“What was it like? Man, wasn’t no fucking Cadillac ride. Hell no! That race—$100,000 Cornhusker Handicap. Riders up—one leg boost and over into the irons. All of that equine anger bound up in muscle and bone, wrapped in dark chestnut, cinched tight by its girth strap. My blue and black silks flag-slapping the wind.
Trainer says, ‘he’s fractious in the gate. Everytime!’ A crazy motherfucker is what that means. ‘Now, stay off the lead. Settle him in the backstretch; he needs to come off the pace to win. You know the plan.’
We enter the number two post position. Steel slams shut. Pat Day in the three hole smiles his ‘I’m-riding-with-Jesus-look.’ Time feels like eternity. And breathing—his and mine blend a calm craziness until the sound of the bell when the doors burst open to madness racing the wind.
We break clean and hard-charge to the front. He goes to the rail. Forget the plan. A runaway freight going wire-to-wire. Ten lengths in front at the top of the stretch, a dull pop—busted cannon bone and the dark chestnut drops beneath me. Hang time—midair—a split second. I bounce off the rail, back onto the track, and my mount somersaults over and into a still heap, and I hear the roaring thunder of apocalypse. In a ball—eyes shut—choking tears and dust, thirty-six steel hoof sledges hammer around me, all missing except for one that tattoos its name across my lower back. Tuffernhorseradish.”
Dennis Thompson is a former U. S. Postal Service letter carrier and horse handicapper. He now teaches writing and film at Des Moines Area Community College. His work has appeared in Mississippi Review, Colere Literary Review, Out of Line: Writings on Peace and Social Justice, and Wabash Review. His fiction “Jesus in the Eighth Race” was nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize.
–Art by Denis Olivier
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