Desolation Angels (24 page)

Every day, according to Simon, “a poem creeps up into Raphael's head and become a high Poem.” That's just the way Simon said it.

88

As we're getting ready to bet on the third race an old woman comes up to us, with big blank blue eyes and spinsterish, in fact with tight bunned pioneer hair (she looks exactly like a Grant Wood portrait, you expect to see Gothic barns in back of her), sincere as all get-out, says to Cody (who's known her from before at all the tracks):—“Bet on 3, and if you win give me half—I have no money—Just be two dollars”

“
Three?
” Cody glances at the program. “That dog, he wont win—”

“What is he?” I look. He's about Seventh Choice in a 12-horse field.

“Of course seventh choice often comes in twice a day,” concedes Cody out loud, and Raphael is staring at the old dignified lady, who could very well be Cody's mother from Arkansaw, with amazement and private worry (“What are all these mad-people?”) So Cody bets on her horse for her, plus his own, plus finally another hunch he has, scattering his money all over, so when his regular system horse does win the third race his profits arent enough to cover the speculation and the insanity—Meanwhile Raphael's played 9 again, mystic, who runs out—“Raphael if you wanta win some money today you better follow me,” says Cody. “Now for obvious reasons the horse in this fourth race is as clear a cleancut second choice as I've ever seen, all alone there at 9-to-2, Number Ten”

“Number Two! That's my favorite number!” decides Raphael looking at us with a little child smile—

“Why not only is he a dog that Prokner that's ridin him keeps falling off—”

“The jockeys!” I yell. “Look Raphael the jockeys! Look at their beautiful silks!” They're coming out of the paddock, Raphael doesn't even look. “Think what weird little—what strange little dancers they are”

Number Two for sure is in Raphael's head—

This time, the fourth race, the starting gate is drawn right before our eyes by six big Budweiser Team horses each weighing a thousand pounds, beautiful big nags, with reverent old handlers, slow, they take their time moving that gate half-mile down to the front of the grandstand, nobody (except little children who play by the wire fence in the sun while their parents bet, little odd assortments of whites and blacks) nobody digs them, looks, or anything, it's all numbers, all heads are bent in the bright sunshine over gray form sheets, the
Daily Racing Form,
the
Chronicle
entries in green—some just pick mystical figures off the program, I myself keep scanning the program which I've finally appropriated off the ground for strange hints like the horse “Classic Face” is sired by Irwin Champion and his dam is Ursory—or I look for stranger hints, like “Grandpa Jack,” or “Dreamer,” or “Night Clerk” (which means the old man in the Bell Hotel may be bending his kindly astral head over our pitiful futile endeavors on the plain of racing)—In his first days of horseplaying Cody was unbelievable, he was actually the trainman assigned to snip tickets on the Bay Meadows Racing Special, and would come out all complete with blue brakeman's uniform with visored cap and all, black tie, white shirt, vest, proud, erect, neat, with his girl of that time (Rosemarie) and start out the first race with his program neat in his side pocket standing proudly in shambling lines of bettors to wait for his turn at the window, losing, till by the seventh race he'd be all disheveled, would have by now stashed his cap back on the train (parked at the gates with engine and all ready for the city-back-run) and because losing money his interest would have switched to women, “Look at that broad over there with her old daddy ah hum,” even sometimes (running out of money) he'd try to con old ladies who liked his blue eyes to bet for him—the day ending always so sadly as he'd get back on the train, brush his uniform in the toilet (have me brush the back) and come out all neat to work the train (of disgruntled bettors) back across the lonesome red sunsets of the Bay Area—Now today he's just wearing off-day jeans, faded and tight, and a flimsy sports T-shirt and I say to Raphael “Looka that old Oklahoma hombre tiptoein to make his bet there, that's all Cody is, a rough hombre of the West”—and Raphael grins weakly seeing it.

Raphael wants to win money, never mind the poems—

We end up just sitting in benches in the upper grandstand and cant see the starting gate even tho it's right down there, I wanta go on the fence and explain racing to Raphael—“See the starter in his box—he'll press a button that rings the bell and bats open the bat cages and out they lunge—Watch those jockeys, every one of em's got hand a steel—”

Johnny Longden is among the great jockeys today, and Ishmael Valenzuela, and the very good Mexican called Pulido who seems to be so observant watching the crowd from his horse, actually interested, while the other jockeys brood and bite—“Cody had a dream last year that Pulido was riding a railroad train around the track the wrong way and when he came around the final clubhouse turn the whole train exploded and all's left is Pulido in the little horse-engine, winning alone—I said ‘Wow, Pulido
won
'—so Cody gives me an extra $40 to play on him on every race and he doesn't hit once!”—I tell this to Raphael, who bites his fingernails—

“I think I'll go back to Number Nine”

“Folly the system, man!” pleads Cody—“I told you about Lazy Willy how they found him dead with $45,000 worth of uncashed win-tickets—”

“Listen Raphael,” I put in, “Lazy Willy just sat around sipping coffee between races, with a pince nez probably, and came out at last minute odds and saw the score and went and made his bet and went and took a piss while that race was on—It's all in the numbers—The second choice's the consensus of the multitude reduced to a second degree which has been mathematically figured to come in so many percent times so if you keep jivin your bets according to the losses you've suffered you're bound to win, unless a tragic streak of losses—”

“That's right,
tragic,
now listen Raphael and you'll make some money—”

“Okay okay!”—“I'll try it!”—

Suddenly the crowd oohs as a horse rears in the starting gate and gets all tangled up and throws his man, Raphael gasps with astonished horror—“Look, the poor horse is caught!”

The grooms rush up and straddle and work and get the horse out, which is immediately scratched from the race, all bets off—“They can get hurt!” yells Raphael painfully—This doesn't concern Cody so much for some reason, maybe because he was a cowboy in Colorado and takes horses for granted, as once we'd seen a horse spill and thrash in the backstretch and nobody cared, everybody yelled for the oncoming far turn, there's the horse with broken leg (doomed to be shot) and the inert jockey a little white spot on the track, maybe dead, certainly injured, but all eyes are on the race, how these mad angels do race to their Karma disbenefaction—“What about the horse?” I'd yelled as the roar surged up down the homestretch and as penance I'd kept my eye on the scene of the accident, completely ignoring the outcome of the race, which Cody won—The horse was destroyed, the jockey ambulanced to the hospital—and not by Simon—The world's too big—It's only money, it is only life, the crowds roar, the numbers flash, the numbers are forgotten, the earth is forgotten—memory is forgotten—the diamond of silence seems to go on without going on—

The horses break and whang out by the rail, you hear the riding crops of the jocks planking the flanks, you hear boots and whistles, “Yah!” and off they mill around the first turn and everybody turns eyes back to the form sheets to see the numbers representing the symbol of what's happening around the Nirvana track—Cody's and Raphael's horse is well in front—

“I think he'll stay in front,” I say, from experience, a good 2½ lengths lead and loping and preserved by the rider's restraining hand—Around the far turn and in they come, you see that pathetic flash of spindly thoroughbred legs so breakable, then the dust cloud as they strightaway home, the jocks are wild—Our horse stays right in front and holds out from a contender and wins—

“Ah! Aye!” they rush to collect a pittance—

“See? Just stick with your old buddy Cody and you cant lose!”

Meanwhile we take trips around to the men's room, the beer counter, the coffee counter, hotdogs, and finally when the last race is coming up the skies have grown late-afternoon gold and long lines of bettors sweat for the buzzer—the characters of the track who looked so confident and fresh in the first race are all now disheveled-looking, heads down, crazed, some of them scour the floor for lost tickets or odd programs or dropped dollars—And it's also the time for Cody to begin to notice the girls, we have to trail several around the track and stand around peeking at them. Raphael says “Ah never mind the women, who's the horse now? Pomeray you're a sex fiend!”

“Look Cody you'd a won the first race that we missed,” I say pointing at the big blackboard—

“Ah”—

We get sorta sick of one another and take separate leaks at urinals but we're all in it together—The final race is run—“Ah let's go back to the sweet city,” I think, which is showing across the bay, full of promise that never takes place except in the mind—I keep getting the feeling too, as Cody wins he really loses, as he loses he really wins, it's all ephemeral and cant be grabbed by the hand—the money, yes, but the facts of patience and eternity, no—
Eternity!
Meaning more than all time and beyond all that little crap and on forever! “Cody you cant win, you cant lose, all's ephemeral, all is hurt,” are my feelings—But while I am a sly non-gambler who wont even gamble on heaven, he is the earnest Christ whose imitation of Christ is in the flesh before you sweating to believe that all does really good-and-bad matter—All shining and shaking to believe it—a priest of life.

He ends up with a highly successful day, every horse came in the money, “Jack you sonumbitch if you'd a squeezed two little measly dollars outa those jeans each race and done what I said, you'd have a nice forty-dollar bill tonight,” which is true but I aint sorry—except for the money—Meanwhile Raphael has come out just about even and still has his thirty dollars—Cody wins forty and pockets it all proud in neat little arrangements with the small bills on the outside—

It's one of his happy days—

We come walking out of the racetrack and past the parking lot to where the little coupe is free-parked by a railroad spur track, and I say, “There's your parking place, you just park there every day,” because now he's won you wont stop him from coming every day—

“Yes, m'boy, and besides what you're seeing there will be a Mercedes-Benz in six months—or at first at least a Nash Rambler Stationwagon”

89

Ah lake a dreams, everything is changed—We get in the little car and go back and as I see the little reddened city on that white Pacific, I remember the sight of Jack Mountain in high mountain dusks how the redness hoared the topmost peak-wall till the sun all went down, and still a little was left from the height and the curve of the earth, and there's a little dog being led by a leash across super-traffics and I say “The little pups of Mexico are so happy—”

“—as I live and breathe and I didnt keep it up didnt stay with didnt nothing, I just let my system run away from me and played other horses and not enough and lost five thousand dollars last year—dont you see what I'm in for this?”

“Solid!” yells Raphael. “We'll make it together! You and me! You make it back and I make it on!” and Raphael gives me one of his rare halfhearted grins. “But I see you now, I know you now, Pomeray, you're
sincere
—you really wanta win—I believe you—I
know
you're Jesus Christ's contemporary frightening brother, I just dont want to be hun-gup on the wrong bets, it's like being hun-gup on the wrong poetry, the wrong people, the wrong side!”

“Everything's right side,” I say.

“Maybe but I dont want crash—I dont wanta be no Fallen Angel man,” he says, piercingly sorrowful and serious. “You! Duluoz! I see you your ideas goin down Skid Row drink with the bums, agh, I've never even thought of doing such a thing,
why bring misery on yourself?
Let the dog lie.—I wanta make money, I dont wanta say Oh Ah Ogh I've lost my way, Oh Ah Gold Honey I've lost my way, I
havent
lost my way yet—I'm going to ask the Archangel to let me win. Hark!—the Bright Herald hears me! I hear his trumpet! Hey Cody it's ta ta tara tara the cat with the long trombone at the start of every race. Do you dig that?”

He and Cody are completely in agreement on everything, I suddenly realize I've succeeded in my wait to see them patch up and be friends—It's happened—There is very little vestige of doubt in either one, now—As for me, I'm in an excited state because I've been in an airy dungeon for two months and everything pleases and penetrates me, my snowy view of light-particles that permeate throughout the essence of things, passes right on through—I feel the Wall of the Emptiness—Naturally it's perfectly within my interests to see Cody and Raphael glad of each other, it has all to do with the nothing that is all, I have no reason to quibble with the absence of judgment placed in Things by the Absent Judge who builded the world without building it.

Without building it.

Cody lets us off in Chinatown all gleaming to go home and tell his wife he's won, and Raphael and I go walking down Grant Street in the dusk, bound for different destinations as soon as we see a monster movie on Market Street. “I dig what you meant Jack about Cody at the races. It was real funny, we'll go again Friday. Listen! I'm writing a real great new poem—” then suddenly he sees chickens in crates in the inside dark Chinese store, “look, look, they're all gonna die!” He stops in the street. “How can God make a world like that?”