later Travis would get a call at lunch from his vet that both mares were in foal.

***

Renegade was strange. Perhaps because of her relatively short tenure in Jonah’s shed row she hadn’t made too much of a personal impression on anyone. Mal rode her in the mornings and still had yet to get any sense of the filly’s personality. She wasn’t otherworldly like Marzanna but she was distant and uninterested in the lives of humans. She was big and fast and no Thoroughbred had ever needed a personality to win.

And win they did.

Frankie Deltino had flown down to Churchill for the Debutante romp over 6f. Renegade was the only unraced filly in the field, but her size and presence and color had the bettors friendly towards her. Although she’d never done anything more than school a bit in the paddock she handled the experience as though she’d lived and done it a thousand times before. Churchill was quiet, the meet about to end, and few had turned up to see the race. It was only after the fact did anyone care at all.

Renegade won by twelve lengths under a hand ride by Deltino after sitting over twelve lengths off the leader. She had also taken the track record. The show had Bloodhorse and DRF and Thoroughbred Times at their shed row the next morning ready with recorders for a few choice soundbites. Triple Crown season, after all, was over and now the two year olds were coming out to play.

“She’s a good filly,” Scout repeated patiently for the press, “Mr. McCailen bought her out of a dispersal sale, liked her size and presence and she passed all the tests. We haven’t had her for long but she shows up every morning and we figured she might do something like this.”

The reporters nodded, a woman from DRF turned to Mal.

“You ride her in the mornings correct? Do you think your experience as a top jockey has given her an edge?”

“Sure, I’d love to think that, thanks for the idea,” he said with a grin, “But in all seriousness she’s just a good filly. She’s mature and she wants to work.”

More nods. A man from Bloodhorse asked about the filly’s next potential start.

Scout shrugged, “We’ll get her up to Saratoga with the rest and see how she takes it up

There. But we expect she’ll be a contender in the juvenile division.”

“You seem to have a strong two year old string with the win of Aponivi, Marzanna’s half-brother, and you had a strong run by Tizme here at Churchill earlier in the month.”

“We did,” Scout replied, “Tizme will get another shot at a maiden once we’re settled in Saratoga. As for Aponivi we’ll have him tell us what he wants to do.”

“It’s early I know, but any resemblance to his sister?”

Mal laughed, “Well he’s certainly a lot shorter.”

Scout even smiled at the quip, “He has good work ethic. He likes to work and he knows his job. Otherwise like you said it’s too early to tell.”

                                                                                                                                                                           ***

Look how grown up Gabe is!!! Ref'd a pic of his sire horsephotos.com/watermark.jsp?…

Name: Golden Age
Barn name: Gabe, Pretty Boy, The golden boy
Gender: Colt
Age: 3
Breed: Thoroughbred
Height: 16.2
Color: Bay
Markings: Blaze, Front socks
Genotype: Ee/AA
Discipline: Racing
Preferred Distance: 8+ furlongs
Running Style: First Flight
Temperament: Fun. He's bright and friendly and doesn't seem to have a mean bone in his body. He's unfailingly polite and considerate towards just about everyone, that said he does have a bit of anxiety floating around, especially when large crowds of unfamiliar people are concerned.
Pedigree: Foundation (Medaglia d’Oro x Life at Ten)

Description

I'm on a roll, rollll, rollllllll

                                                                                                                                                                  ***

Golden Age was looking good. Jonah felt that usual combination sense of smugness and relief that his decision to bypass the Belmont had been the right one for the colt. Wit had backed off his feed a bit over the last week and a half since the Belmont and seemed for the first time in his life, a bit tired. The Belmont winner had been bumped back to a lighter maintenance regime with sights set on a strong late summer and fall campaign towards the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Paranormal’s win in the Woody Stephens had been monumental for the colt’s psyche but Jonah wasn’t ready to put him back up just yet. The Dwyer over 8.5f would get him back to distance, after that they would see.   Golden Age, at weight and rumbling like a freight train each morning was Triple Birch’s best shot for a summer championship.

The Haskell Invitational was circled, but nothing was definite yet. Today the three year old would breeze for the first time since the Preakness, and after that Jonah would see.

Mal sat up on the big colt outside the gap waiting for their call to the inside. In the way that cowardice often turns, the Medaglia d’Oro colt had taken his fear and turned it into raw machismo. He’d become something of a bully. He didn’t nip or kick or body check people like Wit and even Paranormal tended too, but he was prone to defensive and posturing behavior. Even now under Mal he snorted and squealed at nearby horses, neck arched and teeth clacking. Mal who Jonah figured knew plenty about male posturing ignored the colt in favor of attempted distraction, jiggling on the rein, making him spin on his haunches or leg yield across the Belmont dirt. The colt had no knowledge of any of these things, really, but he was athletic and despite his behavior he wasn’t a complete idiot.

“You’re up,” Jonah said.

Mal nodded and let the colt go forward. The colt trotted for half a step and then broke forward into a big hard canter, like some heavy working hunter. Mal let the colt settle himself out for a half a mile and then collected him. The colt’s gait rounded and his ears pinned, he was about ready to blow by the time Mal set him loose at the quarter pole. The colt ripped out from Mal’s hands; going faster than Jonah usually liked to see. His gait was smooth, even, and he gained speed with each stride for another quarter then he hit it pace held it for an eighth of a mile and began to drop out. Mal let the colt run out at his decreasing pace for the remaining eighth of the set and then brought him back down.

The colt was gleaming with sweat, nostrils flared and eyes rimmed with white. No doubt his time would be one of the better ones of the day, which would cause undue press speculation. Jonah was of the opinion that the colt needed the blowout to prevent him from peaking too soon; the Haskell wasn’t for another six weeks after all.

***

Cass, who was arguably their most talented two year old simply because she had the working mind of an experienced five year old race mare, proved to possess shit luck. She worked well every morning, she had the benefit of an exercise rider who’d been a world class jockey, the benefit of one of the top jockeys, and despite all the advantages give to her up against luck they didn’t mean more than third in her first outing.

The filly next to her had been an asshole in the gate and proceeded to clip Cass on the way out the gate. Then the filly on the other side had veered out in childish fear and impending Cass’s path which set Cass way off the pace where she didn’t want to be. By the time Hallie had put the filly in a half-decent place the idiot filly from the gate had lost her pace, sunk back, and pushed Cass back farther. Cass, for the first time in her brief existence, had been frazzled.

Hallie felt the switch in the filly’s brain the second it happened, the sort of frantic frozen feeling humans experience when too many things go wrong in too short a span of time. The race wasn’t salvageable, but the filly’s sanity might be. Hallie used the turn for home as a means to get the filly on the outside and then went wide down the stretch. The filly was too far off the pace, but the open space allowed the filly to refocus, to remember what her job was, and to lose a bit of stress. She made a good rally and it earned her a hard won third.

“All things considered,” Jonah said with a shrug when they finally got back.

“Not a closer,” Hallie said, “She doesn’t mind horses in her space, but she doesn’t withstand fools.”

“Me either.”

***

Gavri’el, or Gavs, as he’d come to be known about the barn was universally thought of as a lovable pain in the ass. He was a gorgeous animal, tall and leggy and he had an excellent way of going over the grass. That was when he decided to focus

The day of his maiden was decidedly not one of those days. Jonah watched with benign frustration and amusement as the big white animal skipped over Belmont’s green with all the forward motion of a lazy turtle. In a way it was comforting after the decisive starts the rest of his two year old crew had made that this one be an utter failure. Granted if positive experience was the whole point of maidens and the horseman in Jonah knew it was even if the sportsman thought otherwise; the colt was highly successful in his first endeavor into the career world of racing. He had an absolutely fantastic time out there on the Belmont turf.

He went left, he went right, he sped up randomly around the 3rd furlong, then he slowed about the turn for home seemingly because he wanted to, he missed his lead change but somehow along the homestretch thought of switching on and off his correct lead four strides in a row. He came in dead last, ears pricked and eyes bright. Luc made his usual jockey apologies and Jonah waved them off as a grinning Estefan clipped a lead on the colt and took him for his test piss.

Jonah watched, arms folded, smiling, as the colt feigned pissing three separate times much to the annoyance of the test barn employees. The colt final dropped his dick and got on with it when Jonah’s cell rang.

“I saw that,” Travis said on the other end.

“Miserable attempt wasn’t it,” Jonah said cheerily.

“His works have been decent,” Travis said.

“Yup. He’s just a pain in the ass. The racing bug hasn’t bit him in the ass yet,” Jonah said, “He’s young. We’ll try him with blinders next time.”

***

“She’s peaky,” Maggie laughed after she reined in the lithe, dark, filly.

“Yeah?” Dean replied with a grin from atop one of the new track ponies they were trying out, a blue roan quarter pony that allegedly was called Ana.

Dean had no idea where the new ponies – of whom Ana was the only real pony – had come from. For as long as he’d worked for Jonah, which hadn’t been that long there was just Chelsea who was an ex-claimer and Geronimo who’d been a green pony hunter (and quite good at it too apparently) until he’d grown two inches over pony size, leopard appaloosa while cute for kids wasn’t a preferred color in adult hunter rings. Scout had more or less claimed the spotted thing as her own which left Dean on the ground or on Chelsea, neither of which he minded.

Jonah was expanding though, which Dean didn’t mind in the least. With Lacey’s injury they were already looking to pull another exercise rider or two into the fray, and the addition of Foster Farms looked to be just the beginning to new clients. Yesterday Dean had caught Jonah giving a tour to a very bewildered young couple and then two days prior he was wandering about with a Marilyn Monroe knockoff and her Clooney looking husband. Dean was all about expansion, expansion provided more horses which meant more purses which meant more money and fame. It also meant that instead of hanging out as the third rung trainer he’d probably get a set or two of clients as his own to manage under Jonah.

It was already feeling like Foster Farms had become his, and if Dean had to guess Marilyn and George would probably be headed his way. Dean had a reputation or at least an image; he was gregarious and handsome and charming. The press liked to talk to him and Dean didn’t mind talking to the press. Owners had always liked him, and that didn’t matter so much with people like Travis, but owners – people in it for the thrills and the game – wanted the whole package, they wanted the gorgeous horseflesh and the winners circle and the movie star looking trainer leading them to the cameras.

“You a peaky lil’ girl ain’t you,” the exercise girl laughed as she hopped down and played with the filly’s mouth.

Maggie wasn’t wrong; the filly was turned up tight. She had a maiden at the end of the month, day before they left for Saratoga, which ought to be a good first race for Ms. Vera Rose to watch. It was likely to be a win.

***

Double Up looked great. It was as if Jonah’s desire for a GI win notch in the filly’s belt had been communicated clearly to her. She ate every grain and every flake of hay with gusto, occasionally she tore her bucket off the wall in protest for more. She ran steady every workout, breezed strongly but not too strong, and she’d gotten that sharp look in her eye. Make me a millionaire, it seemed to say.

Scout felt a touch sad every time she looked at the filly, who was no longer little and soft and kind as she once had been. She was a race mare now and race mares think of one thing, racing and winning.

The Mother Goose at 8.5 f on the Belmont oval had been chosen for Double Up’s next step towards millionaire status. Should she win she’d have a GI win under her belt for the first time, which was the whole point after all. Travis and Sienna had come down a day early to take a look at everyone. Jonah, who was known to prefer working his horses as early as possible, had pushed back the sets to a more reasonable, human hour. Scout, was not complaining. Even though she still had to be at the barn at four-forty five the fact that she could take an hour after feeding to sit and sip her coffee was precious enough.

By seven am things began to set in motion. Wit, being the biggest name in the barn, was set to go first. It was his first time under tack since the Belmont and it would be the least exciting workout of the morning, consisting of mostly trotting and a slow canter about the outside of the track. Jonah and Dean had taken Travis and Sienna up to the Turf Club for breakfast with left her with the enviable job of prepping the horses and exercise riders.

With Lacey injured and the influx of two year olds they’d had to go searching for a new exercise rider. For the last week they’d been relying on catch riders and the charity of their preferred jockeys, but come the shift to Saratoga neither would mesh well with the schedule they’d be on, especially with more and more owners wanting to get into Jonah’s barn. Scout, who was in charge of these things since Jonah didn’t much like making decisions really whereas she thrived on it, had picked up a recent college graduate who was looking for some extra cash to make a post college existential crisis affordable.

Scout liked the girl, a lot, if only because it was nice to be around someone who was eager and capable of talking Foucault. She also clicked with Wit, which was funny only because Naomi was clearly so intelligent and Wit was so lacking. Two days ago when Scout had given her the compulsory shed row tour Wit had given her the equine version of a hug upon greeting. They’d tossed her up on him about the backside just to make sure he wasn’t likely to pull nonsense today in front of Travis, but Scout hadn’t ever had a real worry about it. The colt was weird and Scout had more or less given up assigning him character traits, he always seemed to subvert whatever they thought of him anyway.

Scout left the barn atop Geronimo, who she was beginning to consider her own pet horse (he had been certain of her belonging to him for some time now) with Wit in tow on the pony line and Naomi up looking cool as ice. You’d think considering she’d been hired two days ago and was set to show off the Belmont winner for his wealthy owner she’d be a bit more anxious but she wasn’t. She was a Jersey girl and had spent every summer since she was sixteen exercise riding for one of her father’s friends at Monmouth, that was how she found and afforded her horses.

“Do you have any horses left?”

Naomi shook her head, “Sold my jumper in March to a Grand Prix rider in Florida. At WEF. He’s doing very well with her. My trainer has me working some client horses in the evening and in the mornings I’m here,” she said with a shrug.

“Do you miss owning a horse?”

“Not as much as I thought I would,” she replied, “It’s hard to afford rent and board. And I got sick of the bullshit for a ribbon, at least with racing its bullshit for an actual chunk of change. It makes more sense, you know?”

“It’s exhausting, all the same,” Scout replied.

“You look tired,” Naomi said, “I’m learning life is just a whole lot of being tired.”

Scout chuckled, “I don’t think I learned that till the last year.”

“Well what are you, twenty-five?”

“My god I owe you a drink for that,” Scout said with a laugh, “No, I’m thirty-one.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“Well that’s good I suppose or not. Perhaps that’s the reason I don’t have my life together like all my thirty-one year old friends. No husband, no house, no baby.”

“Funny isn’t it, how biology and culture makes us think we have to have all that? Who knows what we really want, least of all ourselves, when we’ve got compulsory heterosexuality lodged in our throats.”

Scout paused for a moment. “I dated Mal Quinn, we just broke up.”

“Ah so it’s all twisted up for you right now. You thought you had the husband, house and baby coming to you.”

“I did.”

“How do you feel about it now?”

“Kind of relieved, to be honest.”

“Well,” she said pointedly.

They approached the gap where a small horde awaited them. Jonah and Dean and Travis and Sienna and then unexpectedly Travis’s mother, farther down was the expected throng of reporters eagerly awaiting to see Wit’s first work since the Belmont. Scout had gone over the plan with Naomi at least two dozen times, but still felt compelled to remind her.

“Trot for twenty minutes, let him out for a light canter around the-

“Boss, I know,” she smiled, “I got this. Just walk me on the track.”

Scout did as she was told. For a half mile she jogged alongside Wit and then she let the pair loose and turned back to the gap. Naomi did as she was told and Wit did as she told him, the trotted for a very long time. Scout watched the colt’s legs for any sign of weakness or waver, but there wasn’t any. She kept him on a looser rein than anyone before had ever dared and he seemed to enjoy stretching out and going like a working hunter. When she let him canter out he was eager but soft about it, lips flapping and ears flicking back and forth to catch Naomi’s every word.

“He likes her,” Travis commented.

“We haven’t the faintest idea why, but yes,” Jonah supplied.

“He looks good, bit underweight but that’s to be expected,” Travis said.

“We think by the end of August he’ll be peaking,” Jonah replied. Everyone nodded. The words wouldn’t, couldn’t, be said yet, but everyone on the rail that morning was thinking the same thing, Travers.

***

The Mother Goose was set to be a showstopper. Enthrall, the Oaks winner and the Black Eyed Susan winner, then there was Tizadarling reappearing since her third place finish in the Oaks. Then there was an unknown quality in the Gazelle (G2) winner, a big grey filly out of the G1 winning mare Confessional by Bernardini. She was a brute of a filly who’d gone unnoticed thanks to Marzanna’s complete domination of last year’s two year old filly division. She had ran second to Marzanna in the Frizette – which truth be told Jonah hadn’t even remembered – and done a gamely third in the Filly’s Juvenile considering what she was up against. They’d kept her out of things for the winter until the Gazelle in April where she ripped across Aqueduct and held the whole race from start to finish.

Jonah was of the opinion that despite the odds; Colpevole – the grey filly – was the one that Double Up was going to need to beat. Tizadarling was looking sharp every morning, and Enthrall still earned her name with her cavorting each morning on the Belmont oval. But the filly had to be tired. Tizadarling was clearly a classy filly, but since her Oaks loss Jonah had the feeling her owners had taken a more philosophical approach to their charge, it was likely next year would be her big season. Colpevole hadn’t had a race since April and she was more than ready. She was also the equine equivalent of one of those overdeveloped mean girls in all the teen movies; she was big and bad and she knew it.

If one hung with the metaphor then from where Jonah and everyone else was standing Double Up was the heroine. She’d had to toughen up the last few months, learn how to curl her hair and put on lipstick properly, but underneath it she was the good girl. Everyone loves a good dichotomy and that afternoon Belmont provided it.

Enthrall was the betting favorite, which was expected. She looked fierce as always in the paddock and strong in the warm-up. Colpevole was sitting at second because of her color and intimidating presence and Tizadarling and Double Up had been flip flopping all morning. Their filly looks good, little, but bright and unafraid. All four fillies warmed up strongly and the whole field loaded without incident. No the drama came when the gates flung upon.

Colpevole shot right to the front with Tizadarling quick on her heels. Double Up was tucked neatly into the pack, right where they had talked about wanting her. Enthrall was deep in the back right where she wanted to be.

The grey filly set blistering fractions and Double Up sunk back. Tizadarling fought to be where she liked to, right off the pace, but by the backstretch it was clear the big bay was struggling to keep up with the scorching pace the grey was countering with. Double Up was back off the pace, more than Jonah wanted to see.

“Shit,” Dean muttered under his breath. Everyone else was silent.

Suddenly Enthrall was looking like the horse to beat yet again. The brutal pace could only benefit the lithe bay. Tizadarling began to sink back, neck flecked with foam. Double Up was stuck in fifth, unable to move forward.

They all collided about the turn for home. Double Up, by virtue of the situation, made it to fourth as Tizadarling continued to fall back. Colpevole continued her charge and Enthrall came to life and tore out of dead last, nicking off the seventh and sixth place horses with ease. Double Up fired. She made it into third when suddenly Enthrall was upon her on the outside. Colpevole was ahead by five lengths, the second place horse hanging on her tail. Enthrall had her sights on Colpevole, but Double Up had her sights on Enthrall. Pitting the little chestnut against his own big bad grey filly had taught her a thing or two, namely it had made her bold. She wanted to take Enthrall down.

Enthrall flicked an ear at Double Up’s invading presence and ground her teeth at her contestation. The second place filly fell back. Colpevole wasn’t going any faster, but she certainly wasn’t giving an inch. Enthrall and Double Up, hooked up together, gained on the grey.

They crossed under wire together in a mess of limbs and tight packed bodies. The whole grandstand rumbled with excitement. Jonah let Dean lead the way down to await their filly and the results. By the time they waded through the congratulations from other trainers and owners Double Up and Frankie were back as were the other two fillies.

“I don’t know boss,” he said as he clamped Jonah’s hand in greeting, “I don’t know. It was real close. She ran brave though.”

“Hell of a race Frankie,” Jonah replied.

Colpevole and Enthrall’s trainers came up to exchange declarations of fortune and establish the quality of race their collective fillies had just run. Then the photo flashed. They had it by the fucking sliver of her delicate little nostril.

Cheers went up and the handshakes turned to shoulder patting and hugging. The filly was officially a Grade One winner.

***

Hallie had a terrible sense of timing, she knew this and she wondered how much of it was intentional. She tried to rationalize her choice in the seconds that led up to it; he’d just won a G1 so even this little bit of bad news wouldn’t damper him that much, right? Travis would take them all out to a nice dinner and there’d be partying after and no doubt something pretty would catch his eye and he could fuck his misery over her away.

She felt guiltier than she cared to admit.

She knew she was doing it in all the wrong ways, the only thing worse would be a text message and she couldn’t do that because she didn’t even have his number. He was still coated in sweat and caked in dirt from the win when she walked up to him.

“Good race,” she said.

His face, previously filled with unadulterated joy, froze. He knew. He knew then. So, she got on with it.

“We shouldn’t do this anymore,” she said quietly, too quiet for anyone but him to hear, “I’m done.”

His face seized up for the briefest moment, but in it Hallie saw a thousand things he wanted to say and how he felt and yeah this had stopped being a hook up for him and maybe for her too but she was too damaged and too set in her ways to change for him, to change now, to change for anyone least of all herself.

“Yeah,” he said then with a bright smile that could have and did tell everyone else in the jock’s room it was all a-okay, “Sounds good.”

***

Frankie felt like he ought to go to the hospital.

There was no actual reason for it. He was a little drunk and he’d done a casual line or two of coke at the after-after party, but he was fine. Cognitively he was fine and he knew it.

But he was also fairly certain he was going to die. Or was in the process of dying. Maybe both.

The more he sipped at his whiskey – which she’d gotten him drinking in the first place – the more he nursed a plan that involved driving to her place and dramatically shouting about his feelings preferably in the rain. He was also sober enough to know how idiotic he was for thinking up such a thing in the first place.

Maybe he was infatuated with her for all the wrong reasons, maybe it’d never been anything but a hook-up for her, maybe it’d all just been projection on his part. But it didn’t feel that way and that might make him insane, but he’d take being insane over wrong. Didn’t she rest her head on his shoulder that time? She brought him on walks with her dogs. She told him about her father once. About how she didn’t talk to her mother. She said things to him, things that matter, things you just don’t go around talking about. That was something wasn’t it?

Fuck it, it didn’t matter anyway.

He got up off the couch in the lounge and picked out the girl with biggest tits at the bar and decided fuck it, it didn’t matter anyway.

***

Noah liked the colt.

Cryptology wasn’t hard to dislike though. He was a touch skittish, something you’d expect more out of fillies then a three year old colt, but he was affably and kind. He liked affection well enough and he enjoyed his grooming and walking and didn’t mind the vet or farrier. His abscess had healed cleanly and today he’d get under tack for the first time in two months.

Noah put his smallest girl up on him, a ninety pounder who’d just graduated with an Equine Science and Management degree, and let her play about with him in one of the back fields.

“He’s soft for a racehorse,” she commented as she managed to get him into a decent working trot, frame and all.

“He’s a good boy.”

“Well yeah, but no offense boss but racers always tend to be stiff, they want to pull left all the time. You know get to the rail. He’s real soft, just falls in your hand like a nice hunter would,” she called out.

“Alright, well see if he keeps it up at the canter.”

She laughed as she let him loose. He had a brilliant gait, smooth and sweeping. He didn’t drag himself as low as a lot of racers tended to and his step was always careful.

“Nope, still soft. He feels sound, how does he look?”

“Sound,” Noah replied.

He let her work him for ten more minutes and then he ended things. Walking back to the barn she asked the expecting question, what next?”

“Field a few more days, then I suppose we’ll stick him on the oval. He’s got a few more dollars to make, I think.”

***

Initially the trip out started off well. The filly had loaded up with only minor incident and they had had plenty to talk about on the road; Eminence’s win, Aponivi’s stunner of a maiden, the rest of the two year olds and the people they worked with. By Delaware though silence had cut between them and Scout hadn’t the faintest idea of how to surpass it.

By Virginia she just settled for silence. He checked his phone, then when he took the turn to drive she flitted through all forms of social media as a means to distract herself from the awkwardness. They’d never had that talk and Scout wasn’t quite sure how to feel about any of it. About him. About what she even wanted. When did life stop being one existential crisis after another?

So they got to Churchill. They got Renegade settled, and Geronimo too and left them there till the morning. They checked into their rooms at the Holiday Inn and then decided to get dinner. She told him she didn’t care. He picked Applebee’s. She had a shitty margarita about it.

Three margaritas in she gained a bit of courage.

“What the fuck are we doing Mal?”

He looked up from his potato skins with wide brown eyes. Before he had a chance to answer she started again.

“We had a good thing you know. I thought for once that I had a good thing. I never had a good thing like I had till I had it with you. And you’re entirely fucked so what does that say about me?”

He glanced at her margarita –which she rolled her eyes at – and then up at her.

“That you’re fucked too?”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel better,” he replied, “I’m trying to be honest. You careen from one existential crisis to the next and you never really settle up with any of your demons, you just sidestep them by going on vacation or burying yourself in your work. I do drugs. You go into denial.”

She stared at him.

“AA has taught me some stuff.”

“I can see that.”

He shrugged and bit off a piece of his potato. Scout drained the rest of her margarita and wondered how this was all meant to end, if anything was meant at all.

***

Jungle Fever, the aptly named dark bay filly belonging to Foster Farms was ready for her first date with racing. The filly was by Pioneerof the Nile out of the illustrious Storm Cat mare Raging Fever and she seemed set to prove her bloodlines right. She’d also cost Ms. Vera Rose a pretty fucking penny. Today they’d recoup at least the expenses she’d accrued since she’d been in Jonah’s shedrow.

It was a maiden over six furlongs. It was a soft field and the filly stood out on paper, let alone in the paddock. It wasn’t any surprise that she was going off at 2-1 odds. The filly was her usual prissy and hot self; she snapped at Estefan and kicked out at Dean when he tightened her girth. Jonah tossed Frankie up on her and she reared up in the paddock as response coming down with a snort and a shake of her head. She showed off her flashy trot in the post parade and broke away to her warm-up with a customary kick at the pony horse. She was a Storm Cat to the bone and she acted as they tended too.

No, the real maiden was Ms. Vera Rose, who had been fretting all morning and was still fretting in Jonah’s box as her brutish although admittedly beautiful monster terror of a filly made a cursory attempt to maul one of the starters.

“Darling,” Jonah finally said, “If your horse could talk she’d be laughing at you right now. She’s ready, even if you aren’t.”

Dean, who was the good cop of their little routine, gave her knee a friendly if not wholly patronizing squeeze. There were woman on which patriarchal gestures were a comfort too, most of the ones in Dean’s life were not, but Southern Belle Vera Rose certainly was. She settled down until the last handful of seconds before the gate flung open. She got frantic for a moment and somehow Dean ended up holding her hand.

The filly blew to first without contest.

Vera Rose screamed and teared up, free hand on her chest.

“My god,” she said as the pair of them led her to the winners, “Wasn’t that fun?”

***

Marzanna was too skinny.

Initially she had been brought out to the training farm on the Triple Birch complex but she’d done the opposite of thrive. Despite the grazing and the quality of feed and the supplements she refused to eat more than a few bites of anything they put in front of her. Within a few weeks she had to get fluids daily. Tests were run, they came back clean and as well as one could expect considering she was undernourished and on the edge of dehydration.

Noah had suggested they send her to the broodmare farm.

It seemed to Travis at first a resignation. If the filly lived and that was becoming a more ominous and looming ‘if’ with each passing day it seemed that she wasn’t likely to ever step foot on a track again.

They stuck her in one of the small back paddocks at first. She continued as she had, listless and dull, when the barn manager suggested they put her out with the broodmare band, with her mother. Travis had dismissed the suggestion at first, it seemed too dangerous, too risky, but then he watched the filly stand in the center of her lush paddock and not eat and not eat, just stare at the ground, at nothing and he knew in his gut that this was the only chance he could give her.

So after the mares in the Alpha band, her mother’s band, had been fed and their fresh foals sufficiently worn out by one another they let the filly out. At first Marzanna hadn’t realized or hadn’t cared to realize that amid the grass sea were other living, breathing equine beings. Slowly as the mares moved back to the barn in their afternoon grazing pattern it dawned on both parties that an unknown element – Marzanna – was present.

Her dam was the first to notice, but although she saw and perhaps recognized her daughter she made no more forward but grazed peacefully amid the crest of the large hill with her new daughter who looked neither like her or her eldest. The splash filly who had no name yet outside of iterations of baby, but she had more than enough personality to make up for the lack of a moniker.

The other babies were sleepy due to her. She was a firebrand; curious and bright in all the ways all her half-sisters and half-brothers had been aloof and distant. Her playmates were nursing or sleeping, but she was full of milk and awake yet and there was something new in her field. So with the confidence only the young can possess she cavorted over to the unknown entity in her space, her elder half-sister of which she knew naught of.

Marzanna came alive at the sight if only out of shock. That was before impact.

The filly unceremoniously head butted her elder sister square in the chest and then flitted away in an expectation of revenge. Marzanna who wasn’t moved in the slightest by the attack gawked at the creature that had so boldly dared to violate her personal space. The filly took the lack of response as encouragement to charge again, which she did, this time spooking Marzanna into action. The older filly, out of shape and underweight didn’t make it particularly far but she made it far enough to disinterest the younger.

Marzanna, shaken up, but otherwise ignored by the mares and now several hundred yards off the herd, looked at a loss for what to do or how to act. For some time she stood, experiencing anxiety for perhaps the first time in her life, and watched. The foals roused from their naps and rose to nurse and then play. The mares continued their circadian grazing occasionally letting out a watchful nicker when their baby went off too far for their liking. Eventually the filly perhaps out of boredom or perhaps out of a desire to bypass some anxiety dropped her nose to the grass and began to eat.

***

The Australian mares had arrived. Although the one, the bay, was known for being skittish and spooky she and her grey stablemate arrived at Triple Birch without injury or issue. They spent their first days in the quarantine barn, getting blood drawn and tests run to ensure they weren’t incidentally bringing any sort of foreign borne illness. One they’d been cleared they took a walk each morning to flirt with Triple Birch’s teaser stallion. The grey mare, expectedly, went into season first but perhaps encouraged by her stablemate’s hormones the bay mare went into season soon enough.

By irony or perhaps fate Travis was able to be present for the breedings, he typically did so, but typically the breeding season was wrapped up by April. All his other mares had been bred and confirmed in foal. In a way it was a good thing they’d arrived so late, the Australian breeding season wouldn’t be for another few months but it was close enough yet to trick the pair into season.

The grey went first. She was on the cusp of ovulation and putting on more of a display than the bay, which convinced the vets, the handlers and Travis that if either of them were to get in foal it was likelier to be her.

Although Triple Birch’s season hadn’t yet ended (It would on July 3rd) Gunslinger hadn’t seen a mare in over a week. It was then with profound excitement that he greeted the big grey Australian mare. She received his advances well although he wasn’t the most charming or sensitive stallion (he’d always been a bit of a brute and his relative inexperience in the breeding shed meant some convincing frequently had to be done on the part of the mare handlers) and the deed was done.

For the bay mare, who despite her spook was already affectionately received by the broodmare handlers, Travis had decided the best course of action both in regards to pedigree and character was to let her visit Birchwood. Despite his sway back and age he was notably more experienced and gentle than any other stallion in the barn. Chronological was particularly rough and a biter to boot, Sultanof Swing was big and strong, Genghis Khan was prone to being inadvertently careless in his own excitement, and although Suspicion wasn’t mean or rough he was quite loud and aggressive. Birchwood was quiet and quick and unfailingly polite. Also with Seattle Slew on top and Pleasant Colony on the bottom you had to get runner.

The mare wasn’t a maiden, but her nature had them handle her as such. Birchwood was his usual considerate self, no biting, no squealing, no kicking. The deed was done and the mare, a bit dazed from it all, was shipped back down to the broodmare sector. Fourteen days later Travis would get a call at lunch from his vet that both mares were in foal.

***

Renegade was strange. Perhaps because of her relatively short tenure in Jonah’s shed row she hadn’t made too much of a personal impression on anyone. Mal rode her in the mornings and still had yet to get any sense of the filly’s personality. She wasn’t otherworldly like Marzanna but she was distant and uninterested in the lives of humans. She was big and fast and no Thoroughbred had ever needed a personality to win.

And win they did.

Frankie Deltino had flown down to Churchill for the Debutante romp over 6f. Renegade was the only unraced filly in the field, but her size and presence and color had the bettors friendly towards her. Although she’d never done anything more than school a bit in the paddock she handled the experience as though she’d lived and done it a thousand times before. Churchill was quiet, the meet about to end, and few had turned up to see the race. It was only after the fact did anyone care at all.

Renegade won by twelve lengths under a hand ride by Deltino after sitting over twelve lengths off the leader. She had also taken the track record. The show had Bloodhorse and DRF and Thoroughbred Times at their shed row the next morning ready with recorders for a few choice soundbites. Triple Crown season, after all, was over and now the two year olds were coming out to play.

“She’s a good filly,” Scout repeated patiently for the press, “Mr. McCailen bought her out of a dispersal sale, liked her size and presence and she passed all the tests. We haven’t had her for long but she shows up every morning and we figured she might do something like this.”

The reporters nodded, a woman from DRF turned to Mal.

“You ride her in the mornings correct? Do you think your experience as a top jockey has given her an edge?”

“Sure, I’d love to think that, thanks for the idea,” he said with a grin, “But in all seriousness she’s just a good filly. She’s mature and she wants to work.”

More nods. A man from Bloodhorse asked about the filly’s next potential start.

Scout shrugged, “We’ll get her up to Saratoga with the rest and see how she takes it up

There. But we expect she’ll be a contender in the juvenile division.”

“You seem to have a strong two year old string with the win of Aponivi, Marzanna’s half-brother, and you had a strong run by Tizme here at Churchill earlier in the month.”

“We did,” Scout replied, “Tizme will get another shot at a maiden once we’re settled in Saratoga. As for Aponivi we’ll have him tell us what he wants to do.”

“It’s early I know, but any resemblance to his sister?”

Mal laughed, “Well he’s certainly a lot shorter.”

Scout even smiled at the quip, “He has good work ethic. He likes to work and he knows his job. Otherwise like you said it’s too early to tell.”

                                                                                                                                                                           ***

Look how grown up Gabe is!!! Ref'd a pic of his sire horsephotos.com/watermark.jsp?…

Name: Golden Age
Barn name: Gabe, Pretty Boy, The golden boy
Gender: Colt
Age: 3
Breed: Thoroughbred
Height: 16.2
Color: Bay
Markings: Blaze, Front socks
Genotype: Ee/AA
Discipline: Racing
Preferred Distance: 8+ furlongs
Running Style: First Flight
Temperament: Fun. He's bright and friendly and doesn't seem to have a mean bone in his body. He's unfailingly polite and considerate towards just about everyone, that said he does have a bit of anxiety floating around, especially when large crowds of unfamiliar people are concerned.
Pedigree: Foundation (Medaglia d’Oro x Life at Ten)