* * *
—
At last, it came, though, it had to.
A Wednesday afternoon.
The meeting was at Rosehill, and the horse was a miler named Arkansas.
Clay was alone in the riverbed.
It had rained in the city for days, and she’d kept him on the inside run. While the other jockeys took their horses, quite rightly, out to firmer ground, Carey had listened to McAndrew. He’d told her wise and drily:
“Just take him right through the slop, kid. Keep him on the rail—I almost want paint marks on him when you bring him in, got it?”
“Got it.”
But McAndrew could see the doubt in her. “Look—no one’s run there all day, it might hold up, and you’ll be racing him a few strides shorter.”
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“Peter Pan once won the Cup like that.”
“No,” he corrected her, “he didn’t—he did the opposite, he ran out wide, but the whole track was slopped to bits.”
For Carey this was a rare mistake; it must have been nerves, and McAndrew smiled, halfway—as much as he ever did on race day. A lot of his jockeys didn’t even know who Peter Pan was. The horse or the fictional character.
“Just win the bloody thing.”
And she did.
* * *
—
In the riverbed, Clay rejoiced:
He laid a hand on a plank of the scaffold. He’d heard drinking men say things like “Just give me four beers and you’ll never get the smile off me,” and that was how this was for him.
She’d won one.
He imagined her bringing him in, and the gleam and the clock hands, McAndrew. On the radio, they would soon cross to Flemington, down south, and the commentator finished with laughter. He said, “Look at her, the jockey, she’s hugging the tough old trainer—and take a look at McAndrew! Did you ever see someone look so uncomfortable?”
The radio laughed, and Clay laughed, too.
A pause, then back to work.
* * *
—
The next time he came home, he thought and dreamed on the train. He concocted a great many moments, for celebrating the win of Arkansas, but should have known it would always be different.
He went straight to the stands of Hennessey.
He watched her race for two fourths and a third. And then her second first. It was a sprinter called Blood on the Brain, owned by a wealthy undertaker. Apparently, all the horses he owned were named for fatal conditions: Embolism, Heart Attack, Aneurysm. His favorite was Influenza. “Very underrated,” he’d say, “but a killer.”
For Blood on the Brain, she’d kept him nice and relaxed, and brought him through on the turn. When she came in, Clay watched McAndrew.