“So that’s the game, is it?” he said.
Claud was bending over the dog and acting like he hadn’t heard.
“I don’t want you here no more after this, you understand that?”
Claud went on fiddling with Jackie’s collar.
I heard someone behind us saying, “That flat-faced bastard with the frown swung it properly on old Feasey this time.” Someone else laughed. Mr. Feasey walked away. Claud straightened up and went over with Jackie to the hare driver in the blue jersey who had dismounted from his platform.
“Cigarette,” Claud said, offering the pack.
The man took one, also the five-pound note that was folded up small in Claud’s fingers.
“Thanks,” Claud said. “Thanks very much.”
“Don’t mention,” the man said.
Then Claud turned to me. “You get it all on, Gordon?” He was jumping up and down and rubbing his hands and patting Jackie, and his lips trembled as he spoke.
“Yes. Half at twenty-fives, half at fifteens.”
“Oh, Christ, Gordon, that’s marvellous. Wait here till I get the suitcase.”
“You take Jackie,” I said, “and go and sit in the car. I’ll see you later.”
There was nobody around the bookies now. I was the only one with anything to collect, and I walked slowly, with a sort of dancing stride and a wonderful bursting feeling in my chest, toward the first one in the line, the man with the magenta face and the white substance on his mouth. I stood in front of him and I took all the time I wanted going through my pack of tickets to find the two that were his. The name was Syd Pratchett. It was written up large across his board in gold letters on a scarlet field—“SYD PRATCHETT. THE BEST ODDS IN THE MIDLANDS. PROMPT SETTLEMENT.”
I handed him the first ticket, and said, “Seventy-eight pounds to come.” It sounded so good I said it again, making a delicious little chant of it. “Seventy-eight pounds to come on this one.” I didn’t mean to gloat over Mr. Pratchett. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to like him quite a lot. I even felt sorry for him having to fork out so much money. I hoped his wife and kids wouldn’t suffer.
“Number forty-two,” Mr. Pratchett said, turning to his clerk who held the big book. “Forty-two wants seventy-eight pound.”
There was a pause while the clerk ran his finger down the column of recorded bets. He did this twice, then he looked up at the boss and began to shake his head.
“No,” he said. “Don’t pay. That ticket backed Snailbox Lady.”
Mr. Pratchett, standing on his box, leaned over and peered down at the book. He seemed to be disturbed by what the clerk had said, and there was a look of genuine concern on the huge magenta face.
That clerk is a fool, I thought, and any moment now Mr. Pratchett’s going to tell him so.
But when Mr. Pratchett turned back to me, the eyes had become narrow and hostile. “Now look, Charley,” he said softly. “Don’t let’s have any of that. You know very well you bet Snailbox. What’s the idea?”
“I bet Black Panther,” I said. “Two separate bets of three pounds each at twenty-five to one. Here’s the second ticket.”
This time he didn’t even bother to check it with the book. “You bet Snailbox, Charley,” he said. “I remember you coming round.” With that, he turned away from me and started wiping the names of the last-race runners off his board with a wet rag. Behind him, the clerk had closed the book and was lighting himself a cigarette. I stood watching them, and I could feel the sweat beginning to break through the skin all over my body.
“Let me see the book.”
Mr. Pratchett blew his nose into the wet rag and dropped it to the ground. “Look,” he said, “why don’t you go away and stop annoying me?”
The point was this: a bookmaker’s ticket, unlike a pari-mutuel ticket, never has anything written on it regarding the nature of your bet. This is normal practice, the same at every race track in the country, whether it’s the Silver Ring at Newmarket, the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, or a tiny country flapping track near Oxford. All you receive is a card bearing the bookie’s name and a serial number. The wager is (or should be) recorded by the bookie’s clerk in his book, alongside the number of the ticket, but apart from that there is no evidence at all of how you betted.
“Go on,” Mr. Pratchett was saying. “Hop it.”
I stepped back a pace and glanced down the long line of bookmakers. None of them was looking my way. Each was standing motionless on his little wooden box beside his wooden placard, staring straight ahead into the crowd. I went up to the next one and presented a ticket.
“I had three pounds on Black Panther at twenty-five to one,” I said firmly. “Seventy-eight pounds to come.”
This man, who had a soft inflamed face, went through exactly the same routine as Mr. Pratchett, questioning his clerk, peering at the book, and giving me the same answers.
“Whatever’s the matter with you?” he said quietly, speaking to me as though I were eight years old. “Trying such a silly thing as that.”
This time I stepped well back. “You dirty thieving bastards!” I cried. “The whole lot of you!”
Automatically, as though they were puppets, all the heads down the line flicked round and looked at me. The expressions didn’t alter. It was just the heads that moved, all seventeen of them, and seventeen pairs of cold, glassy eyes looked down at me. There was not the faintest flicker of interest in any of them.
“Somebody spoke,” they seemed to be saying. “We didn’t hear it. It’s quite a nice day today.”
The crowd, sensing excitement, was beginning to move in around me. I ran back to Mr. Pratchett, right up close to him, and poked him in the stomach with my finger. “You’re a thief! A lousy rotten little thief!” I shouted.
The extraordinary thing was that Mr. Pratchett didn’t seem to resent this at all.
“Well I never,” he said. “Look who’s talking!”
Then suddenly the big face broke into a wide, froglike grin, and he looked over at the crowd and shouted, “Look who’s talking!”
All at once, everybody started to laugh. Down the line, the bookies were coming to life and turning to each other and laughing and pointing at me and shouting, “Look who’s talking! Look who’s talking!” The crowd began to take up the cry as well, and I stood there on the grass alongside Mr. Pratchett with this wad of tickets as thick as a pack of cards in my hand, listening to them and feeling slightly hysterical. Over the heads of the people, I could see Mr. Feasey beside his blackboard already chalking up the runners for the next race; and then beyond him, far away up the top of the field, I caught sight of Claud standing by the van, waiting for me with the suitcase in his hand.
It was time to go home.
| 1953 |
“Scotch and toilet water?”
THE DEPARTURE OF EMMA INCH
Fiction
JAMES THURBER
Emma Inch looked no different from any other middle-aged, thin woman you might glance at in the subway or deal with across the counter of some small store in a country town, and then forget forever. Her hair was drab and unabundant, her face made no impression on you, her voice I don’t remember—it was just a voice. She came to us with a letter of recommendation from some acquaintance who knew that we were going to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer and wanted a cook. We took her because there was nobody else, and she seemed all right. She had arrived at our hotel in Forty-fifth Street the day before we were going to leave and we got her a room for the night, because she lived way uptown somewhere. She said she really ought to go back and give up her room, but I told her I’d fix that.
Emma Inch had a big scuffed brown suitcase with her, and a Boston bull terrier. His name was Feely. Feely was seventeen years old and he grumbled and growled and snuffled all the time, but we needed a cook and we agreed to take Feely along with Emma Inch, if she would take care of him and keep him out of the way. It turned out to be easy to keep Feely out of the way because he would
be grousing anywhere Emma put him until she came and picked him up again. I never saw him walk. Emma had owned him, she said, since he was a pup. He was all she had in the world, she told us, with a mist in her eyes. I felt embarrassed but not touched. I didn’t see how anybody could love Feely.
I didn’t lose any sleep about Emma Inch and Feely the night of the day they arrived, but my wife did. She told me next morning that she had lain awake a long time thinking about the cook and her dog, because she felt kind of funny about them. She didn’t know why. She just had a feeling that they were kind of funny. When we were all ready to leave—it was about three o’clock in the afternoon, for we had kept putting off the packing—I phoned Emma’s room, but she didn’t answer. It was getting late and we felt nervous—the Fall River boat would sail in about two hours. We couldn’t understand why we hadn’t heard anything from Emma and Feely. It wasn’t until four o’clock that we did. There was a small rap on the door of our bedroom and I opened it and Emma and Feely were there, Feely in her arms, snuffing and snaffling, as if he had been swimming a long way.
My wife told Emma to get her bag packed, we were leaving in a little while. Emma said her bag was packed, except for her electric fan, and she couldn’t get that in. “You won’t need an electric fan at the Vineyard,” my wife told her. “It’s cool there, even during the day, and it’s almost cold at night. Besides, there is no electricity in the cottage we are going to.” Emma Inch seemed distressed. She studied my wife’s face. “I’ll have to think of something else then,” she said. “Mebbe I could let the water run all night.” We both sat down and looked at her. Feely’s asthmatic noises were the only sounds in the room for a while. “Doesn’t that dog ever stop that?” I asked, irritably. “Oh, he’s just talking,” said Emma. “He talks all the time, but I’ll keep him in my room and he won’t bother you none.” “Doesn’t he bother you?” I asked. “He would bother me,” said Emma, “at night, but I put the electric fan on and keep the light burning. He don’t make so much noise when it’s light, because he don’t snore. The fan kind of keeps me from noticing him. I put a piece of cardboard, like, where the fan hits it and then I don’t notice Feely so much. Mebbe I could let the water run in my room all night instead of the fan.” I said “Hmmm” and got up and mixed a drink for my wife and me—we had decided not to have one till we got on the boat, but I thought we better have one now. My wife didn’t tell Emma there would be no running water in her room at the Vineyard.
“We’ve been worried about you, Emma,” I said. “I phoned your room but you didn’t answer.” “I never answer the phone,” said Emma, “because I always get a shock. I wasn’t there anyways. I couldn’t sleep in that room. I went back to Mrs. McCoy’s on Seventy-eighth Street.” I lowered my glass. “You went back to Seventy-eighth Street last night?” I demanded. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I had to tell Mrs. McCoy I was going away and wouldn’t be there any more for a while—Mrs. McCoy’s the landlady. Anyways, I never sleep in a hotel.” She looked around the room. “They burn down,” she told us.
It came out that Emma Inch had not only gone back to Seventy-eighth Street the night before but had walked all the way, carrying Feely. It had taken her an hour or two, because Feely didn’t like to be carried very far at a time, so she had had to stop every block or so and put him down on the sidewalk for a while. It had taken her just as long to walk back to our hotel, too; Feely, it seems, never got up before afternoon—that’s why she was so late. She was sorry. My wife and I finished our drinks, looking at each other, and at Feely.
Emma Inch didn’t like the idea of riding to Pier 14 in a taxi, but after ten minutes of cajoling and pleading she finally got in. “Make it go slow,” she said. We had enough time, so I asked the driver to take it easy. Emma kept getting to her feet and I kept pulling her back onto the seat. “I never been in an automobile before,” she said. “It goes awful fast.” Now and then she gave a little squeal of fright. The driver turned his head and grinned. “You’re O.K. wit’ me, lady,” he said. Feely growled at him. Emma waited until he had turned away again, and then she leaned over to my wife and whispered. “They all take cocaine,” she said. Feely began to make a new sound—a kind of high, agonized yelp. “He’s singing,” said Emma. She gave a strange little giggle, but the expression of her face didn’t change. “I wish you had put the Scotch where we could get at it,” said my wife.
If Emma Inch had been afraid of the taxicab, she was terrified by the Priscilla of the Fall River Line. “I don’t think I can go,” said Emma. “I don’t think I could get on a boat. I didn’t know they were so big.” She stood rooted to the pier, clasping Feely. She must have squeezed him too hard, for he screamed—he screamed like a woman. We all jumped. “It’s his ears,” said Emma. “His ears hurt.” We finally got her on the boat, and once aboard, in the salon, her terror abated somewhat. Then the three parting blasts of the boat whistle rocked lower Manhattan. Emma Inch leaped to her feet and began to run, letting go of her suitcase (which she had refused to give up to a porter) but holding onto Feely. I caught her just as she reached the gangplank. The ship was on its way when I let go of her arm.
It was a long time before I could get Emma to go to her stateroom, but she went at last. It was an inside stateroom, and she didn’t seem to mind it. I think she was surprised to find that it was like a room, and had a bed and a chair and a washbowl. She put Feely down on the floor. “I think you’ll have to do something about the dog,” I said. “I think they put them somewhere and you get them when you get off.” “No, they don’t,” said Emma. I guess, in this case, they didn’t. I don’t know. I shut the door on Emma Inch and Feely, and went away. My wife was drinking straight Scotch when I got to our stateroom.
“Other end, Mr. Pemberton.”
The next morning, cold and early, we got Emma and Feely off the Priscilla at Fall River and over to New Bedford in a taxi and onto the little boat for Martha’s Vineyard. Each move was as difficult as getting a combative drunken man out of the night club in which he fancies he has been insulted. Emma sat in a chair on the Vineyard boat, as far away from sight of the water as she could get, and closed her eyes and held onto Feely. She had thrown a coat over Feely, not only to keep him warm but to prevent any of the ship’s officers from taking him away from her. I went in from the deck at intervals to see how she was. She was all right, or at least all right for her, until five minutes before the boat reached the dock at Woods Hole, the only stop between New Bedford and the Vineyard. Then Feely got sick. Or at any rate Emma said he was sick. He didn’t seem to me any different from what he always was—his breathing was just as abnormal and irregular. But Emma said he was sick. There were tears in her eyes. “He’s a very sick dog, Mr. Thurman,” she said. “I’ll have to take him home.” I knew by the way she said “home” what she meant. She meant Seventy-eighth Street.
The boat tied up at Woods Hole and was motionless and we could hear the racket of the deckhands on the dock loading freight. “I’ll get off here,” said Emma, firmly, or with more firmness, anyway, than she had shown yet. I explained to her that we would be home in half an hour, that everything would be fine then, everything would be wonderful. I said Feely would be a new dog. I told her people sent sick dogs to Martha’s Vineyard to be cured. But it was no good. “I’ll have to take him off here,” said Emma. “I always have to take him home when he is sick.” I talked to her eloquently about the loveliness of Martha’s Vineyard and the nice houses and the nice people and the wonderful accommodations for dogs. But I knew it was useless. I could tell by looking at her. She was going to get off the boat at Woods Hole.
“You really can’t do this,” I said, grimly, shaking her arm. Feely snarled weakly. “You haven’t any money and you don’t know where you are. You’re a long way from New York. Nobody ever got from Woods Hole to New York alone.” She didn’t seem to hear me. She began walking toward the stairs leading to the gangplank, crooning to Feely. “You’ll have to go all the way back on boats,” I said, “
or else take a train, and you haven’t any money. If you are going to be so stupid and leave us now, I can’t give you any money.” “I don’t want any money, Mr. Thurman,” she said. “I haven’t earned any money.” I walked along in irritable silence for a moment; then I gave her some money. I made her take it. We got to the gangplank. Feely snaffled and gurgled. I saw now that his eyes were a little red and moist. I knew it would do no good to summon my wife—not when Feely’s health was at stake. “How do you expect to get home from here?” I almost shouted at Emma Inch as she moved down the gangplank. “You’re way out on the end of Massachusetts.” She stopped and turned around. “We’ll walk,” she said. “We like to walk, Feely and me.” I just stood still and watched her go.
When I went up on deck, the boat was clearing for the Vineyard. “How’s everything?” asked my wife. I waved a hand in the direction of the dock. Emma Inch was standing there, her suitcase at her feet, her dog under one arm, waving goodbye to us with her free hand. I had never seen her smile before, but she was smiling now.
| 1935 |
LOST DOG
SUSAN ORLEAN
On August 6, 2003, Stephen Morris parked his car at the Atlanta History Center, expecting to spend half an hour or so edifying himself and his nephew on the particulars of the Civil War. It was the beginning of what would turn out to be a very bad day. At the time, though, everything seemed fine. Morris, a sinewy guy in his fifties with a scramble of light-brown hair and the deliberative air of a non-practicing academic, was at work on his doctoral dissertation—a biography of William Young, a seventeenth-century composer in the court of the Archduke of Innsbruck. Morris’s teen-age nephew was visiting from British Columbia, and Morris had taken a break to show him the highlights of Atlanta. Morris’s wife, Beth Bell, a compact, gray-haired, dry-witted epidemiologist whose specialty is hepatitis, was at her job at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she is a senior investigator; that day, she was knee-deep in a disease outbreak among attendees of jam-band concerts.
The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs Page 37
