BROKE DOWN

He opened the shutters and a stream of light cut across the stall and shone on the horse. Clarke waved the flies away from the crack. "It’s definitely dead," he said. "Don’t you go off nowhere, Walt. I’m going to have to call the owner. I want to be able to find you if I need you."

I went outside and answered the ringing of my car phone. "I need a blacksmith to look at a horse I’m sending down to the next meet," Linville said. Why’d he have to call now? I told him I’d talk to him later. There was no way I could give him Walt’s name. Not after this.

It had been this way with Walt Harrogate as long as I’d been in the business. He’d been friends with Dad when they’d started out together. Walt had always remained a blacksmith while Dad eventually became an owner. I’d always tried to help him.

But he’d just split the damn head clean in two. Broke it smack down the middle. Just like the cartoon where Jerry cuts Tom in half. Popped that horse right between the eyes with the metal part of the twitch. The split opened up and ran straight down to its nose. The horse staggered down on its front knees and groaned. Then it capsized onto its side. Lying belly-up. One of the hands ran out to his car and got a pistol. Julio, at least that’s what we called him, shot

the horse in the head, right into the slit. It was probably dead anyway. He just wanted to make sure.

The dust in the stall began to settle and the horse finally quit jerking. "Oh shit," Walt had said. "I can’t believe I did that. I sure didn’t mean to. Jesus, that’s unbelievable." He took off his stained cap and twisted it in his hands. Walt’s black hair was matted from sweat and the ends curled up where the edges of the hat had been. He wiped his hands on his khaki pants, smearing stains across the legs.

Julio had gotten over his fit of mercy and started begging us not to tell anyone about his gun, afraid he’d be deported.

Walt was still babbling, "I ain’t never seen anything like that. I been shoeing horses for near twenty years and never saw that happen. Damn thing always was crazy. Shouldn’ta bit me like that. But I sure didn’t mean to kill it. I guess we oughta call the vet."

"Hell, what good’s that going to do?" somebody asked. "We gonna have to call Clarke."

"Just don’t tell him about the gun," Julio pleaded. "He no me gusta anyway. Fire me in un momento."

Clarke was pretty cool about the whole thing though. He was always mean to everybody, so a cracked skull really didn’t change his personality much. "What the hell you doing here anyway?" he asked me before his dented truck even stopped rolling. "You pretty-boys don’t usually come out here. Get your little BMW all dirty."

Clarke always gave me a hard time about my job. He thought since I didn’t sweat and get dirty, I wasn’t really working. I’m a bloodstock agent. I have two basic duties. One, I’m a pimp for horses. I guess you could call me a matchmaker. People call me and say they’ve got a dam out of Raise a Native and who should they breed her with for the best sprinter? The other part of my job is that I give referrals. Some millionaire plastic surgeon in New York buys something at the Saratoga sales and calls me asking who should take care of it.

I’d come out to see Walt because a client needed someone to shoe his filly up at River Downs and wanted to know if I had a blacksmith. But, "I didn’t kill the damn thing," was all I could say to Clarke when he asked me why I was there.

"Walt," he fired, "you done it this time. There’s going to be hell to pay. I covered your ass last time, when you stuck a nail in that Sutree colt’s foot. Clearman spent a shitload of money fixing that fuck-up. And how bout when you shoed that Smart Bell filly wrong? I ain’t going to be able to look out for you on this one."

Walt was on the defensive and began sputtering. "I didn’t mean it. Shit, the thing musta been sick anyway. Heads don’t just crack like that. It wasn’t no good anyway. Cribbed like crazy. Never understood why anyone paid board on that thing."

Clarke didn’t notice Walt’s excuses. "I should’ve known not to listen to you," he said to me.

"What did I do, Clarke?"

"You told me to hire him for this mare. Said he’d be great for the old bag." Clarke slammed his truck door shut and sped down the hill.

"Why’d I do that?" Walt asked out loud. He’d found an old basketball and was tossing it towards the rim nailed to the barn. Not shooting. Just tossing the ball underhand against the wall. Every time it’d hit, a round imprint of dirt would be left on the paint.

"Walt," I said, "stop making a mess." Clarke was nuts about keeping his barns clean. The goal was his only concession to the farm hands and he had a square drawn where the backboard would be. Any marks outside of that little area drove him into hysterics. Walt looked at Julio, "What does it matter now if I get it dirty?"

Julio paid no attention. He was searching the mirror on his Camaro, "Tengo any sangré on me? Can you tell I shot him?" He ran his hands through his long black hair and kept on inspecting for blood on his tanned face.

Walt wandered around the yard, kicking rocks, an aimless kid. He paced back and forth, balancing on some railroad ties that were lying by the horse trailer. He fell off and landed on the dog’s tail. It yelped, and wheeled around to bite at him before running into the barn.

"Who do you reckon Clarke is calling to come get the thing?" somebody asked.

"Probably the lab on Newton Pike for an autopsy," I said. "Although, the cause of death is pretty obvious, so maybe just the Purina factory."

Julio turned pale at the word autopsy and started digging in his back seat. He withdrew a long, thin knife. "I gotta get that bullet out, man. If they find it, policía come for me." He also picked up a pair of needle-nose pliers and went into the barn.

Eventually, a big green truck rumbled up the hill and backed into the barn. The drivers got out and we saw Julio peer out from behind the stall door. They were walking right towards him. He was trapped in the stall with the cracked horse. As they neared the door, we heard two big thuds in the hayloft above us. "What the hell’s that?" one of the men asked.

"Damn gatos," Julio quickly answered. "Always jumping around up there." The men bought it and Julio rushed out of the stall.

The driver walked around the body and bent down to look at the head. The crack had been pried apart considerably. "Fuck happened to this thing?" he asked. The other stable hand looked at me but I walked off. Walt was outside the barn, pulling a board off the fence.

If I gave a client a referral for a vet or trainer, they had better do a good job. Made me look bad if they didn’t. I’d tried to help Walt out but people were beginning not to trust me.

He was always screwing up, always. He stopped at a bar one night on his way home from Keeneland. Just had to go to the bathroom, wasn’t going to stay long. He never even thought about the fact that all his tools were lying around in the back of the truck. Came out from the john and they were all gone. Called me up, saying he couldn’t face Brenda and tell her he’d lost all his tools. The next day, Walt and I went shopping.

"Who owns that thing?" Walt asked as the truck pulled away. "You the referral service," he said to me. "Clarke gets all his owners from you. You know who owns it?"

"No, he’s got all kinds of people. Quarterbacks, movie stars, businessmen, anybody that’s got money to waste on an animal. He’s even got a gangster as a client."

"Great. That’s perfect," Walt said. "I’ll probably end up in a river somewhere. He doesn’t really have a mobster, does he?"

"Sure he does. Guy’s already been busted for paying a bunch of bums to clean asbestos out of buildings. He picked up these guys who didn’t know any better and gave them kitchen spatulas and told them to scrape away. No health precautions, nothing. He’s a pretty bad guy. Clarke gets along with him though."

"Swaybacked piece of shit was probably the gangster’s favorite horse. What am I going to do?" Walt asked.

"I don’t know, Walt."

Julio was climbing down from the hay loft. He had the knife and pliers, strands of hay were stuck in the blood. He got a shovel and went to the side of the barn and started digging.

Walt began picking up his tools. He was throwing them into the truck. "Be careful, I told him, those things cost a ton of money."

"Don’t matter, this old truck been breaking down all the time anyway."

"I’m not talking about the truck, Walt."

"Oh, the tools," he said. "Been meaning to pay you back. Don’t know if I’ll be able to now."

"How about just not tearing them up?" I said. "That’s a business you’re destroying."

A couple of years ago, he actually had a fairly decent business with a partner named Jimmy Motz. Things were going along and then Walt drove a nail into some colt’s foot and it all went downhill from there. Next thing you know, he’s getting his orders messed up, shoeing horses that don’t need, ignoring the horses that do. He actually boarded a horse for a client of mine. Walt was supposed to take care of the mare for the year until the owner got back from his travels in Europe. The owner goes out to the farm, gets his horse, and the damn thing’s hooves are so long that they curled up like those shoes you see elves wear on cartoons.

"I hire a goddamn blacksmith to board a horse and he can’t even trim the fucking hooves?" the guy screamed at Walt before roaring off in his Jaguar. Shortly thereafter, Walt was fixing the roof above the hay loft and he left a space heater running while he went for a cup of coffee. His partner Motz was none too happy to find their barn and workshop burned to the ground. Walt’s just barely been hanging on ever since then.

He kept on throwing the tools in the truck. Dirt was flying and a storm of birds flew out of the barn, scared of the noise. Julio was again rummaging in his back seat. He pulled out a towel and went to the pump and washed his hands. Then he took off the Winwood Farm shirt he was wearing and put on a red T-shirt. He buried the farm shirt in a pile of manure that was to be burned.

Julio started cleaning out his car. Empty McDonald’s bags, beer cans, wadded-up clothes. Just throwing everything on the ground. "Hey carnál," Julio said to Walt, "you need a beer. Una cerveza." He leaned over into the trunk and got out a cooler, handed it to Walt. I didn’t think alcohol would do him any good but at least he had something else in his hands.

Walt sat down in the stock room on a stack of sweet-feed bags with the cooler between his legs. He opened one of the beers and took a long drink. "You gotta help me," he said. "You know horse people all over the country. You could get me a job shoeing in Saratoga. Maybe even send me out to Santa Anita. Just because nobody’ll hire me around here don’t mean I can’t work."

People were always judging me by Dad’s success. Everything I did had to be perfect. Dad won the Derby three times as a trainer and owner. Every horse he bought seemed to be better than the next. He could do no wrong so I couldn’t either.

Walt opened another beer. "What’s taking Clarke so long?" he asked. "I figured he’d been back up here already. Probably just likes making me sweat."

All the hands had gone home except for Julio. He was still rooting around in his car. He got out and brought a battered soccer ball into the barn and tossed it to me. "Hey, Guapo," he said, "make sure those guys get that will you? I always said I would teach them the real football. Gracias." He walked out and fired up the Camaro. I stood in the barn door and watched him drive off. "Adiós ese!" he shouted above the engine.

Walt and I were all alone on the hill. A horse screamed and Walt spilled his beer. Nobody had done any work because of all the action that afternoon and the mares could see Walt in the feed room. They were pushing at the fence, waiting on their dinner.

No stalls had been cleaned, no trash picked up. I walked to the stall where the horse had been killed. The little black kittens were playing in the mud puddle of blood and licking the stains off each other. The twitch was still where Walt had dropped it.

People gossip in this industry like it’s a small town. The Fasig Tipton sales were coming up. Most of my commissions were coming from that meet.

The sun had started setting behind the barn. Light shone through the windows and cracks into the dusty hallway. Walt was still sitting on the feed bags. A beam of light streamed down the middle of his face as he asked again, "You can get me a job somewhere can’t you? It’ll be all right."

He leaned forward, the light now illuminating the part in his hair. His scalp was white and oily against his sweaty black hair, like a fire-break in a dark forest. I realized I still had the twitch in my hand. Walt said softly, "You can take care of it."

"Tell me what to do," Walt pleaded. I was squeezing the twitch so tightly that my hands hurt.

"Get out of here," I whispered.

"What?" he asked.

"I told you to get out of here."

"But ain’t you gonna help me? You can do something."

"Go, dammit. Just go away, Walt."

I washed the twitch off in the faucet and threw it in a bucket of water sitting on the floor. He finished his beer, picked up the empty cans and his cigarette butts and deposited them in the trash.

We walked outside the barn and Walt shut his squeaky truck door. He started to say something, but I cut him off.

"Don’t call me, Walt. I mean it. I can’t do it this time." He nodded and some country song blared from the radio when he started the truck. The black kittens ran from the roaring engine, crossing in front of the truck and into the field. I reached over and picked up the tool box out of the back of the truck. Walt kind of cocked his head to me, turned the truck radio off, and drove down the hill.

I got a beer out of the cooler and sat in my car. The phone was ringing and I reached over and unplugged it. The yearlings were playing, enjoying the cool dusk. I just sat in the car, drinking the beer and waiting. I was giving him plenty of time. I was afraid that I’d drive away and see his old truck broken down on the side of the road with the hood up. He’d be sitting in the cab with the door open waving to the cars going down the road, waiting. And I’d pass on by.