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Show 141 pushy intruder and I wanted no part of it. A pawn of chance, I was kept back and made an instructor instead of being sent to die gloriously in the Pacific. I branched out from girls to gambling, acy-deucey in the ready room, poker in the BOQ, and the horses at Hialeah. I went to the track with my buddy Marrelli, who was out to make a killing, and for the first time saw thoroughbreds up close, tall horses compared to the ones I had known, beautiful, with lots of delicate leg and hot spirit. But they could do nothing except race, and that was too soon over, like sex. Exciting while it lasted though, and I found myself in a strange communion with myself, alone in all that crowd waiting for a small impulse toward one of the horses on the card. Usually I felt nothing, in which case I might or might not bet. But sometimes I did feel a nudge toward a particular horse. If it was weak I bet to place or show, if strong I bet to win. Two dollar bets-I was not after money so much as the strange exciting feeling that I could pick a winner, that I could feel it. And I did, mostly, I was winning, but Marrelli was disgusted with me. He studied the odds and the track records, he looked for tips and used his uniform to get them. He was after money and he had such scorn for my way that I gave in and bet a couple of his sure things. It was no fun and we lost. We walked back to the paddock and hung around, Marrelli looking for tips. I wanted to see the horses, those beautiful, aristocratic horses, but the people there circled around them like crows after carrion, flying on their greed, hopped up with competition. And yet in that crowd the horses were aloof, their beauty undimmed, the shiny coats and bony heads, the flared nostrils, those slender, wrapped cannon bones. To me they seemed to be from another time and place, and that night I dreamed of horses. But the next day I flew and that night I went to town and got drunk and picked up a girl at the Flagler Gardens and screwed her. |