Big Horse

Chapter One It was raining and still dark when I got to the barn.The barn was located behind the Oklahoma training track at Saratoga Race Course.Saratoga is in upstate New York. The training track had been named in the early years, when people had to walk rather than drive to reach it, and its distance from the main track made it seem as remote as Oklahoma.I squished through the mud, amid dark silhouettes of horses. It was 6 A.M. on the Monday of the last week of July 2003 -- the first week of Saratoga's six-week racing season. It also was the first time in more than thirty years that I'd been in the Saratoga stable area."Can I help you?""I'm looking for Mr. Johnson.""What the hell for?"The voice was like sandpaper. The speaker was a short man with rounded shoulders. He was wearing a rain jacket and baseball cap, and standing, stooped, beneath a wooden overhang in front of a stall about halfway down the shed row. I hadn't seen him since 1971, and I hadn't actually met him even then, but I knew this had to be P.G."I called you last night," I said. "You told me I could meet you here this morning.""Why would I have said that? Oh, Christ, you must be the guy I'm supposed to be nice to so my daughter doesn't lose her goddamned job."I could hardly see him in the dark, through the rain."If you have any questions," he said, "I'll try to answer them. If it's not inconvenient, I might even tell you the truth. But I hope you don't have too many. Ocala's my assistant, but don't bother him, he's a son of a bitch. And try to stay out of the way. I'm a working horse trainer, not a goddamned tourist destination."He turned, and started to shuffle back toward the end of the barn, to the small, dirt-floored cubicle that served as his office at Saratoga."I wanted to meet you thirty-two years ago," I called after him."You're late.""The first time I ever bet a hundred dollars was on a horse of yours. 1970. It was the day of the Travers. Cote-de-Boeuf. Jean Cruguet rode him. Four to one in the morning line. He finished out of the money.""You shouldn't bet. I quit that foolishness years ago.""Later on, can I see Volponi?""Yeah, but for Christ's sake don't try to pet him, unless you want to start typing with your toes." Copyright 2004 by Joe McGinniss Chapter Two I was born in New York City in 1942, the year P. G. Johnson bought his first horse. My father's father, an MIT graduate, had been an architect in Boston. My mother's father, an Irish immigrant, had been a New York City fireman. Given such a disparity in bloodlines, if they'd been Thoroughbred horses, my parents would not have been bred to each other. As it was, the results were problematic.We lived in an apartment in Forest Hills, Queens. My father -- who had lost both his parents in the influenza epidemic of 1918, when he was two -- was not a physically active man, but he did enjoy listening to sporting events on the radio.I remember Red Barber describing Cookie Lavagetto's two-outs-in-the-ninth pinch-hit double off the Ebbets Field right-field wall that not only gave the Brooklyn Dodgers a stunning 3-2 victory, but deprived Yankees pitcher Bill Bevens of the first no-hitter in World Series history. That was in 1947, when I was four.I also remember my father and I listening to Clem McCarthy's call of the 1948 Kentucky Derby, won by Citation, Eddie Arcaro aboard, with Calumet stablemate Coaltown finishing second.My father -- who had attended MIT, but had not graduated -- did well enough in his business of preparing blueprints for New York City architects to enable us to move to a new home in Rye, in Westchester County.There, on black-and-white TV, I not only saw Bobby Thompson's home run in 1951, but I watched Dark Star beat Native Dancer in the 1953 Kentucky Derby. I also remember seeing Nashua beat Swaps in the 1955 maMcGinniss, Joe is the author of 'Big Horse', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743260794 and ISBN 0743260791.