by Niall Howell
“Bettors have a window of one hour. But we’re very strict about that. We offer one hour and not a minute longer.”
“And the man who I asked you about, he placed a bet on the next race? The one that starts at 5:40? Answer this one and I’m gone for good.”
“Yes,” he says. “He made a bet on Gray Ghost, who races,” he consults his watch, “eight minutes from now.”
I leave the window and rush back to my post against the corridor wall near the entrance. Why would he place a bet for a race that’s about to start and then not stick around for the race? And who wouldn’t want to watch a race he had money on? Maybe he knows about the time window and he’s going off somewhere else for an hour, but if that were the case, then where would he go? There’s nothing close by here that you could walk to and back from in the time of an hour. At least, nothing interesting, nothing worth leaving the track for. If he needs booze, cigarettes, some reading material, food—anything—well, they’ve got all that right here at the track. That and more, when you factor in the damn entertainment!
I wait there for a full hour, but Andrew never comes back.
A WAVE WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR HER. A HAUGHTY GLANCE IS what I get. I’d been so wrapped up trying to figure out this Andrew business that I didn’t think to take the two-block detour to my hotel and avoid the San Carlos altogether. She’s standing under a canopy raising a match to the tip of her cigarette when we spot each other. I’m caught off guard, so the first words that try to come up pertain to Andrew and his poor betting habits. Luckily, I choke them down before they escape my lips. “Evening,” I say.
She shakes the flame dead and flicks the matchstick to the ground. “Well, isn’t this déjà vu. Are you staying here?”
“No. No, I’m down a ways. The Lighthouse, the place is called. Where’s lover boy?”
She almost winces at ‘lover boy.’ “He’s off at the track. He’s meeting me here shortly.”
“On this particular square of sidewalk?”
She tuts and shakes her head. “In the hotel bar. I just came out to get some air.”
“He, uh, he go to the races often?” I fumble out my lighter and a cigarette as I ask, trying to appear disinterested, like I’m on small-talk turf.
“Not really.” She pauses, then adds, “Well, I suppose more often than he used to go, which would have been never. Why do you ask?”
“Just making conversation.”
“I see. ‘Making conversation’—something you feel obliged to do?”
“Christ, Genevieve, can’t a guy have a goddamn conversation with his—aw, forget it!” I throw my hands up and turn to leave.
I walk fast, so I’m already halfway up the block when she calls, “I’m sorry that he hurt you,” turning my square of sidewalk to quicksand. The clack of her high heels moves behind me. The clack stops when I feel her standing inches away. “I’m sorry that he hurt you,” she repeats. “I wish he hadn’t.” Her voice is flat and matter-of-fact.
“A lot of good wishing does,” I reply, keeping my back to her.
“He shouldn’t have gone so hard on you. I know you started it—the violence, I mean…I’m sure he was doing something to egg you on—but he didn’t have to take it that far. I told him that.”
“He called me a fucking draft dodger.” I turn to face her, and looking her in the eyes, as I say those last two words, my voice quavers the tiniest bit.
“You are a draft dodger.”
“How can you of all people say that? I came to Montreal to—”
“To dodge the draft. You came to be with me at a time when I needed you, yes, but you also came—and stayed—to avoid being drafted. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think so, at least. If I were in your position, I’d do everything in my power to keep from being shipped off to the front lines. But try being honest with yourself for a change, Toby. Own up.”
Neither of us speaks for a while. We stand together, there in the unsteady glow of the jittery bulbs that trim the canopy above us, avoiding each other’s eyes and puffing away. As I flick my cigarette to the gutter and start another, I wonder what the hell fidgety people did in uncomfortable situations before smoking.
They probably sucked their thumbs, I suppose.
When she’s had enough of the silence, Genevieve says, “Is that dancing tart staying with you at your Lighthouse?”
I shake my head ‘no.’ Maybe it’s ‘No, she’s not a ‘tart.’’ Or maybe it’s, ‘No, she’s not staying with me,’ or ‘No, you don’t get to ask me that sort of thing.’
Whatever it is, it’s no.
She’s smiling when I turn and leave her.
I KILLED WALLY JAKES WITH AN EMPTY WINE BOTTLE THAT I found on the ground outside Rowland’s trailer. I bashed his head with it.
That wasn’t the part that killed him, though. It hurt him, no doubt, and it shocked him—his eyes told me that much—but it didn’t kill him.
See, I was holding the bottle by its scrawny neck when I swung it, so a good chunk of it broke into pieces and went flying across the room once it hit his skull. After that, the part I was left holding looked like a chalice with a jagged, blood-dotted brim.
That was the part I killed him with, The Unholy Grail.
It was messier than I ever could have imagined.
"GRAVITY FEARS THEM!" WAS PAINTED IN RED LETTERS, slanting across the middle of the poster. I was depicted swinging with my legs hooked around the bar, reaching out to catch Genevieve, who was gliding through the air towards me. ‘Mr. & Mrs. Angel’ was written in calligraphy just below ‘Rowland’s World Class Circus,’ which was up top. There were always lots of different posters. The idea was to have one for each of the bigger acts, but being headliners, me and Genevieve had two posters dedicated to us. The other one had a similar picture, but beneath Mr. and Mrs. Angel, it said, ‘Not For The Faint of Heart,’ which I thought was pretty generic, nowhere near as good as ‘Gravity Fears Them!’
We were the act to see on the travelling circuit. Every night, we filled seats and left a lineup of asses standing outside, hoping to score a ticket for the next performance. Back then, if you were to step into the big top of Rowland’s World Class Circus on any given night, you’d see a packed house of people who had forked over top dollar—and I’m talking Ringling and Barnum prices—to see our show. You’d look at all the smiling faces, and you’d crane your neck back and look at me and Genevieve soaring through the air, and you’d think: All this looks pretty damned good. And then I’d tell you that looks can be deceiving.
Despite receiving a great deal of acclaim and raking in hills of cash on a nightly basis, in 1948, Rowland’s World Class Circus was a grandiose shitshow that was core-of-the-Earth deep in debt.
A number of animals that we bought without having the means to properly care for went and died long before they’d earned us back a fraction of their cost. A Bennie-loving lion tamer with poor whip control took out a young Cleveland man’s eye and brought a hefty lawsuit down on us. And a train track fuck-up in Sacramento cost us three trailers and put seven dancers and eight crewmen out of commission for several months. Rowland, crooked bastard that he is, went and fired most of the remaining crew, hiring winos and buck-starved vagabonds as replacements and paying them only a fraction of the wages he’d have paid anyone less desperate. To take care of the lawsuit and keep the place afloat, he borrowed a pile of money from some mobsters in Boston, agreeing, as part of his repayment, to let any of their men join us on tour if they needed to lay low for a while. We’d take up to five men at a time. They’d usually stay cooped up in a trailer during the day and come out at night after the show ended. They’d get stir-crazy and drink themselves stupid and pick fights with the winos and try and screw with the women. Julian even got stabbed by one of them once. He’d caught a guy forcing himself on Susan, so he pulled the son of a bitch off and hit him a few times, and figured that was that. But the guy came at him with a shiv the next night and made a hole in Julian’s arm
. He was going for the heart, but Julian’s too quick to get it in the heart by some stinko mob fuck.
Yeah, back in 1948, if you found yourself in our big top, you’d have been delighted and thrilled and astonished beyond belief. And at the end of the show, when you and your gawking date’s beer bottles had been drained and your striped popcorn bags had been emptied save for a swishing subfloor of molar-cracking kernels, you would look up at the two acrobats waving at the adulating masses below them, and you would think, Rowland’s World Class Circus—pretty damned good, if you ask me. But you know what I’d tell you? I’d tell you you’re just a clueless rube. I’d tell you that you live a vapid life that’s so vanilla-shit that you have to pay other people to get your thrills for you. And I’d tell you that a shimmering surface means jack, and you had to be a special class of naïve to think our fool’s-gold tumour of a show looked pretty damned good, because at most, we were only pretty damned.
HISTORY REPEATED ITSELF IN MONTGOMERY, BUT NOT in Birmingham, and we didn’t have any days off in Tallahassee. After all the time I wasted hanging around in Pensacola, I decided from then on I’d only stake out the track on the second of our off-days in any given city.
On day two in Montgomery, Andrew did the same thing as in Pensacola: showed up late in the day, bought a ticket, and left the track immediately after without watching a single race. Figuring that he might pull the same ditch, I’d stationed myself closer to the entrance. That way, I could pursue him from a discreet distance and see what the hell he was up to. When he left, I’d managed to stay on his tail for about three seconds before some half-blind yahoo with his nose practically poking through his race ticket knocked me on my ass. Andrew was gone when I got up.
I went to the Birmingham races with the same approach in mind, but he didn’t show there at all.
I’m starting to think I’ll need a new venue for the job. Still, I can’t help but be intrigued by what’s been going on—or hasn’t been going on—at the race tracks with Andrew.
Atlanta’s Piedmont hotel is classier than any of the places I’d stayed in the last three cities, but after Birmingham, I was getting sick of lodging in dives. Both Alabama and Georgia get seventh-circle hot this time of year, and if the cheaper joints have air-conditioning units at all, you can bet your ass they’ll also have a ‘TEMPORARILY OUT OF SERVICE’ sign with at least a year’s worth of dust on it taped over their controls. The signs are always written in capital letters like that, too. That’s one of life’s certainties right there—people who write ‘out of service’ signs love capital letters.
When I first rolled into Atlanta, I watched the Royal Two stroll into the Piedmont and then went off in search of a close-by spot for myself. I got about a block away, and after scoping some of the alternative accommodations thought, the hell with it! When did I sign up for a lifetime of suffering? I’m treating myself to a nice, clean room with air-conditioning!
The Piedmont was located on the corner of Peachtree and Luckie Street. It had a drugstore called Jacob’s at the base of it and was a short walk from The Forsyth Theatre. To cut down the chances of running into Genevieve or Andrew in the lobby, after they walked in, I killed a few minutes by going for a sandwich at Jacob’s before entering the Piedmont and booking my room. Knowing that the two of them wouldn’t have taken something on the ground floor, I requested a room there myself. The desk clerk obliged, handing me the key to 101 and telling, not asking, me to enjoy my stay.
THE SHOWER IN MY ROOM IS TOP-NOTCH. THE TOWELS ARE the kind of soft you can’t help but bury your face in. Once I dry off, I lie on the bed for a while. The ceiling fan whirring above me was raised by a pack of helicopters. When I set it to its top speed, it spins so fast that I can’t differentiate the individual blades and instead see only one circular blur. The cool air that it whips across my body has a lulling effect. I doze, bobbing in and out of consciousness, half awake, half alert, half real, and half vapour. Maybe in reality, maybe in my dreams, I rub my hands over my face, feeling the lines of my young scars. Memories of the beating and the ensuing indignity come rushing to meet me. They hold my eyelids open with sharp, bony fingers to make sure I don’t ignore them.
I force myself awake and spring from the bed. They can’t be ignored, those bastard memories, but that doesn’t mean I have to let them have their way with me. I dress in such a hurry that I’m still tucking my shirt in as I walk down the hallway and into the lobby.
These days in Atlanta are everyone’s last two off for a while. When we leave here, we hit Charlotte, Raleigh, and then Richmond without stopping. After that, we’ll head to Baltimore, where we’ll get another couple days off. If Andrew shows today at Lakewood Track, I assume he’ll continue with his pattern of buying a ticket and leaving right away. If that’s the case, I’ll tail him—making sure not to collide with some clueless buffoon this time—and see if he goes somewhere that might provide me with an opportunity. I won’t do it here in Atlanta, but if I’m able to tail him today, maybe I can come up with a plan as to how I’ll do it in Baltimore. Maybe he goes to a tavern, in which case I could sneak in unnoticed, and follow him to the restroom and do it there. Or perhaps he goes to the movies—a big, dark room that, given the time of day, might be close to empty. Hell, for all I know, he goes to church and spends a few much-needed hours in a confessional booth, in which case, I’ll throw on some robes, hear him out, and then shove a knife through the wooden grid—that’d be some penance.
If I don’t catch him at the track and get the chance to follow him to wherever he goes, I’ll have to wait until Baltimore, where I’ll either spend another day waiting and tailing so I can come up with a plan for the change of venue, or I’ll have to improvise and go ahead with it right then and there, which would be a risky way to go about it.
The desk clerk tells me there’s a bus that does runs out to Lakewood Track. He sketches a quick map on a Piedmont notepad and hands it to me. The bus stop is only a fifteen-minute walk from the hotel.
There’s a table in the lobby that has coffee and Danishes. I fill a cup for myself and take the last lemon Danish, leaving the late-rising suckers with a choice between apple and apple, and then leave the cool comfort of the lobby. It’s around nine a.m., but holy shit, is it ever a scorcher out! I’m getting pretty damn sick of being on the Southern end of the country. I down my coffee as fast as I can because it’s hot and I want to be rid of it. By the time I’ve found the block where the bus stop is, my shirt is splotched with sweat. There’s a crowd of about twenty or thirty waiting for the bus. A handful of them are somehow wearing their jackets, and I figure they must be either native to the city or they’re recently deceased and don’t know it yet. The bus stop is outside of a beauty parlour. There’s a rectangle of shade outside the place’s window, so I go stand there. Inside, five women sit in a row on cushy pink leather chairs. Each of them is covered with a floral smock and has one of those metal Martian contraptions pulled over her head. One of them looks up from her Life and meets my wandering eyes. I smile and she smiles back and then returns to her Life.
The bus arrives after about ten minutes. Because I separated myself from the other commuters by standing back in the shade, I’m one of the last to get on. There aren’t many seats available. Each seat accommodates two. A few people have already resigned themselves to standing and have found a good spot to hang on to. I spot a vacant seat near the back next to a coloured man. It’s being blocked by a standing white fellow in a gator’s-dick-ugly purple suit.
“You taking that seat, pal?”
Purple Suit dabs sweat from his brow with a polka-dotted handkerchief. “Be my guest,” he says, in a better-you-than-me kind of way, stepping aside to let me sit.
I slide in and nod at my new seat-buddy. He returns my nod and then gets back to looking straight ahead. The bus gets rolling a moment later, and all the standers tip to one side and tighten their grip but pretend they’re not tightening their grip as our ride pulls away from the curb and accelerates. O
nce we hit a steady speed, cigarettes are pulled out, followed by the sound of sparking flint wheels and the scraping of matches. Forgetting I’m not wearing my jacket, I reach where my breast pocket would be and pat absently, but then realize my cigarettes are back in my room at the Piedmont. The fellow next to me offers me his open pack. I take one of his Pall Malls and he takes one, and lights them both.
“Thanks, pal.”
“You bet.”
“I’ve got a feeling everyone on this bus bets.”
A nod and a quarter-smile for my effort.
Purple Suit makes a disgusted face and shakes his head. He’s towering above us, and I get the feeling there’s nowhere else he’d feel more at home.
Twenty miles isn’t far, but time sure likes to stretch itself out when it notices you’re in an uncomfortable spot. A few of the bus’s windows are jammed so they only come open a couple inches. The driver’s got a small fan going at the front, but it might as well be a photograph of a fan for any of us who are seated more than a few feet behind him. And with the temperature climbing, a number of occupants are starting to smell, so there’s a nauseating oniony odour permeating the already unfresh, stagnant air. To make things worse, an accident a few blocks up has got the roadway gagging. “I’d kill for a drink right about now,” I mutter without even really noticing that I say it out loud.
“Don’t go that far,” my seat-buddy says. His coat is draped across his lap. He rifles through one of the inner pockets and produces a small flask. He passes it to me. “Gin,” he says.
“Geez, pal, I’m racking up a real tab with you, aren’t I?”
“Don’t worry about it. And it ain’t ‘Pal.’ My name’s Horace.”
“Well, thank you kindly, Horace.” I raise the flask to him and take a drink. It’s good gin, but right now, any gin would be good gin. Purple Suit winces. A few people around us make a disgusted noise. Some guy sitting across from me mumbles, “Fucking nigger lover.” That ticks me off, so I take another drink from Horace’s flask, this time smacking my lips as I hand it back to him. Horace is staring straight ahead. The attention has got him nervous. He takes the flask back without turning to look at me and returns it to his coat pocket.