Free Close Call by John McEvoy Page B

her.”
    Doyle smiled and made another note. “The ‘Pocket Battleship.’ That’ll be a good nickname for her.” He saw what he thought was an actual smile on the old trainer’s face. “C’mon into the office,” Eckrosh said gruffly. “I see you know something about what you’re doing. At my age, I don’t have time to put up with nitwits.”
    Doyle said, “How old are you?”
    “None of your business.”
    “Great,” Doyle said, “a publicity man’s dream.” Eckrosh pretended he hadn’t heard that.
    ***
    An hour later Doyle had Eckrosh’s story, or at least enough for that day’s purposes. Eckrosh, he’d learned, had started as a teenager on a small racetrack in his native Nebraska. “I was a jockey, and a lousy one,” Eckrosh said. “Then I got too big to ride anyway, and I switched to grooming horses for a great trainer out there named Marion H. Van Berg. A few years later, I went out on my own. I’ve had horses now for more than fifty years. Rambling Rosie is twenty lengths better than any one I had before.
    “Yes, I was married,” Eckrosh said in response to Doyle’s question. “My wife worked with me for years. Died of a heart attack right here at Monee Park five summers ago. Never sick a day in her life,” he said bitterly. Eckrosh clammed up after that statement, and Doyle clicked off his tape recorder and put his notebook in his pocket. Then he thought to ask, “How many people do you have working here?”
    “Two. And I’m one of them. The woman out there, Maria, she’s the other one. Hell of a worker. Takes care of all five horses I’ve got and turns them out happy, healthy, shiny, and relaxed. I couldn’t get along without her. Before Rambling Rosie started earning some good purse money, I couldn’t have afforded any other workers. Now that I can, Maria says, ‘No, you don’t have to get no more. I can do this job.’ And she can.
    “I’ll tell you, son, she’s a hard working, honest person who’s damned good with horses. She doesn’t drink, she’s here early and smiling every morning, and she doesn’t mind working late. You know how hard it is to find somebody like that these days? I don’t care that she’s a woman, or a Mex, or any of that crap. Plus,” Eckrosh admitted, “I have a hard time keeping help. I’m kind of tough on them if they don’t do things the right way.”
    Doyle smiled as he said, “Old school?”
    “Old school, hell,” Eckrosh growled. “Just do it right is all I ask. My horses deserve that. So do I.”
    Doyle said, “I’d like to talk to Maria, get some background on her.”
    “She’s not much of a talker,” Eckrosh said. “Besides,” he said, looking at his watch, “she’s gone by now. She goes home to make an early lunch for her kids before coming back here in the afternoon. She lives about a mile down the road, in that trailer park.”
    “Can you tell me anything about her? Where she’s from? How she got started on the racetrack?”
    Eckrosh shook his head. “It’s up to her to tell you about herself, not me. Come back some other morning.”
    ***
    It wasn’t until the following Monday that Doyle could fit another visit to the Eckrosh barn into his schedule. In the meantime, he’d done some research. He’d found that the backstretches of American racetracks dramatically reflect the tremendous recent influx of Hispanics into the U. S. population. His interview subject that morning, Maria Martinez, was part of a Chicago racetrack work force that now was more than ninety percent Hispanic, more than half of them women, many with families.
    Monee Park provided rudimentary housing for some of these workers; others lived in cheap apartments nearby, or rented in the trailer court. Grooms earned an average of $325 a week—“Jesus,” Doyle said to himself, “that’s not even minimum wage with these hours they put in”—and worked six days a week. At Monee, they started their jobs at six, continued until late morning, then