A Real Kick in the Ass

A nice spring day lets me get out on my bicycle for the first time after being lazy for a few months. I find a steady cadence on unbroken stretches along the levee trail where a yahoo in a pickup truck can’t maim me or kill me. It’s through this unobstructed pedaling rhythm I clear my mind of a lot of junk I’ve collected through six decades of life. The increased flow of oxygen to my brain then opens up pathways to what I feel are poignant (I’m usually wrong about that part) thoughts and many good memories. One recent recollection had more to do with the feeling I had after getting off my bike rather than the couple hours I spent on it. No pain, no gain is an applicable phrase. 

My late Uncle Jimmie was a horseman. He didn’t ride. He hired a jockey for that. Since the days when I was a ten-year-old kid I could remember visiting Pocono Downs where I peeled two bucks out of my pocket to place a bet on one of Uncle Jimmie’s fillies. My mom took the money to the teller window but I sometimes wonder if some of those shady-looking guys behind the glass would even give a shit if I made that wager myself. 

One day after what seemed like forever, the jock Jimmie hired took the young girl across the finish line before the rest of the horses in the field got there. We were all ecstatic. I won about eleven bucks that day but what I won’t tell you is I gambled about fourteen smackaroos in the past seven trips to the track over that summer and the one before it. But a win’s a win. 

You could take a certain number of people into the winner’s circle, and I was one of them. When I got up close to her I couldn’t figure out how she went wire to wire in two minutes. I always thought of fast race horses as long and lithe. This grand lady had hindquarters the size of the Hindenburg. Nonetheless, she was a stunning creature. And her name was Gamecock Louise. 

The name paid homage to the place where she’d been born. Jimmie and his partners transported her up from South Carolina in a shiny silver bullet of a trailer that looked to me barely big enough to house a hound let alone a horse. But I was told horses never minded the small space or the trip. I don’t believe a horse ever told anyone that but that’s what my uncle told me. 

I never heard too many detailed discussions but the general buzz around Louise— among my uncle, my mom, my grandma, and the beady-eyed little trainer I made friends with at the barns— seemed to suggest that the horse hadn’t lived up to expectations. 

By the time I was thirteen, Jimmie had bought Windfield Farm where he boarded the stout reddish-brown beauty in a stall inside a century-old white bank barn trimmed in bright red. I worked on that farm over the summer and during one week I noticed Louise wasn’t around. I didn’t ask questions. I was afraid to. 

I mentioned Louise’s absence to my older brother and he said, “Oh it’s not what you’re thinking. They sent her out to get bred.” It didn’t make sense to my feeble mind at the time, unless Louise wanted a sandwich. But his explanation was enough for me. I was relieved. That had to be a whole lot better than the place so many people callously joked about—  the gruesome one I had in my mind’s eye.  

Louise came back one day, and the vet confirmed she was in the second month of a 12-month-ish gestational period. The sire’s name was Albatross. Albatross earned $1.2 million in one year. He was voted US Harness Racing Horse of the Year in 1971 and the year after that. When his racing days were done, he fathered 2,546 boys and girls who collectively earned more than $130 million over their careers. It was surely this son of Albatross and Louise who would bring glory to the stables at Windfield Farm. 

The next autumn my brother and I were tasked to creosote a meandering paddock fence on the farm. The messy job was, at age fourteen, my preview of eternity— some toil that would last forever and not the divine state of being most of us aspire to. I ducked in the barn to get a view of the colt they named Jo Bim. He looked like his father. He had a coat the color of dark chocolate and sinewy hindquarters like rippling and banded bronze. In my imagination, I pictured this horse snapping a pair of wings aloft to work in concert with its slender corded legs. But even to a kid like me, it was apparent that Jo Bim also had a look of defiance in his eye. 

When my mom told me about the sizable stud fee, she whispered it so as my grandma wouldn’t hear about her son’s cash outlay, even though my grandma was about a mile away up on a hill in the neighborhood of Cork Lane. It was rumored that Jimmie and his guys were offered ten times that stud fee the minute little sticky and spindly Jo slid from Louise’s birth canal. But the boys rolled the dice. They wanted a winner on the track. 

On the farm, a groom I’ll call Jessica was friendly but businesslike and purposeful. She moved confidently. Her hair was brown and cropped, her eyes were blue and her manner was clipped. I don't mean to perpetuate stereotypes but here I go. She had the stature I’d seen on many female horse enthusiasts passing through Windfield Farm. Solid from her shoulders through her hips— an old button-down Oxford and a close-fitting pair of those ubiquitous Wrangler jeans completing the picture. 

She told me a lot about Jo. Mostly that his time in the mile was expected to approach that of his kingly dad’s— around one minute and fifty-four seconds. These efforts would garner Jo a lot of attention when he turned two years old. These times would make his owners happy— and wealthier. These times would make it the best of times. 

Jessica taught me practical lessons about sensibility around horses. How to lay your palm out flat so they wouldn’t bite your hand if you were offering a snack. How to find that spot to rub on their muzzle so that they might even come to trust you. 

Trust is a big deal with horses. To a rube like me, the principal lesson Jessica taught was never ever walk behind a horse without paying the strictest attention. Not paying attention near a magnificent but mischievous colt could have consequences. 

After a country lunch capped off with a giant piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie, I didn’t feel like going back to slopping smelly creosote on a fence. I walked back inside the barn to see Jo Bim. By now, horses mesmerized me. And I am, take it for what you will, enchanted by the combined scents of old maple, new hay and fresh horseshit. Today, that combination elicits sumptuous recollections for me. 

Being the nephew of the bachelor and childless horse owner afforded me a somewhat elevated status on the farm. Jessica was nice enough to me although it seemed at times she wanted me to take a hike. 

In this instance, she made small talk while she stepped in Jo’s stall to feed and water him. She walked behind him while looking over her shoulder at me. And Jo kicked her square in the ass. Those faded Wranglers got tattooed with a horse-shoed print right on the riveted pocket.  

Before I could approach, she sprung to her feet and waved me off. She cursed young Jo upside down. She let him have it with an empty feed bucket a couple times across those lissome hindquarters. Jo just laughed. I know he did. I watched him throw his head back and bear his teeth. I saw the fire in his eyes transform to glee right after he did the deed. 

I don't know what happened to the spirited Jo Bim after that summer. I didn't visit the farm as often since there seemed to be more interesting things for a curious teenager to pursue. I do know, like his mom, he never lived up to the high hopes my Uncle Jimmie had for him. The dreams of victories after bolting out of the gate on the dusty, hoof-hammered ovals in Plains Township at Pocono Downs, to the east at Freehold, and to the south at Liberty Bell. 

I did see Jessica a couple days after the incident. I kept a courteous distance. She shot me an embarrassed glance and a quick wave as she limped along toward the run-out shelter to turn old Jo back in the barn. It is this vision that sticks with me more so these days, as I ease off the saddle of my trusty metal steed after a long looping ride that carries me along the shores of the Susquehanna River. It is also empathy that connects me to the pain in Jessica's backside after Jo did what he did that day nearly 47 years ago. Jessica’s pain might have been close to the ache I feel in my own deteriorating hindquarters— after my first spring bike ride of the season.