Horse Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page A

each other at nearly every family dinner. It was with this in mind that Farley never offered any suggestions to other trainers about their horses. But now he said, “Buddy, you should have that horse’s stifles X-rayed. I had a filly who moved like that in the hind end, and she—”
    “He moves fine. He had an abscess. That’s why he’s been off. But the gravel erupted two weeks ago.”
    “Maybe, but—”
    “Watch this work.”
    The horse shot past them. You could see the exercise boy gritting his teeth, the horse was pulling so hard. Buddy said, “That horse loves to run, and I’m not going to stand in his way. In fact, I’m going to provide him with an opportunity to do what he loves to do.”
    “Buddy—” But in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to say what he was thinking, which was that the horse was going to break down.
    “You know what?”
    “What?”
    “These horses are here to race and win. Their owners pay me seventy bucks a day and all they fucking care about is racing and winning. But that’s not even it. The owners don’t care as much about racing and winning as I do. If the fucking horse falls over two steps after the finish line, he’s done his job that he was born into this world to do.”
    “I don’t think—”
    “What? A Thoroughbred is not a natural phenomenon. His mommy and daddy didn’t fall in love, get married, and decide to have a baby. None of these horses would be here if they weren’t meant to race and win. The breeder is their God and the racetrack is their destiny and running is their work, and any other way of looking at it is getting things mixed up, if you ask me. The last thing I want to do is get things mixed up, because, as fucked as I am now, I’d be really fucked then, because I wouldn’t know what I was doing.”
    “Buddy—”
    “Farley, we’ve been training together around this track for twenty-five years or so, right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, here’s what I’ve noticed about you. You’re smart. They all say that about you, Farley’s smart. Sometimes he’s too smart, but he’s always smart. Iain’t smart, if you’ll pardon my English. If I’m going to get winners, it isn’t going to be by being smart, it’s going to be by sticking to what I know. That’s how smart I am, exactly. I’m smart enough to know how to get by without being smart.”
    “Anyone can learn—”
    “Can they? You had that colt Rough Strife, remember him? You had him around here for a year and a half. He was dumb as a post, wasn’t he? He’s a legend. He fell down at the quarter pole in his first race, and every start after that, he shied at the quarter pole. He couldn’t learn not to. Lots of them can, but he couldn’t.”
    “Just get his stifles—”
    “I don’t want to know about it. He’s ready to run. As long as he tells me he wants to run, I’m going to run him.” Buddy leaned over the railing and shouted, “Gaspar, you were okay this time, so I’m going to put you on another crazy one. I think you’re learning something!” And he turned and marched out of the grandstand. In the ensuing lull, Farley realized that his own second set were discreetly milling about, awaiting instructions. He sighed.
    B Y W EDNESDAY , Farley was back to normal, sleepwise, and Oliver was back to normal, flu-wise, so Farley didn’t get to the grandstand until dawn was breaking over Pasadena. There were two or three trainers standing about, and Farley joined in the joking. Henry, who was over seventy but under eighty-five, said, “You know, there were these two veterinary surgeons who shall remain nameless, but you know them, golfing up there at Pebble Beach, before the Japs bought the place. They were on the third hole, there, in the woods, and the guy from around here says to the guy from Kentucky, ‘See that tree down there with that knothole about four feet from the ground?’
    “ ‘Yeah,’ says the other one.
    “ ‘This is the kind of surgeon I am.