—
From there, they pushed off from the fence, and walked a long way through the racing quarter, from Tulloch, to Carbine, to Bernborough—“They even named the athletics track after a horse!”—and Carey knew every one of them. She could recite each horse’s record; she could tell you how many hands they were, or what they weighed, or if they led from the front, or waited. At Peter Pan Square she told him how, at the time, Peter Pan was loved every bit as much as Phar Lap, and he was blond and outrageously bragful. In the empty-cobbled square, she put a hand on the statue’s nose, and looked at Darby Munro. She told Clay how this horse had lost a race once, by biting poor old Rogilla, one of his great rivals, as they tussled their way down the straight.
Her favorite race, inevitably, was the Cox Plate (for it was the race that racing purists loved) and she talked of the greats who’d won it: Bonecrusher, Saintly, and colossal Might and Power. The mighty Kingston Town: three years in a row.
Then at last she told him the story, of Ted and the horse, The Spaniard—how he’d smiled and cried, cried and smiled, and they were in the Lonhro Tunnel.
Sometimes I imagine Clay waiting back for a while, as she crossed to the other side. I see the orange lights, I hear the passing trains. There’s even a part of me that has him watch her, and sees her body as a brushstroke, her hair an auburn trail.
But then, I stop, I gather myself, and he catches her easily up.
* * *
—
After that, you can probably guess, they were inseparable.
The first time she climbed the roof was also the first time they went to The Surrounds, and the day she’d met the rest of us, and touched the great Achilles.
It was early new year, and her work routine was established.
Ennis McAndrew did it his way, and some trainers called him abnormal. Others said many things worse—they accused him of being human. You had to love racing people, you really did; as many of them said themselves: “Us racing crowd, we’re different.”
She was at Hennessey by four a.m. each day, or the Tri-Colors by five-thirty.
There was horse schooling, and exams, but she couldn’t yet contemplate trackwork. The way Ennis put it, in his usual broomstick manner, you couldn’t mistake patience for softness, or protection for waiting too long. He had his own theories on training, and when to promote the jockey. Those stables, he said, needed shoveling.
Often, in the evening, they made their way through the racing quarter; they walked to Epsom Road. He said, “This is where we found him. How great was Sweeney’s spelling?”
She met Achilles when they got back; he’d brought her quietly through the house. He’d cleared it much earlier with Tommy.
“Was that,” said Henry, “a girl?”
They were laid out watching The Goonies.
Even Rory was taken aback. “Did a woman just walk through our house? What the hell’s going on here?”
We all went bounding out back, and the girl, she looked up from the scrubbing brush; she came over, part solemn, part nervous. “I’m sorry I walked straight past you just now.” She looked us each in our faces. “It’s good to finally meet you,” and the mule came hustling between. He arrived like an unwanted relative, and when she stroked him he in-and-awayed. He eyed us with great severity: Don’t any of you bastards interrupt, okay?
This is bloody brilliant.
* * *
—
At The Surrounds there’d been a few changes:
The bed had been broken apart.
The base was stolen and burned; just kids who’d wanted a fire, I guess, which more than suited Clay. The mattress was harder to find. When he got there and stood and stayed silent, the girl asked if she might sit, on the edge.
“Sure,” he told her, “of course.”
“Do you mean to say,” she asked, “that sometimes you come and you sleep here?”
He could have been defensive, but decided with her it was pointless.
“Yeah,” he said, “I do,” and Carey, she put her hand down, like she could rip a piece off if she wanted. Also, had anyone else said what she was about to say next, it would never have come out correctly: She looked down at her feet.
She spoke directly into the ground.
“It’s the strangest, most beautiful thing I ever heard of,” and then, maybe a few minutes later, “Hey—Clay?” He looked over. “What were their names?”
And it felt like such a long time then, both quiet and calm at the mattress edge, and the dark not too far away.
He said, “Penny and Michael Dunbar.”
* * *
—
On the roof he showed her where he liked to sit down, part hidden amongst the tiles, and Carey listened and looked at the city. She saw those pinpricks of light.
“Look there,” she said, “Bernborough Park.”
“And there,” he said, he couldn’t stop himself, “the cemetery. We can go—if you don’t mind, that is. I’ll show you the way to the gravestone.”
Pulling her into the sadness made him guilty—more guilty than he already was—but Carey was open, oblivious. She’d treated knowing him like some kind of privilege—and she was right to, I’m glad that she did.
* * *
—
There were moments when Clay was torn open—so much he’d kept from the surface. But now it was all flooding outwards; she could see in him what others couldn’t.
It happened that night on the roof.
“Hey, Clay?” She looked out at the city. “What have you got there, in your pocket?”
In months ahead, she would push too soon.
* * *
—
At Bernborough, late March, she raced him.
She ran like a girl who could run the 400, and didn’t mind suffering for doing it.
He chased her freckly outline.
He watched her bony calves.
Only when they passed the discus net did he come round her, and she said, “Don’t you dare take it easy on me,” and he didn’t. He took the turn and accelerated; at the end they were bent and hurting. Their lungs were sore and hopeful, and did what they were there for: Two pairs of burning breath.
She looked over and said, “Again?”
“No, I think that one’ll do us.”
It was the first time she would reach for him, and link her arm through his. If only she’d known how right she was: “Thank God,” she said, “I’m dying.”
* * *
—
And then to April, and a race day, which was something she’d been saving.
“Wait’ll you see this horse,” she said, and she spoke, of course, of Matador.
She loved to watch the bookies and the punters, and those spendthrift men in their fifties: all of them unshaven arse-scratchers, their odor of drunken westerlies. Whole ecosystems in their armpits. She watched them with sadness and affection….The sun was setting around them, in many more ways than one.
Her favorite was standing at the fence, the grandstand at her back, while the horses entered the straight: The turn was the sound of a landslide.
The calls of desperate men.
“Come on, Gobstopper, you bastard!”
It was always a long wide wave—of cheer and jeer, love and loss, and many open mouthfuls. Weight gain was pumped to its limits, of the shirts and jackets that dammed it. Cigarettes at many angles.
“Move your Goddamn arse, Shenanigans! Go, son!”
The wins were won and worshipped.
The losses were all sat down with.
“C’mon,” she said that first time, “there’s someone you should meet.”
* * *
—
Behind the two grandstands were the stables; a length and breadth of shed rows, and horses all within them—either waiting for their races, or recovering.
At number thirty-eight, he stood enormously, unblinking. A digital sign said Matador, but Carey called him Wally. A groom, Petey Simms, wore jeans and a tattered polo shirt, cross-sectioned by a belt. A smoke was erected upwards, at the platform of his lip. He grinned when he saw the girl.
“Hey, Carey kid.”