Fast Rudy -- Vignettes From a Marginal Fairy Tale

nce upon a time, in a faraway land, a young lad named Young Jack was sent on an important family matter.  Wearily trudging through the countryside, Jack hoped to trade his last bag of magic beans for a $5000 claimer.  Jack's mother, who trained some runners at a local track, was having a terrible season.  In fact, she was down to her last horse, a sad looking gelding named Fast Rudy, who had never been able to get in a race because of a red spot on his butt.  It really wouldn't have mattered in most cases, except that it had been overlooked on his registration papers, a discrepancy that the evil Sheriff of Nothinghappening, happened to notice, who coincidentally moonlighted as a racetrack identifier, duly appointed by the Governor to rob the poor and stop those 20-1 shots from walking away with a race................