The Reivers (27 page)

"Hidy, Uncle Possum, morning, reverend" (that was Ned), and came down the bank, already—or still—looking at Lightning. "Yep, that's Coppermine, all right. These boys had Mr Walter skeered this morning that maybe yawl had rung in another horse on him. You running him, reverend?"

"Call him Mr McCaslin," Uncle Parsham said.

"Yes sir," McWillie said. "Mr McCaslin. You running him?"

"White man named Mr Hogganbeck is," Ned said. "We waiting on him now."

"Too bad you aint got something else besides Coppermine to wait with, that would maybe give Akron a race," McWillie said.

"I already told Mr Hogganbeck that, myself," Ned said. He swallowed. Without haste he lifted the bucket of buttermilk and drank, still without haste. McWillie watched him. He set the bucket down. "Set down and eat something," he said.

"Much obliged," McWillie said, "I done et. Maybe that's why Mr Hogganbeck's late, waiting to bring out that other horse."

"There aint time now," Ned said. "He'll have to run this one now. The trouble is, the only one around here that knows how to rate this horse, is the very one that knows better than to let him run behind. This horse dont like to be in front. He wants to run right behind up until he can see the finish line, and have something to run at. I aint seem him race yet, but I'd be willing to bet that the slower the horse in front of him goes, the more carefuller he is not to get out in front where he aint got no company—until he can see the finish line and find out it's a race he's in and run at it. All anybody got to do to beat him is to keep his mind so peaceful that when he does notice he's in a race, it's too late. Some day somebody gonter let him get far enough behind to scare him, then look out. But it wont be this race. The trouble is, the onliest one around here that knows that too, is the wrong one."

"Who's that?" McWillie said.

Ned took another bite. "Whoever's gonter ride that other horse today."

"That's me," McWillie said. "Dont tell me Uncle Posum and Lycurgus both aint already told you that."

"Then you oughter be talking to me instead," Ned said. "Set down and eat; Uncle Possum got plenty here."

"Much obliged," McWillie said again. "Well," he said. "Mr Walter'll be glad to know it aint nobody but Coppermine. We was afraid we would have to break in a new one. See yawl at the track." Then he was gone. But I waited another minute.

"But why?" I said.

"I dont know," Ned said. "We may not even need it. But if we does, we already got it there. You mind I told you this morning how the trouble with this race was, it had too many different things all mixed up in it? Well, this aint our track and country, and it aint even our horse except just in a borried manner of speaking, so we cant take none of them extra things out. So the next best we can do is, to put a few extry ones into it on our own account. That's what we just done. That horse up yonder is a thoroughbred paper horse; why aint he in Memphis or Louisville or Chicago running races, instead of back here in a homemade country pasture running races against whoever can slip in the back way, like us? Because why, because I felt him last night and he's weedy, like a horse that cant nothing catch for six furlongs, but fifty foot more and he's done folded up right under you before you knowed it. And so far, all that boy—"

"McWillie," I said.

"—McWillie has had to worry about is just staying on top of him and keeping him headed in the right direction; he's won twice now and likely he thinks if he just had the chance, he would run Earl Sande and Dan Patch both clean outen the horse business. Now we've put something else in his mind; he's got two things in it now that dont quite fit one another. So well just wait and see. And whilst we're waiting, you go over behind them bushes yonder and lay down and rest. Word's out now, and folks gonter start easing in and out of here to see what they can find out, and over there they wont worry you."

Which I did. Though not always asleep; I heard the voices: I wouldn't have needed to see them even if I had raised onto one elbow and opened one eye past a bush: the same overalls, tieless, the sweated hats, the chewing tobacco, squatting, unhurried, not talking very much, looking inscrutably at the horse. Nor always awake, because Lycurgus was standing over me and time had passed; the very light looked postmeridian. "Time to go," he said. There was nobody with Lightning now but Ned and Uncle Parsham; if they were all up at the track already, it must be even later still. I had expected Boon and Sam and probably Everbe and Miss Reba too. (But not Butch.
I
hadn't even thought of him; maybe Miss Reba had really got rid of him for good, back up to Hardwick or wherever it was the clerk said last night he really belonged. I had forgotten him; I realised now what the morning's peace actually was.) I said so.

"Haven't they come yet?"

"Aint nobody told them where to come yet," Ned said. "We dont need Boon Hogganbeck now. Come on. You can walk him up and limber him on the way." I got up: the worn perfectly cared-for McClellan saddle and the worn perfectly cared-for cavalry bridle which was the other half of Uncle Parsham's (somebody's) military loot from that Cause which, the longer I live the more convinced I am, your spinster aunts to the contrary, that whoever lost it, it wasn't us.

"Maybe they're looking for Otis," I said. "Maybe they are," Ned said. "It's a good place to hunt for him, whether they finds him or not." We went on, Uncle Parsham and Ned walking at Lightning's head; Lycurgus would bring the buggy and the other mule around by the road, provded he could find enough clear space to hitch them in. Because already the pasture next to the track was filled up—wagons, the teams unhitched and reversed and tied to the stanchions and tail gates; buggies, saddle-horses and -mules hitched to the fence itself; and now we—I—could see the people, black and white, the tieless shirts and the overalls, already dense along the rail and around the paddock. Because this race was homemade, remember; this was democracy, not triumphant, because anything can be triumphant provided it is tenderly and firmly enough protected and guarded and shielded in its innocent fragility, but democracy working: Colonel Linscomb, the aristocrat, the baron, the suzerain, was not even present. As far as I knew, nobody knew where he was. As far as I knew, nobody cared. He owned one of the horses (I still didn't know for certain just who owned the one I was sitting on) and the dirt we were going to race on and the nice white rail enclosing it and the adjacent pasture which the tethered wagons and buggies were cutting up and the fence one entire panel of which a fractious or frightened saddle-horse had just wrenched into kindling, but nobody knew where he was or seemed to bother or care.

We went to the paddock. Oh yes, we had one; we had everything a race track should have except, as Ned said, grandstands and stalls for beer and whiskey; we had everything else that any track had, but we had democracy too: the judges were the night telegraph operator at the depot and Mr McDiarmid, who ran the depot eating room, who, the legend went, could slice a ham so thin that his entire family had made a summer trip to Chicago on the profits from one of them; our steward and marshal was a dog trainer who shot quail for the market and was now out on bond for his part in (participation in or maybe just his presence at) a homicide which had occurred last winter at a neighboring whiskey still; did I hot tell you this was free and elective will,and choice and private enterprise at its purest? And there were Boon and Sam waiting for us. "I cant find him," Boon said. "Aint you seen him?"

"Seen who?" Ned said. "Jump down," he told me. The other horse was there too, still nervous, still looking what I would have called bad but that Lycurgus said Ned said was afraid. "Now, what did this horse—"

"That damn boy!" Boon said. "You said this morning he would be out here."

"Maybe he's behind something," Ned said. He came back to me. "What did this horse learn you yesterday? You was on a twice-around track that time too. What did he learn you? Think." I thought hard. But there still wasn't anything.

"Nothing," I said. "All I did was to keep him from going straight to you whenever he saw you."

"And that's exactly what you want to do this first heat: just keep him in the middle of the track and keep him going and then dont bother him. Dont bother nohow; we gonter lose this first heat anyway and get shut of it—"

"Lose it?" Boon said. "What the hell—"

"Do you want to run this horse race, or do you want me to?" Ned asked him.

"AH right," Boon said. "But, God damn it—" Then he said: "You said that damn boy—"

"Lemme ask you another way then," Ned said. "Do you want to run this horse race and lemme go hunt for that tooth?"

"Here they come," Sam said. "We aint got time now. Gimme your foot." He threw me up. So we didn't have time, for Ned to instruct me further or for anything else. But we didn't need it; our victory in the first heat (we didn't win it; it was only a dividend which paid off later) was not due to me or even to Lightning, but to Ned and McWillie; I didn't even really know what was happening until afterward. Because of my (indubitable) size and (more than indubitable) inexperience, not to mention the unmanageable state toward which the other horse was now well on his way, it was stipulated and agreed that we should be led up to the wire by grooms, and there released at the word Go. Which we did (or were), Lightning behaving as he always did when Ned was near enough for him to nuzzle at his coat or hand, Acheron behaving as (I assumed, having seen him but that once) he always did when anyone was near his head, skittering, bouncing, snatching the groom this way and that but gradually working up to the wire; it would be any moment now; it seemed to me that I actually saw the marshal-murderer fill his lungs to holler Go! when I dont know what happened, I mean the sequence: Ned said suddenly:

"Set tight," and my head, arms, shoulders and all, snapped; I dont know what it was he used—awl, ice pick, or maybe just a nail in his palm, the spring, the leap; the voice not hollering Go! because it never had, hollering instead:

"Stop! Stop! Whoa! Whoa!" which we—Lightning and me—did, to see Acheron's groom still on his knees where Acheron had flung him, and Acheron and McWillie already at top speed going into the first turn, McWillie sawing back on him, wrenching Acheron's whole neck sideways. But he already had the bit, the marshal and three or four spectators cutting across the ring to try to stop him in the back stretch, though they might as well have been hollering at Sam's cannonball limited between two flag stops. But McWillie had slowed him now, though it was now a matter of mere choice: whether to come on around the track or turn and go back, the distance being equal, McWillie (or maybe it was Acheron) choosing the former, Ned murmuring-rapidly at my knee now:

"Anyhow, we got one extra half a mile on him. This time you'll have to do it yourself because them judges gon-ter—" They were; they were already approaching. Ned said: "Just remember. This un dont matter nohow—" Then they did: disqualified him. Though they had seen nothing: only that he had released Lightning's head before the word Go. So this time I had a volunteer from the crowd to hold Lightning's head, McWillie glaring at me while Acheron skittered and plunged under him while the groom gradually worked him back toward position. And this time the palm went to McWillie. You see what I mean? Even if Non-virtue knew nothing about backcoun-try horse racing, she didn't need to: all necessary was to supply me with Sam, to gain that extra furtherance in evil by some primeval and insentient process like osmosis or maybe simple juxtaposition. I didn't even wait for Lightning to come in to the bridle, I didn't know why: I brought the bit back to him and (with no little, in fact considerable, help from the volunteer who was mine and Lightning's individual starter) held so, fixed; and sure enough, I saw the soles of Acheron's groom's feet and Acheron himself already two leaps on his next circuit of the track, Lightning and me still motionless. But McWillie was on him this time, before he reached the turn, so that the emergency squad not only reached the back stretch first but even stopped and caught Acheron and led him back. So our—mine and Ned's—net was only six furlongs, and the last one of them debatable. Though our main gain was McWillie; he was not just mad now, he was scared too, glaring at me again but with more than just anger in it, two grooms holding Acheron now long enough for us to be more or less in position, Lightning and me well to the outside to give them room, when the word Go came.

And that's all. We were off, Lightning strong and willing, every quality you could want in fact except eagerness, his brain not having found out yet that this was a race, McWillie holding Acheron back now so that we were setting the pace, on around the first lap, Lightning moving slower and slower, confronted with all that solitude, until Acheron drew up and passed us despite all McWillie could do; whereupon Lightning also moved out again, with companionship now, around the second lap and really going now, Acheron a neck ahead and our crowd even beginning to yell now as though they were getting their money's worth; the wire ahead now and McWillie, giving Acheron a terrific cut with his whip, might as well have hit Lightning too; twenty more feet, and we would have passed McWillie on simple momentum. But the twenty more feet were not there, McWillie giving me one last glare over his shoulder of rage and fright, but triumph too now as I slowed Lightning and turned him and saw it: not a fight but rather a turmoil, a seething of heads and shoulders and backs out of the middle of the crowd around the judges' stand, out of the middle of which Boon stood suddenly up like a pine sapling out of a plum thicket, his shirt torn half off and one flailing arm with two or three men clinging to it: I could see him bellowing. Then he vanished and I saw Ned running toward me up the track. Then Butch and another man came out of the crowd toward us. "What?" I said to Ned.

"Nemmine that," he said. He took the bridle with one hand, his other hand already digging into his hip pocket. "It's that Butch again; it dont matter why. Here." He held his hand up to me. He was not rushed, hurried: he was just rapid. "Take it. They aint gonter bother you." It was a cloth tobacco sack containing a hardish lump about the size of a pecan. "Hide it and keep it. Dont lose it. Just remember who it come from: Ned William McCaslin. Will you remember that? Ned William McCaslin Jefferson Missippi."