three hundred dollars.
“This morning was just for fun,” he said. “I have something big on for this afternoon. But I wish we were at the track.”
After lunch we took a walk around town and then went back to the place. There were a lot more people there then had been around in the morning.
“Why don't you try one?” Jackson asked me.
I told him that I didn't know my way around, because I had never liked the horses. But I finally picked a name and put ten dollars on it. A local fellow who looked like a factory hand or a mechanic asked me if I had ever played the horses before. When I told him I hadn't he said that he'd like to follow my play and so he went up and put ten on the same horse. In a little while the result of that race came in and we had sixty dollars instead of ten.
“Try it again,” Jackson said.
I put the sixty on the first horse on the sheet and then I looked at the odds. That horse was paying four to one. The fellow who had won with me put his money on it too.
I won two hundred and forty dollars. “Chinese money,” I said. “I might as well get rid of it.”
When the next race was over I had six hundred dollars instead of the ten I started on. The fellow who had been riding with me punched me on the shoulder.
“What's good this time, pal?” he said.
“I'm off them now,” I said. “I'm all through.”
“Well, give me a horse.” he said. “Just give me one more. I'll break the damned place!”
I nudged Jackson.
“Give him a horse,” he said.
I pointed out a name. The fellow started up to the cage and then came back.
“Christ,” he said, “you're crazy. The odds are fifty to one.”
“All right,” I said. “That's the one.”
“Fuck that nag,” he said. “I'm not betting on him.”
He sat down and didn't bet on that race. The horse came through.
“Oh Christ! Oh Jesus! How much would I have won on it that time?” the fellow said. “How much?”
“You'd have thirty grand in your pocket,” Jackson said. “If you could collect.”
“Give me a horse, will you?” I need just one more.”
“No more horses,” I said. “Hell with it.”
The fellow grabbed my coat and almost yanked me off the chair.
“God damn it!” he said. “Give me a horse.”
Jackson stood up. He touched the fellow's arm politely.
“It's all over,” he said. “Why don't you take your money now and go home or go out and spend it or something? You can do a lot with that.”
The fellow knocked his arm away, and that was a mistake, because in the next second Jackson had knocked him under the seats. A couple of men who seemed to know him set him on his feet and led him away. In a few minutes he was back.
“You won't give me a horse?”
“I don't know any goddamned horse.”
“I'll pick my own horse. This is my day. I'll break the fucking place.”
He bet on the favorite in the next race, and he had hardly laid down the money when the results came through, and the favorite didn't even place. Everybody had watched the bet, and now everybody watched the fellow walk out.
“Do you want to make some money on the race after this one?” Jackson asked me.
“Is that the one you've been waiting for?”
“That's it.”
“I think I'll sit this one out.”
Jackson had some trouble making a bet of the size he wanted. People began to whisper it around the room, and when he came back to his seat everything had stopped and they were all watching Jackson as though they thought he might be Nick the Greek or somebody like that.
In a few minutes the results came through. The cashier handed over Jackson's money without a word and we walked out.
“Was that race fixed?” I asked Jackson.
“Hell yes,” he said.
We got the car out of the parking lot and started back to the farm.
I handed Ruth the six hundred dollars, and then I remembered that ten of it was mine to begin with, so I took that back and then I changed my mind again and took another two hundred.
“Whatever I have to do for this much,” she said, “I won't. If it's worth that much to do it's too filthy for me.”
“It was a land of present,” I said. “I'm just passing some of it on.”
So I had to sit down and tell her how I had gotten it. She was disappointed.
“Is that all?” she said. “He's just a gambler?”
“I wouldn't say that he gambles, exactly.”
“No. Well, that's better. When I was small I used to think that he might be a pirate.”
Jape came into the room. I swiped at her ass as she went by, but I missed. She sat down on a low chair.
“Good god!” I said.
“Isn't it marvelous?” Ruth asked. “She's been practicing all day.”
I looked straight at Jane's rouge-reddened cunt. She crossed her legs and turned in the chair so that her weight was on one hip. Then there was just a froth of hair to be seen sticking out from under one thigh.
“That one, of course,” Ruth said, “is for parlor use only. It would be too obvious to use on, say, a street car or a park bench.”
Jane heard Jackson coming through the house. She was undecided for about five seconds, and then she pulled down her dress and sat up straight.
“You've trained her too fine,” I said.
Jackson said hello and patted Ruth's arm and took the drink she offered him. He sat down and we talked over the first drink, and then Ruth decided that she and I had something to do somewhere else and we left Jane to talk to him.
“I hope he gets the little cunt,” Ruth said. “It's time she was picked.”
“Don't I count at all?” I said. “I screwed her, I think.”
“There's a difference. You'll see. Oh, that boy called her up today, too. She wouldn't make a date with him.”
We went outside and sat on the lawn chairs under the tree in the yard.
“Living in the country wouldn't be so hard after you got used to it,” Ruth said.
“It would be all right if you could keep away from the people they grow out here,” I said.
“Would you like to live in the country all the time?”
“What are you saying?”
“I thought you might want to marry me and live here in the country. I wouldn't disgrace you. If I ever married you I wouldn't go off with somebody else the next week.”
“I don't know,” I said; “it's something I'd have to think about.”
“I don't promise anything while you're just thinking about it,” she told me.
We didn't say anymore about it, and after a while we went to have dinner inside.
Jane was excited. Jackson had gone up to dress, and the girl pulled Ruth and me out to the kitchen. She yanked her dress up in front, over her belly. Under the word “MINE” there was a big question mark, also done in lipstick.
“I wouldn't tell him who wrote that on there,” she said. “He acted kind of mad.”
Ruth sat on a chair and sat Jane on her lap. She held her dress up and slid her hands up Jane's thighs and touched her cunt.
