Race

​A skulking darkness swallowed the gate and the soft hills of the valley as the horses sidled past the two men at the rail. Gaston had just lost faith in his grip on his tickets and shoved them into his pocket. Roberts—now known wider as El Correcaminos—wasted several minutes describing his most recent financial failure before Gaston shooshed him into silence and pointed at the horse with the large red six on his flank. That’s our boy, he said. He’ll pay today. Roberts dragged his thumb across the number on his ticket, wanting to elaborate on his difficulties. But Gaston spoke first. Sometimes, Gaston told him, things are not as detrimental as they seem. El Correcaminos offered him a worried expression. Gaston described the vacuum of space and two galaxies wrapping around one another in cosmic collision. From our vantage, the violence of this event is obvious. Then he estimated the millions of stars that populated the clusters as they whizzed past one another in the fusion. Those gargantuan structures racing headfirst at the speed of light will produce very few collisions, he said. They are so large and so porous that the violence is an illusion, Roberts. El Correcaminos couldn’t calculate Gaston’s expectation for the metaphor and he felt sure this description held no sway over current circumstances but he dared not contradict the patriarch, his missing little finger a constant reminder of their hierarchy.