“I got an idea she was,” George returned. “I think Miss Elsie was lettin’ her go all the way. But you’d never know it to watch the filly, like you say,” he added. “That’s the kind of a racer she is.”
“When Bonfire goes all out you know it,” Tom said.
“That’s the kind of a racer he is,” George replied. “They’re different as day an’ night. Put them together on a track and somethin’ will happen. I don’t know what.”
They sat there for the rest of the afternoon, discussing the black filly and the blood bay colt and awaiting Aunt Emma’s return from the pie contest. Tom and George were going to the farm again that evening.
And when Aunt Emma joined them it took just one look at her constant smile to know that her mincemeat pie had won first prize this year. She removed the blue ribbon from her handbag for just a moment so they could see it; then she put it away carefully once more.
Bonfire had been fed, watered and bedded down for the night, and they were in Uncle Wilmer’s old car when the race secretary handed George a special delivery letter. After taking a look at the return address, George turned to Tom, sitting next to him. “It’s from the doc,” he said grimly.
With fumbling hands he opened the envelope and Tom leaned over to read the letter with him.
Dear George,
I thought it best to let you know immediately what we’ve found and what has to be done.
Jimmy’s condition is serious. A very rare and severe complication has set in, that of perforation of the ulcer. By that I mean the ulcer has made a leak or hole right through the wall of Jimmy’s stomach. The result is that food in the stomach leaks out into the belly cavity, causing shock and the most severe pain.
Surgery is absolutely necessary, because the leak must be closed. It is a difficult, delicate operation, since Jimmy’s condition is poor. It calls for the services of a specialist, and I have already talked to one in Boston. He is flying here tonight and the operation will take place sometime tomorrow morning.
I’ll let you know the outcome. Try not to worry, for Jimmy is in the best of hands and a successful operation will mean that he’ll be a well man again. The surgeon plans to remove the ulcer entirely, if possible, as well as close the stomach leak.
Remember, too, that Jimmy is my very good friend as well as yours—and I’ll do everything possible for him.
Sincerely,
Henry Morton, M.D.
When they finished reading, they said nothing and passed the letter on to Aunt Emma and Uncle Wilmer.
“Then the operation was performed this morning,” Tom said in a low voice. George said nothing, and kept his eyes away from Tom.
Uncle Wilmer waited silently behind the wheel. After a long while, Aunt Emma broke the silence. “Take us home, Wilmer,” she said. “A hot meal will help.”
But at the farm they only toyed with the chicken and dumplings, and made no attempt to eat Aunt Emma’s mincemeat pie. She didn’t urge them and finally cleared the table and washed the dishes herself; then she left them alone.
Uncle Wilmer turned on the radio softly, thinking it would help.
Tom said, “Jimmy’s a fighter, George. He’ll be all right.”
“I hope so, Tom.”
“And Dr. Morton said the surgeon would remove the ulcer when he closed the leak in his stomach,” Tom said. “He’ll be a well man again, George. Just like he was before all this happened.”
George nodded, but said nothing.
“Should we go home?”
“What good would it do, Tom? He’s got the best care there is.” George turned to the boy for the first time in a long while. “We need money more than ever now … lots of it to pay the surgeon. Fees for good men like him come high, and Jimmy deserves the best there is.”
Tom nodded soberly.
“And knowin’ Jimmy,” George went on, “I know he’ll get well fast if we can give him money to pay his bills.”
“But how, George?” Tom asked desperately. “Even if we win with the colt Friday—”
“It only means a few hundred dollars, all right,” Uncle Wilmer finished for him.
Tom turned to his uncle. He appreciated his being there, but he hoped he wouldn’t ask any questions. He didn’t feel like shouting tonight, just so his uncle could hear.
“There has to be a way we can do it,” George said. “There’s just got to …”
And then they heard the singing commercial on the radio.
Heigh-ho! Come join us here.
To Westbury, Westbury,
That’s where you cheer
The horses, the horses,
a-racing each night
Beneath the stars, under the lights.
The singing stopped and the announcer said, “Yes, folks, the races at Roosevelt Raceway, Westbury, Long Island, are a treat for the whole family! It’s a night beneath the stars, watching America’s fastest horses. It’s the big event of the country fair brought to the city, folks. So come one, come all to Roosevelt Raceway tonight. Post time for the first race is at eight-forty. And we’re only forty minutes from Pennsylvania Station in New York City. So hop on a train tonight and join us! But if you can’t come tonight, folks, be sure to come Saturday night. That’s the night of the Two-Year-Old Championship Race! The foremost colts in the country, including Silver Knight and Princess Guy, who today shattered the world’s record at the Reading Fair, will be racing for that big purse of ten thousand dollars. So make a date now to join us at Roosevelt Raceway Saturday night.”
When the announcer finished, George turned to Uncle Wilmer. “How far is it to New York City from here?” he asked quietly.
“Never been there. But I reckon it’s under a hundred miles.”
Tom saw the light in George’s eyes. “George—”
But George was on his feet and walking toward the issues of Hoof Beats piled on top of the corner cupboard. Taking the most recent issue, he thumbed through it until he found what he wanted; then he took his seat again, reading the magazine.
The kitchen clock ticked noisily while Tom waited for George to finish reading.
Finally George spoke, and his voice was so low it seemed as though he were talking only for his own benefit. “Entries are accepted up until noon the day before the race. That’s Friday Today’s Wednesday. Entry fee is five hundred dollars. One dash. Winner to take seventy-five percent of purse. That’s seven thousand five hundred dollars.” He stopped muttering to remove from his pocket the small book in which he kept their account of money on hand. “I’ve got three hundred dollars which I’ve been goin’ to send Jimmy. Two hundred more would do it. I got to get it.”
“I got two hundred dollars, all right.”
It was Uncle Wilmer who had spoken. Tom turned to him in amazement, not only because of his uncle’s astounding offer of two hundred dollars but also because George’s voice had been just above a whisper and his head had been buried in the magazine; Uncle Wilmer couldn’t have read his lips!
“George, you hear me?” Uncle Wilmer shouted. “I got two hundred dollars to race that colt against the best colts. He’s no small-time colt! He’s a champion! And I’m tired of readin’ about this Silver Knight and that blamed filly Princess Guy! I want to see my colt beat ’em all!”
George was on his feet. “You’ll lend it to us, Wilmer? You’ll give us a chance to help Jimmy with just this one race at the raceways without us ever tellin’ him about it?”
“I been sayin’ that, all right,” Uncle Wilmer shouted. “I got it right now.” And he strode across the room to the corner cupboard.
“Then you aren’t deaf … stone deaf … at all,” Tom said, when his uncle passed him.
“I ain’t sayin’ a thing about not bein’ deaf!” Uncle Wilmer shouted. But he turned quickly in the direction of the porch when he heard the soft creaking of the outer door and knew his wife was on her way to the kitchen. “Heh, Tom?” he asked, cupping an ear. “What you say?”
George took the
money from Uncle Wilmer, put it in his pocket, then turned to the boy. “Are you game, Tom, to try it … at night?”
The boy nodded, and George said, “Then we’ll head for Roosevelt Raceway tomorrow.”
“And I aim to be comin’ along,” Uncle Wilmer said. “I aim to see my money race, all right.”
LUCK OF THE DRAW
19
Tom never asked George what he thought Jimmy might do if he ever learned of their taking Bonfire to Roosevelt Raceway. George had said they’d never tell Jimmy, and Tom let it go at that. This was George’s show, and he’d made the decision to go to the Raceway; the rest was up to Tom and the colt. The job ahead of them would be the most difficult of their short racing careers.
They left the Reading Fair Thursday morning in Sadie with Uncle Wilmer sitting quietly between them. They trailed Miss Elsie and the two big vans from Roosevelt Raceway. Miss Elsie had taken the news of their going with no apparent surprise or concern. She was all business again. The only thing that mattered to her was getting her black filly to the raceway and winning the championship race. Whether or not she felt that Bonfire would provide any competition for her Princess Guy was not evident in her manner or face. She said only that Tom and George could follow her to Roosevelt Raceway, for she had made arrangements with the two raceway drivers at Reading to follow them, not knowing the way herself.
“It’s four hours to New York,” George said, when they left the fairgrounds behind, “and about another hour more to Roosevelt.”
“We ought to be there by three o’clock then,” Tom said.
And that was the extent of their conversation for hours and the many miles that passed beneath Sadie’s smoothly worn tires. George had to push Sadie right along to keep up with the fast-rolling vans ahead.
Within two hours they left the farms and cultivated fields behind and moved speedily along a four-lane highway. The traffic became faster and heavier; they were still a long way from New York, but already they could feel the rapid beat of its city heart.
The country and fairs were behind them and Tom couldn’t help feeling a deep sense of remorse stealing over him; the feeling heightened with every mile that brought them closer to the city and farther away from all he had grown to love so much. While he watched Miss Elsie’s trailer and the speeding vans ahead, he very often thought of the leisurely, relaxed way he and George had driven through rolling countryside from one fair to the next.
He and George and Uncle Wilmer and Bonfire were going far afield, and he wondered what would be the outcome of this penetration of the city and raceway. He had all the confidence in the world in the speed of his colt, but he had learned also that a race wasn’t always decided by speed alone. And night driving would be as foreign to him as to Bonfire.
Finally they were moving along narrow, traffic-congested streets, threading their way toward the tall skyscrapers far in the distance.
“There’s the Empire State Building,” Tom said, pointing a finger toward the long, slender needle, much higher than any of the other buildings, that pierced the sky.
George only gripped the steering wheel more grimly and said nothing; neither did Uncle Wilmer, whose eyes never turned from the street ahead as he sat tense and straight.
Suddenly they were going down into a deep black hole of a tunnel; Uncle Wilmer unclasped his hands and put one on Tom’s knee and the other on George’s.
Tom muttered, “Holland Tunnel … we’re going under the Hudson River.”
The lights of the tunnel flashed by in quick succession; the wheels and motors of cars and trucks increased to a deafening, shattering roar that blasted their ears. When they emerged from the tunnel and were out in daylight once more, there was no relief, for spread before them was the heavy traffic of downtown New York.
No one spoke after that, not even Tom.
Across narrow one-way streets and up crowded avenues they followed Miss Elsie and the vans ahead. And when that was over, they found themselves high on a bridge, crossing the East River to Long Island. Then came New York City suburbs and, after an hour more, cleared fields that skirted the highway; occasionally they saw a small truck farm.
The vans ahead slowed down and turned left off the highway. Not far away was the green-and-white-painted arched entrance of Roosevelt Raceway; beyond rose the mammoth grandstand, its many flags flying in the afternoon breeze.
George drove Sadie through the entrance behind the others. This was it! Everything they had known was behind them, and George and Uncle Wilmer looked upon it all with new eyes, as did Tom.
They passed the gate to the track and saw the flashy green-and-white awnings of the paddock. Beyond was the racing strip, and within the racing oval was still another track; around it many horses were having a workout.
They left it all behind to go to the barns, and never in their lives had they seen so many stables and horses.
Only then did George speak. “There must be at least five hundred horses stabled here,” he said in amazement.
They found more horses beyond the barns, for another track was there; this was being used, they saw, for slow jogging.
Still following Miss Elsie’s trailer, they observed everything there was to see, but said nothing.
They did little that afternoon except to find their stable and to care for Bonfire. Yet they watched with keen, interested eyes everything that went on. They were among strangers here, and no one paid the slightest attention to them; not even Miss Elsie, who went about getting her filly ready for Saturday’s race and ignoring those who wanted to talk to her about Princess Guy; she seemed not the slightest bit interested in the activity of the raceway. Miss Elsie could have been at another country fair for all the attention she paid to what went on about her. She was here for one reason alone and that absorbed her whole being.
While Tom and George had as much—and more—at stake as Miss Elsie, they couldn’t ignore the raceway and its people. For here was the crux of Jimmy’s illness; his resentment and bitterness toward the night raceways and their “killing of my sport”—as he put it—was now on trial before their eyes. So they watched everything that happened and every man there.
“It’s a racin’ plant,” George said, “just as they call it. It’s big business an’ streamlined all the way.”
Tom nodded; but Uncle Wilmer only moved his canvas chair closer to Bonfire’s head as though he needed the colt to protect him from all he saw.
Tom sat there and tried to stop himself from thinking too much about Jimmy Creech. “It’s still too early to hear from the doctor,” he told himself. “And no news now is good news.”
Bonfire sneezed and Tom went to him. “Guess we’d better put the sheet on him. Getting cool with the sun going down,” he told George.
He stayed with Bonfire awhile, fondling the colt and feeding him carrots. Two nights to go, he thought, tonight and tomorrow night; then we’ll be on the stage.
That’s the way Tom thought of Roosevelt Raceway at the end of his first day there. A giant, mammoth spectacle geared for modern racing. He and the others were backstage now getting ready for the big night show. In a way it was exciting. But he missed the noises of the fair, the friendly people who had always come to their stall knowing horses and wanting to talk about them. There were no spectators here now … just the performers.
What would the show be like tonight? What would his reactions be to it? Would he, like Jimmy, become embittered by this swift turn his sport had taken?
Night came and with it life poured into Roosevelt Raceway. Giant floodlights brightened the track and grounds as though it were daylight.
Tom and George closed the upper door of Bonfire’s stall.
“Let him get his rest,” George said. “It’ll be better for him.”
Uncle Wilmer refused to go to the track with them, so they left him behind with Bonfire, and made their way through the black mass of people streaming through the main entrance gate and overflowing the grandstand. They found they cou
ldn’t get near the rail without entering the grandstand gate, so grudgingly they went inside to stand in the packed area between the first tier of the stands and the rail.
As Tom looked at the track, he realized more than ever that this was the stage. He rose high on his tiptoes to see the racing strip over the heads of the jam-packed people between him and the rail.
The track lay smooth and untouched beneath the bright glare of the lights. The infield was green, seemingly too green to be real grass. The blackness of night was beyond the lighted backstretch; there were were no red trucks of a fair’s midway, no spinning, gleaming Ferris wheels. And these, Tom found, he missed very much.
So modern, so brilliant—and yet, too, so artificial, this stage.
Turning to look behind him, he saw the thousands in the stands, afraid to move lest they lose their seats. Just to the right of the grandstand was the paddock, where the horses were taken fully an hour before the race. The gay, colorful awnings looked even more green and more white under the lights than they had during the day. Shaped like a horseshoe, the paddock was fenced off and forbidden territory to all spectators—to all except officials and the drivers of those horses which were to come out onto the track for the first race. Tom thought again of the friendly people at the fairs who would follow them from barn to track, always talking, always so close. They would resent very much a fence that kept them apart from the horses; and Tom found that he did, too.
George said, “More older drivers here than I thought there’d be, Tom. Listenin’ to Jimmy, I thought they’d all be young squirts.”
“More young guys, though,” Tom said, “than the old boys.” And he said it in defense of Jimmy Creech.
“Yeah,” George admitted. “But that’s good, Tom. We need young people like you and them.”
“You mean you like this, George?”
And the way in which Tom said this caused George to turn quickly to him.