Cactus Jack Read online

  “Life around here is dry, I don’t know about strange.”

  “I could do a rain dance for you.”

  “Worth a try.”

  She reached over to take the can of beer from him. She had a sip and gave it back. “You going to make it another year?”

  Will was quiet for a time. “That two-year-old I dropped off at Chestnut Field today is half as good as I think he is, I’ll be fine.”

  “Somebody was asking about that colt today.”

  “Well now,” Will said. “That somebody wouldn’t be Reese Ryker, would it?”

  “It would. He came into the bake sale with his brand-new wife. Bought her some strawberry tarts before he made a point of striking up a conversation with me.”

  “Got hitched again, did he?”

  Marian nodded. “And she’s a looker, I can say that. You’d swear she stepped off the cover of Vogue magazine. Pleasant too, spoke with an accent of some kind.”

  “All his wives have looked like that. Must be his magnetic personality. What’d he have to say about the colt?”

  “Asking about your plans for him.”

  “Worried I might be hitching him to a milk wagon, is he?”

  “I don’t believe that’s his concern,” Marian said. “He asked me when you planned to run him. I told him I didn’t know. Which is what I would tell him even if I did know.”

  Will finished his beer and stood up. “You want one of these?”

  “I’ll just keep stealing from you,” she said.

  As he went inside, Marian stood and walked to the deck railing. In the gloaming she could see the mares lounging. Marian had ridden a little as a teenager in camp but in truth she knew nothing about horses, and less than that about thoroughbred racing. In the four years she’d been seeing Will, she hadn’t learned much. As a rule, he didn’t talk about the business end of things. She suspected that was because he was always either broke or close to it and didn’t want her to think he was complaining about his impoverished state. However, she did know that there was a lot riding on the gray colt. She also knew of the unusual circumstances surrounding the animal’s lineage, and why Reese Ryker was so concerned about it.

  Hearing the screen door, she turned. Will walked over to hand her a cold can of beer. He’d brought two after all.

  “Funny thing, I saw that snot Reese Ryker not two days ago,” he said. “I was at the co-op and he was there, talking to the owner. Never said a word to me about the colt. Yet here he is, quizzing you.”

  “You know the man’s ego,” Marian said. She had a sip, wiping her mouth afterward. “He would never let on how you having that horse eats at him.”

  “Never occurred to him that you would tell me?”

  “I said he’s vain, not smart.” Marian sat at the table again. “But he’s bound to have that horse.”

  Will sat down, as well. “He’s not going to get him, not as long as I’m above ground.”

  “Seems to me like a man who’s never heard the word no.”

  “By my count, this is his fourth wife,” Will said. “He must have heard it once or twice.”

  Marian laughed as she drank the beer. Will leaned forward and opened the corner of the box she’d brought with her.

  “So what do we have here?”

  “Low-fat muffins,” Marian said.

  “Christ. No wonder nobody would buy them.”

  “Far be it from you to try one before you start complaining about them,” Marian said. “Have one for breakfast in the morning. Be a change from oatmeal every day, like the doctor prescribed. You did have oatmeal this morning?”

  Will nodded as he took a drink.

  “I wondered,” she went on. “Because I saw a truck just like yours at the grits and grease down the road. Round about seven o’clock.”

  Will looked away a moment. It was nearly full dark now but the heat had barely relented. He glanced at Marian. “Spying on me now?”

  “Hardly,” she said. “I was headed to the church first thing. I guess I could start taking the long way around through Porterville, so I don’t catch you cheating on your diet.”

  “For Chrissakes.”

  Marian took a long drink before returning the beer can to the circle of condensation it had made on the table, placing it precisely in the ring. “So how is the oatmeal down at the Crossroads? I bet it tastes just like bacon and eggs.”

  “It actually kind of reminded me of sausage and eggs.” Will smiled. “Can we get back to where you promised me a rain dance?”

  She watched him in the half light. “You know, if you were half as charming as you think, you’d be twice as charming as you are.”

  “That’s a lot of fractions for an old shit-kicker like me,” Will said. “You’re saying, when it comes to women I’m no Reese Ryker?”

  “You’re no Reese Ryker.” Marian smiled, letting him off the hook. “I wouldn’t be within ten miles of this place if you were.”

  “Good to know.”

  “But you won’t be getting a dance of any kind tonight. I have a meeting in town.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Sure, if you promise to stick to your diet,” she said. “How’s that suit you?”

  “Right down to my boots,” Will said.

  Reese Ryker had indeed been born into it. His great-grandfather, Thomas Ryker, had arrived in Kentucky in the 1850s, coming out from Massachusetts with a new wife in a wagon and seven thousand dollars in a valise. He bought eight hundred acres of forest in Fayette County. Land in Kentucky was cheap then, and even cheaper yet when it was still nothing but trees. Ryker purchased eleven slaves at auction in Nashville and within three years had cleared the property, built a two-story house, and was raising crops, mainly rye and barley and corn. In 1859 he started the distillery that carried his name. When the war started two years later, he stood, as a man with eleven slaves would be inclined to do, with Leonidas Polk when he advocated secession. When that failed, Thomas remained on the fence for the duration, although family history insisted that he spent an evening in his own living room drinking bourbon with Nathan Bedford Forrest. Of course, if every southern gentleman who claimed to have pulled a cork with Forrest was telling the truth, it’s doubtful that the general would have found time to do all the fighting that it was generally acknowledged he did. Not only that, but it’s doubtful his liver would have lasted through Shiloh.

  Thomas Ryker Jr. eventually took over the estate, which continued to prosper even when it became necessary to pay the workers. The distillery produced very good bourbon, considered high end, even in a state known for the liquor. The plant required corn and lots of it, and in 1912 Ryker Jr. was able to buy an additional five hundred acres, which upon his death in 1948 became the realm of his oldest son, Thomas III. At that time the Ryker name was associated mainly with the distillery, although the farm had continued to thrive.

  Things took a downturn under Thomas III, who was a habitual gambler, a relentless drunk, and somewhat lazy to boot. Backed by what he mistakenly assumed to be an unlimited supply of capital, he married and divorced twice, spent weeks on end in Las Vegas, and left the running of the distillery and farm to underlings, some of whom were not particularly scrupulous about the accounts. When the cat’s away and all that. By the time the second wife had left, with her own allotment of money, Thomas III was destitute to the point where he had to sell the distillery to a French consortium famed for its brandy. Thomas was also obliged to sell nearly all of the acreage accrued by his father and grandfather, retaining only ten acres surrounding the red brick mansion, built in 1899 on the original homestead.

  By 1960 Thomas III was down to his last copper. He considered himself Kentucky royalty and could still play the part fairly well; he had a 1959 Cadillac convertible, unpaid for, and a fine wardrobe he’d bought back when he still had a few dollars in the bank. But his socks had holes in the toes and he owed nearly everybody within a hundred-mile radius—grocers, mechanics, the power company, and of course t
he bank. He was suffering from a deep depression and would from time to time find himself staring at the Navy Colt that had been owned, but never used, by his grandfather during the Civil War. However, it took skill to load the ancient cap and ball revolver, and courage to use it. It seemed he was lacking in everything.

  He nearly begged off going to the Lexington Hospital Foundation Gala that spring, a fundraising dinner he had attended for years, usually with his wife of the time. But serendipity took a hand; had he stayed at home in his misery and self-pity, he would never have made the acquaintance of Shirley Reese, daughter of Frank Reese, founder and sole owner of Reese Department Stores, with over six hundred stores in forty-eight states. Not only would Thomas not have met Shirley Reese, he would not have asked her out to dinner the following night and several more times over the following weeks, and he would not have, obviously, married her that fall, in a small ceremony at the Ryker estate. Shirley was an only child, as luck would have it, and was considered somewhat plain in appearance and pathologically shy in public. These traits were of little concern to Thomas III. He found Shirley to be sweet and deferential and compliant. He also found her to be in line for an inheritance of around two billion dollars. If it wasn’t a match made in heaven, it was close enough for Thomas III.

  Thomas and Shirley had two children. Linda was born in 1962 and Reese the following year. Reese was of course named for his mother’s family, in part to assuage the considerable concerns that Frank Reese entertained over the fact that his daughter had married an alcoholic spendthrift who might, when in his cups, be inclined to bet against the sun coming up tomorrow, if the odds were tempting enough.

  Thus the fortunes of the Ryker name were once again reversed. Young Reese grew up on the old estate. His mother, who beneath her timid exterior was a woman with ambition and spirit, oversaw a complete restoration of the house and grounds. She had loved horses as a child, and with her father’s passing in 1979, she and Thomas (she for the most part) decided to go into the thorough-bred business. More acreage was purchased, miles of white fencing erected; new barns were built, as were foaling sheds and a large training facility. The business was an iffy proposition, no matter how well backed financially, and Ryker Racing International had an uninspiring first two decades. Shirley enjoyed going to the track and watching her horses run; she was not obsessed with winning and could afford to lose. Thomas III couldn’t care less. His coffers refilled, he went back to his vagabond ways. He died in 1999 and Shirley, mourning the man who she had loved as much as an absentee husband could be loved, had turned to Reese to run the stable. Linda had married a software engineer and moved to California. Reese had graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in business and dabbled in several start-ups, all financed by his mother and none particularly successful—a Jaguar dealership, a high-end restaurant called Reese’s, a pipeline proposal that went nowhere but cost the family three million dollars in development fees.

  So, at the age of forty, Reese took over the stable, renaming it Double R Racing. He suffered from his father’s limited attention span, and so horse racing became the latest shiny thing to land on his radar. For whatever reason—possibly the fact that the actual work required to own a stable was not especially exerting—he took to the task. He took to traveling to all the venues where the biggest races were run—Louisville of course, New York, Baltimore, Dubai, California. He changed the way he dressed, he changed his speech, playing up the Kentucky accent he once had attempted to hide, and he changed his wife—three times. Yet for all his posing, he never felt accepted by the other big owners, the people who had been in the game for years and who, more significantly, had all won important races. Reese came to realize that he was a pretender. In fact, his second wife called him that as she was walking out the door. But he accepted the term (it was actually less painful than the terms of the divorce). He also knew that a pretender needed a crown. The crown Reese wanted was the Kentucky Derby.

  Toward that end, he began to spend money, which the family still had in abundance, despite Reese’s poor marital record. He hired one of the best trainers in the country, a taciturn type named Joe Drinkwater, and under his guidance he bought yearlings at the annual sales in Kentucky, Canada, and Florida—as many as fifty in a single year. Ryker horses began to win and the stable actually began to make money, finishing place or show in Triple Crown races seven times over a period of four years. But never first.

  However, Reese was convinced that the day was coming. Ryker Racing was just one piece of the puzzle away from breaking through. Then, quite unexpectedly, that piece became available. Humphrey Brown, the billionaire Kentuckian and thoroughbred racing scion, with over a hundred Grade One victories to his credit, had announced that he would, upon turning eighty, be getting out of the business. Apparently he was determined to follow Warren Buffett’s lead and give away as much of his money as he could in the time he had remaining. That meant that he would be selling off his entire stable, the jewel of which was a horse that was considered the top breeding stallion in the world—Saguaro. The seven-year-old had four years earlier finished second in the Derby, first in the Preakness, and second once again in the Belmont. The following year, the horse won the Breeders Cup Classic and was then retired to stud. Double R Racing put in a preemptive bid and was able to buy the stallion for twenty-eight million dollars. For a horse that commanded a quarter-million dollars for a single stud fee and one that would breed as many as a hundred or more mares a year, the price was not exorbitant, especially when it seemed to deliver, at long last, Reese’s promotion from pretender to player.

  They had acquired Saguaro three years earlier and that first spring had bred a dozen Ryker mares to the stallion. Of these, one showed such promise that even Joe Drinkwater had been seen smiling in the foal’s vicinity. The colt, which they named Ghost Rider, was a mirror image of its sire. In Reese’s fertile imagination, the animal was already the number one contender for the Triple Crown, even though the first of the three races, the Derby, was ten months away. But the two-year-old had already run five races—and won all five with blazing speed and unexpected stamina for an animal that young.

  Five years earlier Reese’s mother, feeling that Reese needed a real job, one with duties consisting of more than hanging around racetracks and acting a role, had purchased a television station— WTVK—in Louisville for him to run. It had been decided that Reese’s title would be CEO. The studios and office space were on the outskirts of the city, near the airport. Reese had a spacious office on the top floor. At first he had gone there every morning, for a half day at least. The half days eventually turned into an hour or so, and then only once or twice a week. The station had been basically a turnkey operation when acquired, which meant that he had little to do there, although he liked to be involved with the hiring of the on-air talent. In fact, his third wife had been the anchor of the six o’clock news when he met her.

  It was a forty-five-minute drive from the Ryker estate to the station. The day after buying the strawberry tarts from Marian at the church bazaar, Reese arrived there shortly past ten in the morning. He shared the top floor with Burt Collingwood, the station manager. There was a foyer, where the receptionist was, and two large offices, one on each side of the building. The interior walls were all of glass.

  Burt was not in his office when Reese stepped off the elevator, but then he rarely was, spending most of his day in the studios below. The receptionist, also secretary to both Reese and Burt, was new. She was short and quite heavy, wearing a dress with a floral print. Reese stopped when he saw her.

  “Good morning,” she said, her voice a tentative singsong. If Reese had been more perceptive, he might have recognized the uncertainty in her tone, typical of someone very young starting a new job. Reese was not that perceptive.

  “Where’s Paulina?”

  “Oh,” the woman said. “She’s not here anymore.”

  “I can see she’s not here,” Reese said. “If she was here, she’d
be here. Right?”

  The woman offered a weak smile, in case Reese happened to be joking. “I’m Michelle. You are Mr. Ryker, I know.”

  Reese had liked Paulina, although he’d never really gotten to know her. But she was of a type he liked. Tall and athletic. And she had a great ass. He frequently married such women.

  “Do you have my messages?” he asked.

  “I don’t think there are any.”

  He went into his office without another word and sat at his desk for an hour, watching TV, flipping from ESPN to the news stations, mostly CNN because they had the best-looking correspondents. Reese wondered where Paulina had gone and why he hadn’t been informed that she was leaving. He had hired her himself; she’d been working at a steakhouse downtown as a hostess and mentioned that she was looking for something else. After flirting with her for a month, Reese had created the job and offered it to her. Before that, both he and Burt had used the receptionist in the main foyer on the ground floor.

  He watched the news a while longer. From time to time he harbored vague ambitions of running for office. He thought he might like to be a state senator, or even a US senator, but that would require a move to Washington. Either notion would have to wait. Since the purchase of Saguaro and the emergence of Ghost Rider as a horse to be reckoned with, Reese had spent most of his mental energy fantasizing about what the colt would accomplish in a year, when the animal would race as a three-year-old.

  Thinking about it now, he turned off the winsome women of CNN and left the office, thinking he would go to Churchill Downs, where Joe Drinkwater would be working the colt. The company currently had a dozen horses at the track.

  “I’m gone for the day,” he told the receptionist.

  He took the elevator to the ground floor, where he found Burt Collingwood in the studio, going over some station logo artwork with a man in jeans and a faded hoodie.

  “I was going to bring these up,” Burt said when he saw Reese. “This is Jared Ross. These are the new logos we commissioned.”