He’d have, maybe, taken a trial trip with one of Razzo’s skins early in the morning after just getting in from Torino at four o’clock in the morning and beating it out to the stables in a cab and then with the dew all over everything and the sun just starting to get going, I’d help him pull off his boots and he’d get into a pair of sneakers and all these sweaters and we’d start out.
“Come on, kid,” he’d say, stepping up and down on his toes in front of the jock’s dressing room, “let’s get moving.”
Then we’d start off jogging around the infield once, maybe, with him ahead, running nice, and then turn out the gate and along one of those roads with all the trees along both sides of them that run out from San Siro. I’d go ahead of him when we hit the road and I could run pretty good and I’d look around and he’d be jogging easy just behind me and after a little while I’d look around again and he’d begun to sweat.
Sweating heavy and he’d just be dogging it along with his eyes on my back, but when he’d catch me looking at him he’d grin and say, “Sweating plenty?” When my old man grinned, nobody could help but grin too. We’d keep right on running out toward the mountains and then my old man would yell, “Hey, Joe!” and I’d look back and he’d be sitting under a tree with a towel he’d had around his waist wrapped around his neck.
I’d come back and sit down beside him and he’d pull a rope out of his pocket and start skipping rope out in the sun with the sweat pouring off his face and him skipping rope out in the white dust with the rope going cloppetty, cloppetty, clop, clop, clop, and the sun hotter, and him working harder up and down a patch of the road. Say, it was a treat to see my old man skip rope, too. He could whirr it fast or lop it slow and fancy.
Say, you ought to have seen wops look at us sometimes, when they’d come by, going into town walking along with big white steers hauling the cart. They sure looked as though they thought the old man was nuts. He’d start the rope whirring till they’d stop dead still and watch him, then give the steers a cluck and a poke with the goad and get going again.
When I’d sit watching him working out in the hot sun I sure felt fond of him. He sure was fun and he done his work so hard and he’d finish up with a regular whirring that’d drive the sweat out on his face like water and then sling the rope at the tree and come over and sit down with me and lean back against the tree with the towel and a sweater wrapped around his neck.
“Sure is hell keeping it down, Joe,” he’d say and lean back and shut his eyes and breathe long and deep, “it ain’t like when you’re a kid.”
Then he’d get up and before he started to cool we’d jog along back to the stables. That’s the way it was keeping down to weight. He was worried all the time. Most jocks can just about ride off all they want to. A jock loses about a kilo every time he rides, but my old man was sort of dried out and he couldn’t keep down his kilos without all that running.
I remember once at San Siro, Regoli, a little wop, that was riding for Buzoni, came out across the paddock going to the bar for something cool; and flicking his boots with his whip, after he’d just weighed in and my old man had just weighed in too, and came out with the saddle under his arm looking red-faced and tired and too big for his silks and he stood there looking at young Regoli standing up to the outdoors bar, cool and kid-looking, and I said, “What’s the matter, Dad?” cause I thought maybe Regoli had bumped him or something and he just looked at Regoli and said, “Oh, to hell with it,” and went on to the dressing room.
Well, it would have been all right, maybe, if we’d stayed in Milan and ridden at Milan and Torino/cause if there ever were any easy courses, it’s those two. “Pianola, Joe,” my old man said when he dismounted in the winning stall after what the wops thought was a hell of a steeplechase. I asked him once. “This course rides itself. It’s the pace you’re going at, that makes riding the jumps dangerous, Joe. We ain’t going any pace here, and they ain’t really bad jumps either. But it’s the pace always—not the jumps—that makes the trouble.”
San Siro was the swellest course I’d ever seen but the old man said it was a dog’s life. Going back and forth between Mirafiore and San Siro and riding just about every day in the week with a train ride every other night.
I was nuts about the horses, too. There’s something about it, when they come out and go up the track to the post. Sort of dancy and tight looking with the jock keeping a tight hold on them and maybe easing off a little and letting them run a little going up.
Then once they were at the barrier it got me worse than anything. Especially at San Siro with that big green infield and the mountains way off and the fat wop starter with his big whip and the jocks fiddling them around and then the barrier snapping up and that bell going off and them all getting off in a bunch and then commencing to string out.
You know the way a bunch of skins gets off. If you’re up in the stand with a pair of glasses all you see is them plunging off and then that bell goes off and it seems like it rings for a thousand years and then they come sweeping round the turn. There wasn’t ever anything like it for me.
But my old man said one day, in the dressing room, when he was getting into his street clothes, “None of these things are horses, Joe. They’d kill that bunch of skates for their hides and hoofs up at Paris.” That was the day he’d won the Premio Commercio with Lantorna shooting her out of the field the last hundred meters like pulling a cork out of a bottle.
It was right after the Premio Commercio that we pulled out and left Italy. My old man and Holbrook and a fat wop in a straw hat that kept wiping his face with a handkerchief were having an argument at a table in the Galleria. They were all talking French and the two of them was after my old man about something. Finally he didn’t say anything any more but just sat there and looked at Holbrook, and the two of them kept after him, first one talking and then the other, and the fat wop always butting in on Holbrook.
“You go out and buy me a Sportsman, will you, Joe?” my old man said, and handed me a couple of soldi without looking away from Holbrook.
So I went out of the Galleria and walked over to in front of the Scala and bought a paper, and came back and stood a little way away because I didn’t want to butt in and my old man was sitting back in his chair looking down at his coffee and fooling with a spoon and Holbrook and the big wop were standing and the big wop was wiping his face and shaking his head. And I came up and my old man acted just as though the two of them weren’t standing there and said, “Want an ice, Joe?” Holbrook looked down at my old man and said slow and careful, “You son of a bitch,” and he and the fat wop went out through the tables.
My old man sat there and son of smiled at me, but his face was white and he looked sick as hell and I was scared and felt sick inside because I knew something had happened and I didn’t see how anybody could call my old man a son of a bitch, and get away with it. My old man opened up the Sportsman and studied the handicaps for a while and then he said, “You got to take a lot of things in this world, Joe.” And three days later we left Milan for good on the Turin train for Paris, after an auction sale out in front of Turner’s stables of everything we couldn’t get into a trunk and a suit case.
We got into Paris early in the morning in a long, dirty station the old man told me was the Gare de Lyon. Paris was an awful big town after Milan. Seems like in Milan everybody is going somewhere and all the trams run somewhere and there ain’t any sort of
