The Risk Pool

myself for nixing the idea earlier. I consulted my watch and realized that they’d probably already left for the track. They both liked to arrive early, have abeer, pore over the program one last time. Lacking the price of admission to the clubhouse, there was no way I could drop in on them, and there was nothing to do but sit in my own dingy living room and listen to the telephone ring.
    As I sat there on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, I realized I was staring at money. My makeshift coffee table was a tree stump from the front yard, the top of which I had leveled and shaved. A girl I’d dated briefly had hammered quarters, dimes, and nickles into the soft wood surface and laminated them there, creating an illusion so real that the few visitors I had were always trying to pick them up or brush them aside so they could set their beer cans down. I don’t know how long I’d stared at them now before realizing that I wasn’t broke, not as long as I had a good claw hammer.
    An hour later I was on the road, four dollars and eighty cents in my pocket, only vaguely concerned that I had crossed an invisible line that prevented other men from mutilating tree stumps. I parked on a dark side street in South Tucson, several blocks from the fluorescent green dome of the dog track so I wouldn’t have to pay for parking. It cost extra to get into the clubhouse, but that’s where Robert and Anita would be, so I paid. I had enough left over for a beer by way of dinner.
    I drank it, leaning against the small bar where the dark men who would spring for the clubhouse, but not the extra three bucks for table seating, always congregated. I tipped the bartender my last quarter, which he rubbed, then sniffed, just as he had the slick coins I’d used to pay for my draft.
    The beer was cold and it immediately made me light-headed. In the last forty-eight hours I’d eaten nothing more substantial than Ben Slater’s pretzels. It was already the third race and too late to get a bet down even if I’d had the money, so I glanced through my program quickly, deciding that the first race I really wanted to bet on was the fifth, where a dog called Blue Piniella looked like he couldn’t lose. The funny part was that two of the three handicappers had him out of the money, which meant the mutt might even pay a fair price. The third handicapper, Jester, had him first, right where he should be, but Jester was acknowledged to be a flake, and this too could help.
    As the third race was being run, I watched the people at the tables along the mezzanine. The same faces every night, most of them. The old hands stayed seated and watched the race on theceiling and wall-mounted monitors. Newcomers got up and went over to the brass railing which separated the section they were in from the one immediately below. For some reason, they wanted to see the real race under the lurid yellow lights. Only after the dogs flashed by the finish line did they return to their tables.
    When I spotted Robert and Anita Crane on the other side of the clubhouse, I went over and said hello. I liked talking to Anita, and I hoped Robert would intuit my situation and beg me to take the money he’d offered earlier. “Fuck me,” he said when I walked up, tearing several tickets in half and tossing them over his big shoulder. Not a good sign.
    Anita’s attention was divided between Robert, the big tote board on the track’s center island, and the legal pad attached to her clipboard. A Marlboro dangled from her pale lips. “I really hate it when he does that,” she said, referring to Robert’s torn tickets. “
Un
official it says up there big as life, and he’s got the tickets torn up already.”
    “He’s a jerk,” I agreed, though I shared Robert’s habit.
    “Only four f’ing dogs would have to be disqualified for those tickets to be winners,” Robert Crane said. “F’ing” was his one concession to Anita’s tenderness and breeding.
    “What do you know about Hawthorne?” Anita said to me.
    “The Unpardonable Sin,” I said. “You can screw up all your life and still get saved, provided you don’t think you’re better or worse than everybody else. English 102.”
    “Too clear,” she said. “How about this: ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne thought the unpardonable sin was one you couldn’t forgive. The important thing was don’t put people down, like in Goodman Brown.’ ”
    “There you go,” I said.
    “That’s the Hawthorne I knew and loved,” Robert