"Mike Resnick - Malish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

MALISH
by Mike Resnick









His name was Malicious, and you can look it up in the
_American Racing Manual_: from ages 2 to 4, he won 5 of his 46
starts, had seven different owners, and never changed hands for
more than $800.
His method of running was simple and to the point: he was
usually last out of the gate, last on the backstretch, last around
the far turn, and last at the finish wire.
He didn't have a nickname back then, either. Exterminator may
have been Old Bones, and Man o' War was Big Red, and of course
Equipoise was the Chocolate Soldier, but Malicious was just plain
Malicious.
Turns out he was pretty well-named, after all.
It was at Santa Anita in February of 1935 -- and _this_ you
can't look up in the _Racing Manual_, or the _Daily Racing Form
Chart Book_, or any of the other usual sources, so you're just
going to have to take my word for it -- and Malicious was being
rubbed down by Chancey McGregor, who had once been a jockey until
he got too heavy, and had latched on as a groom because he didn't
know anything but the racetrack. Chancey had been trying to
supplement his income by betting on the races, but he was no
better at picking horses than at riding them -- he had a passion
for claimers who were moving up in class, which any tout will tell
you is a quick way to go broke -- and old Chancey, he was getting
mighty desperate, and on this particular morning he stopped
rubbing Malicious and put him in his stall, and then started
trading low whispers with a gnarly little man who had just
appeared in the shed row with no visitor's pass or anything, and
after a couple of minutes they shook hands and the gnarly little
man pricked Chancey's thumb with something sharp and then held it
onto a piece of paper.
Well, Chancey started winning big that very afternoon, and
the next day he hit a 200-to-1 shot, and the day after that he
knocked down a $768.40 daily double. And because he was a good-
hearted man, he spread his money around, made a lot of girls
happy, at least temporarily, and even started bringing sugar cubes
to the barn with him every morning. Old Malicious, he just loved
those sugar cubes, and because he was just a horse, he decided
that he loved Chancey McGregor too.
Then one hot July day that summer -- Malicious had now lost