Winter Money by Andy Plattner

Author:Andy Plattner
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

I waited and waited. Around noon, here came Melanie riding that fat old bay pony of hers up to the barn. Melanie worked for a man named Jackie Van Bridges. She said she wouldn’t be through with work for another hour. She said she was sorry, but Jackie’d been working them hard lately because they weren’t winning many races and he owed money to everybody. I said okay. Then I thought of something and I said, “Hey, Mel, if you don’t hear from me in a half an hour, call the guys at Icy Red’s and tell them to meet me over in the grandstand before the first race, will you?” She smiled and said sure. Jackie had a phone in his barn, something he had put in at the start of the summer, sure of the fact he was going to have to make a lot of calls—a lot of plans—for that great stable of his. Phone was only ringing now: somebody needed to be paid. Jackie’s help all wanted to quit. Mel was overworked as it was, but she didn’t seem to mind. She turned the pony around and pointed him home. “Get something down for me, will you?” she said to me because she understood something was up. “I’ll buy you a drink later,” she said.

What was happening was that the old man was holding our pay until the races were over. He would give us some type of limp excuse later. It meant he had a horse running today, one that he wanted to bet on. If we didn’t have our money, we couldn’t bet, and the odds would be higher as a result. It was something he was likely to do, actually.

I walked over to the tack room. There was a program in there. I went through it, and sure enough he had that smart-looking three-year-old down the shedrow from me running. Probable odds said 15 to 1.

We had caught on to him by now, trying to slick us all. What we did was get together all the money we had and what we could borrow and laid ourselves down some combination bets and all the exactas we could afford. I met Reg and the others over at the bar in the grandstand and they looked at me and said, “Is it going to happen?” I said yes. I said bet it all on the nose. They needed to be convinced but I managed without telling them I hid in the loft and watched the old man go into the stall of this horse running today and come out after a minute, slipping something into his coat pocket. I gave the guys all the money I had except a dollar, and I went over to get a beer. I didn’t even watch the race. Horse won by plenty. Paid 4 to 1. We were lucky to get that.

Reg went back to feed later and the old man was there, and Reg said, “Man, was he hot.

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