“I’ve taken a job in Phoenix,” she said, suddenly impatient with his abstractions. “When I told them yes, I fully intended to ask you to come with me. I had this idea that we might even make each other happy in the end. I should’ve known better. You’d rather I went out with your dippy nephew.”
“I’d kill you first.”
“Good,” she said. “Then we’re still friends.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Dan suggested, suddenly wheeling toward her. She closed the patio gate behind them. “I’m glad I still have the car,” he admitted. “Don’t help now.”
He swung himself inside behind the wheel, then closed the door and rolled down the window. “Where the hell is Phoenix, Arizona?”
She collapsed the chair and bundled it around to the passenger side. “Consult a map.”
“I bet they don’t even have ramps. It’s just like you to invite me to a place that doesn’t have any goddamn ramps.”
“These days they’re building them everywhere.”
“More trouble than they’re worth, believe me.”
“But they can be built.”
“I suppose,” he admitted. “In time.”
67
At the Mohawk Grill there are many systems for picking winners at the track, and each of the regulars who slips in off the street when Harry opens promptly at six has his own, though as they readily admit no system’s perfect or the players would all live in Florida. So they compose elaborate mathematical formulas, not to determine who the winner will be but who the winner would be if the track weren’t crooked. These scientific men are not chagrined by their cynical belief that the science of handicapping is seriously compromised by dishonesty and greed. Poring over the charts of workout times and track conditions, analyzing the level of competition—these are pleasurable activities in themselves, especially in the gray morning light that slants through the diner’s front windows and across their racing forms. Even more cynical are those who think the horses more or less irrelevant, and that smart money’s on the trainer with the best pharmacist. This view is not widely held, since there’s no way of telling who has the best pharmacist on any given day; and hence the theory isn’t conducive to wagering.
Harry himself bets only infrequently, though he too has a theory. He has never felt compelled to share it with the seasoned veterans who drink his coffee, losers all, with impeccable credentials and expertise, and who would mock the naive simplicity of his system. Still, it has worked well enough for Harry, and the afficionados were the first to admit you can’t beat the horses. Or the dogs. Or the dice. Or the cards. All you can do is try.
When Harry bets at all he bets jockeys, and while they’re harder to handicap than the horses beneath them, they’re not entirely immune to scientific observation. Harry’s cardinal rule is to never bet an untested jockey; they sometimes win, but mostly find ways to lose on their few good mounts. Some seem born to lose. The top jocks are more or less equally talented, and so the issue, it seems to Harry, is the human spirit: pride and concentration. Desire. These qualities are by no means constant in the human breast, as Harry well knows, and so he watches their ebb and flow until some subtle tuning fork of his own begins to throb and vibrate in sympathy, suggesting for example that Shoemaker will take five winners home in a row. Consequently, Harry will bet the Shoe every time he’s up, never mind the nag, and keep betting until he senses the pride, the desire, the need ascending in another man. It’s a silly theory, Harry knows, but it gives him pleasure and occasionally even works.
This morning, however, Harry has no strong feelings about any given jockey, and feels little in the way of desire himself. Today it wouldn’t surprise him to learn that there were no winners anywhere in America. He says as much and this remark stirs one of the coffee drinkers sufficiently to make him look up from his form. “Somebody’s got to win, Harry. They can’t all lose.”
“All mine can,” another remarks.
The door opens to admit a group of five men, among them John. As if by design, five stools remain at the counter to accommodate them. “Who’s the big loser,” somebody asks.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” says one of the gamblers, “but we played all night and broke even.”
Harry flips sausage patties and smiles, his back to the lot of them. They’ll tell what they want to tell whenever they’re ready, so there’s no need to face them.
The lawyer snorts as he picks up Harry’s copy of the Republican. The front page proclaims that two local tannery owners have been fined over a hundred-thousand dollars for polluting Cayuga Creek. According to investigators, carcinogens were routinely dumped into this tributary of the Mohawk for over forty years. The EPA was debating whether evacuations of high-risk neighborhoods were advisable. Industry spokesmen denied all charges and detailed the number of jobs that would be lost if the tanneries were closed. Further penalties and indictments were expected.
“They’ll never shut ’em down,” somebody said.
“Like hell,” John laughed. “They were closing anyway. Why do you think old man Tucker sold out last year? They made all the money that was here to be made thirty years ago.”
“Never happen,” the first man said. “Mohawk is leather.”
“Mohawk’s horseshit,” the lawyer said. “Always was.”
“How come you’re still here?”
John didn’t bother answering, but his expression suggested there was an answer just the same.
“You figure the government wants to buy my house,” another player asked. “It’s only a block from the crick.”
“Might,” John said. “I know some people who’ll testify you’re wacky, and you can claim it’s from drinking the water. Just like Wild Bill.”
Had John looked up from his paper, he would’ve had time to duck. Harry’s shoulders quivered almost imperceptibly before he whirled, his spatula slicing through the newspaper like a knife. Fortunately, the Republican offered enough resistance to spin the utensil in Harry’s grasp. With a slap it met John’s cheek flat, leaving a triangle of sausage grease below the right eye. Everyone, including Harry, was speechless with surprise. The grease formed a rivulet that disappeared into the lawyer’s collar. The spatula itself was so flexible that the blow didn’t even leave a tingle.
To everyone but the principals it was obvious that what they’d witnessed was about the funniest thing ever. They laughed so hard that several coffee cups were overturned, and John himself soon joined in. “People sure are touchy around here lately,” he remarked. His mouth still bore the scar of Dallas Younger’s assault, a livid crease in his otherwise pretty mouth. He wiped off his face with one of Harry’s napkins. “Was that your best shot, Harry?” The men howled and spun on their stools, one falling onto the floor, the stool twirling without him.
Suddenly Harry, too, was laughing, or crying. The tears ran down his face and he went down on his knees behind the counter. The men had to lean over to see him on the floor, and The Bulldog soon came downstairs to see what the ruckus was about.
Once the breakfasts were paid for and the men were gone, Untemeyer came in. Harry was restored to himself by now, though his eyes remained red and puffy.
“What the hell you been up to?” said the old bookie. “Cryin’?”
“Hell,” Harry said. “Laughing.”
“What about?”
“You had to be here.”
“I wish like hell I was. I never once saw you laugh.”
Harry rang No Sale on the register and removed some bills. “How many mounts does the Shoe have today?” he said.
Untemeyer checked his wrinkled sheet. “Eight.”
Harry handed him sixteen dollars. “I got a powerful feeling about him.”
Untemeyer nodded, added Harry’s money to the thick roll and wrote out a slip. “He’s due, all right, that son-of-a-bitch.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RICHARD RUSSO lives with his wife in Camden, Maine, and in Boston. In 2002 he was awarded th
e Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls.
He is available for lectures and readings. For information regarding his availability, please visit www.knopfspeakersbureau.com or call 212-572-2013.
New from
Richard Russo
That Old Cape Magic
It’s the end of what seems like a perfectly lovely wedding weekend on the Cape, but for Griffin, the middle-aged father of the bride, it marks the beginning of his descent into a failed marriage, a confrontation with his parents’ deaths, and the realization that the life he has does not measure up to the life he thought he wanted. With moments of great comedy alternating with others of rueful understanding, That Old Cape Magic is unlike anything Richard Russo has ever written.
Available August 2009 in hardcover from Knopf
$25.95 • 272 pages • 978-0-375-41496-1
Please visit www.aaknopf.com
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