They found his racing license, but he was using a phony name. Cops came out to the racetrack to investigate the identity of this young man who’d committed suicide in the jail, but we had nothing to tell them.

A few weeks later we heard he was to be buried in a pauper’s grave, so my friend and I went. I don’t know why. We barely knew him. We paid respects. There was no tombstone, just a little plastic marker with his fake name, so my friend and I asked the cemetery if we could make our own stone for him. Back at the track, we laid boards down, poured cement, and set a horseshoe in each corner.

Pauper’s Hill they called it. The pauper’s part was really pretty. When our tombstone was dry, we took it out to his grave with some little flowers from the racetrack.

Later we saw an article about him. They’d finally found his true identity. He had warrants out for his arrest. His family decided to leave his body where it was.

THE OLD LADY

Hoser was a hot walker who’d get drunk and start feeling people up. You never knew who he was trying to take home. He was after this young gal once, Lily, but she didn’t like him. Lily’s grandmother owned some horses and Lily would drive up to help her on weekends. The grandmother had a trailer in the park with the rest of us and when Lily came, the old lady would go back to where she was from and Lily would stay in the trailer.

One night when Hoser was lit up, he sneaked into the trailer where Lily was sleeping. He took his clothes off and crawled under the covers with her. But it wasn’t Lily in the bed — it was the old lady. She was a tough old lady with bow legs and a big gruff voice, and she sat up and yelled, What in the hell?

Hoser screamed and ran out. He woke everybody up. We watched him run naked through camp, looking for his clothes. He forgot he’d left them in the old lady’s trailer.

JAKE THE PRINCE

Jimmie was so skinny. He walked with a limp and his teeth were messed up. He was meek and mild and when he talked he was shy — a real nervous actor — and he had a little stutter. Anytime it rained he’d go out and dance in it. He had an old red pickup, a Dodge Ram, and he was always polishing the chrome ram on the hood with his T-shirt until someone stole it one day when he went into town.