ONE JANUARY NIGHT when snow was sifting white moons into the rusty rims of the kitchen portholes and softening the periscopes of the sewer hookups in the Horseman's Motel trailer park, Maggie realized that she liked this life. Not life in general-this life right now. She was pouring cans of beer over soaked drained cowpeas and all at once she understood she was happy on the racetrack with Tommy.
True, whenever she had had a similar revelation in the past, the man of the day had been temporarily off somewhere, and Tommy happened to be in New York, seeing about a horse. But he had to be home by tomorrow night to saddle Pelter. And anyhow he was present in the food she was cooking. When she had had no lover, she had had to write about food instead of cooking it. Maggie liked food, but food had to be offered, that was its nature; therefore, Menus by Margaret in the old days. Now she had Tommy, and these coarse savory dishes powerfully expected him. He was in the beans lazily seething and plopping like tarpits, in the braided loaves bloating by the stove.
She could cook and yet she was not the homey kind. She was the restless, unsatisfied, insomniac kind. But when she came to rest, it was often with a ladle in her hands. She had been surprised to find out that beans and bread could bind anyone to her, but then, there had never been any telling what would bind anyone to anyone. Tommy also liked her collarbone, and the flat Cossack triangles under her eyes.
Three pounds of beans, three cans of beer. Three cloves of garlic smashed to a xanthous pulp. Three smoked ham hocks, purple-striped, stiff, and reeking, like obscene little baseball socks. Cider vinegar. Thyme honey. Hammered pepper. McNinch's Loosiana Devil Aged Intensified Chili-Water (From an Olde Family Receipt). In her family house (her mother had hardly cooked and had died young), dry beans had been unknown, and Maggie could believe that the lifelessness of her childhood had had something to do with that fact, for surely sterile luck follows the exile of the bean. Beans, as the Pythagoreans knew, were the temporary lodgings of souls on the highway of transmigration. They sprouted beanstalks to giants in nameless upper regions. They were lots in the lottery for Lord of Misrule and his lady, king and queen of Saturnalia, when the order of the world turned upside down. They were cheap. They were proverbial. They were three blue beans in a blue bladder. They wouldn't give two beans. They didn't amount to a hill of beans. They weren't babkes-which also meant goat turds. In order to feel like a savvy old crone in her own kitchen, a woman need know only two things: the stations of the bean, and the immanence of a loaf of bread in a sack of flour. She had to know not only how, but how easy. Bread, bake thyself. Bean, boil thyself. Then she was free to fly about the snowy skies on her broomstick, while, below, ancient arts uncoiled from her hands.
She knew Tommy a lot better now than when they had set forth on this racetrack adventure. Just as she had been thinking, How could I ever trust a guy like that?-wormwood green eyes, blueblack mustachios, torn silk shirts, pure theater-she noticed she was happy. She was relieved. She'd been feeling flashes of shame like she'd fallen for some ridiculous confidence man. And was that what he was? If so, he believed himself in what he was flogging. She was glad she didn't have to introduce him to her father, but she was beginning to see that Tommy was a genuine racetracker, in his virtues as well as his defects. He was riddled with suspicion but also flamboyantly credulous-far more credulous than she was. Sometimes he even admitted it, for instance, the day he'd driven that ten-year-old white Grand Prix, with torn red naugahyde bucket seats, bumpety bump down the long dirt driveway to the Pichot place. Pitifully blatant was what that car was, showy and humiliated, not in equal parts but in the same part, a sick pimp in gem-studded shoes begging a buck for a drink. He had taken it for a nine hundred dollar stable debt from the last of his blown owners, Bugsy Bugnaski of Bugsy's Auto Sales. I thought it was a pretty good deal, Tommy said, and Maggie exclaimed: My god, and you used to sell used cars. Tommy shrugged: Nobody springs easier than a salesman, and she saw that it was true.
Likewise no one believed the racetrack legends like a racetracker. Tommy's glamorous plans had turned out to be the standard racetrack yarn, you heard it every day: I'm going to get me a heavy-head motherfucker. Break his jaw all spring-take him to the fairs come August and drop his head… Everyone said, Run em where they belong, i.e., don't worry about losing the animal-throw a sure winner in the cheapest possible claiming race and cash that big bet instead. But how many actually did it? How many winners were that sure? How many thought themselves that lucky? A person had to see himself, or herself, as lucky not just once in a while, but plugged into a steady current of luck like an electrical appliance, a fan or a toaster. People who thought they couldn't lose-Joe Dale Bigg, for one-were some kind of machinery. That's what old Deucey said. Deucey sometimes believed. You really couldn't tell what on earth Medicine Ed believed. Tommy's eyes burned wormwood green with the need to believe. Maggie would never, ever, believe.
Sometimes she even wondered if Tommy, whose life she was living, wasn't a little mad. After all he, like her, was a college-educated person. (True, he had gambled his way through his years in Madison-one exhausting daily game of Hollywood Gin, elaborately scored in three streets-but somehow, barely, graduated.) He needed to believe, for example, in Maggie as-she smiled-his predestined one. That long-lost twin. As if there were such things as destinies, tying the loose threads together, times past and future, worlds congruous and incongruous, random intersections of total strangers. The way he thought he was bound to her, half mad though it was, nevertheless compelled her, gave him some sort of key to her body that nobody else had got hold of.
Maybe it was creepy. She would have hated to explain her present mode of life to, say, Bertrand Russell. But as with beans and bread, so the body. Without believing anything she got drawn into the stories of others, the older and more cobwebby the better. She would have hated to be left out of the trap of the flesh altogether.
And not that she could pretend it wasn't dangerous. O it was dangerous-she yawned and mopped her brow on a crusty dishtowel. She was sweating into her black-eyed peas even as she admired the snow flailing like chaff under the trailer park floodlights. She was wearing a ribbed tank undershirt gray-pink from washing with a maroon horse blanket, and a pair of blue-striped boxer shorts, but still she was sweating. She had that thermostat set for mamba snakes, jacaranda trees and flamingos, as long as she had to live in a twenty-foot tin lunchbox.
No, it was definitely getting dangerous, all of it. Terrible things had happened lately in this racetrack life-actually she had a nerve being happy. First Deucey had shown up with her front teeth knocked out. It was the morning after Little Spinoza had paid 23.80. Maggie and Ed were stamping around the shedrow in the new snow, waiting for Deucey to show up with the money. They were feeling good, of course, for even after they had paid off the feed man and the hay man, and Kidstuff, and the tack shop, and Haslipp the vet and the wholesale veterinary supply, and Alice, and anyone else they were in hock to, privately or together, they were all going to have dough-at least a little dough-when here comes old Deucey limping into the barn with a veil of bloody mucus hanging down from her nostrils to her chin, and black blood and pink snow caked in her spiky hair. A fat roll of bills in her pocket. But no front teeth. She said she had fallen down drunk and woken up toothless. Them snags was black anyway. I'll get me some new ones, now that I got dough.
Maggie didn't believe it. You couldn't fall that hard around the racetrack, unless it was from a horse, and especially not into a foot of fresh snow. Somebody beat you up. Who was it?
Hope he done with you now, Medicine Ed sighed, like it went without saying who it was, but Deucey wouldn't talk. We still got the horse, was all she said. That night she threw her sleeping bag into the back corner of Little Spinoza's stall and tossed in extra straw and tunneled into it, and there she slept all week.
And nothing happened to Little Spinoza, but on Tuesday morning Deucey found Grizzly on his back in his stall, dead. It was plain to see what had killed him. Never in eight years had Grizzly left one damp oat in the bottom of his bucket. Deucey had bragged on it-she would be heartily sorry for her big mouth now. That was the secret of his long mediocre career, the reason he'd rather be a fifteen hundred dollar claiming horse than a ghost: He loved to eat. No matter how sore he was, every day had two saving points, breakfast and dinner. Last night for once in his life somebody had poured him all the sweet feed he could want, a whole five-gallon bucketful. Half of that was still in the pail when he started rolling on the ground.
At the sight of his gray legs sticking out straight, the terrible roundness of his bloat, the great gray tongue between his teeth and wide unsolaced eyes, Deucey leaned against the wall and buried her face in her hands. I paid for one damn horse with the other, it's the story of my life, she moaned, all these goddamn bandits running around the place raking it in, and I ain't allowed to go two horses deep. Grizzly's belly was still as big as a sofa; not even death had loosened the knot in his gut.
And also there was something wrong-Maggie didn't know what-about Tommy's going up north to see someone about a horse. He had driven off in the pitifully blatant Grand Prix in a peculiar agitation. Half mad, yes. He seemed fevered, shaken off his rootstalk, as when he had made a wild bet in the past and should know fear but wouldn't look down the hole his tapping out had left.
Tuesday he had been all business, clear-eyed at four in the morning, peering in the feed pails, shaking oats through the strainer, divvying up the rich alfalfa hay, green as Ireland, in careful flakes. He was scrupulous, had nerve, and didn't stint; when she recalled him, his elegant gait, terse and collected-nothing of the loose-boned buckaroo about Tommy-moving down the shedrow, deciding this and that; his deft, sensitive fingers taking off bandages, feeling along the cannon bone, fetlock, sesamoid for sponginess or heat-making the rounds with his little doctor bag-she admired him. He was all business, bringing Pelter up to his race. Tuesday he had even walked the horse himself, watching him carefully. When that horse goes bad, I go bad, he said to Maggie, and she said in alarm: Why, is something wrong with him? Not yet, he smiled.
Tuesday he was all order and expertise; he seemed to glow inside his own handsome case like a matched set of surgical instruments. By Wednesday, Medicine Ed and Maggie could look after Pelter, and never mind the rest of his two-for-a-nickel string. He was packing to go.
I've had it with getting by, Maggie, do you hear? How the hell did I get stuck in this hole-that's what I want to know. Anyway it's time to get out-I've got to have enough to put in a claim slip if something looks good to me-that's basic if we're going to the races. So I'm getting the money, you understand me, Maggie? he had said, as if that's all there had ever been to the money, just going to get it.
The way he said Maggie, do you hear? you understand me, Maggie? made her feel he was holding her by the shoulders and shaking her. She laughed a little, trying not to take him too seriously. If you need dough, why don't you ride a few bucks on Little Spinoza? she suggested, half in jest. Say a hundred? I'll even front it to you.
For god's sake, Maggie, he shouted, suddenly furious. He turned his back on her and rattled the cheap doorknob of the trailer, though it wasn't locked. Man, I can't wait to get out of this place.
Maggie, baffled, shook her head. What's wrong with you? He could win for three thousand-even Medicine Ed thinks so.
He turned back around, took hold of her braids, played with them, pulled on them gently but quite firmly, tipping her head back with them like a bell. He gazed down at her, and the little green jewels in his brown-green eyes seemed to swell with chemical light, now larger now smaller, like the cold lights of fireflies. For once she was not sure what he was seeing when he looked at her. Be very careful you're not taken in, my girl, especially while I'm away, he said. You think you have nothing to fear from anyone. That's your problem, Maggie. That's why I have to get us out of this penny ante bullshit now-so I can keep you safe. She felt an icy fingertip draw an X at the back of her neck.
Then he let her go. And I never said Little Spinoza couldn't win-his mocking smile was for both of them, and everything was clear and bright again. I have to draw the line somewhere-like getting cut in on my woman's action.
So why does my dough stink all of a sudden? It was always okay before, said Maggie crudely, but he rose above that provocation.
Your dough is fine, just fine, he said. All right-put ten bucks on Spinoza for me. That'll suffice. Tommy tossed folded shirts into a small suitcase of burnished sorrel leather. No matter how broke he was, no matter how laughable his car, he had good luggage and fine shoes-so he always seemed to be just now falling on hard times rather than hauling them around with him. A few minutes later, he drove off in the pitifully blatant Grand Prix. That had been four days ago. She hadn't heard from him since.
All the same he was in the beans blowing slow fat bubbles through thick lips. Then the phone rang, and it was Tommy, whispering. And also in the phone was some slimy crooner like Perry Como, with violins.
Maggie, I can't talk. Listen to me carefully now.
Little Spinoza win, she rushed to tell him, not forgetting to use the racetrack form of the verb.
I know-congratulations-now listen. I won't be back tomorrow till close to post time.
Don't you want to know what he paid? I've got money now-some money He paid 23.80, Tommy said patiently. Money is not a problem, Maggie. Now listen-I need your help. Are you there?
Sure.
Get a stall ready. Don't ask me why right now. Can you do it?
We don't have any more stalls.
Talk to Suitcase. He won't give you any trouble. He'll let me have whatever I want. And listen-you and Medicine Ed will have to bring Pelter to the race yourselves. Tell Medicine Ed I want the whole drugstore tomorrow-he's got the stuff and plenty of syringes and he knows how to do it. You just do whatever he tells you. And I mean Vitamin B, Maggie, you hear?
You mean bute? she whispered.
I mean bute.
Tomorrow?
Tomorrow.
Isn't that cutting it pretty close to post time?
Extremely close.
You're not worried?
I'm not worried.
Jesus Christ, Tommy, you didn't Don't ask me questions right now, Maggie, I don't have time.
– buy the spit box, she was thinking. They had heard from certain lowly racetrack types-it was the kind of thing a mouthy little parasite like D'Ambrisi would toss off-that it could be done. But even accepting that it might be true, probably was true, they had put it out of their minds. It went without saying that they would never have that kind of money, those kinds of ties. Unless you had those kinds of ties, it was better, healthier, not even to let a picture of them form in your mind. You had to believe instead in the side roads and sub-routes where a clever nobody could set up operations. The racetrack had plenty of those. True, they were crowded with seedy adventurers like themselves, people whose fortunes went up and down, who had it one day and lost it the next, and always would.
I didn't buy anything, Tommy said, reading her silence. It's not like we thought. I've been talking to people. It's all going to be different now.
What's going on? Just tell me if it's bad different or good different.
He reflected. It's depressingly easy-how's that? he said. Listen, I'll see you tomorrow.
He must have got money somewhere-that was her first thought. That would explain the stall-a horse he had got or was getting-but why would he think that Suitcase would suddenly give him whatever he asked? And what was this about the spitbox? I'm not worried. He must have fallen in with the right people, which meant the wrong people. Her scalp tightened and sweat crawled under her arms that had nothing to do with hot beans.
Aren't you going to ask me how Pelter is? she asked.
Frankly But she never found out what he meant to be frank about. She heard a woman's voice, not a girl's, a woman's, cigarette cured, over thirty-five-pictured some Jersey City blonde with a leathery Boca tan and terrifying fake fingernails, a white pantsuit and ten pounds of heavy gold costume jewelry.
Why are you hiding in here, Tommy? O you're on the phone. I want you should There followed the dull flabby nothing that fills your ear when a tactless person claps his palm over the telephone mouthpiece. Then:
Just kindly do what I asked. What did I ask?
Tell Medicine Ed about the drugstore. And fix up a stall.
Good. And he hung up.
She stood there blankly stirring the beans, with the phone clamped between her shoulder and her ear, until the dial tone changed into an ugly siren, and even that she listened to thoughtfully for a time until the phone went dead. Would Tommy take up with some brassy mob matron or chainstore magnate's widow or real estate super saleswoman, just to get her to buy him a horse? Why bother to ask! A woman owner-but of course. The real question was why she hadn't seen this coming. No wonder Tommy had been so sure there was no more to finding the money this time than going to get it. No more than Maggie and Hazel would the Palisades realtor, or mob duchess, or fast food fortune divorcee, turn him down. The woman owner from Jersey City, with her long hard fingernails, would take one look at him and spring.
Why you rotten dirty double-timing plongeur, she said out loud. And just as I was deciding that I really did love you. I pushed my luck. She burst out laughing, a little raggedly.
Well of course he had caught her at a weak moment, with a ladle in her hand, when the wound went to the quick, but she wouldn't leave him for this opportunistic infidelity-that would be far too talmudic-or poison his beans-that would be humorless in the extreme. Or fight the bitch for him-that would be primitive and crude and, even if it worked, only case number one in a long and tedious vigilance. No, she would simply, without whining, loosen the bonds between them. For now that she came to think of it, how could his own ties be anything but elastic, even if he hadn't been so goddamn handsome, like a movie star, because they would always have to stretch where a woman with money was concerned. He would always make room for an owner, of this there could be no doubt. After all, the Palisades broker could afford the best hairdresser in Teaneck and white sofas and black French panty girdles holding together her slightly flabby middle. He would even have a soft spot for that kind of vulgar savoir faire if it lived in Jersey City, which, after all, was only twenty miles from New York City, Belmont Park, Aqueduct, the races. And anyway it only had to be for a day or two, until her check cleared. If she made a nuisance of herself after that, he was no pinch-penny-he would let her and her per diems go.
O YES, PELTER WIN. Ain't paid much of nothing even for 2000 but he win. At Two-Tie's back door, where he had come to pay off a small loan, Medicine Ed took off his shapeless felt hat, and went on with his speech: Horse lay back there for three fourths of a mile like the six horse shadow, and at the sixteenth pole he just slip on by like evening coming on. My, my, wasn't it pretty, he make it look so easy, then I see him in the winner's circle, he can't hardly catch his wind. He a old horse all right. Pelter. Just baldhead class, that's all he know.
He run like an angel, Jojo Wood said. I didn't have to call on him for nothing. You won't believe it but when it come time to make his move, he showed me what to do.
We believe it, Deucey said, and nobody sniggered.
It was a pleasure to watch, Kidstuff said. The horse run like old times. So maybe it's just for two grand, but he still come up through the money to get there, and it had something classic about it, the way he win, like a great old athlete showing you how it's done-you shoulda been there.
Umbeschrien, said Two-Tie, and watch that two-bit tout lead that nice young woman's horse away? I might of threw up on myself.
Worst of it is, Deucey said, it almost makes Breezy look smart, claiming a nine-year-old horse.
D'Ambrisi is not smart, Two-Tie said. He's dumb, very dumb. He'll find out soon how dumb he is.
I wonder how long it will take him to ruin that horse, Deucey said.
He won't get no run out of the horse like Hansel could, that's a lock, said Kidstuff.
So you think that Hansel is a horseman, do you? Two-Tie asked the blacksmith, pouring himself warm orange soda with a small, plump, slightly shaking hand. Certain people that know what's what tell me that young man has got a excellent chance of running himself amok. And tonight he claims back that four-year-old from Jim Hamm in the sixth-I hear it was like a… like a hallucination or something with him.
That four-year-old ain't no hallucination, Kidstuff said. That was a helluva horse for twelve fifty, and Hansel picked him first. Course he paid two thousand to get him back and that wasn't sensible-that tells you something.
Talk about who's a horseman, Deucey said. If D'Ambrisi's a horseman, then I'm Eleanor Roosevelt. I bet he never worked a horse in his life. Somebody explain to me how a nitwit like that gets a trainer's license.
Somebody buys it for him, that's how, Kidstuff said.
D'Ambrisi will never run that horse at any racetrack, don't you worry about that, Two-Tie said. He's going to give the horse back to that young lady with ribbons on. He's going to tell her he's sorry, and he ain't even going to ask for his two grand back. You hear?
Everyone at the table was silent, for from Two-Tie such an announcement was amazingly indiscreet. Maybe he was slipping. Either he was getting shmaltzy about a broke-down old stakes horse, or he had a soft spot for the girl, Hansel's woman. Why should he care? Why did it matter at all? They shifted uneasily in their chairs and beer bottles clinked.
How did she take it, Edward? Two-Tie asked.
She doing all right, Medicine Ed replied, dropping his eyes.
And still the old man wasn't finished; Two-Tie said in a wheeze that for him was almost a shout: He's gonna beg her, beg her, to keep the change. The little goniff!
The company exchanged furtive glances, then Deucey dared to say: It might not be his two grand to give up. Like Kidstuff says, D'Ambrisi never had two nickels to rub together unless somebody gave it to him.
The word be round to leave that horse alone, Medicine Ed said. D'Ambrisi too weak to go in your face lessen somebody be leaning on him. And you know he ain't gone train that horse hisself. Somebody got to tell him what to do.
So who? Two-Tie said. They blinked at each other. Nobody knew.
Two-Tie pushed off the table and scuffed up and down the room, scratching wildly at the thin strands on his forehead. Elizabeth sat up and followed him with her eyes, her head waving left and right each time he passed. Kidstuff, Deucey and Medicine Ed looked away, embarrassed. Two-Tie was a great gentleman. Others thought of him that way and so did he himself. As a gentleman he was supposed to be punctilious about the old ways and above all unexcitable. He was not supposed to beat the bushes for his enemies. He didn't have enemies. From the little wars of territory that happened all around him, he had always stayed aloof. He didn't pretend he was better than he was and he had no private attachments, other than to his dog. And so the big question was, what did he care about that old horse? But having come across something truly shadowy and strange in the old gentleman, nobody wanted to ask. Two-Tie dealt a few hands, but nobody took fire, nobody felt lucky, and before the game ever got going, this one and that one remembered some reason they had to be back wherever they came from, and by three in the morning, they were all gone.
GET ME MR. SMITHERS, DEAR.
Suitcase. Suitcase! the girl screeched. I don't think he can hear me, Mr. Two-Tie, she said, he just went out the office in a big hurry. He didn't even stop to put on his coat.
I can wait. Run after him, dear. Two-Tie gazed out his back window at the stale snow, which molded a bunch of junked counter stools from the Ritzy Lunch into giant egg cups. When his mother went into Levindale at the age of 92, the last year of her life, they used to bring her an egg every morning in an egg cup like that. He liked to come in at six a.m. and be the one to feed it to her, when he was in the city. He liked taking care of some living thing he loved. Why hadn't he seen that when he was still with Lillian? By the time he knew that about himself, it was too late.
He would take the back road out of the racetrack and cross over the parkway to Levindale as soon as the dawn workouts were over. The colored attendant was glad to let him take his mother's tray off the loaded cart. There was something satisfying about tapping in the crown of the pure white shell with a small spoon, dipping the spoon in the tidy hole and carrying the gold-and-white pulp to his mother's still oddly pretty mouth, a little bow-shaped flapper's mouth at the bottom of a dense nest of wrinkles. But sometimes he opened a hole in the egg and the clear slimy liquid ran all over his hand. The egg was raw. He would be disgusted. His mother had given up her last dime to Jewish charities to get in Levindale. Why couldn't they get a little thing like that right every time? These are helpless people in here, he would think. And then he would speak to the management.
Hello? hello? the girl said.
I'm still here, dear.
Ain't he picked up yet? I don't know where he went now.
I got all morning. You go tell Mr. Smithers I'm on the line. The phone bonked down again.
Elizabeth groaned patiently and dropped at his feet. She had been expecting to go on a walk. Now that she was old, he noticed her gray speckled cheeks puffed in and out a tiny bit, like a curtain in a breeze, with every breath she took. Two-Tie lifted Elizabeth's lip with a finger. On the two longest teeth there was a deposit of yellow crud like amber up by the gum, but the points were clean. Haslipp, the racetrack vet, had told him to have her teeth scraped before the gums started to bleed, but Haslipp wouldn't try it himself on a wide-awake eighty-pound dog, and Two-Tie didn't want to put her under just for her teeth. He knew that once they knock you out, you ain't yourself for five, six weeks at least, and once in a long while somebody don't wake up at all. Which admittedly it's rare, but it happens, and there's no telling which player is going to draw the old maid. He scratched the long gulch under Elizabeth's chin with one finger.
Two-Tie? you there?
I'm here.
I was going to call you before, Suitcase said, but something come up.
So talk, Two-Tie said coldly. He waited.
I got some bad news. In the third last night? Hickok's old horse Pelter win for two thousand for Hansel. The horse win going away but he got claimed. That little fucker D'Ambrisi took him.
That sit?
That's it.
How about you tell me something I don't know, Vernon?
Like what? Suitcase whined with faint defiance, you said you want to know everything that goes down with Hansel, your niece and that horse. So I'm telling you.
The claim is twelve hours old already, Vernon. I got to wait twelve hours for news like this, what do I need you for? I can read it in the Telegraph.
Hey, last night I know you're going to hear about it. I know Jojo's going over there to play cards. Tell you the truth, I figure it's taken care of.
Jojo? What does Jojo have to do with it? What does Jojo know? Nutting. And Jojo don't owe me no explanations.
What's to explain? Suitcase asked peevishly. I put the word around like you said. I done what I could, Two-Tie. There ain't no law against claiming Pelter. D'Ambrisi run a horse already in the meeting, so how can I stop him if he really wants that horse?
Don't tell me why you couldn't stop that nobody. Tell me what I don't know. Who bought that horse?
D'Ambrisi bought him.
Who paid?
D'Ambrisi paid cash, twenty nice new hundred-dollar bills.
Yeah, well, where did he get it? Who put him up to it? Who paid him?
Suitcase said nothing.
All right, Vernon. It's gotta be Joe Dale. You wouldn't cover up for nobody else but Joe Dale. Just tell me why? What does he get out of it? What the hell does Bigg want with a used-up old stakes horse? A sentimental claim like that, I don't see it. Why he's insulting me like this?
Suitcase said: Aaaay, let it go, Two-Tie-I mean who believed you could really give a fuck about that horse when you don't even own a piece of him?
Maybe you think I'm slipping and I don't mean what I say no more.
Come on, don't get excited. It's not that big.
You'll find out if I mean what I say, Two-Tie promised, panting slightly. I'll talk to Baltimore. That sweet young woman will have her horse back tomorrow night latest. You think D'Ambrisi could cooperate before, you watch him turn somersaults for Posner. He's got a spine made out of silly putty, that two-dollar tout.
You're calling Posner? Suitcase said mournfully, after a pause. Over this? You honestly think it's worth it?
What I think ain't nothing. My niece is no racetracker. She needs to be protected from sharks and loonies. And vicious assholes. And thieves. That was your job, Vernon.
My job.
Ain't the happiness of your family worth more than money to you? Don't you do what you can?
Sure, Suitcase said dispiritedly.
If you can't do your job, if I got to do your job for you from this side of the river, I need help.
The niece better be very very grateful for the trouble she's causing, Suitcase muttered.
Umbeschrien, Two-Tie said. God forbid she should be grateful. She don't know nothing about it.
The telephone went dead, except for the two men's heavy sighs. Finally Suitcase changed the subject.
On that other matter. Lord of Misrule. Summer meeting, August 1. Maybe I can do sumpm for you after all.
Oh. Is that so?
Standish come up with some Drillers and Dredgers Association dough-the bargeman, like you mentioned.
You don't say.
How about we write an allowance race with a fancy name and make it the feature and jack up the purse five grand?
Good, good, Two-Tie said. I was beginning to wonder if we couldn't do business no more. All of a sudden we seemed to had a wrong number. Or a bad connection or sumpm.
The Low River Ramble-how does that sound?
Call it whatever you damn please, Two-Tie said.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON Medicine Ed seen the frizzly hair girl laying there in the straw in Pelter's old stall, with her arms folded under her head and her face long as the busride home. She was dreaming on the cobwebs up by the roof, looking at the long beards that hung out of last year's nests, and that's when a hurtful remembrance come over him, no rest, no peace. He thought of that tough little filly Broomstick he worked on at Santa Anita, a ink-black two-year-old they were schooling for the Venus, a grass runner with ankles like champagne glasses. He used to whistle for her whenever he come on the shedrow, she would poke her head out the stall and nod her head up and down at him, where you been? At night he liked to drink and and lay down in the stall with her in the good smelling straw. She was the onliest horse he ever felt tied to in that way. Then he got in a deep hole-shooting crap was his downfall in them days, when he still drank-and he went to the goofer powder for the third time. He was in the van with Broomstick when she snapped her leg, coming home from her last race before the Venus, a tightening mile she win going away at Hollywood Park.
He could tell the frizzly hair girl that a groom might have that feeling in his life for one horse and one horse only. Then you put it away. For it tore out a piece of you to care for a horse like that. Only, last night he disremembered that he was ever that tangled up in a horse. After she lose Pelter, she was sitting on the edge of the shedrow, with her feet dragging in the dirt road. Just staring at the white steam curling off the dung pile by the back gate and the cheap horses going round and round in the dark on Joe Dale Bigg's hot-walking machine. Even with them blindman dark glasses hiding her eyes, Medicine Ed could read her mind: she was asking herself what she be doing here on the racetrack at all. It was a better question than what she worry him with every day: has he ever rode a horse and what barns has he worked for and where is his people. Last night she got on his last nerve with her sad and draggyfied face. Ain't they got the win purse and the claim check for more than what they paid for the horse? What was the use of crying?
And meanwhile the young fool was fixing to claim back the red horse, The Mahdi, in the sixth, and so high on hisself he ain't hardly notice about Pelter. He run up and down sparking, and for once he want to do all the work in the barn with his own soft white hand. The frizzly hair girl had him a stall ready round the back side of the barn, turned out it was no need behind Pelter getting claimed, but the young fool taken the far stall for the red horse anyhow. Maybe it was to stay with everything fresh, for luck, or maybe he just want to dwell on the other side of the barn where he don't have to look at the girl.
Medicine Ed could understand. One look at her and a man could not feel satisfied. One look at her, the way she scrooched down on the curb of the shedrow and eyeballed that smoking dung pile in the ice cold dark, surely would cast the young fool down just when he was feeling lucky. A man like to believe his raggedy-patch days is finally behind him. Just to think it is like a cunjure on nature to do his bidding. Well, one look at such as her and a man could get down and lose his strong belief and begin to linger and feel helpless as a newborn babe. So the young fool wouldn't look at her. And which Medicine Ed could understand it: the young fool have to praise his luck while he can.
How do you like that, Ed, we got The Mahdi back, The Mahdi, Hansel was laughing, and he laid twenty dollars on Medicine Ed right then and they smacked the plank. Then the young fool give the red horse a bath and blanket and walk him. He fed him that hot mash and whistled off key to bring down his piss, and for an hour it was a lot of busy white steam rising offen the north side of the barn up to the stars. And meanwhile the frizzly hair girl setting there on the south side in the cold with not one word to nobody.
That was last night. Today she come on the shedrow at five in the morning and work like any other day, only she don't say much. Then in the afternoon Medicine Ed see her laying down in Pelter's stall, and suddenly he can't feel satisfied. She doing all right, he told Two-Tie last night. But last night Two-Tie was saying he could get that horse back for her. It was some hope by today the old gentleman has come home to his senses. Medicine Ed don't want to study on such craziness. But still she is Two-Tie blood kin. He ought not to leave her there without a kind word.
He stand behind the door in the tack room, peering through the crack, trying to think up a word of comfort he might say. But nothing come to mind before the midnight blue steel-top Cadillac noses up the frozen dirt road between shedrows, crackling the skin of ice on all them puddles. The Sedan de Ville stops on a slant so nobody can't drive by, going or either coming. Then the driver's purple window sinks into the door. Joe Dale alone and driving. He leans out over his big gold watch. He smiles and blinks his eyes into the stall where the frizzly hair girl is laying down and he say, Time on your hands, eh? This the first one you lost? She don't say nothing. No pain like that first one. Say, can I ask you something?
What?
Medicine Ed say this for the young fool's woman, she don't give a damn if it is Joe Dale. She don't like him. Her voice say you ain't nothing.
D'Ambrisi don't know what to do with that horse, he say. So suppose I hear something like the horse goes off his feed. Can I come around and ask you what to do with him? Which I know it ain't exactly kosher but… He shrugged.
Medicine Ed squints through the crack behind the tack room door at Joe Dale Bigg, tryna see what the young girl see. Gold watch and diamond finger rings, fifteen-dollar barber job on his big head, high on top, brushed not greased. Everything high class. But she don't like him. What kind of idiot do you think I am? she says.
Hey, you care about that horse, ain't it?
The frizzly hair girl don't answer.
I mean, who can say what keeps a horse running at ten years old?
Nine, she say.
Class can't explain it. Science can't explain it. Alls I know-old Hickok had it. You had it. But for goddamn sure D'Ambrisi don't have it. It's going to be all downhill from here for Pelter. If Breezy don't cripple him, maybe some young ladies' riding school will buy him cheap. He's a nice horse, ain't it? Good manners?
He's a very nice horse.
So maybe he gets a few more years of trail rides and virgin twats around his neck. It ain't a bad life. He eyeball her. Naaa, come to think of it, the society girls will never go for Pelter. He's got a Jewish nose.
Go to hell, the frizzly hair girl say.
Joe Dale laughed. I wonder what got into D'Ambrisi anyway. He's no horseman and he even knows it. He's gonna wish he never heard of that horse. Maybe he's sorry already. You want I should talk to him?
What do you mean? Talk to him about what? the girl say real slow. She nosing round the bait now. Leave it alone, Medicine Ed say into her.
D'Ambrisi's an old gom-bah, Joe Dale say. He already knows he's got a problem. I mean the horse is in jail for a month. He comes to me cause he don't know what to do with the horse, so now I'm twisting his arm, I tell him, get off the horse right away, he gets his dough back-how he's gonna say no to a nice young girl like you?
He's a friend of yours?
Works for me sometimes. This and that. Who didn't use to work for me around here? Hey-Joe Dale start to blinking like he just had him a idea, something he ain't thought of it before. Hey, baby, get in the car. We'll go talk to the Breeze right now.
Go where? the girl say. What barn is he in? I'll walk over there and meet you.
Naaa, ya see, Breezy was thinking about turning him out for two, three weeks, long as he's in jail. Let him cool out, eat grass. He ain't running the horse for no twenty-five hundred. I don't think so! Even Breezy ain't that dumb.
Go where? she say again. Where is he?
So I tell Breezy he can use a stall at my place if he wants. He took me up on it.
Pelter is at your farm? She's in the door of the stall now, swaying back and forth in her blindman glasses. Medicine Ed think she taking a caution, but no.
I can get him back for you, Joe Dale tell her.
Don't get in that dark window automobile with that gangster, you know he has hurt people, Medicine Ed try to say into her, but she ain't listening. The more she know she ought not to go near that car the color of night, the closer she drift. The door shut behind her with a soft chunk like a ice box and she gone. Behind them purple windows Medicine Ed can't see nothing. The midnight blue Sedan de Ville crush over thin-ice puddles and round the corner. Behind Barn L, then Barn J, he catch the Cadillac rolling slow towards the front gate. Medicine Ed light out for the pay phone back of the track kitchen, fast as his stick leg can wamble.
NOT GOOD, EDWARD. Not good. When was this?
Only just now.
This is not good news, Two-Tie said. This ain't good news at all, because D'Ambrisi goes over there himself this afternoon to pick up the horse, as soon as he organizes a van. It won't take him long because I happen to know that D'Ambrisi is hot to get out from under that horse any way he can. I hear he has talked to certain important people out of town and he don't want Pelter no more. He don't want his name on those foaling papers even one more night. Have you seen him yet?
I ain't seen him.
Well, you will. The horse is coming back to Hansel and the girl. And to you, Edward.
Medicine Ed was silent.
Naturally Joe Dale won't like it when he finds out he has to get off that horse. You sure they went to his farm?
That's what he say.
Did Joe Dale have his boys with him?
Wasn't nobody in the car but Joe Dale. And her.
Thank you, Edward.
Two-Tie reached in back of his twenty-volume set of The Book of Knowledge for his Browning 9mm, and called down at the Ritzy Lunch for Roy, of Roy's Taxicab. He went to the back window and fumbled with the rod of the dusty venetian blind; his small fat hand was trembling. He hadn't touched a gun in eighteen months, since he'd backed off making the circuit of race meetings. He had never carried a gun in town. It was starting to rain. Already when Roy pulled his cab around a mound of brown paper boxes into Two-Tie's alley, the boxes were slumping and the rain lay on the dirty ice of the parking lot in glowing gray sheets. He got down his umbrella. Elizabeth went to the door and, refusing to make way for him, eyeballed the door knob insistently. Not today, Elizabeth. Go lay down. She didn't move. O for god's sake. All right. Come on, he said, knowing it was a bad idea. Obviously, if anything happened to him, Elizabeth had no future. The fact was, neither of them had much future, even if they never ran into trouble like this. It was also true that two hours in Roy's backseat in the cold left Elizabeth lame behind for a week. When they crossed the Powhatan Point bridge she was still looking around at her bony tush and turning clumsy circles back there, trying to get comfortable.
TWO DAYS AFTER she lost Pelter, two days after you claimed back The Mahdi, you noticed she wasn't there and you went looking for her. In fact she had been remote and somewhat morose ever since you came back from the city with the money. Now that you had The Mahdi back, you could afford to be generous. It was time to tell her that, beside her, the women of the caravanseries were as the dust that blows across the highway. She meant more than any rapacious blonde you met on the road who offered you a loose thousand or two and her husband's bed for a night. She, your twin, had your soul in her keeping, pinned at her waist in her little rose sachet.
When she didn't show up in the trailer at noon you went looking for her. But she wasn't straightening the tack room or mucking a stall or hauling water or walking some fractious horse, she was nowhere. You looked in the track kitchen. Lately she had been flirting there after the morning works with that little blacksmith Kidstuff, a bona fide cowboy from Louisiana, former rodeo clown, red brown, probably half Indian, who drank a bit. You liked her to flirt, and more than to flirt-to tempt herself with these good fellows. You liked the general ripple of nerves when you dangled her in front of them, and the surge of muscle when you reeled her back. But she wasn't in the track kitchen, though Kidstuff was there, sprawled in an orange dinette chair in his cowboy boots, with a toothpick traveling up and down his very white teeth.
You went back to Barn Z to look in Pelter's empty stall. Maybe she was curled up in there again under a cocoon of horse blankets. It was high time-now that you had The Mahdi back-to intrude on her innocence, to pet away her girlish grief, to prick her dark and deep and wake her to you-to remind her where the bottom really was, how steep and perilous, and to pull her steel-tipped boots on for her. For you two still had a long way to go.
And that's why you recoiled in disgust to find him waiting for you there-that nothing D'Ambrisi-because of who he wasn't as much as who he was. The runt who claimed Pelter was slouching in front of Pelter's old stall like some some cowardly low-rent demon, in bad even with his master Asmodeus, literally quaking in his tasseled Italian loafers.
You gotta help me, he pipes up.
Idling in the dirt road next to Barn Z was that burnt-out pony-girl's, what's-her-name's, incredibly rusted Valiant, shlepping her even more decrepit one-horse trailer. Penny. Penny was famous because she would do anything for drugs, or even, you happened to know, for the right person, without drugs. But Penny wasn't behind the wheel. What do you want, Breezy?
D'Ambrisi's nostrils quivered. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Pelter's empty stall. I know the word is out not to claim that horse, he stammered. I swear to god I never wanted the horse. Joe Dale made me take him. Joe Dale put up the bread.
You shook your head, in distaste as much as disbelief. What's this all about? Why would Joe Dale want that horse? What do you want from me-you want me to take him back? I'll check him over and if he's okay, sure, I'll take him back.
You moved toward the trailer, which was patched with great hardened gobs of something that looked like chewing gum, and smeared an unpleasant pink.
No, that ain't it. The horse ain't here, D'Ambrisi whined. What Joe Dale wants the horse for, I swear I don't know. He's down Joe Dale's farm-ya see?
No I don't see.
What it is-I got a phone call from Baltimore today-you colly? Arnie Posner, personally, gives me down the road. I ain't thinking of the big picture. I gotta listen to people what are bigger than me, what can take care of certain things for me, and has done so in the past-like Two-Tie. Which is true, he almost sobbed, Two-Tie's been good to me. But what can I do if Joe Dale tangles me up in this thing? Joe Dale's bigger than me too.
So what do you want from me?
Posner says give back the horse. Fine by me, I says, only I ain't going down there on the farm by myself and tell Joe Dale. Either Biggy'll tear my ears off or Posner fixes it so I can't show my face at any track east of Cleveland. What am I supposed to do?
He was really crying now and you turned your face away in disgust. You happened to glance down the thin strip of grass behind the barn. And that way you saw, for once, Medicine Ed approach, catch sight of you, and start to fade off again between the shedrows.
Hey, Ed. He stopped. Where is she? you snapped. You were getting just a glimmer now of what was going on. What's it all about? Where's Maggie?
She gone. Left outa here half a hour ago.
What do you mean she left? The Grand Prix has a flat and I've got the truck. How did she leave?
She get in that blue silver-top Cadillac with Joe Dale Bigg.
You seized a shank, gave D'Ambrisi a rough shove towards the dented, pink-smeared horse trailer, and followed him into the road.
SHE KNEW SHE SHOULDN'T get in his car, but it was like Joe Dale Bigg exuded some kind of sticky stuff and she got caught in it and couldn't stop. She didn't even like his plump pale face, the satisfied smile on the rather beautiful Roman lips, and the blueblack growth of beard over his jowls that had the look of pepper on white cheese. She could see the dotted lines around everything he was trying to do, but she overestimated herself, let herself listen and then he was pulling her in. And next she knew, she was sinking into the silvery leather front seat of the Sedan de Ville. All right, he had mob connections and a sadistic streak but he wasn't going to kill her, was he? She heard the power locks suck in on all four sides of the Cadillac, ka-chunk. She remembered that nobody could see her through these blue-tinted windows. No one knew she was here.
The farm was up one of the red dirt roads that led into the hills, those state roads named for logging camps or mines or chocolatey creeks, here called runs, all without marker or sign. For all his dough, Joe Dale turned down a two-track as rutted and unprepossessing as the one to the Pichot place in Charles Town. She could see steep fenced pastures through the trees, horses grazing in patchy snow. The fences were sturdy but they were cow fences, wire, not wood. A deep ditch on the lower side of the dirt two-track got her attention. It had washed out so badly that the heavy car slid again and again on the slick red edge of a crevasse. Maggie wished that the Cadillac would roll over into it, breaking both their heads, but as ever her magical powers were unsupported by faith. Her weak curses had protected many a miscreant in the past and did so again now. The Cadillac floated over violent declivities and across fatal canyons and rolled to the bottom of the hill unscratched.
Joe Dale pulled up in a bare yard of house trailers and horse trailers strewn about without logic. The paddocks were squares of frozen mud, an idle hot-walking machine rose out of a churned brown ring in the snow, and at the far end of the hollow stood two long wooden horse barns in need of paint that probably looked more dilapidated than they were. Horses were everywhere she looked, shaggy like big wild ponies in their winter coats. It was a low overhead, high turnover operation. She wondered if Joe Dale's owners ever came around. Everybody said he was in with the mob but he had owners who certainly weren't crooks. Probably they were as scared of him as she was. Maggie had seen them around the shedrow, looking nervous and out of their depth in their high heels and dressy overcoats, not even all that rich by the look of them, and they too turned over fast. It probably didn't take Joe Dale long to shake them down for more than they could spare.
Three hands who looked more like sawyers than grooms were leaning against the paddock fence. Joe Dale crooked his finger and the biggest of them came over to the car. The giant wore a tight red bandana around a forehead too small for his big cheeks; it didn't quite hide the dented half moon of a scar over little blue eyes. Biggy, Spinoza, and the dentist. Everyone knew that story.
Get this young lady a soft drink, son, she's going to be here a while. And get me one too.
She followed Joe Dale towards the most presentable of the trailers. It stood at the far end of the hollow, next to the second barn; unfenced woods ran up the slope behind it. You can still run away, Maggie reminded herself, but then she followed him up the metal stair.
The trailer was overheated, and like every warm building on a horse farm in March, parched and bleary with pinkish dust. Joe Dale sat in the desk chair. She sat between stacks of yellowing Telegraphs on the sofa. Biggy brought them open Cokes in bottles and she nervously drank hers down at once. For some reason this felt queerly like a job interview, and for a lowly waitress gig at that, with Maggie begging for a job in her rundown shoes, cheap watch and smelly hair, and Joe Dale, the manager, looking her over, his clean hairy hands spread on plump thighs. His thick legs made his blond silk trousers as tight as a pair of good cigars. His over-ripeness made her dizzy. She set the Coke bottle on the floor.
Okay, baby, now I got you here I'm going to tell you something I did which I hope you won't be mad at me, on account of you have to see I really got a thing for you. Did you know I got a thing for you? Maggie slouched deeper into the couch and watched him.
I claimed that horse. Yeah. I put D'Ambrisi up to it. D'Ambrisi don't have a pot to pee in. You colly? He was working for me. He does what I say. Do you know why I claimed that horse?
Maggie shook her head. She felt irrelevantly insulted. She saw that to Joe Dale the worthlessness of her horse went without saying.
I claimed that horse because I want to have something you care about. I don't want to take him away from you. The opposite of that. I want to give him to you. If I like a lady I want to give her something, something she really wants, something so big she'll see she needs me. I want to give her something that will tie her to me, for a little while anyway. I want her to see I was really thinking about her, who she is, when I got this something for her-you see what I mean? I wasn't going to buy you a diamond bracelet. You ain't the type. I wouldn't even want to see you in a diamond bracelet. I like you in that little stripe shirt you wear. Yeah. Tell you the truth, from the first time I see you I want to reach my hands under it. You think that might ever happen? You think I might get to you? O well. He sighed, turned his hands over in appeal, and his big ring clinked against the desk top. Excuse me. I shouldn't of brought it up. You want to see the horse first.
She saw that Joe Dale was standing in the metal doorway of the trailer smiling at her, waiting for her, and she wondered distantly why she wasn't there next to him, why she was sinking deeper into this filthy plaid couch that had the booby-trapped feel of a sleeper sofa, hollow and mined with dangerous springs. Somebody seemed to have opened her veins and poured cement into them. She was wide awake but heavy, so heavy that the thought of standing up and picking her way across the paper-piled floor was almost laughable. She raised a hand to push her three-blind-mice sunglasses back up her nose where they had slipped, and the whole arm felt like a bag of wet sand. She could barely lift it. There was feeling in it-she pushed her thumbnail into her fingerpads to make sure-but the muscles she was so proud of seemed to have dissolved.
… see Pelter? Joe Dale was saying. Without asking herself why, she decided not to let on to Joe Dale what was happening to her. But what exactly was happening to her? Her body was inert or almost inert, her mind bobbed above it on a short string, like a helium balloon, unchanged from itself but aware of its own smooth pointlessness… your horse? he smiled. His custard pallor was making her sick. But she could pretend not to notice. She couldn't run in this condition. She had to use that little balloon to lift herself off the couch and go along with him until she saw some chance. Her feet pushed against the floor and she lurched across the room. It was like swimming through glass. The effort made her hot and nauseous and caused a great din, like an open hydrant, so that in the doorway she saw his mouth move but had no idea what he was saying.
Coming, she said, coming. He was still smiling but watching her carefully. All at once she understood that he had given her some drug and was waiting for it to show. She tried to stiffen her joints inside the jelly they were turning into, but for all her concentration she aimed at the door and tacked slowly to the window. She straightened up, pushed off the sill and tried again.
You aren't sick, baby, are you? You need help? Joe Dale said.
I'm fine, she replied, from a cave in a black rock, one mossy tonsil dangling from its wet roof. She followed him out the doorway, down the unpainted wooden stoop, into the barn, her hands catching clumsily at anything that stuck out along the way.
Then they were standing in a dark stall inside a high wooden gate, no flimsy webbing, and here was Pelter. She could hardly raise her chin to look at her horse; the effort to put a hand on him rocked her back against the planking. Yes, the place was solidly built. Unpainted but built to last. Which brought up the question, how long could all this last. Get this young lady a soft drink. She's going to be here awhile. What, then, was the plan? When she tried to focus on Joe Dale's face, her legs sank away underneath her, she sat down heavily on her tailbone in the straw, and she was looking not in his eyes but at his kneecap. She observed again that he was fleshy, plushy, so that his beautiful trousers were tight at the thigh. His right leg had a faint gray smudge on the pleat along the shin. The round thigh, the perfect crease, the gray smudge, made her deeply sick.
I'm sick, she groaned. What did you give me in that Coke?
I didn't give you anything, he said, smiling broadly, but I could give you something. If you wanted. If I give a lady something, it's going to be to help her relax. A young lady is always more entertaining when she stops worrying about business. If you're feeling loose, why not go with it? Have some fun with it. You got your horse back, ain't it? You should be feeling good. Don't you think you owe me just a little bit of good feeling? Instead of looking at me all the time with that sad face like your canary bird died.
Cause you got me to come here doesn't mean I'm getting my horse back, Maggie observed with dull logic. It just means I'm an idiot and you're an asshole.
Hey, go ahead and insult me, call me a liar if you want-you can still have your horse. Once you get to the road, it's only three miles to the track, almost all downhill. I'll lend you a shank. I'll even show you which way to walk.
Walk! Maggie said. I can't even stand. I weigh a thousand pounds.
Joe Dale laughed delightedly. Hey, he said, a thousand pounds. Just like a horse. So I guess Biggy got the right bottle, for once. You know Biggy ain't the swiftest.
Maggie stared at him. I believe you're telling me you gave me goddamn acepromazine.
Joe Dale just smiled.
But why? Why would you do a thing like that?
Not that I gave you anything-I ain't owning up to anything like that-but when I entertain a lady I like her to be completely in my hands. If you follow me.
I was already in your hands, Maggie said.
Yeah, but I don't like her to be running off as soon as she gets a little spooked. Until she has a chance to think about everything I can do for her. I want her to say, Joe Dale, I'm glad I hooked up with you whatever happens. Better in than out. Better mine than somebody else's. And I got to tell you the truth, baby, I don't see nobody else out there for you.
What do you have in mind? Maggie said.
Unh, unh, unh, that's just what I don't want-questions. No questions. What I want from you is your okay: whatever happens, Joe Dale. See? You're still in charge. If I was going to harm you, would I ask your permission? You got to show a little faith, baby. I promise you won't get hurt. You got your horse back, ain't it? You're going home in one piece. You're going home as good as you got here. In fact, better. You don't have to tell nobody nothing about what happened over here. All's you have to say is: okay, Joe Dale, I'm with you. And I'm going to make you as happy as you made me.
He crossed his arms and waited.
My name isn't baby.
How can I call you Maggie? he said. Maggie. It sounds like an old bag.
Maggie stopped fighting the urge to flop back in the straw. She lay down and stared up at the rough gray rafters, which were gloomy but thick and tightly joined and not even old. She had been right, the place was solid as a cavalry stockade. But there could be no question of staying here and doing what he wanted. She was quite sure that if she said no, he would hurt her, and if she said yes, he would hurt her very much.
She felt something familiar and pleasant at her knees-Pelter nosing through straw between her sprawled legs. Without having to raise her arm she could press the side of a hand against his nostril and feel its balmy gust.
When do I get the papers on my horse? Maggie asked.
No questions, Joe Dale smiled.
No papers no deal.
This ain't a deal, Joe Dale said. It's a gift. I don't think you get that yet.
No, I don't get it.
Well, I want you to stay here and think about it until you get it. I don't want you to go away and have to remember you blew your luck. I don't want you saying to yourself I could have had my horse back, and I could have had Joe Dale Bigg for a friend, just by putting my trust in him for one cotton-picking day. All I had to do was give my There was a commotion outside-some kind of distant shouting, probably an animal running loose-and Joe Dale, who already had his hand on the latch, went out in no hurry and shut the gate behind him. Maggie heard the outside bolt slide across and, through the crack at the bottom of the gate, watched his feet clap away on the earth floor. The crack was only a crack. On the other hand the high gate had no lock. Joe Dale was that sure she wouldn't even try to get away.
He presumed correctly. She tried to feel angry, for anger might pump up her muscles, but anger seemed to need a body to conceive of itself at all. If she could jimmy herself up the planking inch by inch, she could reach over and unlatch the latch at the top of the gate, but then what? Drag herself out of the barn on her belly? How far would she get like that?
And he had even left her with her horse. He had a nerve to figure her for such a klutz-but he was right, she had never been much of a rider and in all her life had never sat a horse bareback, let alone Pelter, a racehorse, without even reins and a bit in his mouth. Still, think of it: Maggie on Pelter. No, she greatly doubted she could get her body up off the ground and onto the horse, never mind stay on the horse once she got there.
She had to try, of course. Nowadays you couldn't just let some Black Bart tie you to the railroad tracks and walk away and leave you. The age demanded signs of a struggle even from a corpse. And there was another way of looking at this: the drug made gravity her friend, so that all at once the earth and her body loved each other dearly and fought to be together and worked as one against the forces that might part them. She had always thought that if she knew what was worth hanging onto in life, nothing could shake her off. She'd be a saint, or at least a nun, if she knew God. She'd be Griselda if she could find a man she could live with for more than twelve months. But so far she'd been spared any such moorings. Now she had a feeling that if she could once get the horse under her, she would stick to Pelter like a tattoo-nothing could get her off him.
Once in a pet store she had brushed inattentively by a cage and the small monkey inside had snatched her by a shirt button and would not let go. She pulled backwards. The monkey had eyed her with all the grave desperation of his boredom and twisted the button tighter. She pried at the monkey's fingers with her fingers, but it was clear she would have to do him some violence, break his little fingers one by one, to get free. She finally had to rip apart her blouse. She didn't mind. She was moved. She knew she was that monkey.
That was how she dragged herself up the gate, thinking of the monkey. She felt along the rough planks for pits and cracks with her bony prehensile fingers, leaning her bag of bones against them and squeezing herself up. She ended up lying across the top of the gate with one shoe on, one shoe off, her naked foot shakily stuffed in the water bucket. She kissed the air for Pelter and he came over.
She slung an arm and leg over him. He stiffened and danced away a little. Whoa, whoa, she begged him. One hand still clung to the top of the gate while her foot weakly pried at his long back end. The gap widened and she sagged into the hole. Come back, come back, come back, come back. Suddenly, for no reason, he stepped under her. She was on. Okay, papa, here goes. Her hand eased over the far side of the planking, turned the bolt, opened the latch, and the gate swung open.
Pelter stared forward a moment. He took in the wide open shedrow, the dark wooded slope all around, men shouting in the yard below and, straight ahead, the unobstructed sweep of light to the dirt road. He felt Maggie's warm weight on his back and the strange freedom of his head, and burst into a gallop. She sank her fingers in his mane, tried to spread her dead body all over his neck and shoulders like a cape. When he ran flat out she found he was level as a table. It was easy. She felt sure that if he didn't prop or swerve she would never fall off. She wasn't sure why he ran so fast, whether it was mischief or exuberance, whether he knew how little it would take to lose her, whether he schemed on losing her, but for the moment she felt the same strand of light drawing them both on. The long dirt driveway cut across the hillside for a short way, its red naked ruts lined with filmy ice like waxed paper. Pelter made a great racket galloping over the skeletal puddles but didn't slip. Maggie was elated. A wonderful thing had happened. She was numb and disconnected but still she was making a getaway on Pelter. She could already see the open meadows tilting steeply up towards the county road. She was riding a racehorse out of the hands of a storybook villain. Her luck had changed. She would make it.
Then suddenly the road dipped down to a white metal ranchhouse before it bent back up to the high meadows and the road to town. Somehow she held on as they barreled downhill. In front of the long one-story building, plain as a shoebox, a yellow taxicab was idling. In the cold bottomland it floated on a little cloud of its own exhaust like a chicken on a platter. The cabdriver, a lanky old fellow in a gray felt baseball jacket, sat smoking a cigarette in the open window. As Maggie and Pelter galloped alongside, the window behind his head was suddenly cram full of the pointed ears and broad muzzle of a wildly barking German shepherd. Pelter veered away, back towards the wooded hill, and Maggie rolled off his back, rolled over and over through the frozen puddles and came to a stop against the taxicab. She lay on her back blinking up at the furious dog. On second glance the animal looked old and blind and as shocked to find itself carrying on this way as Pelter had been. It looked down into Maggie's upturned face, seemed abashed, as though Maggie had yelled at it, pinned its grizzled ears, and ducked its grizzled jaw back into the cab.
The storm door of the metal ranchhouse wheezed open and an elderly gentleman in a rumpled misbuttoned camel's hair overcoat and a-Maggie blinked, could that be two bow ties, one black, one striped?-came limping out. His face was deeply grooved. He was bag-bellied and thin-legged and his wooly eyebrows tilted up to a point in the middle of his forehead that was philosophical and almost comically sad. He was a lacrimose and remarkable-looking fellow, and Maggie saw at once two other even more remarkable things about him: he was waving a big blue squarish gun and he looked oddly familiar-suddenly she recognized the face in the backseat of Joe Dale's car from long ago. You are the picture of your lovely mother at twenty-but for the hair, he had said. Now he said: Margaret, my dear, are you ill? You look terrible. If Joe Dale Bigg has laid a hand on you, I swear to god he's a dead man.
Uncle Rudy? she said.
Was he Uncle Rudy? It was a question of cosmic significance. He took off his black felt hat with the green silk puggree band and held it to his chest, his sad eyebrows joined in the middle and he opened his mouth to answer. Before he could speak, Biggy burst out the aluminum door behind him and caught him a great swipe in the back of the neck. The gun went off. Biggy jumped back with a blank look, feeling his chest for holes. Maggie felt crumbs of frozen dirt bite her in the face. The dog filled the window again, barking crazily. The cabbie ducked down out of sight. Uncle Rudy, if he was Uncle Rudy, stumbled hard into the unpainted railing of the rough little stoop, bounced off and whirled around in a stiff crouch, with the blue gun smoking in front of him. Maggie noticed how small, white and hairless the hand on the gun was-a woman's plump hand in some old painting, without bones.
That's enough, Elizabeth. Quiet down. Biggy, get back in the house. I ain't going to hurt you. Your old man don't need you, you colly? Nobody gets hurt, because here's my niece. You lied in my face, you dumb jerk, but I got no beef with you. You don't got the brains to know what you did. Now get in the house. He made little pushing movements with the gun.
Biggy sniffled with rage but backed away into the ranchhouse, feeling behind him for the storm door.
Whaddaya expect of a pityfull retard like that, Uncle Rudy said. Come on, I'll take you home, Margaret.
She was crawling over the frozen bumpy ground toward the back door of the taxicab. The door handle looked as high as a weathervane.
What about the horse? He's running loose, she said hopelessly. It was all too complex. She had no strength to chase the horse, D'Ambrisi owned the horse Joe Dale Bigg had paid for the horse, and the horse had disappeared up the long dirt driveway into the woods.
You get your horse back tonight, my dear. Guaranteed. I took care of it already. Now let's get the hell out of here, Margaret. We don't want trouble. I come to take you home.
Maggie stared up at him in amazement. She had a funny feeling it was all true-that she would get her horse back tonight even though Pelter had never really been her horse, he was Tommy's-that mountains had been moved for her by this seedy fastidious gangster for unfathomable reasons, mysterious threadlike reasons that all looped around to the unseen and long ago.
Did Joe Dale harm you in any way? the man with two bow ties asked, gazing delicately off to the left of her and up into the woods. A hood's gun dangled down by his side but he had the introverted and long-suffering face of a melamid, one who teaches the rude young and gets little thanks for it.
No, she replied, thinking that, as long as she was rescued, she honestly couldn't say just what Joe Dale Bigg had been up to, and besides, if she kept her mouth shut, she might still end up with the foaling papers for Pelter, all clean and legal and everything. So she might be glad to have been tied up with Joe Dale Bigg after all.
You're getting your horse back, my dear. Certain important people, I don't mean me, looked into it for you. You believe me?
Maggie nodded.
And do me a favor. From now on, don't take nutting else from Joe Dale Bigg. Not a ride home. Not a french fry. Nutting. You colly?
Maggie nodded.
Not a nickel. Babkes, he clarified. You need money? Listen carefully, my dear. Lord of Misrule, he whispered loudly. Lord of Misrule, Margaret. Memorize that name.
THE DESIRE TO BLOW Joe Dale Bigg's head off with the Browning 9mm was so unreasonable yet so vast that Two-Tie was sorry to see him come running out of the near barn towards his cab. In a mood like this, things could come apart. Two-Tie had the aging loan shark's strong disinclination to die in jail, which would be the likely result of giving in to a passing fit of temper and emptying the Browning into Joe Dale's white forehead. In the can, Two-Tie knew, if his ticker went bad, he would have to pull strings to get a ten-minute appointment with some state-issue sawbones from Pakistan who probably spoke less English than a Mexican groom, and besides, Two-Tie had people depending on him, and he had Elizabeth.
Therefore he thought it best to try and remember what he had used to like about Joe Dale Bigg before he got too big and the leading trainer thing went to his head and brought out his Mediterranean guile and his sicko skirt-chasing tendencies. As he ran along the paddock fence, Joe Dale was huffing and puffing. His tits bounced under his tweed jacket and his face turned gray. Two-Tie didn't wish to gloat, he himself had painful neuromas under his metatarsals and occasional angina, but Joe Dale was twenty years younger than he was.
Joe Dale was West Virginia coaltown Italian but the mother had been a schoolteacher from the Bronx. Joe Dale had used to be smart, almost intellectual, compared to the average racetrack trombenik. He had had a little something extra up there under the stingy-brim, so that back then Two-Tie could have a almost decent conversation with him about the type of people they knew and the nature of business it was. But then Joe Dale won a few races and married that police chief's daughter from Steubenville and had his idiot son, and soon he turned into some kind of strange business himself. He was fundamentally a shmeer artist. He bought things and people, and horses, just to squash the notion that they were worth having. He smeared them with himself, then he got rid of them. The wife lived in Wheeling. Nobody lasted with him, except Biggy. He had classy taste, it showed in his car and his clothes, but he overdid it. He overestimated himself. His jackets cost a fortune, but you always thought he'd gained twenty pounds since he last saw his tailor. His shiny slacks pulled taut over his big behind, and fans of wrinkles crowded the armpits of his eighty-dollar sea-cotton shirts. He was bulging and creamy white at the collar, like a cheese danish, and the sight of him made Two-tie a little sick. But at least Two-Tie had talked himself out of shooting Joe Dale, or even wanting to.
For his part, as soon as he spotted Two-Tie, Joe Dale cooled down. He wiped a smile back onto his face and composed himself. He ran both hands through his stiff black hair and smiled genially and said: What can I show you, Two-Tie? He pretended not even to notice Margaret crawling over the frozen mud.
What did you do to the girl? Two-Tie started down the stoop, meaning to help his niece into the taxicab, but as soon as she saw Joe Dale coming, she managed to flounder into the back seat all by herself. You slipped her a mickey, for god's sake-what kinda pimp's trick is that? I thought better of you, Joe Dale. I really did.
Joe Dale shrugged. I honestly don't know what kinda pills she ate. Goofers. Mushrooms. These kids today. Who knows? I was just tryna give her back her horse when she went meshuggy on me. And Two-Tie. His smile got that wounded, do-me-a-favor squint. What are you waving a piece around for? This is a respectable business I run down here. It don't look good.
She didn't rat on you, for your information, Two-Tie said. She's got too much class for that. I knew her mother once, a perfect lady-educated. The dames in that family never wanted no assholes beaten up in their honor, not like some bloodthirsty snapper skirts I used to know.
Maybe they didn't have no honor to lose, Joe Dale said. Now do me a favor and as long as your taxi's here, get the fuck off my farm with the gun. You make me nervous.
The storm door burst open and it was Biggy again, this time with a deer rifle in his hands.
Put it away, shit-for-brains, Joe Dale said. I got the matter under control. I said put it down. Biggy leaned the gun in the angle of the railing. Okay, Joe Dale said. Okay. You remember Two-Tie, don't you, son?
Actually, I and Biggy were conversing only a couple minutes ago, Two-Tie said. It was about the horse. Exactly where is the horse now?
I changed my mind, said Joe Dale. I don't want to do that burnout hippy chick no favors no more. What are you in it for anyway, pal?
Don't talk about this nice young girl like that, right in front of her face. She's not feeling well. You haven't heard from D'Ambrisi?
D'Ambrisi? What the fuck are you talking about?
Two-Tie couldn't quite bring himself to make the announcement. He stood there thinking how to word it. There was no tactful way to say they were taking the horse.
D'Ambrisi's going to tell me. Joe Dale laughed. You're slipping, old man, you know that? I heard it on the grapevine and now I see it's true. The thing I don't get is what you're doing in this particular deal.
They all heard creaking and scraping and looked up the hill. Bouncing down the dirt driveway where little Margaret's horse had disappeared came the worst-looking horse van Two-Tie had ever seen, rusted out and patched in different colors like a gypsy wagon, some of its holes plugged with gray gobs of unsanded fiberglass and smeared with pink primer, the trailer sagging down dangerously over one wheel. And it was pulled by a little lime-pie green six-cylinder Valiant that ought not to be pulling nutting, even when it was new. Two-Tie shook his head. Why was he mixed up in this? He had never put a van that pityfull on the road, not even in the days when River Van and Horse Transport was nothing but an excuse to have a phone and an office, before him and Posner seen there was good money in it. Then it was sheer luck they were in place for the golden age of West Virginia bullrings, when Charles Town started siphoning off the low end claimers from Pimlico, Laurel, Bowie and Atlantic City-all of a sudden, boom, two thousand horses a year turning over at the twin half-milers on the Shenandoah. For a while they bought every used crate with wheels they dared set on the highway and the money rolled in. And now horse racing was already dying again. But he had never seen a van as pathetic as this in all his days.
The driver's scared face showed in the window, one cheek stuffed with bubblegum.
Now who the fuck wants to get in my hair. D'Ambrisi, Joe Dale said in disgust. He paced up and down, but he was beginning to be a believer. As soon as the driveway widened out, D'Ambrisi tried to back the trailer around-he wanted to park the thing in position for a fast getaway, which you really couldn't blame the shlub-and ended up with one wheel dangling over the ditch. He got out, his short neck sunk down as low as possible in his leather jacket, and started to fuss with the gate without saying nothing to nobody.
What is this fucking circus? Joe Dale shouted.
D'Ambrisi went on shakily folding out the ramp.
He got a phone call from Baltimore, said Two-Tie. He don't want that horse no more.
Let him tell me himself. What are you doing here, Breeze? You come to take your horse?
D'Ambrisi busied himself with a rusty piece of chain that had come loose from the metal plate. He waved it around helplessly, waiting for someone to tell him where it attached. No one spoke.
What the fuck can I do? he finally burst out. Posner called me up. Posner in person.
What did he say?
He said I was way out of line.
So? So? Joe Dale was not taking this well. His upper lip was icing up, for he was panting like a bull.
But I could fix it by giving the girl back her horse.
Joe Dale walked slowly over to the horse van, looked at it, and gave it a savage kick in the fender. The wheel well crumpled in like cardboard. He turned and shouted in Two-Tie's face:
You got ties? I got ties too. I'll tell you this, old man. I don't have to go crying to goddamn Baltimore to get something done. I can take care of it right here. What do you want to get in my business for? What do you care about this dropout floozy anyhow?
Maggie had managed to roll down the backseat window. Her chin was on the sill.
Look at that girl. She can't hardly hold her head up, Two-Tie observed mournfully.
Goddamn it, I ain't getting off the horse, Joe Dale shouted, until I get something back for it. This ain't the United Way.
He's my uncle, Maggie said to Joe Dale. I think.
Two-Tie almost smiled. She thought she had to explain. It was a family trait.
You think, Joe Dale said. Do me a favor-don't think.
I'm trying not to, Maggie replied, if you'd all just be quiet.
You will be compensated, Two-Tie told Joe Dale, remembering it was his part to be generous. Better than a hundred percent. I'll take care of it myself. Now where's the horse.
How do I know? Joe Dale shrugged. It's the Breeze's horse. The Breeze can do what he wants with his horse, if he can find it.
Roy of Roy's Taxicab leaned out the window. The horse dumped the girl and run up the hill into the woods, he reported. Twenty minutes ago. I seen the whole thing.
I got thirty-two head of horses on this farm, Joe Dale said. How you gonna tell which one is which?
My garsh, I'd know that Pelter anywhere, Roy said, he's a real dark bay like co'cola in the bottle, got the long back and that old Roman nose like Man o' War. I win a hundred and twenty bucks on him in the Glass Classic in 1966.
Take a shank, Maggie yelled out the window, but D'Ambrisi only hid behind the goo-patched horse trailer. Damn it, I'm going to crawl up there myself, she muttered. She sprang the door handle and fell out on the frozen mud.
Elizabeth hung out the open door above her, barking passionately. Roy got out and carefully closed the door. They heard a whinny up the hill. There was the horse, shiny with sweat, stepping drunkenly down the steep part of the rutted driveway, like after a big race, with Hansel leading him. Hansel wore a pearl gray fedora, black trousers and a wine red vest. He resembled a Galitzianer horse trader out of one of Alvin's stories.
I shoulda known you didn't have the balls to come for that horse by yourself, Joe Dale said to D'Ambrisi. You had to bring the track looney.
What makes you say Hansel is looney? Two-Tie asked worriedly. He was still collecting evidence against his niece's young man, but no one answered the question. Up close, despite his flamboyant dress, Hansel looked like a man of consequence. He had a firm, straight-legged walk which gave him authority-he might be a looney, but he was no drooling gimp. He sent Pelter up the ramp with a sharp slap on the behind.
I need you in the van, Maggie, he said. What the hell are you doing down there anyway? The girl was still sitting on the frozen ground under the door of the taxicab. He's hot-you need to rub him and keep on rubbing him till we get to the track-now let's get the hell out of here.
Can't, she said. Can't move.
She's had a bit too much, Two-Tie explained vaguely. Now that the episode was drawing to a satisfactory close, he saw no point in making personal accusations.
Somebody gave me a rhino trank, Maggie said, with a disbelieving little laugh.
Hmmm. What's that like-any fun?
Uhhh-not recommended. Kind of a graveyard preview. You get your usual boring mind, trapped in a dead body-that's it.
Hansel nodded. Hey, thanks for looking after my woman, he said pleasantly to Joe Dale, who started to smile and never saw the fist flying towards his face. Joe Dale stiffened and fell sideways into his boys like a bowling pin.
Biggy bellowed and jumped for the deergun, but Two-Tie pushed the rifle off the stoop with his rubber-soled dress shoe. The Browning still dangled from his own small hand. Elizabeth threw herself at the open taxicab window in an explosion of barks and snarls.
Want I should let her out? Roy yelled to Two-Tie, rolling the window up halfway.
Jesus no-umbeshrien-she might hurt herself.
Biggy launched himself off the stoop at Hansel and threw a roundhouse punch at his face. Hansel stepped away so that the blow only swished across his ear. Biggy stumbled back to swing again, and Hansel ducked towards the ranchhouse, picked up the deergun and swung it like a club, by the barrel, at the back of Biggy's head. The crack silenced them all. Biggy gave out a groan of weird contentment, swayed, and went down on his face like a felled tree.
The Irish boyfriends fast and strong, he ain't a coward, and he can take care of himself, Two-Tie thought. He was impressed. On the other hand he knew, with hot dizzy certainty, that there would be no end of trouble now.
Joe Dale stood propped between his boys, holding a bloody tattersall handkerchief under his nose. It's a goddamn good thing for you clowns that I'm a respectable businessman, he said quietly, through the handkerchief, or you'd have to be shitting your pants, all three of youse, knowing you're going to get hurt.
Do what you have to do. Just don't touch the niece, Two-Tie said.
The niece, Joe Dale laughed. I forgot about her. I ain't going to hurt the niece. I got other plans for the niece. Say, maybe I could swap you Biggy for her. As is. He pointed down at Biggy, who was making little crawling motions, still face down on the frozen, rootbeer-colored mud. Not much to look at, is he, he said. But neither is she.
I have met a great many slugs and sleazeballs in my racetrack days, Two-Tie announced, but you get the crown. I see you don't care if that pityfull retard lives or dies.
Okay, okay Joe Dale shrugged. I'll keep him. I'll get her some other way. Won't I, baby? She owes me and she knows she owes me.
You'll get what she owes you presently, Tommy Hansel said.
IN THE SUMMER, stunned by heat and work, she lost track of Tommy. He was in New York, seeing about a horse. The midnight blue Sedan de Ville rolled up as she was walking Pelter. They walked on, and the car inched along the shedrow beside them.
Say, that was something how he roped in that Natalie broad from New Rochelle. I keep underestimating the guy. I knew her for years-she ain't that easy. I mean she's vulgar, I-want-you-should-this and I-want-you-should-that, but she's game and she's got the bucks-for a while. Still, I worry about Tommy. Don't you worry about Tommy? He kids himself he can take what's mine without paying for it and if he flies high enough, nothing bad will happen to him. But he's so fucked I don't have to do nothing. He's so high he can't look down. Or he crashes. He's going to crash. Want to ride a dime on it? No? Hey, I thought you'd play. Joe Dale shrugged and the window rolled up and he drove away.
When Tommy is back, they never touch or eat in the trailer. Margaret no longer tries to cook on the faux wood counters with their black gummy cracks and peeling celluloid edges. At night after the races they are exhausted, at four in the morning, getting up to feed, they are not awake. Sometimes Tommy doesn't come back to the trailer at all. Whatever they are, they are not laborers. Their bodies don't thank them for this long reminder that they are not brother and sister pharaoh, not prince and courtesan, not even a proper hustler and his moll. They are working too hard for that. Or at least Maggie is-it's not entirely clear what sort of business occupies Tommy.
That first summer they knew each other, when he came home in the afternoon from the track and she from the paper, they were in bed in five minutes, with all of it: newsprint and horse manure, saddle leather, ink and hashish, past performance charts and food pages, sweet feed and recipes for blancmange and corn souffle. The sheets literally reeked of all that. The sweat-damp canyons of the featherbed were gritty with their mixture. In some way their unmiscible lives fused. Here they live the same life and are rivals to come out of it alive. They meet in the prickly dark of the tack room or not at all. They couple on haybales or in old loose straw on the dirt floor or not at all. It starts with some hoarse utterance, I want to get in your ass, and hard fingers down the front of her jeans, or the back of them, fuck me now. They are naked but scaly, with clothes pushed out of the way of orifices, they come together like insects, claspers, ovipositors, wet vacuoles. They talk in this straw-speckled darkness or not at all. Will you marry me? She laughs. Is that such a ridiculous question?
She knew she should say it, it would have been the honorable thing to say it, but she was afraid of pushing him over some edge: I'm getting out of here as soon as I can. I don't know exactly what's going on, but a girl like me-I can't be playing around with gangsters. I keep thinking I'm in a movie and then I realize I could get killed. The strangeness draws me in but in the end I can't afford it. I haven't done anything with my life.