|
If I could, I’d give this job away. Having to handle this black bitch every day is a bloody strain, I can tell you. But my boy, Jimmy, needs the dollars I pull in from this stable-hand job. I would have no hope of otherwise getting the money for Jimmy’s dialysis, let alone the kidney transplant (charities and the government would help, of course, but I have my pride), and horses are all I know.
She’s got everyone fooled. They think she’s a little cantankerous, a bit boisterous, treat the odd bite or kick as an occupational hazard. The things that have happened are just coincidence or bad luck. I thought the same. Once.
I suppose I can’t really blame them for their
ignorance. The others don’t have the experience or the feel for horses that twenty years in this game have given me. I’m the only one who has guessed the truth, and that’s only because I saw the slight hesitation before she pelted “Shorty” Jones onto the running rail at Ascot one morning, the over-long instant between the bird flying past and her “spooked” shying. The doctors say he’ll never ride again. His left leg was smashed – I heard the crack from fifty yards away – but, for mine, he was lucky to get off that lightly (I reckon she was trying to catapult him into the immovable winning-post).
Ever since that incident aroused my suspicions, I’ve watched her closely, becoming more and more convinced I was right. Now I know I am. I’ve seen the control she exercises, how she only bites or kicks every now and then, saving her herself for exactly the right moment. Such as when little Nigel King was leading her through a gate and got too close to the steel gatepost. She swung her rump around, flinging Nigel against the gatepost, breaking three of his ribs. “An accident,” everyone said. “Unlucky.” Yeah, unlucky all right. Unlucky that it was that particular horse he was leading.
I know her secret now, though I could never convince anyone else (who’d believe it?). But I can’t let someone else cop it. I make sure I’m the only one who ever handles her (and, I must admit, no one’s about to fight me for the task). I need eyes in my arse: I can’t afford to turn my back on her. At least I’m onto her; that’s a comfort, I can tell you. It doesn’t bear thinking about what could happen if I had no inkling of the truth.
But I think she knows I know. I’ve seen a look in her eye, as if she’s thinking ‘I’m gonna get you.’ And I’m afraid she may be right, that one day I might get a little complacent, let my guard down for just a moment. Because, if I do, then I’ll be fucked.
|
