Darlene Scalera - Born Of The Bluegrass

THE NEXT DAY she led this animal she loved to the paddock. His trainer had been eyeing the second tier of stakes races for two-year-olds when Solstice’s colic had come. His other injuries had dropped him back further. His failure to rally and his willfulness had brought him to today’s claiming race. Still he was nickering and pulling like it was Derby Day, and she had to jerk the reins a couple times to stop him from doing his dance. He’d known he was going to race when his hay and water had been removed after breakfast, but she suspected his restlessness also stemmed from her divided attention. Even as they entered the circle of the paddock, she couldn’t help scanning the crowd. She was always looking now for Reid and the child. She had hoped they’d be with the Foxes, but it was only Prescott and his grandfather who followed the jockey and Solstice’s trainer to the saddling enclosure and into the walking ring.

Then she saw them—Reid, her son, her son—at the outside fence. Reid was watching the horse. The child’s attention was everywhere—to the horses, the milling crowd, the afternoon light, the call of music. She heard, “Riders, up,” and the jockey came forward for a leg up. The cup of a hand was all the connection she would have with the dark-eyed, dark-skinned man about to ride Solstice, but she willed a win into that palm.

The racetrack workers usually gathered at the course’s backstretch to watch the races. Dani, however, headed to the grandstand fence, close to her horse, close to her son and his father.

Another Fox Run groom joined her at the rail as the post parade began. “He’ll park,” he assured her, folding a slice of pizza in half and taking a large bite. “He’s a speedball.”

Dani watched Solstice following the pony girl and the palomino. The horse had seemed to relax as soon as the saddle was put on his back. In his gait was a certainty as he went from a walk to a jog to a canter. Even into the starting gate, always a moment of anxiety, Solstice strode in and waited as if already assured a win.

Dani waited, the sun on her shoulders, her hands holding on to the cool metal fence. The trumpet blast sounded. For a beat, the world went still. Then the gates opened.

“And they’re off,” she whispered, the breeze catching her words and carrying them up, up above to where women in wide hats sipped champagne, a summer strawberry split on each flute’s rim, and her son sat beside his father on spindly bentwood chairs.

The colt broke clean but at the first turn, was six horses back, two lanes from the rail. Still the steady beat to his stride echoed his earlier assurance of being the only winner in this race. He lengthened his stride, passing until he was in fourth position by the second turn. There he stayed as if waiting. Dani saw the hole between the second and third horse and Solstice slip through it as easily as entering a dream, and her voice joined the swell of the crowd as the horse, her horse, headed down the homestretch, the strong August sun turning his coat purple and the daylight decreasing between him and the leader, a gray with white stockings.

Solstice’s proud black head was at the other horse’s shoulder, then neck, the jockey coiled low on his back, a passenger now. Three strides to the wire, the heads aligned until Solstice lengthened his neck and stuck his nose in front of the favorite’s.

The tote board flashed Photo Finish but Dani was already crying, having no doubt who won and not caring that the other groom was chuckling over her reaction to an ordinary race. Solstice cantered, then turned toward the winner’s circle as Dani came to meet him. She smiled at him as the results came up on the board, and they moved into the winner’s circle but once again, Solstice’s looks went around her as if she were in the way.

They came out of the winner’s circle and were heading to the test barn when a man came out and hung the tag on Solstice’s bridle. Horses that ran in a claiming race were up for grabs, and Dani knew the tag now swinging against Solstice’s profile meant another trainer had claimed him. Still she stopped and stared at the tag as if she’d never seen such a thing before. She heard the assistant trainer swear, but the head trainer was stoic, Prescott and his grandfather indifferent. They still got the purse. But whoever had put down the required amount of cash in the racing secretary’s office and dropped the claim slip got the colt. It happened all the time.

She was also going away, Dani reasoned. She too had been claimed. Still the reckless excitement of the win left her as she led the animal toward the spit box. She heard a child’s voice and thought she was imagining it. Then she heard Reid’s voice answering, “Yes, that black beauty there.” She looked and saw Reid and Trey coming toward her and Solstice until she was only conscious of the man, the boy, the animal.

Reid smiled and nodded hello as he came up and stood next to her at the horse’s side. Her son stood next to him, holding his father’s hand, looking up at the huge animal.

The man ran a knuckle gently along the horse’s damp neck. “Ready to come home?” he asked.

Dani looked at Solstice. The animal looked right through her.

Hamilton Hills Farm

Lexington, Kentucky

HAMILTON HILLS had been built high on an emerald plateau as if destined for greatness from the beginning. Reid looked out across the acres of legendary lush grass, the reaching lines of white fence and knew the idyllic scene was an illusion. The farm that had set the standard for achievement in the Thoroughbred industry for half a century had died with his brother.

Still, few could view the vast tranquillity spread out before him and not believe a better tomorrow was coming. Reid was one of them. He looked at the land steadfast in its innocence and simplicity and was glad to be home. He’d brought the horse. And the woman. The woman with the deep silence and the sure hands. Her name was Dani Tate. He didn’t need another groom. He barely managed to give the men that were left three square meals, a roof over their heads and an adequate salary. But horses were creatures of habit, and it was more than track superstition that made a trainer reluctant to break up a good horse-groom team. Everyone knew the stories of perfectly healthy horses dropping dead for no reason after being separated from a favorite groom. So when the woman had offered to come to Hamilton Hills with the colt, he’d said yes. In fact, he hadn’t even been surprised when she’d asked. She seemed to need the horse as much as the horse needed her. Now Reid needed them both.

He headed toward the barns, passing the small white building with peeling red trim that was the workers’ canteen. It should’ve been closed down, but it seemed like such a small tribute to the workers who had remained, faithful to the ideal that had been Hamilton Hills.

He passed the equine swimming pool, remembering his brother’s pleasure when it had been built, back when he had mortgaged all their futures, before the bloodstock market collapsed. The pool was empty except for leaves; the underwater treadmills and Jacuzzis used to treat the racehorses’ strains and sprains long gone. The private veterinary hospital was shut down also as were two-thirds of the barns, their residents having been led several years ago through the mist, across the fields to the auction block at Keeneland Racecourse.

He rounded the half-mile training track his father had built years ago when he tired of shipping a hundred yearlings daily to a rental track eight miles away. This year, there were only thirty-two yearlings in the training barn. Yet, last season, there had been only eighteen.

One side of the heavy double-wide door on Barn 4 was rolled back, the smells of sweet clover, oil soap and leather meeting Reid as he entered. Smells that had washed through his dreams since he was a child; smells that were now becoming like home to his own nephew.