The Risk Pool

doubted we would.
    For some reason we were not heading toward Saratoga, andwhen he turned down a dirt road that couldn’t possibly lead anywhere, I figured we were going to pick up Wussy. “Just as long as we don’t end up at the Big Bend Hunting Lodge,” I said.
    “You don’t want to say goodbye to what’s-her-name?”
    “Nor hello,” I said, though that was unkind. There were worse people than Marion.
    When we pulled into Wussy’s drive, my father cut the engine and let the car roll to a stop about six inches from the end of the trailer, which was sunk into a hole so the doors would be at ground level. Then my father laid on the horn and the trailer shivered visibly. A few seconds later Wussy appeared in nothing but his shorts. He had changed very little since that morning so long ago when he had come out of the cabin in the woods. His needs hadn’t changed either, because he came right over and peed on the front fender of the convertible before my father could start the engine and back up. “There,” he said, putting himself back in his shorts.
    “No class,” my father said. “And plenty of it.”
    Wussy stretched, apparently unconcerned about standing there in his skivvies.
    “Come on,” my father said. “We’ll go to the track.”
    “Mind if I put some pants on first?”
    “We insist,” I said.
    Wussy and my father exchanged glances. I don’t think I had ever before intruded on one of their verbal sparring sessions.
    “Wise ass, all of a sudden,” Wussy said. “Right before he’s leaving.”
    My father shrugged, as if it were too late to do anything to improve me. In a minute Wussy returned, carrying his shoes and socks, but otherwise dressed. I offered to sit in the back, but Wussy said he knew how the front passenger seat was and thanks anyhow. Then he stretched out in the backseat.
    Before backing out, my father studied him with mock seriousness. Finally he nudged me. “He’ll be good to have along,” my father said. “Otherwise we might be tempted to go someplace fancy for dinner.”
    There was something obligatory about that last day my father and Wussy and I spent together. Timing had always been at the heart of such outings, and all that day we never did manage to hit our stride. It wasn’t just me out of synch either. We could have survivedthat. After all, it was only recently that I’d become tuned in to the rhythms of their drinking and wandering and peeing and pool shooting. The important thing had always been that my father and Wussy were in step.
    Today though, even they were messed up, somehow. At the track, Wussy saw a guy he knew and stopped to talk and we missed the first race as a result. My father refused to accept that the accidental meeting was fortuitous, that the first race, at least, was one we wouldn’t lose. He preferred to think of it as the only sure thing on the whole day’s card. He said only a blind man could have missed it. The rest, the ones that hadn’t been run yet, were tougher to figure. I managed to break even by ignoring my father’s tips, but both he and Wussy took a bath.
    Wussy kept on disappearing, sometimes for a half hour at a clip. I think he may have been feeling a little odd sharing that last day with my father and me. Either that or he thought maybe we had things to talk about before I left. But we must not have, because we didn’t, and we both felt relieved each time Wussy reappeared. I’d gotten over, long ago, my father’s need to have third parties around when we faced the prospect of a long period of time in each other’s company. I hadn’t figured out what it meant and didn’t want to, though I think I’d always known that we were both afraid. If we had too much time and too little to do, we’d be tempted to talk to each other. Say things. About then, and now, and why, and why not. It was Wussy’s job to prevent that.
    On the way home from the track we argued about the function of the orange balls on the telephone cables that snaked along the edge of the trees that formed a green tunnel along the Saratoga road. My father said they were to keep animals off the lines. Squirrels would jump out of trees and onto the cables and scoot along them. When they came to one of those slick orange balls they’d have to turn around and go back. I couldn’t tell if he was serious. Wussy said that as usual he was full of shit. All right, you explain them, my father told him. Wussy tried. Somebody’d told him once that the