A Fine Place to Daydream by Bill Barich

Author:Bill Barich
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: e9781634509459
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2015-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

DEEP POCKETS. Those were the words that rumbled through my head on Saturday, when I did forsake my chair for a trip to Leopardstown. Paddy Power was sponsoring all the races on the card—very deep pockets, indeed—including the big one, a steeplechase worth almost two hundred thousand dollars. Often I imagine another life for myself, lost in the dream of eternal return, and if I were to be reincarnated as a major-league bookie, I doubt that I’d complain. Twenty-seven horses would be after the prize, but I only cared about the “Dial-a-Bet” chase, a celebration of your phone as a gambling tool, where Moscow Flyer would face a field of five. For once, I’d will myself to root against him. My superstitions had flared up, like a case of hives.

Leopardstow n has the feel of an American track. Trees and mountains, yes, and a glimpse of Dublin Bay, but there’s a slick, sleek pace to the action that pulls in the urban cream, young people from the city center just six miles away. The parking lot was full of fancy cars, but I also saw aged buses that had carried fans in from the country, often older folks flat-capped or trilby-topped. Among the crowd, too, were tour groups from the north, Belfast and Derry lads who’d had a few on the ride down and were fanning the flames with cider and beer. For the moment, Ireland was the center of the jump-racing universe, and the “buzz,” as Ted Walsh called it, had us all tingling.

I felt the buzz when I went through the gate, past a cash machine where a long line had already formed. How strange, I thought. Had everyone forgotten that they’d need money at the track? Then I remembered Elizabeth Bowen (“distress, miscarried projects …”) and understood. Many were the mysteries, and I met with another just ahead—the Leopardstown child-care center, a Jerry Springer—type mobile home, where a kid could be deposited for the afternoon, although a forcefully worded sign warned, COLLECTION IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LAST RACE. Had tapped-out parents left behind their children in the past? And what had become of the orphans? Sold off as camel jockeys? The mind boggled.

Through the crowd I went, and here was another amazing sight. A really, really, really old man—nearly a hundred, maybe—sat on a folding chair beneath a TV lodged on a shelf that jutted out from a pillar. For this privilege, he had paid an entrance fee of twenty-five dollars, even though he could have watched the races at home for free. But no, he liked being where he was, a boulder in the river of human beings that had to split into side channels to get around him. With his plastic spoon, he was eating what appeared to be a bowl of soup, missing his mouth occasionally but not bothered by the error. How stunning that the old guy was so content! He didn’t want to be anywhere else. The buzz had stung him, too.

I ducked

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