The first time I laid eyes on Mr. Metaxa—at least, the first time I ever noticed him– was on a rainy afternoon at Bay Meadows in 2008. The wet track was playing to early speed, and a cheap front-runner from Washington state was stealing the last race of the day at 35-1. Evidently Mr. Metaxa had some money on this horse, because he was cheering him on in a trumpet voice that somehow rose above all the echoing tumult of the grandstand. For the last half-mile of the race, he kept up a relentless obscene gloating monologue: “Go, you motherfucker! Kiss my ass, you bastards! Fucking 35-1 longshot! I knew it, I knew I had a score coming! Thirty-five to fucking one!” All about the money, nothing about the horse.
I shook my head and walked away. The horse won by five lengths and paid $72.60 on a $2 ticket.
To be clear, it was the horse that was named Mr. Metaxa. The human’s name was Remi Carson, but I had no way of knowing that at the time; and even after I eventually learned it, he was still Mr. Metaxa to me.
* * *
In those days I was going to tracks all over California–Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields in Northern California, the various county fair tracks scattered around the state, even Santa Anita and Del Mar down south. I kept seeing Mr. Metaxa everywhere. He wasn’t often as obnoxious as he’d been that day at Bay Meadows, but he was definitely loud, opinionated, and foul-mouthed. I saw him nearly come to blows with a wizened older lady over the relative merits of two horses who’d won two races in 49 starts between them. Another time I looked on as he watched the video replay of a race finish three times and still swore that the second-place horse had won.
Eventually, inevitably, I met him. It was at Golden Gate Fields, at the paddock before an allowance race loaded with Southern California runners. We were leaning on the paddock railing a few yards apart, watching the grooms walk the unsaddled horses around.
“You like the five?” he asked me out of nowhere. He was tall and narrow-shouldered, with long wispy greying hair and mustache, wearing an old belted tan raincoat, binoculars around his neck, a clipboard and a copy of the Form in his hand. I guessed his age at forty, a decade younger than me. I hoped I was aging better.
“Native Rose? Not especially,” I said, wary of engaging.
“Why not? McConnell doesn’t ship ‘em up here for fun.” Mr. Metaxa, I would learn later, had an almost superstitious faith in the maneuvers and manipulations of trainers from Southern California.
“Maybe prepping for a turf race later on?” This was me being diplomatic. The horse was at 20-1 on the tote board, which probably overestimated its chances. “I don’t see him lasting nine furlongs on dirt.”
“You fucking serious?” He seemed offended. “He’ll love it here. Brazilian bloodline. And look at the class drop—he’s too good for this bunch. Bam!” He clapped his hands and walked away.
I ended up betting a different longshot, who lost by a neck to the short-priced favorite. Native Rose ran out of the money, but I saw Mr Metaxa cashing a ticket after the race anyway. So either he’d had a change of heart or he’d never really liked the horse in the first place.
* * *
Fifteen years on from that first sighting. Bay Meadows had closed. Golden Gate Fields was on its last legs. Which once would have mattered a lot to me—for years racing had been a big part of my life, a hobby, an avocation, maybe even an obsession. I’d spent a lot of weekend days at the Bay Area tracks, changed my work schedule to see races that mattered to me, built vacations around trips to Churchill Downs, Saratoga, Longchamps. I’d even written a book about horse racing in Gold Rush California. But I was retired now, after forty years as an adjunct professor at UC Santa Cruz, living up north near Eureka, alone after my wife’s death. I hadn’t been to a racetrack in five years.
The reasons? Some of them would have made sense to anyone, some to no one, some just to me. Bottom line, I had trouble thinking of the track as someplace where good things happened, or at least enough good things to make up for the bad things. But finally, on the last day of the summer meeting at the local track, I saw the name of a horse I knew in the entries, and it pushed me to go back and take one more look at the game, relive the experience and see if it still had the power it once did.
Not much in my life had that kind of power anymore. I got through my days (and nights) OK, I paid my bills and read my books, I kept in touch with old friends by email. I spent a lot of time thinking about Camille, but that seemed only right. I figured I could go on for quite a while, I just wasn’t sure why I’d want to.
* * *
Mad River Downs is a half-mile dirt oval squeezed onto the flood-prone littoral of Northern California, just north of Arcata Bay. A tiny grandstand offers some shelter from the coastal fog; the backstretch stables are strung out along a potholed county road. The racing calendar is a sketchy thing—a week here for quarter horses and Arabians, a week there for Appaloosas or bottom-of-the-barrel thoroughbreds, but almost always two weeks in July for the summer meeting. The biggest race of the year, the only one that attracts horses from better tracks, is the Mad River Marathon, which always takes place on closing day, the last Sunday in July.
I spotted Mr. Metaxa as I waited in line to buy a Racing Form. At any racetrack there’s a cadre of serious bettors like him, guys who are earnestly trying to beat the game. They are students of speed figures, thoroughbred breeding, jockey and trainer statistics, equine pharmaceuticals, horseshoe types, and every other kind of data that could possibly give them a betting edge. They’re smarter than the average bettor, though that may be a low bar, and they look down on the crowd with a hauteur that would make Marie Antoinette seem folksy. I used to be one of them.
I was one of them, but I liked to think it wasn’t about money. Not for me at least. It was about the complexity of the problem, the pure athleticism of the horses, the history and pageantry of the sport. There was an elegance to it, even if you had to squint to see past the greed and corruption that follows humans everywhere.
I wasn’t in the mood to deal with Mr. Metaxa. But before I could slip away, he’d seen me. He shuffled over.
“Erikson,” he said jovially, but not as if he actually liked me. It was more that he saw an opportunity for sticking a needle in. “Long time. I thought maybe you were dead.”
“Not quite.” Close, though—five broken bones from the car accident that killed Camille, then covid, then a heart attack, all in the space of three years.
“How long’s it been? Did I see you at the El Camino in 2018?”
“Rings no bells.”
He gave me a skeptical look. “Or was it that time at Santa Anita? That was strange, seeing you there with your wife. What year was that? Beautiful woman. You still married?”
I blinked. That he didn’t know she’d died–well, it wasn’t like we were friends. That he didn’t remember what had happened that day at Santa Anita—possible, but bizarre. “It was 2018,” I told him now. “And she’s dead. Thanks for asking, though.”
“Jesus Christ, Erickson.” He was shocked. I had to give him credit for a normal reaction. “When did that happen?”
“A few months later.” I decided not to wait for his next question. “Auto accident. Drunk driver T-boned us. ”
That silenced him for a bit. “Well, then,” he said finally. “You must be due for some good luck.”
“You think it works that way?”
“It’s like quantum mechanics,” he said. “Sometimes luck’s in waves, sometimes it’s in particles.” He actually got a laugh out of me with that. “You here for the Marathon? I remember you liked that horse—Kingdom.”
“Yeah, here for the Marathon,” I said. “Only reason I came out.” It was a little spooky—that he’d zeroed in on it. Though I was sure he had no idea how conflicted I was about even being there. It wasn’t like I stood to win or lose a fortune, it wasn’t like I’d be heartbroken if my horse lost or ecstatic if he won—but this one race somehow felt like a mirror I had to look into.
I needed to know if I could still care about racing—about anything, really—the way I once had. All the knowledge I had about the sport—the history, the bloodlines, the racecourses past and present; the legendary battles on turf, dirt, and synthetic soil; and above all the horses themselves, from the founding sire Eclipse to the icons like Man o’ War, Native Dancer, Seabiscuit, and Ribot to the modern giants like Secretariat, Seattle Slew, John Henry, Frankel, Zenyatta, Miesque, to the mere mortals I’d seen myself: Best Pal, California Chrome, Silveyville, Hoedown’s Day, Black Jack Road, and of course Kingdom, the horse I’d come out to see today—all that knowledge was still there, and all the memories I’d gathered over the years. But the connection, the electric bond that I’d felt with the races, that was sleeping if not dead.
“Right, Kingdom,” Mr Metaxa said. “Where was it we saw him break a track record?”
“Santa Rosa.”
“Yeah. 2016. Ten to one.” Mr. Metaxa’s memory for race results was uncanny. Though that was an easy one to remember. Kingdom, just a three-year-old then, had streaked away from a legit field of older allowance runners and won by twenty lengths. “That was a long time ago. He’s not going to run like that today. Or pay off like that either.”
“Clearly not.”
“4/5 on the morning line.” He smirked as he recited an old adage: “Never been a man alive, can pay the mortgage at four to five.”
“Who has a mortgage? Not me.” I’d sold the house Camille and I had lived in near Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz. Now I rented a little condo in Fortuna, between the Eel River and the 101 freeway.
“Ten-year-old horse?” Mr Metaxa said. “Hasn’t raced in six months? He’s got no business being odds-on.”
I’d reached the head of the line. I handed over a ten, collected my Form, and showed Mr. Metaxa the headline: KINGDOM RETURNS IN MARATHON. “Beat him if you can. I don’t think you can.”
* * *
The horse’s name was actually My Kingdom For A, but most everyone just called him “Kingdom.” He was a large bay gelding with a white blaze and a freakishly long, full tail. Ten is not so old for a horse, but very old for a racehorse. After that breakout performance at Santa Rosa, he’d won races at major tracks, competed against some top-quality horses, made a lot of money for his connections. I’d gone to his races when I could, followed him in the simulcasts and the Form when I couldn’t.
The win at Santa Rosa was just one reason I had an attachment to him. The other times I’d cashed on him counted too. But even when he lost, it was never for lack of trying. He was not one of those horses who fade in the stretch, or one of those horses who make their run too late. He raced on the lead or close to it all the way, and if someone got by him in the final furlong they didn’t do it without a fight. Winner by a desperate nose, loser by a neck or a head, and often at long odds—the photo finish was his signature.
Even after I’d stopped going to the track, I kept tabs on him. Not to bet, just to appreciate his crazy tenacity. “Loves to win,” handicappers will say about a horse with a record like his–140 starts, 36 wins, in the money 105 times—and that’s fair enough. I’d put it differently, though. He just never gave up. Like most racehorses, he’d slid down the class ladder with age. But he’d continued sound and game, which most horses don’t, and he kept winning. Against the humble competition at Mad River Downs, he was one for one. He’d won the Marathon the year before.
People love horses for different reasons, but the same person can love different horses for different reasons. Out of all the horses I’d gotten attached to over the years, there were two that stood out. Kingdom was one. The other was a filly named Tansonville, whose career was the polar opposite of his—not a long, slow, stubborn fade, but a meteoric rise and a sudden ending. She was a brilliant miler, a half sister to the triple Breeder’s Cup Mile winner Goldikova. Tansonville had won a maiden race and an allowance race at Golden Gate Fields, then an allowance race and a minor stakes at Santa Anita. From there she’d stepped up to a graded stakes, looking to make her mark against some of the best fillies in the country.
I had a tiny ownership share in her, because the principal owner had been a student in one of the classes I taught at UC Santa Cruz, and he kindly let me buy in. I was at Santa Anita with my wife for Tansonville’s last race. Camille had no use for horse racing. If it was up to her, horses would just run around in enormous bluegrass meadows all day long. Humans would feed them and pay their vet bills, but never ride them, let alone race them or bet on them. We’d had plenty of fights about the time and money I spent at the track. But she understood that this was different. We were owners, if only in a small way, and Tansonville was special. When a horse is undefeated, as she was going into that race, it’s easy to imagine more wins, and then more wins after that, a shot at the Kentucky Oaks, the Turf Mile, an Eclipse Award…
We were standing at the rail, a furlong from the finish, as the gate at the top of the downhill turf chute opened. The field sprang out. Tansonville broke quickly, moved to the inside, and dueled for the lead with a little gray filly, Dancing Mistress. They opened up ten lengths on the rest of the field. But turning for home, Tansonville put a foot wrong and stumbled, then pulled up sharply, limping on three legs. The jockey leapt off and tried to hold her still. The field streamed around them; the grey filly romped on to the wire alone.
“Oh no,” Camille said under her breath, and looked at me as if she thought there was some reassurance I could give. There wasn’t much.
Thank God they did not euthanize Tansonville there on the track in front of 30,000 people. She was quiet enough, an outrider holding her by the bridle, as they loaded her into the equine ambulance and drove her away. So at that point I could still hope she’d at least survive, and that’s what I told Camille. But at some level I knew it wouldn’t happen. I’d seen this too often.
We were just turning away from the rail, completely at a loss, when a familiar figure in a tan raincoat came over to us, grinning and holding up a ticket. “Check it out, Erickson. Dancing Mistress to Roman Girl–6-5 exacta. What do you figure that’ll pay?”
“Yeah, I don’t think we care,” I said.
Mr. Metaxa’s face twisted up in puzzlement. Camille looked at him like he was something out of a slasher movie. To her there was no story here but Tansonville’s breakdown. That Mr. Metaxa could be happy with the result was shocking, beyond clueless.
“We were rooting for the filly that broke down,” I said.
He at least knew enough to dial back his glee. “Shame about that. Didn’t look too bad, though. She could be OK.”
“Can we get the hell out of here?” Camille said, and pulled me toward the exit.
That was in the spring of 2018. It was not the last time I went to the track before the accident that killed Camille. But it was the last time I watched a race without noticing the equine ambulance, an ugly white box towed by a pick-up truck, that always follows the field around the racetrack. I was on my feet again just in time for the arrival of covid, but after a bout with the virus and then the heart attack, I’d only ever seen horse racing on a screen. Racing hadn’t killed Camille, and it hadn’t given me the virus or the coronary. But it had certainly killed Tansonville and I didn’t know if I could forgive it for that.
* * *
I didn’t bet the early races on the Mad River card; I was just there for Kingdom and the Marathon. If I’d ever had a good feeling about it, I didn’t now. What if my being there was bad luck for Kingdom, what if he lost, what if he broke down like Tansonville? Stupid thought—I knew that—but there it was.
In the fourth, a race for two-year-old fillies, one of the horses went far wide on the stretch turn—not uncommon at Mad River Downs where the turns are tight because it’s only a half mile track. This filly, though, panicked and veered all the way to the outside rail. Just before impact, the jockey leapt clear and did a neat shoulder roll as he hit the dirt.
Fortunately the rail in that spot was just a light piece of plastic pipe mounted on sawhorses. When the filly tried and failed to jump it, she crashed right through. The crowd gave a collective gasp; the filly scampered off into the barn area.
“Number seven, Arkansas River, just headed back to her stall,” the track announcer said drily, and then went back to his call of the race. The other horses lunged on for the finish line, jostling and straining, as heedless of danger as mountain climbers or race-car drivers. The fallen jockey got to his feet and limped off the track.
* * *
Mr. Metaxa was in the paddock viewing area to watch the horses being saddled for the Marathon. Of the ten there, only three—Kingdom, Penitential, and Rex Quondam—had any experience in a race as long as the Marathon: two miles, four full laps of the track. Of those three, Kingdom looked easily best if he was fit, Rex Quondam figured to give a respectable performance, and Penitential had a chance to carry his early speed all the way.
“Scraping the bottom of the barrel to fill this field,” said one of the other handicappers looking the horses over. At Santa Anita or Belmont there are crowds of these guys around the paddock; at Mad River Downs, there were just Mr. Metaxa, myself, and a couple of other old guys wearing caps from shuttered racetracks—one Longacres and one Bay Meadows. I recognized Bay Meadows—tall, Asian, neatly trimmed beard, button-down shirt– but couldn’t recall if I’d ever known his name. It was Longacres, a chunky white guy with expensive sunglasses, who’d made the bottom-of-the-barrel comment.
“Yeah, pathetic,” Mr. Metaxa said. “I don’t know why I even bother coming out for this. Must be the gourmet food and the dancing girls. Bam!”
Bay Meadows chuckled, looking at him the way people often looked at Mr. Metaxa–bemused.
“The horses don’t know they’re cheap,” I said. “For them it could just as well be the Kentucky Derby.”
“Yeah, well, that might be,” Longacres shrugged dismissively. “They’re dumb fucking horses. Just saying, the betting action’s more exciting with the scratch cards at 7-11.”
“I hate short priced favorites,” Mr. Metaxa said. “Can’t bet on them, can’t bet against them. Look at that arrogant bastard Kingdom–strutting around like, Damn, this is all beneath me.”
“He always did that, even when he was racing in the big leagues,” I said.
“He’s not in the big leagues now. All he’s got to do is look up at the time on the tote board,” Longacres said. “He’s going to be pissed off when he sees how slow he’s gotten. Ten years old… he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t break down.”
I tapped the paddock railing with my fist against that possibility.
“Nice prices on all the other horses. There’s some decent plays in there,” Bay Meadows said. And then to me—“Aren’t you the guy…”
“I might be,” I said. I knew where he was going with this.
“You owned that filly.” He scanned the Marathon horses as they circled the paddock, the grooms barely hanging on to them. In the stalls, the jockeys stood chatting to the trainers, but their eyes were on the horses too.
“Part owner,” I said, holding up a thumb and forefinger half an inch apart.
“Yeah. What was her name?”
“Tansonville.”
“I saw it on the simulcast,” Bay Meadows said. “Sad. Unusual name. English?”
“Place name from a French novel.” The principal owner, the guy who’d let me buy in, wasn’t French, but he was a big fan of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, which had been the subject of a course I taught at UCSC. Tansonville was the country estate where the hero’s first love grew up. “I used to teach lit classes.”
“Wait, what?” Mr. Metaxa jumped in. “You owned that filly?”
I nodded. Surprising that he hadn’t known that—handicappers like to talk about bad things that happen to other handicappers—but then he hadn’t known about Camille’s death either. Anyway, guessing at the contents of Mr. Metaxa’s brain was never a useful activity.
“Damn,” he said, and it seemed like he was going to add something, but just then the call to the post sounded on the PA system. One by one, the jockeys swung up onto their saddles and the horses filed out onto the track for the post parade.
* * *
Mad River Downs Race 9. The Mad River Marathon. 2 miles, for 3 year olds and up. Purse $22,000
MY KINGDOM FOR A broke alertly, dueled with ORBITAL RULER for the early lead, took command entering the stretch for the final time, was headed in the lane, but rallied gamely to narrowly prevail. PENITENTIAL attended the early pace, got the lead at the eighth pole, but could not hold off the winner. REX QUONDAM lagged early, moved up on the final turn, and finished full of run. WHISPERING MOON, off slowly, was flying in the lane. HOLY GOATS raced evenly throughout, but never threatened. ORBITAL RULER dueled early and stopped after a mile. BARN ONE showed brief speed outside. DIAMOND LAKE was no factor. BONE DRY stumbled at the start and lost contact with the field. KOLISKY was always outrun.
50.1, 1:42.2, 2:32.3, 3:32.4 New Track Record
As for me—I’m not usually one of those people, like Mr. Metaxa, who make a big production out of cheering for a horse. It never makes any difference. When Kingdom put Orbital Ruler away entering the stretch, I pumped a fist. When Penitential edged past him, I groaned—that familiar feeling of, It’s not going to happen. But then Kingdom switched leads, put his head down, and slowly pulled even again. Both jockeys went to the whip, though I doubt the horses noticed. Both of them were straining to put the ground behind them, all out like the hard-knocking veterans they were, showing that relentless fire that thoroughbreds have, to run until their hearts burst or their bones shatter. I was screaming then, pounding the top of the fence, feeling just some sliver of their intensity as they swept to the wire with Kingdom a head in front.
* * *
The winner’s circle at Mad River Downs is nothing impressive, just an enclosed space near the finish line with enough room for a horse and a jockey and a few hangers-on– a groom, a trainer, a couple of owners, and occasionally some minor local celebrity—to stand on a grubby square of astroturf and have their pictures taken. Only a chest-high cyclone fence separates the circle from the asphalt apron in front of the grandstand, so any member of the public who cares to see the winner up close can do so. Most don’t, but I always do if it’s a horse I like.
I had a bit of a wait for Kingdom. Normally after they pass the finish line, the horses pull up more or less gradually, continuing on down the track for a ways, then turning and coming back to the finish line to be unsaddled. If they’ve finished full of run, they may go all the way to the backstretch before the jockey can get them to turn around. In Kingdom’s case, he did that, looked back to see he’d left all the other horses behind, then kept on running to complete a full extra lap of the track. The jockey, a weathered, hard-bitten Latino with long hair and a gold tooth, was laughing as Kingdom finally coasted to a stop next to the winner’s circle. I snapped a couple of photos with my phone as the trainer and the groom maneuvered him into the circle.
Then Mr. Metaxa was at my side. “So your boy won.”
“Surprise, surprise,” I said. I was out of breath; my hands hurt.
“He didn’t win like a two-to-five shot is supposed to win.”
“But he won.”
“Two to five.” He was looking at the tote board, not the horse. “Bunch of money came in at the last minute. Was that you, Erickson?”
“Wasn’t me. Like you said, not worth it at those odds.”
Kingdom was still full of energy, tossing his head, wheeling around as they tried to move him onto the astroturf for the winner’s photo. I smiled at that—he’d always been a handful for his riders.
“I had him boxed with the longshots,” Mr. Metaxa said. “Would have been a decent exacta if one of them would have run first or second.”
I nodded, trying not to let him distract me. Kingdom’s jockey almost fell off as the horse reared.
“You know, I feel bad about that time at Santa Anita.”
I finally had to look at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I never knew that filly was yours. Tansonville.”
“O.K.,” I said, only half believing him. “Now you do.”
“And your wife being there. Too bad she had to see that.”
“Yeah, it was.” Tell me something I don’t know, I thought. But he was apologizing, after all, and that was something. “It’s a brutal game sometimes.”
“Still love it just the same,” he said.
I supposed he had that right. Because as much as it hurt me to think about Tansonville, and about Camille even more so, I could still see the beauty of Kingdom making one more trip to the winner’s circle.
A middle-aged woman in jeans and a leather jacket, one of the owners I assumed, hugged the trainer. There’s something about these moments—all you do is buy a ticket, but you feel like you’re involved in the celebration. The woman reached up to high-five the jockey, and Kingdom wheeled away from her, his massive hindquarters swinging right up against the fence where Mr. Metaxa and I were standing. Without even thinking about it, I put out a hand and lightly patted the horse’s flank before it swung back the other way. I felt the net of muscles tense, and Kingdom’s dragon-like head turned to me, threatening a steel-shod kick. I gazed into that dark eye and he turned away again, as if to say, OK. You can touch me. One time only.
I smiled a little at that, and glanced at Mr. Metaxa to see if he’d caught the moment.
No, not really. “So you didn’t bet him?” he asked. “Not even the exacta?”
I had my ticket in my hand. I showed it to him, still watching the scene on the other side of the fence. The groom wrestled Kingdom’s head around until he was in position. The track photographer took the picture; the jockey leapt to the ground; the groom led the horse away.
“What the fuck?” Mr. Metaxa said loudly. “Five dollar win bet? That’s going to pay all of six bucks.”
“I’m not going to cash it.”
“It’s a fucking souvenir?” Evidently I’d committed a faux pas in Mr. Metaxa’s eyes. “Why the hell do you even show up if that’s all you’re going to do?”
“Just came out to see old friends.”
Puzzled laugh from Mr. Metaxa. “Right. Like me, Erickson?”
“Sure,” I said. “Like you, Remi.”
He swore under his breath. We watched Kingdom, still bucking and tossing his head, looking for someone else to race, as the groom led him down the track.
“Think he’ll be back next year?” Mr. Metaxa asked.
“No guarantee,” I said. “But I think we all will.”
Tom Gartner’s fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals, including California Quarterly, The Madison Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Twelve Winters, and Headlight Review. His story “Monica Being Monica” won the JP McGrath Memorial Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in California, just north of the Golden Gate, and works as a buyer for an independent bookstore in San Francisco.