It was a typical, quiet afternoon at the racetrack. The sun beat down on the soft dirt, which had been freshly spritzed with water from the misting machines. Somewhere along the backstretch, a vintage radio played country music softly. The races were all over for the day, all the awards claimed, and all the crowds gone. Only people left were several trainers working on injured horses, and some owners who were real attached to their horses and spent all their time in their barns, giving their horses so many sugar cubes that eventually the horses turned into fat cow ponies that would go to all lengths for more sugar (like escape from their stalls and jump over the inner rail to where the stewards stored their after-race snacks). Also left were the jockeys, most of whom had already put their horses back in the right barns and put their saddles on the correct rack in the tack room. Now they sat in a large group under the awning of the Howard barn, except for me. I stood under the roof my Ridgewood barn, looking out at the track. My horses shifted around in their stalls, restless to get out and run. Maybe I should take out Seabiscuit, I thought, ride over to the Howard barn and see how everyone’s doing. I’m like that, mostly non-social, except to my horses, who I’m always with. Once when I was younger I was so out of everything that I slept on the roof of the announcer’s box, which I had suspected was a bad idea in the first place, seeing as I fell almost 100 feet to the hard concrete sidelines below. I had landed on the bleachers instead, broken a wrist, and woken up several of my disgruntled friends, who emerged from their barns and gave me quizzical looks, only to leave me to hobble along the track in the dead of night to the small doctor’s office under the grandstand. I was out of the saddle for 4 months afterwards and had to get Cecilia, my best-friend-since-first-grade, to ride my horses. Finally I healed and got back to riding, and my friends. At long last I was talking with people.
I do, if you were wondering, have a horse named Seabiscuit. He’s a great-grandson of the original, who is just as successful but needs some training. He has a weird tenancy to stop behind the starting gate and gallop through when the bell rings, but not actually be in the gate. He’s my favorite horse of my 7 and is sweet, really, when he cooperates.
I stood there looking out at the track for another minute, watching the sun beat down on the Seabiscuit memorial statue. I glanced at the wall clock which read 4:30 pm. I looked at my watch, then back at the clock. Hmm. It was really only 3:52. I stopped thinking about the time and walked to the tack room to get my saddle. The tack room was a closet at the end of our barn, filled with the saddles we usually used, and some older, battered saddles that had been traded back and forth between the barns over time. I grabbed a big western saddle with a woven saddle blanket in the black, pink and orange of Ridgewood. Even though we wouldn’t be running, I pulled a set of blinkers off the bridle rack. They had the geometric Ridgewood sequence of diamonds, triangles, and parallelograms on it, which looked especially good on my other mustang racehorse, Mazarati, making it look like a few pink and orange islands in a sea of black. I walked past the stalls back to Seabiscuit, who was straining against his stall door. I went into the stall and calmed Seabiscuit a bit with a carrot, then proceeded to currycomb him to get all the dirt out of his coat; he had been rolling around in his stall in his anxiousness to run. He turned around to look at me like, “Why haven’t I been out to run? I want to run and be out with my friends.” I laughed and put the saddle blanket over his back, following it with the saddle. Finally, I slipped on the blinker hood. Seabiscuit chomped at the bit as it slid over his tongue. At last, we walked out of the barn and onto the soft dirt of the track. The sun sure was very hot. It’s at times like this that I regret putting so much black in my silks. I climbed up on Biscuit, who promptly broke into a quick trot. “Whoa, Biscuit! Sorry, but we can’t run today.” We walked around the 3rd turn and into the backstretch, which was actually going backwards around the track. I wished we could run, but I needed to write up an exercise schedule for getting my horses back into shape before we went on a long run, because you have to build up endurance for your horses and then maintain it so that they don’t get injured or strained. Racing is quite a business. You have to make sure that you have the time to train your horses to be winners, or else you’ll lose all the time and go bankrupt from the forfeit fees that you pay to enter a horse in a race. Seabiscuit snorted restlessly and pricked his ears forward. Then I saw why: he saw his friend, Corozan, at the end of the backstretch. Corozan saw him too, and at the exact same second, they bolted towards each other. Seabiscuit cantered along at his own pace, but luckily Corozan was tethered to a pole outside the Howard barn. If he hadn’t been tied up, he and Seabiscuit probably would have had a collision or some other nasty accident…I laughed and let Seabiscuit canter most of the rest of the way down the stretch. He slid to a stop in front of Corozan. I slid off and smiled at my friends, who were all laughing at the sight of Seabiscuit in a western saddle and a set of blinkers. I tethered Seabiscuit next to Corozan and plopped down into a chair next to Cecilia. She overcame her fit of laughs and said to me, “Why did you put a set of blinkers on with a western saddle? That is truly the funniest set of equipment on one horse that I’ve ever seen!” She started to laugh again. I grimaced and helped myself to a cracker from the table of snacks in front of me. Then Cecilia collected herself and asked, “So, got any horses ready for the Stars’n’Stripes Handicap on Wednesday?” “No, unfortunately. I need to make an exercise schedule, but if I start today I might get someone that could have some slim chance. The field’s really big this year, and it’s all eastern region so far…” She nodded and went back to the celery on her plate. I finished the cracker I had been holding and watched Seabiscuit and Corozan play grab-the-reins-with-your-teeth. Everything else was quiet. A few horses across the track moved around in their stalls. “Well, I might as well go work on that exercise thing while I have the time”, I said to Cecilia. “Yeah, it would be great if you had someone ready for Wednesday!” “Well, after all, it’s a traditional July 4th race, so I’ll probably have someone ready, even if it’s not the best I could do.” She nodded and took a bite of another celery stick. I untied Seabiscuit and got back up in the saddle. We started down the stretch again when I heard a faint rustling in the infield. I pulled up Biscuit and looked carefully through the perfectly manicured grass. Nothing was plainly visible. I wondered what could have made the noise. I could hear it very well, yet it couldn’t have been made by anything bigger than a pygmy goat, of which there were none at this track. I furrowed my brow and spurred Seabiscuit into a trot. We were almost back to the barn when I heard the noise again, this time closer to us. It was the distinct rustle of grass, like what you hear when you walk through cattails or other tall marsh plants. And then I saw that right inside the inner rail, the grass was moving. Moving ever so slightly as if something was stepping on it, squishing it down, and then moving it’s foot to a different spot. And then the four spots appeared. In four small places, the grass was squished. In hoof-shaped ovals. My heart skipped a beat. Ghost horses? No. These…whatever-they-were… four-legged things were tromping around in the infield, nibbling on the grass, because in front of the forward-most hoof marks, something was tearing up the grass and making it disappear. I started at the invisible thing. Then an idea dawned on me. I spoke aloud and said, “Well, look at that, Seabiscuit. It’s an invisible horse.” As soon as I had finished speaking, a sleek black horse flickered into view for a moment. I yelped and jumped a bit in my saddle. Seabiscuit spooked and backed up several steps. What creeped me out more was that I had heard of this thing. It was a horse spirit from Celtic mythology, and if I had read that book correctly, it had said that they breath fire. Great, I thought, this just goes to show me that mythology is real. The horse flickered back into view and this time it stayed there, munching grass peacefully. I gathered up the courage to speak, saying, “Um… you might not want to eat that grass…um, they spray it with… chemicals to keep weeds from…growing or something”. Well, that explanation was just brilliant. The horse raised it’s head to look at me and Seabiscuit, still chewing a bite of grass. When it finished and swallowed, it spoke in a whispery voice and said, “This is a place of horses, yes? There have been horses here for the better part of a century, haven’t there? We horse spirits can inhabit anywhere where horses are dominant.” The horse gave me a half angry, half questioning look, and went back to eating the chemical-infused grass of the infield. “Why do horse spirits come to racetracks? Do you have a helpful purpose for our own horses?” The spirit reared and looked at me angrily. “We have many blessings for real horses! We can give them speed, health, calmness, color, temperament, anything if they prove themselves worthy of the cause. I could give your horses unlimited speed for life, if they perform a lap around the track by themselves in one minute and 15 seconds or less. But I doubt they could.” “Fine,” I said, getting down from Seabiscuit. I took off the saddle and blinkers. “Does he have to do it by himself, or could he do it with some stablemates?” The spirit looked at me and said, “If you want all of your horses to try for the blessing, they could do it all at once, but I will only give speed to the winner. And it’s one attempt only. If no one wins, then no one gets speed.” I nodded, then put Biscuit in the first starting gate stall while I went to get my other racehorses. A minute later I came back with 5 more horses, all of them anxious to run. I gave each one a separate stall in the gate. The spirit horse came cantering across the infield and stood by the starter’s bell. “Should I start them?”, I asked. The horse nodded and stood right next to the gate so he could see the start. My hand hovered over the bell. And then, in less than two seconds, I rang the bell, and everyone was running down the stretch, barreling along, with Mazarati and Seabiscuit leading. My stopwatch read 17 seconds at the first turn, and everyone was galloping fully. My stomach tingled in excitement. Along the backstretch they ran, bringing Cecilia back out of her barn. She watched them gallop by and looked at me funnily. I shrugged and looked back at my stopwatch. 1 minute 4 seconds at the third turn. The horses ran into the homestretch at a minute ten, with five seconds left to win the challenge. Suddenly, Mazarati sped up to what might have been his maximum speed, or he was unlocking something deep inside him that had never come out before. He kept speeding up until he came speeding under the wire at a grand total of one minute, 13 seconds, and 3/5, with Seabiscuit in second. Mazarati ran a little longer, then slid to a stop and came over to me, panting heavily. I started in awe at him. “Why, Mazarati, I had no idea that you could run so fast!” I turned to the spirit horse. “You owe Mazarati some speed.”, I said.
So, yes, the spirit horse’s speed thing did work. After it touched Mazarati lightly with his muzzle, the spirit disappeared in a puff of blue smoke. Mazarati did get some extra speed and came in second by four inches in the Stars’n’Stripes Handicap the next Wednesday, and then went on to win seven consecutive stakes races in the next two months. I was extremely pleased with him. I learned not to underestimate mythology, too. My other horses seemed to learn something from Mazarati also, as they are all increasing their running speed and distance every day. This seems like a worthwhile deal, especially if you beat the track record while doing it. I’ll probably be looking for more mythological creatures that offer deals like that…