Craig Davidson - Cataract City

He looked leery but said, “For you, darlin’? Anything.”

Minutes later Harry met us at the track. Leashed at his side was a young greyhound with a coffee-cake coat.

“Steadfast Attila,” he told us. “I didn’t name him. He’ll race in D-Class soon. That’s the lowest level at the Lane. Attila’s a stayer — he’ll race right to the line.”

Harry left Steadfast Attila with Ed and approached the mechanical hare. It wasn’t a hare at all — just a ratty teddy bear lashed to a five-foot buggywhip pole. Harry pulled a squeeze bottle out of his overall pocket and sprayed down the bear.

“Rabbit piss,” he said. “Don’t ask how I get it.”

We led the dogs over to the hare and let them take a sniff. Steadfast Attila started pogo-sticking on his hind legs. Fragrant Meat sat on his haunches and gnawed on his own ass.

“That’s not an encouraging sign, son,” Harry told Owe.

Dolly just cocked her head at the hare, and I figured she knew exactly what it was: a piss-soaked teddy bear on a pole.

Fragrant Meat raced Steadfast Attila first. Owe and I lined up the dogs at the start line. Steadfast Attila barked madly, screwing his haunches into the dirt. Fragrant Meat flattened himself out with his tail straight as a ramrod.

Harry hauled himself into the operator’s seat. “When it gets thirty yards out, let ’em go.”

The mechanical hare zizzed down the rail, spitting blue sparks. The dogs tore off, kicking clods of dirt back into our faces. Fragrant Meat’s rear legs had a noticeable sideways kick. Steadfast Attila worked the outside edge, his brindle coat a beautiful brownish blur against the rust-coloured dirt.

Fragrant Meat held the lead when they hit the turn, but Steadfast Attila pulled into a dead heat around the hundred-yard mark and outdistanced Frag down the stretch. Frag kicked hard to the finish, though; there wasn’t an ounce of quit in that dog.

“I don’t like to dismiss dogs on their first offering, but he’s got the sidewinder legs,” Harry said to Owe, a doctor delivering sad news.

“Sidewinder legs?”

“It’s like hip dysplasia,” Harry told him. “There may not be a lot on your dog, but greyhounds are like precision instruments — even a little is too much when you’re talking about races won by a fraction of a second.” He clapped Owe’s shoulder companionably. “The boy’s got sass. But it’s like running with a clubfoot.”

“He does have sass,” Owe said. “He ran his guts out.”

“A good dog only loses because his body can’t compete,” said Harry. “That’s the difference between greyhounds and men — a man’s mind’ll fold, even if he’s got all the tools to win. Some say a dog won’t quit just because dogs are dumb animals. I don’t subscribe to that theory.”

Harry lashed a fresh teddy to the whip. He had a burlap sack full of them: teddy bears and rabbits, pigs and penguins. “I get them from a carnival supply company,” he said. “Used to go to the Goodwill but they’d give me weird looks.”

He led Steadfast Attila to the kennels and returned with a fawn-coloured greyhound who walked with the high, hopping gait of a show horse.

“Trix Matrix,” he said. “Didn’t come up with that name, either. I call her Trixy. She’s earmarked for great things, I’m told. She’ll earn foreign interest — some of our best dogs are bought by Irish breeders to run at the top tracks overseas.”

Harry led Trixy over to Dolly. The dogs stood nose to nose. Dolly nuzzled her snout into Trixy’s throat. Trixy snapped at Dolly, who whipped her head aside to avoid Trixy’s canines, dancing back, paws stuttering as if the ground was hot as glowing coals.

“She’s got moxie,” Harry said, a smile touching the edges of his mouth. “But plenty of scrubbers do.”

Dolly toed the line beside Trixy. She stood stock-still, rear legs flared, front paws spaced with one slightly in front of the other. Her pulse raced under my fingertips. She looked back at me with a quizzical expression. You don’t have to hold me so tight , the look seemed to say.

When the hare raced down the rail, Trixy bolted — god, that dog could boogie. You didn’t have to know much about greyhounds to see she was a true racer: the fibre of her being spoke through her running form.

And Dolly? Well, Dolly just stood there.

“Girl?” I whispered.

Then I felt the run building inside her body: all the little parts gathering momentum, energy coursing through her skin. It was like a giant muscle contracting before it flexed into action. Her entire body recoiled — legs pistoning backwards, haunches dipping low — and there was this awesome tension, every fast-twitch muscle committed to the goal of forward motion. Then she was gone.

At first Dolly’s strides were clipped and violent, paws churning up chunks of dirt until she hit the seventy-yard mark. There she lengthened out into a powerful running motion, her streamlined skull bobbing with each stride.

Trixy ran high, head up, spine bowed. Dolly ran low: head on the same plane as her shoulders, spine prone, slicing through the air like a ballistic missile. She managed to get the same leg-spread as Trixy, though, with her lower gait: her legs scissored under her, tucked paws brushing her belly before they jackknifed out again, barely grazing the dirt.

Trixy held the inside position when they hit the turn; she angled her shoulder towards the rail, steering like a stock car around a high-banked oval. Dolly’s paws skidded for purchase as she muscled herself back into position, her shoulder colliding with Trixy’s; their heads came together, teeth flashing, fighting with each other even as they fought desperately for position.

They raced round the bend. Me, Ed and Owe ran to the rail. The dogs were so close that I couldn’t separate one from the other: there was just an elongated shape, two dogs fused together. They disappeared behind the tote board.

They shrieked around the turn and hit the final stretch. Dolly had flared out to the right, far from the rail, meaning she’d have to cover more ground. Trixy pounded down the track, head upflung, mouth open and tendons flexed down her throat and across her brisket: she looked like she was screaming. Dolly’s legs pumped so hard it was like watching a machine reaching the point of failure, spindles trembling as it threatened to fling itself to pieces. A red berry was splotched on her coat — Trixy must have bitten her hard enough to draw blood.

They tore down the homestretch. Dolly angled across the track, closing in at the rail. Her form was slipping: her front legs speared wide as her head jerked up and down. Still, she drew even with about forty yards to go. Trixy kept pace for another ten yards before Dolly blazed past with a vicious finishing kick, accelerating over the line.

Harry ambled down from the operator’s box. He scratched his belly through his overalls and smiled in the way old men do when they see something fresh and exciting — with an element of bewilderment.

“She’s a real dandy, son. And what a low drinker.”

“Low drinker?”

“Old dogman’s saying,” Harry told me, “for a dog that goes down real deep in their running stance, so low their belly’s almost dragging the dirt. They look like they’re crouched by the river lapping up water.”

Ed slapped my back. “Looks like you won the lottery.”

When I went to pick up Dolly she was hopping around, favouring one of her paws.

“What is it, girl?”

She whined thinly, babying her paw in that confused way animals do, as if they can’t quite believe their bodies might break down or fail. She’d run so hard that sand was compacted between her paw-pads. Must’ve hurt like hell.