LEONARD KRIEGEL
"Well ," he says in Yiddish , "what do
you
think?"
" O'Brien give him . What does he know? "
Dave shrugs. "He speaks with god ."
109
" Don 't be an idiot . I wouldn 't bet him counterfeit money if I got my
own printing press."
" My
luck is dead the last few weeks ," Dave explains. "I got to do
something. What can it hurt? It's worth thirty to him , it 's worth sixty to me ."
The horse finished sixth in an eight horse race .
To outmaneuver the system was everyone 's desire ; to indict it and then
lick its lollipop was another thing entirely . They were small-time gamblers .
They lacked the courage to plunge , to risk their total substance . Something
always held them back . They were weighed down with considerations–
family , rent , clothes . They bet because they could not see very much else that
would enable them to claim victory . They bet because it was enjoyable , a clean
suspense , because their egos dried out when the considerations were too
much-too much family , too many dulled prospects, too much of the drab .
An explosion ofenergy went into handicapping the horses . All of it staked on
the quick hit , the sudden turnover, the gasp of a working-class mentality as it
envisioned the small entrepreneur making it big . Fortune . Harlem had its
numbers and 206th Street had its horses.
Amerika gomfj!
the old men
laughed . The money was a way out, a passage through the wilderness .
"Why did they bet?" I ask my uncle years later.
" Because they were hungry," he says. "Because they got nothing else.
What did Benny the Hack have ? Or Lester? Or that
meshuganah
Irishyer who
used to try to pull out of me what no one could possibly know. Or me? What
else did 1 have? Charley Harris told you 1 was the best handicapper in the
neighborhood . You know what ' best ' means , Lennie ? It means that in a given
year you look like a winner. You pay ten percent for your entertainment . You
dream ofa big hit . And the funn y thing is , they give you .. . here , there , they
give
you .
One afternoon , Lennie , 1remember it was the Saturday Assault won
the Belmont , I walk out of there with five thousand in my pocket. A year 's
salary . 1 give it back in a week . With interest ."
Notes for the two dollar window . The virus of penny-ante gamblers . My
uncle taps the trunk of each tree he passes as he walks down Rochambeau
Avenue , the second and third fingers of his right hand ritualistically twisted
together. He taps each tree twice . In his other hand , he holds the
Worker.
The
imagination beckons . Gambling is an alternative to the class struggle he now
suspects is no longer coming . To hit big , to seize a certain glamour from life .
The flats, the trotters , baseball games , basketball , football , the fights at the
