ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part One, Chapter 43: On the March

Thanks to auctions and antique shops, our apartment now has a walnut daybed, brass floor lamp with tulip-shaped globe, glass-topped dining table with four caned chrome chairs, and art which includes — in addition to the Miro and Chagall — a large Picasso litho celebrating Cannes. Outside sits another Ernie-and-Joshua find — a Benz 240D — thirteen years old, a golden desert color with tan leather seats and leather-wrapped steering wheel.

Ernie still has capital, so he turns his attention to investing in pari-mutuel tickets. The track offers that most alluring bet, the Pick Six: pick six winners in a row, and the handicapper is almost guaranteed a big pay-off, especially if the pot hasn’t been hit for a few days.

After one Friday card at Keeneland, the Pick-Six pot stands at over twenty-five thousand dollars.

“Too big a pot to pass up, Ernestina. Tomorrow’s a Saturday, and who knows how much more money will be thrown in? Those Keeneland bettors are big bettors.”

He buys a racing form, and he and Joshua begin their study of it.

“Which ones do you like in the fifth?” Joshua asks Ernie.

“That’s a Maiden Special Weight, most of them first-starters,” Ernie says. “We’ll have to go on workouts and trainers.”

“How many do we need in the eighth?” Joshua asks Ernie. “That’s a non-winner of two. They’re tricky, too.”

“We’ll have to take a bunch of them, but I think we can ace the fourth race.”

“I don’t know, Daddy. You don’t want to leave out number seven.”

Before noon the next morning, Ernie and Joshua take off in the Benz for the hour’s drive to Keeneland Race Course. I feel as nervous at the track as I do at an auction, so I stay home, but I know the routine. On the road, Ernie and Joshua will put on a tape of German marching music. Hitler excited his crowd with marching music, and Ernie and Joshua use it in much the same way: to get energized, enthused. March, march, march. March to Keeneland. The Benz’s AC emits puffs of frosty air, working to cool their fevered brains.

Eight hours later, they’re back. Ernie slumps to the daybed and throws the racing form to the floor, scattering pages. “I don’t understand it. How can I pick winner after winner and still be a loser?”

Now is not the time to do what I usually do: pick up the form, check out the race they lost, and ask: How could you have left out that horse? Instead, I ask: “What happened?”

Joshua sits on the floor in a bright red top and white shorts, his long legs crossed like Buddha’s, his face pale. “We had five out of six. We missed the eighth race.”

“Tell her, Joshua. Tell her what happened. I’m sick. . . . Ernestina, get me a glass of Coke, will you? With plenty of ice.”

Joshua relates their tale of woe. They had five horses covered in the eighth race, the last race of the Pick Six. Their horses came in second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth.

“Did anyone hit it?” I ask.

“One winning ticket,” Ernie says. “He got the whole pot.”

“Fifty thousand dollars,” Joshua says. Even his lips are pale.

“That’s the kind of hit I’m after, Ernestina. That’s what we need. I am so sick.”