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learned in my twenty seven years.  God in His Wisdom only talked to certain people and every one of them was a first cousin to Groucho Marx who once said: “Whatever it is, I’m against it.”
    Right about then, I spotted someone I knew: George Labold.  George Montgomery Labold was a jockeys’ agent, the first of his breed I’d ever met—this was back when I was still a kid as well as still a detainee at Flo’s place, not to mention Mister’s.  Learned a lot from George and George’s friends for a whole three months one year, and got paid for it by doing anything and everything he and his friends asked me to.  Worked my way up to exercising the horses.  He was the first guy who told me I could of made a hell of a jockey if I weren’t so big and bound to get bigger, and he oughta know, being big himself, plus agenting a few of the good ones in his time.  I would of loved that, being a jockey.  But life doesn’t work that way—getting what you love.  Seemed to me life gives you what you need.  For most people, what you loved wasn’t on the table.
    Anyhow, there was George and there I was, yelling hellos at each other.  Since he was half a foot taller, I was doing my yelling upwards.  At some point in all this, he asked me what I was doing on the backstretch.  It was for sure I hadn’t become a jockey.  Was I rich?  Was I an owner?
    “Do I look rich to you, George?”
    He looked me up and down.  “Hard to tell these days.  You look like you seen a few things.”
    “We’ve all seen a few things.”
    “You mean with the war and all?”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    “Where’d you serve?”
    “The Philippines.”
    “You mean Bataan and like that?  Damn.  Most of those guys never made it back.”
    “I know.”
    And that’s about all either of us wanted to say about the war.  He’d been too old to go and I was still too close from coming back to want to remember too much.
    “So if you ain’t rich, why you here?”
    “Dead jockeys.”
    From the way he just looked down on me, without a word, dead pan as Buster Keaton, I couldn’t tell if he knew jocks were dying or not.  George had come down a notch or two since I’d seen him last.  The three who died probably weren’t jocks he’d ever seen up close.  They won too much, rode horses that competed in the big stakes.
    Knowing how to ride thanks to George and his pals, plus how to care for horses, landed me in the Philippines.  The U.S. had its last cavalry unit there, my regiment, the 26 th .  I’ll never forget a single one of those horses, especially how it was when they got led away, eyes rolling in fear, to be butchered to feed the fellas who rode them against Japanese tanks and heavy artillery.
    Those horses held the beach against the little guys with the big guns.  For awhile.
    A few of us, me included, never touched a single hair of their hide except to say goodbye.  We could be starving, but we wouldn’t, we couldn’t, eat our horses.
    Not another word out of George.  He was already gone, off about his business which was collaring a trainer to get one of his jocks another mount.  It was like the last time I saw him.  That was the year Cavalcade won the Derby, the same year he was Horse of the Year.  George’s jocks never saw a Derby.  But one or two of them saw a stakes race.
    He had a good one once, a jockey out of South Carolina called Bingo Lance.  Bingo died on the track along with the horse that was just about to win the Suburban Handicap.
    That was one terrible day for horse and man and agent.  Bingo was the closest he ever came to glory and the death of Bingo Lance was pretty much the death of George.
    Standing with my hand out, I’d of liked to say more to George Labold, ask him to have a drink with me, maybe dinner in the pink hotel.
    Hell, I was here for two weeks.  I’d see him again.
    Next thing I knew I was in another shed row looking at a mare called Gallorette.
    I would of known her