The Dog Boy, a 39-year-old man child, is being forced from his home. He has nowhere to go. Charon's Crossing, a failed racehorse, will be put down unless she wins her next race, but she has lost each one of her previous 64 races. The worst is certai...
There was nothing in the Condition Book about racing that Monday. In fact, Sunday was supposed to be the last day of the meet. Or anyway, that's what the Condition Book said and the Condition Book was usually gospel. If it wasn't gospel, how would the owners, trainers, jockeys, exercise riders, grooms, and even the hotwalkers be able to make their plans? The solution for them has always been simple. They rely on the Condition Book because the Book gives the details for every race on every day. It lists the distance, surface, age and sex restrictions, the full requirements to get into a field, and any exclusions to ensure that each field is reasonably competitive. Everything is there.
But this was one day after the end of the meet. One day after the traditional frenzy of every horse and human angling for one final, unexpected payday. All of them are guided by the single greatest truth in racing. Somebody always wins. It may not be you, but it's always somebody. So, each of them holds onto a wish that is as hopeless as knowing God's plan for the infinite years ahead. It is like the dozen roses to a grade school crush or squirrels searching for food around a frozen yard or that wager placed on a horse whose history has been so full of losses and bad behavior that a trip to the slaughterhouse is inevitable. So, it goes.
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after the end of the end
Horse racing has been dying for decades. There are fewer horses and fewer fans. Money just seems to dribble out the race track's front door like change falling through a tiny hole in a child's pocket. A nickel might be lost today and then a quarter is gone tomorrow. In better days, the last Monday in September would have been an off day – a day for packing up and heading to the next meet. But not this Monday. On this day, the races on the card were ones that had been scheduled weeks before, but several ill-timed thunderstorms washed them away. Even though no Maryland jockey had ever been killed by lightning, a jockey and horse were killed at Ascot the month before. No one wanted a repeat of that story because things were bad enough already. Killing a jockey in full view of everyone had to be avoided if at all possible. Killing one of the shrinking number of fans would be even worse.
Honestly though, skipping all the races that day might have been the wisest option. It was a Monday and there are never any big races or big crowds on Mondays. Even the weather promised to be terrible. Or anyway, that was the forecast. Every radio, TV, and weather-prognosticating bunion and arthritic joint all over the state of Maryland had come to the same conclusion: it would be an awful day.
Mist rolled in around 11:00AM that morning. It was drizzling by 1:00PM and raining lightly by 2:00PM. All this seemed normal enough. It was just rain (after all), but this was different. At least for September, it was different. A few days before, a cold front had wandered down from Labrador and set up camp off the coast of Delaware. Three days of cold rain followed. Afternoon temperatures had been 30 degrees cooler than normal. But finally, the system began to move and when it did heavy, windless, warmer air came up from the south. Mist led to drizzle led to rain and all that water found familiar pathways through the leaky roofs of the stables behind Pimlico's backstretch.
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