The Marrowbone Marble Company. Glenn Taylor
his teeth out. “I’m truly sorry for it,” he said. He held out his hand and they shook. Ledford pledged that once stateside, he would buy his friend some new teeth.
IT WAS MONDAY, the sixth. The grandstand at Washington Park Race Track was filled. Elbow to elbow they sat and waited, Southside Chicagoans and out-of-towners together. They’d come for the match race between Busher and Durazna, for which the purse was twenty-five grand.
Under the grandstand overhang, Ledford and Erm swilled from their respective flasks. They studied their short forms in silence. A fat lady in a flowered hat sat down in front of them and Erm made a farting sound. She turned, frowned, and fanned herself with a program. “Excuse you,” Erm said to her. He flashed his smile and winked at her. His teeth were white as ivory, set solid and paid in full. When the woman left to find a more suitable seat, Erm hollered, “Keep fannin honey, you don’t know from hot.” He stood for no reason and wobbled a little on his feet. He sat back down. “Did you see that broad? She was wide as she was tall.”
They were drunk. Had been so for three straight days, nine hours of sleep in total.
“What’s the skinny on Durazna’s trainer?” Ledford said.
Erm didn’t answer. He was eyeballing the suits down front. “Look at these cocksuckers,” he said. “I paid good money for these seats. I gotta look at these silver-haired bastards all day?”
Ledford licked his pencil and drew a circle around the words Oklahoma bred.
“What’s the point in standin? There’s twelve minutes to post, for cryin out loud.” Erm’s ears were turning red. He got like this, and there was no point in trying to stop it. “Look,” he said. “See how they all hold their binoculars with their pinkies out? How much you think they paid for those binoculars?” He stood up again. “Hey, Carnegie. Hey.” The men down front knew not to turn around. They recognized that kind of voice.
“Carnegie came from dirt,” Ledford said. He didn’t look up from his Racing Form.
“What?” Erm thought about sitting back down, but didn’t. He ground peanut husks with the soles of his Florsheims.
“Carnegie came from poor folks. He was a philanthropist.”
“Philanthra-who-in-the-what-now?” Erm cleared his throat and spat on the ground. “Pipe down, college boy.” He kicked popcorn at the empty seatback in front of them and sat down. “Choke those fuckin suits with their binocular straps,” he mumbled.
Ledford said he wanted to go to the paddock and see the horses running in the fourth.
Erm looked at his wristwatch. “You go on,” he said. He’d set up a three-thirty meeting with his uncle and needed to be in his seat.
Down by the paddock, the horseplayers tried to blow their cigarette smoke above the heads of the tourists’ kids. It was hot and drizzly. Undershirt weather. A track made soft by summer rain. Ledford was in the bag and it wasn’t yet three o’clock. He drew another circle around the number nine in his short form, put it up over his head like a rain canopy, and walked inside, away from the paddock. He chewed cutplug tobacco. “Homesick Dynamite Boy,” he said as he walked. It was the name of the number nine horse, and at 7 to 1 it was an overlay if he’d ever seen one. He looked at his short form again. His left shoulder knocked against the side of a pillar, so he sidestepped, and his right shoulder knocked against a man in a black shirt and matching derby hat. There were no Excuse me’s. This was expected. Ledford felt the man’s eyeballs on him as he walked away.
He had a fifty, three twenties, and a ten left in his billfold.
Since the war, Ledford had been lucky at the races. He’d once paid a semester’s tuition with a single day’s payout. Erm had helped him along with tips from men with no names. Ledford didn’t ask questions. He stayed drunk much of the time. He’d finished college and proposed to Rachel and taken a desk job at Mann Glass. His life was a game of forgetting.
Housewives from Homewood were logjamming the betting lines. Ledford chewed the plug hard between his eyeteeth and studied his form while he parted all of them, instinct taking him where he needed to go. He stepped up to the counter and said, “Five dollars to win on the nine.” There was no response.
Ledford looked up. A kid in a green golf hat looked back at him. His voice cracked when he spoke. “This is the popcorn cart,” the kid said.
Ledford tried to recollect the previous half hour of his life. He remembered sitting inside a stall on a toilet that had seen too much action, drinking the last of the bourbon in his pint flask. But, like all memories, this one was a sucker’s bet, because once he was in the bag, time and place were wiped and gone. He ended up wagering on three-year-old geldings at popcorn stands.
“Did you want some popcorn?” the kid asked. A red-rimmed whitehead pimple on his nose threatened to blow wide open of its own accord.
Ledford thumbed at the bills in his hand. The dirt under his nails reminded him of Henderson Field, digging. “I’m a college graduate,” he told the kid, who was getting nervous because the man in front of him was relatively big and radiating alcohol and possessed eyes that had seen some things. “Getting married on Saturday,” Ledford told him. “Beautiful girl.”
He looked at the people going by. So happy. So unaddicted to booze and playing horses. So empty of parasitic memories. A short woman with legs like a shot-putter’s rolled by a handtruck carrying a beer keg. It was held tight with twine. “Hell of an invention, the handtruck,” Ledford said to no one in particular. “Dolly, some call it. Roll three buckets a cullet around with one, no problem.” He watched the stocky woman go, her beer destined for some bubblegum-ass in the VIP Room.
As he walked away from the popcorn stand and the acned teenager who could no longer hold eye contact with him, Ledford’s insides ached. He spat heavy.
He walked to the betting line and made it to the window with one minute to post. “Five dollars to win on the nine,” he said.
He held the ticket between his thumb and forefinger. Kissed it. “Come on, Homesick Dynamite,” he said, wedging himself through the crowd, jackpot sardines with dollar signs in their eyes. Ledford stood tall at the rail and waited.
Homesick Dynamite Boy came out of the clouds on the three- quarter turn only to falter at the wire. He placed by a head length.
Ledford littered his ticket for the stoopers to pick up.
Back at the seats, he was introduced to Erm’s uncle Fiore, a short man with bags under his eyes and a tailored black suit. He had a large associate called Loaf.
“Erm tells me you busted his teeth out,” Uncle Fiore said.
“Yessir,” Ledford said.
“And you’re from Virginia?”
“West Virginia.”
“You like to play the horses?”
“Yessir.”
“All right, son.” For the entirety of this exchange, Uncle Fiore had been grasping Ledford’s hand, looking him hard in the eyes. He finally let go and said, “I’m a patriot, by the way. I got the Governor’s Notice for helping secure the port docks.”
Ledford nodded.
“How’s the shin? Erminio tells me you took some shrapnel bad.”
“It’s healed up fine. Little limp left.”
“Good. Good. My nephew’s brain I’m not so sure about, but that didn’t have nothing to do with the shrapnel.” Erm tapped the scar on his forehead where it spread beneath his hairline. They all laughed, except Loaf the associate. He had his hands crossed in front of him and kept shifting his stance. His feet were too small for his frame.