Geronimo24 on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/geronimo24/art/July-Year-4-Collateral-315825530Geronimo24

Deviation Actions

Geronimo24's avatar

July Year 4 : Collateral

By
Published:
442 Views

Description

This drawing literally took me 5 minutes and I know its bad but I don't care because I've defeated writers block and I HAD to get this uploaded immediately before I changed my mind again and rewrote it for the seventh hundred time (I'm being melodramatic its only the third rewrite but still)


***

“How’s the colt?”

“A monster, but he’s fast. Can’t teach him anything, but he’s in perfect racing condition. Sound, nicely muscled for a two year old, and again fast,” Jonah’s weary voice said from the other line.

Hallie bit down on the oatmeal cookie in her hand, one of those low fat versions from the grocery story, “Run him.”

“He just ran. I’ll run him in August in the Saratoga Special.”

“You could run him in the Sanford.”

“He’s not running in the Sanford.”

Hallie knew then what was up, “Whose running in the Sanford Jonah,” she deadpanned.

“John’s Poltergeist colt.”

She was quiet then. She would never admit it but she had been keeping tabs on ever one of Triple Birch’s runners, Paranormal was the colt’s name. He’d won his maiden in last month, from all accounts he was a monstrously sized and decently talented animal. Actually all accounts were more positive than that, but that was her assessment. If Jonah wouldn’t throw in her colt against him it meant one thing, he thought her colt had an all too decent chance of beating the Poltergeist colt and screwing up the colt’s perfectly planned summer.

“How’s the rest of them?” she asked then deciding that this wasn’t an argument worth getting entangled in at the moment. Her colt could suffer a month off.

“I’m tired of two year olds. Half of them are too smart for their own good, the others too scared. The ones that show any sense aren’t showing speed and the ones that are showing speed aren’t showing sense. Mostly I just heap them on Scout and hope for the best.”

Hallie ought to have laughed at Jonah’s attempt at humor, but she didn’t, “And your filly?”

“Good. Great. Perfect.”

He said it quickly as though he was speaking a falsehood, but he wasn’t Hallie knew that. The filly, Zahra, was shaping up to be a leading contender in her division. In all their long distance phone conversations Jonah rarely spoke about the filly, a strange contradiction to her current placement on Thoroughbred Times, the front cover winning the Mother Goose with a blissed out expression on her gray face.

“How’s that new filly, the Elusive Quality filly.”

“Scout has her out in Arlington prepping for the Chicago Handicap tomorrow. You can’t waste time with that one, she barely focuses long enough to eat, let alone run.”

Hallie did in fact laugh at that.

***

Eminence was something of a puzzle, not an impossible puzzle, but certainly harder than a rubix cube. Fortunately Scout had always liked puzzles. As a child on rainy days she could get an immeasurably amount of joy out of a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle and the filly was no different, Scout was getting an immeasurable amount of joy out of her. She was inquisitive and sweet, interested in everything at all times and yet nothing at all, bright and gregarious all the while being rather introspective. She was comprised of nothing but contradictions and Scout, who thought herself to be a rather contradiction free person, enjoyed the conflict of personality between them.

Jonah, who’d bought the filly on the advice of Hallie Jeffries prodigal half adopted daughter, wanted little to do with her, so when Scout had told him the filly was ready for a start after only two weeks of being in their barn Jonah hadn’t had the notice to protest.

Now the filly was at Arlington loading into the gate for the Chicago Handicap (GIII) with Luc Martin on her back. Luc Martin after failing so miserably this spring was slowly regaining his gilded status amongst owners and horsemen. Scout, who’d ignored her instincts the last time, had taken on the role of adopted older sister much in the same way as she had with Lacey. Which in his words meant that she ‘nagged him endlessly,” something Scout admitted she was quite good at after living through four younger brothers, still for the time being it had refocused Luc how long it was going to last she couldn’t say.

Lacey was the primary concern for Scout though. She’d been doing as much research as she could do on the girl, where she was from, why she left wherever she came from, and how she got those disturbing scars from but had learned nothing. Mike Torrez, herself appointed mentor, was of the opinion that she was not from New York, not from the Northeast, perhaps even not from America. Lately Scout had noticed how intently Lacey listened to everything the grooms said and the look of comprehension flickered across her face. She never spoke a word of Spanish, but it was clear that she understood it. Considering that they had Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and Columbians working for them she understood the intricacies of Spanish well enough to hear past the different dialects and slang terms. Frankie’s presence around the barn as of late had released Italian into the air. Once again she never responded but she clearly understood, occasionally he would say something obscene in Italian and Lacey would smile ever so slightly. Smiling was an absolute rarity with Lacey and to hear her smile at another language sent off red flags, what the red flags meant was where Scout was lost.

This was why Scout liked Eminence, or Emmie as she’d begun to call her, out of all the puzzles in Scout’s life she simply made the most sense.

***

“Third was good for her today,” Scout said quietly on her cellphone that evening as she leaned up against the corner of Triple Birch’s shed row at Arlington.

“Missed the race, I’ll watch the replay when I get a chance. That damn War Embem colt threw Frankie real bad, broke a rib or two.”

“Don’t put Lacey on him,” Scout warned.

“Like hell I’d do that. But she keeps eyeing him all funny like and he eyes her right back.”

“Don’t let her get near him.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” Jonah said with a sigh, “I wish Hallie had never bought the damn beast.”

There was a long pause.

“That’s Hallie Jeffries’s colt?” Scout said quietly.

“Wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” he said gruffly.

“Why is she buying horses?”

“Not horses. A horse. She just mailed him to me. I had no hand in it.”

“How much is Westbrook paying her?”

“Considering she just won about everything at Ascot for him I’d say quite a bit. I can’t tell if she’s happy or not though.”

“Jonah,” Scout warned.

“I know. It’s not my problem, she can tell me if she has a problem, she’s a grown up now, but shit Scout I owe her father the grace of caring a bit about the girl.”

Scout was admittedly curious now.

“What did Ben Jeffries ever do for you?”

“He won me a lot of races.”

“Lots of people do that for you.”

A long heavy sigh came then.

“Did I ever tell you about my ex-wife?”

“No.”

“Well I have one and an daughter with that. I don’t speak to either of them.”

“And this involves Ben Jeffries how?”

“I watched him die. He was riding my blasted horse.”

Scout did know that. He was riding Achak in the mornings. A breeze. The colt lost his mind, his jockey, and his career in a single outing. She learned that from the whisperers around the track. No one would speak of the tragedy outright, no one. If anyone spoke of Ben Jeffries’s final fate, including Jonah, it was along the lines of how his end had been fitting, how he would have wanted it, doing what he loved. No one spoke of the truth, no one spoke of how Achak had spooked at nothing, had experienced a crippling emotional breakdown on the track, how he had stumbled over himself in the process, crushed Ben Jeffries underneath his weight and broken nearly every bone in the man’s body, no one talked about how the colt had scrambled to its feet, realized the man at his feet was dead and had frozen. Locked up the old horseman who’d seen it said, hung his head and stood square with his lame front leg resting on the tip of his hoof. No one would speak of how Ben Jeffries had died at Belmont that morning on the colt he’d loved best.

“Does she know the truth of it?” Scout asked quietly her mind filled with images of a little dark bay colt standing silently over the crumpled body of a man who’d loved him.

“She was there.”

No one had mentioned that.

“Her and Charlotte both, Charlotte was her twin. Ben had brought them out that morning. He used to bring them out when they were really small, two, three, four, but he hadn’t for a while. He’d been riding for others all over, hadn’t really seen his daughters much. They were eleven or twelve then. Charlotte wasn’t happy to be there, but Hallie was in her quiet sort of way.”

“They saw the wreck?”

“Only Hallie. Charlotte didn’t want to go down to the track.”

Scout felt lightheaded.

“It was the strangest thing, watching her. I remember how fast everything moved, how chaotic it all seemed, I was shouting, everyone was shouting, you heard Achak screaming, you heard the impact into the dirt, it was all right there. Visceral and loud and consuming, but all I remember was that she was silent, she just watched with this look on her face. No tears, no screaming, just this look of intense pain and sorrow.”

“She didn’t recognize you when you first met her?”

“No. I don’t know if she even remembers what happened.”
Scout was quiet. She hadn’t known Hallie very well, not even half as well as Jonah and in her opinion Jonah had never known Hallie all that well but there was one truth she knew about Hallie and it was that she didn’t forget. Still there was a time and place to reveal truths and now was not one.

“Yeah, probably not,” Scout said quietly her eyes drifting over Emma who was currently invested in a battle of wits with her hay net.

Scout didn’t walk over to help her because sometimes you have to let people and horses fight their own battles.
Image size
1500x1000px 143.63 KB
© 2012 - 2024 Geronimo24
Comments0
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In