Read Online Homestretch by Paul Volponi - Free Book Online Page A

Jorge! Bring this one home! You’re my boy!”
    â€œUse that whip, Chop-Chop!”
    â€œI lost a fortune betting on you, Gillette. And every time I bet somebody else, you beat me, you bastard!”
    â€œYou on the number six horse, you’re a bum with a capital
B
!”
    Sometimes those riders would wink at the good comments or spit on the ground over the real bad ones. But they mostly stared straight ahead, pretending those people weren’t even there.
    It was like they were little supermen, and nothing anybody said could touch them. That’s how I wanted to be.
    Nobody in that crowd had the guts to climb aboard a 1,200-pound Thoroughbred like those jockeys did, driving them through tiny openings between horses that could close up in a split second. And even if somebody there did, they were probably too big and heavy to race-ride.
    It was just after three thirty when I watched the horses in the fifth race go flying past. With the sound of their hoofbeats thundering in my ears and a streak of bravery running through me, I walked up to the first pay phone I saw to call Dad.
    It had been five days since I left, and I had to know what he’d say. Even if he put me down, like I knew he might, I had that jockey’s license I could hold over his head, without telling him where I was.
    I listened to the operator’s voice and to a dollar forty in change slide through the coin slot. Then, with my heart pounding, I got connected and heard the phone ring in my house.
    Ring … ring … ring …
    After three rings Mom’s voice used to pick up on the answering machine. For months after she got killed, it still did.
    â€œYou’ve reached the home of the Giambancos—Gaston, Maria, and Gaston Jr. Leave a message at the tone. We’ll get back to you soon, and have a terrific day,” she’d say.
    Our last name always sounded like music out of Mom’s mouth—“Gi-am-ban-co.”
    Last semester, when I didn’t know how I’d get through the day, I’d call home from school just to hear that message. I’d close my eyes, listening to the sound of her voice. In my mind I could always see her galloping a horse at sunset, with the sky a mix of bright blue and orange.
    Then late one night the phone started ringing, and neither Dad or me got to it in time. Her voice came on. Dad was soangry to hear it that he slammed the answering machine with his fist, breaking it in two.
    And the last trace of her was gone for good.
    I let the phone ring at least twenty times that afternoon from the racetrack, but Dad never answered and no message came on.
    Before I hung up, I dropped my face into my chest to hold back the tears and stop the feeling that there was no place left for me anywhere.
    When I got to Dag’s barn, El Diablo was already there, sitting on a bale of hay with a whip in one hand and an open can of beer in the other.
    Nacho, Rafael, and Anibal were there too, for the horses’ four o’clock feeding.
    â€œ
This
your horse now, bug,” said El Diablo, standing up and slapping at that bale of hay with his whip. “Climb on.”
    I felt stupid, but I did it anyway.
    Nacho and his brothers were already grinning at me.
    â€œFirst, starting gate. You break a horse from there? Ever?” El Diablo asked.
    I shook my head.
    â€œIt called iron monster, ‘cause you don’t know what a horsedo inside there. They can get scared in that tight space—the size of a phone booth. They turn loco on you,” El Diablo said. “Keep your horse leaning against back doors, no the front. So he no flip backward and come down on top of you. Crush you. Snap your spine.”
    I leaned all my weight back.
    â€œRINNNNNGGGGG!” he shouted in my ear, like the sound of the bell on the starting gate when the iron doors spring open.
    My heart jumped, and my weight shot forward.
    â€œNow you go from the gate. Push with your arms. Pump hard.