Call to Post

By Leon C. Harden

It is about the many facets of the horse racing industry: the horses, trainers, and grooms who care for them on the backside; a labor of love, not just a job; the exercise riders, jockeys; the fans; and the aspiration of Sherry, a young girl, to become a jockey, a challenging goal in the face of a male-dominated sport. Her mother died when she was young, so her father, who was a jockey, brought her with him to the racetrack in the morning. There is a close relationship between Sherry; Pop, the trainer; Tom, her father; Curley, her fathers agent; and Manuel, a young Mexican boy, who grooms Jimbo, the horse that is a catalyst that holds them all together. The book encompasses the problems faced in caring for Sherry when Tom is killed in a racing accident.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514482568

Leon C. Harden

Active in the racing industry, he and his wife had a thoroughbred racing stable for twenty-eight years. They raced in Northern California, Southern California, Arizona, Nebraska, Iowa, and at Caliente in Mexico. They had a small horse farm, where they raised yearlings and laid-up horses from the track due to injuries or needing rest. He was born in Arkansas and retired there to be in close proximity to Oaklawn Park racetrack. He continued writing there, including a weekly column in the Sentinel-Record. He has had short stories and poetry published and entered several writing contests, winning or placing in all of them, including first place for Call to Post in the Ozark writers’ conference. After his wife, Barbara, died, he moved back to Orlando and California.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Leon C. Harden.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016905538

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-8258-2

              Softcover        978-1-5144-8257-5

               eBook            978-1-5144-8256-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 04/02/2016

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Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Foreword

The Backside

One must visit the backside of a racetrack in early morning to feel the true pulse of horse racing. The clip-clop of hooves against the pavement echoes off the barn walls. Vapor rises of heaps of discarded bedding from the stalls, piled high at the ends of the shed rows. Stable hands add huge wheelbarrow loads to the piles. A mechanical monster roars as it grasps huge bites from the piles and loads them on trucks bound for the mushroom farms.

A sharp breeze off the bay pushes through the stable area, carrying with it the aroma of fresh coffee and sizzling bacon from the track kitchen, blending it with the pungent odor of urine soaked bedding straw, manure and hot horses.

Grooms hurry to have their horses ready to go out for exercise. When the trainer motions to them, they give the rider a leg-up onto the saddle. The handlers work quickly and efficiently, yet make no sudden movements that would spoke the high strung Thoroughbreds. Young horses on the way to the track are nervous and playful, feeling their oats, while older campaigners patiently follow the route they’ve traveled many time before; to them it’s all in a day’s work.

There is a gap where a section of the rail has been removed to give the horses access to the track. The trainers have from daylight until 10:30 a.m. to exercise their charges; the track is then closed to prepare its surface for the afternoon races.

Official clocker’s are present to record the running time of horses out for serious works. The rhythmic ke-thunk, ke-thunk of horses galloping contrasts with the staccato rattle of the hooves of those that are working against the clock.

Exercise riders jump down off horses, confer briefly with trainers, then, and stride purposefully away toward another stable to ride their next horse.

Twin funnels of steam spout from the nostrils of the horses returning from their workouts, chests heaving, their lungs laboring to replace the oxygen their bodies have spent.

The wash racks are busy where the grooms bathe the horses and rub them down before the hot-walker leads them away, circling the shed row until they are cooled. While the horses are out, the grooms clean their stalls and bed them down with fresh straw. They clean and fill their water buckets, measure out the morning ration of grain and fill the nets with fresh hay. Each groom cares for (rubs) 3 or 4 horses.

After being walked, the horses’ hooves are cleaned again, their legs carefully checked, often rubbed with liniment to stimulate circulation and sometimes wrapped in bandages to protect and keep them warm. Any abnormalities found are reported to the train or the stable foreman.

On a day that a horse is scheduled to race, its groom remains in the stable area, preparing it to meet the fans, then leads it to the saddling paddock. After the race, they lead it back, hopefully, victorious.

Two thousand horses live in this compressed few acres between the city and the bay. They live in a twelve foot square box stall three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, when their natural habitat, but for man, is running free and grazing on open range land.

However, if it were not for mans intervention, the thoroughbred breed would not exist. They are bred to run fast and long.

Here with them, live the hopes and dreams of over one thousand owners, and the love and respect of the horsemen who supply their daily needs, and train them to meet the standards of their forbearers.

Chapter 1

Manuel woke when the dawn light filtered around the canvas flap that covered the doorway. He let his eyes adjust to the dim interior of the two room hut, then slipped from beneath the covers, careful not to disturb his four brothers on the pallet they all shared on the floor. His two sisters were fast asleep on their pallet against the far wall.

He paused and listened to the heavy snores coming from the kitchen where his father and mother slept. Quietly, he pulled a T-shirt over his head and stepped into worn trousers with holes at the knees and frayed cuffs. His hunger tempted him to sneak into the kitchen to fill a tortilla with cold beans, but he decided against it. Should his parents awaken, he would be assigned the task of selling souvenirs to the tourists who crossed the border each day. This money helped feed the family and make the monthly payments on their home. It was a simple dwelling, built of poles, packing crates and salvaged pieces of corrugated metal. It clung to a hillside in Tijuana and looked down on the backside of the Caliente racetrack. His father had saved for five years to make the down payment, and he was still paying thirty dollars a month, half his total income.

Manuel felt a pang of guilt as he pulled the canvas aside and slipped out the doorway. But the guilt disappeared as his bare feet slapped against the pavement in his run down the hill to watch the horses.

He wriggled under a loose section of the fence near the turn so he could be closer and watch the horses as they galloped around the oval track, dreaming that one day he would be rich and own such an animal. If only he could get close enough to touch them.

Many of the men in the stable area carried buckets, so he formed an idea; he’d carry a bucket so it would appear that he belonged among them.

The next morning, he pushed a discarded plastic bucket under the fence ahead of him. Trying to hide the terror he felt, he strode boldly toward a water faucet where men were filling their water buckets. Waiting his turn, he filled his, tested his eight-year-old muscles and then leaning against its weight, he carried it to the nearest stable. He set the bucket down to rest his arm and lingered to watch.

A gruff sounding man with a fierce mustache approached leading a copper colored horse, still blowing from its morning exercise. Cool him out, he ordered, handing the chestnut’s lead shank to Manuel. He motioned toward the pathway where men and boys were leading horses around between the shed-rows. Manuel fought panic aside and began his first job with the magnificent horses he loved—walking ‘hots’.

While he waited for the next horse to come off the track, one of the grooms took full advantage of his interest. He handed Manuel a pitchfork and taught him to muck out a stall. He showed him how to deftly flick the dry straw to one side for re-use, then pick up forkfuls of urine soaked straw with nuggets of horse manure balanced on top and pitch them onto a muck sack to be dragged out to the manure pile. Then, how to ‘shake down’ the stall, plucking a flake of straw from a bale with the pitchfork’s tines, and with a twisting, shaking motion, spread the bright golden stalks evenly over the floor to cushion the horse when it lay down.

At the end of the day, Jose, the mustachioed trainer, counted three pesos into Manuel’s hand and said, Mañana. Manuel raced home, praying that his parents would allow him to keep his new job. His father listened quietly to the vibrant telling of the day’s adventure. Perhaps seeing the light in his son’s eyes caused him to remember the vanquished dreams of his own youth. He patted Manuel’s shoulder and gave him permission to continue.

The years flew by quickly. It did not seem like work for Manuel to look after the creatures of his childhood dreams. When he’d gained enough experience under the trainer’s watchful eye, he was given three horses of his own to rub: to feed, tack up for exercise, bathe and return to the stalls he’d cleaned and shook down when they were out for exercise.

He loved the horses placed in his care. They were his friends and he talked to them lovingly as he tended their daily needs.

He learned that quick movements startle them, so he moved slowly, talking to them to let them know where he was at all times. He slid his hand across their rumps when he passed behind them so they wouldn’t be startled by his reappearance on their other side.

Each day, he slipped into their stalls, took their halters into his hands and looked into their eyes to see if they were happy and contented, or if they were ill or suffering pain. Then he ran his hands along their backs and down over their shoulders and hindquarters, petting them, but also looking for signs of discomfort. He cupped his hands and ran them down around their knees and legs to make sure they were cold as they should be. A hot spot under his touch would signal a sore spot or injury. When he pinched the tendon behind their legs, they allowed him to lift their feet to clean them with a hoof pick, holding each foot between his hands and pressing the inner hoof and frog with his fingers to check for tenderness. Anything wrong, he would report to the trainer.

When Manuel had assured himself that the horse was fit, he tacked him up for his morning exercise.

In the evening, he led them on a shank, one at a time, to the triangular patch of grass where the racetrack veered into the second turn and allowed them to graze. It was against the track rules, but good for his horses.

For this love and attention, he was paid fifteen dollars per week, a princely sum in Mexico. But after paying the mordita, the ‘bite,’ an illegal fee that allowed him to work at such a fine job, he had only ten dollars left to help his father support the family.

Because of cheap labor, Caliente was a training ground for young horses from California. Manuel learned from their grooms of the riches to be had working north of the border.

When he was sixteen years old, he learned that Jimbo, his favorite horse, was being shipped to Northern California. He loaded him onto the nine horse van, and then hid in the feed barrel. Early the next morning when it arrived at Nor-Cal race track, he led Jimbo off the van and was directed to an empty stall in Pop Jimson’s barn.

He unsnapped the feed bucket from the corner of the stall, located the feed barrels at the end of the shed-row, and measured out crimped oats and sweet feed for the horse’s morning meal. Then he unhooked the water bucket, carried it to the wash rack, scrubbed it thoroughly, filled it with fresh water and hung it back in its place. He rummaged around in the satchel, which he’d carried off the van, pulled out a curry-comb and brush, and groomed the horse while it munched its grain.

Pop watched, curiously, until he was satisfied that Manuel knew what he was doing and rattled off a few words of English to him, then shrugged and walked away. Good help was hard to find and Pop wasn’t about to run it off when it found him.

It didn’t matter to Manuel that he understood only a few words of English, or that those who spoke English did not understand him. Because he was first and last, a horseman, and the language he understood best was ‘Horse.’

Chapter 2

Tom Allen turned his pickup into the parking lot at Nor-Cal race track just as the early light creased the horizon. He reached across the seat and roused the small figure curled up beside him. Come on, Punkin, he said, as he lifted her out and set her feet on the ground. He held her hand firmly as he strode toward the stable of his first mount. Sherry ran along beside him, wiping the sleep from her eyes with the knuckles of her free hand and then her runny nose with the sleeve of her jacket.

Her early breakfast had been a piece of toast and a bowl of oatmeal. When she complained about the simple fare her father said, Oats, good for horses—good for people. She sighed, and then copied the way he ate his own portion, which was smaller than hers, because like most jockeys, he struggled to maintain his weight.

Tom got his share of decent mounts because he arrived on the backside promptly at six a.m. each morning when the track opened for training. The track closed for training at ten a.m. to prepare the surface for the day’s racing, so sixteen hundred horses had only four hours to exercise around the one mile oval. Late riders were frowned upon.

Where we going first, Daddy? Sherry asked.

Pop’s barn, he said, got to work a couple of two-year-olds.

Can I go watch?

Sure. Just stay on the left side of the pony horse.

Sherry nodded, that was so the groom could turn a horse away from her if it became fractious.

Tom added, Be sure and sit in the clocker’s stand.

Pop had already saddled a frisky two year old by the time they reached his stable.

Careful, Honey, he cautioned. He’s on the muscle. If he don’t settle down we’ll make a good horse out of him.

Of course, if Pop had his way, there would be no stallions to breed to, because he would geld every last one when it came to the race track.

Gets their mind on their business, Pop said. Darned fools, just an accident waiting to happen.

Tom paused before mounting to appraise a flashy chestnut that a Mexican groom was leading out of a stall.

New additions to your stable, Pop?

Yep. Came in on a van last night from Caliente’. Groom came with him. Boy’s name’s Manuel.

Seems to know his business, Tom said, as he watched the young groom coax the bridle over the nervous colts head, deftly pulling its ears into place.

Yeah, Pop smiled, At least he knows how to get to work on time. Beat me here this morning.

Tom laughed. Then, he’ll probably hit you up for a raise this afternoon.

Hell, I ain’t hired him yet; he just led the horse off the van and went to work. Pop chuckled, Maybe I’m working for him.

That’ll be the day, Tom said, placing the