Correction
I killed a man.
On an aimless, restless walk, a day or two out of my second round of Covid, I was drifting and dreaming and jumping genres from newspaper writing to creative writing. I found a photo pinned to a tree, conjured up a story and killed a man.
You read it here a few days ago.
It went like this.
Kind eyes. Warm smile. Close-cropped hair. Scattered sunspots. In his 60s, maybe 70s. Powder-blue T-shirt. A black strap around his neck that dangles out of the photo, surely a pair of binoculars hang to his chest. I wonder which races they’ve viewed, his horses, whose horses?
He’s looking down, a telling smile, more like a smirk, like he’s just enjoyed a moment, maybe a winner, maybe not, maybe a joke, maybe not. Definitely a Saratoga moment. The grandstand, our old friend, his old friend, in the background in the photo and in real life.
One day they’re back here holding court under a tree, morning workouts, afternoons on the backstretch when the races rip past early and drift away late. The next they’re memories, memorials, on old-growth trees and outside rails.
“Hey, Sean. I’m not dead.”
Three days after finding the photo, I find the man in the photo. Well, he finds me.
Yeah, this is awkward.
The voice is booming, from under the tree where I had stumbled upon the photo and which I passed in the golf cart eight days later.
“Hey Sean…”
I think about flooring it but turn around, take a deep breath and try to steel myself for the correction notice. I roll back to where the photo hangs on the tree. I hear the voice again, bellowing.
“Hey, Sean. I’m not dead.”
I start apologizing like a 16-year-old blowing his first curfew.
“I thought it was a tribute to a great old friend…I should have checked…I just thought it was…”
“No, no, no, it was a great tribute to a great old friend, but his legs are still moving,” Don Pratt says. “You said I was 60. I liked that. I’m 79 though. I’m close but not yet.”
Four years ago, on a day when Pratt wasn’t at the races, one of his friends pinned the photo to the tree, just to mark his spot, his tree, his territory. That’s what 20-plus years of backstretch tailgating gets you. The photo stays up all summer, comes down in the winter and goes back up on Opening Day.
Another voice. Another correction.
“He’s alive,” Flo Audevard says. “He’s alive.”
Audevard tells me about finishing second in the Alabama with Lear’s Princess, beating Rags To Riches in the Gazelle. She’s part of Pratt’s backstretch family.
“That was a great one,” Flo’s husband Rich says. “I don’t know how you do it. I had him dead, too.”
“The moral of the story is…” Flo says, still talking about horses.
“No, the moral of the story is I’m alive and he thought I was dead,” Pratt says.
Flo waves her finger.
“I told him if he put his picture up there, everybody would think he was dead,” she says.
Now, I’ve waded into a family supper.
Some days, there’s a handful of friends under the tree. Other days, there’s 40 or more. They gamble. They eat. They drink. They laugh. They read The Special.
“When you started the paper, we started this. We didn’t know anything before then. You’ve educated us,” Rich says. “The sticker you put on your car, I don’t lose my car anymore. We were into sports but not horse racing. We knew nothing.”
Now they know everything. Well, everything about watching the races from the backside at Saratoga.
One’s from Scotia. Another couple is from near the Tappan Zee Bridge before they moved up here for the horses. Pratt’s niece and nephew come from Atlanta, every summer, for the horses. On Travers Day, Pratt and friends get the backstretch kitchen to cater, all are welcome.
“We all met back here and we’re very, very close. My wife passed away several years ago. Everyone went to the wake, the service. We are like family,” Pratt says. “You know, who used to sit here with us? Gaile Fitzgerald. I met her on the other side of the clocker stand and slowly the people we used to sit with over there passed away or whatever and then we moved over here to this group.”
Each of us took a moment to think about Fitzgerald, a longtime handicapper at The Special and a racetracker to the core. Yeah, a patch of the quilt.
“Gaile always had opinions, we used to fight all the time,” Pratt said. “We actually have lost five people from our group, including my wife.”
Pratt didn’t dwell on it
“We’re just a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky group,” he says.
One raises a can. Another pumps a fist.
“Thank you so much, it was a nice article, and we all got such a joke out of it. We all laughed,” Pratt says. “I’m the biggest ball buster here and I’m the loudest here and there’s a lot of people who would like to see me dead a lot of days. Right or wrong?”
Nobody says wrong.
I apologize again for killing him off.
“You never said it. It was like, ‘Maybe…’ but you never actually said it,” Pratt says. “So nice talking to you. It was a great story.”
I turn the wheel of the golf cart.
“It was nice meeting you. I’m glad you’re not dead.”
Pratt laughs and waves.
“Me too,” Pratt says. “I’m happier than you, believe me.”
