Saving Baby Read online

  In the meantime, both Baby and Scarlett did their usual winter frolicking—rolling in the snow and coming to the back door covered in white, waiting for treats. I’d go to the fridge and take out a bag of carrots, cracking them and handing them out. Finally, I’d tell them, “No more,” but they’d stand there, beseeching me with their eyes like two dogs begging. So I’d go get some more and say, “This is the last time, now go out and play.” Then I’d sneak off to the side of the kitchen where they couldn’t see me through the glass and wait until they gave up and walked away. I couldn’t bear to say no to them, but I could have gone through pounds and pounds of carrots before they felt they had had their fill.

  I loved having this respite with them. At the same time, I knew this was going to be our year. Baby was doing wonderfully, and Scarlett was now going to get to race fully treated. Once training started, in fact, she went through her timed works beautifully, with no tying up, no stiffness, and on lab tests, all of her enzymes within normal range. I was glad in no small part for the money we stood to make. I had worked hard in my role on the HBPA board the previous year to get the state to pass legislation allowing simulcast racing, which meant people could now bet on Michigan races from other states, watching on screens at their local tracks. The purses, and our take, stood to increase dramatically. With the extra money to be earned coupled with Baby and Scarlett’s fantastic condition, our stars were all aligned.

  On April 19th, Terry Houghton rode Baby for a timed work, a good sign that he wanted to race him, so we were thrilled. Everything was in place.

  A few days later, the HBPA had its monthly board meeting. The chair of the backstretch track committee, a trainer named James Jackson, said that the track was in really bad shape. Two horses had broken down on opening weekend and had to be euthanized. They might have run into a groove or dip, Jackson said. It wasn’t clear.

  It didn’t really give me pause. I suspected those horses broke down because they weren’t properly conditioned and were running with preexisting injuries. I already knew that official lameness exams didn’t rule out injuries and that other owners and trainers didn’t take the care I did, that people were running injured horses all the time. But my horses were fine and wouldn’t get into trouble unless they were near the back of the pack, which was not going to happen because they were both so ready to win.

  Soon after that meeting, Terry also rode Scarlett for one of her timed works. We were really in position. The best jockey at the track wanted to race both of our Thoroughbreds.

  Pam had a race picked out for Baby on May 10th but had to scratch it at the last minute. It had been confirmed that Terry would ride him, but his schedule didn’t allow him to take Baby on his last timed work before the race. Baby ran off with the jockey who did take him—the guy couldn’t control him; few could––so there was not enough horse left in him to run at his highest speed just a few days later in the actual event. We were disappointed but not devastated. Everything still looked great, and to add to our high, Pat gave birth on May 15th to a beautiful filly we called Sissy, who looked very much like Baby except for a star between her eyes that resembled an upside-down Nike logo. Her official name was Surprisingly Reel. We were particularly thrilled because Reel On Reel fillies were doing even better in races than the males.

  When I reached the track later that day, Bob Miller, a horse owner and trainer who had played for the Detroit Lions football team in the 1950s, said to me in his booming voice, “Looks like you have a runner.” He had been watching Scarlett do a timed work.

  Hearing that felt great. Bob had been in racing for more than twenty years. His opinions were very well respected. I felt swept up, as if in a joyous wave of hope. Both Scarlett and Baby were in for big wins.

  A couple of days later, Pam found another race for Baby to take place on the twenty-fifth. The only kink was that Terry wouldn’t be able to ride him; he was already committed. That was unfortunate because we would not have Terry’s ability to control him, to keep him from ramming into another horse. But Pam secured Joey Judice, who also had a very good reputation, and in a timed work before the race, Baby and Joey matched extremely well. Joey handled Baby’s bullish style as if he had ridden him many times. Pam, Jerry, John, and I were giving each other high fives.

  Three days before the race, on the evening of the twenty-second, the HBPA board held another meeting and, again, James Jackson said the track was in bad shape, that there were uneven spots, gouges even, that needed to be resurfaced.

  I reminded myself that James liked to talk, that he enjoyed the limelight. He would stand for emphasis, whereas all the other committee chairs gave their reports from their seats. Then, too, Baby had just had another timed work that very morning, and his jockey didn’t say anything was wrong. Pam wasn’t getting any feedback from Jerry about something being wrong, either, and he rode Baby and Scarlett on the track every day.

  But at the same time, two other trainers at the board meeting piped up and agreed with James that there were problems with the track. One of them said that half his horses were back at the farm, sore. That nagged at me.

  The next day, by pure coincidence, I saw the track’s general manager, Jay Fortney, in his suit and tie, talking to people at the maintenance building. He was finishing up and walking back to the track, and I hurried to catch up with him. We had a good relationship, even though he was “track” and I was “owners and trainers” by virtue of being on the HBPA. We had worked together on the simulcasting legislation.

  “Jay, wait up,” I called out. I told him there had been an HBPA meeting the previous evening and that for the second time, James Jackson adamantly expressed that the track was not in good repair and needed maintenance. “I have to tell you,” I said, “we have a horse racing in two days and another horse slated to run the week after.” Pam had picked out a race for Scarlett by that point. “I will not send out my horses if there’s a problem with the track.”

  Jay was a big man, both tall and heavy. He breathed in, puffing himself up. “James Jackson ought to stick to training,” he said. “That’s what he knows. I used to be the superintendent for Belmont Park in New York. If I can take care of Belmont Park, I can certainly take care of the Detroit Race Course.”

  I took him at his word. Belmont Park is where the Belmont Stakes takes place, the third “jewel” in the “Triple Crown” of racing, after the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, in Maryland. It has to be maintained in the same condition as the Derby’s Churchill Downs track in Kentucky. Also, Jay sounded adamant bordering on angry. And because I had a good relationship with him and the rest of the track management, coupled with the fact that it was easy to dismiss what James said as exaggeration, I had every reason to believe him.

  So I let my concerns go and went forward again with the excitement that had been building all these months from Baby’s last race the previous June, where he had been beaten by only a fraction of a length despite a stretched tendon. At this point he was going like a tiger, a freight train. We knew we were on our way to wins, first with him and then with Scarlett.

  Baby’s race date, May 25th, was during Memorial Day weekend, and the weather was a cloudless, summery seventy-eight degrees, so there were more people at the track than typically.

  As usual, Baby let out his hello honk when I entered his shedrow that morning. I breathed into his nose (no treats—he wasn’t allowed apples or carrots on race day), and brushed my nose and lips across his velvety muzzle, as usual. He seemed incredibly alert, right on the muscle. “Boy, he’s ready,” I said to Jerry. It was that same hopeful feeling as when Baby had come back from Florida. I knew how much swimming he had done all winter, how much fitter he was than horses who began to work out only when the track opened in March. I also knew that since this was to be a $10,000 claiming race rather than an allowance race, Baby’s competition was not going to be fierce. Furthermore, Baby’s last timed work before the race was a bullet work, meaning he ran the fastest and a bullet mark was pu
t next to his name in the Daily Racing Form.

  Baby himself was completely comfortable, with not a hint of nervousness. He knew the routine backward and forward—another romp in the park.

  We walked with Baby, Pam, and Jerry up to the saddling area and, as usual, I told the jockey, Joey Judice, to come back safe and squeezed his hand. Then, while Pam was giving Joey instructions—“you know what to do, just stay a bit off the leader”—I put my hand on Baby’s neck, moving it under his mane. “It’s okay, Baby. You be a big boy. We’ll be waiting for you. We love you.” I was speaking softly; you don’t want to be saying those intimate things loudly enough for everybody to hear.

  I lingered just a bit, after which Pam gave Joey a leg up, and Baby was paraded in front of the grandstand with the other horses while John, Pam, Jerry, and I went to take our seats, about eight rows up, along with Jessica and Rebecca, my parents, my sister, an aunt and uncle, and lots of friends—as usual, about twenty people altogether.

  I felt on top of the world. It was the start of what was going to be a stellar year, with Baby about to win his second race and Scarlett poised to run her first race of the season the very next week. And we had a ten-day-old filly at home who would someday be making wins for us, too. It was like I had reached the top of Mount Everest. I felt so confident I even bet $200 on Baby that day, ten times more than I ever bet. We couldn’t have been in a better spot.

  The bell went off. It was the last race of the day, close to 6 P.M. We’d soon be getting our second win picture. The first was already hanging in the main hallway on the first floor of our house.

  Baby was never quite a jackrabbit out of the gate, even at his best, but he came out sixth of twelve, a good enough position and just a length and a half off the leader. Going along the back stretch of the track, he slid into perfect position, with his head right off the flank of the first horse—exactly where Pam said she wanted him. The rest of the field was a couple of lengths behind.

  About halfway through the race, Baby was clearly poised to win. Despite my confidence, I could feel my heart beating in my chest—Baby hadn’t even kicked into gear yet. Joey was still holding him back. John and I had our hands clasped together. Then, suddenly, almost imperceptibly, he drifted slightly off to the right—and stopped.

  “Oh my God!” I cried out.

  “Don’t worry,” Pam said. “The saddle probably slipped.” She took my binoculars to get a closer view, then handed them back to me. “Here, look at him,” she instructed. “You can see his front legs. There’s nothing wrong.”

  That calmed me down. The vast majority of breakdowns occur in the front legs. Then Joey took off the saddle, which was in keeping with what Pam thought had happened. But he and Baby just kept standing there. The other horses had already crossed the finish line. Why are they waiting, I wondered.

  Then I saw the horse ambulance coming out, a trailer painted white. Pam grabbed my arm—she didn’t want me running onto the track. “It’s going to be alright,” she said. “It’ll be alright. Come on. We’ve got to go.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Oh, Baby, Oh, Baby.” I put my nose right against his because I wanted to make sure he knew it was me. Just like with the plastic chair stuck on his head, with his first view of a grey horse, with anything that made him feel scared, it was always me. Then I threw my arms around his neck and lay my cheek against his, speaking in the same quiet, reassuring voice I had used so many times since he was born. “I’m here, Baby. It’s Mommy. It’s okay.” I knew I had to stay calm so that he could stay calm. “I’ll take care of everything, Baby. Don’t worry.”

  Covered in sweat so profuse it turned into foam that cascaded down his neck and chest, he was trembling all over. But I took comfort in the fact that his eyes, widened with fear, had relaxed some. He recognized my presence. Better still, I saw that everything was okay because he was still standing on both his front legs, where nearly all fatal injuries occur. Also, there was no blood. It had to be something minor, although clearly very painful. Maybe there’s a bone chip in a joint, I thought, or a pulled muscle.

  We were together in Baby’s shedrow, where the ambulance trailer had been brought. The back of the trailer was down, but I had run to the front, where a little door lets you into a very small area right by the horse’s head. Larry Wales, the private track vet, was already in the trailer when I came on.

  I can’t remember exactly how we had made it from the grandstand to Baby. John and I, and I guess Pam and Jerry, too, climbed down to the bottom row, then went through a little gate where Pam had parked the golf cart that she used to navigate the roads on the backside. I don’t know how many people climbed onto the cart with us. The guard wasn’t checking IDs, as he usually did. He was just letting everyone through.

  Along the way, we ran into Baby’s jockey, Joey, who was holding the saddle. “It was like an explosion,” he blurted. “The leg broke.”

  I looked at John, and he looked directly back at me. But as in a tsunami, what was clear, even familiar—it was a simple statement, after all—became jumbled with everything else ordinarily recognizable until, all caught together, the whole became a chaotic blur, with Pam and all of our guests running alongside us tossed into the flow.

  “Joey doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Pam shouted furiously. “He’s not a vet. He doesn’t know.”

  At some point Larry had caught up with us in his truck. “Jo Anne, do you want me there?” he asked. Usually, when the ambulance is called, the official vet at the track, the one from the Office of the Racing Commission, is sent out to take care of everything. But Larry knew me so well. He knew I would take Baby home when he had stretched his tendon rather than continue to let him race. He saw Scarlett go through tying-up syndrome.

  “Yes. Please. Thank you, Larry.”

  I don’t know how he arrived at the ambulance before we did. “Jo Anne, it’s not good,” he said. I was still breathing into Baby’s nose.

  “We’ll take him to Michigan State and fix it, whatever it is,” I answered.

  “Jo Anne, his leg is broken.”

  Larry didn’t know what he was talking about again, like when he gave Scarlett the wrong antibiotic all through the previous spring. All you had to do was look at Baby to see that neither of his front legs was broken. “Larry, we’ll take him to Michigan State. It’s okay. Money is no object. We’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “Jo Anne, it’s really bad. It can’t be—“

  But I stopped hearing him. The foam—my God, Baby just kept shaking. “I’m here, Baby. It’s going to be okay. Baby…”

  Larry was interrupting me again. “Jo Anne it’s not going to be alright. This is bad. We can’t—”

  I felt that if he wasn’t going to do something he should just get out of the way. “It’s okay, Larry,” I responded, letting him know with my tone, calm but firm, that I was in charge. “We’ll take him to Michigan State. We’ll spend whatever’s necessary. We need to get a trailer.” I knew we couldn’t transport Baby in that one.

  “Jo Anne, let me talk to you,” Pam said from outside the trailer, so I left Baby for a moment and my mother came on to be with him. “It’s all right, Baby,” she whispered. “It’s going to be all right.” I had been composed to that point, but my mother’s tender manner with Baby made me start to cry.

  “Jo Anne, this isn’t good,” Pam said. There, outside the trailer, I realized just how many people had crowded around, not just my own family and friends but dozens of others from the backstretch. Ours had been the last race of the day, so nobody was in a rush with any horses.

  Not you, too, Pam, I thought to myself. Don’t you agree with him. She, more than anybody outside my family, knew what Baby meant to me. How could she say that? My eyes went again to the blur of people—people I knew, people I yakked with in the kitchen, backstretch workers I didn’t recognize but who recognized me, perhaps because I was on the two boards, and had crowded around out of curiosity. Then I looked again at Pa
m and just went back in with Baby, my mother stepping off.

  Bill Frank, the Racing Commission vet, was already on the trailer, whispering with Larry. I hadn’t seen him step in. “Jo Anne, do you want a second opinion?” he asked.

  I suppose I said yes because Bill looked at Larry and Larry nodded, and the two of them switched places. Bill palpated the tibia on Baby’s back left leg—a very long bone that runs along the upper part of the limb—going up and down, up and down, with both hands, and then he looked at Larry and nodded and turned to me and said what Larry had tried not to say. “Jo Anne, it—the tibia—it’s fractured.” I must have had a blank look on my face because after a moment he added, “It’s shattered. He can’t be saved.”

  Why are you all against me? I wondered. Why doesn’t anybody understand? All we have to do is take him to the hospital. It doesn’t matter how much it costs. Even if the leg is broken, they can fix broken legs. Years ago, maybe no. But not now. This was the 1990s. I wasn’t able to entertain the idea that there was a fracture they couldn’t fix.

  “… can feel it, even though you can’t see it,” Larry was saying. He had tried not giving me the details to spare me, but he saw that neither Bill nor he was getting through. “It’s in multiple pieces. I can’t even count how many—”

  We have to get out of here, I realized. We have to get away. “Don’t worry, Baby,” I said in a low, almost conspiratorial, voice, going down to his nose again. “Don’t worry. I’m going to get you away from here.”