Bob was very happy. He made a bundle of money on the gamble. He got the exacta, trifecta. We won another four or five races after that. But then Dark Side got crippled up — suspensories — and Bob sold him at the fall sale. I couldn’t do a thing about it because he wasn’t my horse. Bob always sold all his horses at the fall sale, then he’d start out fresh for spring.

Some other trainer bought him. He never won another race. Don’t know if he flipped in the gates again but every time he seen me at the track he’d spin his head around and whinny.

EIGHT

RACETRACKERS

You’re around some really prominent people and some are just as common as old shoes.

FANCY SUITS, FANCY BOOTS

Tim Tucker’s parents were wealthy, and they bought him expensive racehorses to train. He wore fancy suits and fancy boots and dark sunglasses and after a few months on the scene he thought he knew everything. He did well, got several wins, but mostly because his horses were so expensive to begin with. All he had to do was drop them in.

Once, after his horse beat my horse, I said, Congratulations Tim, your horse ran a good race, and he said, Sonia, suck my dick.

The next day, my boss says to me, Sonia, do you know where those bute pills are? He’d just gotten a new bottle from Charblatt. I said, Maybe Tim borrowed them. I wasn’t being nasty — that’s what we did. We borrowed things, loaned things, helped each other out. But when my boss asked him, Tucker said, I didn’t take them — but maybe that dumb cunt who works for you did.

I found Tucker and we had a brawl. He pulled my shirt way up and we were rolling around on the ground. My boss had to drag me off. Tucker was crying and the next day he had a black eye. Everybody was happy about it. They were really rubbing it in.

If you start a fistfight at the racetrack you’re supposed to be banned a few months, but instead the stewards said, Sonia, what can we buy you for breakfast?

Tucker did change after that. And a few years later, when I was injured so bad I almost died, he’s the one who invited me to stay with him and his wife in their trailer at the racetrack. When I got out of the hospital I couldn’t even sit up on my own, but Tucker and his wife — they took good care of me.

PAUPER’S HILL

There was a fellow with long hair, an exercise rider, who got caught robbing a Dairy Queen. When they arrested him, he pulled out a penknife and cut himself with it. They took him to jail and he hung himself in his cell that night.