He was making bets. Put him in a rest home and he’ll be dead overnight. Saw another guy out there, blind. He must have had a better day than I did yesterday. I’ve got to phone Quagliano and tell him I’ve finished this article. Now there’s a very strange son of a bitch. I don’t know how he makes it and he won’t tell me. I see him at the boxing matches sitting there with a beer and looking very relaxed. I wonder what he’s got going. He’s got me worried. . . .
Small Press Review, Vol. 4, no. 4, 1973
TALES
A Dollar for Carl Larsen
dedicated to Carl Larsen
owed to Carl Larsen
paid to Carl Larsen
. . . it was a lazy day and a lousy day to work, and it seemed that even spiders hadn’t thrown out their webs. And when I got to the railroad yards I found out that Henderson was the new foreman.
The old Mexican, Al or Abe or somebody had retired or died or gone insane. The boys were matching pennies down by the barn when Henderson called me over.
“Gaines,” he said, “Gaines, I understand you’re somewhat of a playboy. Well, that’s all right. I don’t mind a little horseplay now and then, but we’ll get our work done first and then we’ll play.”
“Just like recess at school, eh, coach?”
Henderson put his face real close to mine. I put mine real close to his.
“Or haven’t you been to school, Hendy?”
I could look right down into his red mouth and his frog jaws as he spoke: “I can tie the can to you, boy.”
“Proving what?” I asked.
“Proving you are out of position.”
Which was a pretty good answer, and a pretty good criticism: I was always out of position.
I took a nickel out of my pocket and flipped it to the cement where the boys were lagging to the line. They stood back stunned, looking from the nickel to me. I turned and walked the hell out of there.
II
I lay up in my room and studied the Racing Form for a couple of hours and knocked off half a bottle of leftover wine. Then I got into my ’38 Ford and headed for the track. . . .
I wrote the morning line down on my program and walked over to the bar where I noticed a big blonde about 35, and alone—well, about as alone as a big babe like that can get in amongst 8,000 men. She was trying her damnedest to burst and pop out of her clothes, and you stood there watching her, wondering which part would pop out first. It was sheer madness, and every time she moved you could feel the electricity running up the steel girders. And perched on top of all this madness was a face that really had some type of royalty in it. I mean, there was a kind of stateliness, like she’d lived beyond it all. I mean, there were some women who could simply make damned fools out of men without making any type of statement, or movement, or demand—they could simply stand there and the men would simply feel like damned fools and that was all there was to it. This was one of those women.
I looked up from my drink as if it didn’t matter and as if she were anybody else, and as if I were a pretty jaded type (which, to tell the truth, I was) and said, “How you been doin’ . . . with the ponies, I mean?”
“All right,” she said.
I’d expected something else. I don’t know what. But the “all right” sounded good, though.
I was about half-gone on the wine and felt I owned the world, including the blonde.
“I used to be a jockey,” I told her.
“You’re pretty big for a jock.”
“210, solid muscle,” I said.
“And belly,” she said, looking right above my belt.
We both kinda laughed and I moved closer.
“You want the winner of the first race? To kinda start you off right?”
“Sure,” she said, “sure,” and I just felt that big hip-flank touch the upper side of my leg a moment and I felt on fire.
I smelled perfume, and imagined waterfalls and forests and throwing scraps to fine dogs, and furniture soft as clouds and never awakening to an alarm clock.
I drained my drink. “Try six,” I said. “Number six: Cat’shead.”
“Cat’shead?”
Just then somebody tapped me. I should say—rapped me on the back of one of my shoulder blades.
“Boy,” this voice said, “get lost!”
I stared down into my drink waiting for her to send this stranger away.
“I said,” the voice got a little louder, “run along and play with your marbles!”
As I stared down into my drink I realized it was empty.
“I don’t like to play marbles,” I told the voice.
I motioned to the bartender. “Two more—for the lady and myself.”
I felt it in my back then: the sure, superior nudge of a peerless and no doubt highly efficient automatic.
“Learn,” said the voice, “learn to like to play marbles!”
“I’m going right away,” I said. “I brought my agate. I hear there’s a big game under the grandstand.”
I turned and caught a look at him as he slid into my seat, and I’d always thought I was the meanest-looking son of a bitch in the world.
“Tommy,” I heard her tell him, “I want you to play a hundred on the nose for me.”
“Sure. On who?”
“Number six.”
“Number SIX??”
“Yes: six.”
“But that stiff is 10 to 1!”
“Play it.”
“O.K., baby, O.K., but . . .”
“Play it.”
“Can I finish my drink?”
“Sure.”
