Lord of Misrule (15 page)

But I don’t really feel like killing you, you said.

Let me up now, she said in a low voice. Her face said
You’ve spoiled everything
and you quickly untied her, looking away. Of course not in a million years was she going to say to you what you had so many times bowed down in front of her and said:

Thank you, my twin, for granting me my life.

R
IVER VAN AND TRANSPORT
.

Happy Thanksgiving, Two-Tie.

Good morning, Vernon. What do you know?

You wanted I should call when Pelter was in. Well, he’s in. Nightcap Sadday. Two thousand dollar claimer for horses which ain’t win two since May.

How far’s he going?

A mile.

Hmmm. So what do you hear? Do the layabouts in the Polky Dot think he can still get up to speed?

Against two thousand dollar horses? When he’s been running for fifteen? To be honest wit ya, I been amazed. These clowns remember Pelter. Nothing about what little stakes he win, what distance he likes, how old he is. Nothing about how bad he broke down. None of that. The Darkesville Stalker, that’s what they remember, the poor man’s Stymie, bred in a field. They ain’t forget that name. I think he’s a sentimental favorite Sadday. He oughta run for governor. He might could beat Arch Moore.

I’d vote for him, Two-Tie said. If I still had a vote.

How come you can’t vote? You never did no time for that bookstore, ain’t it? I thought they let you off clean, no probation, nothing.

I live in Ohio now.

O yeah. Hey, look at this. Same Sadday, in the fourth. Here’s that three-year-old Zeno claimed off your guy, Hansel, the one that’s hooked up wit your niece—Jim Hamm’s got the horse for Mrs. Zeno now. The Mahdi. Shipping up from Charles Town. Hey, they say that Hansel goes on yak yak yakking about claiming him back—could he be looney, that guy? He’s got a funny look in his eye.

Umbeschrien
—you’re supposed to tell
me
if he’s looney—you find out, you hear? And Vernon—speaking of claims—you hear anything else I should know?

Like what?

I realize that only some certified moron would even think about claiming a nine-year-old horse what pulled up in the stretch once last year. Still, Vernon …

I know what you mean. It’s Pelter.

But the horse is nine years old, Vernon.

Aaay, racetrackers are crazy. You start with that presumption.

What kind of greedy, disgusting asshole would trade around a class animal like that, from hand to hand, in its old age, like it was a poker chip. Here is a horse what has already made a substantial contribution to society—seventy-seven grand lifetime, if I remember right. He wakes up in a strange barn with a moron in charge who don’t know nutting about his lingering medical problems, and outside of if he win or lose, could care less. The horse is looking at a miserable death.

Aaanh, this business will drive you nuts if you let it. What do you care? You going soft on me? What’s going on?

What do I care? That is a interesting question, Vernon. Never mind what I care, just put the word out, will ya? Two-Tie will take it very,
very
bad if anybody claims that horse.

For two grand?

For any price. Two-Tie will take it deeply personal. Spread the word. You follow me? I realize you can’t be responsible for mental cases, Vernon. Or strangers. Assholes and morons, yes.

I’ll see what I can do.

Thank you, Vernon. How is it coming with that special race for spring? Lord of Misrule.

I don’t know, Two-Tie. It don’t look good. Standish don’t want to shock the Chamber of Commerce types, sending the meatwagon after some cripple even a greenhorn could see the horse shouldna been running in the first place.

I want you should remind Mr. Standish politely how he got tight with the Rotary Club in the first place. And the glass factories.

Suitcase sighed hopelessly.

And ask him who roped in Glory Coal?

Suitcase said he would do so.

Thank you, Vernon. What are your plans for Thanksgiving? Eating turkey with the missus?

You know, Estelle was going to do the turkey for the kids and the five grandbabies. Monday she picks up a twenty-two-pound butterball out the freezer bin at the Giant Eagle and sumpm goes pop in her back. Behind the shoulder. Some Thanksgiving. She’s gotta cook for eleven people with one of them collars around her neck looks like a toilet seat.

She don’t gotta cook nutting. I’m gonna send over a licensed practical nurse who will also cook your turkey for you. Best turkey you ever eat. Stuffed with bay oysters and cornbread. Tell Estelle not to do nutting or buy nutting—the nurse’ll bring everything with her. Ruth Pigeon. Kidstuff’s old lady.

Ain’t she spending the holiday with Kidstuff?

I’m sorry to say the kid has temporarily tied himself up in other business.

The Boston floozy.

Yeah. This gives Ruthie sumpm to do.

I’ll tell Estelle. Hey, that’s real good of you.

Think nutting of it.

You wouldn’t maybe care to join us?

Two-Tie laughed softly at the bare idea—Elizabeth and him would of course eat in the Ritzy Lunch and spend a quiet evening at home—but then, the invite had been strictly for form’s sake. Everyone knew that Two-Tie did not do family feasts—no weddings, no christenings, no graduations. Funerals, yes. Some people said he kept kosher, but this could not be right since sometimes he turned up at wakes, where he filled up a paper plate with ham and potato salad like everybody else. And on the other hand he would not show his face at a bar mitzvah either. People said that family scenes depressed him, unless it was shoving some stiff in the ground, on account of he had lost a very young wife himself years ago—the one in whose honor he wore the black bow tie. But no one in Carbonport or Indian Mound had actually known this individual, or had the nerve to ask, or could remember Two-Tie in any domestic arrangement other than bachelor with dog.

One other thing I gotta tell you.

What is it, Vernon.

Your niece—I don’t know what it means yet—her name comes up the other day as co-owner for a horse Joe Dale Bigg let old Deucey have the animal on the cuff.

Bigg! What business has that sweet young girl got with Bigg?

Don’t get excited, it’s nothing like that. This is a six-year-old horse, got some class, Joe Dale used to keep him down the farm, run him twice a year for five, six grand. Win once and refused
in the gate three times. Another Speculation grandson that ain’t panned out.

Not the dental patient? Two-Tie asked. Little Spinoza?

That’s the one. First I had a letter from Joe Dale about alien on the horse, three thousand dollars in nobody’s name but Deucey Gifford’s. This week I see the foaling papers: now it’s the girl, that old colored groom they call Medicine Ed, and Deucey. I don’t know what their game is, I don’t hear yet if they’re fronting for that fellow Hansel or what, but I don’t think so. That wouldn’t be like Deucey.

What about the horse?

Like I said, never went nowhere. Two, three wins in twenty-five starts lifetime. Nothing at all but one show in the past two years. And common—half crazy—you know. Speculation grandson. The dental patient. Everybody knows that story. And Biggy Bigg just got out of Pruntytown. So Joe Dale unloaded the horse cheap, maybe that’s all it is. Anyhow check out the seventh race Friday, he’s in for 45 hundred.

Joe Dale Bigg, Two-Tie said in disgust. It ain’t enough for him to take doctors and lawyers to the cleaners—he’s gotta skunk negroes and orphans too.

Suitcase said nothing, for as Two-Tie knew, Joe Dale and him was close as wax, almost as close as Suitcase and Two-Tie.

Well, let us not speak of cheap tricks at a track where the leading trainer don’t have to know a horse from a hole in the ground—I’ll tell the scumbag myself what I think of him if he touches my niece.

Be reasonable, how in hell he’s going to know she’s your niece? You told me not to say nuttin to nobody. Anyhow, like I told you, Joe Dale’s out of it. The horse went from him to Deucey to
the girl, not from him to Deucey
and
the girl. If you got a beef it’s with Deucey.

You honestly think Bigg ain’t holding some cards? Wait till he sees that fresh young woman, he’ll think up some angle even if he didn’t have one in front.

To tell you the truth, if I’m you, I don’t worry about it.

What does that mean, Vernon? I don’t like the sound of that.

When did you ever see Joe Dale Bigg with any type of broad but a diamond dolly? Balloons out to here and bleach blond hair by the cubic foot. Joe Dale likes to pay top dollar for his girls and let’s face it, the niece is a hippy, they give it away. They have ideals, but still. For free! And no more tits than a Boy Scout. And how about that afro on top?

She’s a very charming girl, a great deal like her mother Dorothy, except for the hair, said Two-Tie in an injured tone.

Forget it. She’s safe. She ain’t his type, Suitcase said.

A
N HOUR BEFORE
Little Spinoza’s first race they sat around in a funeral mood—all except Little Spinoza who stood in his bucket of ice as cool as a Tiffany cocktail stirrer, dreaming in black jewelry eyes of emerald alfalfa and clover of Burmese jade. He had miraculously regained his innocence as they had all lost theirs. He had forgotten what it was to go to the dirty races, but they were owners now—maybe they should have stayed drudges, toadies and slaves. They should have known they weren’t the lucky type.

Deucey turned up the collar of her gray raincoat and plopped a soggy woolen golfing cap on her head as if it had been an ice bag. She reached in her pocket and went to work on a pint of Early Times. Medicine Ed sat in a metal folding chair with his stick leg propped straight out in front of him on a bale of hay. His liver brown hands were floury from the cold. He was oiling a petrified curl of leather from a halter, the little blackened end piece that went through the buckle. It ain’t a decent piece of tack in the outfit, he had complained and set to work gravely, so he could sit there looking down in his lap and wouldn’t have to talk to the women. Maggie lay on her back in the straw next to Little Spinoza, staring at him and trying to understand, but without her fingers spidering over his legs and back, his horse brain was closed to her, dark as an Ocean City frozen custard stand in December.

They were all expecting the worst. Maybe he had turned into a chucklehead girl on them. Or like these boys round here anymore he did not want to work. Or maybe he was woolgathered about his manhood, not knowing what he was. Even though he wasn’t supposed to win, they had thought he’d be pawing up sparks by now, thinking about his race. They had thought that Earlie or whoever it was would have a hard time pulling him, but at forty minutes to post he didn’t seem to have noticed yet that he would have to run.

Around 6:30, the pony-girl Alice Nuzum ambled along. How y’all doing tonight? she said. At first no one bothered to answer her, for they weren’t cheered by her visit. I’m taking this one lying down, Maggie finally said, from the straw at Spinoza’s feet. Who wants to know? Deucey said, passing the pony-girl the open pint of Early Times without looking at her. Alice, I’m going to share my likker with you even though you ain’t said nothing good about my horse in a month. Tell you the truth, Alice began. Don’t, Deucey said.

Medicine Ed stood up and limped off to the tack room, carrying the discolored bit of halter out in front of him like a dead snake. He always kept a respectful distance from Alice, for to him she look like some cunjure woman’s helping hand, that do her bidding in the deep of night and the rest of the time live alone under a rock.

I can see this ain’t the right time, the pony-girl said and stepped up to the webbing where the horse stood in a tub of ice. Little Spinoza nickered with pleasure at the sight of her.

Deucey groaned. Cussed horse is more interested in his pals than in the damn race. Hey, tell him he’s in the gate in less than thirty minutes, will ya. Maybe he listens to you.

Alice sank her chewed-off fingernails in Little Spinoza’s
topknot. Wake up, little buddy. O well, I guess today ain’t the day, eh?