They were amused by the sheer audacity.
He made twenty a night for months.
* * *
—
Then Tommy, and what was to come:
Tommy got lost in the city; he was trying to find the museum.
He was only ten then, and it was bad enough we’d had Clay disappearing, though at least Tommy actually called. He was in a phone booth many miles away, and we drove there to pick him up.
“Hey, Tommy!” Henry called. “I didn’t know you knew what a phone booth was,” and it was great, that afternoon. We drove for a few good hours, through the city and by the coast. We promised we’d take him another day.
* * *
—
As for Clay, and for me, the training started one morning.
I’d caught him, midescape.
It was first light, and he came out front, and if he was surprised to see me by the letterbox, he was able not to show it; he only walked casually on. At least, by then, he wore shoes.
“You want some company?” I asked.
He shrugged, looked away, and we ran.
We ran together each morning, and me, I came back to the kitchen, I drank coffee, and Clay came back to the roof—and honestly, I saw the attraction:
First, the legs, they lit with pain.
Then the throat and lungs.
You knew you were running hard when you felt it in your arms.
We ran up to the cemetery. We ran Poseidon Road. On Carbine we ran the middle; a car once blew its horn at us, and we parted, we veered, each side. We pounded the rotten frangipanis. From the cemetery, we watched the city.
Then there were the other great mornings, seeing boxers from up at the Tri-Colors, as they ran their early roadwork.
“Hey, boys,” they’d say, “hey, boys.”
Hunched backs and healing cheekbones.
The steps of broken-nosed boxers.
Of course, one of them was Jimmy Hartnell, and once he ran backwards and called to me. Like most of them he wore a lake there, of sweat round the rim of his T-shirt. “Hey, Piano!” he called. “Hey, Dunbar!” Then waved, and carried on. Other times when we crossed, we tapped hands like replacement footballers; one of us on, one off. We ran through all our problems.
Sometimes there were extras, too—young jockeys apprenticed to McAndrew. That was one of his requirements: in the first year of your jockey trade, you ran with the Tri-Colors boys, alternate days of the week. There wouldn’t be any exceptions.
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I remember when we first ran to Bernborough, too:
It was a Sunday, an arsonist sunrise.
The grandstand burned like a tenement—like the criminals had lit the place up—and the track was already awash: with weeds, and bedsores and eczema. The infield not quite a jungle, but certainly well on its way.