Homestretch (7 page)

After I'd caught my breath and my lungs stopped hurting, I saw that my knuckles had turned pure white from squeezing the reins so tight.

“You got some raw talent,” Dag told me. “Maybe I could use you for some things.”

Part of me was satisfied because I'd done it. I'd hung on to that demon, a horse even El Diablo didn't want to ride. But another part of me could hear in Dag's voice what I'd heard in Mrs. Mallory's, our high school drama teacher, when she recruited me
special
for the school play.

“I've had my eye on you for a while now, Gas. I think you could be a valuable part of this production,” she said.

I went home on cloud nine, thinking how actors like Tom Cruise were shorter than everybody else around them in their movies.

Then the next day I found out that she needed me to play a Munchkin in
The Wizard of Oz,
and even thought I could handle two roles and be one of the Wicked Witch's little monkeys with wings, too. But I never showed up for rehearsal or answered the notes she left for me in homeroom.

Later that morning, after I'd finished walking my last horse, Dag sent me over to the racing office. A man there fingerprinted me and used the information on my yellow ID card to issue me a temporary jockey's license.

I couldn't believe it. I held that paper by the corners so any ink left on my fingers wouldn't smudge a single line.

That was the first thing I ever got in my whole life for being small. And I didn't even want to fold it up to fit inside my wallet.

I showed the artist who ran the tattoo parlor my fake ID, and the first thing he said was, “Kid, it's not my job to talk people
out
of getting tattoos. But at your age it's a risk to put a girl's name on your arm. Two weeks later she's left you for somebody new, and you get to see how big an idiot you were every day in the mirror.”

“She's already gone,” I told him. “It's for my mom.”

That's when he pulled up his shirt and showed me
his
mother's name surrounded by two angels blowing trumpets over his heart.

The artist sketched out the cross on a pad for me with the letters of Mom's name running down the middle. That part was simple. But he worked for almost forty-five minutes
drawing in the petals from all the flowers and roses until he got it just right.

The picture got transferred onto my right bicep with a stencil. Only, it looked cold on my arm without any color to it.

He poured caps of black, purple, and yellow ink, and took some sharp needles out of a bag.

“Concentrate on breathing slow,” he told me, putting on a pair of rubber gloves. “Every now and then somebody passes out. It's not from the pain. It's because they forget to breathe.”

The machine that held the needle started buzzing louder than the neon sign in the front window, and I could feel the needle digging into my skin. But it wasn't even close to the pain I'd been feeling. And when that tattoo was finished, I knew I'd have it in my life forever, no matter what.

I sat in something that looked like a dentist's chair, gritting my teeth and looking up at the drawings that lined the walls.

There were cute teddy bears, skulls, bloody daggers with snakes curled around the handles, a marijuana leaf, a bald eagle gripping lightning bolts in its claws, and even a snoring beaner taking a siesta under a big sombrero.

Dad had a tiny tattoo on the inside of his forearm, from his days in the navy. It was of a hula-dancing girl wearing a
grass skirt. And whenever he flexed his muscles, she'd shake her hips.

I wouldn't look down at my arm anymore, not until that artist was done. But some woman came in off the street with butterflies tattooed on her wrists and ankles. She sat there watching him do the colors for a few minutes before she said, “That's just gorgeous. I can almost smell those yellow roses.”

When that buzzing stopped and the artist flipped up his safety glasses, I finally looked.

That tattoo was so beautiful it nearly broke my heart when he had to cover it with a big bandage. But he warned me, “It's an open wound, and you've got to take real precautions for a while.”

So I took care of it like he explained. I kept it moist with baby lotion, and I didn't pick at any of the little scabs, no matter how much they itched.

I went to find Tammie at her grandpa's barn so I could show her my jockey's license. Cap was standing at the door, looking inside at his row of four horses beside a dozen empty stalls.

“Tammie's not here right now,” he said, barely shifting his eyes.

The feeling inside Cap's barn was different than Dag's.
There was a calmness here, and standing next to Cap, I could feel it seeping into my bones.

“I guess you grew up around racehorses,” I said.

“No, not me. I was raised in Chicago by my father, a photographer. My mother died before I was old enough to remember her,” Cap said. “But I'd see horses every day on the streets pulling ice wagons. Before electric refrigerators, people needed ice for their iceboxes, to keep the food cold. Anyway, I'd pet those horses, feeding them sugar and such. Then one day a driver left the hand brake off in his wagon, and a horse followed me all the way to school. I thought that horse loved
me
. I never considered it was the sugar in my pocket.”

That's when I showed him my license.

“Dag arrange that for you?” he asked like he already knew the answer.

I just nodded my head.

“I saw you ride this morning, and the best thing I can say about it is that you're still in one piece. I think you know that too. So I'm not sure what that snake sees in you. Don't think I'm just against him because the horses that used to fill these stalls are in
his
barn now,” said Cap. “But Gas, let me ask you. Where's your family?”

I'm not exactly sure why I started to tell him the truth.

There was something behind his eyes that kept them steady while he talked. Something that said he wasn't going anywhere. That he wasn't going to move off the spot he was standing on, not unless he was good and ready.

The only person I ever knew like that before was Mom.

“My mother was killed back in March, around Easter time,” I said. “After that it's just my dad. But I don't talk about him much.”

“I'm sorry to hear it,” Cap said. “Just to say—if Dag hasn't asked you about your family yet, it's probably because he doesn't have to. He can read it all over you.”

Then Tammie got there.

“Gas, is that a jockey's license? Congratulations,” she said, kissing me on the cheek.

For the second her soft lips were on me, I could feel the blood pulsing through my entire body, and then my face turning flush.

“Grandpa, did you see Gas on the racetrack riding that nut job of a horse with El Diablo leaning all over him?” asked Tammie. “That was gutsy.”

“Is that what they call ‘crazy' these days?” said Cap, grinning. “Gutsy?”

“Now all you need's a trainer to put you on some live runners in real races,” said Tammie.

“Oh, yeah, that's what he needs,” said Cap without a trace of a smile. “Some
trainer
doing him a favor.”

To celebrate, Tammie took me to the cantina to play Ping-Pong.

I was standing on the other side of the table from her, looking over the net. I wasn't even sure if she liked me as a friend or maybe something more. But a feeling inside me didn't think it was right that I'd told her grandpa about Mom when I hadn't told Tammie yet.

“I'm not at home anymore because my mom died in a car accident,” I said fast, like it might hurt less. “All because some illegal Mexican didn't want to get deported.”

Then I looked at the beaners everywhere inside that cantina, and I cut the air hard with the paddle in my hand.

“That must be really tough on you, Gas,” she said soft, following where my eyes had just been.

I tap-danced around a few of her questions about Dad before we began to play.

After the first game Tammie picked the ball up off the floor and said, “My parents got divorced when I was six. They don't even talk to each other now. It's sad because it's like they're dead to each other.”

I WAS WALKING ROSE
of Sharon in the courtyard beneath the branches of that big shade tree the next morning when Nacho and Anibal came running over.

“Here. See,” Nacho said, pushing a long sheet of paper at me. “
Mañana
. You ride Bad Boy. Tomorrow, race number three.”

It was the entries for the next day's races, and there was my name listed as the jockey for Bad Boy Rising, with three asterisks next to it.

3RD RACE

PURSE
: $2,400

6
FURLONGS
, (
CLAIMING $2,000
)

FOR 3-YEAR-OLDS & UP

I felt six feet tall as I finished walking the last of those laps with Rose of Sharon.

“You should be down-on-your-knees grateful. This is a helluva opportunity,” Dag told me later at the barn. “The winner gets sixty percent of the purse money, and the jockey ten percent of that. You could make a hundred and a half for about a minute and fourteen seconds' worth of work. And that's the cheapest purse money we run for around here. Now see yourself riding all nine races, every day. Start to add up that scratch.”

“I appreciate it. I'll do the best I can,” I said, with Cap's warning about Dag creeping into my brain.

“I know you will, Gas,” said Dag, taking the toothpick out of his mouth and stabbing at the air between us.

“What are these three asterisks next to my name for?” I asked.

“Well, one asterisk would mean you're a bug boy. Three says you're a triple bug boy—the lowest of the low in a jockey's career. You got no real experience, and to even make it a race, the other jocks have to spot you ten pounds of weight. But if either you or the horse you're riding has got any talent, it can be a big advantage.”

That's when El Diablo came over and stood at my shoulder.

“Satan himself is gonna give you some pointers on how to ride for me,” said Dag.

“Four o'clock, I meet you right here, bug,” said El Diablo in a disgusted voice, like Dag had forced him into it.

I walked away still feeling great, except for the parts about me being tutored by El Diablo, and being called a
bug
. And somewhere in my mind I had a vision of myself squished under the sole of somebody's shoe.

“Oh, and Gas,” Dag called after me. “No matter what you might hear about me from certain people at this racetrack, don't forget, I'm the only one who's taking care of you.”

That afternoon I went over to the racetrack. I watched the
jockeys parade their horses before every race, dressed in the different colored silks of each horse's owner.

People in the grandstand would yell all kinds of things to them:

“Go get ‘em, Jorge! Bring this one home! You're my boy!”

“Use that whip, Chop-Chop!”

“I lost a fortune betting on you, Gillette. And every time I bet somebody else, you beat me, you bastard!”

“You on the number six horse, you're a bum with a capital
B
!”

Sometimes those riders would wink at the good comments or spit on the ground over the real bad ones. But they mostly stared straight ahead, pretending those people weren't even there.

It was like they were little supermen, and nothing anybody said could touch them. That's how I wanted to be.

Nobody in that crowd had the guts to climb aboard a 1,200-pound Thoroughbred like those jockeys did, driving them through tiny openings between horses that could close up in a split second. And even if somebody there did, they were probably too big and heavy to race-ride.

It was just after three thirty when I watched the horses in the fifth race go flying past. With the sound of their hoofbeats thundering in my ears and a streak of bravery running through me, I walked up to the first pay phone I saw to call Dad.

It had been five days since I left, and I had to know what he'd say. Even if he put me down, like I knew he might, I had that jockey's license I could hold over his head, without telling him where I was.

I listened to the operator's voice and to a dollar forty in change slide through the coin slot. Then, with my heart pounding, I got connected and heard the phone ring in my house.

Ring … ring … ring …

After three rings Mom's voice used to pick up on the answering machine. For months after she got killed, it still did.

“You've reached the home of the Giambancos—Gaston, Maria, and Gaston Jr. Leave a message at the tone. We'll get back to you soon, and have a terrific day,” she'd say.

Our last name always sounded like music out of Mom's mouth—“Gi-am-ban-co.”

Last semester, when I didn't know how I'd get through the day, I'd call home from school just to hear that message. I'd close my eyes, listening to the sound of her voice. In my mind I could always see her galloping a horse at sunset, with the sky a mix of bright blue and orange.