If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  Cait and I looked at each other. Timmy held her hand. We stood there. In the distance we heard the official’s megaphoned announcement that the race would begin in five minutes. People were moving past us toward the track.

  “This isn’t right,” I said. “Walking away, giving in.”

  “That’s ’cause of who you are,” Johnny said, sounding calmer. “Tell you what, we’ll watch ’em race. Find out about the competition.”

  I suspected he was doing it more on my account than his own. We made our way back to the official.

  “No problem with us going in to watch, is there?” I said dryly.

  “Matter of fact,” he said, looking less than pleased, “there is, but I won’t push it. ’Less there’s trouble.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a hell of a lot.”

  “Samuel, don’t,” Cait warned.

  We sat in the grandstand. Johnny secured his velocipede below us, where he could watch it. It attracted a lot of attention.

  Over two dozen entrants gathered at the starting line. The winner’s prize would be fifty dollars, the distance two miles—four times around the long oval. Johnny scrutinized the racers disdainfully. Only two wore racing gear. All of the machines were wood. Closely bunched, the cyclists pedaled furiously through the first lap. The pace slackened noticeably as the pack stretched into a thin line during the second and third laps, and fell off dramatically in the stretch run.

  “Nothing,” Johnny muttered.

  One burly farmboy looked like something, though, his thick legs still pumping tirelessly as he flashed across the finish line a quarter lap ahead of the second finisher.

  The straw-haired official stepped forward and droned through his megaphone, “THE WINNER . . . SILAS ALSTON OF SYCAMORE TOWNSHIP!” Scattered applause sounded in the stands. We sat silently. A small-time, dismal affair, I thought. It was hard to see how winning this could take Johnny or anybody else very far.

  “THE WINNING TIME . . . A TWO-MILE RECORD FOR HAMILTON COUNTY . . . SEVEN MINUTES, THIRTY SECONDS!”

  “I’d’ve beat that,” Johnny said.

  “You sure?” I said, thinking it would take half a dozen of his spindly shanks to form one of the winner’s tree-trunk legs.

  “He would’ve!” Timmy said loyally.

  “For a certainty,” added Cait.

  I had an inspiration. “Johnny, why not race him in a special heat?”

  “They won’t do it” His mouth bent downward. “You’re wasting your time, Sam.”

  I got up. “Well, let’s see.”

  “You again,” the official said. “What now?”

  “How about he takes on the winner in a special race?”

  He shook his head wearily.

  “Nothing officially connected with the county,” I persisted. “Just an exhibition.”

  He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. The sweatband had flattened his pale hair in a wet oval. He put his megaphone down. “Look,” he said, “it’s done. The winner don’t need to race, he already won. ’Sides that, he’d be a mite tired to do it again.” He regarded me sourly. “And ’sides that, you don’t seem to understand the nature of things here. Suppose the nigger raced—presuming a white man’d go on the same track with him, which he wouldn’t—and he happened to win. You think it’d do him good? You think folks wouldn’t resent one of theirs shown up by a nigger? You don’t picture trouble?”

  “Stop calling him a nigger,” I said. “His name’s John.”

  A grimace of irritation passed over his face. “Suppose your . . . boy loses. Well, that’s what everybody figures should happen anyway, see? Either way no good can come out of it.”

  “Nice of you to consider everybody’s feelings,” I said. “Well, then, how about a special exhibition, just him against the clock?”

  “He’s welcome to use the track. After hours. But you’re touched if you think folks’d come out to watch a nigger wheel around in circles by himself.”

  I’d had my limit. I shot a hand out and clutched his shirt, yanking him so close that I felt his gasp of tobacco breath on my face. “Next time you call him a nigger, I’m going to slap your fucking head.”

  Eyes large, he gulped and managed, “All right.”

  I released my hold. “Now, let’s go on considering possibilities.”

  He smoothed his crumpled shirt. When he looked up again, something in his face had changed; a hint of calculation leavened his wariness.

  “Why is it you think your nig—think the boy’s so hot? He don’t look like any great shakes.”

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t know how good he is. I just want him to get his chance to ride today. Here. In front of people. With you announcing it.” I paused. “I’ve got money to argue he is pretty damn good, though, if that’s what’s called for.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt none,” he said carefully. “Tell you what. I’m willing to match my trotter again’ him, five miles to his three. Full harness rig. Hundred dollars each to make a purse. Oughta draw a fair crowd.”

  “I’ll check,” I said. “We might have a deal.”

  “In fairness I should mention that my mare’s never lost. Nobody hereabouts’ll go against her anymore.”

  “Right.”

  I put the proposition to Johnny.

  “No!” exclaimed Cait. “Samuel, how could you even think of it? Compete with an animal!”

  Somewhere in my mind a memory was sparked: a reproduction of a slave-auction poster advertising the raffle of a horse and a woman, each to become the chattel of some lucky winner. “It’s the best I could do.” Suddenly I didn’t feel so good about it.

  “I want to,” said Johnny.

  “You sure?”

  “Wow!” said Timmy.

  Johnny said, “But I’ll go two miles ’stead of three, same distance as the county race. Show them I’d’ve won, see?”

  “That’s a point.”

  “Tell him I’ll do two miles against anything over that for his rig.”

  “You may end up with worse than he’s already offered.”

  “I’ll ride.” He gripped my arm, and his yellow eyes burned into mine. “I’ll beat anything on legs or wheels today, Sam. You could bet the sky on it!”

  Probably what I’ll have to do, I thought.

  The official licked his lips and looked thoughtful when I proposed that Johnny ride two miles against his horse’s three and a half. “Shorter distance could work against me,” he said cautiously. “Three and a quarter?”

  “Three-eighths.”

  “How about a third?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “You got yourself a match.”

  I thought I detected a trace of smugness. “But,” I went on, “I want to raise the bet to five hundred—”

  “That,” he said, grinning pleasantly, “strikes me as a sporting—”

  “—against your thousand.”

  His grin slackened. “That’s a stiff amount.”

  “Your mare’s never lost, remember?”

  Considering it, he said, “You got it with you?”

  I nodded.

  “It’ll take a spell to get mine in cash,” he said. “But I think I can raise it from friends right here. Race in two hours?”

  “Fine.”

  “Nigger’s gonna race Brad Hoge’s prize mare!”

  We heard it spread over the fairgrounds. People gravitated toward the track. Cait and Timmy and I walked the other way, killing time. We viewed turbine waterwheels in Mechanics’ Hall, eyed prize food displays—Mohawk potatoes, firestone peaches, canned white cherries—and Jersey cattle and black Spanish chickens.

  Cait led us into Fine Arts Hall. There, despite Timmy’s overt disinterest, we saw prizewinners in an astonishing range of categories: best “fancy” painting, best decorated cake, best collection of insects, best woolen mittens. At the ladies’ exhibit we chatted with an exuberant seventy-six-year-old whose rag rugs had clobbered the competition. We vie
wed the latest sewing machines. I carried Timmy on my shoulders.

  We returned to the track as Johnny finished his warm-ups. There was scattered talk of betting, but nobody seemed willing to back Johnny at any odds. Maybe Hoge had gotten a bargain at two to one. Given Cait’s disapproval of gambling and dim view of this race, I didn’t tell her of my bet. In a privy I slit the lining of my coat and pulled out the five one-hundred-dollar bank notes I’d sewn inside for emergencies. They, along with a shower of coins and bills from Hoge, went into a hat held by a man introduced as Constable Williams. I kept a close eye on him.

  The harness rig appeared, guided by a boy handling the reins with casual arrogance. The mare’s roan coat glistened, rich with highlights in the hot sun. Muscles rippling, radiating nervous energy, she pranced and tossed her head like equine royalty. We’d been suckered, I thought. Poor Johnny.

  The stands were packed. A few admiring oohs mixed with the laughter that followed Johnny and the shining Demarest to the starting line. It was obvious that the crowd had never seen anything like the velocipede. Or exactly like Johnny either. The maroon trunks bagged above his skinny, knotted legs. The new shoes looked enormous. The jockey cap perched on a cushion of orange-red wool.

  “. . . RACING IN A PRIZE MATCH AGAINST THE CHAMPION TROTTER, SARAH JANE . . . JOHANN SEBASTIAN BRUHN!”

  I’d dictated the form, but I couldn’t control Hoge’s intonation. “Johann” came out comically, with hard “J” and flattened “a,” the three names drawn out to ridiculous length. The spectators, their numbers by then swelled to nearly a thousand, roared with laughter.

  “The nigger fancies hisself Dutch,” somebody behind me chortled.

  I tensed and started to turn. Cait gripped my arm. “You wanted him to have this,” she said, “so let it be.”

  Hoge raised a heavy cane and slammed it on the judge’s stand. THWACK! On the far side of the track the mare surged forward, energizing the harness rig smoothly and instantaneously. Johnny started slowly, wobbling as he built up speed. Before he was halfway through his first circuit, Sarah Jane pounded past him on the outside, enveloping him in swirls of dust.

  “Oh God,” murmured Cait.

  “She has to go six-plus laps to Johnny’s four,” I said. “It’s not over.”

  Not reassured by my own words, I tried to reconcile myself to having thrown away a hell of a lot of money.

  “ONE FIFTY-EIGHT!” Hoge boomed through his megaphone as Johnny swept below us, completing his first lap. I made a calculation and groaned mentally. To post his record time, the earlier winner had averaged 1:52 per lap. Johnny was well off that pace, and was bound to slow from fatigue. Meanwhile, the damned mare was burning up the track as if her life depended on it.

  In the second half mile Johnny appeared to get his stroke, though Sarah Jane came on very fast and was about to lap him again.

  “THREE THIRTY-EIGHT!”

  He had done his second circuit in a minute and forty seconds, nearly twenty seconds faster than the first. My gloom brightened a tiny bit. He was closing in on the earlier winner’s pace. It would be something if he could at least beat the record.

  The third lap was brutal. Johnny labored in dust stirred by the rig.

  In the searing heat it streaked to mud on his face. His drenched silks drooped on his straining body. He bent low over the handlebars and drove his legs in churning, pistonlike rhythm.

  “The poor man,” Cait said.

  “He’s still in it,” I said.

  “FIVE MINUTES, TEN SECONDS!” droned Hoge as Johnny flashed past the line below us.

  A minute thirty-two. Somehow Johnny was getting faster with each lap. Incredible pace. If he could only sustain it, maybe . . .

  The rig passed before us to enter its final circuit, scarcely a third of a lap behind Johnny. The winner would be the first one across the line. Sarah Jane’s driver used his whip to lash her heaving flanks. The rig sped around the oval, gaining inexorably.

  “He’s losing ground too fast,” I said. “Come on!”

  “It’s a cruel thing,” said Cait grimly, her hands clenched, “to man and beast.”

  “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny!” yelled Timmy, waving his arms.

  Johnny leaned into the final curve, chest heaving, strokes no longer smoothly rhythmical but frantic and flailing. Strain knotted his arms and swelled his back as he began the homestretch. His eyes were nearly closed, his mouth gasping, lips stretched in a sneer of agony.

  Behind him, like a thundering storm, Sarah Jane rolled on, closing the distance. Johnny took a desperate glance over his shoulder and forced his legs faster.

  “God in Heaven,” breathed Cait, hands on her face, “he’ll burst his heart!”

  Sarah Jane gained steadily. The driver worked the whip furiously over her ribs. Streamers of foam trailed from her mouth. Her hooves drummed a dull thudding beat on the track.

  A roar around us seemed to lift us to our feet.

  “Yes, Johnny!” I yelled.“COME ON, JOHNNY!” we screamed.

  He swept toward the finish line. Sarah Jane came up on the outside, nose almost even with his rear wheel. They were in the last twenty yards.

  “WIN IT, JOHNNY!”

  The mare’s straining head reached the velocipede’s saddle, Johnny’s shoulder . . .

  Cait covered her eyes.

  They crossed the line.

  “HOLY CHRIST!” I shrieked. “HE WON!”

  The result was unmistakable. There was no doubt, no argument. The crowd’s hubbub subsided to a buzzing.

  “Oh, he’s hurt!” cried Cait.

  The Demarest wobbled violently and toppled sideways, pitching Johnny to the track, where he lay unmoving. I vaulted over the grandstand railing. He was conscious, but his eyes were filmy and his chest heaved as he gasped for air. Must be badly dehydrated, maybe heatstroke, I thought, and carried him to the shade of the stand. Cait found ice somewhere and brought it in her scarf. She swabbed his face and wrists. Johnny stirred and groaned,

  I bent over him. “What?”

  “. . . win?”

  “You did it, buddy,” I told him. “Looked impossible, but you pulled it off.”

  He smiled weakly. “Time . . .?”

  I looked around. Hoge and the man holding the stakes were talking, frowning, heads close together.

  “Hasn’t been announced yet,” I said. “But I know you broke the record.”

  “Want to hear,” he mumbled.

  “I’ll check on it. Cait, Timmy, stay with him, okay?”

  Hoge saw me coming. He didn’t look real happy.

  “Announce it,” I said. “Huh?”

  ‘Announce Johnny’s time.”

  ‘Here’s your money.” He dumped the contents of the hat on the table between us. “I wouldn’t push farther.”

  I stuffed the money in my pocket. Then I shoved the table aside so that nothing stood between us. “Announce it,” I said, giving him my best death stare, “or I’m going to hurt you. Bad enough so you won’t forget it for a long time. And fast enough to keep anybody from helping till it’s all over.”

  Neither of us moved. For an instant I thought it wasn’t going to work. Then he lifted the megaphone.

  “WINNING TIME . . . SIX MINUTES THIRTY-NINE SECONDS.”

  He broke the damn record,” I snapped. “Say it’s the record!” Look.” He gestured at the grandstand.

  I looked. It was two-thirds empty. Those remaining looked on silently, faces slack and staring.

  “Say it anyway.” I took half a step toward him.

  “A NEW HAMILTON COUNTY RECORD.” He lowered the megaphone. “That’s all you get, mister. You’d best not stay around here.”

  It sounded less a threat than a statement of fact. There was something chilling in it. I took his advice, half carrying Johnny.

  “My wheel, Sam.”

  “Timmy’s walking it.”

  “Wait.” He struggled to shake free of my arm, failed, and, feet dragging and body twisting,
shouted at the grandstand, “DID YOU SEE ME?”

  “Come on, Johnny,” I urged.

  He dug his feet into the dirt. “I’M CHAMPION! I’LL RACE Y’ALL! RIGHT NOW! EVERYBODY!”

  His shouts echoed in dusty silence. I glanced at the stands and saw a knot of men beginning to exchange looks in a way I didn’t like.

  “We’re going,” I said, and picked him up bodily. I carried him clear out of the fairgrounds, Cait and Timmy moving fast to keep up. Tears formed rivulets in the grime on his face, disappearing into his sopping jersey. The tears didn’t stop completely until we were halfway home on the train.

  “Look,” I said, pulling out the money. “You won more than just the race.”

  He counted it and looked up. “Fifteen hundred?”

  “Five’s mine. The rest was the purse. It’s yours. Not too bad, your first time!”

  He looked at it wonderingly. “You bet that much on me?”

  “Johnny, you rode that last lap in a minute twenty-nine. You smashed the record by nearly a minute!” I laughed. “Those guys paid a stiff price for doubting you.”

  “I want to be a racer!” Timmy said. “Will you show me how?”

  “That’s right, ain’t it so,” said Johnny, unheeding. “I made ’em pay, didn’t I?”

  “You sure as hell did.”

  Cait looked at me. I knew what she was thinking: They might have paid, but they’d only let him on the track with an animal.

  “Nobody’s ever believed in me like that, Sam.”

  It was sad to think it might be true.

  Chapter 23

  What would you think if I dressed in man’s clothing?” Cait said, lowering her newspaper.

  “What?” We sat side by side in the parlor, swaying in our rocking chairs like an elderly couple. The gas jet cast a cozy light. It was almost ten o’clock. Timmy was asleep. O’Donovan and the others were still away. We were alone. “You heard me,” she said.

  “I suppose,” I ventured, wondering if she visualized a Fenian uniform, “it would depend on the man.”

  “Not a bit funny,” she said. “Read this.” She handed me that day’s Enquirer and pointed to an item titled “Women in Men’s Clothes,” by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.