Washed Away

The Years In-Between

For the first year or so after Live A Little left my barn, I continued to get some quality horses. However, none of their owners could deal with my hatred of the press and unorthodox training methods, and soon enough, I was left with claimers and constantly-hurt horses who were lucky if they could do a mile in 1:38, much less win a race.

Why did I hate the media so much? Well, originally I wanted to be a sportswriter, particularly a turfwriter, but after a lot of drama and a little violence, I realized I was not liked by other newspapermen and left, deciding to shadow my father's old friend, Todd Pletcher, and become a trainer instead.

And what an illustrious career it had been. I had one good horse, and now I was back to being disrespected. The only friend I had was Bill Tasmora, and there wasn't much he could do to help me.

The years passed, and I got fewer and lesser-quality horses each year. I barely spoke, bottling up my disappointment and anger at myself. I didn't live in and apartment. No, I didn't have enough money for that. I lived in a stall in Bill's barn, because I didn't have my own barn anymore. All I had of my old barn was the old, scratched, green and white plaque. I found an abandoned camera one day and began taking pictures with it.

My daily routine was to get up and eat a little bit of the food Bill gave me, as I didn't want to overstep my hospitality more than I already had. Then, I would watch the horses work on the Keeneland track and make pointless notes. I'd take pictures during the races in the afternoon, and I hot-walked Bill's horses for him.

I looked at my stats for the past 10 years one day. It was depressing.
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Year-wins-earnings
2030-45-$2,110,112
2031-25-$878,340
2032-19-$360,230
2033-11-$212,075
2034-5-$100,050
2035-5-$68,540
2036-3-$7,550
2037-1-$2,300
2038-1-$1,500
2039-0-$480
2040-0-$125
2041-0-$0
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Every day, every year, my life got worse. It became more and more unbearable, and I considered taking my life quite a few times. The problem was that I could never go through with it. I couldn't cut my throat, couldn't tighten the noose, couldn't run out on the track in front of the horses or the road in front of cars and trucks, couldn't jump off the bridge, couldn't strike a match to light my clothes on fire. I couldn't do it, and so I went through the motions of living my depressing life.

I hated every second of it. It's horrible, knowing you're not going anywhere, but not knowing in which direction to take the first step, and then, when you try to take a step, finding you have too much baggage weighing you down so that you can't move. 

But when you're at the bottom of the roller coaster, you can only get off or go up, my friend. And I couldn't get off. I had already learned that.