Lord of Misrule (17 page)

Hey, I heard old Roland Hickok thought the world of you, Joe Dale said, and so he answered your question. I’m not surprised.
He
could pick em. I tell you what: he never thought much of me. When the money starts rolling in I say to myself, All right, now the old man will show me some respect, but no, he won’t even talk to me. After a while I get the idea he thinks I’m a sleazeball. Not that he would ever say so. He had manners, you know? Class. Like he came from the type of family, the boys go to some school in New England where they play lacrosse and it snows three feet in the winter, and the girls’ weddings get write-ups in the
New York Times
. I mean, his father and brother trained for the Ogdens—in the Hickok family
he
was the black sheep, and in West Virginia he had a holy air around him like fucking George Washington. So what does he need me for? But you he gives his champion horse, his old-time stakes winner—what’s the name of that horse?

You just smile.

Punter? Naa, that ain’t it.
Pelter
, he answers himself. The Darkesville Stalker, First Horse of West Virginia. Now that says something.

He didn’t give me Pelter. I paid for the animal, you say. I was working for Hickok at the time.

Yeah, but money was never the issue with Roland Hickok. He had class and he picked you. That says it all.

The guy was good—he about had you pegged—for a moment you couldn’t let him see your face, because it was glowing with pride. You turned your shoulder to him, busied yourself with a case of electrolytes, counting the foil packages.

Plus you get the girls to work for you, Joe Dale went on. I wish I had that. I got no women in my barn. Everybody knows they have a softer touch, more patient. They get more out of the animals. They don’t strong-arm a horse. They finesse. There it was. You knew he’d come round to her, sliding under the door, soaking in, pearling up the edges. Instead of hiding her you pushed her towards him—surprise him a little.

Girls work harder, he said.

Girlfriends work cheaper, you said with a wry smile.

She must love the hell out of you, Joe Dale said. You couldn’t get me to sling hay bales for no amount of love or money, no matter how cute your ass was.

Actually I’m only second best, you said coolly. After Hickok sold me his horse it was nothing but Pelter. She likes that horse.

Izzat right? Joe Dale shook his head in wonderment. Yeah, some of em’s like that. Even the trollops that drip diamonds, you’d be surprised. It’s like,
Ooooo, he’s so beautiful, can I pet him?
Sure, baby. Imagine thinking one of these dumb hayeaters is beautiful. He laughed. Must be the sight of those big shlongs that gets em sentimental. Hey, that girl of yours looks intelligent, though. I used to know girls like her back in New York. I bet she went to Barnard College or somewhere. What is she, Jewish?

You know—she might be, you said, as if you’d never thought of
that before. Why don’t you ask her yourself, if you’re interested? She’ll tell you. She’s quite a candid person.

Maybe I will—try to get her away from you while I’m at it—into my barn, I mean. I pay better. Big open-faced smile, shining with well-groomed wop geniality.

He talked dirty to you and that, too, was a way of looking for her. Hey, I even had a Jewish girlfriend once. She was only this big—he held his manicured thumb and index finger an inch apart—which usually I like, but it took me a long time to get around to banging her. I thought she’d have a big twat, don’t ask me why—because of what they say about twats and noses, you know?—so it was prejudice, I admit it, because she didn’t even have a big nose. But turns out she was incredible, a little hairy down there but tight like a pencil sharpener. I swear she ruined me for Catholic girls for three years.

You stared at him but he was absorbed in pulling a hair out of his watchband, laughing softly at his own joke. A mean wind had blown in from Ohio on the tail of the rain. The puddle by the back gate had a thin new skin of ice. Inside Joe Dale’s Cadillac the heat must have been ninety degrees. The window was all the way down, his pale aqua shirt lay open at the collar and he wasn’t even wearing a coat. That was when you decided to take whatever he dangled and turn it upside down on him. Do business but do exactly as you liked. You knew an offer was coming. Some type of deal to give him power over you, only he would have no power over you. You waited and there it came.

You know, Hansel, I got more than I can handle. You got the kind of brains behind horses I wish I had, no, I mean it, I got the humility to see I need help. I know what I do good, nobody does it better, but I need people like you. What do you say I push some owners your way, and maybe sometimes a horse that don’t
win for me? And you tell me what looks good to you out there and I see about getting it for you, no claim necessary. See, that’s one thing about having that leading trainer hand to file. Maybe I don’t know much, but plenty of times I go to the owner, make the case he’s with the wrong guy, and whatever I say, the jerk’s so sick of wondering if his trainer is turning him around, he does what I say. You need owners, Hansel. Am I right?

I wouldn’t turn the right kind away, you say.

This way I get you some live ones, deep dough, high rollers, flashy good time guys, accident lawyers and like that, lotsa playing room there. And also I got some people waiting in line right now who don’t want their names involved for various reasons. You take their horses, you go down as owner on paper, or the girl can—whichever way you want—they’ll pay by the day and meanwhile—we’ll be in touch. You know how to get horses ready as good as I do. In fact, better. Big friendly grin here. Only, now and then I let you know about a race that’s literally made for them and you might not of heard about it—see what I’m getting at?

So there it was. You had nothing to lose—asked right away for his ass on the table.

I want that horse back that Zeno claimed from me. The Mahdi. He’s in for two grand on Saturday night.

Jesus Christ, Hansel, I don’t know if I can move that fast. Who’s the trainer?

Jim Hamm, for Mrs. Zeno.

Not good, not good. Jim Hamm don’t do business with me—not directly. I don’t think he likes me. He smiled.

Get me somebody who puts up two grand and dailys and I’ll claim him myself. Nobody’s going to lose money on the deal, I’ll tell you that. If you can get me two thousand—sure, okay, I’ll take a horse for you. Those are my terms. Take it or leave it.

Oooo. Must be a helluva horse, huh. The Mahdi, eh? Joe Dale said, pretending to be impressed.

He’s a piece of junk, but he’ll win at the Mound for a while. If he stays sound.

What’s that again—fourth race Saturday night? But of course you hadn’t said which race. He was letting you know he knew. You peered at him without answering.

He shrugged. Hey, you know what you’re talking about. I’ll see what I can do.

And he departed. So it looked like luck, which had been doing her best to claw her way through to you, had decreed that you should have The Mahdi back after all, which made beautiful sense—but of course you had no intention of doing what Joe Dale Bigg asked you to do, unless it happened to coincide with your own intention. A small-town
mafioso
like that couldn’t hurt you. You’d have to look out for Maggie now—she wasn’t as strong—but Biglia deserved no loyalty. He was dark and rich in flesh like duck meat, but shallow. He talked dirty about women to men he hardly knew. Never mind that
Women are more patient
crap. Joe Dale, same as Biggy, went into rages at spirited horses and kicked and bullied them—the whole family was famous for it. He didn’t even like to come in his barn and dirty his shoes. In fact he hated animals. He was vulgar. He couldn’t love. He was nothing but a dark emptiness—the absence of good. He could do you no harm.

S
EEM LIKE EVERY DAY
since time he been thinking what a shame and pity it is how the world is coming down, how the pride of work has disappeared, until they just laugh at him, the boys that come on the racetrack now—how the horses is misused and abused, started out racing too young before they bones is hard, not rested proper and dosed with all kind of shots and pills, and so consequently don’t last—how these five-and-dime horsetrainers and they ten-cent owners anymore be tighter than the bark on a beech tree, when it come to anything but rush rush rush them horses back to the track and collect a bet. It ain’t no real sportsmen round here no more, if it ever was, or either sportswomen. And John Q. Public wasn’t no dumber than he used to was, but also he ain’t no smarter.

Seem like since time, that was the most fun old Medicine Ed been having, studying on it every day, every day, how this good thing has come down and this other thing that once was fine, has went to pieces on him. Until he be sick and tired of his own self. And then he land up in his mashed-in trailer in the deep of night, mumbling through his bald gums and mixing up some pocket toby to get his own back. Snatching blind at any thread that maybe tie his luck to him.

And which is why every now and then when some kind of a good thing come together in nature, it make the whole world new.
Seem like once again he have found that harmony, how they is a power in charge and strong secret threads lead around and under, and tie it all together.

And which is what happened that night with Little Spinoza.

He might have knowed that Alice Nuzum, who didn’t resemble no other human being he has ever seen, man nor either woman, would have to be a luck thrower of some kind. The way she look—not ugly but like something born between mud and river water, like something out of a creek swamp—a person must figure fate has already laid a shaping hand on her and is satisfied. Or can’t do no worse. Or maybe mean to make it even to her in some way.

Nothing in Little Spinoza’s routine changed behind that bad race. It was still Alice on Little Spinoza at four fifteen in the morning and old Deucey peering into the fog from the river with her spyglass and stop watch, clocking Little Spinoza’s little bit of speed. And which was still there, the speed, but now it ain’t even no one to hide it from. Earlie Beaufait has done them the favor to badmouth Little Spinoza and his trainer and three cockamamie owners too. Horse be no count, they say, a killer in the gate and a quitter in the stretch, with a hard, ruinated mouth. One more incident and management gone be stamping his foaling papers
NOT FIT FOR RACING
.

And the apprentice jockey them three have found under a rock somewheres, since Earlie quit them! A townie, a female, and ugly enough to scare a hound dog off a gut wagon—and a bugboy at that, you know how they say about a bugboy, he save you seven pounds in the gate and add thirty pounds in the stretch—and this is a horse even Earlie Beaufait couldn’t get no stretch run out of him. So this time for two weeks everybody keep that clear of the horse you think he carry that equine selfalitis. Not even
Joe Dale Bigg come round. And then Deucey drops him in for three thousand.

Everybody think they see them coming, everybody figure the plain obvious truth—them are the broke, pityfull owners of Little Spinoza that done shelled out their last two-dollar bill on that horse—the colored groom, the he-she trainer and the lost college girl—them three are gone try and get him claimed for what they paid for him, which was far too much money already.

But what Alice Nuzum say is this. Whoever come up with that idea that Little Spinoza has early speed? He has speed all right—and it is an exact amount coiled up in him the way a black snake will live snug under your well cover all winter. He is a one-run horse but of a very classy kind, Alice say. He has an exact amount of speed which could last an exact time, from the last possible moment when you call on him, until that wire. But until now he has squandered it early. He is like some corner zoot suiter cut loose with his mama’s death benefit before he has become a man, before he has grown sense to put it in the bank or either a choice bit of real estate. He come out the gate going every whichaway in terror and pure foolishness. He go every whichaway and finally he tire and die, and if the boy hit him he wither up besides. And yet he is a dreamer horse who like to look at ducks splashing down on the river and hawks sailing on the wind. Alice say:
What if he can sleep like Sleeping Beauty, only on his feet, with no pain, and stay asleep till I wake him up at the quarter pole?
And Medicine Ed can follow her idea: As long as the pace up front ain’t too slow, as long as the frontrunners be halfway honest, he might could get there.

To rate him, Alice has to hypmotize the horse a little, and she say she can do it. How can she? O she has her little ways, she say,
maybe I sing him to sleep
, and she smiles that no-lip smile that put Medicine Ed in mind of a newt.

Alice couldn’t prove it. She showed them, in a little trial with Grizzly and Miss Fowlerville and Railroad Joe, how Little Spinoza come swooping by in the stretch. True, them others wasn’t but 2000 or even 1500 dollar horses—and two belong to Hansel, but the young fool had suddenly drove off somewhere for two days
to see about a horse
, and left Medicine Ed in charge. Naturally a lit-up grandstand and a thousand screaming bettors be something different from dark and silence of first morn—let alone a paddock judge poking in his mouth, and the starter man grabbing his ear or snatching his lip in the gate. All the same, that is Alice’s idea, which do have the beauty to tie all the parts together.