The Curious Misadventures of the World’s Worst Racehorse
CHAPTER 1
"Hip Number 1743"
“His legs are crooked.”
“His toes are turned in. It’ll make for an awful stride.”
“This is a son of the great Charismatic? Are you sure somebody didn’t make a mistake? What a rat.”
My ears swiveled forward to take in the many voices directed at me. Throngs of people milled about, pointing at other young horses and occasionally stopping for a longer gaze.
I didn’t know where I was. I had never been in a place such as this: a musty, crowded building, filled with the jabber of men and the cries of other scared yearlings. It was almost like the barn at home, except bigger. And scarier. The thin layer of straw over the hard ground that I stood on combined with a strong odor seemed a far stretch from the clear green meadow I was in the day before.
A black-haired man stopped in front of my box. He seemed different from any human I’d ever seen before: he was dressed in all black, and something long and brown was dangling from his mouth. It looked sort of like a stick, but on fire at the end.
I stretched my nose forward in greeting, my whiskers gently brushing the fabric on his shoulder. However, I didn’t get the pat that I’d come to expect. Instead, he pushed my nose away and burst into a booming laughter, causing me to withdraw in surprise.
“You call this a horse?” he said between cackles. “Look at him! I bet my grandmother could outrun this pathetic thing.”
A few other people who had stopped to listen chuckled and slapped the man on their shoulder with folded up pieces of paper. With a final shake of his head, he stepped away to look at bigger, flashier horses. I could only pin my ears and watch, confused by the sudden treatment I was receiving.
“It’s alright, buddy.” Mr. Owens, the old gentleman who’d raised me, reached over to stroke my neck. “Not everyone in this industry is so uptight.”
Relieved, I turned to touch my nose against the coarse skin of Mr. Owen’s face. He was advancing in age, but I’d never seen him look as old as he did standing on front of me. The wrinkles that ran like rivers across his forehead seemed deeper than ever, his hair a shade grayer. The usual plaid button-up shirt and jeans, while so familiar, suddenly seemed out of place compared to what others were wearing.
“We’ll find you a home, son,” said Mr. Owens, pulling a piece of straw from my forelock. “A good one, too.”
My ears twitched in confusion. A home? But I had a home. One I loved.
I turned away from the bustling crowd and faced the blank cement wall behind me, my mind wandering to the place I’d called home for the first two years of my life. To my mother, with her kindly brown eyes and soft bay coat. To the long days of frolicking with the other colts and lying in the grass at my mother’s side.
To the first time I met Mr. Owens, a memory that now seemed so distant.
***
“Maggie foaled just last night, Mr. Owens.”
I heard a voice and lifted my head from the straw. My mother’s ears pricked, but she didn’t look up from munching on her hay.
“A colt,” the voice continued. “He looks healthy enough.”
Something moved outside and a large shadow blocked the path of the bright sun. The wooden stall door creaked open to reveal two creatures. They weren’t like my mother; instead of standing four legs, like her, they were on two. They were tall, too, with weird markings but bald in some places.
My mother looked up from my side and offered a short nicker in their direction. I think it was more to reassure me of my safety than to greet him, but he took it as such.
“Well, hello to you too, old girl.” This one sounded different. Mr. Owens, I assumed. He slid a hand down my mother’s neck, his eyes never leaving me. “Easy now, Mags. I just want to take a look.”
I watched him cautiously as he kneeled at my side, his eyes shifting over my small body. Suddenly, his hands were on me, running across my neck, back, and legs. I was confused, but I didn’t mind. His touch was as soft and kind as his voice.
“Okay, little guy,” Mr. Owens said, patting my rump. “Let me see what you’ve got.”
Somehow, I knew what he was asking. With a glance at my mother, I pushed my tiny hooves out in front of me and did what I had practiced for what seemed like forever the night before: the difficult task of standing. With all my strength, I used my hind legs to propel my body off the ground.
My legs shifted rapidly in an attempt to keep my upper body from teetering. My neck was twisting to and fro in a struggle to find a center of balance so that I wouldn’t fall down. Even though I’d only known these two creatures for a small amount of time, I was determined to show them all I had.
Finally, despite my wobbling knees and awkward pose, I was standing. I lifted my head confidently, pushing my knows towards him with a snort. So, what do you think?
Mr. Owens was grinning. He reached up and scratched behind his ear, rustling his unruly white hair.
“Small, isn’t he sir?” the other creature chimed in as he tossed a flake of alfalfa into the corner of the stall for my mother, who immediately started chewing on it.
Mr. Owens shrugged, resting a soft hand on my withers to give me a gentle scratch. “So was Seabiscuit, but we all know how that played out. It’s the heart that matters, Dave, not the size or the build.”
The one called Dave nodded. “True, sir. Have you decided what to call him?”
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” He leaned back, observing me. “Look at him, Dave. A natural redhead. Not a marking on him.”
“Look at the other side,” Dave said with a shake of his head, stepping forward to point out a small white spot behind my front leg. “He’s got the spot of luck.”
“Even better,” Mr. Owens murmured, running his hand across my forehead to scratch between my ears. “He’ll share the name of all the greats,” he said, smiling. “Man o’War, Phar Lap, Secretariat. You know what they were all called, right, Dave?”
Dave’s eyes grew wide with realization. “Red, of course, sir.”
I closed my eyes, calmed by the soothing voice of Mr. Owens and the gentle tickle of his whiskers as he kissed my nose. “Exactly,” he whispered, to me more than to Dave. “You’ll be called Red.”
***
Here, I had no name.
Instead, I was known as a number, which was coincidentally pinned to my rear on an uncomfortable white tag. Mr. Owens called me Red, but everyone else simply knew me as Hip Number 1743.
“Red.”
I heard Mr. Owens’ familiar chirp and turned around to find him standing with another gentleman. The man was somewhat shorter, but alike in build, with messy salt-and-pepper hair and a curious little strip of hair above his lips. When he saw me look, a broad smile spread across his face, deepening the wrinkles that were peeking out from behind oddly shaped wire that hooked around his ears and covered his eyes.
“Would you mind taking him out for me, sir? I’d love to have a closer look, if possible.”
I stood still as Mr. Owens tossed a dingy leather halter over his shoulder and entered my stall to slide it over my head, cautiously gentle as he brushed my ears. I followed him as he led me from the cramped confines of my box and into the even more crowded, hectic aisle of the building.
“Move aside! C’mon now, gentlemen. Let a man get to business, would you?” Mr. Owens growled. Yet, despite his pleas, no one seemed to listen. The hordes of other men were much too involved in business of their own, arguing heatedly in the middle of the aisles over much more muscular looking colts and fillies.
“He’ll kick the livings out of all of you if you don’t scram!”
I had never kicked anybody in my life, but the threat was all it took. The crowd immediately parted, leaving Mr. Owens and me just enough room to jog a few yard back and forth in front of the man. All the while, my head twisted to and fro as horses from every direction whinnied, grunted, and snorted in my direction.
“Not the best mover I’ve seen in my lifetime,” he gentleman said when we returned to stand in front of him, “but certainly not the worst. How much do you think he’s going to go for?”
“No telling,” replied Mr. Owens, who seemed busy trying to catch his breath. I guessed he didn’t run and play with other humans the way I did with other colts. “But one thing’s for sure, not many people seem too interested. Everyone seems stuck on that colt across the row.”
My gaze, along with the gentleman’s, followed Mr. Owens’ pointing finger. A crowd of men and women stood around one of the biggest colts I had ever seen in my young life. He was much taller than any of the other colts on the farm, and nearly black. He had piercing eyes that bore right through everyone as though he didn’t even feel like acknowledging their company.
“Holy smokes,” the gentleman commented. “Who’s he by?”
“Fusaichi Pegasus,” Mr. Owens replied with a nod. “He’ll likely go for millions.”
The gentleman turned his attention back to me to run a calloused hand down my neck. “Can’t quite afford something like that,” he said, shaking his head. “Even if I could, I think I’d prefer to buy my wife a nice vacation home than a horse that probably won’t even win back a quarter of what I paid.” He chuckled, pulling a pad from his back pocket and a pen from behind his ear to jot something down. “Hip 1743. I’ll be looking for him.” He held out a hand to Mr. Owens. “I’ll see you tonight, sir.”
“Gifford,” Mr. Owens said, taking his hand. “Gifford Owens.”
“Mike Hastings,” the gentleman said. “Good to meet you, Gifford.”
Mr. Owens and I stood, our eyes following him as he walked slowly off through the crowd. “Nice man,” Mr. Owens commented as he led me back into my box and removed my halter. “Hopefully he’ll put in a bid tonight. What do you think, Red?” He rubbed behind my ear before slipping back into the aisle and settling into his chair.
I didn’t know what Mr. Owens meant, just as I didn’t know why I was being referred to as a number instead of my name. All I knew was that I wanted to get past whatever was waiting for me here tonight and return home to the green pastures and friends that I loved dearly.
Little did I know, I would never see my home again.
