Lord of Misrule

by Jaimy Gordon

  Roy's Taxicab passed the cut-off to Indian Mound Downs-Two-Tie looked over his shoulder but got no last eyeful of the jewel green bullring, the bottomland by the river was still a basin of fog-sped past the Horseman's Motel and Trailer Court, the length of the little strip that passed for a town, and up into the hills. Two-Tie prepared a few words, I always run a honest business, I thought more of you, family comes first, but then the cab bounced past the steep driveway down to Joe Dale Bigg's farm. D'Ambrisi was pushing it too fast for the patched and cracked West Virginia blacktop, taking the snaky curves along the ridge on two wheels, stomping the brake at the same time. He was no lowrider, he must be afraid somebody would see them. It looked bad and sounded bad-nobody saying a goddamn word and D'Ambrisi's hands shaking on the steering wheel.

  Do me one favor, Breezy. Don't leave the dog with nobody to look after her. She's an old dog. She won't know what's happening. Where I go she goes. You follow me?

  Nobody ain't gonna hurt the dog, Biggy said. I like dogs. You want to come home with me, fella? Whaddaya say, duke? He roughhoused Elizabeth's head, and her lip curled up.

  She's a lady, she don't like that rough stuff, Two-Tie said. He despaired of explaining anything to Biggy. Promise me, Breezy. You hear? She won't know where she is. If anything happens to me, put a bullet in her head. He had a picture of Elizabeth shambling blindly around some pile of rubble deep in the woods that still smelled like him, confused and hungry, lying down, getting up, lying down again, walking around in circles looking for him, waiting for him to come back, till she starved.

  He wants we should off the dog, Biggy said indignantly. His own dog! What kinda guy is that?

  I ain't packing, Breezy whined.

  These two lames would be no help whatsoever. Two-Tie sank back hopelessly into the seat cushions. If it wasn't for Elizabeth, he saw, and it was like a slap across the head with a two-by-four, he wouldn't care if they took him out. Not even these assholes. Be my guest. He was so sick of assholes he was almost ready to go. He looked back in his mind and saw the zig-zag line of his actions lately, that craziness with the niece, he done things that weren't like him, weren't prudent. Why? What did he care if little Margaret knew him or not? If they croaked him, would she cry? She'd gasp when she heard the news, then forget him in five minutes. You could even believe he'd been trying to buy it, the way he'd been making a weird nuisance of himself lately, like he'd seen other chumps who didn't have nobody to look after them go off the deep end in the past.

  But the big boys should at least have sent somebody halfway intelligent, somebody more respectful. The best you could say, it was fast, the way these dumb hoods brought it to you-or otherwise he waits to get decrepit like Elizabeth, and who looks after him when he's old and blind? Nobody. If he didn't have Elizabeth to worry about, he'd have to worry about himself, and where was the sense in that? He didn't care no more, if he had ever cared. Of course nobody likes the idea of turning up dead in a garbage bag in a culvert, scaring some poor Cub Scout out of his wits with your empty eye holes and eaten-up head, it ain't dignified.

  The taxicab jolted off down an oiled rock lane behind a little black and white arrow sign, Ohio County Landfill 1, then they turned at once on another unmarked two-track into the woods, some old mining or logging road, or maybe a back way into the dump. They passed one of those country oil wells that nod up and down like mechanical donkeys at the trough. Then the road got worse. The taxicab splashed into a puddle that was really a creek bed, and spun its wheels coming out the other side.

  Goddamn cab's gonna be mud all over, Biggy lamented, you heard Daddy, just don't throw me no heat, now what if we get stuck back here? I thought you said the road was okay.

  It used to be okay. You didn't give me no time to think, Breezy said.

  Bushes swatted the windows, like Nature wanted to punish them but didn't have the equipment. The cab's old springs creaked as they dipped into a hole. Bastid, Biggy muttered, rolling against the door, and the gun wavered where it was pushed up against Two-Tie's kidney. Just then the sun popped through the trees and smacked Two-Tie's eyes in a great big blank of glittering light. He couldn't take no more.

  Gimme that, you idiot. He snatched at the rude hardware of the gun barrel in his side and yanked it upward and twisted on it. He had some crazy, hopeless idea of getting hold of it and shooting Elizabeth himself, and at the same time everything opened up very wide around him, and he knew this was giving up, like taking a fabulous suite at the Sans Souci in Miami Beach for a week, which he knew he wouldn't be around to pay for it. Three shots, bang bang bang. He saw the first one, a little round hole winking at him from the back of the driver's seat, smoking and frying black along its edges, and he was studying it, thinking it wasn't so bad, when he remembered about the other two. Where were they? I'm hit, Breezy yelled, then heavy crunching and swishing leaves, like a elephant in the jungle, and, whomp, a tree in the middle of the windshield. Fuck, fuck, fuck, Biggy screamed, Daddy said don't shoot him in the car, and look what I done, I shot him in the car. Elizabeth, barking in this one's face, that one's face, not grasping what had went wrong, making a terrible racket. I'm hit, Breezy wept, oh jesus, oh jesus, let's get outa here. A whirr like getting sucked up in some machine-the taxicab, tryna back out. Wait, punk. Biggy slapped the back of Breezy's head and they rocked to a stop. Two-Tie wanted to explain that it didn't matter, he always thought if you died, everything went black, like, the whole picture went and you was off like a TV set, but it wasn't like that at all. He could feel some of his middle was gone, gut, tubes, pupik, the whole bucket of shit, you would think you needed your middle but it was better like this, blown away was the right word, sky blue, wide open, all like bubbles going up. Quiet, he wanted to say, quiet, but he couldn't find his breath.

  Light, shade, light. He was travelling through the woods, his head bouncing softly along, trying to piece together the cut-out puzzle of sky between the treetops. And then it really was quiet, perfectly quiet, not even Biggy grunting no more, so he didn't have to say it. Quiet. Elizabeth's face was looking down into his. She had that black mole under her chin, and the long shiny black whiskers that sprayed out of it, like a daddy-long-legs. The face sank away, he couldn't see her, she groaned that familiar groan, settling in-he moved his wet hand an inch or so and there she was. God forgive him, some caretaker he turned out to be, he was glad she was there. He should of kept the lid on till they threw him in the dump. Then, who knew, some clyde out shooting squirrels might have come across her and took her home. Only she'd never go, she'd lie there affen shpilkes, worried but patient, waiting for him to come back. She would make like she didn't see the guy calling to her, till the fool decided she was sick or mad and got his gun and shot her. Which wouldn't be the worst thing. Here, who knew what would happen to her? Nothing would happen to her. That was the worst thing. It wouldn't end. It would keep on ending as far as you could see. But everything ended. He tried to move his fingers in her beautiful fur. He couldn't feel her no more. But he knew she was there.

  BUT THAT HADN'T BEEN the hottest day of the summer, for this one was. All of them sat on haybales in the shade under the shedrow, panting like dogs and squinting stupidly into the heat. Through eyes in the backs of their heads they watched their horses. They watched them because of the race, even though the race was a queer race that none of them was supposed to win.

  The sun beat down and by three the red dirt glowed back around each barn and strip of grass like the works of a toaster. The heat was a bullying heat that muffled sound, so that a person saw a brush or bucket fall or a tiechain drop and heard nothing, just a kind of clap of air, a flat toneless echo. Every now and then a sparrow flopped down in the dirt and scratched around. Even the baby sparrows in the eaves gave up, peeped listlessly under the heat as under a strangler's pillow. Every puddle save the one by the back gate had given up the ghost, and now even that one shrank between hideous cracked lips. Some joker had left a horse's skull drying beside it. You didn't w
ant to think where he'd gotten it, the ivory molars still sharp-edged and young.

  Barn Z, the transient barn, stretched low along the backside fence, the heat from its long tin roof a waggling, meaningless mirage. In front of almost every stall a cheap box window fan whirred and shuddered irrelevantly at the end of an extension cord, its back side bearded with straw and cobweb. Usually a trainer would be fearful of fire but with the heat and the race a go-to-hell mood rolled over them all. On Friday afternoon, racetrackers cleaned every fan out of Ted's Appliances, West Carbonport. By Saturday they hooked up anything that turned, even old electric heaters with the heat turned off.

  Margaret came around the corner and blinked at the sheer oddity of the sight. The shedrow was like a temple to pain, its hay-specked portico held up by the row of noble sore horses, each rising out of a zinc tub of ice with a palsied electric fan next to it. Every one of them was going to the same race, and the race itself was funny, not quite a fixed race but not quite square either. Pelter, Spinoza, The Mahdi, a few more nameless bays and chestnuts, and in the end stall, Lord of Misrule, a small, black, slinky horse who nosed around his stall with a certain junkyard style. Now and then he raised his head to slash vindictively at his hay bag, and sized up the traffic out of the custard white corner of his eye.

  In front of his stall sat the sickly-looking punk with the almost shaved head and bumpy headbones, smacking flies on his legs with a rolled-up comic. The boy was too young to be in anybody's pay. He must belong to Nebraska. He had his father's curving soapcake of a nose. His fingernail worked some red spot near his mouth corner. He made a point of looking baldly at the sweaty crotch of every girl who passed. Look at the prune on that, he said out loud, over and over, hawked and spat. That's how bad he wanted some grown person to talk to him.

  MEDICINE ED DON'T WANT to talk to him. He can't be distracted. He watches the boy through a crack in the tack room wall. The goofer dirt need a little time to take. He must be very deeply in earnest. Maybe he should have throwed it round last night, but last night he ain't make up his mind yet. Everybody say that horse can't lose. The jocks in on it. All the grooms in it. Every big trainer at the meeting have a piece of it. Yet and still, he have to be sure. His hope, his peace, his little tomorrow be riding on it. You want to be down on a sure thing-long as it is a sure thing-even if the horse don't pay but even money. He can double his nut in one minute and, after all, what do the Peoples Savings and Trust of Wheeling pay? Three point four percent in a year! If he call Two-Tie and draw on his whole bankroll and win he land up with 5000 dollars, exactly enough to buy him that trailer in Hallandale, the one with the green stripe awning in the old park for colored behind the track and the little yard of clean gravel with a palm tree sticking up out of it. If he have him a home, he won't hardly have to work no more. Then if he still be getting up awake all night like he do now he can get him a little job-somebody be glad to put him on as stall watch for pocket change. And then he don't need nobody. No more young fool. No more frizzly hair girl. That is his plan.

  For every night the young fool can't sit nor rest, he going up and down the shedrow, going in the stall and out again. He talk craziness to that red horse, the one Zeno taken from him, and which he claim back, and which he think is going to win that race for him. He whisper about the expected one and saints in Ireland and that. He think that secret is between him and the horse. He don't even see where Joe Dale Bigg's boys are cruising up and down the dirt road watching him through the blind windows of that midnight blue gangster car.

  Yesday Medicine Ed just cooling on his haybale, braiding a busted shank, waiting to hose out the feed tubs, when the De Ville come grinding over the red dirt in front of him, so slow it don't even raise no dust. The window slides down in the door and it's Joe Dale Bigg.

  You going to collect a couple dollars for losing tomorrow?

  Sho is, Mr. Bigg.

  That Speculation grandson don't figure, am I right?

  Sho is.

  I know you ladies ain't gonna turn Nebraska around. You ain't that stupid.

  Medicine Ed watched the air wiggle over the manure pile.

  What about Hansel's horse? The one he filed his nut hand over? Whassaname of that horse?

  Medicine Ed shook his head.

  Red horse.

  I disremember the name.

  Don't know nothing, eh? I'll bet. Hansel drops him in for twelve fifty it'll come back to you. His name. Something like Mahdi. Could that be right?

  Medicine Ed shook his head.

  So I hear Hansel's buying up castles in Ireland from that horse. I hear Hansel thinks he's St. Jack and the Beanstalk or Jack the Giant Killer or somebody. He freed all the slaves of Ireland, is that right? Hope I'm not the giant. Joe Dale laughed. I better not be the giant. Am I?

  Medicine Ed shook his head again, Don't know nuthin bout nuthin, and looked away at a sparrow taking a bath in the dirt. For these was the type of wandrous secrets the young fool was swapping with that horse all night long.

  They say this business will drive you crazy, Joe Dale said. The lying and the cheating and you can't be sure of nothing. I think that college boy ain't coming back from wherever he ended up at. Which is a sad sight to see, a talented young man like that, but it ain't no excuse for getting in other people's business. If Hansel has to go around with his fly hanging open, his shoes untied and his hair sticking up on end, that's his lookout. If he comes untied, that's your-all's lookout. He better not bust up my deal, you colly?

  Joe Dale practically yelling now and Medicine Ed cut his eyes up at him briefly, went on with his plaiting

  I'm putting you on that case, you hear? You old timey negroes from down around Aiken in the hunt country, I know you got your little ways. You use em, you hear me?

  That red horse ain't gonna last in no race with Lord of Misery, Medicine Ed said. He a sprinter, nemmind what the young fella say.

  I don't want him even trying, Joe Dale shouted. I don't want no loose wheels out on that race course. I don't want no uncontrollable factors. I'm holding you responsible to stop it or let me know. You hear what I say?

  Slowly Medicine Ed raised his eyes to him. Already the purple window was riding back up in the door. Joe Dale's black sunglasses gleamed in the crack of it. Unh-huh, Medicine Ed said. Sho is.

  Yesday he full of cautionary thoughts. He a owner now and a co-trainer too. The horses gone good. Everything coming they way. He, Medicine Ed, might could have five more years. Or six. Or ten. His eyes be good, his ears still good, his draggy leg no worse, ma'fact better than it was last January when the shedrow spigots freeze and he have to haul full buckets down from the clubhouse; his remembrance still good, can't he be content to make it little by little? His pay coming in punctual, plus twenty dollars when anything run in. The young fool wander in his mind, yes, but he freehearted. He dig even deeper than Zeno. He don't forget Medicine Ed. Yesday evening Medicine Ed was thinking let it go, call Two-Tie, put some down on the horse, only just a little-don't get greedy, don't stir up the Devil, don't cunjure with that old stakes horse from Nebraska, don't take his life. And then there come Joe Dale, all the sign he need that bad evil is lurking round and he must cover himself.

  In the Winnebago he pulls together the pink plastic curtains over the sink and sinks his head and washes his hands. He must think about his dust and nothing else save his dust. All the while he is mixing it up he must think about his dust until his thinking put a kind of holy spirit on it. He takes the jars out the wall one by one, and he is careful to bring to mind what they each contain. He must be very deeply in earnest. This one is a controlling powder, coltsfoot, not just dusty coltsfoot from beside of any road, but the dark green velvet hand-shape leaves, soft as a lady's glove, that creep along the ruin of a stone stable deep in a woods in Cambray, South Carolina. In this stable his grandfather, Eduardo Salters, born in slavery, once was king. Ain't nobody ever had the control of a four-legged animal better than Eddy Salters. When he was coming up, folks sa
y, he could climb on a fence and jump on a cow and make her run.

  He ain't invite it, and it's no use crying. Yet and still. Evil has come out after him. Something must be done. Back in his crushed in trailer he make what he need. First, forward and foremost, he need speed enough to overtake and turn the wind of a horse into money. And money, too, need drawing and controlling: In a little whiskey bottle is boil of moneyplant, moneyplant gathered far from water which run itself away.

  In this jar is one teenchy pinch, all he have left, of the blood of Platonic. Platonic is early speed, and Cannonball is speed early and late, and here, mixed in the grave dirt of Cannonball, if you dig you find four glassy glittery things-wings of the botfly that can overtake and grab on the legs of any horse, so long as he be running. Yet and still. No use crying. Common judgment tell you that. For fact is, and it say so right in the Bible, a horse never saved nobody. Psalm 33. On a plate of glass, he move around a little of this, a little of that. He seek for that spirit of imagination wonder, to know what to do, and when is enough. You must be very deeply in earnest, Madame Eulalie said to him when she learned him doctoring, then luck will come. But he has trouble tonight to keep his mind on one thing only. His remembrance acting up, he can't get that little filly Broomstick off his mind. He keep thinking of the frizzly hair girl, he can choose to tie her to him, he know how. He can tie the bad luck off himself. But he can't make out to himself like he used to done that it is a harmless goofer he mixing. He know the truth now. Harm is coming, it ain't his fault, but still he is doctoring so that hurt, when it come, it will go on others and not on him.

  He can say he is only tying the bad luck off himself and he mean no harm to anyone. He can say the young fool has drawn this trouble on the three of them, like he always knew he would. He can say the young fool is a lost, crossed, through-and-through fixed man-soul. And which he is: there ain't no cure nor doctor to undone what has already been done to the young fool. He don't eat nor either sleep. He don't pray nor cunjure. He whisper all night to that red horse, the one he lost to Zeno, and which he claim back, and which he think is going to win that race for him.