This short story was written for a "word challenge" which members of the Uxbridge Writers' Circle often participate in.
We select words at our meeting and then read our stories which incorporate all these words at the following meeting, a month later.
The chosen words are in italics.
What would you have written?
Photo by Gene Devine on Unsplash
A
fat rat scampers under the rusty but
sturdy metal shed which houses the hay for the five horses I train. The pests
are the only ones doing well around here. This racetrack has lost a lot of its
dignity, and so have most of the people involved in the horse-racing business.
Where the horses
are stabled is the place you notice it the most. If there is any paint left, it’s
peeling and flaking, and the old neon
lights are flickering - if they work at all. There isn’t a tap that doesn’t
leak, and the doors to each barn either won’t move at all or get stuck every
other day, requiring a team effort to open or close them.
The race purses
have diminished and costs have increased. Foreign workers are hard to come by
since the new regulations have come in. Not many locals want to clean out
stalls, walk hot horses or groom them, or even ride them.
Every day I ask
myself why I’m still in this business, scraping a living, barely making it
through each racing season.
That’s not true.
I haven’t examined
my reasons for hanging in here until today. And I wish I hadn’t started to
think about it: it’s as if my thoughts have entered a labyrinth so complicated and confusing that I’m more conflicted
than when I started. I should know better than to try to analyse, in a rational
way, why I train racehorses. Horseracing defies logic.
I chuck my empty
cup into the garbage and walk down the shedrow past several pairs of bright
eyes and large nostrils, towards my area of the barn. One of my five horses
whinnies. I like to think that it’s a greeting but I suspect it’s a plea for
his grain. Bertie’s racing this afternoon, so hasn’t been fed his lunch. His
whinny is half-hearted, though, because he understands he’s going to run. He
knows the ropes probably just as well as I do.
I talk to each of
them in turn, offering mints which are grabbed by soft, fuzzy muzzles from my
outreached palm. I take out the empty feed buckets and as I’m scrubbing them
under a tap which refuses to ever be shut off, my thoughts delve back into the
labyrinth. My lips are dry and my stomach unsettled. Perhaps I need to get out
of this business. The fact that I’m asking questions probably means that my
heart isn’t in it any more.
But I can’t think
of what I’d do instead. My father was a racehorse trainer. I was immersed in
this world from a young age.
When Dad was
injured in a car accident, I got my trainer’s licence, graduating from
assistant trainer. So, it’s as if this is my heritage.
Dad had been a private trainer for a wealthy family,
but I had a falling out with the grandfather, the patriarch. His ideas of horse
management and horse care didn’t come up to my standards. So, I became a public
trainer. But I only have five horses so far. I’d like twenty. But to get twenty
you have to have success. You have to win races and get noticed.
Bertie doesn’t
have much of a chance today. The competition has come up tough.
I can hear Sally, my
horses’ groom, humming. She dumps a cracked laundry basket on the rubber mat
near to the tap and picks up a clean saddle pad. As she folds, she glances at
me and asks why I look so glum. Ever the optimist, Sally gets excited about
every race. I shrug and put the feed buckets on their hooks handy for later
use.
We get Bertie
ready and take him over to the paddock for saddling up. I give the jockey a
leg-up and Bertie trots almost on the spot, in anticipation. Sally hands him
off to the pony who escorts him, in the company of the other nine horses with
their ponies, through to the post parade, and on to the starting gate.
I’m at the rail
near the finish line and Bertie’s coming around the last turn. Sally and I
scream at him, although I doubt he can hear anything of our impassioned
encouragement over the thunderous pounding of thirty-six hooves and the
explosive puffing of eighteen flared nostrils, all on his tail.
If Bertie wins,
I’m staying in this business: and that’s my final decision.
