Billy is spinning this tale about one time back in the thirties when she and my mom literally bumped into a Black Wing at the Santa Anita racetrack. “It was Asael,” Billy says. “In a three-piece dove-gray linen suit, if you can believe that.” “What did you do?” someone asks in a hushed voice, like this big baddie might be able to hear us. “We couldn’t exactly fly away, now could we?” Billy says with a wry smile. “There were so many people around. But then he couldn’t confront us, either, not the way he would have wanted to. So we went back to our seats with our lemonade, and he went back to his, and after the race he was gone.” “We were lucky,” Mom says. “Yes, we were,” agrees Billy. “Although I’ll never for the life of me figure out what he was doing there.” “Betting on Seabiscuit, like everybody else,” Mom says. A few people laugh. Billy sighs. “What a race that was. You can’t find sport like that anymore. Things aren’t the same now.”
