I’ve been doing this for nineteen years now. I got my start at the old Virginia Downs. Well, I guess it isn’t really old, it’s the same one that still stands. But I was there when it was still privately owned and we ran year round, full-card turf racing. Then the idiot goes and sells it to the State or County or whatever and as soon as the public gets a sniff that they own a piece of it, it lost all of its charm. And safety. It didn’t matter what the weather was, we ran on the turf – all we had was turf. Now, they have that death trap that they call a main track. And this talk of safety is coming from a guy that packed his crap and headed to a place where they run nothing but nickel dog broke down junk.

Yeah, West Virginia Downs. Like Virginia Downs, but west a little. I got my nickname – ‘Crack’ - the first week that I was here, when seven of my first eleven mounts were hauled off in the wagon. ‘This is why they call this track thirteen.’ Thanks. But the name stuck and I do admit, it is a bit more fun crossing the wire now. At old Virginia, I was just James Hash – here, when I win, the patrons are treated to ‘…prevails under Jimmy Crack Hash’ – but I don’t care what you call me.

I guess I’m a typical jockey. Well, maybe not – I’m communicating in English at the moment, and even though I’m keeping spell-check pretty honest, for the most part, I am literate. But, at the moment it is five after seven, which means I missed my first two workers this morning, so I can’t be called atypical either. And seeing as how break time is in another forty minutes and I’m still just now in the parking lot, I may as well stop in the kitchen for a coffee and two donuts I can purge before nine so that I can have brunch before purging before lunch.

I’m not sure about this walking thing at the moment either, you’d think that they’d let us drive into the barn area in the morning. For God’s sake, if I can avoid eleven horses while on one at thirty miles-per-hour, I can certainly be trusted to steer clear of an equine collision while operating a Honda CVCC.

Hell, I can always kill time and take my mind off of the exercise while I do what I do best – lie.

“Ronnie, what time do I have to work that ratty little gray mare that’s dragging the hind leg?”

 Ronnie is my agent. He’s probably eighty-years-old now and is proof that experience doesn’t always count for much and things do not necessarily get better with age. But, he puts zero pressure on me, which is exactly what a volatile, lazy deadbeat like myself needs at this point in my life.

“Six-thirty Jimmy. I think you better hurry though, it has to be close to that time now and we got another one before the break.”

And proving once and for all that I do have a hell of a clock in my head and am masterful at precision timing, the P.A. system bellows.

“Break time on the main track. It is now break time on the main track.”

“Ah, crap, how the hell is that possible? What are they taking break early today, it can’t be seven forty-five yet, I just got here.”

“Jimmy, I can’t believe it either, I must have fallen asleep again outside the racing office.”

See, we are a match made in heaven.

“Swing by old man Frazier’s barn and tell him I’ll get the busted legged mare second after and we’ll try and work the two-year-old for that nutty fat guy with the broken toothed daughter that gallops before the track closes. If not, I’ll get him before break tomorrow. Wait, not tomorrow, the day after. Just tell him he can walk two more days. Or get the toothless kid to do it, she isn’t that much heavier than I am.”

“Frazier may have gotten Tate to take her, he called me a little while ago and said whoever got here first would ride her – he enters today.”

“Perfect. Tate it is.”

* * * *

I made room for brunch an hour ago and now it’s almost time to get rid of brunch in favor of lunch, which at the moment I’m leaning towards two Rolling Rocks over another donut and a shot of Sambuca in another cup of coffee. I like choices so I’m going to string this one out a while. Luckily, I don’t ride the first today so I don’t have to be in the room until eleven-thirty. To be honest, I’m thinking about skipping the second too, but they’ll probably pull me off of all of them, and while that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, I do ride five today which should put about $180 in my pocket at the end of the week. And I do need it. The brakes are almost completely gone in the CVCC. And the throttle sticks.

The guy in the second has this nine-year-old or ten-year-old or fifteen-year-old or some dumb old gray horse that is so old he’s white and it still a non-three. Eighty-one starts now and every time he gets beat, the straw hat wearing numbskull, Parker, reassures everyone that ‘he’ll let you know when you can bet your money’.

Great. Guess who got the heads-up that ‘this time, we take the money’. Yeah, and I’ve ridden this old jalopy before. Last year we had this same chain of events occur and afterwards he vowed that he’d kick my ass back to Virginia (I think he called it Vir-gin-E). You see this super-horse in disguise needs a ‘little help’. Or so Colonel Peachtree keeps telling every new rider. One thing is for sure, either this horse needs to get hit by eighteen bolts of lightning simultaneously or nobody has bothered to take the old coot to seriously. I know I just nodded my head last year, planted my left hand on his neck down the lane and never uncocked the stick. A real machine horse would have fell for it.

And to be honest, I’m not sure this guy is the worst of the idiot parade in today’s assemblage of paddock visits. I’ve already been told by that lady with the career maiden in the fourth that I am to scratch the horse in the post parade if she gives me the ‘secret signal’ that someone dropped on her pride and joy.

What kind of cellular deficient, sadistic lunatic would want to even look at this overweight, ill-mannered, no-running pet that wouldn’t even make a good pet, much less feed it even one meal?

Okay, darling. If I thought the guy with the two for a hundred gray goblin was actually on to something, I’d plug the plodding oaf in and parlay my million dollar payoff by claiming this glorified pony horse myself and I’d do something useful with him. I’d ride him from the CVCC in the parking lot to the kitchen at seven-forty two.

At least Wilmer is a nice guy, but that flipping nut he’s got me on in the fifth is beyond sore and the old guy just isn’t getting it. I hate to scratch one on him, but after eight minutes of his limp before we even get to the gate, I’m not sure that I want to endure the three minutes it takes to pack him in and pray they kick it before he launches me down the chute and into the barn area.

 The thing is, the one that I ride for him in the ninth can run. And as a first time starter, he isn’t too sore. Factor in Wilmer’s win rate, which looks terrible even compared to my own win rate, I got a shot at making a few bucks if I can get away clean. I suspect Wilmer won’t have him tight enough to win, but he’s not in a bad spot if he’s close to fit enough and if I key him first, second, and third in the trifecta – it could make sticking around for the card worthwhile.

And if that doesn’t pan out… tee-hee…

I have to sit through five races before the last, which I ride. And the last is a superfecta race. Sammy Tate rides Applied Assault for Larry Abner and he should be 2-5 in that spot. And I’ve got a feeling old Applied Assault is going to get left at the gate. Bad left at the gate, like hopelessly out of contention from the start. They scratched two from the field already, which leaves seven, minus Applied Assault, leaves six. Six times five times four times three is three-sixty. We’ll cover one box in the room and I’m sure the gate guys will get their own. Keep this between us okay, the pools aren’t great even on a big simulcast day and we’d really like to get most of, if not all of the super pool.

* * * *

One of the best things about West Virginia Downs over Virginia Downs is that we get to ride in house silks. There was nothing worse than parading out to the paddock wearing bright pink with orange polka dots or something. Is the owner completely blind? Does he need the most putrid colors allowed by law in order to figure out that he’s five behind the field and without hope – like usual?

So, if nothing else, when I get cussed out after pulling up in about fifteen minutes, at least I won’t look totally ridiculous at the same time – I’m in solid white, like my decrepit, old mount.

“Are you ready?”

Here we go already. No hello, how are you, it sure is cold. None of that. Colonel Peachtree is grinning like he already ate the canary and doesn’t realize that canaries always make him barf.

“Yeah. Ready.”

“I’ll bet a hundred for you, alright.”

“Great. Perfect.”

First of all, if he bets a hundred at this dinky track, he goes from eighty to one to the favorite in one tick of the board. So, thankfully, I know he’s full of crap, or I’d be on my cell phone placing bets on the rest of the field through an off-shore betting hub.

“Good luck, Crack, I’ll see you tonight with your money.”

He legs me up, nearly leaving me a ridgling with his graceful hoist on to the whithers of old Whitey.

I glance at the tote board to see that Whitey is twenty-six to one, while the one is favored at three to five. It’s only a seven horse field and I’m not even the longest shot at the moment. We start to jog towards the gate and I’m watching Tate on the one. Mental note to self, stay away from that one. He can hardly jog, Tate is taking inventory down below the entire post parade but hasn’t said a word to the vet.

We circle and circle and circle and lope and jog. One thing about old Whitey, he’s as easy as they come. The six looks like he’s trying to breed the pony, which is most amusing, and the four is so wet that old Nickey Fine is doing everything he can to stay tall in the irons with a hand full of mane.

We load uneventfully, Tate looks over and mentions – “You may want to get in front of me or outside of me, this may be a short journey.”

And like that, we’re all set… and away…

Well, Tate takes away the ‘in front of me option’ early, and the fact that the rest of the field is to my outside limits my ability to get outside in a hurry. So, I’m second last at the fence just watching this thing of Tate’s shimmy and shake into the turn. We’re only going four and a half, thankfully – I make more per hour on these losing jock mount types.

As the horse behind me begins to approach from the outside, old Whitey actually picks up the bit some and gets a little heart. As fate would have it, he picked a hell of a good time to come to life. We’re three back midway on the turn with five in front of us and Tate’s rocky going beast starts getting out bad. Then it goes from bad to holy crap bad, he’s going to put four guys in the grandstand.

I the blink of an eye, I go from being second last and three back on the hook to a head in front, saving ground with all but one in field seven paths outside of me. It’s a match race from the three-sixteenths to the wire between old Whitey and some other plug that managed not to get completely annihilated by the busted down favorite on the turn. Doing my best ‘machine rider’ impression, I carry a cross up on this sucker’s neck in my left hand and try to use my stick to fend off the horse to my outside. He’s gaining, I remember this moron may have actually put a hundred on this thing, and I’m trying to make this other horse think if he takes another step closer, I will crack him in the snout.

Two jumps from the wire, I’m going to win. It’s the two of us all the way down the lane, and then bang, something comes and roars past me near the wire, at the wire, or after the wire – I’m not sure, he was somewhere near the outside fence, at least eight paths outside of the two of us.

The photo goes up, it comes down, we run second. But… there is an inquiry. I unsaddle, the old man doesn’t know if he should holler at me. He doesn’t want to waste the opportunity if he should be squalling, but every light on every horse on the board is flashing and he’s too confused to take the chamois. I’ll take it.

He’s yelling about remounting in case we get our picture taken, but I’ve got get back to the room. Post time for the fourth is in forty-eight minutes.

Funny thing is – when I got back to the room, I realized I ran third, not second. There was a riderless horse to the outside of the ‘winner’. We watched the replays and when the eventual winner started to get pack wide by the favorite, Danny Target reaches out and cracks his mount on the shoulder, but when he rears back with the stick, he actually knocks Nickey Fine in the chops and clear out of the irons.

Target gets taken down, placed last, I win on D.Q., and old Whitey pays $22.80. The old man must have dropped a fortune. I’ve got a grand or so coming.

* * * *

I make it out to the paddock for the fourth, but there’s no horse. I wait about two minutes and they announce a late scratch. It seems ‘darling’ forget to bring her pride and joy to the paddock.

I find out later that she caught someone walking through the shedrow five minutes before they were going to get ready and she was certain  that she’d come home with only a bridle. Well, I don’t suppose two miracles can happen in one day.

* * * *

So, back out I go twenty-six minutes later, this time in yellow. Wilmer greets me, thanks me for riding his horse again. He says he’s been feeling better, training well, and most importantly, standing in the gate in the mornings with little fanfare.

He legs me up, I head on to the track, and it takes little time to realize that he ain’t feeling that much better. It’s one of those things, he doesn’t feel like he’s dragging an appendage or taking his last steps. He’s just sore, like it starts at his neck and runs right through to the tail. He just mopes and chops and shimmies.

I give him every shot to warm up, but it isn’t happening. I hate to do it, especially to Wilmer, but I take him behind the gate, jog him for the vet a few times and he agrees. The horse is scratched.

Wilmer never gets mad. He’s not exactly happy, but more embarrassed or disappointed. I apologize and tell him that we’ll make up for it in the ninth. Wilmer acts as though he hasn’t any idea about the ninth race, consumed with the present.

“My granddaughter’s birthday is Thursday. She’s getting too old for boring horses. This might be a challenge for her, a solution for both of us. Her mom will kill me though” “See you in a little bit Crack, and thanks.”

* * * *

Maiden claiming, thirty-five hundred is about as cheap as you’ll find. And I really like this little colt of Wilmer’s. He’s standing perfectly in the paddock stall across from me as Wilmer departs his charge and meets me in front of the orange number seven at our feet.

“I don’t know if I got him quite ready Crack, but he’s feeling plenty good and behaving like a good horse. If you think you can win it, go for it, but most importantly, give him a good education. Me and him got a long road together and this is just the start. I’d rather he leave here knowing something good that something bad.”

Meanwhile, I got this first-timer keyed everywhere in the gimmicks. I know he can run a bit and he’s by nothing and out of nothing, with mediocre looking works, a bad trainer, and in against a bunch of proven losers on the bottom. He’s 15-1 on the morning line and 9-1 on the tote board, probably because I told a few people that he might be worth a few bucks.

The little guy is perfect from the paddock to the gate and at every point between. I’m actually starting to get really confident, he’s on the muscle, but within himself and feels much more alive than the others look from my perspective. Plus, I’d really actually like to win a race for Wilmer, especially after the fifth race episode.

The little guy loads perfectly, we take a spot in stall seven with two to load to our outside. He stands like a champ, keeps his head straight, moving only his eye a bit to notice the header.

The bell rings, we leave there and in an instant the little guy and I are dueling with three others for the lead, two to the inside, one outside. We’re only going five-eighths, so it is a fairly short run to the turn and I don’t want to hammer the gas and use him to soon to get closer to the rail. So, we zip three wide into the turn, and doing it easily I might add.

The horse to our immediate inside, in the two path, he begins to peel off and at the same time, the guy to the outside, ‘Kentucky’ Baker starts kissing and whistling and tapping just inside the three-eighths. It’s a bit sooner than I’d like to start asking this guy for his finishing kick, he’s unlikely to be dead tight, but he’s listening to the stimulation to his outside and getting keyed up, so I start to nudge along.

We cut the corner and straighten away and the remaining part of the pace package to our inside is coming up empty and the horse to outside with ‘Kentucky’ making a racket is struggling to find more. I’m not exactly sitting on a ton of horse, but with an eighth of a mile to run, there is simply nobody else doing any running at all. Three slaps of the whip, one left-handed, for the education part, and he’s in front at the wire by four. The horse to our outside on the turn ends up a clear second, with four back to third.

Wilmer never looked so pleased in his life as he hobbled up towards the track as I jogged back. Then I saw Bob, the paddock clerk hand him the slip.

Larry Abner claimed the little guy. Wilmer almost forgot to walk back to the winner’s circle. He was just staring at the claim slip like it had more information than he could readily see.

They snapped the photo. Wilmer said ‘Thanks, Crack. Maybe he’ll let you ride him back.’

“I doubt it Wilmer. Good job.”

* * * *

Larry Abner hasn’t won a race from his last seven starters and that doesn’t  sit well. So, he takes a horse that just won for $7,500 in a non-three lifetime and drops him to $3,000. He’s four to five on the morning line and likely to be one to nine at post time because the ‘King’ (as Mr. Abner refers to himself) will likely bet with both fists in order to get out ahead. The purse won’t cover the difference of $4,500.

Since the last race I rode, I’ve already heard something about Colonel Peachtree losing his winning tickets and demanding the mutuel department put a stop on the tickets. More good news. At least I’ll feel good about King’s horse running off the board after taking Wilmer’s out of the ninth and we’ll all make some money at his expense.

I get a leg up from some local yokel aboard something with a name that sounds like a quarter horse – B C IM A RED or J R U CAN CAN or something like that. The horse looks more like a shetland pony than a quarter horse, but it doesn’t matter, I’ve got a decent chance of running fourth or better no matter what he looks like.

I venture towards the gate with NO NO RUN FAST or whoever and we load slowly. At least it seems slow. The gate crew seems hell bent on getting everything perfect. Everyone has a head just right and there’s a lot of chatter. The room split two six horse superfecta boxes with King’s horse conspicuously absent.

They kick it and I get a good view of King’s horse sailing straight in the air – I’m the only one that broke almost as poorly and I wasn’t trying to.

To make a long, heartbreaking story short, I’m eight behind midway on the turn asking YO YO I M SLOW for his life and King’s horse is dragging Tate to my flank. I mean Tate has got this sucker bent in half, but trying to make it look good, and failing miserably. A quarter from the wire, Tate cruises past me and I’m actually making some headway on the dog in front of me.

I can see the top two well clear nearing the wire and then a break to another duo with Tate aboard King’s horse ripping and tugging but doing little actual riding making up ground. I cross the wire on about even terms with one of the others and notice a lot of chatting between Tate and the others while galloping out.

I pull up quickly, a little too quickly, but I really wanted to see the tote board.

Tate ran fourth. He was pretty darn white coming back and we were all shooting glares. How about running up someone’s heels, genius? Get stopped, make it look good. For God’s sake, I can’t take much more of these pinheads.

Abner, he comes storming up towards Tate, screaming and cussing. Then Bob stops him. Hands him the claim slip.

Wilmer stops me on the way back to the room.

“You want to ride that horse back?”

“Of course I do, Wilmer. What did you do, parlay your claim money already into another one?”

Wilmer reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ticket. A six horse trifecta box, minus King’s horse.

“Nah, I knew I had the winning trifecta before I came up here. And I had a feeling this colt might save his condition. Paid for himself.”

* * * *

I drank a beer. Walked out to the CVCC and drank another one before turning the ignition. I thought about the day’s events.

Then I thought about tomorrow. I ride seven. Tomorrow, now tomorrow is going to be a crazy day.