The Risk Pool

lip-farted.
    “Take me and Jack Ward,” he said. “We both go into the service the same month, not a pot to piss in, neither one of us, we both go ashore at Utah Beach, we both end up in Berlin, we get home the same week. A year later he’s driving a new Lincoln Continental, loaded like a Greek, nothing to do but play golf every day. Now you tell me.”
    “Jack Ward’s dead,” I observed.
    He looked at me as if I might have an undetected brain tumor. “So?”
    I was embarrassed to state the obvious. “So his luck didn’t hold.”
    “You’re full of shit,” he said. “It held right to the end.”
    “Died in the saddle is what I heard,” somebody down the bar said.
    “You’re goddamn right,” my father said, standing up to demonstrate the proper rhythm for the saddle. A canter, I judged it to be. “He went right from the saddle into the loving arms of his maker. Nonstop.”
    “Probably d-driving around in a L-l-lincoln up there in heaven,” said Tree, who was much inclined toward my father’s theory of an Elect and a Damned.
    “Nah,” said the man down the bar. “He’s probably got a driver. He’s in the backseat getting you know what.” The speaker checked around the bar to see if there were any women.
    This led to a discussion of whether you-know-what was better in heaven. Somewhere in the proceedings, my father, who had instigated the whole thing, lost interest. As the voices rose in mock anger and comic disagreement over what it had to feel like to get balled in heaven, my father, as I had noticed him do repeatedly that summer when he thought no one was looking, stared at the crooked stump of his thumb, as if the black, callused digit he’d lost contained some magic he despaired of finding anywhere else beneath the sky.

35
    A few days after I served Manhattans to Mrs. Agajanian, Claude’s old neighbor, who should come in off the street but Claude himself. It took me a minute to recognize him because his hair had receded and he’d become an adult instead of the soft, pudgy boy I remembered. In fact, it was worse than not recognizing him. I thought he was his father, for there was a striking resemblance between the man who stood before me and the pear-shaped Claude Sr., who’d blown town after his son’s attempted suicide. And when I blinked and said, “Claude Schwartz?” it was the father I thought I was speaking to. But then I saw the turtleneck and the strange mischief of expression, the same look that had been there as a boy when he had some believe-it-or-not item he wanted to share with me from his own personal Ripley’s. We shook as enthusiastically as we could with the bar between us, his large hand doughy, but warm and full of kindness. His grin was good-natured and wounded, suggesting that finding me here hadmade his day, even if I
had
been around for a month and a half and failed to look him up. Never mind, all was forgiven.
    “Claude,” I said, trying not to mimic his grin, but finding it impossible to resist, “what can I get you?” The place was pretty crowded for that time in the afternoon, for which I was grateful. There was no guarantee Claude would speak.
    He waved in the general direction of the taps, as if to say it didn’t matter to him which one I pulled. I drew him a beer and wouldn’t take his money for it.
    Untemeyer came in and I told Claude I’d be right back. I had half a dozen small wagers for the bookie, who set up shop at his usual place at the end of the bar near the kitchen. Irma came out, her hair in a net, dark perspiration stains under her arms from the steamy kitchen, and tossed two dollars on the bar for her usual daily double.
    “Irma La Deuce,” Untemeyer said, writing out a slip.
    Irma winked at me, her face humorless. Untemeyer always took her action first, so she could go back in the kitchen.
    “You never should have took up gambling,” the bookie said. “You’re an unlucky woman.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Besides,” Untemeyer said, “one loser per marriage is enough.”
    “Not in mine,” Irma said.
    “Right,” Untemeyer said. “Not in Mohawk.”
    I read him what I had while he wrote. When we finished, he made me read it all again to make sure there was no mistake. Then he took the money. “How come you never bet?” Untemeyer said.
    It was true. I’d quit. Left the whole thing back in Tucson. “I’m just looking for the right horse,” I said.
    “Me too,” he agreed. “Fifty some years and I haven’t found him