Bloodless Day

Interesting

By the time we got back to the shedrows, BD's coat had dried into hard curls of sweat and hair. Jack's head drooped till it touched his chest, and defeat lingered like darkness in his eyes.

Mary wasn't there- she'd stayed in Kentucky, in school. (Where I kind of sort of should have been, but my grades hadn't suffered at all. Online schooling suited me well.) So I left Jack to hold BD by the reins and scouted out the stalls for his wheelchair. I located it, waiting patiently like a pony in the third stall to the left, and wheeled it back out to the tired Thoroughbred and his equally exhausted jockey.

As Jack slipped down his side, he managed to fumble out a few words, handing them to me like an old man. "It was... my fault. I'm not strong enough to hold him back."

"You've been a great jockey until now. It was mine... I was too amped up before the race. California..." I stopped. A pang of sadness went through me, for a lost friend, for a horse that broke his heart trying. BD lifted his head slowly and touched my palm with his muzzle, too tired to ask.

Jack, too, looked up. His eyes narrowed. "What about California?"

I couldn't talk. My hand fell.

"Well, if we're blaming your feelings for this, we might as well blame mine too. My father- he called."

"What did he want?" I asked too quickly, too sharply, and BD tossed his head, eyes flaring with light before he resettled, shaking slightly.

Jack's laugh was a humorless one. "Money. What else? I don't want to talk about it- go get that horse settled. We have a long drive back."

He rolled away, but instead of obeying, I curled my knuckles into the coarse mane at the base of BD's withers, pressing my forehead against his shoulder. "I'm so, so tired of this," I murmured into the salt of his coat. "Just when I think I'm over her, we come back here. This was my fault. If I was calmer, if I was just done mourning, I could've stayed focused for you."

BD didn't respond, but he shifted his feet, tipping his head slightly to look behind me.

So I did, too.

Wes stood there, with a frown and a Thoroughbred. The young horse danced, fresh and unspent, as she met my gaze. Dark hair curled around her face, tossed by the wind, as her frown turned into a not-smile. "Interesting," she said.

Interesting.

*****

"BD's not eating," I reported. Willifred looked up from his donut and met my concern with a shrug.

"A lot of horses don't eat after a race. Not like that. They're too tired."

"Well, but-"

"Is he drinking?"

Usually after a race, BD would down a bucket and a half of water before even slowing. Today he'd only managed a quarter. I shook my head.

Willifred sighed. "There's not much we can do about it."

We stood- well, I stood, Willifred sat- in a little cafe near the track. The trainer had called a meeting there with Jack and Lilac as soon as the horses were comfortable in their stalls, and it seemed like everybody had had the same idea. People crowded into nearly every booth, spilling across the bar counter and laughing with the waitresses. Conversations about race statistics trickled through the air to meet us.

"Can't you give him something to make him feel better?"

Willifred met me with a level gaze. "Nothing legal."

I bit my lip and glowered out the window, a sweeping cascade of glass down the clean wall of the café. California mountains glowered back. My feet, my heart, missed good old Kentucky dirt. Everything had been fine in Kentucky. My horse hadn't been trembling from exhaustion in Kentucky.