by Ken Grimwood
After he dropped Judy off at her dorm he found a bar on North Druid Hills Road, near the new Lenox Square shopping center. It didn’t seem to be the sort of place where he was likely to encounter anyone from Emory: This was a drinkers' bar, a hangout for an older, quieter crowd seeking only an hour’s escape from thoughts of mortgages and stale marriages. Jeff felt right at home, though he knew he didn’t look as though he fit the clientele; the bartender even carded him, and Jeff managed to find the altered ID he’d once kept in the back of his wallet for such infrequent occasions. With a dubious grunt, the man brought Jeff a double Jack Daniel’s and went off to fiddle with the horizontal hold on the black-and-white TV set above the bar.
Jeff took a long sip of his drink, stared blankly at the news: There was more trouble in Birmingham, Jimmy Hoffa had been indicted on jury-tampering charges in Nashville, Telstar II was about to be launched. Jeff thought of Martin Luther King dead in Memphis, Hoffa mysteriously gone from the face of the earth, and a skyful of communications satellites saturating the planet with MTV and reruns of "Miami Vice." O brave new world.
The night with Judy had begun pleasantly enough, but that final scene in the car had left him depressed. He’d forgotten how artificial sex used to be. No, not forgotten; he’d never fully realized it, not when those things were happening to him for the first time. The dishonesty had all been masked by the glow of newly discovered emotion, of naive but irresistible sexual hunger. What had once seemed wondrously erotic now stood revealed in all its essential cheapness, unobscured by the distance of time: a quick hand job in the front seat of a Chevrolet, with bad music in the background.
So what the hell was he going to do now, just play along? Indulge in more heavy petting sessions with a dewy little blonde from another time who’d never heard of the pill? Go back to classes and adolescent bull sessions and spring dances as if they were all new to him? Memorize statistical tables he’d long since forgotten and had never found any use for, so he could pass Sociology 101?
Maybe he didn’t have any goddamned choice, not if this phenomenal, grotesque switch in time turned out to be permanent. Maybe he really would have to go through it, all of it, again—year after painful, predictable year. This alternate reality was becoming more concrete by the moment, ever more entrenched. That other self of his was the falsehood now. He must accept the fact that he was a college freshman, eighteen years old, totally dependent on his parents and his ability to repeat successfully dozens of academic courses that now filled him with disdain and utter boredom.
The TV news was over, and a sports announcer was droning off a list of AA-league baseball scores. Jeff ordered another drink, and as the bartender brought the fresh glass Jeff’s attention suddenly focused with laserlike intensity on every word from the ancient Sylvania.
"… coming into Churchill Downs unbeaten, there are still two eastern colts that might give the California chestnut a run for the money. Trainer Woody Stephens brings Never Bend into the Derby fresh from a handsome victory in the Stepping Stone prep, and with a clean record for '63; Stephens won’t go so far as to predict a victory, but…"
The Kentucky Derby. Why the hell not? If he really had lived through the next twenty-five years, rather than imagining them or dreaming them, one thing was clear: He had a vast store of information that could be useful in the extreme. Nothing technical—he couldn’t design a computer, or anything like that—but he certainly had a working knowledge, a journalist’s knowledge, of the trends and events that would influence society from now to the mid-eighties. He could make a lot of money betting on sports events and presidential elections. Assuming, of course, that he actually possessed a concrete and correct awareness of what would happen over the coming quarter century. As he’d recognized earlier, that was not necessarily a safe assumption.
"… not far off the pace. The horse that just might set that pace is Greentree Stable’s No Robbery, who holds the record, at 1:34, for the fastest mile ever run by a three-year-old in New York … and who won the Wood Memorial one week after setting…"
Shit, who had won the Derby that year? Jeff struggled to remember. The name Never Bend, unlike No Robbery, at least rang a distant bell; but that still didn’t sound right.
"… both have an uphill battle against the team of Willie Shoemaker and the western wonder, Candy Spots. That’s the combination to beat, folks; and though it looks to be an exciting Run for the Roses among these three contenders, the consensus—and it’s a strong one—is that Candy Spots will wear the wreath this Saturday."
That didn’t sound right, either. What horse was it? Northern Dancer? Or maybe Kauai King? Jeff was sure those had both won Derbies; but which years?
"Say, bartender!"
"Same?"
"No, I’m O.K. for now; have you got a paper?"
"Paper?"
"A newspaper, today’s, yesterday’s, it doesn’t matter."
"'The Journal or the Constitution?"
"Whatever. You got the sports pages?"
"Marked up a little bit. Braves coming to town next year, I’ve been following their averages."
"Can I take a quick look?"
"Sure thing." The bartender reached beneath the place where he kept the garnishes and produced a tightly folded sports section.
Jeff flipped past the baseball pages and found a preview of the upcoming race of races in Louisville. He scanned the list of entries: There were the favorites the announcer had mentioned, Candy Spots, Never Bend, No Robbery; then Royal Tower, Lemon Twist … no, no … Gray Pet, Devil It Is … never heard of either of them … Wild Card, Rajah Noor … uh-uh … Bonjour, On My Honor …
Chateaugay.
Chateaugay, at eleven-to-one odds.
He sold the Chevy to a used-car dealer on Briarcliff Road for six hundred dollars. His books, stereo, and record collection brought in another two hundred sixty dollars at a junk shop downtown. In his dorm-room desk he’d found a checkbook and savings book from a bank near campus, and he immediately withdrew all but twenty dollars from each of the two accounts; that gave him another eight hundred and thirty dollars.
Calling his parents was the hardest part. It was obvious how deeply his sudden request for an "emergency" loan worried them, and his father was clearly angered by Jeff’s refusal to explain any further. Still, he came through with a couple of hundred dollars, and Jeff’s mother sent another four hundred from her own savings.
Now he had to place a bet, a large one. But how? He thought briefly of going to Louisville and putting the money down right at the track; but a call to a travel agent told him what he’d already suspected, that the Derby had been sold out for weeks in advance.
There was also the problem of his age. He might look old enough to order a drink at a bar, but making a wager of this size was sure to draw close scrutiny. He needed somebody to front for him.
"A bookie? What the hell do you want to know about bookies for, kid?"
To Jeff’s eyes, Frank Maddock, at twenty-two, was himself a "kid," but in this context the senior, prelaw student was an older, experienced man of the world, and obviously enjoyed playing that role to the hilt.
"I want to make a bet," Jeff said.
Maddock smiled indulgently, lit a cigarillo, and waved for another pitcher of beer.
"What on?"
"The Kentucky Derby."
"Why don’t you just start a pool around your dorm? Probably get lots of guys to come in on it. Be sure to keep it quiet, though."
The senior was treating him with an affable condescension. Jeff smiled inwardly at the young man’s practiced, if unearned, air of worldliness.
"The bet I want to make is fairly large."
"Yeah? Like how much?"
Manuel’s was half empty on a Thursday afternoon, and no one was in earshot. "Twenty-three hundred dollars," Jeff said.
Maddock frowned. "You’re talking about a hell of a lot of money there. I know Candy Spots is pretty much a sure thing, but—"
"Not Candy Spots. One of the ot
her horses."
The older boy laughed as the waiter set a new pitcher of beer on the worn oak table. "Dream on, son. No Robbery isn’t worth that kind of risk, and neither is Never Bend. Not in this race."
"It’s my money, Frank. I was thinking of a seventy-thirty split on the winnings. If I’m right, you could clean up without risking a dime."
Maddock poured them each a fresh mug, tipping the glasses to keep the-foam down. "I could get in a lot of trouble over this, you know. I don’t want to do anything to screw up law school. A kid like you, all that money; how do I know you wouldn’t go screaming to Dean Ward if you lost it?"
Jeff shrugged. "I guess that’s where your part of the gamble comes in. But I’m not that kind of guy, and I don’t plan to lose."
"Nobody ever does."
A raucous number came up on the jukebox, Jimmy Soul doing "If You Wanna Be Happy." Jeff raised his voice above the music. "So, do you know a bookie or not?"
Maddock gave him a long, curious stare. "Seventy-thirty, huh?"
"That’s right."
The senior shook his head, sighed resignedly. "You got the cash on you?"
The bar on North Druid Hills Road was packed that Saturday afternoon. The commercial-laden prerace show blared from the TV set as Jeff walked in: Wilkinson Sword trumpeting its newest product, stainless-steel razor blades.
Jeff was more nervous than he would have expected. This had all seemed perfect in the planning, but what if something went wrong? As far as he’d been able to tell, the previous week’s world events had duplicated the past that he recalled; still, his memory was as fallible as anyone’s, and after twenty-five years he couldn’t be sure that a thousand, a million, different incidents in 1963 hadn’t turned out differently than they had the first time around. He’d already noticed a few minor things that seemed slightly off-kilter, and of course his own actions had been drastically altered. This race could just as easily have a new outcome.
If it did, he’d be out everything he owned, and he’d skipped midterms this week, putting his academic standing in serious jeopardy. He might not even have the option at this point of buckling down to repeat his college career. He could be out of school on his ass, broke.
With Vietnam on the horizon.
"Hey, Charlie," somebody yelled. "Another round for the house, doubles, before they leave the gate!"
There was a chorus of cheers and laughter. One of the man’s buddies said, "Spending it a little early, aren’t you?"
"In the bag, man," said the generous one, "in the fucking bag!"
On the TV screen the horses were being shut into their gates, restless, hating the confinement, eager to run, as they’d been bred to do.
"Anything can happen now, Jimbo. That’s what a horse race is all about."
The bartender set out the doubles the stranger had bought for everyone. Before Jeff could pick up his glass, the horses were out of the gate, Never Bend breaking away as if electrically charged, with No Robbery almost at his side. Candy Spots, with Willie Shoemaker coolly astride him, was only three lengths back at the first turn.
Chateaugay was sixth. One mile to go, ten lengths behind.
Jeff tossed back a gulp of his drink, almost choked on the near-straight whiskey.
The front-runners sped past the half-mile pole. Chateaugay hadn’t gained an inch.
A smaller school, Jeff thought. Even if he flunked out of Emory, some community college would probably take him. He could work part time at a small-market radio station. His years of experience wouldn’t exist on paper, but they’d count for a lot on the job.
The bar crowd yelled at the screen as if the horses and jockeys could hear them, four hundred miles away. Jeff didn’t bother. Chateaugay had pulled up a bit toward the end of the backstretch, but it was as good as over; a three-horse race, just as the odds-makers had predicted.
Shoemaker took Candy Spots in on the rail as the field turned for home, then moved him back out for the stretch. Chateaugay was in fourth place, three lengths back, and with that kind of competition ahead of him he’d never—
At the quarter pole No Robbery suddenly seemed to tire, to lose heart for the closing battle. He dropped back, and it was Never Bend and Candy Spots tearing for home, but Shoemaker wasn’t getting the final spurt he needed out of the California Chestnut.
Chateaugay passed the favorite and bore down, steady and relentless, on Never Bend.
The din in the bar swelled to riotous levels. Jeff remained silent, unmoving, his hand nearly frozen, though he didn’t notice, as it clutched the icy glass.
Chateaugay took the race by a length and a quarter over Never Bend, with Candy Spots relegated to a close third. No Robbery was back in the field somewhere, fifth or sixth, exhausted.
Jeff had done it. He’d won.
The other men in the bar began loudly and angrily analyzing the race they’d just seen, with most of their ire aimed at Willie Shoemaker’s tactics in the last half mile. Jeff didn’t hear a word they said. He was waiting for the figures to come up on the tote board.
Chateaugay paid $20.80 to win. Jeff reached reflexively for his Casio calculator watch, then laughed as he realized how long it would be before such a thing existed. He grabbed a cocktail napkin from the bar, scribbled some figures with a ballpoint.
Half of 2300 times 20.8, less Frank Maddock’s 30 percent share for placing the bet … Jeff had won close to seventeen thousand dollars.
More importantly, the race had ended as he’d remembered it.
He was eighteen years old, and he knew everything of consequence that was going to happen in the world for the next two decades.
FOUR
Jeff slapped the cards down one at a time, face-up, on the dark green Holiday Inn bedspread. He flicked them off the diminishing deck as fast as his fingers could move, and as he did so, Frank droned a now-familiar hypnotic chant: "Plus four, plus four, plus five, plus four, plus three, plus three, plus three, plus four, plus three, plus four, plus five—stop! Hole card’s an ace."
Jeff turned the ace of diamonds over slowly, and they both grinned.
"Hot damn!" Frank chortled, slapping the bedspread and sending the cards flying. "We are a team, my man, the team to beat!"
"Want a beer?"
"Fuckin'-A told!"
Jeff uncrossed his legs, walked across the room to the cooler on the table. The curtains of the first-floor room were open, and as he pried the tops off two bottles of Coors Jeff looked with fond admiration at his new grey Studebaker Avanti by the curb, gleaming in the lights of the Tucumcari motel’s parking lot.
The car had drawn curious stares and comments all the way from Atlanta, and would probably continue to do so for the rest of the drive to Las Vegas. Jeff felt totally at ease with it, even found a certain comfort in its "futuristic" design and instrumentation. The long-nosed machine, with its bobbed rear deck, would have looked attractively state-of-the-art in 1988; indeed, he seemed to recall that an independent firm had still been manufacturing limited-edition Avantis during the eighties. To him, here in 1963, the car was like a fellow voyager in time, a plush cocoon spun in the image of his own era. Nostalgic as he’d felt about the old Chevy, this machine evoked an even stronger, reverse nostalgia.
"Hey, where’s that brew?"
"Comin' up."
He handed Frank the cold beer, took a long pull of his own. They’d taken off right after Maddock had graduated, at the end of May. Jeff had long since stopped going to classes, was flunking out, and no longer cared. Frank had wanted to drive the southern route, stop over in New Orleans for a few days of celebration, but Jeff had insisted they take a more direct path, skirting past Birmingham and Memphis and Little Rock. Outside the cities there were newly opened patches of interstate highway every couple of hundred miles, with speed limits of 70 or 75, and Jeff had used their smooth, broad-laned isolation to push the Avanti near its 160 mph peak.
The depression and confusion Jeff had felt after the abortive evening with Judy Gordo
n had been largely dissipated by the Derby win. He hadn’t seen her since that night, except in passing, on campus. And he’d stopped agonizing over possible explanations for his predicament, aside from the times when he’d awake at dawn, his brain demanding answers that could not be found. Whatever the truth might be, at least he now had proof that his awareness of the future was more than just a fantasy.
So far, Jeff had managed to deflect Frank’s questions about what had led him to such a spectacular win. Maddock now assumed Jeff to be a handicapping prodigy, with some secret method. That image had only been strengthened by Jeff s refusal to make a follow-up wager on the Preakness, two weeks after the Derby. He’d been sure that Chateaugay would win two out of three of that year’s Triple Crown, but he couldn’t remember which of the Derby sequels the horse had lost; so, despite Frank’s protests, Jeff had insisted they sit out the Preakness. Candy Spots had taken the race by three and a half lengths. Now not only was Jeff certain of victory in the upcoming Belmont Stakes, but the resurgence of Candy Spots had driven the odds back up on Chateaugay.
The betting had given Jeff a new sense of purpose, distracted him from the hopeless quagmire of metaphysics and philosophy in which the answers to his situation lay buried. If he weren’t insane already, another month or so of brooding over those imponderables surely would have driven him to that point. Gambling was so clear-cut, so soothingly straightforward: win or loss, debit or credit, right or wrong. Period. No ambiguities, no second guessing; especially not when you knew the outcome in advance. Frank had gathered up the scattered cards, was stacking and shuffling them. "Hey," he said, "let’s do a double deck!"
"Sure, why not?" Jeff straddled a chair next to the bed. He took the cards, reshuffled, began to dole them out.
"Plus one, plus one, zero, plus one, zero, minus one, minus two, minus two, minus three, minus two…"
Jeff listened contentedly to the familiar litany, the running count of aces and tens as they were dealt. Frank had been avidly memorizing charts and tables from a new book called Beat the Dealer, a computer study of betting strategies in blackjack. Jeff knew from his own reading how well the card-counting method actually worked. By the mid-seventies, casinos had begun barring anyone who played with those techniques. In this era, though, the dealers and pit bosses had welcomed any sort of system players, considered them easy marks. Frank should do all right, hold his own at the very least; and if he were absorbed in the thrill of his own triumphs at the 21 tables, it might divert his attention somewhat from the more spectacular win that Jeff expected to achieve in the Belmont.
