The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [346]
Studs wished he had dough on Good Luck. The excitement that was choking them all up seemed to be getting him, and while many kept stamping and tapping the floor, and straining themselves, and snapping their fingers, and pounding their fists together, he looked keenly around, a little bit lost.
“Come on! Come on!”
“Hold ‘em! Hold ‘em!”
“Sweetheart, be sweet.”
“Come on, Hot Pepper, get hot, get hot!”
“All right, Sweetheart Girl, keep comin’, girl, keep corn-in’, keep comin’, girl!”
“Hurray!” a man half-yelled, leaping from his chair, to stride rapidly to and fro.
They were all tightened up, all right, like they’d bust, he thought.
The seconds of the race seemed eternally long, and there they stewed, racketed, made faces. Most of them looked like they were ready to cry, start a fight or even go nuts.
“The winners ..”
He could see, too, how many of them took it hard, couldn’t lose with a smile like Studs Lonigan could, bum gamblers. From the sour pans they put on, a person might have thought that they had just lost their best friends or dropped a thousand bucks or more on the stock market, the way he had. Some of them should just know that, and then realize how they were taking the loss of a measly half buck or a dollar so hard.
“…Charcoal, Good Luck, Sweetheart third.”
Several hysterical cheers rose, died abruptly. Murmuring conversation broke over the room, the many voices drumming out like men talking to calm themselves after meeting sudden dangers. Studs searched out the woman in blue, and saw her glancing wildly and distraught from face to face. The winners were verified, and the winning list chalked on the blackboard. She rushed to it eagerly, with an extravagant hope blooming on her face, read, turned aside, watched the winning bettors clutter up to the counter. She went to a chair, sat, crossed her legs, studied the papers, her lips firm and tight.
Studs sauntered to a group around a scratch sheet on the wall.
“Well, Ma, how did you do?”
“I never complain, that’s my policy. I have my system, and I play it, and it works all right for me,” Ma said, cigarette still drooping from her lips.
“I had a hunch to play Charcoal, but I’ve been balling myself all up with my system of handicapping, and like a chump I didn’t have the nerve to play my hunch.”
“I never play hunches. That’s not scientific. I play my system,” Ma said.
“Well, who you picking for the next at Bowie?”
“That’s my business.”
“The next is a steeplechase. You can never pick ‘em because anything is liable to happen in a jump race. The best horse in the country is liable to miss a hurdle and lose its rider. Now, last summer in a jump race at Saratoga, well, I had it doped for Equal Sugar to win. Every expert in the country, nearly, picked Equal Sugar. Well, I don’t usually play the favorites, but I laid my ten bucks down on Equal Sugar because I was in the dough then. And you know, at the first jump Equal Sugar breaks a leg. It all goes to show, jump races are never certain.”
“Al’s Pink Sheet picks Sir Canafe, and he’s the consensus of the experts, too. And Al’s Pink Sheet is pretty reliable. I’ve been following it now for a long time and it’s given me some good pickings. Why, one day two months ago I bet on all Al’s choices and I won twelve bucks. And the other night I didn’t have nothing to do, so I checked back through a number of old copies of Al’s Pink Sheet, and you know, he picked fifteen steeplechase winners over the period I checked through.”
“I tried all the dope sheets, and I finally found that Sunshine Sam’s is the most reliable. He picks more winners than any of ‘em, and he’s good on the jump races, too. He picks Fielder’s Choice.”
“I used to go by Sunshine Sam’s dope, but it never did nothing but put my dough in a bookie’s pocket.”
“Al’s Pink Sheet never won me anything but grief.”
The door kept opening, admitting more and more new-comers. Studs moved around kind of wishing some lad he knew would happen in, keeping his eyes, all the time, peeled on the neat trick in blue, who, studying her dope sheet with