I walk through the trees to the field where the racetrack is. Cars are parked all over. Culpeper is hot this time of year. The race is called the Virginia Honeysuckle; they say it’s supposed to be dangerous. There’s a boy leant up against a clapped-out truck.
“White people usually don’t come here,” he says.
I catch sight of Callie. She’s wearing green silks, being bunked up on a swishy-tailed mare. My stomach gets tight when I see her. I get in the shade of a rickety stand of bleachers, in the back so I’m hidden. I’ve been following her too long.
“Are you with the white girl?” the boy asks. I nod as if I still am. There are no other white people here.
Girls in dresses sell beer from a long trestle table. Some of the men aren’t walking straight, some lean up on others, mostly they don’t notice me.
“We call her Snow White,” says the boy.
A man lies out on the ground, half beneath the bleachers. He looks like he’s been stabbed with a bottle but no one seems concerned. Horses and jockeys mill around, down one end where a man stands on a chair. The jockeys seem bigger than usual, or maybe the horses are smaller. Some of them are starey coated, some of them aren’t that bad. Callie’s riding short, her knees up around her chin.
I want to be out there with her.
Callie’s been riding races since she got rubbed out from horse shows, but she can’t ride at real racecourses, like Pimlico and Belmont—only men are allowed. She always said one day she’d get a licence, be the first woman jockey. Meanwhile she races at places like this. On my days off I watch her.
A loose horse gallops past, dragging the post it was tied to. It heads through the crush at the starting line. Horses and riders run sideways and some of the jockeys get off. You can’t see much for the dust. Callie stays on board. Her mare is snaky, pinning its ears at the others.
The gun goes off while some of the riders are barely back on, others face the wrong way. Callie breaks out running at the front end. She has racing goggles, the only one who does. But she doesn’t need them, she stays ahead of the dust. Some of the riders are left so far behind they give the whole thing up. A man throws a brick at the starter.
The track is narrow, with roots on the surface and only an inside rail. I recognise Callie’s mare as she passes, low in the middle and high at the ends. She named her “Miss Furs”; her winter coat came out in big patches. I remember when she got her. “Like riding a soup sandwich,” she said. You wouldn’t run a good horse here.
The race becomes a cloud of dust along the back of the field, it passes a clapboard house. I can only see bits and pieces. People begin to crowd forward, pushing up into the stand. Some of them get up on planks between barrels. A man drops his drink and says, “Jesus.”
The horses storm back along the rail, into the rough-stubble stretch. I watch for Callie. I’m the one not shouting. She’s still out in front, she whips the most consistently, each time in the exact same place. “Beating the moths from the sofa,” she calls it.
The boy beside me cranes his neck to see. “She’d make a box spring gallop,” I say, but he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
People drunk with the dust and the beer and the afternoon sun get to their feet and roar with the others who are already standing. Callie wins easily with two lengths to spare. She rides past the prize-giving and straight towards the makeshift grandstand where I hide. She knows she’s not supposed to, but she avoids presentations and ceremonies.
Men and women rattle down the planks to pat the winner and see the white girl close up. Callie jerks the mare in the mouth so she doesn’t bite their outstretched hands. I stay underneath, among the empty cans and bottles, beside the man who’s bleeding and another who’s fallen down drunk. “Be careful, her horse could kick,” I say to the boy. He looks at me suspiciously.
“If you know her so well, why don’t you go over yourself?” he says.
I get glimpses of Callie through the boards and pant legs. I don’t think she sees me. She takes off her goggles and smiles as she talks to each of them; she doesn’t mind if they’re drunk. She likes it here. She’s having more fun than the other times I’ve watched her lately.
One by one the people go back to their drinking, the boy disappears. Callie gets down from the horse and takes off the saddle. No one seems to weigh in or out. Her new groom comes over and takes Miss Furs. He’s already collected the trophy, a cheap beer mug, and a red rosette. Callie jokes with him like he’s her brother, holding his forearm as she talks, the way she used to with Hoofers.
I follow them back to the trailer but I stay in the cover of trees. I know what she’s saying even though I can’t hear. How friendly the people are, how useless the mare is, how she got out first and stayed there. Her hair is standing up and matted from the racing cap. She runs her fingers through it. She didn’t used to care about appearances. I remember how we’d return to the stables at horse shows, how I’d pull off her boot and the sock would come with it. I’d tickle her feet and we’d fall to the ground. It feels good being near her, even if she doesn’t know.
Hoofers is waiting with the car and trailer as though he hasn’t bothered to watch. I didn’t expect him here, didn’t know they were still friends. Callie gets in the front seat with him. I lean up against a tree and watch them as the light fades down around me and shines along the car. They sit until the sky turns purple. I want to go over but I don’t. They laugh and then she kisses him. She puts her face about his cheeks and neck, and then against his mouth. He’s dark against her skin, awkward like they’ve not done it before. It catches my chest and takes the breath from me. I slide down the bark and sit in the dirt, then I get up and I’m walking over to them. I don’t care if they see me.
Hoofers rolls down the window and they look at me like they knew I was coming. “’Bout time you came out of the trees,” says Callie. She turns and sits sideways to face me. Hoofers won’t look, he knows how I feel. He was my friend too. I look at the ground, there’s a bottle in the dirt. I want to pick it up and break it on something.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I say.
“What?” asks Callie.
“Kiss.”
“We knew you were there,” she says, “Your face as white as paint.” I don’t like the way she dismisses it.
“It wasn’t fair,” I say. My voice is brittle, it quavers, my disappointment doesn’t sound good. I wanted to be more resolute.
“You can’t keep following her around,” says Hoofers. “It only makes things worse.”
“Are you still with Buddy Black?” I ask her. I know he travels the horse shows.
“You know that’s not it,” she says. She looks at Hoofers like he’s supposed to say something.
“I’ll have more chance on my own,” she says.
“I thought we’d do that stuff together,” I say.
“We can’t both be women jockeys,” she says.
I stamp the bottle into the dirt, it makes a hollow sound but doesn’t break. The leaves are noisy under my feet, my breathing is loud and deliberate, everything is amplified.
“I’m sorry,” says Callie. She reaches past Hoofers and out the window, with a piece of paper in her hand.
“What’s that?” I ask her.
“My address if you want to write.”
I take the paper and read it. Her writing is scratchy, not like mine. I fold it in half and put it in the pocket of my pants. “I shouldn’t have come to America,” I say.