American fiction -- 20th century; American poetry -- 20th century; Short stories, American
I remember once out at St. Cloud. It was a big two hundred thousand
franc race with seven entries and Kzar a big favourite. I went around
to the paddock to see the horses with my old man and you never saw
such horses. This Kzar is a great big yellow horse that looks like
just nothing but run. I never saw such a horse. He was being led
around the paddock with his head down and when he went by me I felt
all hollow inside he was so beautiful. There never was such a
wonderful, lean, running built horse. And he went around the paddock
putting his feet just so and quiet and careful and moving easy like
he knew just what he had to do and not jerking and standing up on his
legs and getting wild eyed like you see these selling platers with a
shot of dope in them. The crowd was so thick I couldn’t see him again
except just his legs going by and some yellow and my old man started
out through the crowd and I followed him over to the jock’s dressing
room back in the trees and there was a big crowd around there too but
the man at the door in a derby nodded to my old man and we got in and
everybody was sitting around and getting dressed and pulling shirts
over their heads and pulling boots on and it all smelled hot and
sweaty and linimenty and outside was the crowd looking in.
The old man went over and sat down beside George Gardner that was
getting into his pants and said, “What’s the dope George?” just in an
ordinary tone of voice cause there aint any use him feeling around
because George either can tell him or he can’t tell him.
“He won’t win” George says very low, leaning over and buttoning the
bottoms of his pants.
“Who will” my old man says leaning over close so nobody can hear.
“Kircubbin” George says, “And if he does, save me a couple of
tickets”.
My old man says something in a regular voice to George and George
says, “Don’t ever bet on anything I tell you” kidding like and we
beat it out and through all the crowd that was looking in over to the
100 franc mutuel machine. But I knew something big was up because
George is Kzar’s jockey. On the way he gets one of the yellow odds
sheets with the starting prices on and Kzar is only paying 5 for 10,
Cefisidote is next at 3 to I and fifth down the list this Kircubbin
at 8 to 1. My old man bets five thousand on Kircubbin to win and puts
on a thousand to place and we went around back of the grandstand to
go up the stairs and get a place to watch the race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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