The Black Stallion Challenged (12 page)

Alec followed Cornwell but Willy hung back. “C’mon, Willy,” Alec said. “This show is his responsibility, not ours. Let him do the worrying. We’re just guests.”

“It’s too much to ask of anybody,” Willy answered, but he followed Alec into the adjoining studio. Four other jockeys were there, sitting in chairs placed in a semi-circle around a desk. A battery of lights were winking in the control booth beyond and several men sat before the large board. One man held up three fingers to Cornwell, who glanced at the large clock over the glass-walled booth and nodded in reply.

“Three minutes to air time,” he told Alec. “You and Willy take the empty chairs.” He went to the desk and sat down, picking up the script and studying it. Then he looked at the group of small men sitting on either side of him. They all seemed to be uncomfortable under the glare of the lights.

“We’re checking the line-up of the cameras,” Cornwell told them. He glanced at the sweep hand on the large clock again, then at the monitors below the control booth. He studied his own image as it appeared on the monitor, then his guests’. They all looked like what they were, horsebackers. It should be a good show. His mouth widened into a large, friendly smile as the program director’s hand swept down and the light on Camera One blinked red. He was on the air.

“Good evening, fellow Miamians, this is ‘Count’ Cornwell.…”

Alec scarcely listened. He was not much interested in the brief account of the day’s sports activities which Cornwell was giving prior to his interview with the riders. Anyway, except for Cornwell they were all off camera and had several minutes to themselves before going on the air. Alec stole a look at the other jockeys to see how they were taking it.

Willy Walsh was still scared by it all but he seemed to have got hold of himself. Jay Pratt, shorter than Willy, was in the next chair; he was wearing a buff-colored turtleneck sweater under a sports jacket. He looked clean and natty, giving evidence of the money he made racing. Jay never worked horses in the mornings any more. He got up just in time to go to the track for the afternoon program. One could do that when owners and trainers started running after you with the big-stake mounts.

Pete Edge sat alongside Jay, his short legs crossed. He was built square and was strong enough to drag the carcass of a dead horse out of his stall, which Alec had seen him do. His left eyelid drooped slightly and a long scar ran directly beneath it, the result of a bad fall and steel-shod hoofs. It made him look tough, which he was, and unhappy, which he also was. He hadn’t been winning many races lately.

Gustavo Carballido, one of the very successful South American riders at the present Hialeah meeting, sat in the next chair. As usual, Gus needed a haircut. His dark skin was stretched drum-tight across his cheekbones, making his eyes seem all the more sunken and piercing. He looked ravaged and hungry despite his
current success on the track. There was no doubt that the lean, poverty-stricken years he had known on his way to the top had left their mark.

Next to him was Nick Marchione, the oldest rider at Hialeah, who listed his age at “39 going on 60.” He was one of the great jockeys of all time and would probably never retire so long as he continued winning races. He squinted through glasses, which he never wore when riding, and watched Cornwell do his sportscast, and kept running his fingertips through his thinning hair.

Alec’s gaze shifted back to Willy Walsh, who was young and inexperienced compared to the others. Willy was rubbing a large gold ring on his left hand. It was, Alec knew, supposed to bring him good luck. Most horsemen were superstitious, Alec reflected. They believed in all manner of charms and taboos for good and bad luck, and every kind of cure-all. Willy had his ring. Jay Pratt wore a medallion with the figure of a bird in flight around his neck. Henry carried horse chestnuts in his pocket. And, Alec admitted, he himself had a silver dollar he’d never be without.

Cornwell was coming to the end of his résumé of the day’s sports news. Putting down his script, he fingered his immaculate tie and ran his hand softly over the top of his bald head. Through Camera One he beamed at the riders who sat around the desk. At the same time, his eyes were very probing.

Alec prepared himself for what was to come. He felt his muscles tense, almost as if he were in the starting gate, waiting for the doors to open. And he knew it was no different for the other riders.

“And now,” Cornwell told his television audience, “I want you to meet some of America’s greatest jockeys.” He introduced them with Camera Two singling out each rider as he spoke. He thought how unlike other athletes they were, these men of the saddle. They sat uncomfortably in their chairs, looking very drawn and stringy despite their well-cut clothes. A couple of them might even be taken for emaciated children. Yet their muscle-banded shoulders and forearms could guide and control a thousand pounds of tough horse running some forty miles an hour. Marchione and Carballido looked harder and more used than the others, as if their lean bodies had endured so much that physical resilience was wearing thin.

He concluded his introductions with Willy Walsh and Alec Ramsay. How young-looking they were! How many more rides before they looked like the others? How many more spills, when all of a sudden a horse went out from under them like a tree limb breaking,
and they were down among the sharp hoofs? Thinking of it made Cornwell realize how glad he was not to be one of them. They weren’t paid too much even if they made a thousand dollars a day, he decided.

“And now,” he told his audience, “we’ll talk to these crack jockeys one at a time, starting with the oldest and the country’s best-known veteran campaigner, Nick Marchione. Nick,” he said pointedly, “you’ve been riding race horses for over thirty years now. Don’t you think it’s time you packed your trunk and left the jockey room?”

Nick Marchione did not appear to be taken aback by Cornwell’s directness or sharpness of tongue. His image alone was on the screen of the monitor. He seemed delighted to be there. His lined face was excited, even impatient, as if he was overflowing with new ideas which he wanted to divulge to the vast television audience.

“I’ll quit only when I can’t give my best … that’s the only way I ride,” he said cockily. “How else would you want me to put it?”

“Then you feel you can still do full justice to your mounts?” Cornwell asked.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I have a responsibility to the people I ride for and the racing public.”

“You find that your eyes don’t bother you? I’d heard you had some trouble with them.”

Marchione shrugged his shoulders and, at the same time, squinted through his glasses. “I wouldn’t say they don’t bother me none, but not enough to affect my riding. I’m near-sighted, so all I been doin’ for the last few years is to stay closer to the pace whenever possible.”

“And when you can’t? Or say there’s a heavy fog or storm?” Cornwell persisted cagily.

“I use my ears. I’m not deaf. I can tell where I am, all right,” Marchione answered, grinning into the camera.

“Is competition tougher these days … I mean than it was, say, ten or fifteen years ago?” Cornwell asked.

“No, it’s always been tough, like any competitive sport. Jockeys love to beat one another, regardless of the importance of the race. I mean the size of the purse isn’t as important to me as you probably think it is. I get as much kick out of bringing home a winner as I ever did.”

“The daily grind doesn’t bother you?”

“What daily grind?” Marchione asked. “For me there
is
no daily grind. I love horses and racing. I like to ride. I don’t want to do anything else.”

“Then you’ll only hang up your silks when you feel you can no longer give your best?”

“That’s right. As long as I’m physically able to ride, I’ll ride.”

“You’ve had plenty of spills?”

“Plenty. I was even pronounced dead after a race on a Midwest half-miler about fifteen years ago.”

“Fortunately for you, the diagnosis proved incorrect,” Cornwell said, smiling.

“Yeah, fortunately,” Marchione repeated solemnly. “And I won the race as well. I crossed the finish wire with my feet in the air and my head beneath the horse before I hit the dirt.”

“You sound as if you’d pay to ride if you had to,” Cornwell said.

“I might at that,” Marchione answered.

“What advice, if any, do you have for young riders on their way up?”

Marchione said hesitantly, “When you’re green you can make a million mistakes. Lots of situations come up that kids can’t handle. What I tell them is try not to get discouraged. As you get older you learn never to give up hope or quit trying. Among the biggest thrills I’ve had was winning races where I never thought I had a chance.”

“Do you find that young riders listen to you?”

“No. There’s nobody smarter than a seventeen-year-old kid.” He glanced at Willy Walsh and smiled. “I know, because I was just as stubborn at their age. Now I find I’m doing the same things the old riders told me to do. It’s too late to thank most of them.”

The camera, shifting quickly to Willy Walsh, showed him sitting on the edge of his chair, listening to Nick Marchione’s sage advice.

“Willy,” Cornwell said, as if all this had been prearranged, “you’re seventeen years old. How do you feel about what Nick just said?”

“I listen to everybody. I always listen,” Willy said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat and wishing it were a saddle instead. “But like Nick said, you can make a million mistakes and some of ’em aren’t even in the book yet. A lot of things happen in horse racing that can’t be explained by nobody, even old guys like Nick.”

“What do you weigh, Willy?”

“Generally round 104 pounds stripped. With rigging an added six pounds, I can ride at 110.”

“Does the rigging include the safety helmet you jocks wear?”

“No. They let us step on the scales without the helmet. It’s a good thing.”

“Why?”

“The new helmets weigh about a pound and a half. That much added to tack would put a lot of jocks in a steam box.”

“A pound and a half,” Cornwell repeated. “That’s a lot of weight to be carrying on top of your head during a race.”

“Yeah, but it’s good to have there in case you go down. It’s saved a lot of lives already.”

“I imagine it has,” Cornwell said. He paused before going on. “Willy, are you a sentimentalist like Nick here? I mean, do you love riding so much you’d stay in this sport whether you were successful or not?”

“Sure I would,” Willy said quickly, “if anybody would have me. We all would or we wouldn’t be here.”

“Not I,” Jay Pratt interrupted, and the camera switched to where he sat comfortably in his chair, exuding poise and self-confidence.

“You wouldn’t?” Cornwell asked. “Why not?”

“It’s a business,” Pratt said, his blue eyes laughing, “not a sport. No one ever told me I had to love horses to be in it. I make decisions every day, just like you do in your business or any other executive. I decide where I want to race and what horses I want to ride. I leave the exercising and training and loving to others.”

Cornwell smiled back at the handsome jockey in the natty-looking sweater and sports jacket. “I’ve heard
that you get up just in time to make the afternoon races,” he said.

“There’s nothing wrong with that. Many of the top trainers believe in strong, heavy exercise boys being up on their horses in the morning. It helps to get a horse dead fit in his training.”

“And lets you get more sleep,” Cornwell suggested.

“Why not? I’ve been at this business a long time, almost as long as Nick here.”

“What do you think is the most important quality a rider can have?”

“Confidence is the big thing. Like I just said, I make a lot of decisions every day, and I can’t afford to hesitate. I’ve learned to act quickly and confidently. When I decide to move with a horse, we move, inside or outside. I don’t change my mind once we’re on our way. I decide before I move how much horse I got under me and whether or not I can make it, then I go.”

“And if you’ve made the wrong decision?” Cornwell asked.

“I get in a jam like anyone else. But I don’t make many wrong moves anymore. I keep my horse free of trouble and going all the time.”

“Have you been around horses since you were a kid, Jay?” Cornwell asked.

“No. I was born and brought up in New York City. The only horses I saw were the cops’ horses in the streets and a few that hacked around Central Park.”

“Then why were you attracted to racing?”

“I wanted to get to Florida for the winter months,” Jay Pratt said, laughing. “So I went to the racetrack and learned to ride.”

The camera switched to the man in the next chair, and Cornwell said, “Here’s another rider who has had to work hard to get where he is … Pete Edge.”

“We all know what it is to work hard,” Pete said, looking fierce because of his drooping eyelid and scar. “The difference is that only a few are making money at it.”

Cornwell smiled. “It’s true you’ve had a run of hard luck at Hialeah this season, Pete. How do you account for it?”

“You get a lot of bad horses, like I have, and they make you look like a bum. It’s as simple as that.”

“You were brought up in the city, too, weren’t you, Pete?”

“Chicago. Like Jay here, all I knew about horses at first was that one end bit and the other end kicked. Then I went to the track mornings and found I could stick on ’em.”

“Do you still exercise horses in the mornings?”

“Sure. I don’t have any choice like Jay does, but I’d do it anyway. I keep fit by working. I feel as good now as I did when I was Willy’s age. I don’t drink or smoke and I got a wife who understands.”

“That helps,” Cornwell said, smiling and thinking how incongruous it was for this rider with the tough, scarred face to be talking about living the clean life. But there was no doubt that Pete Edge was strong on fortitude.

“Everyone has a run of hard luck once in a while,” Cornwell went on. “I’m sure you’ll have a successful comeback.”