Lord of Misrule

by Jaimy Gordon

  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 w
ant 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 s
o 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.