A young man comes home. He was away long. He has come far. He has tested himself against the folklore of his native land and has failed to measure up to it. This circuitous, somewhat oval-shaped expedition has consumed nearly one-tenth of his life, has taken him through more lonely crowded cities, empty nameless towns, whimsicalities of Weather, and certainly through more of Anxiety’s sleepless nights than he had endured in the whole of the previous nine-tenths, and in general has succeeded in leading him through a labyrinthine maze of challenges for which he, sadly, was not prepared; enemies whose wrath he neither provoked nor deserved, monsters of such enormous scope that they could not possibly have been imagined. Many of these terrific creatures suffered birth and even now take nourishment in his own mind, and they, of course, are the most real, the most troublesome. He still is not free of them (hence, a story), but at least he is now a wise enough young man to know that he stands a better chance of dealing with them and ultimately defeating them here, in the far more comfortable battlefield of his own home town. For him a rare good decision. He certainly would not have been capable of such prescience at the time he began this journey. For instance: One thing he had not, when he began, been wise enough to know—his elders had systematically made sure of it from the day he was born—was how naive a man can be about his own country. In effect he had been sold out. Fail? Here? His mission had been merely to succeed at what was most important to him, the actual what didn’t matter, it was his national birthright this success, he had been assured! Yet the florid, jingoistic slogans of his youth proved altogether impotent against Reality and his legions (It’s not supposed to be so damned difficult is it?), “try harder”, the distant voices in his head whispered, sure, all right, I can try he would whisper back, but the harder he did try the more thoroughly he did fail, the harder he believed the more savagely the hard hand of Disillusionment came down. Fact soon shrunk into fable. Fable faded finally to myth. Finally he was broken. (Suddenly he drops to the ground. He begins doing pushups. Wet gravel digs deep into the cold pink palms of his hands. A cumbersome, dirty-white trenchcoat prevents him from going down all the way. Passersby barely take notice. He only does a few. It doesn’t work.) Broken indeed. But at the time he left, to be fair, why shouldn’t he have believed the sweet, patriotic diet that had always been fed to him? Why shouldn’t he have swallowed the cliches? For indeed it is scratched somewhere on the sinuous parchment of History that this country of his, this colossus, this grotesquely fat storybook empire, was once something simple and honest and beautiful, something its founders had intended to be the most perfect example of civilization in an imperfect world. And for a very long time, The Dream and Reality danced a well-rehearsed reel. But as we try this day to focus our eye on one small stage of the national theater, curtained by rain, the props and players obscured slightly by what appears to be (at first glance) the same misty-gray cloud of uncertainty that hangs so ominously o’er the rest of the land, it is with the unmistakable knowledge that The Dream is in trouble. The global landscape has changed. Outsiders mock the colossus. Its people are no longer the despised envy of the world, merely despised. In fact, on the heels of two sad decades of international embarrassment and domestic quarrel, it could easily be asserted that the citizens of this once-proudest of nations are facing their first great crisis of humility, of collective, coast-to-coast self doubt; or at least the first one since the great crisis of conscience which served to define that nation, conceived and brought forth on this continent by their forefathers almost six score years ago. It is a humbling time for a people who don’t react well to being humbled. Like this young man, standing again, who at the moment is little more than a statue in a steady drizzle, only half aware of it, and thus growing colder and wetter and—certainly on the surface—more pathetic by the minute. But today he is not so much concerned with what small inconveniences Nature might sneeze at him. Today he is faced with an altogether different problem. With only one more gate to walk through before he can truly consider himself home, he is apparently having a little trouble negotiating his own admission… “Don’t rush me,” he finally replies. Suffice to say she is the best excuse he could come up with for coming back a failure. And for not punching his own ticket for being one. "final time…one minute, ten, and three-fifths seconds...” Ten thousand miles behind him. Fifty feet of mud to go. The end link in a painful, oval-shaped chain. Wind, Cold, Rain, they all whip at him, ruthless, penetrating, hard. And each succeeding volley Weather throws against his face finds it increasingly pale and numb from the abuse. Yet the young man does not go forward. Why? Were it only that easy….Consider further that he has been preparing for this moment since the very day he left, planning, dreaming of how it might feel, and now, just a few long-legged strides from a teaspoon of actual happiness, standing finally before the damp, turnstiled threshold of his repatriation, standing, he is not even surprised. It takes courage to be happy. He knows this now. He is used to them, the Old Paralyses. He is scared. But an excuse to come back? Excuse? Woe that any free man should require such pretext, merely for the exercise of his inalienable right to come home. Beyond the tortured wander of his own mind, of course, none is necessary. Certainly this egalitarian, forgiving realm into which he is attempting to reinvest himself never requires an explanation to accompany admission, and indeed any man whose guts, by Chance, become riddled with the wonderful disease of Risk is here routinely, and cheerfully, bid welcome. Judge him not harshly. After all, for the whole world it is a time of excuses. For the individual, a time when words like “free” and “inalienable” mean little. And in his brief defense, this tired, beleaguered young man has never been away for any great length of time, and he is still more than a little embarrassed and confused by the whys and wherefores of his travels, and yet he figures he still has a little pride left, somewhere, and all this pressure on the soft, untested veneer of his self-respect has gradually caved in his resolve. Funny. Most of the time he is actually aware of it, of just how thoroughly he has dressed himself in this straitjacket of psychological gamesmanship. But he doesn’t care. That’s what happens, sometimes, when the bold idealisms of youth surrender to the easy compromises of adult-hood. The point is that his own ego—broken and long-netted in disrepair—has seduced him, is begging him, shamelessly imploring him to allow it at least the dignity of this final, sweet temptation. “the results of the third race have been declared official...” And what a worthy, irresistible seductress she remains!—this rambling, curvaceous, capricious and constant both, this wonderfully unpredictable European greensward, the very greenness stamping her so radically different from the dirt track which imprisons her. She is better. Perhaps it’s because grass is a living thing, and a dirt racetrack is only a lifeless, colorless flat oval of various sediments and barren clay compounds, perhaps it is this emerald gift of Life that makes turf racing so much more “watchable”, so much easier for the rapt naked eye to embrace. A dirt track merely exists. A grass course seems to shimmer and pulse, and undulate with a life all her own. Worthy of transmutation into the appropriate human gender? Might as well question the notion that it is one simple, biological Impulse which has thoroughly vexed and driven Man since his creation. Yes, it had always looked that good, this unusual turf course. But he hasn’t looked upon her in more than two years, which for any caliber of man is considerable denial, the result being that her emerald-green sod—for him grown lush in that frustrating absence through the seed of so many fertile memories—is today especially beguiling…. Today she impresses him more than in even those happiest of times. In the good old days, he recalls, she would seem to spring directly from the San Gabriel Mountains immediately to the north, a picture-frame row of hills formed a thousand millenniums ago (practically the only east-west mountain range in America) surely in anticipation of this most unusual and spectacular of sports theaters. Even the local sportswriters would get into the act, clever chaps that they are, with one of them likely to wax downright rhapsodic that a vertical racecourse and horizontal mountains are a “love match”, or a lead-pipe “natural”, absolutely predestined to mate with one another. Unusual, sure. But on this somewhat gray and glorious day, after so long and painful an abstinence, and after going to such great psychological pains to finger her as the scapegoat for his return, there is no way he is going to settle for such mundane objectivity. This is no time to shackle the imagination. For in his mind’s eye, this perfect product of human engineering could just as easily have been thundering right on down from leaden-gray clouds, the gift of some benevolent god, falling from the vault of heaven like an Asgardian rainbow bridge, untrodden and indivisible, and thus providing an anonymous creator with a suitable one-way thoroughfare should he ever deign to descend into the bleak Midgard of humanity. But upon piercing the misty-gray firmament (to mortals visible now) this rainbow of the mind could perhaps suffer yet another strange metamorphosis, where, at the top of a half-mile hill, the six lesser colors of its spectrum might be strained through twelve gleaming, metal gates….a process which now succeeds in melting them into green. Green….that most feminine of all colors….the blood-color of Nature herself. Once below this splendid prism of gold his mind’s eye meekly gives way to his physical ones. They follow the course down to where it is taken from view for a moment by a misplaced grove of trees (which its earthly architects had neatly avoided with a clever, right-hand veer), trees which stand vigilant guard round old Lucky Baldwin’s 19th-century winery (which these architects, rare humans indeed, had the heavenly good sense not to destroy) then bending back to the left in encirclement of those trees and rolling into view again not three furlongs from the gate, descending, always descend-ing, winding its way counterclockwise and downhill in a wide sweeping arc, finally flattening out, finally straightening out, only for the green to be interrupted suddenly and brutally by the brown of the main track, slashing athwart, severing her in two, at the top of a long stretch run. His eyes linger at this dangerous dirt crossing, as if to spirit an animal’s fragile legs safely across the cinders, safely back to rich, tender sod. When he blinks there is moisture. Finally his eyes settle level, they follow the curl of a shimmering ellipse of green, green which flows from the blue of these damp tired orbs like emerald paint, flattering the inside lining of the larger dirt oval with the singular green gift of Life, finally slowing to a slightly uphill grade through the stretch….and finishing in the shadow of the second of two giant totalizator boards in the infield. Charles Edison Barnes—wanderer, dreamer, failure—had forgotten just how magnificent a creature she is. Breath stops halfway down his throat in a tingle. He has never known her equal, yet he gazes wantonly upon her green grandeur as if it were the first time; the ever-perfect funnel for his passion. He had practically forgotten that curious right-hand dogleg a furlong or so below the golden hillside starting gate, and the dozens of eager athletes—both human and equine—he has seen fail to negotiate it properly. He had all but forgotten just how good the horses look rushing past the “tote” boards, their respective odds blinking a bright yellow background as they stretch and strain frantically for an invisible wire. He has certainly not forgotten the losing wagers, options he has incorrectly (or, more precisely, unsuccessfully) invested in over the course. Yes, the memories of those many-hundred disappointments still linger. Of course without the losses there would be no thrill in winning. But his private testimonial to her beauty is that the rush is essentially the same. She could be so deliciously cruel…she could be so unbearably kind. Suddenly he shudders. Another. And soon it is several of these silly shuddery deep breaths escaping a tired, troubled face. When he realizes it he swears. He then leans, half-smiling, on a wet railing just shy of the general admission gates. Moisture seeps through the sleeves of his trenchcoat, soaking his forearms, goose bumps arriving immediately to combat the chill. One by one his senses take their inventory. Sense by sense his imagination seeks to play translator, ghostwriter, interpreter. Each version is as clear and real as the other. So while swift, pale blue eyes run all the way up the green hill—and see nothing—hosts of full fields of flailing jocks and horseflesh concurrently gallop down the very same hill right toward him. His ears also hear nothing, save the occasional ornery squawks of birds, yet his mind tingles clear and sure with the swell and crash of symphonies—grandstands of symphonies—the glad squeals and desperate shrieks of Hope of a dozen never-to-be-forgotten winter seasons. Perhaps his nose is memory’s strongest engine. It smells hotdogs yet to be prepared, pulls free the scent of popcorn consumed a decade ago….as for aromas marking prevailing place and time, he is sure he can smell the freshly cut grass through the rain….and just as surely, at just that moment, the stables behind him reach his nostrils with their own peculiar odor. Nothing here ever changes, he reflects out loud….even while the rest of the damn world gets worse. And since the ubiquitous Old Paralyses, pitiless creatures that they are, since they have seen fit to temporarily delay his paying his way into the compound so it is that he has stopped to reflect on this long and generous green temptress—officially the Camino Real Hillside Turf Course—that had given him so much pleasure and pain in his youth (Have even thirty seconds ran away since the precise moment he allowed his mind this backwards gallop, this romp through the cobwebbed corridors of his memory?). Time, for once, does not exist. And these are not merely the indolent, lazy offspring of vagueness and forgetfulness, these thoughts. No. Vividly, rather, he recalls the veteran performers who took his money wire-to-wire, and, perhaps even more vividly, the countless neophytes who spent it by going too fast too soon. Then there were the late-runners, speedless creatures relegated to playing a waiting game, waiting and hoping that their swifter, more talented brethren would weaken and tire, and ultimately fade and falter in the drive. Some would get there. Most would not. But can anyone honestly say, he might easily be wondering, that the thrill of victory eclipses the thrilling, electric anticipation of defeat? The confused thrum of two decades of pounding hooves rings hot and hard in his head….Once he had a horse, a fast and fresh and winning horse (and a borderline psychotic, no doubt) disqualified for successfully leaping the inner railing only a stride or two from the wire, just before dropping stone dead from a cerebral hemorrhage right there in the goddam infield….just one lousy jump to go….damn, ‘still hurts….ah, but then there was the very first animal he ever dared to put his trust in, a filly, drawing away in the stretch by six lengths at 25-to-one, as if his simple, unquestioning faith in her had lent violent wings to her stride. He has to smile. Were it only that easy. In fact, her recent form had been utterly questionable, and she had deserved to go off at such faithless long odds….If he had known anything about anything at the time, he never even would have bet on the nag. He has no memory of pain, not really. Just different voltages of pleasure…. But above all, foremost of all the memories of all the grass-course races crowded blissfully within his fine mind, he recalls most vividly, and ever-fondly, the ‘Capistrano. The formal name is the San Juan Capistrano Handicap, but an event of such magnitude needs its own moniker. ‘Capistrano….the word hits him harder than Christmas. It means more. For him it represents true joy, not merely the promise of nebulous half-joys yet to come. The race itself, which requires mastery of every nuance of this tricky hillside course to win, is surely this young man’s favorite crucible of Sport. It is the only race of the season that tours the entire length of the lawn, about one- and three-quarter miles from gate to wire. It is a torturous journey for both man and beast, a race against exhaustion, enervating both physically and emotionally and almost impossible to win while leading the whole way. Front-runners pay for their courage. But Olden Times turned the trick in ‘62, with the indomitable Shoemaker doing the steering. Charlie was there with his uncle. It was his first ‘Capistrano. It touched him, the way a six-year-old boy knows something has touched him but doesn’t exactly know why. Touched him so sufficiently that in the next fifteen years he didn’t miss once, and ‘Capistrano Day soon became his anchor; the pivot around which each year would meekly revolve. As he slowly grew older, and he, like a great many boys and future young men, intuitively sensed a need to organize and chronologize the various epochs of his life, he soon began to attach each succeeding epoch to one or more of the ‘Capistrano’s routinely great renewals….Longden’s last ride, courtesy of the equally grizzled George Royal, or the dead-heat between Quicken Tree and Fiddle Isle, more recently the successful come-from-behind rallies of Cougar, One On The Aisle, and Exceller….grade school, high school, college, and beyond. Standing there, transfixed by his own thoughts, indifferent even to Weather clinging to his face like stubborn holiday tinsel, he takes himself through his short life, year-by-year, fast-forward, each near triumph, each seemingly great tragedy, each corresponding drive to the wire. Pictures whir and spin inside his head like newsreels. Year after year, in order, he plays in his mind the films of every stretch run. They are talking pictures, and the crowds roar. The pictures are in color, and the grass is green. (His teeth gnaw quietly at the fingernails of each cold hand. A tiny section of the right index nail, in tearing free, tears too much, rips the soft quick asunder, causing a brief, fleeting jolt of pain to disappear somewhere deep within his over-loaded nervous system. How he wishes he’d never left…how he wishes he had the guts to go again…A tiny drop of blood beads up at the site. He barely notices it. He doesn’t do anything about it.) “all horses in the fourth race will wear mud calks....” The ‘Capistrano will not be presented again until three months hence, beneath a torrid April sun. Instead, this damp day’s feature race is a measly six-furlong dash, featuring some fairly ordinary three-year-old fillies, in front of an audience only one-third ‘Capistrano size. A day like any other. But despite the modest racing program, and the relentless winter drizzle that drives frozen hands, finally, to the warm dry sanctuary of pockets, the young man looks to the day as a new beginning. He hadn’t missed much about L.A., but he has dearly missed this track. Especially the turf course….how many times, how many ugly, intolerable times the past two years, when there seemed to be no legitimate incentive capable of convincing him to not punch that final ticket, just thinking of her inexhaustible bounty helped him pull through….He knows he doesn’t deserve her, he knows no irresolute man could ever deserve such beauty, such sweet, daily absolution, and so for a moment something, everything, the whole dizzying, embarrassing, god damn merry-go-round of his brief and undistinguished adulthood, again keeps him from going forward to the gate. His thoughts tremble briefly into speech: “Geezusgod, what if it just doesn’t work anymore….what if—”, speech choking quickly back into thought, what if it’s just like everything else….How did it ever come to this, he wonders. He closes his eyes. From out of this recent cruel past yet another leftover shudder materializes, clutches at him, even threatens to overwhelm him for good….but he shakes it. For once he shakes it off. But it is still a hollow reminder of just how long he has been away. It has been too long, and his face welcomes the rain. The man inside the booth waits while he coaxes his hands from their corduroy homes, quickly sorting out $2.25 in small change. “Good luck,” says the man, “I doubt it,” says Charlie, as he finally pushes his way trancelike and shaking through the revolving horizontal bars of the turnstile. He’s in. The hands slip back inside the pockets. A deep breath through the nose brings back all the old feelings. Home. The chain is closed. And the shudder is now a tingle. It feels good to be a citizen of this great nation, this melting pot of risk and ruin, of Santa Anita, finally, again. Fresh odds are blinking on the tote as the young man strides strongly (though anything but confidently) for the finish line. *** “Form! Racing Form!” His first distraction that first day, en route to the wire, was a character he didn’t really know but nevertheless someone he had always imagined he knew well. The man was very old, very thin, his wealth of ghost-white hair pulled behind a tanned and weathered head in an absurd, wonderful ponytail. Charlie suppressed his laugh. The old man had always reminded him of the dozens of old men with ponytails he encountered regularly in his Berkeley days. It seemed like every time he had ever purchased a Daily Racing Form at Santa Anita it had been from this old man. And it was as if he had bought his last “Form” yesterday, the old man had changed so little. “You ever gonna get a real job, Gramps?” The ancient head jerked up from a wooden podium to catch Charlie’s generous, friendly smile. The tanned, leathery face cracked and broke, in a familiar smile of its own. Pale blue eyes played several seconds on this pleasant weathered countenance. No words. None were necessary. So while the old man took care of a customer Charlie checked him out head-to-toe, scanning this wonderful creature’s wonderfully comic attire, indeed a sight for sore eyes; the same long-sleeved white shirt, the same too-short black pants, pants which stopped in frays and tatters just below the knees. A pair of white athletic socks reached up high enough to nearly touch the frays and tatters. Was it possible the old man had not changed outfits in two years? Finally the young man moved forward, pulled out a dollar bill, and slapped it down hard on the wet counter. The wood and water united in a defiant, smacking report. “It’s a buck-fifty now, lad.” “What? A dollar-fifty for a lousy Form? Ya gotta be kidding me!” “It’s been a long time fer yoo, laddie. The price of knowledge has gone oop.” The young man winced and produced two quarters. The whole world’s going to hell, he decided. With genuine reluctance, he laid them down meekly on the counter. “Thank y’lad—an’ yoo ‘ave a good day,” the old man said with a wink. Charlie had missed that old wink. “Yeah, same ta you, man,” he said, his cold right hand plucking the newspaper from the counter. With a backward glance down at the old man’s shiny black dress shoes, he continued his long-overdue journey to the finish line. It occurred to him that the shine on the shoes was inconsistent with the rest of the threadbare costume…. what’s a tattered old coot selling papers in the rain need with footwear fit for a king?…‘course there’s that nice old shoeshine nigger, I mean that old black guy they used to have….they could have some sorta deal goin’.…yeah, maybe that’s it. He remembered how his uncle used to get his shoes shined by the same friendly old black man, an institution around these parts, practically every time he would shepherd the boy to the track. The ten-year-old Charlie loved the old black shoeshine man. He was old and skinny and gray-haired, and sort of beat-up looking, and he never said very much, but he had a nice face the way it would somehow come up with an extra wrinkle or two when it smiled. And when he did actually say something it was invariably the nicest possible thing he could say. But the proprietors of Santa Anita would only let him work the south side of the grandstand, the side with no view of the track, out of the way, and when Charlie was little it had always struck him as sort of unfair that the old fellow didn’t ever get to actually see the races; funny the things kids think, he thought. Thinking about it now, he had to smile inside….But that neat old shoeshine nig….that black guy, god, he’s been setting up shop at that same location for as long as….man, he just has to still be there, he has to, the young man decided. And he knew there could be no doubt that the two old men knew each other. In exchange for surreptitiously providing a free Form, a daily shoeshine was probably fair compensation, he reasoned….sure. “Ay! Yoong laddie!” He turned around. The old man smiled an eerie, almost theatrical smile. “I pray you—take a look ‘that fairst-timer in the foorth!” was his impas-sioned advice, and then, without further qualification, turned his attention back to the trickle of potential customers filtering through the turnstiles. Dead-faced, unsmiling. A machine.… He continued on. Between the turnstiles and the finish line lay a familiar sea of red. The “walking area”. Tens of thousands of carefully inlaid ceramic tile squares, six-inch squares of red and orange and black and white, scrupulously arranged to form larger squares, or, looking west-to-east, a great geometric pattern of interlinking diamonds; just so the peripatetic dregs of Soci-ety could have some splendid place to convene. Charlie’s somewhat cyclotronic mind flashed briefly to a book he once read, about prehistoric astronauts who once visited this planet and, supposedly, were responsible for building airfields for the Egyptians. From the air, this vast mosaic must surely resemble a landing strip of colorful diamond runways, he decided, and his imagination deftly contrived to establish the designers of the walking area, accordingly, as emissaries from another world. Why the unnecessary attention to detail? Other tracks don’t have walking areas like this, he thought. And what did a bunch of ancient Egyptians need with an airfield anyway, he continued, and struggled in vain to keep from laughing at himself. It was a good fantasy. Good enough for the Egyptians, good enough for….well, suffice to say that he’d always appreciated the meticulous craftsmanship that had gone into something so unimportant, or rather something that only some ignorant outsider might consider unimportant. In the old days, he always felt a little guilty about littering the red tile. Even guiltier when he would catch himself spitting on it. But dammit, it was important!—important because it was unnecessary! It represented something special for the little guy, something that said that no matter what his social station, no matter where his roots, here he belonged. And so, in order to afford all who inhabit this tiled plain the same chance at a view, the ancient astronauts or earthly architects or whoever it was who designed it did so at a slight incline: an amphitheater of standing room, sloping directly and gradually from the grandstand steps all the way down to the iron fence which serves as the outside rail of the main track. A masterpiece of artistic engineering, no matter who was responsible. And certainly a worthy monument to the masses….He tried in vain to remember the exact day he last was one of them. And now, as he commenced this nostalgic three-six-teenths-of-a-mile journey to the wire, weaving his way through the familiar nameless faces attached to bodies still standing seemingly where he had left them, the young man began his equally familiar struggle with the Form. The pages, typical of the times, were bound together at the edges in annoying perforations, as though there was some foul conspiracy afoot to keep hidden away some very special secret. And indeed somewhere within the complicated charts and race results of the Form were contained, are contained, will always be contained, all the precious and elusive secrets of this singular realm, the secret of the next race, the next winner. Secrets readily available to any man blessed with determination, insight, and a lousy buck-and-a-half. He raised it to his nose….fresh….fresh-cut wood….awesome. Employing his index finger as a letter opener, he deftly split free the pages of this long-overdue bible without even breaking stride— “Hey! Try watchin’ where yer goin’, pal.” “—Oh….‘scuse me for living, pal. My dog’s in the shop.” He continued on. With the third race barely over he would have ample time to study the fourth, including a critical look at the “first-timer” the old man had mentioned. The fourth was a Maiden race, meaning a race for horses that have never won. This modest Maiden affair was scheduled to take place on the main track, going six furlongs (which is to say three-quarters of a mile), three-year--old colts and geldings, claiming price $40,000. From a handicapping perspective, it was Charlie’s favorite type of race. He liked Maiden races primarily because there was no shuffling of stock up and down the class ladder by greedy trainers shopping for a good spot to win at a big price. He knew most trainers bet like madmen. It’s tough enough to pick a winner without worrying about whether or not some money-grubbing trainer is trying to pull something cute. Maidens are, by definition, young horses all trying to win to “break their Maiden”, generally providing for an honest race with the best horses clearly identifiable by their Form charts. And he knew, conversely, that there were always a handful of “plugs” to be found in any gathering of Maidens, especially cheap $40,000 Maidens, woefully inadequate creatures with practically no chance of winning, perennial bridesmaids who might never know the thrill of victory. Maiden races are easy…. The betting favorite in the fourth was a colt called Iron Ruler. A quick, cursory scan of the Form convinced the young man that the colt merited his favored status. He had been a close second in his only two starts, and was now dropping drastically in class from the tougher competition of his previous race. The Form further informed him that Iron Ruler was by Bold Ruler, who, it was easily recalled, had won the Preakness Stakes in ‘57. A self-proclaimed racing historian, Charlie’s mental encyclopedia of thoroughbred biography contained a full chapter on Bold Ruler, an animal of blazing speed with a heart big enough to stretch it. In other words he was basically a sprinter, this long-ago colt, whose toughness and courage enabled him to do well in the longer “Triple Crown” races: namely the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes. But it was as a sire, a “chef de race”, that Bold Ruler unwittingly canonized his own name. (Surely if his mares could talk, they would no doubt be eager to confirm his prowess in the barn!) Indeed, the labors of few stallions have produced as many fine crops of runners. His noblest and certainly most famous offspring, Charlie recalled easily, was the big red colt Secretariat, who won all the Triple Crown races in ‘73, a feat that had not been accomplished in a quarter-century. For this, his name was duly awarded “household word” status. Who hasn’t heard of Secretariat? Everybody’s heard of Secretariat….even his up-tight, ultra Puritan, never-made-a-bet-in-her-goddam-life mom had heard of Secretariat…. ….so this Iron Ruler is a proven runner with a proven sire….the best sire….half-brother to Big Red….good god, what could be simpler? My boy Iron Ruler will make short work of this crappy field, the young man said silently to himself….providing the shitty track doesn’t drag him down…. The best he could do was a fat hairy man in a black suit: “Say buddy, I just got here—speed holdin’ up okay?” “Hunh? What’cha say, kid?” “I said I just got here. Didn’t catch the first three.” “So what.” “So help me out.” “I can’t help yeh, kid. I’m awreddy down two-fifty as it is.” “No, man, I mean the wet track. C’mon. I’m trying to talk to you.” “So talk, then.” He smiled and blew on his hands. “The wet going, my stout friend. I am here and now inquiring as to whether or not this muck is devouring the speedballs. Is it? Hm? Not playin’ fair?” The hairy fat man did not move. Charlie dropped the smile, jacked up the volume: “Look, man, I’m not tryin’ to borrow money, and I don’t need to be your best pal. I just wanna find out if the speed is stickin’ or if the closers are pickin’ up the tired—” “Pickin’ up tired nuthin’!” the fat man barked louder. Flesh jiggled all over, and as his face tightened up its thick bushy eyebrows collided in anger. One hand clutched a Form, the sports page sprouted from the other. He waved them around like signal flags. The black hair on the sides of his neck looked slick….like an oily driveway after a rain….“Shit, the way they’re slippin’ and slidin’ out there a stretch-runner’s got no chance at all. Get this, kid. I had that blinkered-up three-horse in the second, needed him teh get my double. Four-teh-one, right? Okay. He breaks clean, tucks in right behind the leaders. Perfectly placed, runnin’ at fast fractions, saves ground the whole way, splits ‘em at the quarter, y’couldn’t’ve asked fer a better trip! Catbird seat, right? It was like stealin’. So then he angles out for the drive, absolutely clear fuggin’ sailing I’m tellin’ yeh, couldn’t’ve been more’n five lengths out of it at the eighth. And kid, did he look fulla run. I’ve got my goddam double in the bag, right? Shit. Down the stretch y’wudda thought he was runnin’ in chocolate pudding. Never even changed leads! God damn track. The going was god-awful. And I’m tellin’ yeh he was a lock, a lock, a god damn, motherfuggin’ mortal lock; look at’cher Form. He had the best speed rating of any of ‘em, he was droppin’ down, goin’ outside teh inside, and I might be crazy but I sure as hell didn’t see anything else in there tha—” “Yeah, that’s tough luck, man. Thanks. Keep up the good work.” He continued on. “ladies and gentlemen, your attention please…the condition of the main track has been changed from sloppy to muddy…repeat, make the official track condition muddy...” Finally he was at the finish line. Rain had kept the attendance down, allowing for plenty of elbow room down by the winner’s circle. Hooves in his head were replaced by the hum in his ears, that great whisper of anticipation which can only be made by a grandstand of people, people far more alive than at any other moment of their day. He could occasionally make out the rare clear sentence or loud filthy expletive of a nearby fellow walker, poking enthusiastically through the soft din. This area, in the general vicinity of where the finish line and winner’s circle meet, nicknamed long ago by his uncle the Natural Viewing Area (or NVA for short), was always his favorite place to watch the races, but now, harsh weather conditions notwithstanding, he was a little surprised not to find it teeming, as usual, with seatless, streetwise handicappers sharing the same preference. Call them Railbirds. The finish line is the bottom line, and this was one Railbird who understood the value of being at the wire. He realized, after all, that grandstand seats are reserved for those with money, clout, position. It didn’t bother him to hang out with his own kind. The light drizzle didn’t bother him either, except that an occasional raindrop was bound to blur the freshly printed figures of his Form. And though the swirling winds that chilled the air chilled the skin, they weren’t quite severe enough to be considered an annoyance. He knew what to expect from January. Sure it was cold, and wet, and windy, but he didn’t mind. On a day such as this, the puckish inclemency of Weather was among the least of his concerns. In defiance, he allowed his coat to remain open. But while the flesh shivered with indecision the eyes drank it all. Mountains, abrupt and thrusting high like streaks of charcoal; the roving clouds conspiring to hide them; palm trees in the infield, bending from the heavy hand of Wind; and the various beguiling blood-shades flourishing on the hillside, the bushes, trees, the emerald-green sod. And the day itself? The gray of an angry Rain? Gray yes, but at the same time so bright, so shockingly, inexplicably bright! Sun and clouds fought for control of the sky, and the day glistened from their dispute. A dozen countries and forty-eight states, sights many a less-fortunate older man would sell his soul to see, and yet for him it was, unquestionably still, this 480-acre sports compound nestled so conspicuously at the foot of the San Gabriels—of all places he had yet seen—that occupied the loftiest mansion of his thoughts. He had much to be glad about as he moved freely back and forth in front of the winner’s circle….room to maneuver, the refreshment of a fine cool mist on his face, and a sure thing waiting for him in he next race. And smack in the middle of Wednesday no less….a Wednesday. A day that the rest of his fat, naive, dumb-happy country would spend behind a desk, or worshipping a time clock, or hinged to a telephone in passive pursuit of the almighty dollar, while he found himself, finally, amazingly, after so seemingly protracted an interval he could scarcely believe his own senses, found himself standing right where he imagined he should always be allowed to stand, win or lose, in this no-longer-distant, no-longer-illusory, this splendid, perfect theater for unchequered pursuit of happiness. ….He loved everything about it. The sounds the smells the colors the cold the delicate, velvet-soft rain. He was relieved he still preferred standing and shivering in a rain-slick NVA to sitting fat and passively in a warm chair by a fire. He loved reading the Form. He loved simply the feel of it, the way the pages felt against his fingertips, the smell of it. The fact of it. Everything…. His overdue return to Santa Anita was shaping up nicely. Suddenly the last two years hadn’t even happened. He had forgotten what the simple pleasures of the track meant to him. “Farm boy?” The voice, low and slow and irritating in its self-assurance, easily lifted the young man’s face from between the wet pages of his Form. No need to turn around. He knew so well this voice, a voice so hauntingly familiar belonging to a face so indelibly burned into his brain that his instantaneous mental tintypes and tape recordings were every bit as clear as those of the old man with the ponytail. It’s possible to forget someone you meet at a cocktail party, or on an airplane, or even someone who has shared an entire night’s suffocation within the dark, desperate bowels of a singles’ bar, but not someone with whom you have spent countless afternoons avoiding each other, loitering at the finish line, jawing, arguing, handicapping the races. The spell was broken. He felt cold and clammy all over. “You took yer time, farm boy.” Charlie Barnes turned, glanced, and smiled as politely as his swelling indignation would allow him, but did not answer. His quick face dropped, unsmiling, back inside the Form. Casually, he tried to move a few steps away. What are the odds of something like this, he thought.… “Whatsuh matter, ‘think I got b.o. or somethin’?” A couple more steps away. “Look here, farm boy, yer gonna hurt my feelings.” He moved crisply now, several quick steps further from the wire. The intruder doggedly pursued him. “Deaf and dumb these days, farm boy? Or jus’ plain dumb.” “Geezusgod, must you call me that?” he said finally. “Hey, I can’t help it if yuh were born and raised in the Great Corn Belt!” “Get lost,” the young man moaned. (….and how the hell does he know where I’m from?) “What, before finding out what brilliant money-blowing strategy you’ve come up with for the next race? Please, farm boy. Don’t torture me.” “Look man, stop callin’ me that! I’m serious—you’re really pissin’ me off.” “Okay, okay, I’m shakin’ in my boots,” said the intruder. There was the obnoxious glimmer of a challenge in his eye, but Charlie had already looked away. “Jus’ makin’ conversation, bud, no offense.” “You’re forgiven. Now if you don’t mind, I’m extremely busy.” “I can see that,” said the other, a wry grin again the clearest measure of his mood, adding, “Unfortunately, you happen to be standing right smack in the middle uh my section of the NVA.” Now they glared at each other. But before the younger man’s startled and indignant face could thaw sufficiently to respond, the intruder kept on, saying, “Fear not. I’m feelin’ kinda generous today. I’ll let yuh hang out here jus’ this once, ‘long as yer already here. So who yuh like in the fourth?” Charlie smiled condescendingly and shook his head. He looked up and out at the tote. Iron Ruler, number two, was blinking at even money. Just then, as if the crowd could read his mind, the odds fell to four-to-five: “Is there some sort of a problem with the fourth?” he finally said, the tone as sarcastic as he could possibly manage it under the circumstances. “Well, fer most uh you morons who pay my bills I’m sure there prob’ly isn’t,” the intruder rejoined sharply. Charlie’s head whirled in anger. How he had learned to loathe sarcasm routed in his direction. He wanted to hit this man, scream something, reply with both fist and tongue. Yet he remained still. His mouth fell open, but words would just not come. Rather, he was reduced to studying the man’s left profile (since the man would not even deign to look at him), a silent, critical appraisal for the first time in a long time of a truly remarkable individual. Like the old man selling Forms, this track fixture had also resisted Change. Barely past thirty but already beer-bellied, stringy brown hair running rebelliously below rounded shoulders….hell, at least it isn’t in a ponytail….but the young man never could figure out why people….why some people, that is, simply can’t get it through their heads that the sixties and things like social revolution and long hair and antiwar marches and flower power, and all that stuff, is history. He squinted the strange man into sharper focus. A flimsy white T-shirt was all that protected him from the rude, remorseless chill of Rain. And the shirt was too small, or perhaps the torso inside it was too big; he was roughly Charlie’s height, well over six feet, but at least thirty pounds heavier….and the more he thought about it, the more he realized just how much weight had been added to the longhaired man’s once-lean frame. It was a sight both new and familiar to him….how strange, he thought. The jeans were exactly the same, though, worn and faded into light blue, each knee having its own hole to peek through. The only pair of pants he’d ever seen him in. And he wore the same silly red high-top tennis shoes that were his trademark the last time he saw him, five or six years before. Charlie couldn’t decide which bothered him more; the man’s ridiculous, cartoon-character appearance or his snide disposition. Get a haircut, you bum—the war’s over and we lost, he felt like saying…. But it was the lower, slower, self-assured voice that chose to continue: “Hey, hot-shot, yer corn-fed brain hasn’t gone and given you a hard--on for the fuckin’ two-horse, has it?” “And why the hell not, you fat obnoxious prick?” Charlie finally snapped back. He barely recognized his own voice. He wasn’t surprised that it still irritated him to have his handicap-ping skills maligned, but to lash out like that? Nerves….nerves again, he decided. “Stick around, college boy, yer about tuh find out,” came the calm reply. “I jus’ think yuh gotta love the seven-horse, especially at the price.” Charlie now watched in utter amazement as the long-haired man—whistling and humming and looking every which way—reached into the front pocket of his faded bluejeans, paused briefly, and then yanked free a fat roll of bills; hundred-dollar bills. The bills looked new. Calmly peeling off one of the crispy-loud notes with fingers obviously not bothered by the cold, he smiled mysteriously, winked, and then headed up the red-tiled incline for the betting windows. More than a little curious now, the young man opened up his Form to the fourth. The seven-horse was the only entry in the race who had never started before. He’d already forgotten about the old man’s reference to a first-timer. (It was a stubborn old habit of his, not paying close enough attention to things.) The colt’s name was Common Sense. Common Sense….He squinted in the direction of the tote board. The colt was being offered at ten-to-one. Ten?…Really?…He rechecked the Form. Common Sense was by Nonsensical, out of a mare called Common Market. He hadn’t heard of either of them. Not exactly royal breeding, he thought….and as if in direct, symbiotic response to these very thoughts, the odds floated to eleven. Better check the works….No, the colt’s morning workouts were nothing to get excited about either, the best of them being a five-furlong exercise in one minute flat. A nice work, sure, but by itself hardly worth a bet….especially against a monster like Iron Ruler.… One more chance. Maybe one of the local sportswriters knew something. He drew from his back pocket the folded-up racing section, torn from the morning’s sports page. Good thing I remembered to bring it, he silently congratulated himself….but no. No mention of the plug. Nobody even picks Common Sense to come in the money….that cinches it. Figures. The annoying man dressed like a boy with a woman’s long hair and a bootlegger’s bankroll soon returned with his ticket. Charlie was ready for him. “Didja really blow a C-note on that plug?” The longhaired man smiled wide. “Fifty win, fifty place,” he said. “Better’n riskin’ a thousand on that Bold Ruler colt tuh win the same damn thing.” “But what about that Bold Ruler blood?” demanded Charlie. “This guy’s bred-in-the-purple, man, bred ta fly! And what about those two seconds? And what about—” He realized how fast he was suddenly talking. “What about the drop in class?” he added quietly. “The drop is exactly what worries me, kid.” Pause. “Say what?” was all he could manage. And now the longhaired man pulled out his own Form, breathed deeply, and explained: “Look here, farm boy,” he began, pointing to the place where the conditions of the race were set forth, “this race is fer forty-thousand-dollar Maiden claimers, right? Nuthin’ but cheap glue pots, yer prob’ly thinkin’….” The young man’s head bobbed once in dumb agreement. “Well, yer right. That’s a big drop in class from a straight-Maiden race. But lemme ask yuh this—if he’s so god damn good, why are the owners puttin’ him up fer sale, huh? C’mon, farm boy, think! A lotta people around here think this colt is headed to the Kentucky Derby, and now all of uh sudden his owners go’n put him in fer a tag? Jus’ like that? I don’t buy it. They’re tryin’ to unload him. I say he’s gotta be sore.” Charlie instinctively put up a small defense: “What about those two strong seconds? He didn’t run like he was a sore horse then….uh, did he?” “Don’t matter. A horse can come up lame anytime. Could uh happened in his last race, could uh happened in training. He’s sore. If he’s sound, there’s no way on god’s green earth we find him in a claimer. No way.” “the horses are on the track for the fourth race, going six furlongs....” Just then the hornblower blew the familiar call to the post, and the winless three-year-olds emerged from a tunnel, stepping high and proud, one-by-one, up and out and onto the main track. They paraded before the grandstand, up close and parallel to the walking area. Those in closer attendance, those dingy denizens ever-strewn across the NVA, Society’s peripatetic dregs, leaned forward as one. Charlie had already moved right up against the iron fence, and his eyes were riveted on number two. No more than twenty feet of cold air separated them. The animal’s behavior was extremely rank and frac-tious, and his coat was lathered with a froth that can only be manufactured by nerves. There was a similar sweat building up between his hind legs as well. His active tongue, for his own protection, had been tied to the floor of his jaw; he tried in vain to free it, and lather foamed around the white strip of cotton. He looked ready for a shave. Even in a walk his steps were tentative, picking up his hooves as quickly as he would put them down, like he was tiptoeing on hot coals. Charlie was no horseman, but it didn’t take one to see that the colt just didn’t look right. And there were bandages on his front legs. “He’s washy. Kidney sweat, too. Look at those front wraps. I tell yuh, farm boy, this critter ain’t ready tuh run. He’s sore.” By this time Charlie was more than convinced that Iron Ruler was a poor wagering proposition. His attention turned automatically to the first-time starter. “So what is it ya like so much about the seven?” Sudden interest in his opinion made the longhaired man chuckle. “Well, maybe it’s jus’ that I don’t like the other entries! Breeding isn’t everything, y’know. Or maybe I jus’ like the longshots as a general rule. Better tuh get thirteen-tuh-one than one-tuh-one, y’dig?” It wasn’t enough: “But what about the horse—can he get there?” “That minute-flat work the other day. It was around the dogs.” This time he practically tore the Form open. Sure enough, the letter “d” in parentheses indicated that Common Sense’s last workout had been performed around “dogs”, temporary barriers placed several feet out from the rail to preserve the inner surface of the track for the afternoon’s races. The dogs are only necessary during stretches of inclement weather, and it made him mad that he hadn’t noticed it…. “I’ve always liked the trainer, the way his babies always seem tuh come out dead fit,” the longhaired man continued. “And that five-panel work is really much better’n it looks on paper, seein’ as how he was runnin’ a greater distance uh ground. A minute flat around dogs is a monster work. Especially for a cheap claimer. You should know that by now, farm boy, what the hellsuh matter with you?” The seven-horse paraded proudly before them. He was a fiery-red chestnut, fit-looking, with a mind of his own but obviously well schooled by his trainer. A light glaze of sweat on the withers caught and threw back a dull sun, but the rest of his coat stayed dry. Well within himself warming up, gamboling about lightly in his excitement, prancing, strutting, this clearly was an athlete ready to perform. His jockey seemed intent on one of the tote boards. Number seven now blinked at 12-to-one. Charlie tried to imagine just how much money had been wagered by the colt’s owners on the little man’s behalf. The evidence, though delightfully circumstantial, was flat overwhelming. He had come full circle, but somehow still could not quite bring himself to do anything about it: “I….I just don’t know.…” “Whatsuh matter with you, man?” His voice was sharper. “Wuddayuh waitin’ for? You know the seven’s a good bet, are yuh jus’ bein’ stubborn cuz I suggested it? I think yuh been workin’ those dead-end jobs too damn long, it’s affected yer brain.” “Maybe it’s because I think yer a bum,” Charlie suggested, feeling very relieved to have finally gotten it off his chest. “I’m a bum? Yer callin’ me a bum? This is gonna be harder than I thought….” the longhaired man said. His laugh was now a dagger. “Listen up, farm boy. What I am, since yer too dumb tuh figure it out, is a player—a professional gambler, y’dig? I make my living off idiots like you. While yer out workin’ yer ass off nine-tuh-five I’m right here at the finish line, havin’ a ball. I’m not one uh those pathetic welfare guys who blows his whole check every Friday on the Daily Double. I’m way ahead uh this game, bud, and I mean way, way ahead. So before yuh go around criticizing other people’s lifestyles, jus’ make damn sure yer not blowin’ smoke up yer own tired ass cuz yuh wish you were ahead of the game too.” The young man had nothing substantial to say. He knew he was no one to talk. About anything, really. And now that he thought about it, it did seem like the guy used to always come out ahead….or at least an awful lot of the time….an awful lot more than I ever did, that’s for sure.… “The horses are approaching the starting gate!” boomed the loudspeakers. Charlie’s whole fragile nervous system went into a panic. Suddenly he knew he absolutely had to get a bet down on Common Sense. He raced to the windows, leaving the professional gambler alone, standing, grinning, laughing in the light rain. The line he wound up in had eight people in front of him. A couple of them were foreign-looking, so he had to make allowances for the language barrier. There wasn’t time. He saw a line a few yards to the right with only a few people in it, so he boldly darted through a clump of fellow bettors, knifed through two other long lines, and managed to secure the position he desired in the shorter line just as half-a-dozen less alert individuals filed in behind him. He glanced back to the line he had quitted—where a Vietnamese-looking man made frantic hand and arm gestures at the pari-mutuel clerk—to see whether or not he had made the right move….there was no change. He fumbled through his pockets to find a five-dollar bill. It was a race against the clock now. Only an old woman blocked his path. She took her time, but made only two small bets. When she moved out of the way he lurched forward. He’d made it. “Five ta win on the seven!” was his loud order, and the clerk punched the appropriate buttons. The red and white ticket jumped out of a machine like in a movie theater box office. His bet was down. He again surveyed the line he had deserted. It had barely moved. He’d timed his move perfectly. He had made the right decision. As he sprinted back down the red-orange tile, grateful ears received the long-awaited announcer’s proclamation, “And they’re off!”, whereupon ten three-year-o1ds sprang as one forty-legged creature from the gate at the far northeast section of the compound. Each lusting after that first victory, the westward rush down the backstretch was a cavalry charge: “That’s Iron Ruler going to the front, with Common Sense up on the outside to challenge....” His legs and lungs not steeled by any recent exercise, he was actually a little out of breath by the time he made it back to where the gambler was idly standing. “That Iron Ruler should still be tough ta get by!” he huffed and puffed pessimistically. “He’ll fade,” the gambler said. “Around the far turn that’s Common Sense, now moving up on the outside to take the lead, Iron Ruler is second, dropping back along the rail...” The young man’s heart began to beat to the pounding of the hooves. As the ten anxious neophytes splashed their way around the turn the multitudes in the grandstand rose in unison, like a great choir, their murmuring a steady crescendo becoming a light roar that all but drowned out the announcer’s elevated commentary. Is it perhaps some bored, impish deity who demands this performance? Is it the price of Paradise? For so well-timed are the movements and wailings of these several thousand strangers, so perfectly, absurdly choreographed, that someone visiting the track for the first time could observe this phenomenon, analyze it, and naturally assume the patrons were required by the gods to rehearse this scene in the parking lot before they would even be allowed their seats in the grandstand! Oh, how he had missed the exhilaration of that moment, the moment when these exploding bundles of quicksilver—leaning to their left to cancel the centrifugal force their very swiftness creates—come spinning off the turn to straighten into the stretch. Perhaps in no other sporting enterprise are the emotions of the spectators so in tune with the efforts of the participants. The crowd seems to communicate directly with the athletes. It’s as if the horses can sense the snowballing urgency of the moment, prompting them to strain just a little harder, go just a little faster. It is as if the crowd’s heightened decibel level is a necessary signal for the jockeys, for them to finally cock their whips, and bring them urgently, savagely, reluctantly and repeatedly down on their tiring partners’ backsides. Charlie had lived through this magical illusion ten thousand times before. It had always thrilled him. He was thrilled the feeling had not dissolved in the horrible passage of Time.… “Into the stretch it’s Common Sense all by himself, he’s much the best today, Common Sense now drawing clear by four, by five, by six lengths…” “That’s it. This one’s history,” the gambler said dryly. Charlie Barnes, not nearly so confident a soul, waited for Common Sense to gallop unchallenged under the wire before he would allow himself to jump, scream, swear, laugh, and holler. The colt had won—“on his own”, as they say—by seven yawning lengths. Iron Ruler checked in last, beaten a sixteenth of a mile. It was all so easy, easier than he ever imagined it could be…. “Whatta bitchin’ run—whatta call!” he bellowed. “Man, you had that race wired!” “Research, farm boy. Simple, elementary, basic research. Simple common sense, yuh might say.” Charlie slapped him hard on the back, in what amounted to more of a loud thump than a friendly ‘thank-you’. The gambler smiled and nodded with his eyes closed for ‘you’re welcome’. Then they both looked up, the younger disbelieving and delighted, at the numbers blinking at them from the infield tote boards. Rapture. Common Sense had been sent off at 13-to-one by the baffled crowd. “Sixty-five bucks! Sixty-five beautiful, wonderful, spend-able American dollars—geezusgod, man, what a crazy way ta start the year!” the young man effused. He yelled out his sincerest congratulations to the colt and his entourage as they posed for pictures in the winner’s circle. Fellow Railbirds applauded his enthusiasm with a shower of laughter. And when the announcer’s voice declared the race official, his lightheaded response nearly convinced him that the whole thing was just another dream…. The gambler pulled out his crumpled ticket. Prices flashed on the tote. A split second for mathematics, then: “Well, I picked up a little over nine hunnerd on that one. Looks like I’m the big winner, farm boy. After we cash, how ‘bout if I buy the beer?” The young man was finally in no mood to argue. This was one beer he was determined to actually enjoy, not merely ingest for medicinal purposes. Accordingly, his first swallow was overly ambitious. It spilled over, with a considerable amount of the foamy residue collecting in his thin blond moustache. He left it there. After all, at the track, foam in the ‘stash is a badge of honor, an unmistakable stamp of success. The taste reminded him that he didn’t really like American beer, but anything tastes good after a 13-to-one shot comes romping home. A moot point, since he knew that Santa Anita refused to even offer the more expensive European brews. He quaffed down the cheap pale liquid with only mild reluctance. The two men leaned against the bar, standing. They said nothing at first, contented silence, each drinking in the satisfaction of victory. Charlie tried to remember his last winner….but soon found himself distracted by the gambler’s exposed forearms, hairy and damp, resting thick and heavy on the cold wood. “How can ya stand it, runnin’ around in the rain in shirtsleeves?” “You should pay less attention tuh the way people dress….farm boy.” “Ya like bein’ cold?” “Yuh get used to it.” Stubbornness in place of logic had always annoyed him. “But’cha don’t hafta get used to it,” he protested, raising his voice a hair. “Just buy yourself a jacket, stupid.” “I like the cold.” The young man shook his head, and again they drank without conversation. Soon the bartender moved to the side to reveal the television monitor above the liquor bottles. The word REPLAY was lettered across the screen. “Here’s the rerun, gentlemen!” the bartender said, with great feeling, no doubt an effort to ingratiate him to whichever of them might leave behind some spare change. On the monitor the field broke in a straight line, and this being a sprint they all did their best to dispute the issue from the outset, but Iron Ruler was clearly given the most encouragement by his rider to get on with it. He made the lead, but was obviously laboring: “He’s sore, all right,” the gambler said between swallows. Charlie squinted at the ten sluggish runners making their counterclockwise horseshoe. Mud and water flew up in the faces of the slower animals, most not responding at all to the flurry of flashing whips and vigorous hand-riding. Common Sense, the sole beneficiary of this conspiracy of ineptitude, was shown gradually and effortlessly widening his lead through the stretch. “His early speed was the key,” the gambler explained. He was already working on his second beer. He continued to drink steadily, but at all times managed to cable the green laser of his eyes into Charlie’s: “Horses don’t like mud kicked up in their faces, especially the young ones. Makes ‘em sulk a little bit. Never back a closer in the slop, farm boy. Forget about coming from off the pace. Jus’ remember—off track means front-runners. It’s a natural advantage.” Charlie nodded obediently. When he caught himself doing it he quickly stopped and looked away. It felt funny being stared at by a virtual stranger, funnier still having the stranger actually offer him counsel. Just like he’d known him forever. Why? Sure they were acquaintances, once upon a time, familiar enough with each other’s faces to argue or shoot the breeze between races just to pass the time, but it wasn’t as if they actually knew each other….weird. He pushed himself away from the bar. The beer gone, the bartender taken care of, the replay recorded in their minds, they made their way back down the red-tiled incline, winding up as if summoned there by remote control at their usual spot about twenty yards up from the finish line. The drizzle had become a light rain again. Charlie finally buttoned up the old trenchcoat, and pulled a baseball cap from one of the oversized pockets. It was his favorite cap, dark blue, the red insignia “B” trimmed in white. When he put it on, his curly blond hair puffed out at the sides. The gambler seemed strangely unaffected by the rain that fell so cruelly upon him, soaking him to the skin. “So you’re really a professional gambler, huh?” the young man marveled, an unquenchable hint of awe altering the tenor of his voice. “So that’s why I could never come ta this place without seein’ yer ugly-ass mug!” “Yuh gotta make a living.” He tried to sound casual: “I wonder what, uh, kind of a living a guy could make betting on horses,” he stammered. Too clumsy. He could’ve kicked himself…. If the gambler did smile, it was undetectable. “Well yuh jus’ saw me make a big score, but if yer playin’ it cool that really shouldn’t happen too often,” he said. The longhaired man’s preface to his own reply sounded oddly like a warning, and as such the young man could only interpret it to be, again, oddly enough, advice…. Advice?: “I did bank about seventy-five grand last year, though. And that’s seventy-five grand my old boss Uncle Sam won’t ever hear about, either.” Charlie’s eyes bugged out of his head: “Seventy-five thousand dollars?” “You heard me.” Again he forced himself to look away. This is all too much, he thought. He wished he had a little time to absorb it all. After a few seconds he did manage to loosen his eyes from the darkening mountains he was pretending to look at, and he fastened them again to the gambler. The gambler’s eyes were already busy with his Form. At first Charlie’s eyes were virtually tethered by those of his talented new crony, they were so flickering, so agile….and so goddam green, he said to himself. Nobody’s eyes are that green! Indeed the eyes were sharper by far than the rest of this bedraggled soul’s slack features, so all-knowing and strangely compelling, and as shimmering a green as the Camino Real herself. The long hair, the full belly….none of it was so distracting or so out of proportion as that which was in such sharp discord with the rest of his color scheme: the red shoes, the faded blue of his jeans, even the particular shade of brown his hair was, a darker brown now from the incessant rainfall. The colors just didn’t fit together. It was the eyes. He didn’t remember them being nearly so….or green at all, for that matter....and in this carefully-measured scrutiny of the longhaired man his own eyes, blue and busy and temporarily free of their fatigue, fell to a two-inch horizontal scar at the throat, barely above the neck of the T-shirt, where the soft flesh indents just above the breastbone. The wound was a thin, clean line. Damn. He was almost sure it wasn’t there before…. But this was not the time for self-indulgent analysis. What he was hungry for was information. “How come you never told me all this stuff before?” “Never figured yuh needed tuh know before,” the gambler said quickly. He didn’t look up from his Form, and it made it seem like he was reading his answer from a script: “I remember when yuh first started hangin’ around down here, with yer uncle….you were just a snot-nosed high school kid gettin’ on my nerves, no reason to bring it up. Wouldn’t uh done you any good. And later, when you were goin’ back’n forth between here’n college, I….well, I figured there were more important things on yer mind, for the moment, and you might not uh believed me anyway. So I jus’ stayed clear. But college is long gone, bud, and you’ve got nine-tuh-five written all over you.” Charlie laughed loudly to cloud both his confusion and his embarrassment, while welding a hard mechanical gaze to the tote board. He squinted. The yellow numbers shone softer now. Their earlier sharpness had melted and seemingly lost all potency, the wages of light having to fight to reach his eyes through endless falling darts of Rain. This guy knows a hell of a lot more about me than he has a right to, he thought, but it was a fleeting notion, in and out of his head as quickly as his eyes were able to focus. The odds from the fourth race had blinked away, and in their place were the morning-line projections for the fifth. Already the masses had begun to modify them. The thrill of fresh odds. Every race a new and different problem. A problem he couldn’t wait to take a shot at, for a change….and naturally, he couldn’t wait to tap a real live professional gambler’s brain on the subject: “So who ya—” “Well, I’m takin’ off,” the gambler said. He tucked the Form like a spent pistol down the front of his jeans, and looked up just in time to catch the younger man’s mouth falling open. “Huh? You’re really leaving?” “Really. Yer gonna be out here tomorrow, right?” All the hundreds of half-forgotten losing days flooded instantly into his head. “But—but why? Heck, I was just….I mean we just—” “Nine hunnerd’s a good day’s work fer anybody, dude.” “But—” “You comin’ out tomorrow or not?” The repeated question, in its calculated insistence, caught him off guard: “Uh, I dunno yet, man—y’know I’m pretty busy these days….I might be able ta make it out, if I’m not tied up with something, I just don’t—” “Okay, okay. Don’t strain yerself. I’ll look for you anyway, right here in the NVA, first race. Don’t be late,” the longhaired man said. He turned quickly to the grandstand and began walking. “Guard my section for me,” he added without looking back. Suddenly he was trudging resolutely up the red-orange tile of the incline, heading due south, in the direction of the main front gate. The long brown tangle of hair could be seen bouncing up and down against the wet gray of his T-shirt as he walked, in perfect rhythm with his ultraconfident stride. Amazingly, with five races left on the card, he was gone. And so it was that first day, and just that quickly, that the professional gambler disappeared under the grandstand, without fanfare, sort of like he’d never even been there in the first place. Charles Edison Barnes, dazed, looked out at the tote board, then down at the now-sodden Form he was holding. Then back out at the tote. The local sportswriters were of no help either. Suddenly he was conscious of the cold in his fingers, and his thin face tightened in frustration. It was no use. With his new mentor and guardian gone, so gone was the needed confidence to continue. He looked north, to the vanishing foothills. Through the gray obscurant of mist and clouds they were transparent, ghostlike, invisible. They were no longer the impenetrable fortress of his consciousness. Beyond them lay the rest of the world, and for a terrible instant he was paralyzed by it, the fact of it, the hollow certainty that it was there. Soon it materialized in front of him. The real world. He could see it just as surely as if he could see it. It was a world he had vowed never to return to, if he couldn’t find a way to make it work. He was allowed to see most clearly, and for him most cruelly, the high, concrete canyons three thousand miles to the east, the place where paper dreams are made, where the high spirits of youth are broken. Where fat and powerful old men look down from stuffed-velvet offices and sit in pompous judgment of the world’s gifted young men, young men they must surely hate, must surely envy. Sad. For so many like him, for far too many, it is more a shining holy citadel of achievement than a mere city, this place. A rare, worthy archetype. An ideal. A place worthy of pilgrimage and quest. But for most, in the end, it is just a fable replete and overflowing of false advertising. A myth. A mirage…. He looked down again, again at the limp, wet Form rolled up in his hands. Its sudden worthlessness actually caused him to smile, and so he tossed it, symbolic of his futility, to the wet tile floor of the compound. The water-heavy paper clapped the loud tile, like a shoe slapping through a puddle. It chanced to land right next to a copy of the day’s newspaper. It was the front page only; the guts had long since been torn loose from it. If he was paying attention he might well have noticed the headline, the dull, endless, embarrassingly familiar word HOSTAGES drowning out all other words, yet glaring up at a strangely indifferent sky. So no. No way he could go it alone yet. Not under the circumstances. A deep breath got his feet moving. Suddenly the anticipation of defeat held no mystery for him, the very thought of losing a thing of palpable distaste. So with his sixty-five dollar profit tucked safely away he headed west, for his usual exit at the top of the stretch. The light rain was even lighter now, a drizzle. His walk was very slow. He felt good about the money in his pocket. Yet soon he was glancing side-to-side, no eye contact, it was only the fifth race, half the card to go, he knew they’d be staring at him….at least this time it wasn’t my fault….wait….wait a minute….you won, remember?…they’ll think you’re leaving because you already bagged your limit, because your best bets just happened to be early on the card, yeah….that is if you play it right….so slow down, take it easy….don’t be afraid to look—stare right back at the bastards, smile….they only wish they could nail a 13-to-one shot, isolate a live first-timer, spot a sharp work around the dogs….you’re a winner, remember that.… (He unconsciously began to gnaw at his fingernails, but laughed weakly at himself the moment he realized there was nothing left to bite. He would have to wait a couple days for the white to grow out from the pink, before he could nibble all ten greedily down to the nub. How did it come to this, he wondered. How could it ever have come to this….) The circle was closed, his pockets a little less empty, yet, as of 2:07 p.m. on this crisp January day, in a year not yet labeled by a ‘Capistrano yet to be run, his thoughts were only of failure. “Form! Tomorrow’s Form!” He approached the old man with the ponytail holding out a dollar. The old man’s grandfatherly frown reminded him of the inflation the kingdom had suffered in his absence. Sheepishly, he found another fifty cents. Gratefully, he accepted the Form in trade. “Hot off the presses, lad. How’d it go?” Perhaps his hand clutching at the expanded wad of bills in his front pocket is what forced his face into a grin: “Not bad I guess….ah hell, Gramps, pretty goddam good for a change,” he said. What a definitively perfect caricature, he thought….such a privilege just to be able to look upon such an individual, to fantasize, make assumptions. It made him think about all the times he had tried to draw him on his Olivetti….“—Oh, and thanks for the tip,” he added, in genuine appreciation. “Atta-boy!” the old man sparkled back with his customary wink, and then, more earnestly, “Now doon’ a-forget the way back ‘ere.” The young man touched the bill of his cap and threw back a quick wink of his own. And finally, a reflex born of years of painful partings, he risked a quick, passionate glance up the hillside green. He tore open his new Form, inhaled the fragrance of fresh-cut wood, unusually eager to see who was running tomorrow. He caught himself laughing. Never in his wildest dreams would he ever have believed he could come to the track and then stay for just one race….but that was the good thing about a place like Santa Anita. As long as a guy had $2.25 he didn’t need in his pocket, he could always come back. It had been quite a day. It had been a long time since he had looked forward to the next one. Reading as he walked, he had to cross right through the sloppy muddied dirt-path which runs between the stables and the racetrack itself, in order to get to the Baldwin Avenue parking lot. It was no problem. He knew the way by rote, every turn every dip every pothole, there was no need to tear his eyes from the wonders of a next-day’s Form merely to confirm he was headed in the right direction. And the Form’s complicated past-performance charts seemed somehow simpler this time, at first glance at least less difficult and mysterious than in the past, clearer to his mind. Weird….the Form finally seemed to make sense. Such is the brief antidote for Life that is success. Accomplishment. Winning. About the time he got to his car the rain finally stopped. Even if he had noticed it, he wouldn’t have cared that the mud had crawled inside his shoes.
“So,” he asks himself yet again, “shouldn’t we at least get the hell in out of the rain?”
Prologue
One
Of Pilgrimage and Quest
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