Uncle Wilmer took back the program, studied it, then said, “Thursday’s races are better’n Wednesday’s.”
“I just might have some mincemeat down cellar,” Aunt Emma said. “Wouldn’t do no harm to try to—”
“Heh?”
But Aunt Emma said nothing, and Tom knew there was no need to tell his uncle about the mincemeat in the cellar.
“We really shouldn’t go,” Aunt Emma said loudly to her husband.
“Darn right,” he returned. “We saw it last year—” He stopped suddenly, his head turning in Tom’s direction.
And then the boy was conscious too of Aunt Emma’s gaze upon him.
“But Tom didn’t see it last year,” Uncle Wilmer said.
“No, he didn’t,” Aunt Emma said, nodding her head in agreement.
“We oughta go for him. That’s what we oughta do, all right.”
“We certainly should,” Aunt Emma said. “ ’Specially since he’ll be goin’ home soon. He ought to see the fair before he goes home.”
The smile left Uncle Wilmer’s face. “Tom goin’ home? When?” He turned to the boy.
“Jimmy said he’d pick the mare and colt up soon now. I’m going back with him. I have to be back at school in two weeks,” Tom said.
“I hadn’t thought of your goin’ yet,” Uncle Wilmer said quietly. “Seems you only jus’ got here.”
Aunt Emma turned upon her husband. “What have you been thinkin’ about, Wilmer! You know well enough he has to go to school!”
“Sure, I know it!” Uncle Wilmer returned defiantly. But then his gaze fell. “I guess the summer’s just about gone, all right. I guess it is. That always comes with the fair, too.”
“Time goes awfully fast,” Tom said. “It seems to me I just got here, too, But the colt is over two months old now, Uncle Wilmer. Even that’s hard to believe.”
When Tom left the porch after it had been agreed to go to the fair on Thursday for his benefit, Uncle Wilmer joined him.
“Where you goin’?”
“To the mailbox. I thought there might be a letter from Jimmy.”
“I don’t suppose he’d be racin’ at the fair.”
“He didn’t say anything about it in his last letter. He was at the Mercer Fair then; that’s a couple of hundred miles from here.”
“That’s purty far, all right. Guess he wouldn’t come.”
They walked to the mailbox together and found Jimmy Creech’s letter. As Tom opened the envelope, Uncle Wilmer made it plain he was definitely interested in its contents. “Read it aloud, Tom,” he said. “Good and loud.”
“The season is just about over for George and me,” Tom read. “We decided we’d kill two birds with one stone by racing at Reading, then pick up you and the mare and colt and come home.”
Tom stopped reading and turned excitedly to his uncle. “You hear that? He’s coming to Reading!”
Uncle Wilmer nodded his head vigorously.
“I entered Symbol in a race on Thursday; that’s the day we’ll get there,” Jimmy wrote.
Tom stopped reading again to shout, “Thursday, that’s our day!”
“We’ll be there Thursday, all right,” Uncle Wilmer said.
Tom turned back to the letter and continued reading aloud: “We’ll go back to Coronet on Friday, and you can come back with us, if you want to—”
“What’s he mean, ‘if you want to’?” Uncle Wilmer interrupted. “When that colt goes you go, too. You belong with him, all right.” But he didn’t meet Tom’s gaze when the boy turned to him. “What else he say?” Uncle Wilmer asked without raising his eyes.
“We got the picture you sent of the colt,” Tom continued reading, “and he sure looks like everything you’ve written about him. George and I can hardly wait to see him in the flesh. Glad to learn everything has worked out so well with your uncle.”
Tom glanced at Uncle Wilmer. “I told him you’ve been a big help to me,” he said.
“That the end?” Uncle Wilmer asked.
“That’s all, except he says he’d like to meet you,” Tom replied, folding the letter.
Uncle Wilmer said nothing until they were well on their way down the hill. “I’d like to meet him, too, all right,” he said.
“You will,” Tom returned, “at the fair—Thursday.”
Although it was only a little past eight o’clock, the traffic was heavy as they approached the fairgrounds Thursday morning. Tom sat in the front seat beside Uncle Wilmer, who had a firm, deathlike grasp on the wheel and whose body swung with his old car as he weaved it in, out, and around the other cars. Tom found himself moving with his uncle, gauging distances between cars and wondering if they were ever going to get to the fair at all. In the back, sitting in the middle of the seat, Aunt Emma held her carefully wrapped mincemeat pie and never said a word.
Tom relaxed a little when he saw the flags of the fairgrounds just ahead. Attendants of the parking lots solicited Uncle Wilmer’s patronage by waving and shouting, but Uncle Wilmer kept his foot on the gas. “No need to pay those fellers,” he said. “I know my way around, all right.”
Two blocks from the main entrance to the fairgrounds, Uncle Wilmer swerved recklessly across the highway, bringing the oncoming traffic to a screeching stop. The drivers of the other cars shouted angrily at Uncle Wilmer. But unmindful of their critical blasts, Uncle Wilmer turned down a side street, where there was no traffic ahead of them.
Tom settled back in his seat, certain his uncle knew where he was going. A few minutes from now and they’d be inside. It seemed a very long time since they had gotten up. And it was, when he figured it out. Uncle Wilmer had awakened him at four o’clock to help with the chores, and Aunt Emma had been up even earlier getting ready. The mare and colt were in the paddock with free access to their stall and a rack full of hay. They’d be all right until he returned to the farm; and Jimmy and George would be with him to see their colt for the first time. And tomorrow? Tom faced tomorrow with mixed emotions. He’d miss his uncle and aunt, and life on the farm. But there was much to look forward to as well, for before very long the colt’s real schooling and training for the track would begin. While he’d never have been able to do this by himself, he could watch Jimmy Creech, helping him while he brought the colt along and learning a great deal.
Tom felt that he had done the job Jimmy had expected of him, for the colt could be handled and had complete confidence in human beings, which was what Jimmy wanted. And while his task in the months to come would be that of assistant to Jimmy Creech instead of having the colt all to himself, it was the way it should be. For the colt’s professional life was about to begin and he would have a part of it. He’d learn with his colt. And who knew what the future would bring them?
Uncle Wilmer drove his old car down many residential side streets, and at last found a spot to park just a block from the main entrance to the fairgrounds. “Like I said,” he mumbled when they left the car, “there’s no sense in payin’ those fellers. Not when you been comin’ to the fair for forty-three years.”
Walking to the main gate, Aunt Emma handed her pie to Tom while she straightened her good gray dress and the black straw hat that was trimmed gaily with white flowers. Uncle Wilmer, too, fixed himself up by buttoning the collar of his blue shirt and drawing up his tie. He wore his new gray hat, but like his everyday hat, it was much too small and sat high on top of his head.
Reaching the gate, Uncle Wilmer stopped Tom from paying his own way and struggled with his big change purse until he had enough money out of it to purchase the tickets.
In the early-morning sun, they walked down the already crowded avenues of the fair. Tom could feel the fair as well as see it. He had forgotten the smells, the sounds and the excitement of a fair. And now they all burst upon him—the throaty bellowing of the brown-and-white Hereford cows from the nearest open sheds, the sweet fragrance of freshly cut flowers coming from a Grange building as they passed its doors, and all about them the farm people, s
o much like his aunt and uncle, as eager and excited as they were.
Yet, unlike the other people who streamed in and out of the exhibits housed in the long, low buildings on each side of the avenue, his uncle and aunt never slackened their pace and cast only a quick glance into the doorways of each building while hastening by. They seemed to know where they wanted to go, and Tom followed, as anxious as they were to get to his destination, which was the racetrack. In and out of the crowd they wound with Aunt Emma leading the way. Hawkers shouted their wares to them from small booths along the way; and even though it was early, the odor of caramel-treated popcorn balls filled the air, and fluffy cotton candy of red and white was waved in Tom’s face as he hurried to keep up with his uncle and aunt.
Finally his aunt came to a stop before a building through the doorways of which wafted the spicy smells of pastry of all kinds. She turned to her husband. “I’ll meet you right here, Wilmer, at four o’clock.” Even before finishing her sentence she had turned toward the door again, the pie held carefully in her hands.
“Heh, Emma?” Uncle Wilmer cupped an ear.
She turned upon him, and Tom saw the irritable look on her face. “I’ll tell him, Aunt Emma,” he said quickly.
Nodding, she smiled tightly, and Tom knew there would be no relaxing for his aunt until the pie contest was over. She was on her way through the door, when suddenly she stopped to turn to Tom once more. “You bring your friends to supper, mind you, Tom. Won’t be no trouble at all. The makings are ready.”
Tom hurried to catch up to his uncle. There was no need to ask him where he was going, for ahead and towering above the low exhibit buildings was the high-tiered grandstand of the racetrack. For a farmer, Uncle Wilmer showed only mild interest in the long rows of open sheds which housed the pedigreed cattle—the black-and-white Holstein cows, all with red and blue prize ribbons hanging proudly above them; neither did he stop when they passed the sleek black Angus steers, nor at the goat shed. Instead he made directly for the grandstand, and his eyes left it only for the flags flying over its red roof. “Time to see the cattle is later,” he told Tom. “Right now they’re working the horses, gettin’ ’em ready for the races this afternoon.”
Tom needed no urging.
They walked behind the grandstand toward the entrance to the paddock, through which the horses passed on their way from the stables to the track. “I always go there,” Uncle Wilmer said. “You see more what’s goin’ on.”
“I’d better go to the stables first,” Tom said. “I want to find Jimmy.”
“You think he’s here now?”
“I’m sure of it,” Tom replied.
They passed the grandstand and came to the bleachers. And now through the wire-mesh fence they could see the horses on the track. Just a short distance beyond was the paddock entrance and a little farther on were the long rows of stables.
Their paces quickened to the sound of hoofs on the track and the shrill neighs from the stables. Through the paddock gate passed sleek animals, pulling their light, two-wheeled racing sulkies behind them. Those going onto the track were charged with energy and their drivers guided them carefully past the sweated horses coming off the track from their morning workouts.
At the gate, Uncle Wilmer came to an abrupt stop. “Look’ut the roan mare, Tom. Just look at her! And that dark bay mare comin’ off the track. She could be the Queen!” Excitedly, Uncle Wilmer passed through the gate and made for the rail, where grooms and drivers stood watching the horses as they went through their workouts.
Tom watched while his uncle secured a place at the rail, then he turned toward the stables, where he’d find Jimmy Creech. But he stopped suddenly, looking back once more at his uncle and then at the man standing next to him. That bald head, unprotected against the sun, and the blue coveralls could belong only to George Snedecker! And if it was George, Jimmy Creech was out on the track working Symbol!
Carefully, Tom made his way around the horses, loving their nearness, and wanting so much to be one of these hardened men who sat so casually and expertly close behind powerful hindquarters. Such men and horses were as much a part of a fair as the cows and steers and chickens—and Aunt Emma’s mincemeat pie! It was a life Tom wanted very much to live.
Nearing the rail, he stopped a few feet behind the man he thought to be George Snedecker. Uncle Wilmer had turned to the man and Tom heard him say, “I got a good colt back at my farm, a darn good one. From the looks of him he’ll go all right.”
The man turned toward Uncle Wilmer, and Tom saw his face, tanned heavily by the sun. One stride of Tom’s long legs took him to the man’s shoulder. “And don’t you think he’s kidding, George!” he said.
George Snedecker threw an arm around Tom, while Uncle Wilmer stood watching them sheepishly. Now George pushed Tom an arm’s length away. Shifting his chaw of tobacco, he said, “You put on weight, Tom. You’re not such a tall bag of bones any more.”
“My aunt’s cooking did it,” Tom said, turning to Uncle Wilmer. “And this is my uncle. He was telling you about his colt.”
“Heh?” Uncle Wilmer asked, while George Snedecker clasped his hand.
“Looks like a good many people got an interest in that colt.” George smiled. “He really looks good to you, Tom?”
“He does to me,” Tom replied. “Wait’ll you see him.”
“We’re lookin’ forward to it,” George said; then he added, “Here’s Jimmy comin’ around now off the backstretch.”
Uncle Wilmer heard George, for he too turned to look at the track.
Jimmy Creech brought Symbol around the turn at a fast rate of speed.
“He’s brushin’ him this last quarter,” George said. “Got the watch on him.”
Off the turn came Symbol, his head stretched out, his legs working hard. Jimmy Creech held the reins high, urging Symbol to greater speed. They swept past the paddock rail, past the bleachers, and it wasn’t until Symbol had gone by the judges’ booth opposite the center of the grandstand that Jimmy moved back in his sulky seat. Tom’s eyes had never left them.
“What do you think of Symbol?” George asked.
“Jimmy has done a lot with him, but he’s too rough gaited. He works hard but doesn’t stretch out. And he’ll break when the going gets tough. It’s a wonder Jimmy has done as well as he has with him.”
“You sure don’t generalize, Tom,” George said. “You never did.” Pausing, he spat his tobacco juice on the ground. “All you say is true about Symbol.”
“Does Jimmy know it?”
“Sure. He knew that the first time he worked him last year. But Symbol takes him to the races and he’s certain of place money here and there. Call it old-age security, if you like.” George smiled.
“But now he has the colt,” Tom said.
“Yep,” George agreed, “and I’m hoping the colt will help Jimmy more than the medicine he’s been taking.”
“I thought he was feeling better.”
“He was,” George returned, “up until a few weeks ago, then his stomach started acting up again. Maybe you could call it ‘end-of-the-season jitters.’ I don’t know. Jimmy calls it indigestion. I don’t wonder he’s got stomach trouble. Never eats a decent meal during the day; it’s always a quick hamburger, hot dog and a bottle of soda pop at a stand. Good hot meals are what he needs as much as anything, I think.”
“I was hoping he’d be feeling well,” Tom said quietly. “Maybe seeing the colt will change things,” he added hopefully.
“Maybe so, Tom. But don’t expect too much from him. It takes a long time to understand Jimmy Creech. Took me the fifty years I’ve known him.” George spat on the ground again. “Looks like it was a mistake comin’ to this fair, too. There are too many young fellers like that guy”—George nodded his head toward a man driving a dark chestnut stallion with light mane and tail—“and Jimmy doesn’t like those young fellers. He says they take too many chances. That’s a laugh, when I think of some of the races Jimmy drove years
ago.” He turned to Tom. “But he’s sick, Tom, so let’s just you and me go along with him and be patient. He’ll come out of it.”
Uncle Wilmer touched Tom’s arm. “Here comes Jimmy,” he said and there was a definite note of eagerness in his voice.
Jimmy neared the track gate and as Tom studied the thin, frail body he could tell that Jimmy hadn’t gained a pound during the summer. His face was tanned, but there was a strange brightness in his eyes that Tom didn’t like. From all appearances it looked as though George was right. He walked to the gate behind George, while Uncle Wilmer followed.
George unhooked the check rein that kept Symbol’s head up and shouted to Jimmy, “Here’s someone to see you!”
Holding the lines, Jimmy slid from the sulky seat and gripped Tom’s outstretched hand warmly. “Good seeing you, Tom,” he said. “Let’s get over to the stable where we’ll have some quiet.”
Jimmy walked beside Symbol while George led the horse out the paddock gate. And as Tom walked with him he noticed that Jimmy ignored the greetings of many who called to him. That, he knew, wasn’t like Jimmy.
Uncle Wilmer was with them and Jimmy had greeted him cordially. On the way to the stables Uncle Wilmer did most of the talking, telling Jimmy of some of the races he had seen at this fair twenty to thirty years ago. Jimmy pushed his soiled red-and-white sulky cap back on his head and listened to Uncle Wilmer while they walked along. Uncle Wilmer needed no more encouragement than that to continue his stories.
Tom’s gaze moved over all three of them. They had much in common, he thought, being of the same generation. Physically they were much alike too, except that Jimmy was small-boned and very thin compared to stocky George and Uncle Wilmer. Temperamentally, though, they were very different. He couldn’t imagine anything disturbing George or Uncle Wilmer from their placid, regular way of life. But Jimmy was as highly strung as any colt and his emotions would vary from day to day and from hour to hour.
“Is the colt as good as his picture, Tom?” Jimmy asked suddenly, turning to him.
“Better.” Tom smiled. “And you’ll probably see even more in him than I do.”