Joshua Sur­tees

"This is 'the track,' isn't it, rather than 'the races'?" my friend says, sur­vey­ing the San­ta Rosa Park race club in Ari­ma. "Like when a dad gets home from a night shift at the fac­to­ry and says to his wife, 'I'm go­ing down to the track. I don't know when I'll be back."

Im­ages of whisky-soaked Charles Bukows­ki nov­els come flood­ing back–the broke writer head­ing to the track in LA to win a few hun­dred bucks to pay his rent or debts–a seedy un­der­world of il­le­gal book­mak­ers who'll take your car un­til you pay up. Bukows­ki's char­ac­ters stud­ied the form guide be­fore plac­ing bets, but when we look at the num­bers and weights, it's com­plete­ly in­com­pre­hen­si­ble.

I ask a man what the let­ters mean and he says it in­di­cates whether the horse is wear­ing a vi­sor, blink­ers or has its tongue tied. "Ah­hh!" I say, as though this piece of in­for­ma­tion will make any dif­fer­ence to my choice of hors­es.

I'm bet­ting on names alone and I've al­ready spot­ted a cer­tain win­ner in the next race, Black Ge­nius. The laugh­ing woman at the kiosk tells me the odds on Black Ge­nius are 25-1 and rolls her eyes, try­ing to dis­suade me. But I will not be dis­suad­ed. I'm de­ter­mined to lose at least $100 here to­day.

A $20 deficit is prompt­ly reg­is­tered in my wal­let as Black Ge­nius trots in last, by some dis­tance.

I blame the ground. The rain is re­lent­less and the sand is sod­den. The score­board de­scribes the go­ing as "slop­py turf," a suit­able name for a Bukows­ki short sto­ry.

Rain rolls in from the hills, which are vis­i­ble one mo­ment, ob­scured with cloud the next. On our way here we drove straight past the course with­out see­ing it, such was the in­ten­si­ty of the del­uge. I'd left Port-of-Spain in a maxi from City Gate and the John Lennon song Imag­ine had come on the ra­dio. In­stinc­tive­ly I'd rewrit­ten the words of the cho­rus in my head: "You may sa-aa-y I'm Ari­ma. But I'm not the on­ly one." I was pleased with it and thought about how best to em­ploy it, but I was dis­tract­ed by a gen­tle­man talk­ing to me.

The fur­ther east you go from town, the friend­lier peo­ple are, I find. The same ap­plies to south.

"You know where you're go­ing af­ter you get to the maxi stand?" the man asks me, mak­ing sure I don't get lost. I tell him my friend is meet­ing me there.

In the event, she is de­layed and I wait by the Di­al ad­mir­ing the hand­some Ari­ma folk do­ing their Sat­ur­day shop­ping. Peo­ple ask me di­rec­tions. When I tell them I'm from Lon­don they smile.

I lis­ten to the Syr­i­ans out­side their clothes shop, speak­ing Ara­bic. I think about the Syr­i­an Con­sul, a few doors down, with his poster of Bashar al-As­sad on the wall.

I won­der if the race­course will be like As­cot or Ep­som, but it's more like the track my aunt once took me to in Paris, where the pun­ters were un­shaven but at least, po­ten­tial­ly, bathed.

In Ari­ma, the lo­cals are armed with pens and pro­grammes. Tele­vi­sions in­side the stand show races from Sarato­ga, New York and Wood­bine, Toron­to, and peo­ple whoop and cheer. I won­der if, like at the World Cup, peo­ple are chang­ing al­le­giance, minute by minute, as a new next horse takes the lead.

We wan­der over to the pad­dock. The hors­es look rea­son­ably fit, the jock­eys thin, the train­ers fat. One train­er, who seems to have three hors­es in each race, hands his busi­ness card to my friend. It has a pic­ture of an ag­gres­sive-look­ing hawk and de­scribes him as an in­sur­ance ad­vis­er. I won­der if it's the jock­eys or hors­es that com­mand the high­er in­sur­ance pre­mi­ums.

We spot a mark in the same place on each horse's rear, where the whip lands.

A wa­tery sun peeps through and a dou­ble rain­bow ap­pears. Per­haps there's a pot of gold wait­ing at the end? We see a sign writ­ten on a chalk­board, "Oh God be gra­cious and bless us to­day. Amen." Sure­ly the gods are with us? But no. The odd­ly named Slew­jero, our last bet of the day, is pipped at the post.

As we leave, my friend tells me her fi­anc�'s fa­ther in Ire­land was a race­horse train­er but was paral­ysed in a fall. Good­ness, I think, what an in­sen­si­tive choice of ac­tiv­i­ty I've cho­sen for this day out.

To cap off the best of British luck I seem to have brought, we dis­cov­er our car bat­tery is dead, as we left the lights on. The heav­ens open again and we fear no­body will stop to help. but two East In­di­an broth­ers, car lovers, hap­pi­ly take out the bat­tery of their vin­tage Ford and get us go­ing again, while I shield them with two um­brel­las. We thank them and promise we will re­turn to buy them drinks at the next race meet.

"It's on­ly good kar­ma," my friend says. And we're off.

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