Ask the Parrot

14

Around nine-thirty, Bill Henry yawned, stretched, pushed back from the desk where his latest Field & Stream had lain open and unread for some time now, and got to his feet. One more yawn and he said, “I think I’ll walk around a little.”

Max Evanson, his usual partner on the overnight shift, looked up from his People magazine in some surprise: “Walk around what?”

“The track. The building. Just around.”

Max still didn’t get it. A traditional kind of guy, who only believed in, as he’d said more than once, “meat and potatoes,” he wouldn’t see any reason for Bill or himself or anyone else on night guard duty at Gro-More to get up from his comfortable chair in security unless his shift was over. He said, “You’re gonna walk around the track? It’s, what, it’s two miles, mile and a half, something like that.”

“I’m not going to walk around the track,” Bill said. “That’s not what I mean at all. Look, Max, I’m outa here the middle of next month, just in time for Thanksgiving, I’m feeling a little different about the place, okay? You get it?”

“No,” Max said.

“I’ve been working here thirty-seven years,” Bill said, “the last five in this dumb security office, and pretty soon I’m not gonna be working here any more.”

“I’m fourteen months behind you,” Max said, as though it were a prayer.

“Well, fourteen months from now, you’ll feel the same way I do,” Bill assured him.

“And what’s that?” The skepticism twanged in Max’s voice.

“Not nostalgic exactly—”

“Nostalgic! For this place? The people running this outfit here—”

“No, not nostalgic,” Bill insisted. “It’s just— You spend so much of your life at a place, you know you’re gonna leave it, you won’t really miss it, but still you want to fix it in your mind before you go.”

“It’s fixed in my mind,” Max promised him.

“Well, I’m gonna take a little walk around,” Bill said. “Mind the store.”

“Huh,” Max said.

The way it was set up, because of insurance and getting people bonded and all that, security at Gro-More had been a special set-off company since just after World War Two. The track contracted for security arrangements from that company, everything from staff for crowd control to spy cameras, and the employees of the subcompany shared in the not-very-good health and pension benefits available to the rest of the track’s workforce.

For most of his thirty-seven years here, Bill Henry had been assigned crowd control out by the entrance gates, and he’d enjoyed it. It was pleasant out in the air, and more interesting than the occasional stint in front of the betting windows, showing the uniform and the holstered sidearm and looking stern, just as though there was a chance in hell one of these bettors would suddenly up and rob the place. Never happen.

So what they did with the security employees, as they got older, nearer retirement, less intimidating out in public regardless of the brown uniform and the holstered firearm, was move them to the overnight guard detail. A simple, easy life if you liked to read, which most of the guys did. A short workweek, reduced pay, but retirement was right out there at the end of it, so not really a problem.

Parts of the track were kept locked at night, like the money room downstairs and the tellers’ cages upstairs, but most of the rest of it inside the security wall was open, illuminated just enough to satisfy the fire code. Leaving the office now, Bill walked first down the corridor past more offices and then out to the rail near the finish line, down to his right. The main dirt course was a long oval under the dim lights, extending left and right, with the slightly smaller turf course a green river within, and then the interior lawn, a different green, with its ornamental fountain and some perennial flowers that were starting at this time of year to give up the ghost.

At night, empty, the track looked much bigger than in the daytime, as though it could probably be seen from the moon, though he knew that was impossible. Bill liked the size of it at night, and the emptiness of it, and the fact that, in all that big empty space, there was never even one echo. It was as though the track absorbed sound, making the place restful and eternal and also just a little spooky.

He made his way leftward along the rail to the far turn, where a lane would lead down to the paddocks if he felt like going there, but he thought he better not. There were always a few of the grooms and assistant trainers sleeping somewhere near their animals, on cots or in sleeping bags, because this horse or that was having some kind of problem, and those people didn’t like other humans around to spook their beasts.

Bill turned away, walking toward the end of the clubhouse and grandstand, all in one building, and as he walked, he saw the reflection of headlights sweep over the white wooden wall that enclosed the entire track area.

Headlights? They were outside, so he couldn’t see them directly, only their glow above the wall, and as he stopped to frown at that unexpected aura, the lights switched off.

But what were they doing here? Nobody was supposed to be in that area beyond the wall at night. That would be where the service road came in, at the end of the clubhouse, and there was never any reason for traffic out there after the track shut down.

Unless it was somebody out to harm the horses.

Why that should be, Bill had never understood, but there was a kind of sick human being who just liked to mutilate horses. Attack them with knives, axes, bottles of acid.

Why would people do things like that? They were always caught, drooling and bloody, and they were always put away in a nuthouse somewhere, and there was never any explanation. Whatever went wrong in your life, whatever went wrong in your head, why take it out on a horse?

And is that what he’d happened across tonight? It was those sickos, he knew, who primarily made his job as a night guard here at the track necessary, that and the constant fear of fire. So is that what he’d found, some maniac with a chain saw in his fist? Was he about to become a hero, like it or not?

He thought the thing to do was go back into the clubhouse and walk around to where he could look out one of the windows facing the service road. Let’s just see what’s out there. Couldn’t hurt.