Lord of Misrule Read online

  Down Tijuana, that was when he got his teeth. He had plenty of time to get fitted downstairs for a nice set of teeth until his cash run down. Bad teeth could kill you, slowly poison your blood, ruinate the other organs. Now he had the good teeth and no home. Maybe if he hadn't got his teeth, but he had.

  If he could know death would snatch him quick, like it took Charles Philpott. But last time he seen the doc-it was for a tetanus shot after some horse shipped up from Florida jumped out the stall and bit him, and Zeno made him go-the doc said his heart and lungs were twenty years younger than he was. If he hadn't give up drinking after that ulcer, but after he got out the hospital he couldn't look at the stuff no more. And then he forgot about drinking, found he grew ponderful in the evenings on his own anymore, didn't need no likka, no nothing. He had deep thoughts. He had no learning, no way to write his thoughts, but this was his own fault. If he hadn't run away to his Uncle Wilbur at the races at the age of eight, so his other family was lost to him-on his father's side, a good many of them was educated, teachers and barbers and such. After his mother died he could have gone to her people in Arkansas, but they were Christian path folk who farmed cotton on shares and didn't want nothing to do with racehorses.

  Looking for a home at the age of seventy-two! It was his own damn fault. He could feel bitter about certain things-after he win the Seashell Stakes, a 225,000 dollar race, a gold watch that stopped the first year-but some way he was lucky. He could see something in the whirling dust, the shadows. The harmony showed itself to him. It made strong suggestions to him, as to why things were the way they were. But this was the onliest time it had told him in words what to do. Mr Boll Weevil.

  He put the fifty back for now and screwed the lid on tight, and as he walked out of the trailer to collect his abandoned horse from the frizzly hair girl and the blacksmith, he caught his brown sunken face under its pad of white hair in the shaving mirror over the kitchen sink. Even in his hurryment it stopped him-how it seemed to quiver and heave and then all at once to crack open, not like a death mask, but like a woman's beauty mask which a newborn face is just coming out of. In the same moment he remembered to reach in the glass on the counter and slip in his teeth. Outside it was a young lady present. This was always a good sign.

  SHE LIES ASLEEP in the straw in some tiny striped shirt that won't pull down all the way over her belly button, and her jeans are taut and shiny over the keelbones of her hips. She is so small in the middle that you can pull the jeans down to her knees by opening just the one button with a soft pinch of two fingers, and look out now if she doesn't let you do it, without even opening her eyes to ask who it is, the slut, golden straw sticking in her dense fuzzy hair, thorning the kinky pigtails. And that cossack face of hers, slashed by just the one blade of dusty light that comes through the crack in the barn door. She is so light even in that most rounded and muscular part of her, where the strong sinews twist together in a basin, that you never see her push up to let you, rather she arcs and floats a little over the sweet straw to meet your hand, like a magic lamp with its wick floating in oil. Your hand slips easily over the small knob at the brim of her pelvis, so light, and helps her. And this precisely tooled handle that only you know leaves you still the two fingers free, the ring finger and the little finger, to prod her open. Now you can light the wick from the flame at the tip of any finger.

  And now awash with love of you, not that she knows who you are, or cares, the slut, she opens into that cave of spirits, tomb of your lost twin, and you cast off upon the black satin waters, gliding, gliding. And so easily in that medium, so deep so quick, so soon sliding over the falls rather than patiently stroking, it is impossible for you not-to laugh. O yes, O yes, the perfect over-brimming willingness of her to you! She is the very body of luck giving herself to you, asking no questions. In fact she thanks you for taking her, such a blind wave of thanks that she never even sees you down on your knees in the straw in front of her, shooting dice for her mercy, begging her never to leave you.

  HE DID LAUGH. She woke up, and he was clinging to her in the straw like a boy to a driftwood raft. What's going on? she asked him, picking straw out of her hair. But the horses were waiting. Miss Fowlerville went in the bad stall. Railroad Joe was escorted to the stall hidden behind the track kitchen, in Barn J. They put The Mahdi in Z, the transient barn, where Maggie could have watched him through a spy hole if he were going to a race tonight. But it was already five in the evening: no way he was going to a race tonight, Maggie thought, thanked god and the hurryless van man, hid the Telegraph and kept her counsel.

  And now Tommy was backing Pelter out of the van-he was a long horse and had a long way to come. His shoes screeked on the diamond frets of the aluminum ramp and she pressed her hand on the warm rump to steady it, raising a hand-shaped dust mark on the velvety nap. Pelter had the commonest coloring for a racehorse, which was, to Maggie, also the most beautiful: dark bay, a dense nut brown with black mane, black ear points and tail, and gleaming black knees, ankles and feet. She liked especially the shallow, faintly darker gulley that deepened over his spine just above the tail, dividing the hindquarters into plum-like lobes. Now she pushed her nose into his hip and smelled him.

  They started across the backside, towards the beautiful faraway stall in Barn B. What does it mean? What are they trying to do? she asked Tommy again.

  Who the hell knows, Maggie? Maybe they got no stalls.

  That's when he laughed. She peered at Tommy to see if he was joking, it wasn't quite possible to tell and instead she found herself staring at little aquamarine flakes like bits of glass in his pond-dark eyes. They made threads of a similar color jangle in his old tweed vest. Without even trying he was a dapper man-he'd pick up some gray rag for a quarter off a church rummage-sale table in Martinsburg and the next day it was a shirt that draped around his throat just so, even ruffed a bit in the back, and had turned a smoldering sage green. With perfect cuffs. But shoes he bought new, and only the best: ankle high paddock boots of a burnished-copper color with zippers up the back and cecropia-moth elastic insets, custom-ordered, ninety dollars a pair, from Hornbuckle of London.

  What do you mean, Maggie said, I saw dozens of stalls when I was traipsing around the backside getting these ready. There are four in Barn Z alone, all better than the one they gave us.

  They're not going to inconvenience horsemen they know just to accommodate me. They think I'm a nobody. I am a nobody. And again he laughed. He pulled a straw out of her hair, then tangled his fingers in the dark rich knots of it. Look, Maggie, if you're so worried, maybe you ought to call up that shady Uncle Rudy of yours, see what he can do for us.

  Chrissake, Tommy! That's just what we need to get in and out of here fast-to get ourselves tied up with some petty gangster who used to go to seder with my mother.

  Tommy laughed uproariously. Presumably he had been joking. Uncle Rudy, he said fondly, what was he anyway-some kind of tout or tip-sheet writer, or what?

  I have no idea. It was not a suitable topic at the family dinner table. Tommy, this old girl of a gyp, Deucey is her name, says they want to get a look at what we have.

  Tommy shrugged. Let em look. Hell, I've been around cheap claimers long enough to know you can't tell from looking at these horses whether they'll run or not. Everyone of them's beat up, bowed, got a knee, a foot, a sessamoid, something. Plenty of times, on a track like this, the worse they look, the better they run. If they run.

  Ours look that bad?

  Let me see… Railroad Joe…

  O yes.

  O yes.

  There was no disagreement here. The right front cannon bone on the black horse resembled an old ragged galosh right down to the lumpy buckles. Blister, cautery, everything had been done. And in Maggie's eyes he had a giant, prehistoric head-armor plated, scarred like a boxer and ugly as a rhinoceros.

  Pelter?

  Pelter. I don't know, Tommy said. He's old. He was a famous horse in his day. There was no claim. Mr. Hickok used to
take very, very good care of him. Nothing wrong with his legs. His back always was too long and it looks lumpy now, if anybody's looking at his back.

  Maggie ran a hand down the side of the horse, the long dark barrel of his ribs. The short hair there, like good dope, left a slight stickiness on her fingers, not unpleasant. They were in the fine stall now and Pelter let out a squeal and threw himself on his famous back in the straw and rolled. They stepped away, watching him carefully. The horse had been known to get cast in a stall, just when he was feeling good. Tommy hooked the webbing behind them.

  You'll be sorry you fell in love with that horse, he said.

  I know.

  Because I'm going to run him where he belongs.

  I know. But I still don't see somebody claiming him after all these years.

  It was Mr. Hickok they left alone, not the horse. I'm not Roland Hickok.

  Maggie was silent. They walked back along the ranks of shedrows to Barn Z.

  Tommy sighed. I don't know, Maggie, I don't know what people will think. He's old, that's the best thing. He looks mercifully bad on paper-except for the Lifetime Record, of course-not even a show in the last year. And he bled, not that long ago. Some of these oldtimers probably saw it.

  We should make him a blanket that says One more race and I'm through, Maggie said. It would be the truth.

  If we did, somebody'd be sure to take him, Tommy said.

  How about The Mahdi?

  The Mahdi, The Mahdi, The Mahdi, Tommy said. The Mahdi is one of us.

  They stood at the webbing and looked at the gleaming red bull of a three-year-old who was settling, with his usual composure, into the fairly good stall in Barn Z. He was not the most interesting to her of the horses. The Mahdi was a heavyweight, remote and gentlemanly in a men's club sort of way, and he was red, although, to be fair, not red like a carrot-rather the more medieval red that stains the edges of old books. He was a sprinter, deeply wrapped in his muscle and sure of himself. He wasn't sore. He did not require the coaxings of women. Any businesslike groom would do.

  Still, you could not say he lacked poetry. The Mahdi stood at the webbing, awake and calmly looking into the dark, like an airplane pilot. Maggie's eye traced the lyre of muscle up his heavy chest. She suddenly realized that, despite his calm, he was not at all as usual for this hour of night. The horse almost seemed to think, himself, that he was going to a race. Why hadn't Tommy fed him yet? She didn't want to know.

  What do you mean, The Mahdi is one of us? she asked. Who exactly is us?

  Tommy's face opened like a fan. This is my horse, he said. This is the one I wanted, the one I worry about. Not a mark on him.

  Tommy had eyes a mile apart and, when he was gambling, a kind of pearl shone on the long planes under them. He looked like a bodega saint in a rapture. Maggie stared at him in uneasy admiration.

  You mean he'll get claimed?

  You may be absolutely sure of it, Tommy whispered in a sort of singsong. As soon as they know. If they get the chance.

  First time out?

  It's not impossible. (Laughing again-like something flying apart.) Well. We'll soon find out. That's one consolation.

  How soon?

  Very soon.

  Not that soon, Tommy.

  O yes. Even sooner

  Not tonight soon.

  Tonight, Maggie. Maiden claimer. Fourth race. Now don't give me a hard time. Get us the big tub, will you? He should be standing in ice already.

  THE FRIZZLY HAIR GIRL wasn't watchful like Deucey had told her. Thus and consequently, it was easy for Medicine Ed to be watchful. He went in his tack room and put his eye up on that chink and taken a deep look at them, the funny-looking couple from Charles Town, reefer-smoking friends of Zeno, Tommy Hansel and the frizzly hair girl, and their big red horse.

  It was a peculiar thing: how Zeno's horse and this young fool's showed up today like might-could-be twin brothers, common enough horses but like seeing double, both maidens, both geldings, fat, red, with nary a mark on them, not even a white sock, and both the color of store-bought whiskey. As for Tommy Hansel, what was the story on that young fellow? It had Medicine Ed woolgathered, trying to fit him in where he belonged. He was a racetracker in his moves, but he wasn't a racetracker in his face. He had a Jordan John look about him which gave Medicine Ed the creeper crawlers-wide forehead, black curly beard, high color for a white man, and burning eyes-big smoking charcoal eyes. This business will run men crazy, Zeno always say. The young fool had a crazy look about him. He had a wild man's laugh. It gave Medicine Ed the creeper crawlers down to the bottom of his hair, and he could not understand why Mr Boll Weevil should have a look alike in that man's company.

  I don't get why we had to come here, Tommy, the frizzly hair girl say to him, it's all crooks running this place, and he say, Maybe they think I'm a nobody. I am a nobody. And he laughed that king-size laugh, not like he really thinks he is a nobody.

  This old gyp Deucey says they want to get a look at what we have.

  Let em look. What can they tell from looking? Half the time, the worse they look, on a track like this, the better they run, if they run.

  Yeah? what about this boy? she said, and together they looked at the fat red horse.

  Young fool's voice dropped way down. This the one, he whispered. This is my horse. Not a mark on him. That's why I'm not waiting till somebody sees.

  She fetched the pitchfork, poked up a mat of dark pissed straw and carried it to the front of the stall on the flat of the tines.

  How soon? she asked.

  Tonight.

  You really put him in.

  While I can.

  You're not going to scratch.

  Nope.

  He just got out of the van.

  He can handle it.

  Seven, eight hours standing on his feet. Noisy hot ride. Horse that's hardly raced. I'm just saying what you taught me, Tommy.

  All true.

  Who are you putting on him?

  Jojo Wood. Hector couldn't get here.

  Shit, the girl said.

  Look, all he has to do is get the horse out of the gate. The Mahdi will do the rest.

  Jojo is a clutz, as you've told me fifty times.

  We have a very good shot in this race, the young fool say.

  We didn't leave our home to take a shot, Tommy. What's wrong with you?

  The young fool ain't answer and she went stomping out the stall in her bargain basement sneakers. He had on hundred dollar horseman's shoes, from London, England, color of new pennies, with zippers up the back.

  She was back directly with her own paper.

  You put him in for six furlongs, she say. He never went more than five.

  Young fool stand there a-petting his big three-year-old. Gus Zeno's got a horse in this race.

  That's right.

  I think he might be gambling on that horse. His old groom had such a look on his face, like something was up.

  No way, the young fool said. It's a nothing horse, big red baby, hardly been out, and he's giving it a race.

  He looks just like our horse, the frizzly girl said. I saw him myself.

  To the ignorant, The Mahdi might look like a nothing horse, but Zeno's horse is a nothing horse, as he'd be the first to tell you. Let me see that paper.

  He snapped it flat in his hands, so sharp that the red horse threw his head up and screamed a little, and the young fool glared over the quarter-folded Telegraph at the girl. It's a nothing horse, he repeated after a moment.

  He threw the paper at her feet and she picked it up, turned her back on him, and studied it.

  Zeno's horse always goes six furlongs, the frizzly girl said.

  He snatched her off the ground by the loose of her jeans, her arms flew up and out and she landed on her belly in the straw. And then he picked her up by her rear waistband and pushed her against the wall, leaned hard on her from behind and run his hand down the front of her pants. He was no pygmy racetracker. He was a well-g
rown man.

  You shut up, you hear me? he said in her ear. That's enough out of you.

  Let me go, she said. Someone might come by.

  Just shut. Do you hear me? Do you understand?

  What do you want? she whispered.

  I want you to capitulate.

  All right. All right, she said.

  The young fool went off somewhere, and now, like Deucey said, the frizzly girl don't let the animal out of her eyesight. She sat in the straw memorizing the horse, with her hands wrapped around her bony knees and her back against the wall. It wasn't all that much to see. She looked at his clean red legs, at the long tendons where they rolled in and out each other as he moved his weight, like strings on a bass fiddle. For a horse going to a race in sixty minutes he ain't have much to say for himself, just standing in a tub of ice, staring in the dark, like his twin Mr Boll Weevil, standing in a tub of ice five stalls down.

  I want you to capitulate. Along the muscular curve of her buttocks, in the notch between them, she had felt him harden against her. His knees pushed her knees apart and his hand slid down her belly and inside her jeans, pressed at the soft wet rivet that held her limbs together. And then he had speared her on his fingers. She uttered some senseless syllable.

  That's enough now, do you hear me, Maggie? he said.

  Let me go. Someone might come by.

  You're going to shut up, starting now. Do you hear me? Do you understand?

  What do you want? she said very low.

  I want you to capitulate.

  All right. All right, she whispered.

  And then she was falling, falling. But he didn't let her up. He pushed farther, and curved them, his fingers, hard against the wall of her. And his thumb found the other moist portal and curved around inside her to meet them, and hooked her.

  She was spinning upwards. Her loosened jeans bound her knees together. One hand under her belly, he lifted her to himself. And then some small thing gave way and he pressed to her center. Somewhere he laughed at her, not unkindly.