Cataract City (23 page)

The racers were led onto the grassy infield by the Niagara Falls chapter of the Young Jaycees, giving bettors the chance to eye the dog flesh. The tote board flashed betting lines—Dolly had gone off at 12–1; she looked stringy and bandy legged compared to her competition.

We herded Dolly into her trap. She’d been slotted in number 3. Along with traps 2 and 4, they’re known as coffin boxes: the dogs in these traps are hemmed in by the rail-runners and wide-runners, meaning they can’t open up down the stretch.

The traps flew open as the mechanical hare zipped down the rail. Four greyhounds went pounding down the track like the hammers of hell.

Dolly remained in her trap. One second ticked by. Another. The other dogs were already twenty yards gone and accelerating fast.

Come on, girl
, I thought.
One foot in front of the other …

An explosion of fur and flesh blasted out of the trap. Dolly launched herself wide, banking round the high side of the track. I remember a whistling inhale—the sound of breath caught in a hundred throats—as hardened railbirds and casual dog fanciers alike leaned forward in their seats.

Dolly went wide on the first bend. There was something gyroscopic in the way she ran the track: banking high around the turn only to arrow in on the straightaway. She covered more ground than she needed to, but she’d also ramp up to a faster max speed. Maybe that’s why she’d waited in the traps: she wanted to avoid the jostling of the pack so she could blow by on the homestretch.

She caught up with ninety yards to go and slingshotted past the pack, winning by four lengths. Her breakneck running style, late dash from the traps and wonky manoeuvring had the crowd buzzing.

Hell,
I
was buzzing. I turned to Ed in the Winning Ticket Lounge and said, “Will you move in with me?”

I lived on my own by then, in a teensy apartment overlooking the Fairview Cemetery. It was barely big enough for me and Dolly, but I had a steady job at the Bisk—the Fig Newtons line—and nursed a hope for something bigger.

Ed threw her head back and laughed—a tinkling sound like glass wind chimes in a high breeze. “Dunk, you live in a shoebox with a view of the boneyard. If we’re going to do this, you’re moving in with
me
.”

I told my landlord the very next day; he was happy to see the back end of the high-strung dog that left scratch-marks on the linoleum. I loaded my few possessions into Bovine’s hearse and drove to the house Edwina rented on Culp Street—which happened to overlook a boarded-up middle school. It wasn’t much better than overlooking a graveyard, but I kept this opinion to myself.

Dolly was elevated to B-Class for her second race soon after that—and the tote board listed her at 2–1 odds. She won. Then she won two more races in that class. And that’s when she was deemed ready for A-Class.

A few days later, Ed and I watched as Dolly smoked her A-Class debut over Silent Cruise, who had been tabbed as a world-beater. Afterwards an old gaffer sauntered up to me and in a deep Irish brogue asked, “Is that great galloping bitch for sale?”

He had associations back in Tipperary, he claimed, and was an informal scout for punters at the famous Thules dog track. “She may not always win,” he said of Dolly, “but Lo’, she puts on a rollicking show. The yobbos back home would love ’er.”

He hadn’t been surprised to hear Dolly wasn’t for sale.

“You’re smart to hold on to a bitch like thaa. A gold mine on four legs!”

How much longer would I let her race? The way she ran made it a huge risk every time the traps sprung. I couldn’t live with myself if she got hurt. I’d have stopped if not for the fact that Dolly seemed happiest in full flight.

By the time we got home that evening, the heat had set in. There were rolling blackouts across the city and our A/C was on the fritz. Edwina was edgy. We lay on the sofa reading by the light of tea candles. Her legs thrummed across my thighs. She screwed a knuckle into my ribs and play-slapped me.

“What’s up with you tonight?”

“Just feeling silly.”

The sticky warmth lay thick inside the walls. We had been sweating just to breathe. She stood up, pulling me into the bedroom. It may simply have been a way to break the heat inside of her, the same way a good thunderstorm will break a heat wave.
She undressed in the moonlight falling through the window. Her body seemed carved out of that moonlight—a part of it, and distant in the same way. Before Ed, I’d had no experience with women. Sure, I’d kissed Becky Longpre on the Lions Club baseball bleachers, got my hand up her shirt before she protested about being a good Baptist girl, but that was it. My breath always quickened with Ed. My heart beat so fast I felt it over every inch of my body.

It was always a struggle to control myself, but Ed sensed that. She’d brace her hands on my shoulders and ease the shakes out of me, eyes telling me to take it slow. I only had to listen to her and obey.

I wondered what she was thinking in those moments. Part of her, maybe the deepest part, was locked off—even then, when we were that close. I figured a woman can’t be understood the way a man can. Women have purposes men can’t even imagine.

And then I felt that sweetness coming up from the balls of my feet. It wasn’t just the physical part; it was the body-closeness I would come to crave. But it’s never enough, is it? Two people can’t share the same heart, can they?

Afterwards she let out a jittery breath. “That was nice. You always try real hard, Dunk. A girl appreciates that.”

A girl appreciates that
. It was as if she was giving me advice for down the line, when I’d find myself in bed with someone else.

Early the next morning I’d awoken for no reason I could name. Dolly’s head was perched on the edge of the bed, inches from my face. The weight of her skull spread her dewlap across the mattress. Had I been talking in my sleep? Had I called out to Dolly?

She snuffled softly and licked my cheek. Her tongue smelled of shaved iron. It wasn’t her style; Dolly was a standoffish creature.

Maybe something about the stillness of night had rewired the circuits in her brain, drawing her to me? I lay motionless, not wanting to break the spell.

Three weeks after Dolly’s A-Class win, a murmur passed through the Winning Ticket as Ed and I entered. The punters had pegged me as the owner of the mutt with the million-dollar legs. Ed slapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear: “You’re basking in the reflected glory of a dog. Drink it up, big shot.”

A weedy fellow in boater shoes and a brushed velvet coat wormed out of the crowd.

“The number four bitch in tonight’s final heat—yours, yeah? Is she well?” he asked. “Not got the shits, I hope? Should I put a ten-spot on her to be first on the bunny, first over the line?”

Other dogmen pressed in, twisting their racing forms in white-knuckled fists, waiting for my reply.

“She’s not shitting any differently than usual, if that helps.”

They peeled away like buzzards from a clean-picked carcass, grumbling as they drifted over to the betting wickets.

Harry waited for us in the kennels with Dolly. “This is the big time,” he said. “Open Class welcomes dogs from all over. The purse is decent enough that you’ll get dogmen coming up from New York and as far east as Maine. Your girl better not make her customary late dash—these dogs’ll be too quick for that.”

“Do you know any of the other dogs?” Edwina asked.

“Not so much the dogs as owners. Teddy Simms from Cheektowaga’s got one in trap two, a bitch named Hurricane Jessie. Simms works with some
fast
bloodlines. Lemuel Drinkwater’s here, too. He breeds over at the Tuscarora Nation outside Buffalo. A real bottom-liner, is Lemmy—loves a winner, no use for a loser. A couple years back he got DQ’d for the season. The vet was giving
one of his winners the usual post-race once-over and wouldn’t you know it if a jalapeño pepper didn’t slide out of the poor dog’s ass.”

Harry took in our shocked expressions.

“Old dogman’s dirty trick. Slit a hot pepper with a razor blade, get those juices leaking out, stick it up your dog’s fanny. You better believe it’ll get him hopping.”

“Why is he still allowed to race?” I said.

“You take a look around this place? Not exactly a hive of morality, son.”

We sat in the stands for the prelims. The spotlights beat down on the red dirt of the track. Midges and no-see-ums rose from under the risers, dancing in the gathering dark. The tote board chittered as the odds rose and fell.

Railbirds clustered along the finishing stretch with tickets clutched in their sweaty fists, pounding the spectators’ rail as the dogs thundered down the final leg of each race. Afterwards the winners crowed—“I knew that boy was a mucker!” or “What a stayer, just like I told you!”—as the losers tossed their stubs on the blacktop alongside cigarette butts and crumpled beer cans.

Before Dolly’s heat I went down to the lockout kennel where the dogs were housed before each race. Harry stood with a tall man in his early thirties. The man wore pegged blue jeans and a jean jacket, his red-brown face shadowed by the brim of an Australian out-backer hat; fake crocodile teeth were strung around the brim like bullets in a bandolier. He reminded me of Billy Jack, the star of those seventies action flicks, except he didn’t have that actor’s face.

“Duncan,” Harry said, “meet Lemuel Drinkwater.”

We shook. Drinkwater’s hand was dry and chilly; it was like gripping cold muscle. He smiled but there was no kindness in it, no heat or nastiness either: he had a perfectly blank expression, reflecting nothing.

“We were jawing about your dog.” Drinkwater pronounced it
darg
. “How’d you train her to run that way, wide all the time?”

“I didn’t do anything. Just how she runs.”

He nodded the way a man does when he doesn’t believe you. But some men figure everyone’s lying to them all the time.

“She’s a quick dog,” Harry said. “Whoever chucked her in the garbage as a pup must be kicking themselves.”

Drinkwater shrugged. “Garbage is the best place for some of them.”

Harry pursed his lips like he wanted to say something but wouldn’t.

“Guess I got lucky, then,” I said.

“You know what they say,” Drinkwater said breezily. “Even the blind squirrel finds a nut.” He swaggered off, cowboy boots pink-a-pinking on the cement floor.

“What a dick.”

“He’s got his qualities,” Harry said diplomatically.

Harry handed Dolly over to the lead-outs and we headed to the traps.

“That’s Hurricane Jessie, Teddy Simms’ girl.” Harry pointed to a muscular greyhound with Dalmatian markings on her coat. “And that’s Drinkwater’s entry, War Hammer.”

War Hammer was jet black with a frost of white hair fringing her muzzle. Her ears were pinned flat to her skull and she had the mincing gait of a boxer during his ring walk. She moved like a creature that wanted to outrun its own skin.

Dolly drew trap number 4. Hurricane Jessie was in number 5, the outermost. War Hammer would run the rail from the 1 spot, with Primco Posy and Tilda’s Vinton filling out the other traps.

The mechanical hare zipped down the electrified rail. The traps sprung open, unleashing a fury of muscle and bone. At first it was
difficult to separate one dog from an other: they were nothing but a mad blur of limbs like smears of paint on a canvas.

The crowd rose to a quick roar as the hounds hit the front stretch. War Hammer led with Primco Posy running outside her heels, boxed in on the outside by Tilda’s Vinton. Hurricane Jessie had established her spot on the far right. Dolly was in last place, a yard or so behind Tilda’s Vinton.

She was running higher than usual; she couldn’t find room to open up. Hurricane Jessie had the long body to make a wide break difficult, plus Dolly would sacrifice too much distance against War Hammer on an outside pass attempt.

She rolled her shoulders and ducked in at Tilda’s Vinton, trying to squeeze past. The dog met her charge nimbly: Dolly’s head snapped off Tilda’s haunch, killing her pass attempt.

The dogs hit the turn. War Hammer rode the rail so close you’d think she was zippered to it; her positioning ensured she kept her lead over Primco Posy, who ate a faceful of dirt. Hurricane Jessie eased into her turn, running smartly but dropping her speed. Suddenly an opening presented itself.

Dolly shot the gap between Hurricane Jessie and Tilda’s Vinton. She gunned up the high side of the track, finding open space. She angled her shoulder to the bend, banking like a fighter plane on a make-or-break manoeuvre and battling every inch of the way.

I hopped on the rail hoping for a better view but all I could make out was the dogs’ cresting shoulders. I stared into the stands at Ed, trying to gauge the race from her face. Her fists were clenched, her mouth open in a frantic O.

The bunny rocketed down the homestretch. The lead dog was War Hammer. Next came Dolly, wide on the outside, fully into her stride.

Then a funny thing happened: War Hammer went low. Not as
low as Dolly, but her body flattened and became streamlined like a street racer tapping the nitrous oxide for the final kick. But Dolly was just naturally faster, plus she’d done her work early in the race—she was running flat out.

Dolly and War Hammer hurtled down the last fifty yards. Their strides were so long that they covered seven, eight yards at a go. Dolly’s head was down, eyes fixed on the finish line. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

They crossed the line at a dead heat. The results went out over the loudspeakers: Dolly had won by a quarter of a second—razor-close, even by dog-racing standards. A small cheer went up from the stands.

Harry shook my hand like I’d had something to do with it. “A magical dog,” he said. “Merlin on four legs!”

Drinkwater collected War Hammer. He smacked her ass hard enough to rattle the poor thing’s bones, and shot me a challenging look—
What, you’re going to do something about it
? He said, “Talk about your bullshit luck.”

I should have resisted, but I couldn’t. “Winners win and losers go home.”

“This one’s won plenty,” Drinkwater told me, stroking War Hammer’s skull so hard that the skin peeled back from her bulging eyes. “Why else would I keep her around? She’s beaten far better than your jumped-up sidewinding bitch.”