Lasher’s race!

May 01, 2016 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols
Nineteen seventy-two was going to be a good year for Lasher. His brother Prince had come from the

Mazaruni goldfields with a $10,000 windfall and two peanut-sized nuggets. He had given Lasher $2,000 after blowing a similar amount at a Lombard Street nightspot with three friends and a slim Dougla girl who, he later found out, was his brother’s current ‘binny’. Neither of them cared one way or the other.
While still a teenager I got to know Lasher through horse-race betting, a habit I had picked up while working at the Waterworks on Vlissengen Road. The big day for winning and losing money at Totes Horse-racing service on Camp Street was Friday, because it was pay day for most punters. As for Lasher, he’d never worked a day in his life, preferring to live by his wits and those pounding hooves oceans away.
Lasher was a small, dark-skinned man, maybe in his mid-twenties, slim and sinewy, with what his betting buddies said was an old head on young shoulders. He had a knack for picking winners from the form sheets, and he spoke as if he knew the jockeys and trainers personally. Even the horses’ unpredictability he understood which, strangely enough, never kept him from blaming them when things went badly.
With the windfall from his brother, Lasher bought himself a wardrobe full of denim jeans, tight shirts, bell-bottom pants, ‘kickers,’ topes, and a couple of dashikis. He also bought a pair of expensive sunshades which he wore day and night. His pal Boney said they were to hide the tears when the horses kicked harder than usual.
There were two versions as to how Lasher got his name. The English races were broadcast by radio commentators who relayed information from racetracks in the United Kingdom. They would do so in the most dramatic manner, and as they did, the punters would be seen lashing their favourites with imaginary whips as the finish line approached and challengers were fought off. Lasher was an expert at this mime.
The other version was a rumour that the man compensated for his small stature by ‘hustling’ and ‘getting through’ with women at a prodigious rate, especially the prized thick ones whom he likened to thoroughbreds. (What else?) It was said that he lived only for women and horses, and not necessarily in that order. Then one week in June, 1972, the horses betrayed him.
It started with a string of losers that Monday. His windfall had dwindled to less than $300, and by the time shop closed, the bookies had coaxed $60 more from it. On Tuesday he won a four-dollar place bet but lost forty. On Wednesday his main pick inexplicably tripped a hurdle and fell after he’d placed twenty bucks on him to place. Thursday was a repeat of Monday. Black Friday loomed.
It was a stifling hot day.  Lasher wore a dashiki, bell bottoms, and a pair of kickers that elevated his height by almost three inches. With dark purple sun-glasses and a matching, oversized face rag hanging out from his back pocket, he was a wonder to behold. He swaggered into the betting shop shortly before 10 ‘o’clock, and only God could tell him that the $50 in his pocket wouldn’t at least double before the day was out.
The race of the day was a one-miler, with nine horses lined at the gates. The favourites were two colts, Horty Bill and Holder, both at 2 to 1 odds. Lasher knew there was no way both could fail him, and he put $20 on each to win and place. Everything was in his favour; he knew they had great jockeys, and the hard track was to their liking. They didn’t disappoint.
With two furlongs to go, the race commentator was shouting himself hoarse. “Horty Bill and Holder! It’s Horty Bill and Holder neck and neck, stride for stride.” Lasher was hunched over, whipping his imaginary horse feverishly, his eyes gleaming. With 100 yards to go the commentator was screaming. “Horty Bill and Holder! Horty Bill and Holder! And on the wire it’s Horty Bill and Holder, dead even!”
Lasher heaved with relief. His buddy Boney clapped him on the back as some of the luckless punters tore up their slips which fluttered to the ground like confetti. Lasher reached into his pocket to retrieve his slip. He looked at it. No, not that one from an earlier race! He pulled out another. Nope! With growing apprehension he emptied the pocket then felt frantically in the others. He slapped them. He shook his trousered legs. Nothing fell out.
He stooped, almost on all fours, and scrabbled wildly among the scattered slips. Nothing! Then he rose – and he was a broken man. He wandered across the floor, scanning for an untorn slip. He picked up a few, but none were his. He sat on a bench and tears welled behind his dark shades. He had five dollars in his pocket. He hadn’t eaten in about six hours but felt no hunger, just a deep and sweeping feeling of remorse that reached into his heart and yanked it. Only emptiness was left. He walked away slowly.
The years passed on. What became of Lasher, I couldn’t tell. Decades went by.
Then in 2006 I saw him again, unbelievably at the same spot on Camp Street where I’d last seen him shuffling dejectedly along the pavement. He’d just left the betting shop, now with new management and a line of television screens bringing luck and misery in living colour.
Was it my imagination? Lasher was dressed almost exactly as I’d observed 34 years ago. Well not exactly, but he still wore the sunshades, his trousers had a small but noticeable flair at the cuffs, and a large purplish rag streamed from a back pocket. His face looked remarkably unchanged, except for a puffiness that tried to hide the stress lines; the old head was entirely white, and the once horizontal shoulders drooped dishearteningly.
In his hand was a track sheet with the names of horses, jockeys and trainers, and he checked off names every now and then as I stood watching in bemused reflection. He stood near the entrance but didn’t go in. I found out from a buxom woman nearby that he was now an ‘advisor’ to the younger punters, and when his picks paid dividends, he would pocket a small piece from the grateful beneficiary.
Strange, but it was said he hardly ever won when he himself bet occasionally, only when he picked for others. The woman said he told her he was waiting to accumulate enough cash to play the big one when the chance came along.
I saw Lasher again in 2014, on Camp Street. Resignation was etched into his face, as if trying to erase the last traces of hope from his heart and mind. I was certain this time that the clothes he wore were the same as from 2006.  He was trembling in the noonday sun, still waiting; still dreaming, but now there was no energy left in the whip-lash.

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