So when Connell lost what should have been a hand ride, and a purse that had our money in it in entry fees, I lost patience with him. I’d guessed before at what went on in the jockeys’ trailers, when it was someone’s birthday or someone was owed a favor or wanted revenge. When I’d asked Connell, he said what my dad said: “A guy works awful hard keeping his weight down to be throwing races.” But there’s such a feeling of impotence when a horse comes out of the gate representing everything you’ve worked for, and there’s nothing more you can do. I wanted to keep what wasn’t left to chance where I could see it.

“I think I want someone else up for a while,” I told my father at the picnic table.

“I don’t want anyone else up,” he said. “I like Connell, and Rocky likes him.”

I thought he must have felt, as I did, that Connell had let us down; I figured he was defending him in order to oppose me. The more my father weakened physically, the more he sought out conflict. Problems with the horses—losses, illnesses—put him in a stubborn mood. I let it go, and we watched the rest of the races in silence. My father’s reticence had always felt to me, with country-song logic, like eloquence and generosity; we knew each other so well we scarcely needed to talk. But I’d begun to feel the pressure of limited time. I wanted to know what he knew, but I didn’t know what else to ask.

It rained all week, and my father caught a summer cold and stayed home the second weekend of the fair. He thought he might come later in a separate car, but I didn’t want him to drive the eighty miles to Great Falls alone. The track was sopping wet; they had run the sealer over the mud, to jiggle the water to the surface to evaporate, but it hadn’t dried yet. I surveyed the crowd: maybe a hundred people standing around the paddock and the betting windows, maybe not that many. The huge old firetrap grandstands nearly empty at the biggest race meet of the year. It was true, what they said: racing was dying. People put their gambling money in poker machines.

I wanted to make sure someone had put mud shoes on Rocky; she had done all right in the mud before, and two more wins would make the summer worthwhile. When I got to the backside stables, Connell was there. He’d just finished taping Rocky’s rear hocks.

“I hear you’re mad at me,” he said. Rocky turned her ears to listen to his voice.

“Not mad, exactly,” I said. “You didn’t have to tape her.”

“I had some time and couldn’t find your trainer. She gets cut up easy.”