Free Watch Me Go by Mark Wisniewski Page B

caused
more loss.
Don’t Bet Scared
Money was one of Tom Corcoran’s mottos, but this had never meant any Corcoran should
     refrain from betting. It just meant they shouldn’t be scared.
    Because, when it came down to it, Tom Corcoran
was
going to bet.
    And Tom’s motto about not betting scared money did little to calm Tug now. All the
     motto did was run through Tug’s mind and make his stomach queasy. Tug remembered a
     trick Tom had used to fight fear of odds-on favorites, glaring directly at one’s opponent
     to remind oneself this opponent would perish like everything else, but it occurred
     to Tug that he himself didn’t know who his father’s opponent was. His father, for
     the record, now sat motionless in the front seat, and it occurred to Tug that, at
     this very moment, Tom might have been preparing to glare at his opponent as soon as
     the Galaxie arrived at the secret sprint. But what really got Tug right then, as Jasper
     sped on, was that he, Tug, was glaring intently at the back of his father’s head,
     which maybe should have told Tug that his opponent was the very blood he and Tom shared.
    Suffice to say the drum’s disappearance had Tug all screwed up, to the point that
     he almost got emotional in that backseat, confused as he was by flared-up sentiment
     and shock on top of his long resentment of his shame for having been raised in a family
     prone to gamble, and he told himself not to mention the drum’s disappearance to anyone,
     certainly not to me, since if he did, he might break down so pathetically I’d consider
     him
worse
than a pussy.
    Which was to say (using Tom Corcoran’s language) like a goddamned baby.
    And after Tug promised himself to keep his mouth shut, he sat quietly for miles, glaring
     at the back of Tom’s head.
    And when Tug could finally breathe in the boggy smell of the Tonawanda River, it hit
     him that
this
—the smell of a body of water he’d never fished or swum in—probably embodied the sum
     total of the peace in him that night. And when Jasper finally turned down the puddle-strewn
     gravel road that unfurled onto the acreage, I had already put on the riding helmet
     Tug had treasured as a kid, and quite a few horsemen were already present, maybe thirty,
     standing near their muddied cars and pickups, wearing Stetsons and pressed jeans and
     new checked shirts. Tug recognized some of these men from when he was nothing but
     a toddler at the stables, but there were also horsemen younger than Tom: slimmer,
     meaner-looking men Tug had never seen, the kind of guys that struck one as criminals
     whether one wanted to be an attorney or not, all with poker faces that, to Tug now,
     suggested that Tom might have owed any of them a boatload.
    Bill Treacy was unhitching a two-horse starting gate from a tractor, and Tom and Jasper
     opened their doors and stepped out and stood on either side of the Galaxie, apparently
     surveying the crowd. Tug envied me for this chance Tom had given me, renowned as Tug
     himself now was as a failure at his attempted horse farm—and Tug felt stuck between
     Colleen, who was gazing through the windshield at a new horse trailer behind a shiny
     truck, and my mother, who seemed glued to the Galaxie’s backseat.
    “Is the rookie owner already here?” Colleen asked. She said this as if only she and
     Tom knew about the gambling he and she both did, and Tug smelled the lemon juice she’d
     put in her hair to lightenit. She rolled down her window. “Tom?” she asked. “Is the rookie already here?”
    Tom’s navy blue T-shirt—all we could see of him—didn’t move.
    “Tom?” Colleen said.
    “Quiet,” Tom said, and Tug knew why Tom wanted quiet: If the rookie owner had already
     arrived, it was possible
we
were being set up.
    Tom took a step toward a group of horsemen, stopped, then walked quickly to Bill Treacy.
     He helped Bill Treacy unhitch the starting gate, lit a cigarette for him while they
     talked. Then he returned to