2000 Winner: The Painting

by Alan P. Henry

CARL GREENE had never really thought of himself as the vulnerable type. Sure, there was the land mine shrapnel in the back outside Panmunjom in 1953, followed by almost three years of jaw-grinding rehab in a VA hospital. And the divorce, which 30 years later blew a gaping six-figure hole in his FBI pension plan. And, of course, half a century's worth of painful 1-2-3-5 superfecta finishes. But that was about it, give or take a few family funerals.

About it, that is, until right now, right here. Dawn, on the backstretch at Saratoga Race Course. Fish-cold hands vice-gripped against the outside rail, midway around the turn for home. A percolating stew in the belly torn between simmering down and shooting straight up the throat. Eyes blank, staring icily straight at nowhere.

One August week a year, every year for the past 15, Carl had begun his Saratoga mornings at this spot, usually with black coffee in one hand, an unfiltered Camel in the other. To one side, the three-sixteenths pole from which the storied likes of Suspended Flight, Look At Me, and Vodka Tonic had launched rallies into Thoroughbred racing history. To the other side, Barn 37.

Why Barn 37, he'd never really figured out. Maybe it was the angle at which early light pricked through the spindly Norway spruces, bounced off the tin roof, and brought to life the 18 horses stabled along the south face of the rickety wooden structure. Or maybe it was the interplay between the sycamores lined in front of the barn, the horses circling the trees, and the steam that rose behind all of them from great mounds of last night's discarded straw. For whatever reason, that particular spot just always felt like the right place to be.

"My private escape," he'd called his adopted sunrise rail-side roost to friends back in Chicago. "Peace," too.

But on this Wednesday morning, 7 a.m. sharp as usual, Carl knew full well there was no escape. Or peace. On this morning, everything was different. Up for grabs. His past, and what it meant. Perhaps his future, and what it held. Certainly his heart, and to whom it belonged.

"I never should have come up a day early," Carl mumbled to himself, nervously pumping both wrists back and forth into the rail. "Why me? Why now? After all these years! Damn that painting! And damn Dark Tuesday to Hell!"

DARK TUESDAY. Yes, there was the culprit. Of all the fifth wheels and perverse concepts in the world, August Tuesdays at Saratoga had to be near the top of the list. Right up there with ice cream in January and Bibles in by-the-hour motels.

After all, Monday's races, and the sundry frustrations they spawned, were already ancient history. And Wednesday's races lay forever away. To call Tuesday, the one day of the week when there was no racing, a "dark day" was being kind. Dark, for sure. More like positively black.

But Carl had flown in a day early this year because the Brunswick B&B across the street from the track had called a month back with a Tuesday cancellation and offered him his "usual" back room for half price.

Why not, he'd figured. Get in around noon, spend the afternoon goofing around on Broadway, do a little handicapping, and be well-rested for a week of racing. Beginning, of course, at 7 a.m. Wednesday in front of Barn 37.

Saratoga Springs had first crossed Carl's consciousness as a teenager, when he read a newspaper article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a little town in upstate New York where people came from all over the country every August just to go to the races. A place where schoolteachers and doctors and plumbers swapped laughs and handicapping horror stories while politely lining up at streetside stands on Broadway for early morning delivery of the Daily Telegraph. A place where hot tips, workout tabs, and breeding nicks were the grease of the commonweal. As a recent, rabid initiate to Thoroughbred racing at Golden Gate Fields, Carl had sudden visions of the Emerald City, glistening capital of the Land of Oz.

War wounds, family, and work had conspired to keep him away from Saratoga until he'd passed age 50. Nothing had kept him away since.

As an August "regular," part of the daily drill was a walk along Broadway, with its hodgepodge of junk shops, grande dame hotels, biker bars, and highfalutin haunts. That included an annual stop in the Empire State Emporium, a darkly paneled ground-floor maze of closet-sized rooms and hallways, jammed wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with other people's basement rejects. A few years ago, he'd found an old LSMFT lighter there; further back, a Boston Globe trumpeting Secretariat's Triple Crown win.

On this Dark Tuesday, the Emporium was as cluttered and claustrophobic as ever. And empty, too. Junk, after all, is junk. As Carl twisted and turned his way toward the back of the store, he found at the end of an unlit hallway a place he'd never before run across-what appeared to be the establishment's pathetic excuse for an office. In one corner of the unoccupied room, a 35-watt lamp was trying to do a 100-watt job atop a worn wooden desk piled high with disheveled stacks of Daily Racing Forms. On every wall, yellowed curled posters were tacked helter-skelter to warped wooden paneling. An old metal four-drawer file cabinet stood in the darkest corner, behind the door, its bottom drawer missing. On top of the file cabinet, behind a jumble of empty Coke bottles, a painting of a backstretch scene leaned against the wall. Judging by the dust on the 18"x24" canvas, and the dirty wood frame, Carl figured it could have been sitting there for who knows how long without so much as a human glimpse.

But Carl quickly wanted more than a glimpse. Moving the bottles aside, he could see this was not just another painterly Saratoga moment. Through the film of filth, he could see it was a moment he knew well. The backstretch, from the three-sixteenths pole, looking due east at first light, straight at Barn 37.

Carl moved face to face with the unsigned painting, scanning every inch, finally fixating in the dim light on what appeared to be the stable's silks, on a sign, hung on the back corner of the barn. "EW," it read, the blackened art deco lettering surrounded by a reddish-colored circle lost in heavy-handed varnish.

At that moment, a teenage boy quietly appeared in the office doorway.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This area is private."

"But this painting; I'd like to look at it further," said Carl, his baritone voice instantly aggressive, his hands reaching for the artwork. "I might want to buy it."

"Sorry, mister, please don't touch. I'm just the help. All I can tell you is that the owner told me nothing in this room is for sale."

"When will he be back?" Carl shot back impatiently. "I want to look at this painting."

"It's a 'she,' and maybe in a few hours. I don't know."

Over the course of 25 years as a field agent with the FBI in Chicago, Carl had helped put away plenty of oily con men, ham-handed mobsters, and pinstripe boodlers, and being told to get lost, no matter how politely or appropriately delivered, was not something he took well. But the kid was just following orders, so Carl backed off.

"I'll be back later," he said in a thinly disguised huff.

Never one to shirk a challenge, Carl knew the afternoon's mission before he'd left the Emporium. Someone had painted his spot. Who would have done that? And why? And when?

"EW," he rolled over in his mind. "Find them. Find the answer."

IN THE late 1970s, Carl and a couple of pals had raced a string of cheap Thoroughbreds on the Chicago circuit. No-counts, mostly, though You're An Angel and No Discount, a pair of hard-knocking fillies with bad attitudes, had managed to cover expenses before wearing out. Carl knew, thanks to an IRS audit of No Discount's partnership five years after her demise, that the paper trail on a stable, if recent enough, shouldn't be that hard to pick up.

He began at the Saratoga Public Library, a creamy marble homage to turn-of-the-century architectural grace.

"I'm looking for a racing stable that once ran here that went by the initials EW," Carl told the elderly woman at the impeccably polished mahogany reference desk. "I saw it painted in a picture in a junk shop on Broadway and I want to track it down. Can you help me?" The approach was vintage Carl. To the point. Polite but firm. No extraneous banter. Just like at work.

"Well, let's see what we can do for you," smiled Nettie, whose "have a nice day" yellow name tag, stoop shoulders, and matching white hair and fake pearls placed her right out of central casting for the part she was already playing in real life.

"Would that be the owner's initials or the trainer's?" asked Nettie.

"I don't know."

"About what year do you think we're talking about?"

"I'm afraid I don't know that either. I'm guessing maybe somewhere between 1950 and 1980."

"Well, nothing was really put on the computer until the last 15 or 20 years, so that would be out. I suppose you could go through the microfilm of every day's racing chart for every one of those years, and look for something with EW in it. Or maybe ... we could start over here."

As Nettie spoke, she moved with a 70-something shuffle to a thick cardboard three-drawer file that had been shoved on the floor of a closet behind the reference desk. As Carl bent down to pull out the box, Nettie explained its contents.

"Every year from sometime in the 1930s up through, I think, the late 1960s, a gentleman used to do a watercolor reproduction of every winning owner's silks for that meet. He painted them on cards that had around ten silks-shaped stencils on each card. Then he would print the name of the stable or owner underneath their silks. Since you have the design, that might do it.

"You know," whispered Nettie, with the look of an archaeologist on the scent of the Dead Sea Scrolls, "I've been here 41 years and I don't remember the last time someone asked to see these. This is exciting!"

The files, Carl saw at once, were as advertised: catalogued on 4x6 cards by year, starting in 1931, 12 watercolored stencils per page in three rows, four across, with alphabetized stable names neatly inscribed underneath.

Carl started with 1940. At only 14 cards or so per year, the task was an easy one. There was Easy Winners Stable in 1941, but the silks did not use letters; Equine Wonders in 1951, but with just a "W" on the silks; Eva Worthington in 1961, with the letters EW, but in blue block type inside a white square.

Only two years remained: 1968 and 1969. A dead end soon enough, Carl thought to himself-but not for long. Flipping to the second card in 1968, he immediately spotted his prey. Top row, right corner. The letters EW, black and art deco style, curved inside a magenta circle, exactly as in the painting. And underneath, in perfect parochial school penmanship: Evening Wind Stable.

"Bingo!" he shouted out over his shoulder in Nettie's direction. "Now we've got 'em in our sights." The thrill of the hunt quickened Carl's pulse. Just as when he'd uncovered the offshore bank account that ultimately sent publishing heiress Kathy Stevenson and her lover, then-Illinois State Treasurer Lee Star, to jail for the 1973 contract murder of her husband.

"Oh, my yes, we do have them in our sights now, don't we," tittered Nettie, not used to such delicious intrigue.

"To the past performance charts in the microfilm room!" she chirped, patting her hands together.

Twenty-four racing days, nine races a day. "We'll just start at the beginning," said Carl.

Inside the time it takes to bathe a horse, there it was. The Daily Racing Form, August 9. Fourth race, $20,000 claimers. Six furlongs in 1:13. The winner: Bourget Lake. Randall Davey, trainer. Evening Wind Stable, owner. A shoulder-slumping sigh blew from Carl's nose. He knew Davey, now dead, had been a small-time New England trainer for decades, only rarely venturing to Saratoga. Surely, he wouldn't have commissioned a painting. No, the key was still to uncover the identity of the owners of Evening Wind Stable, but nothing in the official charts had put a name to it.

"Now what, Nettie?" Carl asked, after explaining to her that stable partnership documents would be long-since destroyed or buried in unsalvageable state files.

"There's always the winner's circle picture. Maybe that would provide some clues."

Why, Carl wondered aloud, couldn't Nettie have been on the case back in 1976, when all he'd needed to nail federal tax auditor Julie Weary for extortion was a simple incriminating snapshot or two. The chances of a picture producing tangible evidence was a longshot, he knew, but worth chasing.

"Yes, I might have made a good Sam Spade," Nettie laughed.

"So, Nettie, where do you hide the winner's circle photographs from 30 years ago?"

"We don't. No one officially does."

"That can't be," said Carl.

"I'm afraid it is. But there's my old friend Talbott Leyden. He took all the winner's circle shots for years then got fired during one of the NYRA shake-ups in the 1980s. He's kept copies and negatives of every winner he ever snapped."

"Yes?" Carl prodded. "And you know where to find him?"

"Of course. We eat breakfast at the same diner. I'll call him right now." "Talbott ? Nettie ? Listen, I need a favor. August 9, 1968, fourth race. I want the winner's circle picture ? I'm sure that won't be a problem."

"Yes? Yes?" coaxed Carl, knowing he had long since lost all control of his own investigation.

"He says for a $25 darkroom fee, he'll drive the picture over within 30 minutes. I said yes. I hope you don't mind."

"Mind? Are you kidding! Done!"

True to his word, Talbott was along shortly, handed Carl a brown manila envelope, took the cash, and left.

With Nettie standing over his right shoulder, Carl opened the flap and pulled out a glossy 8x11 photograph, in perfect condition.

Carl slowly perused the picture from right to left. There was Bourget Lake, held tight at the bit by trainer Davey, who was flanked to his right by two people. A girl, who looked to be around ten, and. ?

An awkward gasping sound jumped from Carl's throat, as though a much larger man had grabbed him in a bearhug from behind.

"Are you okay?" Nettie asked, not knowing what to think.

"Fine. I'm fine," said Carl, quickly composing himself. "Nettie, trust me on this. I have to go right away. I promise I'll let you know what happens. In the meantime, you're the best."

Carl knew he owed Nettie more of an explanation than he had given her. He just hoped that a kiss on the forehead and the promise he'd explain later would suffice, at least for the moment. Because now, there was urgent business at hand.

THERE might have been a "Yield" sign at Circular and Hansen, and maybe even another one two blocks later. Carl wasn't sure, and he did not care. He only knew he had to get back to the Emporium. Immediately.

As he walked into the store, envelope in hand, Carl spotted the young man he'd seen two hours earlier. "I want to see that picture again," he said, in full FBI-mode. "Is the owner in yet?"

"Yes, back here," came a muffled voice from the office at the rear of the store. "Come on back."

Carl moved quickly past the clutter, through the darkened hallway, and into the office, now choking with cigarette smoke.

A fortyish woman, slender, with matching curly brown hair and eyes, sat at the dingy desk, a pile of sales receipts, half-filled tin ashtray, and calculator in front of her.

"My name is Eliza. May I help you, sir?" She knew full well, of course, why he was there. The teen had told her about his first visit and his somewhat agitated state.

"Yes, my name is Carl Greene, and I'm here about that painting," he said, sitting down at the desk and pointing over his shoulder to the top of the file cabinet. "I have discovered some of the history behind it, and I want to buy it."

"Well, that's certainly interesting," said Eliza, matching his deadpan look with one of her own. "And what is it you think you know about the painting?"

Carl opened the envelope, took out the photo, and placed it on the desk in front of Eliza. "I know the painting was probably done about 30 years ago, and that it shows what is now Barn 37, and that the barn was once used by Evening Wind Stable, and this is a picture of one of that stable's horses in 1968."

Eliza looked down at the photo, still sporting a blank expression, then looked back at Carl. "Yes? Anything else?" she asked.

"Yes," said Carl. "The woman in the picture is Mattie Alloway. We met in Paris on April 28, 1953. In a betting line at Longchamp. She was studying painting and art history at the Sorbonne. I was a war correspondent between tours of duty in Korea. I had not seen her face again in 46 years, until 20 minutes ago, when I saw this photograph."

"My, what a story," said Eliza, now fumbling for a Marlboro in her top desk drawer. "So, I'm still not sure what you want."

"What I want, Eliza, is to buy that painting. That's my spot, where I go every morning. I'd also like to know who painted it, and if you know anything about the woman in the photograph."

Staring straight at Carl, Eliza held the cigarette to her mouth, took a slow, deep drag, then exhaled even more deliberately.

"Here's the story, Carl. I can call the owner of the painting and ask if she wants to sell it, but I don't think she will. It's here, sort of for safekeeping."

Those weren't the words Carl wanted to hear, and he did not trust them. But this war of wills was far from over. Rather, in his mind, it had just begun.

"I need your help on this one," said Carl, who stood up, went to the door, then turned around and faced Eliza. "If Mattie is alive, and someone contacts her, have them give her this message: 'Au vent du soir. Pour toujours.' "

"I'm sure I can't be of much use to you on that last one," said Eliza, remaining stiff in her chair. "But if I learn anything, I'll be in touch."

TUESDAY afternoons on the covered front porch of the Brunswick were Irish tea and shortbread time-one of inn-keeper Catherine O'Neill's special touches.

"Ah, just in time for a spot of tea," Catherine smiled in Carl's direction as he climbed the porch stairs, Wednesday Racing Form in one hand, manila envelope in the other.

"Maybe in a few minutes," said Carl. "Just let me clean up first."

"By all means, Carl. And by the way, a woman named Eliza just called for you. I left her number on the desk in the second-floor office. Use the phone there if you like."

A new scenario raced through Carl's head with each step up the stairs. The owner will sell the painting. Eliza's found Mattie. No sale. No information.

"Eliza, it's Carl. I understand you called." All business, as always. At least on the surface.

But the voice on the other end of the line was not all business. Rather, it seemed to Carl a bit erratic.

"Carl, please just listen to me and don't ask any questions. I wasn't being completely honest with you in the shop, but so much was coming at me at once I just couldn't take it all in. The woman in the picture you showed me-her name is Mattie Alloway Andrews. She's my mother. Meet me at 7 a.m. tomorrow at the painting if you want to talk."

"I'll be there," said Carl, knowing exactly where she meant, and knowing not to say another word.

In an instant, each minute seemed to take an hour; each hour, a day. And still there was no time. No time for handicapping. No time for a post-dinner cognac on the porch. Only time to stare at beautiful Mattie in the 31-year-old photograph; to collapse backward through the years and relive the loss all over again; to wonder if he'd stopped searching too soon; to commit every square millimeter of her image, undiminished by age, to memory. The chiseled dimples and tossed, peat-brown hair framing a broad Scottish smile, the inscrutable dark eyes, the strong shoulders and muscled, heavily veined arms draped, he now assumed, around Eliza.

Seven a.m. Wednesday ? A nighttime away. As he dozed in fitful 30-minute bursts, a lifetime away.

"I'M sorry I'm late!" Carl whirled around, toward sunrise and the voice, hands flying free of the rail.

"Eliza! Forget the time. I'm so glad you called and wanted to see me." "Me, too, Carl. Me, too. I think we have a lot to talk about."

Tuesday's edge was off her voice. His, too. Standing face to face in worn blue jeans and flannel shirts, each appeared to the other far more human, more approachable than the day before.

As both settled their backs against the rail, facing Barn 37, Carl could feel his stomach suddenly calming and the blood coming back into his hands. Both knew it was truth time.

"Tell me about you and my mother," Eliza said. "Tell me everything."

Carl knew that would be easy to do, because he remembered everything, as if it had just occurred.

"I was 23 and on top of the world. I'd been given six weeks off between tours covering the Korean War peace talks in Panmunjom for the Associated Press. My real passion was horse racing, and when I got the chance to go to Paris I took it, because I knew I could go to Longchamp.

"It was my first day there, and I went straight to the track and hit the winner of the first race. Her name was Le Vent Du Soir. I'm standing in line waiting to cash my ticket and there's this girl in front of me shuffling through her pocketbook. I was semi-fluent in French, but I knew she spoke English because she had a copy of Ethan Frome sticking out of her bag. I don't know why, but I just sort of blurted out: 'Le vent du soir.' That's 'evening wind' in English."

"I'll never forget the first thing she said to me when she turned around: 'That's why I bet on her. Because the evening wind makes wonderful things happen. Like magic.' I think she had me from that moment on. There was just a brash, warm way about her that reached inside and grabbed my heart."

Carl shifted his back uncomfortably on the rail. "Eliza, if you don't want to hear this, just tell me and I'll stop."

"No, I want to hear everything. I have to."

"Okay then," said Carl. "For the next month and a half, we were inseparable. We both loved horses and art and French poetry and Bordeaux wine. I think we went back to Longchamp half a dozen more times, and Saint-Cloud once or twice, and did all the museums. Mostly, though, we simply melted into each other's arms. We were goners: hopelessly, helplessly, timelessly in love."

Eliza pulled out a Marlboro. Carl, a Camel. With shaking hands, he lit both.

"So, what happened after six weeks?" Eliza asked.

"I had to go back to Korea. The night before I left, all we did was cry and make love and wrap our souls around one another. The next morning, at the airport, we whispered the same last words to each other: 'Au vent du soir, a l'amour, a nous. Pour toujours.' (To the evening wind, to love, to us. Forever.)

"I knew I meant it. I didn't know if she did, but it didn't matter. Less than a week later, I was in a jeep outside Panmunjom when we hit a land mine and rolled over. They didn't think I was going to make it for a while, and the next two years-plus were just a blur of operations and heavy painkillers. We'd agreed to meet again in Paris four months later, but when I finally got well enough to try to track her down through the Sorbonne, they were no help; and when I called her parents' house in New York the phone had been disconnected. I figured I'd lost her and I simply gave up. I didn't have the sense to know it at the time, but in the back of my heart I've known it almost ever since. She was the one."

Carl looked up at the sky, fighting to keep tears from forming. Eliza, too, felt a mist filling her own eyes.

"And then?" she asked. "What about since then?"

"You know. Work, family, divorce, retirement. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. And then I started coming to Saratoga every August and to this spot every morning, never thinking in a million years that she might have been here."

"Well, she was," said Eliza. "Right there, in Barn 37."

"How did that happen?" Carl asked, nervously lighting up a new cigarette with the last one.

"My grandparents owned some horses and had them spread around a few tracks. When Mattie came back from Paris in 1953, she became a painting instructor at the Boston Arts Guild and began hanging around Granddad's string of horses on the Boston circuit. She got married in 1955, and her last name became Andrews. He lasted long enough to have me three years later, and she never remarried. In 1968, Granddad had a couple of decent horses and wanted to send them to Saratoga. She jumped at the chance to oversee them and insisted they be called Evening Wind Stable. To my knowledge, she never told anyone how she came up with that name.

"So that's you in the winner's circle photo?" Carl asked softly.

"Yes. Yes it is. With our one winner, Bourget Lake. A California-bred. Mom named her."

Carl had assumed that already. In the epic 19th-century French love poem Le Lac, Alphonse de Lamartine mournfully returns to Bourget Lake, where he and his now dead lover had spent their happiest moments together. Under soft cotton sheets in Paris, Carl and Mattie had read Le Lac to one another their last night together. He still had the book.

"And the painting?" Carl asked.

"She did it. That summer of '68 we basically lived right here. And that's when she painted it. Her easel was not more than ten yards from here."

Carl breathed deeply before asking the next question, Eliza even deeper before answering.

"Eliza, you haven't told me if she is still alive."

"I can tell you that she is all around us, right now."

"I don't understand," said Carl.

"The next year, just before the August meet was about to begin, Mom was diagnosed as having an advanced stage of ovarian cancer. She died within weeks. In the hospital, she asked that she be cremated and that her remains be scattered on the backstretch here. The track officials said no, but I wasn't going to let them deny her last wish. The next morning I came here before sunrise and scattered her ashes around the barn, and over here by the rail. We are with her right now. Without knowing it, you've been with her for all these years. As I now realize it was meant to be. For both of you.

"I also know something else that was meant to be. The painting. Until yesterday, I thought it was mine, but it's not. It's yours."

"What do you mean?" asked Carl.

"Wait here. It's in the car. I'll bring it over."

Overnight, Eliza had wiped the work clear of dusty disinterest. As she held it in the sunlight, the frame now had a rich, burled walnut luster to it. The canvas itself was suddenly alive; a chorus of daybreak yellows and golds, lush greens, and earthy browns.

"Read the inscription on the back, Carl. When you left that message for Mattie yesterday, I knew right away who the painting belonged to."

Carl took the painting from Eliza and rested it against the rail. Across the back of the canvas, in large, neat marking pen script, it read:

To the evening wind, which blew our souls together.
To love, upon whose cloud we floated.
To us: hearts as one; lips in lust, kissing the sun.
Forever.

Carl opened his arms to Eliza, and she moved easily into them. Each let the tears fall down their cheeks and onto the other's shoulders. Tears of loss, both knew. But tears of love, as well. Tears that cleanse the past and mend the heart.

Behind them, hard against the inside rail, a two-year-old chestnut filly in long white stockings skipped lightly by the three-sixteenths pole, rhythmic jets of steam shooting from flared nostrils, clippety clops pounding in perfect cadence against the cuppy chocolate earth. Unraced. Unbeaten. On top of the world.

Under the early morning Saratoga sky-one circle joined, another just begun.

Like magic.

About the author

Over a 27-year newspaper career, Alan P. Henry has been an award-winning reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, Boston Herald, and Boston Globe and a senior editor at the Sun-Times. He is now a columnist and deputy executive editor with Pioneer Press Newspapers in Glenview, Illinois. He is also a longtime horseplayer, Thoroughbred owner, and art collector, with a special affinity for slow horses and equine prints by early 19th-century masters. He lives with his wife and two children in Wilmette, Illinois.