leading their riderless charges through the opening in the fence and out onto the track.
“This is the morning workout,” Callahan said. “Gets the kinks out of the ponies.” He pointed to a
stately-looking cinnamon-brown gelding, frisky and hopping about at the end of its tether. “Keep
your eye on that boy there,” he advised.
“What about him?” I asked.
“That?s one fine horse.”
“Oh.
“If you don?t mind my asking,” he said, “just how much do you know about racing?”
I had been to the horse races twice in my life, both times out in California with Cisco Mazzola, who
loved three things in life:
his family, vitamins, and betting the ponies, and I?m not real sure in what order. Both times I had lost
a couple of hundred dollars I couldn?t afford to lose, making sucker bets. After that, Cisco stopped
inviting me.
I said, “I know the head from the tail and that?s about the size of it.”
“That?s okay,” Callahan said, although he seemed surprised at my ignorance. “Keep your ears open, I
will give you the course.”
Before the day was out, I was to learn a lot about Pancho Callahan and a lot more about racing, for he
talked to me constantly and it was like listening to a poet describe a beautiful woman.
“First, I will tell you a little about Thoroughbreds,” he said. “Thoroughbreds are different from all
other animals. Thoroughbreds are handsome, hard, spooky, temperamental. They are independent and
proud. And they are also conceited as hell because, see, they know how good they are. The jockey, if
he is worth his weight, he takes his kid in tow and he talks to him and he disciplines him around the
track. The trainer may tell the jock how he wants him to run the race, like maybe hold the pony in
until the backstretch or let him loose at the five-eighths pole or the clubhouse turn, like that, but once
that gate opens up, it is just the jock and the horse and that is what it?s all about.”
In the fog, with the sun just beginning to break behind the large water oaks nearby, we could hear the
horses but not see them until they were on top of us. The three-year-old gelding was frisky and playful
and the outrider was having trouble with him. He was snorting and throwing his long neck across the
saddlehorn of the outrider and trying to bite his hand as they galloped past in the fog, which was
eerily magenta in the rising sun?s first light.
It was one hell of a sight. Callahan was right, there was poetry here.
The three-year-old was to become a lot more important than either Callahan or I realized then. His
name was Disaway. And on this particular morning, he wanted to run.
