Lord of Misrule Read online

  And now that he had cash to play and Maggie's free labor and four ready horses who looked pitiful on paper, the trick was to get in and get out fast. It was Tommy who said so, Maggie had only soaked this stuff up faithfully for months-sitting on the curb of the shedrow writing headlines for Menus by Margaret: ORANGE RUM FILLING RAIDS MARGARET'S TEA RING, MANY LIVES OF WORLD'S OLDEST BEAN (no one watched what she wrote at that rag), and gazing up at Tommy more hypnotized than credulous, like a chawbacon at a snake-oil show. Get in and get out fast, he chanted. They had to arrive at a small track unnoticed (small but not too small-it had to have a respectable handle), drop each horse in the cheapest possible claiming race before anybody knew what they had, cash their bets, and ship out again, maybe without losing a single horse.

  And now already part one, Get in fast, was down the drain. They hadn't managed to sneak under the fence unseen, as planned, with their penny-ante operation. They had been noticed. Just like that, the sure thing careened out of management. Now they had to figure out what the track officials were trying to do. Busted by a stall man named Suitcase Smithers, for the love of god! These guys were cartoon creepy-but someone could get hurt. She was ready to back out right now.

  But Tommy wouldn't back out. Tommy might well laugh. Fat risk made his eyes brighten and soften, his forehead clarify, his nails harden, his black hair shine. The way Tommy thought, if you could call that thinking: He had been born lonely, therefore some bountiful girl would always come to him-he required it. Luck was the same. It came because you called to it, whistled for it, because it saw you wouldn't take no for an answer. Luck was the world leaping into your arms across a deep ditch and long odds. It was love, which is never deserved; all the rest was drudgery. So he might well laugh at this news-laugh that soft, fond, mocking laugh-just as he laughed at all fools, including himself, who rose to iridescent, dangerous bait, where they could be caught-the same way he laughed, softly, in bed, when she came.

  (That soft laugh had got its hook in her, yes, but she thought she knew where Tommy came by his guts. He wasn't quite right in the soul, really. There was that missing twin he talked about all the time-his mother, Alberta, a waitress in Yonkers who rarely made sense, swore she'd been carrying twins, but one had got lost in the womb, she said, and for once Tommy believed her. He had the notion he'd swallowed his twin up himself, her he said, swallowed her up, big fish little fish, before he knew any better. Anyway there was a kind of spinning emptiness in him where things like sensible fear should be, a living hollow where light was dark. As some grown trees, oaks even, are full of leaf but wind-shook, with a stain of hole at their center.)

  And finally another five minutes south to barn Z, one wooden stall in fair repair in the transient shedrow near the back gate. Gus Zeno, a trainer they knew from Charles Town, kept some stalls here, watched over by an old black groom; and so did the buzz-cut crone, Deucey, the one who had seen this coming. Well, you were right about the whole deal, Maggie said when she saw her, and Deucey said: I wrote the book on two-faced false-hearted luck, girlie, anything you want to know about going it on your own at the races, come to me. And grinned at her with black-edged teeth. She was a dilapidated hull of a woman with wrestler's muscles and a bulge at the waist of her filthy undershirt that could only be what was left of her breasts. She had one stall with a horse in it, and not even a second stall for a tack room, but you had to think she was getting by. More than getting by-in the know, scared of no one and don't care who knows it, although Maggie thought her half mad and far too cozy.

  Psst, girlie, the old woman stuck her head in the stall that Maggie was raking. You looking for a place to coop for the night?

  I'm not certain, Maggie said carefully. Of my situation. It could change any time. Thanks, though.

  Your do-less boyfriend might roll in here yet with them horses, is that it? And whatever is he gonna say, tsk, tsk.

  Maggie dragged a rake to the darkest corner of the stall. How did she know, that was the question. Do you really have just the one horse? she asked.

  One horse and no home, that there is your basic definition of a gyp, which I am, Deucey said. Although I am right now under some pressure to expand my stable to take in this beauty-full boy-only now Maggie looked up and saw that the old girl was walking, on a loose shank, the loveliest little dark bay horse she had ever seen on a cheap track-only, A, I don't got no playing room, which is the long definition of a gyp operation, and B, I don't like them that's pushing me. And anyway, you know me-(Maggie didn't know her)-gyp I was born and gyp I'll die, or hope to, in the saddle and not in no hospital, that is.

  Maggie peered at her. Are you an actual gypsy?

  Ha. Soon as I can understand it, Deucey said, I'm a nothing. Though I wouldn't put it past me. They took everybody in them coalmines at the start, even gypsies. To be honest I don't know what I am. Just a coalville orphan from Dola, 40 mile down the Short Line from the river. Everything I know about horses was learned me by the age of eight in a one-man one-pony punch mine, where me and this pony Redrags pulled the tub. Uncle Stevo was the man, I was just part of the pony. I used to sleep on haybales in a coal mine, which makes Barn Z look like the Dewdrop Inn, dearie. Now you let me know if you need a room in this fine hotel. And she winked hideously.

  Maggie was ready to sleep on haybales, or even half naked down in the itchy straw. Finally you open your arms to sleep even if it's nightmare you see coming. She had been going for fourteen hours-no one, certainly not Tommy, had her stamina, and she was vain of it. She had been up at 3:00, fed, mucked stalls, shlepped bales and water buckets. At dawn she had walked the horses one by one. She had picked out feet and packed them with fragrant clay, crated the loose tack. And still the van didn't show, the van or Tommy, who had made one of those airy deals with the van man that Tommy lived on, "on the cuff" where all cash was notional, future, moiling in the clouds like weather, until some horse ran in; and nobody ever wrote down a number or forgot one. But it was somehow part of the deal that Tommy, with a bit of dope in his pocket, never too proud to be a roustabout, might be asked along for the ride. Like today, Tommy in that creaky, rust-flowered van.

  Around noon, the van finally rolled down the driveway, and she was off in the Grand Prix over the mountains and up the river, while Tommy and the van man took the long way, the slow way, dropping and loading horses for racetrackers who paid cash. But what had she done with her morning, while she waited in the fly-loud barn for Tommy and the van man? Maggie had found a bottle of eye-stinging brand X pink wintergreen horse liniment in the Pichots' tack shed, mixed, for all she knew, according to the late Gaston Pichot's secret recipe, and with it and strong fingers, she worked on Pelter, more or less making it up as she went along. Why did she so love the slant-eyed bump-nosed horse that her hands wished to parse every inch of his famously long back? It was true she had no scientific reason to believe she knew what she was doing, but surreptitiously she did think so. For all her stamina, as a human girl she knew she was lazy and unambitious, except for this one thing: She could find her way to the boundary where she ended and some other strain of living creature began. On the last little spit of being human, staring through rags of fog into the not human, where you weren't supposed to be able to see let alone cross, she could make a kind of home.

  Her hands felt their way blindly along the ridges and canyons and defiles of the spine, the firm root-spread hillocks of the withers. She rolled her bony knuckles all along the fallen tree of scar tissue at the crest of the back, prying up its branches, loosening its teeth. And it must be having some effect: when she walked Pelter these days he wasn't the sour fellow he used to be, he was sportive, even funny. She had walked him this morning until the rising sun snagged in the hackberry thicket. As they swung around the barn, she took a carrot from her pocket and gave him the butt and noisily toothed the good half herself. He curvetted like a colt, squealed, and cow-kicked alarmingly near her groin. Okay, okay, she said, and handed it over. She was glad there was no man aro
und just then to tell her to show that horse who was boss. When they were back in the stall and she turned to leave she found he had taken her whole raincoat in his mouth and was chewing it-the one she was wearing. She twisted around with difficulty and pried it out of his mouth. He eyed her ironically. Just between us, is this the sort of horse act I really ought to discipline? she asked him, smoothing out her coat. I simply incline to your company, he replied.

  The frizzly hair girl landed up with one stall in barn Z, that next-to-last stall ruinated by a deep ditch around the walls that some thousand-pound stallwalker had dug on his endless round trips. It taken muscle to shovel over enough dirt to fill that up, but she made it halfway right, he'd give her that.

  Psst, Deucey leaned around the corner of the stall and crooked her finger at the girl. You running anything in the next few days?

  It was a long pause, then, I don't think so, she say, and Medicine Ed watched the frizzly hair girl try to empty her face. In the lying capital of the world, she would have to do better than that.

  Well if you do run sumpm, and you don't want to let him out of your sight, Deucey said, which I wouldn't if I was you, put him in the stall here and ask Medicine Ed to let you sleep in Zeno's tack room. He lets me. She winked, it was a dreadful thing to see, and the frizzly hair girl backed off from her. Calm down, girlie, I don't mean you and me. I sleep in the stall with my moneymaker Grizzly, he appreciates me-she cackled. That tack room ya see got a chink in the east wall, you can lay on hay bales and look through the chink and watch a horse all night, if you can hold your eyes open. Talk to Medicine Ed. That's him. And she pointed to where he was, standing in the dirt road with the red horse and Kidstuff, the blacksmith.

  Medicine Ed saw the frizzly hair girl's eyes light, not on him, but on the blacksmith. Heh! heh! It happened every time. Kidstuff was a pretty little man, chestnut brown, with a tilted smile and very white teeth, out of Louisiana, part colored, part Cajun, part Injun, like as not.

  The girl tiptoed up. She said excuse me.

  You end up with stalls in this here barn, young lady?

  One, she said.

  Suitcase scatter they horses all over the grounds, Medicine Ed told Kidstuff.

  Aaanh, don't take it personal, the blacksmith advised. It's the ten-cent Hitlers run this place. They like to break your spirit before you ever get to a race. Who you with?

  Tommy Hansel.

  The horseshoer looked quizzically at Medicine Ed. They shook their heads politely.

  She needs a place to sack out for the night, Deucey hollered over. Can she get in your tack room, Ed?

  Medicine Ed shrugged. Ain't nothing in it, he said. Hay. Welcome to it.

  The farrier put away his tools. Zeno gonna let this boy run tonight? he asked.

  Might could figure, Medicine Ed said-what he always said-if he don't come up lame.

  So where did Zeno pick up this Mr Boll Weevil? I seen the sire before but who's this High Cotton-talk about breeders you never heard of-Sunk Ferry, Arkansas The old groom stumbled back as though he had been struck. What you talkin bout, Mr Boll Weevil?

  This horse you're holding right here. In tonight for twelve-fifty, maiden claimer, fourth race. Say, here's Tommy Hansel, the blacksmith said to the girl. This your guy?

  May I see that paper please? the frizzly girl said faintly. She looked in the Telegraph, where Kidstuff was pointing, and out of her mouth come a terrible cuss word, not quite under her breath. Medicine Ed blinked at her. For a little while, time went backwards, for her the same as for him. Then he piled the shank right on top of that paper, and backed away. His long ash brown fingers shook. He appeared to be buckling, fading; got smaller and smaller in the direction of the half crushed mobile home he lived in. He held a hand over his heart as he staggered backwards, like an actor in a play. His mouth was a ragged hole, no word came out, now they saw the gray stumps of his gums.

  The blacksmith was shaken. Damn me, he said. Damn me, maybe he needs the doc. Hey, Ed! you all right? he yelled after him. The door of the bashed-in trailer clicked shut. I seen these old-timers pitch over dead more than once, he said to the girl shyly, now that they were alone. You never know.

  I think it was something about that horse, she wondered. And that was that. A cool green light came on in the blacksmith's eyes. His handsome lips quivered like a rabbit's, smelling something, then he slightly smiled. He looked back at the trailer. Already the tall old groom was returning to them, limping across the dirt alleyway with a calm grimace. He had even remembered to put in his teeth. Then they were all in on it. If the old man wasn't dying, it came down to a flash about a horse.

  IT WAS NO NEED FOR studying and dreaming. Often in the past if Medicine Ed need to know about a horse, he could sit over a hand made of tail and mane hairs of the horse and tied with a red string, and a hoof shaving, and one green corner-bit of his lucky money, push them around in hot candle-sperm with a hoof pick under the light of the same white candle, and dream until the answer came to him. But today was no need, no time. Soon as he heard the name of the horse Zeno was running, he knew what he must do. He must ride his lucky money on Mr Boll Weevil, who had beckoned to him-and somehow he felt he had to touch his lucky money just then. They it is, nemmind if it look strange-he stumbled into the trailer.

  It was a fifty Zeno give him last year when they stole a nice little race in the Poconos with Small Town Doc. He kept it pressed flat and neat between the lid and the waxed-cardboard seal of a pickle jar of hedge-beech leaf. The bill was evenly folded four times so Ulysses S. Grant looked up thoughtful at you out of the lower left-hand corner. It was no use wishing it was a hundred, or a couple of hundreds. He'd seen better years than them with Zeno, and worse years. Thing of it was, he had lucky money, like the boll weevil he was looking for a home, and here was Mr Boll Weevil in the four slot in the fourth race, beckoning to him.

  It was not a harming goofer that Medicine Ed knew the makings of. This ghost gray powder had never been meant to undo a horse. It was a rootwork of strong encouragement, of reaching deep into the lost harmony and milking up one drop of what was needed at the last. The gray rolled leaf which stuck to itself like cobweb came from a hedge-beech in the old Salters family plot hard by New Life Baptist churchyard in Cambray, South Carolina. The tree grew sideways out of the grave of his grandfather, Eduardo Salters, greatest jockey ever known in South Carolina, born in slavery, killed in a match race in 1888. It sprung out of the grave dirt twisted in the shape of a man riding, with one straight limb shooting out of it like a whip, and its leaves must be collected at dark of moon from that limb only. This jar was dried heartleaf, this one was horse mushroom, this here was boneset. The fine graygold sugar with specks of black peat in it was sand and shatters from the infield of Major Longstreet Park, in that little arc of elderberry bush where Cannonball was buried. And finally he had needed blood of great speed, and what he got musta was good enough. This was the blood of Platonic, who he had rubbed for Whirligig Farm, and who give him his own bleeding ulcer. Platonic had scratched his fetlock in the gate the day he won the Seashell, and Ed had scrooched down before he let the horse have his bath and scraped every black flake into this little bottle here.

  And that, once he mixed it to his recipe, was Medicine Ed's horse-goofer dust. But he had give up doctoring. Come to find out if you asked by powerful means for more than the animal had to give, you could not manage the results. Every time he had cast the powder the horse had won, but won for the last time. Some way that was the last race of the horse, at least the last he ever saw. Either he was all done like Willie W, who was nerved and hooked a front sticker on his behind foot and ripped out his frog and had to be put down; or Scraggly Lake, who bled for the third time and was banned and auctioned and he never saw him again; or Broomstick, the onliest horse Medicine Ed ever loved, who win for him at Hollywood Park and snapped her cannon bone in the van on the short drive home. And which was why he had let the medicine go, all except his name, which nobody up here w
as wise to where it come from. And that was a good thing.

  Fact was, after that first time with Willie W, he had had to need the money extremely bad. At Santa Anita he bought himself a change of address fast, behind what-was-her-name, Estelle, whose pachuco boyfriend come looking for him with a knife. After Broomstick he vowed never to touch the horse-goofer again. This was in 19 and 55.

  But now the peculiar harmony of Mr Boll Weevil running in the fourth race had beckoned to him. He was seventy-two years old and tired. He never paid no mind to horses' names, disremembered most of em. This one sneaked up on him: He's looking for a home. He's looking for a ho-ome. Must be some kind of home out there looking for him, Medicine Ed.

  He had done for horses all his life. If he had spent his working days in one place, with just one stable, like Charles Philpott, maybe they would give him a tack room in the end, or even a room to himself over the track kitchen and let him fade. He would turn into one of them old pops who get up at four in the morning to the day they die and limp to the track and run errands for folks, get ice and coffee and such. But as a young man he'd been restless. If somebody's girlfriend caught his eye, he was heedless. In the old days he'd get to drinking, get to fighting. Then worry over Platonic give him that ulcer which put him in Sinai Hospital and damn near killed him. Afraid to make a mistake, afraid something gone happen to the horse before he get him to his race, study and worry all the time and after I win the Seashell what they give me? They it is-a damn gold watch. He was bad sick when he worked on Platonic. It was only that jealous pachuco boyfriend with a knife who got him out of that, the time he used the goofer with Broomstick. He cashed his bet and went down to Tijuana for two years, got him a room over a dentist shop and didn't miss no racetrack either, unh-unh, not one bit. Except for what happened to his filly, he used to think sometimes he ought to find that crazy Mexican and thank him.