Lord of Misrule

by Jaimy Gordon

  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 Medic
ine 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.