My Year of the Racehorse Read Free

the front-side (betting areas), were there watching daytime simulcasts from Australia. Randi, who was wearing a thick turtleneck sweater, sat at the bar, talking to an insurance salesman and thoroughbred owner who explained how one could deduct the cost of buying and maintaining a horse, even write off part of it as a depreciating asset under livestock. “I’m taking it easy now, but back when I was making one-hundred-fifty, two-hundred grand, there was no better tax shelter; I owned half a dozen horses and it actually saved me money,” said the insurance salesman, who wore a dry-cleaned denim shirt underneath a windbreaker. “Some people have RRSPs; I own horses.”
    The insurance salesman left to make a bet. “I’m not saying that guy was lying to you,” Randi said, “but a lot of racetrackers exaggerate some of the time. The first thing I should tell you is not to believe everything everyone says here. You know what I’m saying?”
    I bought Randi, who rarely drinks, a hot-buttered rum. We relocated to the far end of the bar, away from the winter-season punters, where I asked her about her horses. “They’re all trouble, all the time,” she told me. “I know you want a story out of it, but I can’t sell you Sylvester, because he’s too expensive. He’s my favourite. Riley’s hurt himself before that cocksucker’s ever ran a race. Tell you what? I can give you a piece of Blackie.”
    â€œI could afford maybe a hoof,” I offered. “Maybe a hank of mane.”
    She ignored my wisecrack. “She’s no fucking Ruffian or anything, but she tries her little guts out.” She wrinkled her face into her glass mug as though its contents were cough syrup. “So, was your dad into racing?” she asks me.
    â€œUh-uh, he doesn’t gamble.”
    â€œYour mom?”
    â€œJust mah-jong.”
    â€œSo how the fuck did you hear of the track?”
    â€œIn high school, I read all these books by Charles Bukowski,” I told her. “He always wrote about going to the track in L.A.” The skid-row bard’s autobiographical stories about journeyman gamblers—guys who punched into Hollywood Park, day in, day out, like factory workers—still carried weight for me, even while his depictions of damaged women and flophouses now only induced skin-crawling visions of chlamydia and bedbugs.
    Randi seemed amused by my aspirations to be a seedy bookworm. “Post Office was pretty good,” she said, referring to his autobiographical novel about his much-loathed career delivering the mail. “I always tell people if they want to know how fucking miserable it is to work at the post office, they should read that book.”
    I followed Randi outside for a smoke. In the winter chill with a view of the empty paddock, my toes numb in my dress socks, I half-hacked through the cigarette that I cadged from her.
    She eyed me eyeing her, trying to surmise my shit from my truth, as I tried to extract the vitriol from her small talk. I set my squint at her as some hay-pitching carnie fixing on her mark—a four-eyed chucklehead who turned people into fictional entities. Who was ripping off whom?
    From this uneasy first get-together, I agreed to buy a share of her horse. Actually, there was no suspense there. Before even meeting Randi, I’d decided it was the perfect purchase. I could have that taste of ownership that I recently ached for, but also, at the same time, a piece of a four-legged thrill machine. I would get a laminated pass into a world that had always fascinated me from afar, while joining what I felt were rarefied ranks. People might want to read about it.
    I would write Randi a cheque for a four-figure sum. I didn’t invest a huge chunk of my savings, nor did I promise to hold onto my share of the horse beyond the year. When that first race was being run, I hadn’t yet written the cheque. I could