Authors: Willy Vlautin
“Well, what do you want?” he said when he finally noticed me.
“I was hoping–” I started to say.
“You want your money, right?”
I nodded. He pushed his chair back and took out his wallet and he gave me forty dollars.
“Yesterday you said you’d give me eighty.”
“That’s all the cash I have on me tonight,” he said. But when he took the forty out of his wallet I could see a big wad of bills in there. “I’ll get you the rest tomorrow, but I’m busy now, alright?”
“Alright,” I told him and then I left, but I couldn’t go back to the tack room while he was still there so I took the money and walked all the way to St. Johns to a taqueria that was in the back of a Mexican grocery store. While I was there a couple came in and started arguing with each other. The woman got up and left him there. He stayed but he didn’t eat anything. He just lit a cigarette and then after a while a Mexican guy came from behind the counter and told him that smoking wasn’t allowed. The man looked like he might start a fight but he didn’t, he just left. There was no one else in the place except me and the counterman. After a minute or so he went into the back and, when he did, I got up and went to the table where the man and woman had sat. The woman’s meal was half done but the man’s was untouched and I took it and set it on top of my empty plate. I went to the counter and rang the bell and the guy came out from the back and I got a to-go container and put the man’s meal in it and left.
It was still pretty early so I walked around for a while, then I went to the movies and saw one about a good-looking girl who has a crazy father who thinks there is treasure buried underneath a Costco. They end up jack-hammering through the concrete floor and finding a hidden river and a bunch of gold. After that I walked back to the track and by then the caf was closed and Del’s truck was gone so I went inside the tack room, laid out my sleeping bag, and ate the rest of the Mexican food.
Del showed up at nine the next morning carrying a paper sack. He was hungover and dressed in the same clothes he wore the day before. He went into the tack room, sat at his desk and turned on the radio. In the sack was a six pack of beer and a package of hot dogs. He began eating the hot dogs cold and washing them down with beer. It was a pretty sick thing to see. Him just taking them out of the package and putting one after another in his mouth. I stood outside watching. Then he swallowed a handful of aspirin, lay down on the tack-room floor, and fell asleep.
A couple hours later he coughed and sat up.
“What time is it?” He felt around his shirt pocket and took out a can of chew and put in a dip.
“It’s eleven-thirty,” I told him.
“Okay,” he said and stood up. He took a can of beer off the desk and opened it. “Pete’s up first. Let’s hope to God he gets claimed.” Del moved his hands through his hair and put on his cowboy hat and coughed and it was a heavy, sick sort of cough. “I got to hit the can. Be ready to bring him over in twenty minutes.”
The race was a $
4
,
000
,
350
-yard maiden claimer. Del didn’t say anything at all when we brought Pete over. There were lines of sweat leaking down from under his cowboy hat and he hadn’t shaved. I stood with him in the paddock and held Pete while he put on the saddle and he didn’t say anything then either.
When the bell rang and the jockeys came out, a woman jockey got on Pete. Del didn’t tell her anything, he just gave her a leg up, then led them out of the paddock and handed Pete’s lead to a pony girl who took him out.
While the horses paraded Del went to the bar and ordered a beer so I walked down next to the track and waited. When the race went off the announcer didn’t even mention Lean on Pete. From where I was I could tell he was near last and by the time the winner passed the finish line I could see Pete struggling three lengths behind.
Del walked out on the track as the jockey brought Pete back. She jumped down and they took the saddle off and she said a few things to Del but I couldn’t hear. As we walked Pete back to the stalls Del remained quiet. We hosed him down and set him on the hotwalker and then put him in his stall. Del went to him and felt both his front legs.
“Is he gonna be okay?” I asked.
“It don’t look good. I guess he probably really is navicular. I ain’t certain he’s got it, but I ain’t paying for X-rays.” He picked up Pete’s right hoof and when he did it you could tell it hurt and Pete jerked and Del fell back and hit his head on the stall wall.
When he got up you could tell he was mad. He stood there for a moment or so, then just walked over to Pete and hit him as hard as he could in the neck. Pete moved away from Del and bumped into the back of the stall.
“You’re a pig,” he said as he opened the gate and left.
I followed him down the shedrow until he walked to a sani-hut. He went inside and was in there for a long time.
When he got out I asked him, “What are you gonna do with him?”
“With who?”
“Pete.”
“Can’t a man shit in peace?” he said. He put in a chew and looked at me. “No one wants a five-year-old that can’t run and could be navicular. We have to get rid of him.”
“I still don’t understand what navicular is,” I said to him.
“It’s a fucked-up bone in his foot. How many times do I got to tell you? It’s a degenerative disease. There’s nothing to be done about it for a horse like him. I ain’t paying to cut his nerves and he’s barely worth Therapain. Now I gotta run a few errands so leave me alone, alright?”
I nodded and he left the backside, got into his truck, and drove off.
I went to Pete’s stall. He seemed okay but I wasn’t sure. When the races were done that day I went to Fred Meyer and bought him apples and a bag of carrots, then I pulled up a chair next to his stall and tried to read a novel that Del had lying around. I spent the afternoon that way. That night Del showed up again to play cards in the caf so I left and decided to walk to the trailer park where Harry Durand lived, hoping he would know what to do about Pete. I knocked on a few trailer homes before this old lady told me which one he lived in. I went to it but he wasn’t there. I waited for a while but he never showed up so I walked back to the track.
I went into the caf to see if they were still playing cards and they were. Del saw me and waved me over.
“You still know how to drive my truck?” he said. He was drunk.
“Sure,” I told him.
“Hook the trailer to it. You know which one, right?”
I nodded.
“Bring the truck and trailer over here and park it in front of the caf, okay? We’re gonna load Pete tonight. I’ll be out in an hour or so.”
“Where’s he going?”
“I’m going to sell him.”
“You’re gonna sell him tonight?” I asked.
Del nodded.
“To who?”
One of the other trainers playing cards started laughing.
“Why should you care?” Del said.
“I was just asking.”
“It’s not any of your business.”
“I could buy him off you,” I said.
Del laughed. “You don’t have any money and you can’t keep him in one of my stalls. Just go get the truck.”
I stood there staring at him, but he didn’t say anything more, he just handed me the keys. I went out to the lot and found his truck. It started easy enough but I stalled it twice trying to get it in gear. I drove it around to where his trailer was and backed it up the best I could and hooked the old stock trailer to it. The whole thing took a long time, but I did it. I drove to the front gate and the security guard came out, opened it, and I drove in.
I took the truck down the main backside road until I came to Del’s stalls and I cut the engine. I went to Pete, put a halter on him, and loaded him. Then I went to the tack room, took my bag of clothes and sleeping bag, and put them in the cab of the truck. After that I went into the rafters and got my last couple cans of food, then took two bales of Del’s hay and set them in the bed of the truck.
I got back in and circled around and drove to the main gate. The old-man security guard came out and I rolled down the window.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Del’s selling Lean on Pete,” I said. “He told me to load him and park across the street. He’s in the caf finishing up playing a card game.”
The security guard turned on his flashlight and looked in the back of the trailer and then shined the light on him.
“Alright,” he said. “Just sign here.” I signed where he told me to, then he opened the gate, and I drove out.
I had the truck in first. It was hard to get it in second but I did and drove down the road towards the freeway. I didn’t mean for all of it to happen like that, I really didn’t. But I could tell by the looks of the other men at the card game that Del was going to sell Lean on Pete to what the people at the track called the killers. I knew sooner or later he would be in a stock trailer full of other horses he didn’t know heading for Mexico.
When I came to the stoplight I headed south on the freeway. I could have gone either way, but there was more traffic heading north. I got the truck out of second and into third alright but I kept grinding gears and I couldn’t figure out how not to. It took me three tries to get it into fourth. I was scared to go over fifty but I knew I had to. The old truck seemed to rattle and shake more than it did when Del drove it and I wasn’t sure why. Every ten seconds or so I checked the rearview to make sure the horse trailer was still there and it always was so I just kept driving down the road.
I passed through downtown Portland and up some hills and then the road leveled and the traffic thinned and we left the city. I began to relax. I looked at the dashboard and I saw that I still had a quarter tank of gas. I drove until it was near empty, then I got off the highway and pulled into a gas station.
A fat lady came out, I gave her all the money I had, and she put thirty-four dollars’ worth of gas in the tank and I went back to Pete. He looked pretty small in the big old stock trailer, but he didn’t seem upset or worried. I went inside and found a map of the western United States and when the counterman wasn’t looking I walked back out with it. The truck started easy and I drove back towards the highway and pulled over. I looked at the map for a long time and decided I’d go to Wyoming and try to find my aunt for real. I had to drive through Oregon and Idaho to get there; I had to drive more than a thousand miles.
It was almost ten o’clock when I began heading east on Highway
20
. It was a two-lane road and the further we were from the interstate the windier it got. Then the mountains started and I began grinding the gears so much that I just left it in second. Cars passed me because I was going so slow, a few of them even honked and I was worried that if a cop saw he would pull me over. Eventually I made it through the mountains but when I did I realized I’d missed the turn-off I was supposed to take and ended up in a town called Prineville.
I was dead tired by then and I parked in the lot of a closed Safeway grocery store. I tried to sleep but I just lay there in the cab and worried. I had less than a third of a tank of gas and no money. I looked through the glove box but there wasn’t anything in there except a bunch of receipts, a flashlight, some fuses, a lighter, and a pocket knife. I took the lighter and pocket knife and put them in my coat pocket.
I got out and looked in the bed of the truck and there was an empty five gallon gas can. I took it out and set it on the ground then went back to Pete. He stood there motionless in the darkness and really I had no idea how he was doing. I went to the bed of the truck and got him a flake of hay, then I opened a can of soup and we ate together.
It was still dark out when I left the truck and walked to the first house I saw and stole a garden hose. I went back to the truck and cut off a six-foot section. There were a handful of cars in the lot and I moved the truck next to one so the gas tanks were right next to each other. The other car had a lock on the gas-cap cover, but I broke it off and stuck the hose down the tank. I began sucking as hard as I could and after a while gas poured into my mouth and started spilling out. I put the end of the hose in the gas can and it began to fill.
I filled Del’s front and back tanks like that. It took me three different cars to do it, but I didn’t get caught and I was too worried to feel bad about it. When I was done I got back on the road and drove out of Prineville as the sun began to rise. Not long after that I got so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. I passed a sign that said I was entering a national forest, and in the distance I could see mountains and trees starting. I pulled off on a forest service road that ran alongside a creek and I stayed on it until there was a good turnout and I cut the engine.
I went back to the trailer, unloaded Pete, and took him down to the creek. He looked around for a long time, then he drank a little. I could see the muscles on his neck move as the water went down his throat, and he seemed pretty fine.
“I hope it’s alright I took you,” I said to him. “Del was gonna take you to Mexico, I know he was.”
Pete leaned down and looked at the water but he didn’t drink again.
“Del said a lot of mean things to me. He told me that I’d never amount to anything, that I’d be lucky if I ended up working a fryer at a fast-food place. He used to say I was useful as a bag of concrete that had been pissed on. He said stuff like that all the time. The only reason I’m telling you all this is that I know he said some things to you too. But remember, when he was talking about you he was just being grumpy. Everyone knows you’re a good horse.”
Pete looked up, then stepped into the creek. The cold water ran over his feet. His coat was black as asphalt and his eyes were half shut. It was like he was asleep right then.
“One time my dad left me at this guy’s house for a week while he went to Las Vegas with a woman he was dating. I can’t remember her name but she won a free trip to a casino. This was when I lived in Green River, like I told you earlier, but the guy who I was staying with lived all the way over in Cheyenne and my dad and his girlfriend dropped me off there on the way to Denver. That’s where they were gonna get the plane to Las Vegas. I’d met the guy before but I didn’t know him. He was my dad’s friend from high school. This guy’s voice was so loud you never could tell if he was just talking or if he really was mad and yelling. He worked swing shift and I had to sleep in the living room, but the problem was he never went to bed so I just sat there with him and watched TV. I never once saw him sleep in his bedroom. He just watched shows until he fell asleep on the couch. I slept on the floor, which I don’t mind, but it was a small room. It made me nervous. It was summer, so I didn’t have to go to school, but my dad signed me up for a week of day camp so I’d have something to do. The problem was that the guy lived ten miles away from town. He told my dad he’d drive me in. He owed my dad a bunch of money and they’d agreed to call it even if the guy took me to the camp and let me stay at his apartment. But he was hard to get up when morning came. The first day I had to stand over him and shake him. He was so mad and startled when he woke I thought he was going to hit me, but he got up and drove me in. It was the same way the second day but he was even grumpier about it then. On the third day he wouldn’t get up so I missed the camp. I ended up just sitting around outside his building. He took me the next morning but the day after that he didn’t even come home. And there was hardly any food at his place. All he had were Banquet frozen dinners and they’re the worst. The Salisbury steak’s alright, but he’d only bought one of those.