Family Matter

A 406-page novel,  now available from Sanniti Publications. 

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From Chapter 6:

“Anyway,” he goes on, “you must’ve been the last kid to see a race at Aqueduct. You remember? The day they changed it on us?”

I do. There was a powerful light that animated my days at that time. Me, the only veteran of the New York racetrack circuit in my class, my neighborhood, in the whole city maybe. Not that anybody knew it though some kids must’ve noticed that I always skipped school on Mondays. That being the day the shop was closed, racing day. Everybody else’s father had Saturday off, everybody else’s father would throw baseballs or footballs or fix bikes or wash cars with them on Saturdays. Not mine. He worked hardest on Saturdays and played no sports but racing; was off Mondays to the track and me with him. Which superiority over normal scheduling may have had something to do with the fact of my leadership of all playground gangs up to and including second grade; or may have had none at all, that merely being the age at which I stopped growing and the rest didn’t, leaving me after that smaller always smaller. I don’t know. But when I thought of the terminal point of my power in schools, that last racing day always marked it: before that, a golden age when we were giants; after that, bronze men merely. 

The day began with trouble. There had been torrential rains all weekend before, meaning that the field would belong to the mudders, but also that the trains would have to inch along at certain flood points, making my father fidget and curse about missing the “double;” and at one point somewhere in Long Island City or some such industrial garbage heap where the track rammed along deep in an artificial gully formed by coal-covered embankments, stopping the train altogether. The conductors kept coming by to assure everyone that we’d soon be on our way, though they weren’t very successful calming that train full of chewed nerve-ends watching post time and their chance at the big one click ever closer with them marooned ten miles from the betting window. And the moan that went up when they finally came by with the news that we’d have to leave the train—that’s right, abandon ship but not to worry there were buses at the top of the embankment waiting to zip us straight to the track—the moan that went up was epic. So cursing and stumbling up the coal-loose hill which for me was high adventure but for the tracksters was at the least physical agony and at the worst a terrible omen of the day’s events, we made it to the buses. Not, though, before some alert photographer for the New York Daily Mirror had snapped as shot of this DeMilleian assault on high ground in pursuit of the magic carpet to payoff land; which snapshot appeared, full page spread rear, in the late edition, and which yellowed back page of the Mirror with me and my father in the center of the mob smiling courageously, remained evermore in the place of honor in the family photo album. Though I never did learn if my teacher saw it or not. 

Well, we got there with still ten minutes to post time which looked to be all right. If the damn line would only move faster. It did, we got to the window, one for the clubhouse my father said, shoving his five-dollar bill through the grate. Then, smiling ticket in hand we swung toward the gate. The attendant looked down at me. “Where’s he goin’?” “With me, whaddya mean?” “Dont’cha read the papers, buddy, kids under sixteen not allowed anymore.” Stunned. Five minutes to post time with a sure thing for the Double and now this! My father tried every tactic of persuasion he had ever learned or heard of, up to and including giving the guy at the gate an extra ten for himself. It worked. We got inside, but not before the guy added that we’d never get in the clubhouse, they were absolute about the rule there, what with the booze and all. So we flew through the turnstile, my father walking triple time which made me have to run to keep up. I had already asked him why we couldn’t just stay in the lower level down by the rail which was where I liked it best anyway, but he had snapped something about meeting someone up there with some info and his tone was not to be questioned. So we ran. Tried for a few seconds to slither past the attendant at the clubhouse. No dice. Ran to the ten-dollar window in the lower stands to place his Daily Double bet, he wiping his forehead with relief that he had at least got the bet down. “Will we win?” I kept asking. “Sure, pal, sure,” he said, triple timing down to the rail to watch the first race. It was mobbed. I couldn’t see anything but legs. He couldn’t see much more, especially with me whining about not seeing. The only good thing was that people kept letting us inch closer to the rail out of sympathy for this frantic guy with the whining kid. We were just about there but still blocked by an ice cream truck, one of the push-em kind right in front of me. “Hey, I can’t see,” I was complaining and they were coming around the last turn just before the stretch and the crush was pushing me closer to the metal truck and me whining and him trying to stretch on tiptoe to watch as well as make sure I wasn’t trampled to death. When the ice cream vendor said, “Hey, put him up here.” So they did, lifted me up and sat me right on top of the damn truck just in time for both of us to see Momma Duke streak across the finish line first by a head. Hot damn! We won. 

Well he was hugging me and the ice cream man who if I remember right had the same horse, we were all so jumping happy especially him because he still had the double which if the next horse came in it’d be worth a real bundle, and he started talking about having to get up in that clubhouse but wasn’t it a bunch of horseshit this new law about kids. And Pepper, that the ice cream guy’s name, he agreed Yeah it was the shits but if he really wanted, why didn’t he leave the kid here, hell he was gonna be here the whole afternoon selling his ice cream and the kid could no trouble sit up there and see everything at the rail as close as could be with free ice cream to boot. At which my father broke into his most winning smile the way he could do to make anybody feel good, this was incredible, a major omen which could not be passed up. So he stuffed a couple of bills in my pocket to make sure if I needed anything and shaking Pepper’s hand and thanking him in several laughing ways and promising to be back between races, he high-stepped off looking like a million. And me, I started on my first of nine Good Humors. 

Pepper and I got on famously. I don’t remember how much ice cream he sold that afternoon, or if he cared he seemed so interested in the horses. Though I do remember him letting me ring the bells on the truck which always attracted a lot of customers and then he would let me take the money and give change. But if it got too crowded and the  horses were being trumpeted onto the track, he would just shut the thing down and snap at anyone trying to disturb his concentration on the horses. He had lots of sheets and papers in every pocket too and he would look through them and then look squinting at the horses as they came by. And in the third race he was holding me up on the truck as usual as they came parading by some going sideways not more than five feet from us and he asked me which one I liked. Well, I immediately picked out this beautiful black horse that was shiny and tight and had on one of those terrific masks I always thought made them look so mysterious and wise, and he said that one huh? and looked down at his tote sheets scratching his head and in a minute he was off to the window telling me to watch the changemaker. Well, that horse won by five lengths going away and paid $42.90 to win. Pepper was ecstatic. He hugged me and jumped up and down and gave me my fifth ice cream of the day. After that, nothing could’ve got me off that truck; Pepper almost got in a fight with one guy who complained that he couldn’t see with me standing up on the truck like that kids weren’t even supposed to be here and Pepper said shove off buddy the kid stays. And he meant it. I don’t know but I think I picked a couple of more winners for him because he would ask me every time which horse I liked and I would pick the shiniest danciest one usually with stockings or a mask and he jumped up and down a lot that day and I jumped up and down a lot too though not for any particular horse because by the time they had come to us I had forgotten which one I had picked which to me didn’t matter any at all I just loved to see them all scrambling huge and splattering right down at us with the mud flying and the whips zinging and their nostrils flaring out wide and their legs splayed out in a million directions all at once and so big almost like the trains as they came by inches away it seemed with the people all around screaming louder and louder and Pepper holding onto my ankles for dear life as I almost fell over the rail with the surge of it.