"Шервуд Андерсен. Триумф яйца (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

It brings a lump up into my throat when a horse runs. I don't mean all
horses but some. I can pick them nearly every time. It's in my blood
like in the blood of race track niggers and trainers. Even when they
just go slop-jogging along with a little nigger on their backs I can
tell a winner. If my throat hurts and it's hard for me to swallow,
that's him. He'll run like Sam Hill when you let him out. If he don't
win every time it'll be a wonder and because they've got him in a
pocket behind another or he was pulled or got off bad at the post or
something. If I wanted to be a gambler like Henry Rieback's father I
could get rich. I know I could and Henry says so too. All I would have
to do is to wait 'til that hurt comes when I see a horse and then bet
every cent. That's what I would do if I wanted to be a gambler, but I
don't.

When you're at the tracks in the morning--not the race tracks but the
training tracks around Beckersville--you don't see a horse, the kind
I've been talking about, very often, but it's nice anyway. Any
thoroughbred, that is sired right and out of a good mare and trained by
a man that knows how, can run. If he couldn't what would he be there
for and not pulling a plow?

Well, out of the stables they come and the boys are on their backs and
it's lovely to be there. You hunch down on top of the fence and itch
inside you. Over in the sheds the niggers giggle and sing. Bacon is
being fried and coffee made. Everything smells lovely. Nothing smells
better than coffee and manure and horses and niggers and bacon frying
and pipes being smoked out of doors on a morning like that. It just
gets you, that's what it does.

But about Saratoga. We was there six days and not a soul from home seen
us and everything came off just as we wanted it to, fine weather and
horses and races and all. We beat our way home and Bildad gave us a
basket with fried chicken and bread and other eatables in, and I had
eighteen dollars when we got back to Beckersville. Mother jawed and
cried but Pop didn't say much. I told everything we done except one
thing. I did and saw that alone. That's what I'm writing about. It got
me upset. I think about it at night. Here it is.

At Saratoga we laid up nights in the hay in the shed Bildad had showed
us and ate with the niggers early and at night when the race people had
all gone away. The men from home stayed mostly in the grandstand and
betting field, and didn't come out around the places where the horses
are kept except to the paddocks just before a race when the horses are
saddled. At Saratoga they don't have paddocks under an open shed as at
Lexington and Churchill Downs and other tracks down in our country, but
saddle the horses right out in an open place under trees on a lawn as
smooth and nice as Banker Bohon's front yard here in Beckersville. It's
lovely. The horses are sweaty and nervous and shine and the men come
out and smoke cigars and look at them and the trainers are there and