Lord of Misrule (29 page)

S
HE SANK HER STRONG
, ignorant fingers into her horse. She felt along the gnarly scar tissue at his spine, which she pictured as roots and branches, or the foot of a roc. Knob, burl, carbuncle—soften, she told them. Draw your claws in. Let go. She tried to believe in the blind connectedness of her body, its unknown powers. She felt if she had faith enough she could make it happen.

You’re going to show in this race, she told Pelter. It’s the poor people’s derby. Now it’s hot as the devil out there so take it easy. You have seven-eighths of a mile to come to yourself and you don’t have to win. You don’t want to win even if you could win, that wouldn’t be healthy, for me or for you. But even with that clown on your back you ought to run third. Just get some exercise and run your race.

Little by little the pool of pale pink oil of wintergreen horse liniment vanished under her fingers. She felt deep tremors moving like waves below the brown glistening fur, from shoulders to loins of the horse’s very long back. He buckled away from her with a whinny and came up biting and kicking a little. She stepped out of the way. We just need getaway money now, she told him. That’s why I’m betting Nebraska. Just run your race, you’ll make me 800 dollars. I have a good feeling about you. I don’t know what the heck it means but I do.

T
HE SUN HAD FINALLY
gone down. The yellow twilight, made out of air that fried all day, had something greasy about it. The backside smelt like hot pennies, turpentine and dung. The horses picked their way along a dusty track, first beside a parking lot, then along the racecourse fence. This dotted line of bald spots in the grass was the shortest route to the racetrack from Barn Z. Everybody went this way.

An ancient pony-boy came for Lord of Misrule on a tall spotted rodeo pony. The old pony-boy, known as Wuzzy, was always exactly on time. So Lord of Misrule set out first on the long walk to the paddock, the wormy kid trailing along behind.

Wuzzy had been hired just for show. Lord of Misrule went calmly and lightly on his small pitch-painted feet, although above them the waffled, battered black ankles stuck out of long white bandages, not even clean.

Tommy Hansel came next in the parade. He too walked lightly, for he had lost a few pounds, since he no longer needed to eat or sleep. He wore a black vest with some sort of round emerald green and gold saint’s medallion pinned to one side. He knew it was a bowling club stick pin from a Czech social club in Steubenville. He had found it in the trailer. But he also knew it was a magic pin, a mark from St. Jack.

On the way to a race he had used to dawdle till last or next to
last, a habit left over from the schoolyard and the family gas station and used car lot in Trempeleau, Wisconsin, but madness (he knew he was mad) had polished away the crude burr of all that schoolboy sedition and procrastination. It had been a way of dreaming off, and at the same time of needling his father, his teachers and his bosses, but that was over. He knew now he couldn’t lose and so did his horse. It was impossible to lose to lesser beings than you were—no mere mortal man, not even a king, could swallow up God, though he might eat of Him. You looked around for your twin. She wasn’t there. She carried a curse for taking away your horse. She would get to post last.

Now that he had it all figured out, he gleamed like a king in a classic comic (he saw this himself), although his ruffled shirt was a little grimy, something he could not make out by himself in the dead blue fluorescent light of the trailer. A cold blue fire burned at the backs of his eyes and the eyes seemed off on their separate missions, one east one west, wider apart than ever. His boots had been burnished to amber by a Charles Town bootblack, but he wore, not by accident, one red sock, one blue. His madness had wrecked the careful economy of the body. His color was high, his beauty spendthrift. It couldn’t last.

Tommy Hansel leads the Mahdi. The Mahdi won five times in the winter. Then Hansel claimed him back. In March, in jail for 2500 dollars, he showed once, closing; in April, ran second, then sixth, then fifth. Last week he didn’t quite last for 1650. What does it mean? Just because Hansel is nuts, you can’t say for sure he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He might be working for Nebraska, he might think he’s taking orders from some reptile king on Pluto and he still might win, who knows? The Mahdi rolls along the path to the race track as red, broad and shining as
a John Deere tractor, but when he walks, can that be a tiny catch or halt, an almost insignificant shortening of the smooth action of his brawny forearms, some little tightness or twisting in the subcutaneous cables? Can he be sore?

Sonia’s Birthday, a tall gray six-year-old mare with rundown heels in front and a ruffle of sweat like a dingy tutu between her thighs, crunches her way along the gravel path, swinging her head from side to side and backing up as they near the paddock gate. She is not happy about this race, but her trainer needs 200 dollars. Next comes Sudanese, a neat and abstract black horse, no markings, well made, with a crop of uneven knots about his delicate joints and an air of deep self-absorption. Who recalls that six years ago Sudanese ran in the Gold Bug Futurity for $200,000, led to the sixteenth pole and held on to show? Certainly not he. Next come Wolgamot, Island Life and Hung The Moon, all mainstays of the 2000-dollar allowance field, la crème de la crud of Indian Mound Downs, track favorites, each with his loyal following, all routers, all grizzled regulars of the ninth and tenth race, named on many an exacta ticket, each dragging his day of glory behind him, some Farmers and Merchants Cup or Pickle Packers Association Handicap or even some just-missed minor stakes. All are reasonably clean for this race, scarred and gleaming dark bays of various shades and descriptions—the commonest run of racehorse, dirt cheap, bone sore and all more beautiful than chests of viols of inlaid rosewood and pear. Hung The Moon, an amiable gelding of ten years old, stops to snatch at a dusty tuft of crabgrass along the parking lot fence. If this race is anything special he hasn’t noticed.

Next to last comes Little Spinoza. Old Deucey Gifford has borrowed Penny’s exercise pony Bob, put on a cowboy shirt and a bandana and they go to the track in style, Spinoza doing a crab
dance on his tippy toes, rubbed and oiled to a brown-black pearl. He might be sweating a little under the floodlights but who ain’t? The little philosopher is in the highest of spirits. All his friends are near.

Deucey leaned down and whispered to Medicine Ed: It’s his distance and he’s ready. Alice wants to try with him. What do we got to lose by letting him run? Goddamn he’s ready to ramble. Goddamn he looks fine. It’s no way in the world, said Medicine Ed. Yall don’t want to win with that horse today even if he could win. You might could stir up the Devil that way and how you gone settle him down again when it’s done? Somebody could get hurt. Hell I’m getting paid two hundred dollars to run the horse, not hold him. I didn’t sign up for nothing but to bring him to the gate at post time, and here I am. I don’t want it on me, Medicine Ed said. Joe Dale Bigg in with Nebraska. If you cross them gangsters or mess with they game, you don’t want to meet them riding nor walking. I already don’t want to meet them riding or walking, Deucey said. Ain’t that good enough? Say, you down on Nebraska? Hell I am too, but I’ll take that purse money instead, come to that, I’ll be covered and wouldn’t that just be horse racing. I never been afraid of dying. This world ain’t been so good to me I can’t stand the thought of leaving it. Deucey ball up her jaw like a bullfrog and march on.

Medicine Ed lowered his eyes from her. For that’s how it was for him too. Ma’fact it was behind that one thing, how the world ain’t give up her bounty to him yet, that he couldn’t make up his mind to leave her but give her, over and over, one more chance and one more chance. He look in back of him for the frizzly hair girl. She kicking along in the dirt with Pelter, gray as a ghost. He drift her way. Alice and Deucey, they fixin to turn Spinoza
loose, he whispered. She stared at him, shook her head. Then she laughed a little. My word. Whatever happened to majority rule in this partnership? Everyone seems to have lost their way on the road to this weirdo race. But what can we do, Ed? She laughed again, still shaking that frizzly head but but scared awake and beginning to believe. I guess we can’t complain to the racing secretary that our partners are on the square. Somebody could get hurt, Ed said. I know. Spinoza might could run round that black horse. What then? She shrugged. Take the money and run?

By now they walking the paddock fence. Medicine Ed leaned on the rail with his heart going too fast and she walked on, looking at him across Pelter’s back with a worried wrinkle in her forehead. Medicine Ed scoured the crowd for a tall gray gentleman with high-heel rusty red paddock boots, a string tie and a curl in the middle of his forehead. He will be laughing through his long gold teeth. Ed didn’t see Death nor either the Devil and his heart slowed down. Well fine and good if somebody got somewhere to run to, Medicine Ed said to himself. If not, you can go to the wind.

Now he standing by the hundred-dollar parimutuel window deep in thought. His whole bankroll, through the helping agency of Two-Tie, is already riding on Lord of Misery. It is too late to take back. Yet and still, his pocket full of money—though he owe Two-Tie that money—and the medicine might not take. Yesday when he was at his work, why, it wasn’t that spirit of wonder and so consequently he ain’t sure. In the end he take and put the powder to the four corners of the world but he ain’t sure.

It’s time to bet and Medicine Ed still hasn’t made no move. He is standing by the parimutuel window thinking, Seven furlongs is Little Spinoza race. Horse could run in. Well fine and good if
somebody got somewhere to run to, he mutter, but at the same time he is thinking, Horse might could run in.

The young fool’s horse, that Mr Boll Weevil twin which last summer ain’t had a mark on him, look sore and common and out of his class. Pelter is number 9, well out of it, for him the race too short and anyway he seem to know what’s what, he don’t even break a sweat. Could be he figured it out when that do-less jockey Jojo Woods climb up on his long back. The warhorses, all them old milers, whatever they name is, number 4 with the knee, number 5 with the feet, number 6 with some other misery so his head go down when his left foreleg come up—they will run honest enough, put no shame on nobody and do nothing to speak of. And which is exactly what they supposed to do, collect 200 dollars and go home.

But Little Spinoza, the 3 horse, his horse and the women’s horse, now that horse might could run in. Deep dapples have rose in his round mahogany flanks. He jog a little, feeling good. He shine like a parlor piano. He seem to have lost his years behind the kind treatment he get, this feeling of home and family and nature with the goat and the women and that. Some way you always feel the danger laying in ambush for an animal so childish carefree in his mind. Yet and still. It’s something between that horse and Alice Nuzum, who is up on the horse now in they secondhand silver silks, with them funny little half legs pressed up under her. It’s something in the way she ain’t man nor either woman, ain’t people nor either animal, and the horse too, Little Spinoza, have never quite had his four feet in this world. It’s like them two know each other mind and have somewheres to meet, some halfway place. They ain’t stuck with things the same what they’ve always been.

Horses out on the track now and up on the board the numbers
jumping like a toadfrog pond, all except Lord of Misery, he is steady at even money. Nobody was supposed to know nothing about the Nebraska deal save them that has a horse in the race, and yet and still it is so much down on the horse that nothing can pry that big 1 loose off the board. Three minutes to post and Little Spinoza stand at 6 to 1. Can Little Spinoza win? It be a peculiar day when Medicine Ed go down there and lay a bet against his own medicine. But things has changed, even if he, Medicine Ed, ain’t changed. Or has he? He is not sure of his medicine no more. He sure it do something. What it do, that he can’t see. Yet and still. How can Lord of Misery lose on this crooked track with all that gangster money saying he win? That bunch that play poker every night at Two-Tie’s has run through money like Grant through Richmond to play they last dollar on the horse; how can the horse run out?

He is standing by the parimutuel window thinking, Yet and still: seven furlongs is Little Spinoza race. Horse could run in. If he do run in, them that hate me is brought low and destroyed. They will be hot at me and they will pursue me to hurt me but, gone to glory, if he do run in, wouldn’t that be fine. I take that money and fly—and Medicine Ed step in line, reach his hand deep in his pocket. There is one man in front of him, and now he done.

Your wager? say the clerk.

Medicine Ed can’t move his tongue. He is thinking:

But if it’s no place for you and you run off, before you is nobody knowing you, nothing but disappointment, trouble, nobody that care a red nickel for you, emergencies in the night, disease, hospital cases and death.