The horns sound and we spook in lockstep. I’ve never known what the recorded trumpeting noise is meant to represent, but believe me, it’s the classiest thing that happens all day. A dollop of regalness atop our Coors Light and overcooked hamburgers. When everyone else stands, we stand, like hungover Catholics in mass, en masse, ennui. Joi de vivre.
I have a skirt for the track. A big pocket for ready cash, a smaller one for the next race’s tickets, and a very, very small one for winning tickets. My pocket for won cash is empty, yet and often.
It’s the 9th, and the 22 to 1 long shot that my 7-year-old son bet on twice busted early through the gate and then threw her rider.
The jockey lies still in the dirt, still lying, still, and longer. I imagine her gray and white matter pooling in crimson, coincidentally, or perhaps not, also the color of her silks. She isn’t alone, but she’s the only one who’s not moving, because peopled chaos is the remedy her handlers find most appropriate.
A woman behind me laughs as the loose mount devours the 5 1/2 furlongs empty-saddled and fully engaged. Some cheer, but some boo and hiss, not recognizing that she is but a child, and this is her duty, and she doesn’t know what else to do.
The jockeyess is motionless, then disappears on a stretcher, and we, the fat, drunken, hatted, and booted populace stand and hold our beery breath. Many take this opportunity to smoke. They won’t tell us over the loudspeaker whether our emboldened rider scratched and left us alone on this planet with our sweaty hands holding the wrong number.
Race 9 ends and 10 is about to begin. The 5 and 2 horses, only half-collected by the heavy lead horses, buck like babies. I think I love these two fillies because they seem aware that the world is unstable, learning of the crazy, the doomed, the general instability of the day through hoofed vibration, and so I put a sawbuck on their quinella. I’m plussed by their uncollected souls and their collective names, Axe Me A Question and Dawn’s Wild One.
Ava Joe rides her pony on her boat.
Archived at http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/flash/266-aj-0710-jockey and shortlinked at http://frsh.in/dv
