Golden Filly Collection One (53 page)

A pair of huge Rottweilers announced the truck’s arrival.

“Don’t worry about them, my friend.” The smile on their host’s face was about as wide as the man was tall. He’d obviously been a jockey at one time but now had gained a bit in the girth. “Hal, I can’t believe it’s really you. How many years has it been?”

“Too many.” Hal shook the proffered hand. “Adam, this is my daughter, Trish. Trish, after all the stories you’ve heard about him, you finally get to meet Adam Finley.”

Trish felt her hand taken over by the warm grasp of her father’s friend. His blue eyes twinkled, as if the leprechauns of his homeland lived inside.

“Let’s be getting that horse of yours settled, and then I’m sure you’ll appreciate the cold drinks my wife has ready up at the house. And, Trish, in case you’d be interested, we have a swimming pool out to the back.”

Trish looked at her father, her eyes wide, and shook her head.
I could learn to like this,
she thought.

Trish led Spitfire down the ramp and around an open area a few times before leading him into a roomy stall, apart from the other occupied stalls.

“I’m thinking all your hard work has paid off.” Adam nodded his head. He scratched Spitfire’s cheek and ran his hands over the sleek shoulder and down the colt’s legs. “And you say he goes as good as he looks?”

“He does.”

“Well now, and I sure am looking forward to seeing that race on Saturday.”

“You’ll come all the way down there to see us run?” Trish couldn’t keep the amazement from her voice.

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Adam tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and led them toward the sprawling house. “Now, let’s go get those drinks I promised you.”

The next thirty-six hours passed like a dream. Trish could have listened to Adam and her father swap stories all night, but finally she went to bed.

After walking Spitfire around the three-quarter-mile dirt track a couple of times, then turning him loose in a grassy paddock, she spent the rest of the morning lying by the pool. And playing in the pool. And most of all, lapping up the sunshine. She
did
take heed and slather on the sunscreen. Her dad was right, she couldn’t afford a bad burn right now.

When the time came to leave, she felt like she’d known Adam and his wife, Martha, all her life. “Maybe they’d like to adopt me as a grandkid,” she said to her father as they drove out the driveway on Tuesday morning. “What a place! And what horses!” She sighed. “I sure would love to ride for him sometime.”

“You never know.” Hal smiled at her. “I have a feeling that someday you’ll have your pick of any mount, at any track.”

“You really think so?”

Hal nodded.

Trish re-ran every moment of their visit as they drove on south. What a treat it had been.

Oil derricks at Bakersfield looked like giant grasshoppers nodding above the land. She couldn’t get enough of the palm trees, and when they took time for lunch, the riot of flowers around the restaurant stopped her in her tracks.

“Mom would love those,” she said. “What are they?”

“Don’t ask me.” Hal shook his head as he held the door open for her.

He laughed at her awe when they drove the Grapevine on their approach to Los Angeles. Freeways in every direction blew her away.

“Now watch for the signs for Pasadena,” Hal told her. “I have to keep my eyes on the traffic.”

“I’m sure glad you’re driving and not me.”

The Pasadena freeway wound up through rough hills, covered with bushes but no trees. A yellow-gray haze hung in the valleys and blurred the mountaintops.

“That’s good old L.A. smog,” Hal said in answer to her question. “Some days are clear and others are—well, others are downright awful.”

They passed exit signs for Pasadena and Trish saw one for the Rosebowl.

“Now watch for Arcadia and the Baldwin Avenue exit. There should be a sign for Santa Anita Park.”

“There it is!” Trish exclaimed a few minutes later. As they left the freeway they wound through a beautifully wooded area.

“This used to be all one estate,” Hal said. “But now this area is a wellknown arboretum and park. See, there are the stables off to our left.”

Trish sat with her mouth open as they rounded the street into acres of parking lots. The grandstand soared green and enticing above the palm trees ahead and to the right.

“This place is…is…” She turned to stare at her father. “It’s humongous!”

“Baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Chapter

15

B
rian Sweeney’s stables?” Hal asked the gate guard.

“Straight ahead, number 26, third barn on your right.” The uniformclad man pointed up a dirt road with low-roofed green barns butting against it. As they drove up the road, Trish could look down lanes leading to the track or deep-sanded walking areas that separated each long barn.

“This is beautiful,” Trish whispered, trying to see everything at once.

Since they arrived in the late afternoon, the day’s program was nearly over. A couple of horses were being led toward the grandstand. As they stopped the van at barn 26, they heard the roar of the stands. Another race had just begun.

Trish felt like a little country mouse come to the big city. Obviously, horse racing was on a different plane here than up in Portland.

“Brian, how are you?” Her dad shook hands with a dark-haired man who wore a ready smile. She could hear a British accent in the return greeting.

Spitfire nickered as he heard their voices. The van shifted as the colt moved around.

“Brian, my daughter, Trish.”

“Good to meet you.” Brian shook her hand. “Welcome to Santa Anita. Let’s get your horse unloaded so you can move the van. We’ve a stall all ready for him.” The two men pulled out the ramp and opened the back door.

Trish took a lead shank and met Spitfire at the door. He stared out, ears pricked forward. Sun glinted off his blue-black hide. He whinnied, announcing to the world that he had arrived.

Horses answered from stalls around them. Spitfire tossed his head. Trish laughed as she snapped the rope to his halter.

“You’re a show-off, you know that?”

Spitfire blew in her face and followed her down the ramp.

“Looks like he traveled well,” Brian said. “Why don’t you take him to that ring there and walk him for a while, Trish. Loosen him up a bit.” He pointed to an oval area between the barns, deeply sanded and with a groove worn by horse hooves.

“You want some help?” Hal asked her.

Trish shook her head. “I need the exercise as bad as he does. Come on, fella. You can check out the sights as we walk.”

About half an hour later, Trish led Spitfire down the aisle between the stalls. Each barn was four stalls plus two aisles wide. The aisles had been raked earlier and the cool dimness felt good after the walk. It felt more like a summer day in Portland than early April.

Deep straw bedded the dirt stall. A sling of hay hung on the open upper door, and green webbing took the place of the lower door half. Spitfire inspected everything, drank from the bucket in the corner, and came back to stand by Trish to get his scratching. She obliged, all the while listening to her father and Brian catch up on the years since they’d seen each other.

I never knew he had so many friends in other places,
Trish thought as she stroked Spitfire’s head and neck.

“Let’s feed him now, Tee, and then we can get settled at the motel.”

“You needn’t worry about a thing in the morning,” Brian said. “My men will take care of him until you come to work him out on the track. We have to be done with morning works by nine-fifteen, so you have plenty of time. Take it easy, you’ve had a long trip.”

Trish thought back to the fog.
And you don’t know the half of it.

“We’re going to stay here?” Trish looked up at the bell in the Spanish tower of the Embassy Suites Hotel. Her father smiled.

“All right!” She gawked even more when they walked through the inner courtyard on the way to their room. Lush greenery surrounded a waterfall and running creek. Brick walks, benches, and white-clothed tables were scattered throughout the airy, two-story room.

Laughing children played around an outside swimming pool, shaded by stucco and brick courtyard walls. Trish knew where she wanted to spend part of her day.

“I can’t believe all this,” she told her mother that evening after she and Hal had dinner in the dining room. “Oh, I wish you and David were here too.”

In the morning they ate breakfast at the buffet in the courtyard and headed back to the track.

“That parking lot is bigger than our whole farm,” Trish pointed out.

“And that’s only one of several. Santa Anita has quite an interesting history. You should go on one of the guided tours; you’d learn a lot.” This time they parked by other trucks outside the gate.

Spitfire announced his pleasure at Trish’s return as soon as he heard her greeting Brian.

“He’s already been groomed,” Brian said. “We probably should clip him this afternoon. Looks pretty shaggy compared to our horses down here.”

Trish tightened the cinch on her saddle.
Yep, they do things differently in California.
Once mounted, she followed the two men past lines of barns and out to the huge track.

“Just walk him,” her father said. “We’ll be up getting a cup of coffee.”

It was a good thing Spitfire was behaving because Trish had a hard time concentrating on him. Off to her left, across a palm tree–dotted infield, the San Gabriel Mountains seemed to butt right against the track. A turf track and another dirt working track also circled the infield.

The stands to her right seemed to go on forever and clear up to the sky.

Spitfire didn’t manage a flat-footed walk. He jigged and pulled at He pointed to an open restaurant area to the right. the bit. He snorted and reached out to join those horses slow-galloping or breezing by them. Trish got a better look at the stands from the far side of the track.

“There’s gonna be an awful lot of people here on Saturday. We’ve got a big race to run.” The enormity of it all dried her throat right up.

By the time Brian took them on a tour of the facility, Trish was even more thunderstruck.

“This area is designed after the English paddocks,” Brian said as he pointed out over a landscaped area that looked more like a park than a racetrack. Two sculptures of horses were carved out of bushes. He called them topiary. “They do a lot of that kind of thing in Europe. And that’s Seabiscuit over there under the awning.”

Trish saw a bronze, nearly lifesize statue of a horse on a pedestal. White-clothed tables surrounded the statue.

“They entertain special groups there, serve fancy lunches and programs.” Brian led them through the saddling stalls and showed Trish the women’s dressing area and where to weigh in in the men’s dressing room. “We’ll bring Spitfire out and lead him through all this a couple of times during the other races. That way nothing will surprise him.”

Or me,
Trish thought.
This is all so much more complicated than at home.

She and her father registered that afternoon for their licenses as trainer and jockey in the state of California. They stood in line in the racing secretary’s office under the grandstand and paid their fees, including the final $6,000 race fee.

“One thing about California, everything costs more.” Hal shook his head as he put his checkbook back in his pocket. “Well, come on. Let’s go get that horse of ours clipped.”

The foreman was just finishing as they arrived back at the stables. “Good horse here.” His smile flashed bright against the tan of his face. He, like most of the grooms and stable boys, was of Mexican or South American descent.

Trish was tempted to try her Spanish but chickened out. She’d been able to pick up some of the conversations, but they all talked so fast. She ran her hand over Spitfire’s shoulder. While the hair was short now, it still had the fuzzy feel of heavier winter coating.

“I’m not used to someone else doing all the work like this,” she said as she and Hal walked down the aisles to the track. “But it’s nice. David would love it here, don’t you think?”

Hal smiled at her. “Let’s watch a couple of races, then head back to the hotel.”

“Fine with me. You still don’t feel good, do you?”

“Not great, but better.”

At least the race is the same everywhere,
Trish thought as they watched a field break from the gates. After the horses swept by, she looked up behind them to the cantilevered roof of the stands, five stories above them. Crowds thronged both the grandstands and the infield, where there were betting windows, food stands, and a children’s play area.
Better keep my mind on the horses.

Trish fell asleep stretched out on a lounger by the pool. When she awoke in the shade, the first thing she thought of was sunburn. She felt her neck and the backs of her knees and let out a sigh of relief.

“Dad woulda killed me,” she muttered as she gathered her towel and slipped her sandals back on. “Hope he’s ready for dinner, ’cause I’m starved.”