Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan

Author:Kathryn Scanlan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811223201
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2022-08-09T15:33:33+00:00

YOU CAN’T BLAME A MAN

Bob Bozeman was an owner who’d been a jockey. He weighed maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. His wife Charlene was a big woman with blonde, fluffy, weird hair like a movie star’s. They had two grown daughters and then they had a little gal, Bebe, who was an accident — Charlene got pregnant when she was forty-four years old. The squirt was spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. She was a little friend who’d help me sometimes with the horses.

Bob was a big gambler, a little shaky. I was happy because I had a good stable of his horses to train, but he’d always put the screws to me. When he drank he’d take on the largest person he could find. One night a bunch of us were at a table at Hungry’s to celebrate a win. You grilled your own steaks at Hungry’s — big old sirloins, huge slabs of Texas toast. Bob got drunk and said, I’ll put my dick down the neck of this beer bottle. He was working on it when Charlene stood up and said, Bobby, put that little thing away. The waitress came over and we got kicked out of the restaurant.

At draw time, the owner had to be present, but Bob lived in Oklahoma, so he said, We’ll fix that problem right now and put the horse in your name. Well, wasn’t that fine and dandy — on paper, I was the owner. But then when we win a nice race, guess who paid the tax?

Bob’d come down for the races on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He’d rent a motel room for the week and the room would sit empty on days he drove back to Oklahoma. One week when I’d been sleeping in my truck he said, You might as well stay at the motel since it’s paid for, and he gave me the key. But then he came back early and let himself into the room one night while I was asleep. He thought he’d get him some from me.

He was slick, tricky — a slippery son of a bitch. He pulled stunts that made me look like an idiot. You had to watch him. You had to learn. He respected it when you outsmarted him. You can’t blame a man for trying, he’d say.

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