Saddled by their colors, muzzled, they paraded before us from right to left to the starting gates, in order of number. They each had distinctive strides, held their heads differently. I saw right away that Number 6, tan and husky but with an extremely narrow pelvis, straining at the leash, was going to win. I told my uncle.
“You wanna change your bet, Niece?”
“No, I’m just telling you, I’m positive he’s going to win.”
At some signal the dogs were crammed one by one into the starting gates and the handlers, dressed identically in white polo shirts, khaki shorts, and running shoes, sprinted down the track to the grass by the first turn. And then, for the first time I heard the dogs, whining, barking, all their various impatient voices. “Here’s Rusty,” someone said, and somewhere a clattering bell, like an old fire alarm, shrilled. The sun caught a gleam off the little device on wheels that ran along the inside railing and suspended the bouncing white stuffed rabbit over the packed dirt. When the rabbit had just cleared the corner by the starting gates it tripped some wire and the gates lifted and the dogs were off, silently shooting out from their little gates like the professionals they were, eating up ground in giant gallops, those lean legs that were entirely muscle, the trim-hipped torsos, the tiny aerodynamic heads that contained just enough brain matter for survival and the knowledge to run. The human beings were the unruly ones, leaning forward with their tickets grasped in their fists, screaming numbers as if they were the names of drowning lovers. I followed the dog I’d bet on, Khartoum, Number 5, for about ten seconds, and then I lost him. “Shit!” my uncle yelled. “Watch that turn, just edge over, that’s right, beautiful.” As far as I could tell, his vision at that moment was about twenty-twenty. They ran around one and a half times and it was over.
Number 6, the robust tan I’d picked at the last moment but not bet on, won.
“Huh,” Uncle Richard said. He’d thrown his ticket to the ground in disgust the instant the dogs came in. “Well,” he said to me. “You were right. You should have changed your bet.”
My dog for the next race, Hotsplit, was scratched. “You could get your money back right now,” my uncle urged, poking me, but I didn’t want to bother. Again we watched the dogs parade by. “This time it’s Number One,” I said. Number 1 was jet black and although far from the largest had a confident step I liked.
“Okay, okay, you go put money on,” said Uncle Richard.
“Nope. I just want to watch.”
Number 1 came in an easy first. “Bad race,” my uncle muttered.
“Why was it bad?”
“Dirty. You see that first turn, that one big white dog, you see how he goes sideways like that, cheats all the others, not fair.”
“But dogs don’t know to cheat.”
“You think they can’t be trained?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m surprised the judge didn’t call. No, it was a cheat. But I tell you, Niece, you’re something. Two for two.”
Once Carey and I had gone to Saratoga Springs and I had won two hundred dollars on a long shot who looked good in the paddock. I don’t know how I did it. It’s like falling in love, your eye automatically picks out one in a crowd, you can’t explain why.
In the next race my uncle won seventy-two dollars. To celebrate he bought another beer and a Coke and a sun hat with a visor for me. After that he began to lose steadily. I didn’t even bother to check my tickets. I hadn’t bet on a single winner, although I managed to call them all, four more in a row. I admit, it was some kind of a thrill.
“Jeez Louise, Niece,” Uncle Richard said. “Next time we place our bets right before post time. But you gotta pick second and third too. You practice, we can do superfectas.” My uncle’s face was distinctly gray in the sunlight and noticing this gave me a shock.
“Uncle Richard, maybe we better go home now.”
“One more race, Niece. You like this one, it’s that dog you met.”
So we watched, although I was distracted and didn’t even bother to pick a winner this time. I tried to focus on Shady Lady instead. She didn’t cut a very promising figure, slightly splay-legged, her head bowed down in a deferential manner. Beside her the competition looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger dogs. By the time the starting bell sounded the odds against her had climbed to twenty-seven to one. I was afraid to look, but when I did, she was right in the middle of the pack. At the first curve she slid into third place. I imagined I could see her ribs heaving under her colors, and I wondered what the hell was driving her on, didn’t she know how outclassed she was? As the leaders bounded toward us, it looked like the second-place dog was losing ground. Shady Lady had taken his place when they whipped past. The crowd was on its feet. Someone was screaming louder than anyone else, right in my ear, and I realized, later, that it was me.
She stayed a close second right to the finish. It cut me to the quick, I don’t know why. It wasn’t like I had a lot riding on it. My uncle put his hand on my shoulder. I had completely forgotten that he was there.
“She had the most heart, that’s for sure. Good race.” He coughed and reached up to unbutton the pocket of his shirt. “Hey, Niece, maybe you could help.” I reached in to his pocket and found the vial and unscrewed the top. My uncle opened his mouth and I tried not to breathe in the blast of his breath—cigarettes, beer, Chinese heart medicine, old-man decay—as I slipped the pill under his tongue.
The band was playing “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
“So much excitement.” Uncle Richard’s color was still off but he was smiling. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to be casual. The gesture reminded me of Carey. “Next time we sit upstairs in the air-conditioned part. I take you to the infield because it’s your first time, you want to see the dogs close up.”
“I really think we should go home now.”
“What if I really have a heart attack? Can you drive fast to the hospital? How fast can you drive? Can you break speed limit?”
“Not funny. Remember the boy who cried wolf.”
“I don’t fake, Niece.” Uncle Richard put on his glasses and leaned forward in the plastic seat to scrutinize yet another batch of racers. “Who do you pick this time?”
“I don’t want to play anymore.”
“You with this power, you don’t want to use. Okay, okay. We go home now.” He got up, brushed off the seat of his pants. “How much money you lose?”
I told him.
“Not too bad. You are cautious, like a crab.”
“What about you?”
“I net about what you lose, so we just break even.”
“It was fun.”
“Yeah. More fun make money.”
“Better than losing.”
“You are funny, Niece. You expect to lose. No gambler’s spirit.”
We collected my uncle’s winnings at the window and went back to say good-bye to his friend, who was in a good mood because Shady Lady had performed so well. He let me give her a Milk-Bone and she licked my hand. She was just a normal dog, way too normal to be racing.
In the car I was already beginning to feel like an old hand, easing us around the lot to the arrowed exit. The little Toyota had its quirks, like the way it would slip out of gear between first and second, but I was learning to put that little extra pressure on the heel of my hand while pulling back. At the exit, as I waited for a window in the traffic I told myself, Watch it, Sally. You’re not totally yourself yet. Your reflexes aren’t up to snuff.
As if contradicting my thoughts, Uncle Richard said: “Good driver,” and I looked at him and saw that his eyes were beginning to blur over again. He manipulated his seat back, loosened the parrot tie. “Okay, back to the movie. What happens to the good couple?”