“Why?”

‘“Cause that’s where all the worst serial murderers are penned up. And that’s where they keep Ole Sparky.”

“What?”

“The electric chair.”

“I thought they didn’t use that anymore.”

“They do in Florida.”

How did she even know things like that?

“So how much money you bring, Niece?” My uncle’s jovial tone brought me back into the present.

“Not much. I’m living on a shoestring, Uncle Richard. I haven’t worked since January.”

“Your luck will change. Don’t worry.” On the worry my uncle started to cough, until he was hacking away like he did mornings in the bathroom. He whipped out a handkerchief, hawked, and spat. It turned my stomach and I tried not to let him see.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine, fine. Okay, make a left here on Gandy Boulevard and go two blocks and you see a parking lot.”

You couldn’t miss it, it was so enormous, with DERBY LANE in ten-foot-tall letters over the main entrance. Fortunately the lot wasn’t very full, so I didn’t have to pull any fancy parking stunts. As we got out of the car I could hear a band playing and a loudspeaker announcing something over it. The other people going in looked fairly normal, plump blond tourists in shorts and T-shirts. My uncle was by far the most nattily dressed, in a yellow linen suit and white bucks.

As we walked toward the entrance he nudged me. “You like this tie?” he asked, holding it out for my inspection. It was unfashionably wide and had tiny brightly colored parrot heads on a black background.

“That’s Daddy’s.” Now I knew why it had bothered me. Ma and I had picked it out for his birthday and I remembered the last time I’d seen him wear it, at the eighth grade Christmas play where my sister had been the Madonna.

“I wear it for you, Niece. Plus, it happens to be my lucky tie.”

I wondered what Daddy would have thought about this, whether anything of his could ever bring luck to anyone. I wondered what he would have thought of Uncle Richard and me going to the greyhound track. I myself was afraid I’d hate the track, I didn’t know why I was there, except I was bored and humoring Uncle Richard. I was afraid the dogs would make me sad.

My uncle paid for the dollar apiece tokens to get us through the turnstiles, bought a program, and then led me through the infield over to a building he called the benching area, where the dogs were penned, ready to go, or cooling down. I wasn’t prepared for what it would sound like, that greyhounds were after all hounds, all that howling and yelping. They weren’t show dogs and didn’t have to be beautiful, although some of them were. Bred strictly for speed, their spare lines were not unlike horses’ and they weren’t just gray. White, some of them, one even pure black, blue-black, a whole range of tans, pintos, dappled. Uncle Richard was friends with a handler, who flipped back the ear of one of the dogs and showed me the tattoo. The hound stood lean and quiet beneath his hands. Her name was Shady Lady and she was scrawny, light gray with little black spots. Her face markings resembled a raccoon mask.

The dogs were barking, the announcer was barking, my uncle and I left the benching area and went back through the infield to the betting windows. As we walked he was scribbling notes in his program. Opposite the windows hung a row of television sets before which stood a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. I thought it must be closed circuit and then I saw that one screen was showing a horse race while the one beside it was displaying jai alai.

Uncle Richard placed several bets, talking and flinging down bills so fast that I had no idea what he was doing. “Tenth race, quiniela box,” I heard him say. Then he turned to me. “Okay. You pick a race, pick a number. We make it simple, your first time. You pick which one to win, place, or show. You know what that means?”

“Yes.”

I made my choice by name: Khartoum (named for a famous horse, I knew), Hotsplit, Greyghost the Fourth, and Shady Lady, a long shot in the seventh race, ridiculously long, twenty-five to one. Those were my kind of odds. I bet all my dogs to win and handed over thirty dollars in all. My uncle bought a plastic glass of beer and we went to lean against the fence. Across from us the odds flickered on the big board and a brass band played “The Girl from Ipanema.” In the center of the track was a carefully styled oasis, complete with pond and playing fountain. The whole scene wavered in the blazing, unforgiving savannah heat. I put my sunglasses on again.

Uncle Richard sipped his beer and pulled out his cigarettes and we smoked and waited.

I studied the program. “SHADY LADY, number 7 Green and White. Night Shade—Lady Godiva. Rl Erly-Crwdd 1st Tn. Weaknd in Stretch. Sought Rl 1st—Bmpd. Led Briefly—Weaknd.” My uncle was watching the odds flip with the calm concentration of someone who could do intricate calculations in his head. A snowy egret wafted onto the oasis and stood, as if posing in the brilliant green by the fountain, then took off as the band began playing a march. The dogs were being led out.

Saddled by their colors, muzzled, they paraded before us from right to left to the starting gates, in order of number. They each had distinctive strides, held their heads differently. I saw right away that Number 6, tan and husky but with an extremely narrow pelvis, straining at the leash, was going to win. I told my uncle.

“You wanna change your bet, Niece?”

“No, I’m just telling you, I’m positive he’s going to win.”

At some signal the dogs were crammed one by one into the starting gates and the handlers, dressed identically in white polo shirts, khaki shorts, and running shoes, sprinted down the track to the grass by the first turn. And then, for the first time I heard the dogs, whining, barking, all their various impatient voices. “Here’s Rusty,” someone said, and somewhere a clattering bell, like an old fire alarm, shrilled. The sun caught a gleam off the little device on wheels that ran along the inside railing and suspended the bouncing white stuffed rabbit over the packed dirt. When the rabbit had just cleared the corner by the starting gates it tripped some wire and the gates lifted and the dogs were off, silently shooting out from their little gates like the professionals they were, eating up ground in giant gallops, those lean legs that were entirely muscle, the trim-hipped torsos, the tiny aerodynamic heads that contained just enough brain matter for survival and the knowledge to run. The human beings were the unruly ones, leaning forward with their tickets grasped in their fists, screaming numbers as if they were the names of drowning lovers. I followed the dog I’d bet on, Khartoum, Number 5, for about ten seconds, and then I lost him. “Shit!” my uncle yelled. “Watch that turn, just edge over, that’s right, beautiful.” As far as I could tell, his vision at that moment was about twenty-twenty. They ran around one and a half times and it was over.

Number 6, the robust tan I’d picked at the last moment but not bet on, won.

“Huh,” Uncle Richard said. He’d thrown his ticket to the ground in disgust the instant the dogs came in. “Well,” he said to me. “You were right. You should have changed your bet.”

My dog for the next race, Hotsplit, was scratched. “You could get your money back right now,” my uncle urged, poking me, but I didn’t want to bother. Again we watched the dogs parade by. “This time it’s Number One,” I said. Number 1 was jet black and although far from the largest had a confident step I liked.

“Okay, okay, you go put money on,” said Uncle Richard.

“Nope. I just want to watch.”

Number 1 came in an easy first. “Bad race,” my uncle muttered.

“Why was it bad?”

“Dirty. You see that first turn, that one big white dog, you see how he goes sideways like that, cheats all the others, not fair.”