My father had a collection of old Damon Runyon books which he loaned to me when I was in my twenties.  I, of course, promptly lost them all.

 Still, I’ve made good use over the years of some of Runyon’s best lines, a personal favorite being his punter’s paraphrase of Ecclesiastes.  Said the Broadway bard, “The race may not always be to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”

 Another favorite: in his story The Nice Price, several Runyon characters are pondering the odds of a Yale vs. Harvard rowing contest that has the Yalies favored three-to-one.  “I do not know anything about boat races,” one says, “and the Yales may figure as you say, but nothing between human beings is one-to-three.”

 “In fact,” says his compatriot, “I long ago come to the conclusion that all life is six-to-five against.” A nice price.

 These shortish odds were brought to mind in sorrowful fashion over the past month, when two old friends passed away. I had known them both for more than 40 years. One was a fraternity brother at UNC, where he had studied marine biology and made a name for himself chain smoking non-filter Camels and hurling target knives into the frat house wall for hours on end.  He met his future wife on a train in Europe, then went on to work for a time as a plumber in the Virgin Islands before settling in Switzerland to raise a family way up in the Alps. 

The other was among the first folks I’d met when my family moved from Durham to Henderson, a gifted athlete who quickly after became an inseparable companion on the basketball court. He stood six-foot-eight. I can still remember my fingers disappearing into his the first time we shook hands. He won a state championship at Vance High (4-A, undefeated), was taken out to dinner by Dean Smith, and attended Davidson on a basketball scholarship.  He ultimately ended up in Chapel Hill, too; a Morehead scholar finalist, he graduated there.  We were roommates in a farmhouse out in Chatham County for a time.

 Both were my age – a youthful 60. Chalk up two more for the house, as Harry the Horse might say. 

 Against that, other things seem trivial. There’s a wonderful scene from another writer, Barry Hannah.  His novel, Ray, is an entertaining tale built around the angst of a middle-aged man living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  He’s a Vietnam vet where he flew Phantoms, he’s seen his friends blown out of the sky, and he’s haunted by dreams of the Civil War.  “I live in so many times,” says the titular Ray.  “Everybody is still alive.”  

Like the protagonists of many Southern novels, Ray suffers from post-modern ennui. He struggles to find the purpose, and the courage, to get from one day to the next. In his dreams, he rides with Jeb Stuart’s calvary, sees the scarlet lining of Stuart’s cloak erupt against the gray line as the horses stamp and snort along a ridge, and watches as John Pelham, the boy artillerist, directs the fire of the riders’ smooth-bore, 12-pound Napoleons.

 Ray is terrified in two centuries.  

In the book’s final scene, Ray surveys the prospects for his by now not-too-bad small town doctor’s life (a wife who still loves him in spite of himself, a mother who has found religion). Gazing out at the unknowable future, he takes up Runyon’s odds, and echoes Stuart’s call to battle.

 “Sabers, gentlemen,” he says. “Sabers.”