At every weight, the mares did the same thing. They walked up quiet. They waited for the hook without moving a foot. And when I said their names, they put their heads down and leaned into it together, and kept leaning until I told them to stop.
At every weight, Glen’s team did the same thing too. They came in hot and danced. Their hook boy had to work for every hook. And when the hook was set they hit it with everything they had and blew right through the mark.
At eleven thousand there were two teams left. His and mine.
Herb said it into the microphone the way only an old announcer can. “Well, folks. Looks like this one’s going to be decided at the supper table.”
The grandstand laughed. Up there, nobody knew the half of it.
They had a fifteen-minute break while the crew stacked more block. I took the mares to the shade under the big maple at the end of the track and Eli brought two buckets of water and I let them drink a little, not too much.
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My hands were shaking. I had sweat running down under my braid.
Glen walked over. He had a bottle of water in his hand and he held it out to me. I took it. I’ll give him that too.
“You can scratch,” he said. “Nobody’d think less of you. They’ve done more than anybody thought.”
“They’ve done more than you thought,” I said.
He let that sit. “Eleven eight is a lot of weight, Jenna. You’ll hurt them.”
“I’ve been driving them every day since November,” I said. “If they tell me they’re done, I’ll stop them. They haven’t told me.”
He looked at Queenie for a while. Something moved in his face, and then it closed up again.
“Your forty dollars,” he said, and walked back to his team.
Herb called the next weight. Eleven thousand eight hundred pounds.
They’d loaded the boat until the blocks were stacked three high on the back. Glen’s team was up first.
The geldings were wet all over and blowing, and they came at the boat with their heads in the air. The hook boy blew the first hook. The near horse kicked at the evener. He blew the second hook. The grandstand got quiet.
On the third try, the boy got it set and jumped clear, and Glen hollered, and those roans hit the collars like a truck.
The boat jerked. It moved. Ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty. The grandstand was coming up out of its seats.
At about twenty-four feet the off horse lost his footing a little in the soft dirt and threw his head. The near horse felt him go and swung his hip out. And then the whole thing came apart, the way it does with a young team. They spun sideways against the evener, half facing the grandstand, and stopped. Glen hollered at them and they lunged once more and quit.
The tape man walked it out. Twenty-six feet even.