I drove the beaten parkway. Summer balm hung over the thick brush that fell from the woods onto the shoulder of the road. The dawn light and pre-coffee chills took hold and I shivered. Making a right to the old racetrack, I saw that it was dead that day. I was alone in the parking lot.
***
He’s fifteen, down to Clearasil and perpetual shyness. He hasn’t gotten drunk yet and he sure as hell hasn’t gotten laid. He sleeps and reads a lot. He doesn’t need Budweiser-sponsored gallivanting and toilet-papering, suburbia-style. There’s a higher source: the track.
Nothing moves him to ecstasy faster than his father’s voice on a crisp, sunny autumn morning. “Wake up, my boy! We’re going to the races!” He hears the flop of the Daily Racing Form to the floor as he plucks the goo out of his eyes. It’s going to be a beautiful day.
His father peels out of the driveway and swerves from side to side, faking a behind-the-wheel seizure. The played-out number still gets laughs from a euphoric son. They’re off.
Sweat is already beading up atop the father’s bald head. His nose, broken seven times in schoolyard basketball games, contorts on his face as he waxes native Brooklynese, chuckling with each phrase, like Santa Claus. He smiles all the while.
To the son, there is only one explanation – his father has already pored over the past performance sheets and found the sure victor in Race 1. The father fixes one eye on his son with one on the road. He morphs his face into the smiling theater symbol and speaks in butchered Cockney.
“Tally-ho, my boy. Would you like the winner of the first race?”
The wise-ass retorts.
“Sure, Dad. Who is it?”
“Unlike Anything, with Eddie Maple,” he spits.
“Dad, he has absolutely no shot at winning this race. He is such a pig it’s unbelievable. Do you honestly believe that he’s gonna win? Because if you do, why don’t you just hand me your money? Seriously, why give it to the New York Racing Association? They’ve got enough of their own. Give it to your son instead!”
The son, expecting applause, is let down. His father is suddenly ranting shrill, psycho-ward rebuttal.
“Unlike Anything will win, you schmuck, and I will be the winner because I am the greatest handicapper in the world, and you, my son, are a schmuck, I tell you, a living, breathing schmuck, I tell you, you schmuck!”
“Forget it, Dad,” the son says, giggling. “Just waste your money. I’ll wave to you from the winner’s circle.”
The father and son head around the far turn and stretch it out to the parking gate. “Hey Jonesie,” the father yells at the red-faced, jolly Pinkerton security guard. “Got any winners for me today?” Jonesie saunters to the car door, checking peripherally for imaginary hidden video. “Well, Big Red, I think the Sedlacek barn’s got a real live filly in the fifth. She might be a price, too.” The father turns to the son and gives a what-the-hell shrug. He’ll send in a deuce on the filly. If she wins, he’ll have one helluva story. That’s all the track is good for anyway. The stories.
They walk past the Mercedes and BMW dealership otherwise known as “Trainers and Owners Parking Only” and then playfully scamper over a tree-lined sidewalk crossing a manure-laden barn-to-track horse path. They quicken their strides when they spot the clubhouse – expansive glass, red brick, no T-shirts or shorts allowed. “Classy,” the father says. Worth the extra three bucks. The father, clad in a suit with a tie-tack, confidently shells out admission. He buys two programs and hands one to the son before they take the escalator to their floor.
The sun shines through the cathedral windows on both sides of this heaven, lighting up the betting windows by the payphones and bouncing off the white tile floor. The National Anthem is in 14 minutes, and then there’s another hour until first post.
***
I crossed the familiar road to the clubhouse, noticing a coming storm over the towering, ancient backstretch oaks. The gate to the rail was open. I hopped the turnstile and entered the barren grandstand level. On a normal day, we’d see the hardcores down there — poor white trash, poor old Jews, poor Rastafarians, poor Puerto Ricans. Gamblers, nothing more. But they were gone, the horses were gone, and the spectacle was gone. The biggest racetrack in the world was now the emptiest. They had shipped the carnival upstate to Saratoga for the business suits’ “Summer Place To Be” festival of equine majesty and stiff martinis.
I unraveled into one of our usual seats just a bit too far past the finish line. I looked for the chair I broke when my $500 score was disqualified by the drunken stewards upstairs. It had to have been fixed, I thought. The chair, and that race. I glanced back up and sighed. Like a Van Gogh, with meadows and lakes and graying clouds, this place of legend stood before me. Only me.
***
The fifteen-year-old phases in and out of the New York Times and sleep. It’s still a little early. Thirty-four more minutes, to be exact. The regulars are there.
There’s Mike, at 80 now, his life extended by the miracles of racetrack therapy. He falls down the stairs as if on schedule every few months, but he’s always back. Jacques, or “Frenchy,” a two-time heart attack victim, pulls relentlessly on his Dunhills through a plastic cigarette holder. The two Johns are here, too. Big John is scribbling numbers all over his program. John the Mechanic is asleep.
“Son, do you realize that the circumference of this track is one and one-half miles?”
The son is now fully awake.
“Yes, Dad. You’ve told me this before.”
“Son, this is the largest and most beautiful racetrack in the world. You will realize it someday and thank me, your father, for showing it to you.”
“OK, Dad. Whatever you say.”
The son considers the teachings of the lovable mad scientist with red outer head fuzz, takes a look through his binoculars, and relaxes in his seat. In between the main track and the infield plain lie two lush grass racecourses. Both passageways are covered six inches high. The infield’s breadth inspires corporate golf greed – probably thirty-six holes worth. Lakes plotted as reflections of each other fill both turns in the oval. Put the two together and you’ve got a square.
The son is the rookie and his father is the veteran. The divorce daze has forced an S on the father’s chest, and he does his best to live up to it. They have dinner on Thursday nights, go to Yankee games, and spend weekends at the old racetrack. The only arguments are sports-bar chatter.
The son cringes as the father commences his race-watching/audience participation ritual. It’s time for the long-awaited performance of the 4 horse, Unlike Anything and his jockey, Eddie Maple.
The son tries to focus on the starting gate. The horses break cleanly and file into expected order. The father is warming up, rolled-up program slapping against his leg. The horses appear at the top of the stretch and the father leads the masses in rising. He jumps up and down, yelling.
“Come on, Eddie, come on, Eddie, that’s it, Eddie, come on, 4, get up there with this 4, get up there, Eddie, Eddie why are you going so fucking wide? Come on, Eddie, you lousy piece of shit!”
He shoots his son an about-to-vomit look. “Eddie Maple is the worst fucking jockey on the face of the earth. Did you see how wide he took that horse? Unbelievable. Un-bee-leevable!”
“Dad, Maple’s been one of the leading jockeys here for like twenty years. He might make the Hall of Fame.”
“Yeah? Well, I think he stinks.”
The son chuckles and produces a ticket from his pocket. “Well, at last one member of the family’s got the winner.”
***
I took the escalator back down and walked to the paddock. I leaned against wrought iron, imagining a lineup of greats parading before me, riders up. The silks were hot pink, brown and yellow, neon orange and ice cold blue. The trainers and owners were showing off Armanis and Zegnas and exchanging strategy tidbits. The standing area was packed. TV was there. I smiled and wished for coffee.
***
The son is sixteen and still the wiseass. He studies the sport now and tells his buddies he knows the game “pretty good.” He’s at the old track with his father. Today’s big one is the Fall Turf Classic. The race is full of contenders and Jacques starts the bidding.
“Eef you assholes want ze winneur, ze holse is Nobelle Fighteur, from France. He is ridden by Alain Lequeux, a real jockey, not ze sheet you have here.”
The father knows the babble. Every French horse or French jockey is a cut above. Any local hard-knocker who’s been getting some checks here and there is a “peez of sheet holse,” and every non-French “idiote” is less of a man than Jacques.
The son checks his Form. Indeed, Noble Fighter has a shot. He’ll probably like the wet grass. It’s like that in Europe all the time. The son checks the odds board with report card eyes and sees 55-1. Done.
“Dad, can you put two on Noble Fighter for me?”
“Sure.”
The father figures out his own David-over-Goliath scheme two minutes before post time, leaving out Noble Fighter. It’s personal now. United States versus France.
Noble Fighter roars past the leaders coming down the stretch. He romps through the soaked grass, the easiest kind of winner. The son is high-fiving Jacques and dancing on his seat. He applauds when the victorious Lequeux comes back to the winner’s circle. His father returns and the boy sticks out a hand.
“One hundred and twelve dollars, please.”
The father wrinkles with realization as he looks downward, standing on the sideline, just beaten for a touchdown.
“I forgot, champ. I’m sorry.”
“Dad, you’re kidding, right?”
“No, pal. I really forgot. I’m sorry. Great pick.”
“Dad, he was 55-1. All you had to do was bet two bucks!”
“I know, champ. What do you want me to do?”
***
I turned away from the dark paddock and walked back through the grandstand. I climbed four flights of stairs to the restaurant area and found the tight, almost cardboard corridor to the press box. The ladder to the roof was still there. I used it. Standing on the roof, observing the full layout, I thought of little programmed mortal robots running in circles all day and insignificant mortal pleasure-seekers losing their money wagering on them. I laughed.
***
The son is twenty-one. He gambles with his own money now. The father is proud of his college boy, who is interning for the Daily Racing Form this summer. The son works with reporters and editors the father continually writes unanswered letters to. The son wins money regularly while the father loses. The son brings home a copy of the Form for his father every day.
The father’s stomach has been bothering him. He takes his son to Brooklyn for a reading from the family doctor. The son waits double-parked for over an hour before the father emerges from the depths of the cellar office, eyes sunken and face withdrawn. It’s lymphoma.
They drive on dirty concrete in silence past steel bridges. The son offers something. “Dad, you’re gonna get better. It’s not really that bad. You can beat it.” The father pulls the car to the side of the road. The asphalt and glass cast a stare on him as he hugs the son and shivers. “I’ll be alright, pal,” he cries. “We’ll be alright.”
The father starts treatments and orders the son back to school. “Finish, and we’ll talk later,” he says. The son does as he’s told. The cancer spreads to the father’s liver. There’s no hope. It’s waiting time. “Finish school,” the father grumbles through morphine. The son does as he’s told.
The son’s college phone rings a cruel six months later — six months of chest pains, a pounding heart, and private tears on the walk home from class. He’s scheduled to fly home and say goodbye in two days.
“Honey, it’s Mom. I’m calling with some bad news. Dad died this morning.”
The son leaps out of bed, freezing and hyperventilating. He runs frantically to each corner of the room like a staggering boxer. He pounds his bed. Questions race. “Where was I? What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I there?” There are no answers.
Later that day, the son falls asleep while watching TV. He enters a suspended trance. He walks toward a tall wooden door with his father. The mother and the sister watch and wait. His father sweats a little through blue pajamas, the morning routine, and his red chest hair pokes out of the V-neck. He is crying.
“I’m going away now,” he says. “Everything’s going to be alright. I promise.”
The son hugs him as hard as he can, putting head to heart, feeling heaving breaths up and down, breaths of relief and tears. The father opens the door as the son wakes up.
***
I walked out to the rail by the main track. The previous night’s rain had dampened the sandy strip to the point that it would be labeled MUDDY if there were races that day. I hopped up onto the track. I looked up at that ominous gray sky and ahead at the emerald of the turf and the azure of the lakes. I cowered before the massive, empty old racetrack. I took the jar out of my knapsack and spread the ashes up and down at the finish line. I mixed them in with the mud until I couldn’t see any difference in the color.
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Hands down the best article I’ve read on the Flip so far. I had to stop midway through because I was tearing up as my students did their chapter reviews. After the bell, I let go. I haven’t lost my father yet, but I dread the day when that news comes. You captured the father-son relationship perfectly. Truly expert writing.
I concur. Great stuff, Tom.
Sheesh! It’s become suddenly dusty in my work cube. I envy your relationship with your father.
Bravo
Absolutely fantastic. I only found this one in the archives, because I saw it was in Best American Sports Stories 2011. Hard to believe only four people had comments, but I guess most people were just speechless when it originally aired.
Has a lot in common with The Royal Tennenbaums. New York setting, untraditional, bigger-than-life father that takes his son out gambling. Really had me at the 55-1 twist. “I forgot, champ.”