He doesn’t start out for the track. The prescribed route lies solid in his head: travel a straight line down Broadway, over to Main, take a yielding right for the 135, chug the slow uphill and merge with what should be near-vacant highway lanes. After three dead exits, the neon glow for Shopwell Regency Supercenter will welcome him in, reward diligence with a choice of parking—never available on regular days—close enough to skirt the rain.
Vern sees himself walk the pitted gravel lot, enter the whooshing double doors, and steer a non-hobbled cart to frozen foods without a moment’s hesitation. There, in the clean arctic case will be Wisconsin’s Best bagged cranberries, the stacks likely picked over and toppled by now. But the promise of tart pop with sweet syrup squeezes extra saliva in his mouth. He’s supposed to get two. Three, if the price is right.
And not far off would lay slabs of vacuum-packed turkey roast. There should be plenty left, even this late in the game. Canned pumpkin, Cool Whip, and boxed instant potatoes. He knows they’re perched in the aisles, waiting. The mission is mapped, his wife’s instructions echo a few more times in his ears, though she’s already retreated inside their borrowed apartment. He hears her humming Emmylou, wistful notes filtering out the screen door. The money sweats through his shirt pocket.
The Buick Skylark rests under a canvas tent, set up after Vern found steel poles abandoned roadside last winter. The driver’s door creaks when it hits rust at the endpoint. He has to give it an extra yank to overcome the inertia. Fortunately, the engine catches, which is always a supreme sign of luck. He revs the motor and follows Broadway straight as an arrow. Weather-battered asphalt rises as he takes the onramp south.
*
The track is off-limits. His wife said it probably a million times. Extended family banned him from betting with all kinds of threats and consequences he can only remember vaguely now. And then there’s the matter of track authorities. Everyone agrees—he should stay away.
But somewhere after exit 30 and before Regency Supercenter’s neon he drifts to the middle lane. He can’t say exactly how, just happens the steering slanted in that general direction and he didn’t protest. Fifteen miles to Hydraulic Street. His hands are slippery on the wheel. He’s already come this far, so he keeps going. It’s easy to slide further south on tire speed and, sure enough, it’s a straight line too. The place tugs at him like clear fishing line.
Vern parks in the side yard and walks the distance. The rain has quit, leaving the grounds part-way damp—one of many handicaps his mind starts to factor in with diffuse light, low clouds and 1:15 start time on a Thursday. He enters from the west, his head down and hat tilted so the cameras won’t see much.
Stone tunnels target toward the betting windows and he lingers in the archway, eyeing the boards. A familiar shuffle and bustle of commerce wash over him and he has to push beyond to the apron outdoors to keep things going, to stretch out time. He wants to prolong the certainty that nothing irreparable has happened, no damage has been done.
Outside, the empty track lies expectant, each oval lane tamped down from use. His chin bent to his chest and breathing hard, Vern clamps the apron’s border fence. The stands rumble behind him, low static hisses on the P.A. The smell of soiled dirt and old beer fill his nose. A hazardous optimism seeps in and he starts to relax.
Around back he can hear dogs bark in the Jinny Pit. He fingers the turkey money padding his front pocket, three twenties. The soft, well-worn bills slide easily against one another. Bets are closing for the fourth race.
Once again the dogs howl—thin low calls, long and mournful. One greyhound at the start is holding up the race. The dog hovers, lopsided and ratty, pacing dirt in short bursts. It squirms to avoid the gate, pulls its scarred nose away from the trap slot. Handlers try and stuff him in, but he resists, towing them in circles. Finally they give up.
The loudspeakers blast, “Number 8, Firebrand, will be scratched from the fourth. Any bets on number 8 can be moved or refunded.”
That’s it for Firebrand, Vern thinks. Dog food.
The dog trots a clay path back to the paddock on his own, tongue out, body leaning right. They don’t even bother with the leash.
*
Five gated fences lie between him and the pit. Vern slips past the first two without incident. The third he pretends like he works there, sent on an important errand. Near the kennel, an acne-spotted attendant stares and Vern has to say something. Something convincing. Something redeeming.
“I’m retrieving Firebrand for the outfit,” Vern says. “I got twenty bucks here to compensate.”
“Yeah, right.” The guy leans on his mop and looks hard at Vern. No one pays for a dead dog. Puddles swirl muddy blue and yellow at his feet.
“Out of holiday goodwill, I can offer forty to cover the loss.”
The attendant maintains his stare, restores a grip on the mop and sloshes water in his metal bucket, signaling an imminent acrid wave.
Vern eases out the third bill and holds up the turkey money. It’s all he has. “You know that dog’s more work with no return. Someone should make quick gains off him.” Thin cheers rise and fall with the fourth’s finish.
The guy snaps up the cash and hustles them out a back exit.
Firebrand takes more convincing. Vern holds his hand open like he’s seen people do, but the slender nose shies away. He figures he’d better level with the dog. “It’s me or no one, buddy. Up to you.”
When they aim for eastern woods, the call of fresh ground wins out and Firebrand takes off. Vern stumbles to keep up, tripping on mulch and stones, clumsy through bared hickory and birch. The alien creature consents to being tethered beside a fencepost and doesn’t pull at the tie while Vern circles back for the Skylark. He checks every few seconds on Firebrand’s position.
*
They get caught behind traffic leaving the park. Some demented synchronized clock rings and everyone decides now is exodus time. He’s trapped between a ’57 Ford pickup and Plymouth station wagon. People who downed a few beers and aren’t in any rush. People who probably have real turkey crisping in their ovens, who have families that’ll be glad to see them when they arrive home.
Vern keeps a lookout for flashing lights or super-sized security vehicles. His heart pummels faster than it ever has, faster even than the last time he got caught short. He’s about to slam the dashboard when he spots Firebrand in the rearview, his nostrils wedged in the slim window opening, his tongue hanging over the edge.
On the loop’s last corner, he cuts loose and hits the onramp flying. Firebrand braces against the back seat while cold air courses through the cabin. Every lane is empty now.
Travel north isn’t so easy as south, especially once the adrenaline runs down. He slows when they pass the Regency Supercenter, bright screaming white in the fading day. All promise with no hope. Vern retraces Main to Broadway and slogs the deserted street the pace of a funeral procession. The Skylark rolls back into its grooves under the canvas tent. Maybe he and the dog can sleep here tonight.
He lowers the car window for easier breathing, enough for a greyhound face but no more. Firebrand shudders, unsteady on split vinyl. He threw up twice during the ride home. “Be right back,” Vern tells him.
His wife looks up from scrubbing last year’s black off the turkey roasting pan. Sweat and dish soap intermingle on her face as she wipes a gray-streaked ringlet away with her wrist. “Took you long enough,” she says.
“Yeah, about that . . .”
She pauses, her hands drowned in suds. “Where’s the food, Vern?” Her voice is dead quiet. Nothing he can say will answer her question, so he doesn’t say anything. He goes outside and sits on the curb. Firebrand’s head is half-way out the window, pulling in smells long-distance.
Vern goes to crack the car door, which groans and sticks, but the dog glides to the ground between the narrow gap. He sniffs oleander bushes by their chipped apartment steps before peeing on them. Vern digs into his pockets, nothing there but lint grit. He realizes he doesn’t have money for dog food, another thing he hadn’t considered.
Firebrand stands next to him, shivering, bald in patches. His lanky body leans against Vern’s leg. Barely any weight. Vern marvels at how quickly and effortlessly he’s become one of those homeless men sleeping under a bridge with his dog.
His wife shoulders open the screen door. She pauses, stiff and threadbare on the top step, holding a plastic salad bowl with water, the bowl they would have used for cranberries.
“It could have been worse,” he says and starts out thinking this means something. That despite how it looks, some good was done, some harm averted, but his words just hang there, exposed. The meaning evaporates with nothing to show for it.
“Less worse is not better. It ends up the same.” Her features are slack, her eyes muted. The expression isn’t even outrage or disappointment anymore.
“But the dog . . . he would have gone down.” He wants her to see the difference, to know what it took. That there was some kind of rightness inside him that rose up and came out of it different this time.
A light rain trickles, making soft taps on the canvas tent. His wife looks upward at the dimming sky and Vern sees she’s not entirely surprised by the outcome of his trip. If he’d arrived with their dinner—that would have truly shocked her, which takes him back. She’s unimpressed by nuance.
“Well, one thing’s certain: you’re not staying.” She descends the stairs and sets the cranberry bowl on the ground. “The dog, I’ll have to think about.” She’s done hedging her bets.
Firebrand stands stock-still for a moment, then loosens a full-body shake, spine to tail. He trots to the bowl and laps up water like he hasn’t drunk for days.
Miriam Bloomfield attended Pomona College and graduated from Stanford University with a History degree. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Chautauqua, Blue Guitar, and SandScript Literary Magazines. She’s a multiple finalist for the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards and received Honorable Mention in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. She recently completed a novel set in North Arkansas.