2002 Winner: It Can Happen Here

by Catherine Dupree

Every day at dawn, Abby exercises horses. She zips between puddles and mud in Rutland's backstretch on a dirtbike-walking takes too long. A whip sticks out of her back pocket like an antenna. Mornings are her cocktail hour. Among bales of hay and sweating horses, she networks. She chats up trainers and smiles enthusiastically about every creaky horse she's hoisted onto morning after freezing morning. And, when she returns from each workout, sunlight straining through winter-bare branches, her cheeks stinging from the wind, she reports precisely how the horse ran. Everything in the morning is part of the hustle to convince trainers she's strong and smart enough to race their horses.

This November morning, it rains in sheets. By the time Abby had lifted her bike from the bed of her pickup, her ponytail hung in a stringy brown frond down her back, her sweatshirt soaked. Some things you can't control, she thinks, pedaling through the rain.

Her face, glistening from rain, glows beneath her helmet like a pale moon. She leans her bike against barn 17 and ducks inside. A mare nickers. Abby pulls off her gloves and presses her cold fingers to the horse's muzzle.

"Hey, sweetie," she whispers, leaning in close. She shuts her eyes, breathing the salty warmth of horses. In their stalls, the dark shapes move about like silent ships. For a moment, Abby slips away from the leaky-roofed barns, and this unlikely sanctuary engulfs her. Surrounded by ordinary horses, Abby feels an invisible sentience: like standing in an empty cathedral, or at the base of an ancient tree. She craves this sensation of nearness to grand things.

"Abby!" Barry yells from the other end of the barn. He's round and spry with crooked teeth like a jack-o'-lantern. He's trained horses at Rutland since 1960, when 30,000 spectators swarmed the grandstand every Saturday. He's lived in the same narrow triple-decker so close to the track that 30 years ago his wife, pregnant with their first child, stood on their sagging deck and waved a red dishtowel to signal that her water had broken. Abby rode her first race on one of his horses-finished eighth-and that evening he had sat in the stewards' room with her, watching the replay video.

"Here's where you should've kept him wide," he had said, touching the dusty screen with his index finger. "And here's where you needed to shake him up a bit. And here's-" he had pointed at the jumble down the backstretch, "where you lost the race." In the dark, they had watched as her horse faded into the pack.

"He gave up on me," Abby had said. "I don't think he felt like running." Although the race had finished hours ago, she still felt the tremor in her legs. She could still smell the race: the alkaline leather, the dank, alluvial mud.

"That's your job," Barry had said, his voice even and kind. "You've got to find speed in him. It's there, buried like treasure."

This morning, Barry bustles toward her, leading a chestnut colt with red bandages.

"Another on-time arrival!" he calls, thrusting a thumbs-up.

"Am I ever late?" Abby says. "Whatcha got for me today? And please tell me I'm racing this afternoon. I've got rent, y'know."

"Awww," he says. "The poor apprentice can't get a mount." He taps playfully on Abby's helmet, then nods toward the colt he's leading.

"You're galloping Mayday first. And-so you can't say I do nothing for you-you're on Duplicate today in the second," he says.

Abby smiles. She's ridden Duplicate before, finished sixth.

He's sluggish and, as she often says, doesn't believe he's a racehorse. "You could fall asleep on him and be safe," she had told Barry once.

"Then shut your eyes and pretend you're on Secretariat," he answered.

"Barry," she said, winking at him, "I always do."

"Thanks," she says this morning. "But when do I get to race him?" She points to Mayday. Barry shakes his head.

"Abby, you know Jeff rides him." He doesn't tell her the colt's owner scoffs at women jockeys. He had pulled Barry into the tack room last month, grumbling through pursed lips: "No girls.

They can exercise my horses 'til kingdom come, but I don't want them racing." And what could Barry have said? The owner had brought him two new allowance horses from Delaware-the best Barry has had in his barn in months.

"Listen," he says. "I'm getting a new one in tonight and she's real fiery. I saw her run up at Nonantum last summer. And, " Barry holds two fingers up in the air like a Boy Scout. "You have my word you'll get first crack at her." Abby squints at him suspiciously. "What is she? A $5,000 claimer?"

"Sure. But, Miss Abigail, when has that stopped you before?" She shrugs and throws her hands up.

"My life revolves around claimers and longshots."

"Greatness strikes where it pleases," Barry says. He hoists Abby onto Mayday. She's exercised this colt for years: through rain and flurries, under sun and in winter dawns, under moons. But she'll never race him. Eventually, it'll be different, Abby thinks. She daydreams often about racing at exquisite tracks, on horses purchased as yearlings at select Kentucky sales, in nationally televised races that award wide scarves of lush, brilliant flowers. Napping in the jockeys' room, she returns to these beloved scenes of absurd and hyperbolic glory, images blooming with come-from-behind rallies and sweeping stretch runs.

Still bleary-eyed from these ecstatic dreams, she tries to ride her races with the same fervor and thrill that had infused them.

In the evenings, Abby cooks chicken broth and sips it in front of the television. She crawls into bed early since her alarm rings at 4:30. Sometimes she flips through her wins album-her mother's idea. "Put in all the photos of your winning races," she had said last Christmas after Abby had unwrapped the flowery album and stared at it, thinking, What will I fill this with? "Then, when you're down, you can see how far you've come!" Her mother had clapped her hands. But the album was a fine idea. Looking at the pictures-most with her arms outstretched, mimicking the horse's elongated dive under the wire-she's astonished. If she stares at the photos long enough, context peels away, then vanishes.

Last night, Barry had called her just as she was curling under the blankets. She answered and there was Barry roaring about the filly who had just arrived in the dark and rain. I had to call you. You understand.

"How does she look?" Abby had asked. She imagined Barry pacing at the pay phone in the tack room, winding the silver snakelike cord around his finger. Alone among shadows of saddles and bridles, the stinging smell of polished leather. Ten thirty and too excited to go home with a new horse in his barn.

"Like she can run through a stone wall," he had said. "Make sure you're ready tomorrow."

Barry pokes his head from the stall, waving for Abby to hurry.

Inside, the filly is the color of wet earth, with a white smudge between her eyes. She's barely 16 hands but radiates a faint, humming presence. Wow, Abby thinks when she peers in, that horse is alive.

"Meet our new baby," Barry says, slapping the filly's neck.

"Vesper." Her eyes are wild and black as oil. Abby traces the white whorled hairs on her forehead.

"How'd she do up north?"

"Broke her maiden first time out. But downhill from there," he says. "Too green. Poor girl never had a chance." How strange to think of these horses, shifting in their dusty stalls, as having a chance, Abby thinks. But at first they do. They start stormy-eyed: charged to run. Then some break bones or tear things in their delicate legs. Some win enough for their owners to display, framed in suburban, carpeted dens, the winner's circle pictures. And some ship to better tracks. But most emerge as mediocrity. Performers.

Driven by a speck of memory: when as gawky, bristly maned weanlings, they ran headlong across pastures and realized there was something in their tissue and blood that made them very fast.

And, in the following months, they tested it, this queer singularity, placed in them before birth. Palpable and marvelous.

Like the gifted child who draws unwittingly an extravagant, flawless sketch. Look! He must think ecstatically. Look what I can do!

Barry follows them to the track. Vesper prances, neck arched like a chesspiece, and shies at paper fluttering on the ground.

Abby jerks forward, rain spilling off her helmet onto her cheeks.

"Careful," Barry says. "She's got the devil in her." A subway car clangs past, clattering over his words. Barry pulls his cap farther over his eyes and thinks of the trainers who have fled to Florida, escaping winters and shabby Rutland. "Rats deserting a sinking ship," he mutters. But can he blame them? After all, he hates bandaging spindly legs every morning, praying the temperatures won't strain tendons. He hates the paltry purses and career claimers who bounce from owner to owner-each one swearing he'll make this one a winner. He hates the crowded barns and dwindling handles and annual threats from the racing commission to deny the simulcast license. Don't be naive, he thinks, people don't come for the Rutland nags. They come for the rows of television screens flashing nonstop the million-dollar babies at the million-dollar tracks.

But he can't leave. Sixteen years ago, he had sat his wife down after she had threatened to walk out with their daughters. He explained Rutland was improving. New York trainers were sick of sky-high barn costs. Florida owners wanted a new playground. Even California's lovely palm tree-lined tracks were losing luster. He told her every morning he clocked faster horses, and every afternoon, handicappers drove in to throw larger bills on this flashy new blood. He told her an owner from New York had called him at the barn, promising a colt-a two-year old son of Northern Dancer-he wanted ready by spring.

Barry told her splendid things, things he believed could happen at Rutland, and she, gentle and desperate, shook her head and touched his arm and left. Later, smoking cigarette after cigarette on the porch overlooking the dark track, he struggled to understand why he had done it. Why had he lied-glorious, ridiculous tales-to his wife?

"Hush," Abby says to Vesper. She watches for the filly's ears to flicker, listening. But they pitch toward the track yawning before her. She wants to run.

"You'll get your chance," Abby says, galloping her on the outside. Horses running faster workouts hug the rail. Abby recognizes some of them: Izzy's Fortune, a chestnut gelding she had galloped until he switched trainers; Kalliope Kat, a sprinter she had raced on grass. They streak like jackrabbits. Riders perch low, motionless above the barreling Thoroughbreds. With each passing horse, Vesper's muscles gather and wind. The reins cut through Abby's gloves as she holds the filly back.

"Hush," she soothes, hearing the cadence rising behind her. As a gray colt sweeps by on the rail, the filly catapults, head lowered, ears pinned. Thrown forward, Abby inhales the must of mane and horsehide. She hears Vesper's breath, fast but steady.

The gray colt's rider turns his head, mouth moving quickly, but the words are whipped away by the wind. In an instant, Vesper catches the colt and the two horses lock strides, eight hooves pounding into one deafening rhythm. The colt's rider shouts again, and Abby sees his eyes: flashing and fierce.

"What the hell are you doing?" he yells. "Where the hell are you going?" She gropes for the reins, looping low down Vesper's neck, and stares ahead as wind cuts tears from her eyes. She wants to let Vesper run. How fast, she thinks, could she go? Later, Abby would remember each arcing, beautiful stride. She would distinctly feel as though-in those airborne seconds that seemed to last forever-she is flying. And then, things slide back into place.

Raindrops pelt her face and her arms throb. She is aware of speed-rocking, ricocheting-beneath her, and stillness everywhere else. She tightens the reins and slows down so the gray colt passes. But the filly's energy pulses: faint and certain. Abby glances down and realizes her hands are trembling. I've been a jockey for three years, she thinks, but this is the closest I've been to racing.

A week later, Barry and Abby sit on wobbly lawn chairs in front of barn 17. In cut-offs, Barry stretches out his chubby legs-the morning is strangely balmy-and sighs. Giddy from sunlight, he had treated himself to a saucer-sized honey bun from the track kitchen, and his chin shines with glaze. He tilts his face to the sky, closes his eyes and listens-smiling-to the clinks and snorts from the barns. This is my world, he thinks. In front of them, a groom hoses Vesper's steaming back and whistles quietly. She nips at the spray, happy too with the morning.

"I entered her for next Friday," Barry says. "An allowance, but the field's steep. Wendall's bringing his latest hotshot from New York."

"Wendall Mathieson?" Abby asks. He had trained at Rutland when she was starting out. Then he had stumbled onto his break: a speedy filly named Problem Solver and her Philadelphia Main Line owner. Five wins later, he had abandoned Rutland and upgraded to New York.

"What brings him back? Is he down on his luck?"

"Nah," Barry says, rubbing his eyes. "His colt, Ragnarok, started here. Then he shipped to New York. He's run solid against a few colts who've gone on to win stakes, so now Wendall thinks his colt's got promise. Just needs some wins under his belt and he'll be ready for takeoff." Abby turns to him.

"I hope-"

"Abby," Barry says, shaking his head. "You never learn. I gave you my word. She's yours." Abby sinks into her chair, rests her feet on the low rail in front of them.

"Wouldn't it be funny if she's good," she says. Barry laughs.

"She'd get scooped from me faster than lightening." Because that's what happens. A horse wins handily, and the owner starts fantasizing. Several wins later, and he saunters into the barn, stepping daintily over manure and damp hay, and declares with practiced regret, 'I think we're moving on.'

"I don't see how they can do that," Abby says. "If your horse wins, you're doing something right."

"Doesn't matter," Barry says. "Because I wouldn't leave.

There's plenty going on here." She looks at him, sprawled on the chair, drumming his fingertips along his leg.

"There's nothing going on," she says. "Who wants to come here? The horses are tired. And if you say anything to the trainers, they don't ride you back. So, thinking about better places helps." Abby lowers her voice, as she does when her mother whispers into the phone, What kind of life do you have?

"Thinking about where I could go, the tracks and horses, everything I dreamed about when I was little," she says. Barry thinks of the elaborate stories he had told his wife: things he believed could happen at Rutland.

"What you dreamed about, that Black Stallion schmaltz, was it specific? Was it set anywhere? Because it wasn't Rutland, but it wasn't anywhere else either. It was just you, atop a horse, hell-bent-for-leather. The details weren't important." He pauses, watching Vesper. "And they still aren't. They're just trappings."

"I want to be on good horses," she says.

"Neither of us have left," he says.

Next Friday, the sky is gray and flat. The wind whips the infield flags, rips through the horses' manes in the paddock.

Inside the women jockeys' room, Abby lounges on the worn leather sofa. It's warm and quiet, like the dwindling hours of a slumber party. Shrill hollers from the adjacent men's jockey room puncture the silence.

The riders aren't allowed to leave these quarters-or the smoky kitchen where tiny, muscular men in sleeveless shirts and white britches shoot pool and shout in Spanish-so they spend their days here. They weigh themselves hourly on a giant, cartoon-like scale, and swear softly at an extra pound. They munch on pistachios. They chat about who's moved on to Florida or Delaware. And with 15 minutes to post, they dash out the room and up the short flight of stairs right into daylight. Most jockeys pause at the top of these stairs, kiss their fingers, cross themselves before they mount their horses.

"You up next?" Jane asks Abby. Jane, a tanned and taut veteran rider with murky tattoos covering her arms, has clawed her way to the top. She's sloppy, fearless, and once punched another jockey in the paddock after he had cut her off down the backstretch.

"The four horse." Jane shuffles through the program.

"Uh-oh," Jane says, tapping the page with her fingertip. "Ragnarok is in this? Watch out baby. He's a live horse if I ever saw one. I rode his first start and he blew out of that gate-blam!" Jane whacks the program against her open palm. "We won by like five lengths, easy. Tore the whole way." Dawn, another apprentice, watches simulcasts. She whistles.

"She's right, Abby. Colt's got speed," she drawls. "I don't know why he's runnin' here. This ain't no stakes."

"My filly's pretty live," Abby mumbles. But she doesn't argue. Jane likes scaring her ("The grass is a freakin' obstacle course!" she had screamed before Abby's first race in a downpour. "If you don't hold your horse up, you're going down!"); and Dawn doesn't care. She'll quit, Abby suspects, after this winter.

"Just don't be surprised when your head's handed to you," Jane says and stomps to the kitchen for a cigarette. Abby stares at Jane's program crumpled on the table. A vast hopelessness envelops her. There will always be horses faster than Ragnarok.

As the valet hands Abby the purple and gold silks, Vesper begins her walk from barn 17 to the paddock. She flashes her dark eyes at the clusters of handicappers along the rail and prances fitfully when Barry saddles her. A wrinkled man gnawing a cigar leans over the chainlink fence, waving his Racing Form.

"Superstar!" he yells at Ragnarok. "Superstar!" Vesper causes no stir. Her nostrils flare into saucers. Her teeth clank on the dull, silver bit.

"Just keep the dirt out of her face," Barry says to Abby, who twirls her whip. He hoists her onto Vesper's broad back and she tucks her legs behind the filly's neck. Her owner stands next to Barry, clutching his horse's blanket. He's taken the day off to watch her race. He has even brought a camera.

In the post parade, a strip of foam glistens on Vesper's skin, under the reins. Ragnarok trots by, his skin shining like a penny.

"Tranquilamente," his jockey murmurs in lilting Spanish. "Tranquilamente." The colt moves serenely, with strides crisp and confident.

At the gate, Vesper balks when the starter grabs her reins and hauls her into the padded stall. Abby grabs a fistful of mane, balances herself on the tiny saddle, and stares through the green metal bars down the track. Seconds later, the doors spring open with a piercing ring and clatter. They launch out among the eight others, into the six-furlong race.

Vesper and Ragnarok break from the gate together and, within strides, leave the rest a tangle of shimmering silks and fragile, frantic legs. By the half-mile pole, Vesper, on the outside, lurks a head behind the colt. Both jockeys sit still. It's up to them to hold fast, to sing and coo and watch for their horses' ears to pitch forward so they're listening, waiting, for their riders to slip the reins a notch. They glide in tandem down the backstretch: Ragnarok and then like his own shadow a split second later, Vesper. Try and catch me, he taunts. Try and outrun me, she whispers back. And so it goes around the far turn, both jockeys crooning and calling, and both horses propelling the other to run faster, to not give up or let the other pass. At the quarter pole, Abby lets the filly free. She pumps her arms along Vesper's neck, releasing rein, as the homestretch spreads like an open sea in front of them. But Ragnarok matches each stride, and she can't pull away. Yet Ragnarok can't shake her, and his jockey slices the air with his whip-fsssssstt crack!-on the colt's haunches. As the pair hurtles under the wire, Abby can't hear the crowing handicappers, and she can't hear the roar of horses finishing behind her. Instead, she hears gentle scrubbing of leather on sweating skin, and sharp exhalations of Vesper's breath. She feels the cool flecks of mud freckling her cheeks, and smells the sour ocean, carried in on the rising east wind that ruffles Vesper's brown mane. Second by a head, she thinks. Second.

"Great race," Ragnarok's jockey calls to her. He's a sensation in New York. Young, cocky and shiny-faced, he learned racing at 14 on scrappy Venezuelan tracks. Abby's read newspaper articles about him, clippings her mother sends. In one, the reporter asks if he misses Venezuela. "Nope," he replies. "I left and never looked back."

"Wasn't expecting it," he says, pulling his horse next to hers. Both jockeys stand in the stirrups, allowing their horses to settle and slow. Abby wants to ask him why, but instead she stares at Vesper's heaving neck. Because you can't expect much here, she thinks wickedly.

"Should I leave Rutland?" she blurts, instantly aware of her desperation but too absorbed in this whirlwind to care.

"For where?" he asks, laughing. "How should I know." His voice, slurred and blase, hits Abby with a thud. She pictures him leaving Rutland that afternoon, humming to himself while thinking of tomorrow's card. He claps Ragnarok's neck and turns for the winner's circle.

Ten minutes later, standing in the humid jockeys' room, Abby wipes mud from her face. Jane looks up from the sofa. She had watched the race on the closed-circuit TV.

"Not bad," she says. "You almost had it." Outside, Vesper joins the other horses on the walk back to the barns. Beneath the purple blanket that drapes her body and hoods her head, she looks like a weary prizefighter. Soon, the horses in the next race will parade by and the handicappers will scribble numbers and notes on their Forms. Then they'll scramble to the betting windows, stepping on hundreds of losing tickets scattered about the concrete floor.

The following morning, Abby walks into barn 17 and says to Barry, "I'm leaving."

"Are you sick?" he asks, cinching the girth around a gray horse who pins his ears and grunts angrily.

"No, I'm leaving Rutland. I'm going to New York." She winces a little because it sounds so dramatic: the harsh consonants of York hanging in the air like a slap. She feels the walls tilt and the whole barn seems to seize up, pull back, and pause, then rush toward her. Barry roots his hands into his hips, a wisp of straw dangling from his elbow.

"You're kidding, right?"

"I know." Her voice rises. "It sounds ridiculous and you think I'm not ready, but I think I am and I don't want to get stuck here." She rattles off the words like a script.

"Well, I do think it's ridiculous. You'll get creamed. And then I think you'll hate riding and quit." The horse tosses his head, nudges Barry's shoulder.

"I won't quit. I'll just go crazy if I stay here." She looks down at the narrow legs bandaged in bright blue cotton.

"Why?"

"Because the racing's terrible. There's no money, there's no-"

"You are not in this for the money."

"Yeah, well it would be nice to have some extra cash once in a while. It would be nice to ride racehorses once in a while." She spits the words out, hating his contentment here. Doesn't everyone want to be better? Aren't these things we can control? Barry looks at her, astonished.

"These aren't racehorses?" he asks.

"They're claimers and longshots." She knows she's betrayed him. Three years ago, she had surprised him. Not with her drive-all aspiring jockeys have it-but with her reverence. They shared this, whatever it was that he could never name, and he welcomed her.

"Then, you're not doing your job," he says, pulling the horse with him out of the stall so Abby hops aside.

"You know what I mean," she says.

"You don't have a clue what you're doing. I think all these horses," and he spreads his arms in a wide, sweeping swath around him, "are racehorses." He doesn't walk away though because she, tiny and earnest and strong, arms hanging at her sides, suddenly makes him sad. She guides horses and tells them when to run, and, in return, lives an isolated, repetitive life of frigid mornings; failed, desperate relationships; and crawling, empty stretches of time. And this sport, full of bloodlines and strategy and complex fractions of speed, remains a madly spinning mystery with an unknowable ending. And we all try to pin it down, he thinks. We breed and ride and train in order to control what overwhelms us.

We try to shape it anyway we can. But some of us want to be awed again and again. He walks toward her, the gray horse clopping behind.

"But you're here now," he says. "Are you galloping this morning?"

"I guess so." She looks up at him.

"Yeah." He juts his thumb toward the door. "And then get outta here."

"Deal," she says.

"I was going to have you gallop, but I've changed my mind. Blow him out." He helps her up and as they leave the barn, his palm on the horse's haunch, he stops and waves toward the track.

"Y'know what, you go ahead. Let me know what happens," he says.

She calls after him as he walks away. It hasn't occurred to her what he had asked. Let me know what happens. So, she gallops the horse to loosen his muscles, stiff as elastics from the cold night. He pulls on the bit, fighting Abby for more rein. When he's ready, when enough horses have blown by on the rail and his body has tensed and coiled at each one, Abby lets him run. He isn't fast-Vesper runs faster-and he's too tall and barrel-chested to make a stakes winner. But this morning, Abby doesn't think about that. She crouches low, flattening her chest to his neck, waiting.

And, gradually, she feels the familiar drag and pull through her body, a sensation like diving: that silent, slow, soaring space of time after leaving the ground and before slipping into water. This instant-flooded with expectation and promise, hope and grace-seems to her the gamble of horse racing. Will everything come together? Is there something in this horse that makes him not just fast but grand?

She paces the horse, ticking seconds off in her head, and eases him when they reach the quarter pole. He gallops for another half mile, and then she turns him around. As they trot back, Abby thinks of what she'll tell Barry. He'll amble out of the barn and wait until she dismounts and hands the horse to a groom. Then he'll ask what happened.

He ran OK, could've gone a little more, she'll say. But this isn't the answer he'll want. He's trained this horse long enough to know what happens in four furlongs.

What else? He'll ask. What happened to you?

I rated him pretty well, but he fights me, she'll say. Or maybe she'll tell him: Everything lifts away and it's just you and the horse and then it's just the horse but you're somehow part of it, too.

Part of what? He'll ask.

Part of the running.

But there's something else she can't name. Haunting, otherworldly. She feels it stirring in the horses: an inexpressible, barely there presence. And, sometimes it swells and soars, ineradicable and immemorial. Be grand, it whispers.

So, is this what you expect to find in New York? He'll ask.

New York has better horses, Barry, she'll say.

I think you're searching for more than that, he'll say. But she is not like him. So she leaves that morning, waving from her pick-up as she merges with the snarled rush hour traffic.

Around noon, Barry will walk across the tarmac parking lot to the paddock and saddle the first of three horses that day. He'll chat with other trainers and listen to their stories.

But, when the race starts, he'll watch intently and alone. His horses will finish fifth, then eighth, then first. He'll smile for the winner's circle photo and blink stupidly at the flash. He'll shake hands with the owners, but be eager to return to his barn. There, he'll stay late in the tack room, smoking cigarettes and musing about strategies and upcoming races. Hunched over his notebook, he'll write his dreams down furiously. Around 9:30, he'll shut the barn doors. But, before that, he'll turn off the lights and listen to the presence of these massive, mysterious creatures. He knows he won't leave. He'll drive the short route home in his neighborhood of gas stations and video stores. And, at some point, staring through the windshield at the blinding taillights of all the cars heading somewhere, it will occur to him that whatever Abby's searching for exists here, too. Somewhere lurking in this sad, cold, brokedown place is shining glory, as pure here as anywhere, waiting to be found by the most deserving.