Secretariat Reborn (2 page)

Hank raised an eyebrow and growled, “Drink on my farm, boy, and you’re out of here.” He turned to Juan. “Fetch that dark colt in the third stall.”

Juan jogged to the long barn and soon returned with a flashy sable colt trotting alongside. “Want me to take him right in?” he called.

“Give it a try,” said Hank.

At first the colt seemed ready to leap into the horse van with Juan at his side, but at the ramp, he, too, refused. “Come on, boy,” said Juan, pulling on the lead. “There’s a pretty girl in here.”

Hank ran his sweaty hands over his threadbare jeans and wiped his damp forehead with his sleeve. “Going to be one of those days. All right, Larry, let’s lock hands behind his butt and shove him in. He isn’t afraid, just being stubborn.”

Hank placed one hand on the colt’s rump and with his other hand, he reached for Larry, but before they could clasp hands to muscle the colt in, he kicked out and struck Hank’s hand.

“Son of a bitch!” Hank examined his injury. “It’s always the one you never expect.” He glared at the colt and thundered, “Son, you better get your ass in there.” The colt, sensing trouble, bounded up the ramp, and Juan backed him into a stall.

The men gathered around Hank and looked at his bloody fingers.

“Jesus, Mr. Roberts,” Larry said. “That horse nailed you. Those look broke.”

The trailer driver nodded. “You need to go to the emergency room.”

Hank cringed, trying to move his fingers. “Think you’re right. Can’t budge them.” He glanced at the driver. “Get going, Joe. Don’t want those horses overheating.”

“Okay, Mr. Roberts, got one more pickup, but I’ll offer them water before I head south.” He slid the ramp up and closed the doors.

Juan said, “I’ll get you a clean towel from the tack room.”

As the semitrailer took off down the long drive, Larry asked, “Want me to take you to the hospital?”

“I’ll drive myself,” Hank said. “Just help Juan feed and finish up. He’s in charge while I’m gone.”

The husky white man scowled at the smaller dark-skinned Juan entering the barn. “But, Mr. Roberts,” Larry said, “he’s Mexican. I don’t take orders from them.”

“You’ll take orders from Juan or collect your pay and be gone.”

As Juan approached them, Larry put out his foot and tripped him. Juan hit the ground, but in seconds was on his feet with fists raised.

“Leave it, Juan,” Hank said. He straightened, facing Larry. Although slighter than his helper and with an injured hand, the trainer had a no-nonsense attitude that could intimidate most men with a glance. “You’re about to spit teeth. Now get off my place.”

Larry backed away. “Fucking wetbacks,” he snarled and strode to his pickup.

Hank drove to the hospital in his tired truck using the wrist of his injured hand to steady the wheel as he puffed a cigarette and glanced at the bloody towel serving as a bandage.
How am I going to train horse with only one hand? Hell, a couple of splints, some stitches maybe, and it should be healed in a few weeks. Managed with worse horse injuries
.

At the hospital, Hank learned that his broken index and second fingers would require more than splints and stitches. After X-rays,
the emergency room doctor said, “The bones are shattered, Mr. Roberts. You’ll need surgery.”

Hank next met with a surgeon who examined his injury. “I’m scheduling you for an operation tomorrow,” the surgeon said. “You’ll be too groggy to drive home, so have someone accompany you.”

The following morning Hank and Juan sat in the hospital’s waiting room. A nurse explained to Hank that it was standard procedure to take a chest X-ray before surgery.

“You’re just padding my bill,” he complained and followed her.

Shortly after, he reclined on a gurney in the operating room. The surgeon entered and Hank lifted his head. “Let’s get this over, Doc,” he said with a nervous grin. “I got horses that need tending.”

The surgeon placed his hand on Hank’s shoulder. “Mr. Roberts, I have bad news. It’s your chest X-ray.”

Christian Roberts’s lanky body rested comfortably in the seat as he tapped the steering wheel of his SUV in sync with the classic rock blaring from the radio. The song “Last Chance” came on. He shuddered, shaking his sun-bleached hair, taking a deep breath. Even after the tune changed, the lyrics played on in his head, making him focus on the purpose of his trip.

He pushed his Ray-Bans up against the bridge of his nose and massaged his chin. “Fuck,” he muttered.

Until the day before, Christian’s life had been good and uncomplicated. He had youth, looks, and brains and was cruising in a new red Ford paid for with his flourishing boat business. And he was dating one of hottest chicks to grace Sarasota nightlife.

Then the phone call came from his mother, telling him the bad news. His father was dying from lung cancer and wanted Christian to drive up. Now, after four years, he felt old insecurities kicking in, bringing memories of being unwanted, unloved, and a disappointment to a man Christian had idolized.

He exited I-75 and drove past rolling green pastures dotted with oak hammocks and horses. He gazed at the mansions and well-kept barns with paddocks and exercise tracks that screamed “horse money.” If not for the humid air and an occasional cabbage palm, he could have been in Kentucky, but this was Ocala, the only place in Florida where horses outnumbered cattle.

At Citra, a tiny town north of Ocala, he turned off the main road onto a narrow side street. After a mile of potholes, he saw the familiar
yellow sign: M
AKE A
W
ISH
F
ARM
. He slowed and turned into the entrance.

Six-foot-high dog fennel grew around the faded sign and in the ditches along the drive leading to the house and barn. The pastures, too, were overgrown with weeds. He moved on and noticed that most of the four-board fencing on both sides was either broken, warped, or completely down.

This place has gone to hell
, he thought, glancing at the dilapidated fifty-acre farm, so out of place with its immaculate neighbors. He noticed the pastures were empty.
He wouldn’t have sold his horses, not all of them. They meant too much to that miserable old man
.

He pulled in front of the two-bedroom wooden house that paled in comparison with the thirty-stall, concrete-block barn farther down the drive.

“Nothing but the best for the nags,” he mumbled, and slid out of his vehicle. Pushing the sunglasses up, he turned his sapphire-blue eyes on the rundown track that surrounded a small lake, used for exercising young Thoroughbreds. A gentle wind tugged at his Tommy Bahama shirt and blew his shaggy locks off his collar. As he stared at the sandy track, he recalled the day when his world collapsed and he gave up winning his father’s love.

Christian had been only ten when he sneaked into the stall of a promising gray colt and put on the tack. He had led the colt from the stall and hopped on. His hope was to make his father proud, showing him that he could handle a Thoroughbred as well as any hired help. He guided the colt down the path leading to the track where his father stood at the railing, watching two exercise riders put their horses through the paces.

As Christian approached the open track gate, he saw the two horses and riders making their last turn, and they were breezing, a full-out gallop that was clocked in preparation for an upcoming race. As they came in his direction, he felt his colt’s body tense and hump
up as it prepared to dash after them. “Whoa, boy, whoa,” he said, gripping a handful of the horse’s silver mane.

“Christian!” his father screamed from fifty yards away.

Christian immediately recognized his error. Although he had started riding at age three on the gentle teaser pony and later on his father’s quiet quarter horse used to lead and calm the high-strung Thoroughbreds, none of his riding experience had prepared him for a thousand pounds of hard muscle moving like a launched rocket. The colt, believing it was bursting out of a starting gate, took the bit in its teeth, and left Christian with no control.

His father yelled again. The colt lunged forward, and Christian tumbled off its back, crashing to the ground. Dazed, he lifted his head from the dirt and saw the departing hooves of the gray colt that charged down the track after the other horses.

“Pull him up, pull him up before he hits the rail!” his father had yelled to the riders.

Christian sat, holding a throbbing arm, and watched one of the riders grab the runaway’s reins and gallop him slowly to a stop. The rider hopped off and held his mount and the gray.

“Is he all right?” his father had hollered to the man and jogged onto the track without a glance at his son or his welfare.

Only after the colt was examined and led back to the barn did his father hotfoot it to Christian. “Goddamn you, boy,” he cursed. “What the devil were you thinking?”

Christian, in tears, scrambled to his feet. “My arm hurts, Dad.”

“I don’t give a shit! Do you know how much that colt is worth? Your ass is about to hurt.”

Lucky for Christian, his mother had heard the commotion and raced onto the scene. “Look at his arm, Hank!” she screamed. “It’s broken! You care more about a lousy horse than your own son. I’ve had it!”

That day marked the end of his parents’ marriage. Before the cast was off Christian’s arm, he and his mother had left the farm and
moved 150 miles south to Sarasota and her relatives. Six months later, his parents were divorced.

During the summer, Christian would stay with his father, but over the years, the visits became shorter and less frequent, realizing he couldn’t compete with the horses for his father’s time or affection.

His mother married a wealthy lawyer, and Christian spent the later part of his childhood on the snow-white beaches of Siesta Key with Sarasota Bay his backyard and playground. He became an avid sailor, fisherman, diver, and surfer. In his late teens, he stopped going to the northern horse pastures. His childhood devotion had faded, replaced with resentment, and every discussion with his father ended in an argument. As an adult, he closed his mind to a father who never cared.

Now, a familiar man’s voice came from the house and snapped Christian out of his reflection. “Christian?”

Christian put the Ray-Bans in his shirt pocket and turned. “Hi, Dad,” he said and walked toward the porch.

“Nice ride. Is it a rental?”

“No, it’s mine,” said Christian, swiping the blond hair back from his forehead, “Bought it a few months ago.”

“Don’t you know buying new is a waste of money?”

Christian bit his lip, feeling the squabble coming. Quickly, he changed the subject. “Mom called and said you weren’t doing too well.” Opening the screen door, he lowered his head to conceal his shock. Gone was the vibrant fifty-year-old with the lean, muscled frame, fiery eyes, and thick brown hair. Even his low, subtle voice, the one that commanded respect among men yet could seduce any horse and most women, was listless. His father resembled a corpse. At six-foot-two, Christian now towered over the pale, emaciated man with sunken eyes. The cancer had ravaged him.

“Yeah. Go figure. I went to the hospital with broke fingers from a horse kick and walk out learning I’m dying of lung cancer.” Hank
forced a dry smile. “Well, I’m glad you drove up. We need to settle on what I’m leaving behind.” He coughed for nearly a minute and clutched the back of a porch chair for balance. “Come in, come in,” he rasped and shuffled back inside the house.

“There’s nothing the doctors can do?” Christian asked and followed him.

“Been through radiation; it didn’t help. And I’m not about to spend my last days bedridden and sick with chemo.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “Can I get you somethin’ to drink?”

Christian saw how difficult it had been for his father to greet him at the door, and instantly his animosity toward him lessened. The heartless dictator was now a pathetic old man. “Sit, Dad. I’ll get it.” His bitterness began to be replaced with pity, and he vowed there would be no sarcasm or quarreling on this, perhaps his last, trip to the farm.

Hank nodded and collapsed in his overstuffed chair. “I get pretty winded these days.”

The small kitchen had cluttered counters, dirty dishes piled in the sink, and an overflowing trash bin. In the refrigerator, Christian found open cans of soup, containers of spoiled food, and meager supplies. “Dad, are you getting any help here?” he asked, removing a couple of Cokes.

“Oh,” Hank called, “sorry about the dirty dishes. If I’d known you were coming today, I’d have asked Juan to help me clean up.”

Christian returned to the living room and popped the soda can for Hank. “Juan, whoever the hell he is, should be fired. The whole place is a mess.” He eased into a chair opposite his father’s. Still stunned by his father’s gaunt appearance, he shifted his gaze to the window.

“Can’t fire someone you don’t pay.” Hank grinned. “Juan stops here every morning, takes care of the horses, and gets me what I need before heading off to work on another farm. He stops again in the afternoon. He won’t take money, says he owes me for teaching him the horse business. That little Mexican is a darn good friend.”