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PART II OF A THREE PART STORY

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The next evening, Fate came back to Fort Stockton wearing rhinestones.

This was not entirely unusual. Fort Stockton had seen Fate dressed as drought, foreclosure, marriage, divorce, football, livestock, Internal Revenue Service correspondence and, on one memorable occasion, a suspiciously inexpensive shrimp buffet. But rhinestones were new. So was the white 1976 Cadillac Eldorado convertible pulling a red-and-white horse trailer.

The rig came west through town shortly before sundown, Cadillac first and horse second, which was probably the proper order if you had paid for both. The Eldorado was Cotillion White and roughly the length of a municipal bond issue, with red pinstriping, a white convertible top, chrome enough to signal aircraft, and wide whitewall Vogue tires rolling beneath wheel covers that looked suitable for serving Thanksgiving dinner. Behind it came a custom horse trailer painted brilliant red with white fenders, Cadillac emblems and a white canvas top stretched over a rounded frame. It had its own wide whitewall tire and enough chrome to suggest the horse inside had retained counsel.

The combination turned into the Cattle Baron Hotel.

People looked.

This was unavoidable.

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A 1976 Eldorado was not so much parked as docked. Cadillac had built it in that final, glorious period when Detroit still believed petroleum was being manufactured continuously beneath Oklahoma and that the average American family required an automobile with sufficient hood acreage to qualify for agricultural subsidies. Beneath that hood was a 500-cubic-inch V8 rated at 190 net horsepower and 360 pound-feet of torque, figures that demonstrated just how effectively the federal government and emissions equipment could turn seven or eight liters of American displacement into the performance characteristics of a courthouse.

Still, it was magnificent.

The driver’s door opened.

Then Palomino Patty got out.

There are women who enter a town and there are women who require the town to make room.

Patty was perhaps fifty, although determining her age was difficult because several decades appeared to have reached a confidential settlement. Her hair was an architectural achievement of blond curls piled high enough to require FAA notification. She wore a white Western blouse decorated with red roses and rhinestones, a red fringed skirt, white boots, a turquoise belt buckle approximately the size of Delaware, and enough silver jewelry to cause fluctuations in the commodities market.

She had the voluptuous confidence of a nightclub singer, the posture of a woman raised around horses and the makeup of someone who understood that subtlety was invented by people without adequate lighting.

She opened the trunk.

Two suitcases came out.

Both had rhinestones.

Because of course they did.

Inside the Cattle Baron lobby, the desk clerk looked up from the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and watched Patty approach.

“Need a room, sugar.”

“One night?”

“Honey, at my age I don’t promise anything past breakfast.”

The clerk pushed the register toward her.

“Name?”

“Palomino Patty.”

He waited.

“So that’s what your mama named you?”

“No. That’s what I corrected it to.”

The clerk decided that covered the legal requirements.

Twenty minutes later Patty had carried her bags upstairs, refreshed her lipstick and returned to the parking lot to check the horse.

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She opened the rear door of the trailer.

“How we doing, Sugarfoot?”

There came the soft movement of hooves against wood.

Patty reached inside, stroked the animal’s nose and checked its water.

“Don’t worry. Mama’s just going across the street for one.”

Sugarfoot had apparently heard this before.

Patty closed the trailer.

Across the street, the Lucky Lady was beginning another evening of protecting Fort Stockton from the dangers of sobriety.

Lucinda was there because Grounds for Divorce had closed early after Delgado discovered something leaking beneath the grill that neither of them could identify without violating several provisions of the county health code. Delgado had accompanied her because, in his words, if the restaurant exploded he wanted to be somewhere with whiskey.

Trixie was already at the bar.

Chad was beside her.

This was the second consecutive night Chad had occupied the Lucky Lady, which was beginning to raise questions about the managerial rigor presently being applied at the Piggly Wiggly.

Hank was behind the bar.

“You’re here again,” he said.

“I’ve had a difficult week.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

The front door opened.

Four heads turned.

Palomino Patty entered the Lucky Lady.

The jukebox was playing Waylon Jennings. Smoke hung in the yellow light above the bar. Beer signs glowed against dark paneling. Somewhere near the pool table somebody broke a rack, and the balls scattered with the sound of distant gunfire.

Patty paused inside the doorway.

Trixie looked her over.

Patty looked Trixie over.

For perhaps three seconds the combined hair volume of the two women altered the atmospheric pressure inside the building.

Then Patty smiled.

“Evening.”

Trixie nodded.

“Evening.”

An understanding passed between them. Whatever differences existed between the Klip-N-Dye and whatever institution had produced Palomino Patty, both women recognized a fellow professional.

Patty took the empty stool beside Chad.

“What’ll you have?” Hank asked.

“Bourbon.”

“Which one?”

“The kind that makes men improve with distance.”

Hank poured.

Nobody asked who she was.

That was the thing about the Lucky Lady. A stranger could sit at the bar for half an hour without anybody asking a personal question, but if he ordered a vodka tonic somebody would eventually want to know what the hell was wrong with him.

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Chad was midway through telling the others about the Russian.

“You should’ve been here last night.”

“I was in Van Horn.”

“Then you missed it.”

“I gathered that.”

“A cosmonaut.”

Patty turned slightly.

“A what?”

“Russian cosmonaut. Sat right there.”

Chad pointed to the stool beside him.

Patty looked at it.

“Right there?”

“Right there.”

“What was he doing in Fort Stockton?”

Chad stared at her.

“Nobody knows.”

“Fair enough.”

It was, in fact, the most satisfactory answer anyone had yet offered.

Chad continued.

He told them about Valeri Kubasov. About Soyuz 11. About the X-ray four days before launch. The shadow on Kubasov’s lung. The fear of tuberculosis. The Soviet rule that removed the entire prime crew when one man was medically disqualified.

Lucinda had heard pieces of it earlier that day but not the whole story.

Delgado listened quietly.

Trixie stopped examining her fingernails.

Patty sipped her bourbon.

Chad told them how Kubasov’s grounding had put Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev aboard Soyuz 11 instead.

How they had lived aboard Salyut 1.

How they came home.

How the capsule landed perfectly.

How everybody inside it was dead.

When Chad finished, nobody spoke for a few seconds.

Hank wiped the bar.

Lucinda shook her head.

“My God.”

Trixie looked down into her drink.

“Imagine living with that.”

Delgado said nothing.

Then Patty set down her bourbon.

“That ain’t nothin’.”

Everybody turned.

Chad blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“My great-granddaddy was the only man in history ever won a horse race dead.”

There are statements for which ordinary conversation provides no adequate preparation.

This was one of them.

Hank stopped wiping.

Lucinda slowly turned her stool.

Trixie’s eyebrows rose.

Delgado looked toward the ceiling, perhaps checking whether the building had developed another leak.

Chad stared at Patty.

“Dead?”

“Deader’n Elvis.”

“And he won?”

“By a head.”

Hank placed both hands on the bar.

“I believe I’m going to need you to start over.”

Patty smiled.

And she did.

His name, she said, was Frank Hayes.

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On June 4, 1923, Hayes was twenty-two years old and working around horses. He was primarily a stable hand and trainer, not an established professional jockey, although he wanted desperately to become one. He knew horses. He understood them. What he did not possess was the smallness generally considered desirable in someone intending to sit on one professionally while it ran very fast.

So he lost weight.

A lot of it.

Quickly.

Patty described starvation dieting and brutal exercise. Contemporary accounts later said Hayes had dropped more than ten pounds shortly before the race to make 130 pounds. What precisely killed him would become the subject of conflicting reports, although the prevailing explanation became heart failure brought on by the strain of the race combined with the punishment he had inflicted on his body to make weight. 

Lucinda frowned.

“How fast did he lose it?”

“Fast.”

“That’s dangerous.”

“Apparently.”

Delgado looked at Lucinda.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Man died.”

“I understand that.”

“Then I believe diagnosis has been confirmed.”

Patty continued.

The horse was named Sweet Kiss.

Trixie smiled.

“That’s pretty.”

“Wait.”

Sweet Kiss was a twenty-to-one long shot.

On that June afternoon at Belmont Park in New York, Hayes climbed aboard for what would become his first winning race and, through circumstances he could not possibly have anticipated, his last. Guinness World Records identifies Hayes as the first deceased jockey to win a race and records the event on June 4, 1923. 

The horses started.

Sweet Kiss ran.

Frank Hayes rode.

Somewhere toward the end of the steeplechase, Hayes suffered a fatal heart attack.

He died.

But he did not fall off.

That was the part that settled over the Lucky Lady.

The horse kept going.

The dead man remained in the saddle.

Together they cleared the final fence.

Trixie stared at Patty.

“No.”

“Yep.”

“Dead?”

“Dead.”

“Over a fence?”

“Over a fence.”

Delgado considered this.

“That is commitment.”

Lucinda slapped his arm.

“What?”

“You can’t say that.”

“Why?”

“Because he was dead.”

“Then he cannot complain.”

Even Patty laughed.

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Sweet Kiss charged toward the finish with Hayes still aboard. Whatever balance, saddle, stirrups, momentum and providence were required to keep him there, they did. Horse and rider crossed the finish line first.

By a head.

A twenty-to-one horse.

A dead jockey.

A victory.

Guinness’ account says Hayes remained aboard through the final jump and finish, then reportedly fell from the saddle about a hundred yards beyond the finish near the judges’ stand. Track physician Dr. John A. Voorhees examined him and pronounced him dead. The result nevertheless stood. 

Nobody at the Lucky Lady said anything for a while.

Then Chad asked the question.

“So did he get paid?”

Lucinda closed her eyes.

“Chad.”

“I’m just asking.”

“The man was dead.”

“I know. That’s why I’m asking.”

Trixie turned toward him.

“Who exactly do you think they would’ve handed the money to?”

“His family.”

“Eventually.”

“Then he got paid.”

“His family got paid.”

“Same difference.”

“It is absolutely not the same difference.”

Hank leaned over the bar.

“You’re arguing about payroll administration for a dead jockey in 1923.”

Chad thought about it.

“That’s fair.”

Patty took another sip.

“There wasn’t even the usual weigh-in afterward.”

“Why not?” Chad asked.

Four people looked at him.

He raised both hands.

“Fine.”

Patty explained that the race result was declared official without the customary post-race weighing. Hayes was buried three days later at Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn, reportedly wearing his racing silks. Six friends at his funeral wore silks as well. 

Then she got to Sweet Kiss.

The mare never raced again.

“And,” Patty said, “they say afterward folks called her the Sweet Kiss of Death.”

Delgado slowly set down his glass.

“That is a terrible name for horse.”

“Accurate, though,” Chad said.

Lucinda pointed at him.

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Whatever you’re about to say.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Your face was.”

Hank brought Patty another bourbon without being asked.

Trixie studied her.

“So he really was your great-grandfather?”

Patty hesitated just long enough to make the answer interesting.

“That’s what my grandmother always said.”

That was sufficient genealogy for the Lucky Lady.

Outside, darkness had settled over Fort Stockton.

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Across the street, beneath the lights of the Cattle Baron parking lot, the long white Cadillac waited with its red trailer attached behind it. The Eldorado looked faintly ridiculous hitched to a horse trailer, but only because ordinary automobiles had trained people to think too small. The Cadillac had a 500-cubic-inch engine, front-wheel drive, four-wheel disc brakes, automatic climate control, power windows, power locks, cruise control and enough red leather inside to upholster a respectable steakhouse.

The red leather was cracked in places.

The clock didn’t work.

Neither did the rear-seat window controls.

Cold air refused to come from the upper vents.

The power antenna stayed down despite the radio functioning perfectly.

In other words, it was a Cadillac.

Trixie followed Patty’s gaze through the window.

“That’s yours?”

“Sure is.”

“What’s in the trailer?”

“Horse.”

Chad turned.

“You pulled a horse trailer with an Eldorado?”

Patty looked offended.

“Honey, it’s got five hundred cubic inches.”

“Front-wheel drive.”

“Five. Hundred. Cubic. Inches.”

Chad recognized the universal American principle that displacement ended arguments and withdrew his objection.

“What kind of horse?”

“Palomino.”

Lucinda smiled.

“So that’s where the name comes from.”

“No.”

Everybody waited.

Patty drank.

Nobody asked.

Some questions improve with neglect.

Chad eventually returned to the subject of Frank Hayes.

“I still don’t see how he stayed on.”

“Nobody does,” Patty said.

“Maybe his feet caught in the stirrups.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe he died later than they thought.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe the horse knew.”

That silenced them.

It was Delgado who finally spoke.

“Horses know things.”

Lucinda looked at him.

“You have horses?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know?”

“I have met horses.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“And they told you things?”

“They did not have to.”

Hank nodded.

“That’s pretty solid evidence.”

The jukebox changed songs.

Someone at the pool table cursed.

A bottle opened with a metallic snap.

And Fate, having been invited back into the conversation, took the empty stool among them.

The night before, it had been an X-ray.

A tiny shadow.

A mark on one man’s lung that doctors believed might be tuberculosis. It wasn’t. But because somebody saw it, because somebody worried about it, because Soviet rules demanded three men rise or fall together, one crew stayed on Earth and another went into space.

Three men lived.

Three others died.

Tonight Fate had chosen a horse.

Or a saddle.

Or a stirrup.

Or perhaps a young man’s refusal to surrender the one thing he desperately wanted because his body happened to weigh too much.

Frank Hayes had starved himself for a chance to ride.

He got the chance.

Then he died during it.

Then he won.

There was something almost offensive about the sequence.

Fort Stockton understood that sort of thing better than it liked to admit. Out here, people had always lived close enough to weather, cattle, machinery and bad judgment to know that cause and effect occasionally lost track of each other. A man could do everything right and lose everything. Another could make every wrong decision available and live to ninety-two.

Sometimes the fence broke.

Sometimes the horse stumbled.

Sometimes the horse carried you home.

Sometimes it carried you across the finish line after you were already gone.

Trixie broke the silence.

“So what happened to the Russian?”

“Went back to the motel,” Chad said.

“Think he’s still in town?”

“No idea.”

Patty smiled.

“Shame. I’d like to meet him.”

Lucinda laughed.

“I’d pay money to hear that conversation.”

“What would I say?”

“Apparently you’d tell a cosmonaut who lost three friends in space that your great-granddaddy could beat them all at dying.”

Patty considered it.

“Well, mine won.”

Lucinda stared at her.

Then Patty started laughing.

Trixie followed.

Hank bent forward against the bar.

Even Delgado surrendered.

Chad tried not to.

That lasted perhaps four seconds.

It was an awful thing to laugh at.

Which was why, once it started, nobody could stop.

Eventually Patty slid off the stool.

“Well, ladies. Gentlemen. I got a horse across the street who’s gonna start filing complaints.”

She placed some bills on the bar.

Trixie glanced toward the Cadillac.

“You driving tomorrow?”

“West.”

“Where?”

Patty shrugged.

“Wherever Sugarfoot points.”

She walked toward the door, rhinestones flashing beneath the Lucky Lady’s tired lights.

Chad called after her.

“Patty.”

She turned.

“If that horse ever wins a race, make sure you’re alive when it happens.”

Patty smiled.

“No promises, sugar.”

The door closed behind her.

They watched through the front window as she crossed the street toward the Cattle Baron, white boots moving beneath the motel lights. She disappeared briefly behind the enormous Eldorado, then reappeared beside the trailer.

A moment later the rear door opened.

The horse shifted inside.

Patty stood there stroking its nose.

For all her rhinestones and hair and nightclub bravado, she became very still around the animal.

That was something horses did to people.

Maybe because horses did not care what story you told about yourself.

Maybe because they had their own.

The next morning, the Cadillac and trailer were gone.

There was no ceremony.

No explanation.

Only two long tire tracks through a patch of dust at the edge of the Cattle Baron lot and, near one of them, a small crescent-shaped hoofprint.

By breakfast, Chad had already told the story twice.

By lunch, Frank Hayes had become Patty’s grandfather instead of great-grandfather.

By supper, Sweet Kiss had won by three lengths.

Fort Stockton was doing its part for history.

But the important pieces remained.

June 4, 1923.

Belmont Park.

Frank Hayes.

Sweet Kiss.

A twenty-to-one long shot.

A young man who wanted badly enough to become a jockey that he tortured his body to make weight, climbed onto a horse, suffered a fatal heart attack somewhere along the course and nevertheless crossed the finish line ahead of everybody else.

The strangest part was not that he died.

Everybody does that eventually.

The strangest part was that Fate, having already taken everything Frank Hayes could possibly lose, apparently decided to give him the race anyway.

And somewhere west of Fort Stockton, a Cotillion White Cadillac Eldorado rolled toward the horizon pulling a red horse trailer, carrying Palomino Patty and Sugarfoot toward whatever came next.

Five hundred cubic inches up front.

One horse out back.

And Fate riding somewhere in between.

Nobody had thought to ask whether it was wearing a seat belt.

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