"Keep him under two minutes today, okay, Lance?"
"I'll try," he told her with a smile. "He has a mind of his own sometimes and a will of his own all the time."
"That's what I'm paying you to control!" she said harshly in no uncertain terms. "I'm taking a helluva chance on you. Everyone I know says I'm crazy. But after 45 years of being around horses, I can 'feel' things and you riding Window Dressing feels right. Don't make me regret it."
She turned to walk away then turned back around and just as directly.
"Or worse, don't you dare make me have to eat my words."
His smile faded as he realized she wasn't kidding. And why would she be? She was under enormous stress to win this race. Winning meant the difference between staying in business or selling everything she and her late husband had worked for their entire lives. It also meant that anyone still working for her was out of a job. So...no pressure.
"I won't, Peg. You have my word. We'll come in at around 1: 45."
She held up her 25-year old stopwatch and said, "You're on the clock, Lance. Let's get a move on!"
Lance Palmer was 26 and had been riding professionally since he was 18. Between paying for gas, hotels, food, and workouts at local gyms, he'd lost money his first two years. Looking back, that was a tradeoff he'd willingly made to try and establish some kind of reputation. He finally broke even the third year and made a modest $15,000 his fourth. The year after that he'd made a very respectable forty grand, and had averaged close to fifty since then with most of that coming from winning the biggest race of his life three months ago. And it was that win that had caught his new boss's attention and convinced her to hire him.
At 5'5" and 130 pounds, Lance had to be able to handle a thousand-pound horse flying around a track at 40 miles per hour, and that was the reason he had to stay in the gym no matter how busy he got. He was neither the biggest nor the smallest jockey around, but he was always on guard for comments about his height.
Since getting his jockey card, he'd met a lot of jockeys shorter than him. A couple were under five feet tall with most being between 5'2" and 5'6". Weight varied from maybe 115 to 135 with a few rare exceptions on either end.
It was little consolation that he was considered 'tall' for a jockey. The only good news was he'd learned to keep things in perspective after having had met quite a few 'short rounds', a term he'd heard applied to him far too many times, open up about dealing with something most men never even thought about.
Unlike 'size', a feature men could hide and therefore ignore most of the time, that wasn't true with height. Along with gender and race, it was pretty much the first thing people noticed when meeting someone for the first time. He was no longer paranoid about it, but it still bothered him.
It was still hard having guys use his height (or lack thereof) as a way to well, 'cut him down to size' anytime they wanted to put him down. It was such an easy 'go to' insult, but that's right where they went.
It was even worse when a woman he found attractive gave him that 'look'. It didn't matter that he had a very nice-looking face, great hair, and a rock-hard body. He was 'a short shit' and after years of praying for the growth spurt that never came, this was his reality, and dealing with it was his lot in life.
He'd done his best to embrace his...shortcoming...and gone into a career where he could use it to his advantage. Lance got his first big break the fifth year and won three races, collecting 10% of the winning fee. He made a hundred bucks a ride if he didn't win, place, or show, the terms racing used to denote first, second, and third places. The percentages for placing and showing were less, but still better than a measly $100 which barely paid for a day's expenses. But it was this last win that had really opened up opportunity's door, and it was Peg Winfield who'd come knocking.
Winning this high-stakes race in two weeks could mean as much as a hundred grand, and Lance was riding a rocket named Window Dressing that could tear up the track. He was the fastest three-year old he'd ever ridden. More that matter, he was also the fastest horse he'd ever been on—period. He'd won a couple of local races, but hadn't won a major event yet so he wasn't even close to being the favorite, although he had been moving up from a long shot with odds of 25-1 to his current odds of 7-1 which put in him third place in pre-race handicapping. He was Lance's first real shot at racing glory and Peg Winfield's last hope of keeping her business, so both of them had a lot 'riding' on this race.
Ten minutes later, Lance had Window Dressing in the paddock. His headset was fully functioning, and he let Peg know he was ready. She hit the open button and Window Dressing took off like he was shot out of a cannon. Lance stood up immediately to slow him down slightly forcing the gelding to hold back on this one-mile timed run. This was as close as Peg would allow her star horse to run at full tilt, and she wanted to leave something in reserve.
As they rounded the track for the final lap, Lance didn't need Peg calling out the time. He could feel how fast Window Dressing was running and also knew when to use the whip on the final sprint.
Just as he'd promised, he brought the horse in very close to the predicted time at 1:46.2 for a mile.
After walking it off and coming over to where Peg was standing and smiling, she couldn't wait to ask, "How much did he have left in him?"
Lance smiled and said, "We didn't even kick in the afterburners. I could have gotten another 2-3 seconds out of him no problem."
"Perfect!" she said, a rare smile showing on her somewhat weathered face.
Lance had heard there was a time when Peg was always smiling. Rumor had it you couldn't find her without a smile glued to her face back then. But that was before her husband had passed away and before her ex-son-in-law had convinced her only child and their two boys to leave the area to follow his dreams, and before her the financial crisis that had wiped out her savings, her 401k, and nearly everything she had. All that had happened within a three-year window, and now she and the ranch were, well, running on fumes.
Window Dressing wasn't supposed to be anything special. He came from a stud and a dam that were decent stock but nothing more than that. They'd had him gelded when he was a year old and six months later Peg was watching him run four furlongs. She stopped what she was doing and started watching closely. She kept watching for another year and that's when she knew this horse had real potential.
The next time he ran, she was there with her stopwatch and couldn't believe the time he put in. Since then he'd won several small races and finished a very respectable third in his only high-stakes race.
Peg liked the jockey who ridden Window Dressing since his first race, but something wasn't right. So just a few weeks ago, she let him go and changed horses, so to speak, before the biggest race of her life. Peg was convinced the only reason the horse hadn't won was having the wrong jockey riding him. So she'd gone looking for one she thought could win, and Lance Palmer was that lucky man.
She was literally betting the farm, or maybe ranch, on this unexpected speed demon and the relatively unknown jockey riding him. Were he to show, she could keep the ranch up and running but would be in trouble again a year or so down the road. If he placed, she'd be set for the foreseeable future. Were he to win, well, it would be a life-changing event for her and her staff.
Staff. That was almost funny. She'd once employed nearly a dozen people, but now there was just Miguel, her best trainer and groomer who'd been with here for some 20 years.
"Okay, let him cool down then turn him over to Miguel," she told Lance. "And nice work!"
Compliments were as rare as her smiles these days, so Lance felt pretty good about his effort. Of course, if they didn't win when it mattered, all the work would be for naught, and no one was more aware of that than him.
He went to answer Peg when her phone rang. She saw who the call was from and held up her hand letting Lance know she was taking it. What he didn't know was it was her daughter calling with some very important news.
"Mom?" Peg heard.
