As I enter the stable area a guard checks my badge, no Chubby anywhere. I weave my way to the barn. The headlights of the old GMC reflect the shadows of horse and rider, on their way to the track. Approaching barn B the cast of their beam reveals the words fagot, homo, queer, written in black spray paint on my stall doors. The light extends just enough to expose a short stocky figure running away and tossing an empty paint can in the trash. The fight's not over, it's just begun. My own Stonewall must continue.
The adrenaline races through my body as I hurry to the feed room to get my horses breakfast. “Where’s Will?” Mac shouts, as I enter.
“My house. Told me you gave him the day off. He wanted to spend it away from here.”
Mac was so wound-up he had trouble getting the words of his next sentence out. “I-I-I-I did, but I was worried. Chubby's been here looking for you two. Said you faggots gotta go. What happened! What you boys do to deserve that?"
"I had a disagreement with Chubby yesterday. He stopped us when we came back from the races. Called Will a faggot and said the jockeys should have run him over the rail so he couldn’t win. Pissed me off so much I called him a hateful bastard - that he had a twisted outlook on life and I was fuckin’ tired of this faggot shit coming out of his slack jaw mouth. Now there's graffiti spray painted on my stall doors. Thought I saw Chubby's fat little ass running out of the shed row when I pulled up this morning."
“Sounds like he needs a visit. Feed you horses and come with me. It won’t take long.” Mac says, as he walks towards his car.
Quickly, I do as I'm told. Driving to the stable gate the intensity of Mac’s emotions is very apparent on his face. He grits his teeth and those warm brown eyes are now glaring straight ahead. The skin on his face is drawn tightly, eliminating the wrinkles on his forehead and cheeks.
Pulling up to the gatehouse Mac slams on the brakes, intensifying the situation. Chubby, who is standing outside, turns abruptly and strides heatedly towards us. Before he can utter the first word, Mac jumps out of the car and is in Chubby’s face expressing his dislike for the threat of yesterday.
“You fat little honky, want to see my boy get hurt. Anything happens to him and you’ll wish you never opening that big mouth of yours. And I want all of that graffiti cleaned off Harry’s stalls, now! You got ten minutes or I’m going to the racing commission and tell them about the police state you hold these men and women in around here.”
Chubby glares at me, “I’m not done with you boy. You better bring Uncle Tom with you anywhere you go around here!”
Mac takes a step back and explodes with a left hook to the side of Chubby’s face. Chubby’s flabby jaw looks broken, as spit, which is now red with blood, spurts from his mouth. As he holds his jaw in agony Chubby motions to the security guard to grab hold of Mac, who now has his back turned, as he walks to the car.
“Watch your back!” I yell.
Mac turns quickly, pulling a switchblade from his pocket and activates its 6” blade. The security guard freezes in his tracks as Chubby falls to the asphalt with a thud and a groan; apparently, he’s passed out from the loss of blood, which continues to pour from his mouth.
“You gotta help him!” the guard shouts. He's still afraid to move, as Mac continues to point the knife at him.
“Get your skinny little ass in the guard shack and call 911,” Mac orders to the guard, whose face is now extremely pale and body quivers as he walks to the office. Mac is close behind, his switchblade still drawn. But as they enter the guard picks up the police radio instead of the phone and screams, “Officer down”.
“You underhanded bastard!” Mac yells. He slaps the young guard left-handed across his puny, pasty, white face. Still holding his weapon in his right.
Before Mac and I can decide what to do, three police cars and an ambulance arrive at the scene. They toss up gravel as they screech to a halt. The officers leap from their cars revolvers drawn. They look at Chubby lying on the asphalt, which is now a bright red as the blood continues to pour from his mouth. The paramedics kneel down over his body and place compresses in his mouth to stop the bleeding.
Seemingly unafraid, Mac steps out of the office door, leaving it open so the guard can hear what happens. The deputy sheriffs put their guns down as he speaks.
“Chubby threatened Will. Painted homophobic graffiti on Harry’s stalls. And called me an Uncle Tom. Can’t take a punch either,” Mac says with a smirk.
Mac turns back around, steps in the office door.
“Don’t forget, he tells the guard. You got ten minutes to get the graffiti off of this man’s stall doors.”
Dumbfounded, I shake my head as we drive back to the barn. Mac looks at me and says. “Just did what had to be done. I may not like to have sex with another man like you and Will but I won’t let a man discriminate against another the way they did against me and my people for so long.
I train for some people who support my feelings and can shut this place down if they want to. Your stall doors are going to be cleaned off this morning, or Chubby and his buddies will be out of a job. Maybe that is what has to happen around here. You and Will keep on fighting for what you believe in and I’ll support both of you any way I can.”
Reality strikes my dream.
“Mac, thanks for all you have done for me. I know Will appreciates you. Thinks you are someone special. You know I recognized you the first day we met. Remember seeing you in a book at the library. Caption on it read Macabee Smith jockey."
"That was along time ago," Mac says as he shakes his head. You know I train for those same people who put me up on their horses back then."
"I know, Will told me the first day we met, made a point of it. "
The rest of the morning is very uneventful. Except for watching that guard from the stable gate, who arrived a few minutes after Mac and I, scrub the spray paint off of my stalls. Sweat was rolling down his pale white face making dark black streaks as the dirt was stirred up from its crusted surroundings of the stall doors and settled on his skin. One by one the letters vanished as he scrubbed. Just like letters erased from a chalk board: F-a-g-g-o-t, a-g-g-o-t, g-g-o-t-, g-o-t, o-t, t- ; H-o-m-o, o-m-o, m-o, o- ; Q-u-e-e-r, u-e-e-r, e-e-r, e-r, r- . The hot walkers trudging by cooling out their horses made a contest of his labor. They counted how many more letters he had to remove. He was not amused but thought better than to say something in retaliation. Still, he grumbled under his breath, "Fuck you."
I found it amusing too and asked the hot walker who had just passed if they heard what he said. He hadn't. But on his next trip by he smacked the top of the guard’s head with the end of the leather shank that held the horse at the other end. The guard stopped scrubbing the paint. Looked up at me glaring as if he was trying to project icy daggers out of his squinting eyes. Instead it just made his face scrunch up on the sides as he declared, "Fuck you too and your faggot jockey."
I smiled at his childish statement with a look of anticipated amusement; after all, Mac was walking around the corner and heard everything he said. With a hooking motion of his arms Mac picked the guard up by the back of his shirt collar, lifting his body off the ground. As he turned him toward the stall door he slammed his already limp body against the wooden barn.
"One… two… three…" counted the crowd of barn employees, who had gathered to watch as his face smashed into the barrier and blood ran from his nose and made a large irregular shaped splotch of red on the front of his white shirt. It mixed with the black sweat stains and formed a dirty brown pattern looking and smelling like a polluted stream. His screams became shriller each time his face met the wood. Until they gurgled as he swallowed some of the excretion and then silence when Mac let the body fall to the ground.
It lay in a heap. His arms and legs curled up under him and the shape of his torso resembled a pile of dirty cloths waiting to be washed.
He raised his head, looking over his right shoulder sheepishly. He cringed, expecting another blow, when he saw Mac was still standing over him.
"Get up out of the dirt boy," Mac barked. “The way I see it you still got five more letters to scrub off this wall and your times up. You're lucky I got too much work to do. But I got all these boys walking around the shed-row to keep an eye on you. Next time I come around this corner the marks better be gone along with you.
I needed to be gone too just like the guard. It's now 7 AM. I feel alone… scared like the little boy away from home for the first time. Just as I thought I would until I met Will. My thoughts are racing like a runaway horse not knowing where it's going but running just as fast as it can to get there.
Reality strikes my dream.
