Lord of Misrule

by Jaimy Gordon

  Then she ran away back down the towpath. She knew that if she made any gesture to the man, he would come home with her for the night, although she sensed he was expected within. All the same he found her the next day and that was that, he moved in, and by Saturday night's races, she was learning how to pack a horse's feet. Maggie realized only later that Hazel must have been the next-to-last of Tommy's willing handmaidens, mucking stalls and walking hots and feeding for him at five in the morning. Maggie had been her replacement.

  Don't try to fix it. Don't say anything, she instructed herself. Keep your mouth shut. See what happens. Her hand was on the latch of the tack room. She had made it this far. She pulled the door open, blinked into the opaque, itchy dark, a deep gray hole with only a tic of light here or there where the floodlight from the back gate touched a strap or buckle. The air was dead. He wasn't here. She felt along the wall for the light switch and a hand closed over her hand.

  That's right. Shut up, he said, firmly but not roughly-and had she really said that out loud? Or had he read her mind? Maybe because he had that empty space where her own drawers and pigeonholes were stuffed with words, he often, spookily, out of a silence, echoed back to her her most treacherous thought-as if he vibrated with even the dead or unspoken noises whose ghostly scraps floated around her. In an almost soothing gesture his fingers circled her wrist, his thumb pressed deep into her palm, curled it, flattened it again, brought the hand down behind her, and suddenly he was binding both her hands together with the leather shank, then the chain. She heard the double-end snap. He had hooked her to the wall. And then he quickly pulled off her shoes, and, with a minute flick of a button, her jeans. She felt the cool night air moving between her legs. Then he pulled the door closed hard and they were in darkness.

  Do you think I didn't see you, he whispered, cashing your bet on Zeno's horse? Don't answer, he warned, listen. Money is nothing to me. You can't imagine how little. Can you?

  He pressed up against her back, gave her a little shake. She didn't answer.

  Good. I want you to play with money the same as I do. I want you to kick around bills and coins same as me, like sand on the seashore. You don't have to explain to me anything about it. Have fun but don't insult me by telling me. I'll always catch up with you. I'll always know what you're doing. Won't I?

  He spoke into her ear, her neck, her hair, but didn't touch her this time. She felt his heat, the nearness of his hands, and her own captivity pulling her into dreamy counter-exertion. Talking as he was, straight out of some dark dream of his own, she began to long for him to touch her, spell to spell, in her most private places, and thought she must be out of her senses.

  You want me to see through you anyway, don't you? He ran his fingers up inside her, milked the shameless wetness of her. Don't you? Her knees almost buckled. He caught her on his hand.

  She nodded, her face brushing against him.

  It's your money. I don't want to know anything about it. I'll ask for it if I need it and I know you'll give it to me if you have it. Won't you?

  He had taken her by the small hard handles of her hips and now with a swift deft twist he lifted her and brought her down on himself. Won't you.

  But he held his palm over her mouth, and she thought more than said: Yes. No. Yes.

  SECOND RACE

  Little Spinoza

  BECAUSE IT AIN'T SAFE for the horse with that pazzo back on the backside, D'Ambrisi said. Joe Dale don't want the kid should get suspended again. Or worse.

  Biggy? What is he, home from college? Earlie Beaufait said, and everyone laughed.

  Heh-heh. Finally got his walking papers from Pruntytown, more like it. Once they lose their hair, state gotta send em home no matter what they done.

  They were at Two-Tie's all-night card game. The second floor, over the Ritzy Lunch in Carbonport, was roasting, the Frigidaire solid with Carling Black Label, two bits a bottle. Orange soda was free. A small electric fan hung upside down from the ruins of a dining room chandelier over Two-Tie's green felt card table. Dangling askew between three naked light bulbs, it made just enough wind to keep the mutt pack from stinking each other out of the room, without blowing the cards off the table. Over and over it wagged its head no, but weakly, very weakly. No one ever listened.

  What he done to get sent up there, again? Kidstuff inquired.

  Nobody could recall the details, except that a car with a trunk full of heaters of various shapes and sizes, all loaded and ready for action, had been impounded on racetrack grounds.

  This was after the thing with the dentist, D'Ambrisi explained.

  O yeah the dentist. Fletcher. Fletcha the butcha from Chesta. He and Biggy got along good. (Everybody knew that story.)

  He was after the horse, or what?

  After the horse, with 500 rounds of ammo.

  Maybe he still ain't just the right groom for that particular racehorse, huh?

  Guess not, everyone laughed.

  Joe Dale tries to keep the kid down the farm most of the time, D'Ambrisi said. But that's where he use to keep the horse too. The horse don't do good in a stall.

  The thing with the dentist was in a stall, said Kidstuff. Horse put a dent in Biggy's head with an egg bar shoe, which I know because I put it on myself. But, I kid you not, a lot of people said Biggy was smarter afterwards, like it might of let a little light in the bubblegum he got for brains or something. He ain't grateful, though.

  He still got the exact curve of that bar on his forehead, D'Ambrisi added. Which is why, like I started to say before, Deucey is tied up tonight. Joe Dale got the idea the old jasper could solve his problem. He's making her take the horse on the cuff whether she wants him or not.

  I hear she says no.

  They are talking business as we speak.

  Why Joe Dale don't just send that overpriced quitter to the block? Jojo Wood asked. He'd still fetch three, four big ones easy. They might not even heard he's bonkers, that horse, Lil Spinny or whatever the fuck he's called.

  Little Spinoza, Two-Tie said. A Speculation grandson, out of a Rembrandt mare. Joe Dale Bigg paid twenty grand for the yearling at Keeneland. This was in 1965.

  He was gonna be Joe Dale's Derby horse ya see, Earlie said. He was going to Saratoga at least, with that kind of class. This wop from East Liverpool, he was going to be a debutante. Come to find out he just got himself another space cadet like Biggy. If the horse had broke his leg first time out, he'd of put him down and forgot in a week, but the stiff refused in the gate three times. An embarrassment is what it is. Joe Dale can't give it up. He wants something back for the horse.

  He would like to pass the animal to Deucey on the cuff? Nuttinginfront?

  That's the deal.

  And she says no? Come on, Elizabeth. Two-Tie shook his head and went to answer the back door, rolling a case of empties in front of him. His old dog was just getting to her feet when he came back.

  It was Deucey, clattering out of the back stair in army surplus combat boots, which she wore without socks. I hope you gents ain't waiting for me. I mean to sit the first few out. This ain't my lucky night.

  Joe Dale get your name on them foaling papers yet?

  Hell no.

  May I ask, said Two-Tie, what's so geferlich about his offer? Nobody ever touched that classy horse so far but thugs. Who knows what he's got?

  He's got a ankle, what I heard, Earlie said. But that ain't the half. He got all the Speculation loony-tunes and none of the talent.

  If I remember correctly, Little Spinoza win for sixty-five hundred going away, the one time he don't quit. True, that was some time ago.

  Before the dentist?

  Before the dentist.

  I guess everybody knows that story, Deucey said. Well did I ever tell you fellas I was across the way in Barn Z when it happened? Me and Medicine Ed saw the whole thing. For yalls information, I don't think that beauty-full boy is one bit crazy. Spinoza I mean. He might be the sweetest little horse I ever met.

  You
try bringing him to the starting gate, we'll see how sweet, Earlie said.

  I know I look stupid, gentlemen, but I ain't racing Joe Dale Biggs' ruint stakes horse, which he hates, at Joe Dale Biggs's racetrack, where he is king, under my good name. Many troublous things could happen to the horse, as we was just discussing, and I would still be three grand in the hole for him, to say nothing of the feed bill. I don't care if he never runs his race. A great big baby is what that horse is. And that's what I'm doing for Joe Dale Bigg, and that's all I'm doing-babysitting him.

  So there, Kidstuff said. Here, here. And I give up liquor starting now, except for this one last Carling's I'm finishing off, just so as not to waste it.

  You can drink yourself to hell, Deucey said, and I know you will. I ain't taking this horse.

  On the racetrack may be found any number of doggy types, Two-Tie observed to himself as he surveyed his rooms over the Ritzy Lunch in the graying dark to see what his all-night card game had dragged in. It was the low nature of their appetites that tangled them up in one species together, various breeds of dog as they were. Only Kidstuff had gone home, wherever home was. D'Ambrisi, whose bubblegum-stuffed cheek lay on his last hand of cards, looked like a chickenshit dachshund, the kind that pees itself, and your shoes, whenever you give it a pat on the head. The little tout D'Ambrisi worked for Joe Dale in some obscure capacity, assistant trainer he'd like you to think, more like licker of shit and gofer. Deucey Gifford was an old broad-browed retriever dog, faithful to the death, who had some dignity with her size. The doggish part was how she never let go. Once she thought something belonged to her, or didn't, her jaw clamped down and her gaze flattened out and she could get stupid, very stupid. Jojo Wood, leaning back on the sofa with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, was the commonest dog around the racetrack, a square-headed beagle mutt who padded around the backside, nose low to the ground, hoping for that pizza crust or dropped hamburger, without a clue or a plan. Jojo was a jockey, a little worse than run of the mill. He got his mounts largely because certain horsemen was dumb enough to think that Jojo was too dumb to cheat them. The other jock on the sofa, Earlie Beaufait, a little Frenchman from around Evangeline Downs with a big Choctaw beak on him, was smarter than Jojo, but twitchy as a chihuahua even in repose. It is a known fact that dogs sleep two-thirds of the time. These four, like sixty-seven percent of the other dogs on the planet, were asleep.

  Of course the whole notion was an insult to dogs, which included some of the noblest individuals that Two-Tie had ever known in his life, like his Elizabeth. But as with humans it was a question of how the dog had been raised and what had been asked of it whilst it was still young. Early on, you had to show a intelligent dog what to do. A dog like that thought good of herself and pretty soon she ran the whole show, better than what you could. On the other hand, if nutting was asked of it, a dog would expect its dog food night and morning every day of its life and spend the rest of its time looking for that bonus hamburger that fell on the floor, never noticing how good it was taken care of already, for the nutting it contributed to society. The dog got led around like a ponyride by that nose for a free hamburger, and the rest of its brain went dead.

  His Elizabeth, however, was a herd dog, hustled by some ancient sense of responsibility not to let her sheep-whoever she decided her sheep were-out of her sight. As for Two-Tie she wouldn't even let him take a dump in privacy but curled up with a groan on the little wrinkled rug between the tub and the sink for the duration. He had had to curtail some of his out-of-town operations in recent years. Elizabeth no longer cared to travel. She didn't appreciate having her routine interrupted. It had cost him some bucks. But it was the least he owed her for thirteen years of devoted companionship. Around the racetrack (especially if you weren't welcome on the actual grounds no more) you had better know the value of a foul weather friend.

  Two-Tie leaned over Elizabeth towards the mirror, to pull a comb across his hair and realign his redundant haberdashery, the black bow tie under the striped bow tie that he wore every day of his life. He pinched the alligator clips and patted down the loops of the rather greasy black bowknot. Lillian, he nodded at the glass, and his sagging bloodhound of a face nodded back. He didn't kid himself that Lillian, aleha ha-sholom-she'd been pushing up the daisies in some RC cemetery in Chicago for thirty years-could hear him, or would listen if she could. It was his way of trying to pay off little by little an unpayable debt. Lillian, I treated you wrong, he thought, or said-it was a kind of morning benediction with him, and sometimes he listened to himself, sometimes he didn't. Hey, I don't forget. I treated you shabby, very shabby, and the worst is, there ain't a thing I can do about it-nutting. Except, hey, your boy Donald called me up from Nebraska yesterday. He wants I should do a favor for him and I'm going to do it, Lillian, not for him-he's the same no count, worthless punk he always was, I can tell already from the phone-but for you. Look out, Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth pushed herself off the floor, her old toes scrabbling tiredly on the linoleum for purchase, to follow him out to the back porch where he was drifting, telephone in hand.

  Good morning, dear. Get me Mr. Smithers, please. Two-Tie looked out over the trash barrels down in the courtyard, the pile of rotting windows and ragged patches of tar paper, broken chairs and stacks of empties from the Ritzy Lunch and the blowing laundry on the next porch, and he felt calm and in tune, this end of his life being tied securely to the other by a porch much like his mother's back on Patterson Park Avenue in East Baltimore, although hers had had a fine vegetable garden down at the foot of it, every inch of the backyard dunged from ayrabbers' horses and planted, with the leaves from the last row of radishes poking through the alley fence.

  Vernon. Look. These things happen. Just because I am interested in a horse in a particular race don't mean nobody else is trying to win. In the fourth race last night as you know I am very interested in the one horse. Correct, Buckle My Shoe. Before this race goes off I hear nutting about some possible unknown factors that could figure. Am I right or do I forget something? All right then, nutting.

  As I say, I am aware such things happen. Some jeff ships in from god knows where. We don't know him. He's not from here. He ain't even looked around to see how things work here. He's got his mind on his own business and he tries to win first time out and gets lucky. Somehow I don't hear nutting about the mug, who appeared inconsequential. These things happen, Vernon. We make allowances for that.

  What I fail to understand in this particular case is two horses beating the crap out of mine, and I hear nutting in front, not word one, zooker. Alls I can say, it's a good thing Buckle My Shoe goes off at such a sorry price so I'm not in heavy. But as you know, Vernon, I like to keep myself covered, and I know nutting about the four horse, on paper he looks like shit. Well, it's Zeno's horse, alev ha-sholom, poor slob, so I have to know he could be gambling. But this other guy with the two horse what got claimed, I never even hear of him before and nobody gives me a call, nutting.

  Suitcase mumbled something about the third place purse he had in fact taken home, and Two-Tie winced.

  We are talking about a very small piece of change here, Vernon, and besides, as you know, he delicately cleared his throat, I am not the owner of this horse. These are complex operations. A little money may be going more ways than a dago waiter in such a operation and this purse don't even qualify as money in my book. It's basically nutting.

  Suitcase goes bop de bop, this and that, he's sorry, he'd never thought, it was late, the girl forgot to call, and finally, okay, I owe you one.

  Thank you. It's interesting you should put it that way-it so happens I want you to do something for me, Vernon, not right away, let's say in the spring, maybe twelve, thirteen weeks into the meeting-and not because you owe me-I overlook such considerations from friends, even if you do owe me-but because in my opinion the deal is good for the People, and for Horse Racing.

  Two-Tie paused to let this piety sink in. Men like Ogden and Rohring di
d things for Horse Racing. Now Two-Tie and Suitcase could do something for Horse Racing, and it wouldn't cost them a dime of their own money, and they could make a bundle on the same deal.

  Take something out of that Tri-State Glass and Marble Industries kitty, I know you got some left, Two-Tie suggested. Or I could put the squeeze on the bargeman for you. He owes me deep.

  So? Suitcase said.

  So I want you should write me a race, well, not me personally, fellow from Nebraska, kid I used to know back when-actually I used to know his mother. Beautiful, skinny broad, but nervous. Yellow hair in a nice soft puff, like a Easter chick. She was very good to me. Alas, I fear I did not return the favor like I should have. Died young. Cancer.

  Anyway the kid ends up out at Aksarben with a stakes horse that once was big, the biggest, a legend. He's tryna make a little comeback Nebraska, you say?

  Correct.

  Not Lord of Misrule?

  Lord of Misrule, Two-Tie admitted, in not quite the sanguine tone he was attempting.

  Lord of Misrule-Jesus Christ, what about that fall last year? Ain't he dead?

  I hear he's doing good. He ain't back racing yet. They're sharpening him up-slow Slow-I guess. I don't know, Two-Tie. Jesus, he must be eating bute for breakfast lunch and dinner-no wonder he's in Nebraska. You sure that horse can walk?

  Maybe he can't walk, Vernon, but he can run. That's what the kid tells me. And he can still beat the class at the Mound. Anyway the horse should be a draw in a nice little special allowance race some Sunday-call it the Glass Block or the Crystal Classic or something. Everybody wants to know the ending with a horse like that. It's a whatever-happened-to-so-and-so kind of story. Tie it up beautiful for the fans. Even if it's his last race they can always say I saw it. It's history.