Equus

by Rhonda Parrish

  “Word is our flower ain’t alone.” Ma seemed bothered by this, like she’d thought our acreage was special for its exotic bloom. “Word is there’s a few more here and there…a garden in New York City, if you can credit it, some rich man’s aviary in Charleston. The seeds were brought off boats from God knows where—wasn’t we lucky men thought my grandmother beautiful enough for rare gifts—and now they’re blooming, the trappers said, all t’once.”

  The scent in the air had not yet begun to turn sweet to my nose, but I imagined when Ma breathed in she smelled money.

  “I’ve planned this,” Ma murmured, her eyes straying to the window. “I purely loathe the thought of some no-account trappers muddying my plans simply because they heard—why, it’s unconscionable, what they did to Mr. Greeley to get that note. The pollen’s been his long years past, the oath in my mother’s writing, but can I blame the poor man? Word is they sank a five-spot at his gate and smiled wrong at his woman.” Her eyes came back to me, harder than before, winter sky and rare frost. “You understand me? They got that note in uncanny hands.”

  I understood less her concern over who might get the pollen. That she should dig up some civic-minded worry now—but then her family was clannish, always had been, and trappers were outland. Inherently untrustworthy.

  “Now,” my mother said, calm as though we sat over tea. “You go start making movements toward riding hard tonight, Bea.”

  I went, but before I headed for the barn, I snuck around the side of the house. When I heard the porch door shut I went a little way further and saw my mother wander into the back yard. She stopped at the foot of the corpse flower and ran her hand up its stem. I hated to watch her fingers, pale on the purple, mottled flesh of the flower. It seemed obscene, the corpulent stalk and its aroma, its heavy, open blossom. Carnal, suggestive where her ruined left palm was death. Even in her girlhood she’d never been a dab hand with limeys as I was.

  I left her to it and went to fetch Eel.

  The air was cleaner north of the house, the monstrous flower’s aroma losing some of its wrench to manure and hay. A flower blossoming in our yard, one in a rich man’s greenhouse in South Carolina, another in a city garden in New York, and who knew how many others, the world over? My arms were chilly in the damp summer heat. If Reverend Anson caught word of this, his sermon on Sunday would be hellfire and omens, the Book opening, the world ending.

  Something bothered me more than the thought of the reverend’s face poppy-red and sweating above his collar. My mother was a liar, this the whole town knew, slick-tongued and false. There was no point in lying to me—I knew full well she was a gambler through and through, it was in our blood—but I couldn’t figure what she might’ve thrown into the pot to set against the corpse flower’s pollen. No trappers worth the name would gamble to walk away with nothing.

  I hoped she hadn’t offered Eel. It wasn’t like I couldn’t get another limerunner should I need to, but I was fond of Eel. We worked well together, and he didn’t give me half the lip Coral did. Sometimes I thought he kind of liked me.

  He looked at me across the small, stream-backed pasture, and I let him, let him remember why I was there. His coat shone under the late sun, sleek and liver-dark, a faint red gleam of vestigial gills. Once he was used to me again I tacked him up with the small saddle limerunners could be taught to tolerate and slipped on his halter, flexible bay bound with braided moss, and we jogged out onto the road. His hooves left demon prints next to the normal half-moons of the trappers’ horses. A nice jog was just what we needed, him to warm up so we didn’t have to spend too much time on the track with the others, and me to lose myself in the movement, let Eel carry me away from the house and the scent of the corpse flower.

  The racetrack was five miles west, just south of the cemetery between Springfed and Odessa. I clocked Eel in my head, more out of habit than anything else; his outsized legs covered the distance in forty minutes or so. The sun chased us into town. Road traffic grew thicker the closer we got to civilization, people honking now and then as though we were too close to the pavement, in someone’s way, bothering them at all. It took more than an Oldsmobile horn to spook Eel, and more than snotty townspeople to irk me. They liked to pretend dismay at limeys, chattered to Town Hall about banning the races, but I saw them at the track all the same.

  When the racetrack gates came into view I drew Eel up and hopped off, then led him the rest of the way by his halter. We’d timed it right, walking beneath the big curly sign that said The Grove just as the sun sank behind the barns. There were still a few trainers and jockeys around, men whose eyes slipped over me as though Eel was walking himself. Most of the men who ran or rode Thoroughbreds had no time for limerunners and those who sat them.

  Had I a mind to play horses, I wouldn’t have bet on theirs.

  We didn’t use the stables; there was no need for the quarantine barn, because limerunners didn’t fall ill and couldn’t communicate illness to normal horses, and no reason to try to obtain stalls in the other barns, because limeys had to be turned out near water, bedded on moss, and stabled on calcite floors. It was generally accepted that even had we wanted to stable limerunners at the Grove, someone would’ve kicked up a protest.

  “Hey,” said Tim McDonough when Eel and I reached the fence. I kept Eel well away from Tim’s limey Corker, who had a tendency to bite first and ask questions not at all. Tim spat a wad of chaw onto the concrete on the far side of the fence. “Heard tell your momma’s got a big bet riding on this one.” He laughed at the look on my face. “News travels faster than Eel, looks like. Might wanna work on that before the race.”

  My middle finger let him know what I thought about our chances.

  “Not very friendly,” Tim said mildly. Corker’s head snaked out toward Eel and Tim tightened his grip on the bridle. “It true that weed y’all got out back smells like shit on a stick?” He chuckled again. “Guess as long as it brings Miss Mira some cash. It or you.”

  About the only thing I was good for was bringing Ma cash, whether in bills or wet and cloven-hoofed.

  “Might as well warm ‘em up,” said Tim. He led his limey out onto the track. After a moment I followed, though Eel was good and warm by now. I watched Tim mount up, the motion effortless; one minute his boots were flat on the dirt and the next he was aboard, no space between the two. There was no point in being jealous. Some folk looked pretty on a horse and some didn’t, and I didn’t look pretty anywhere, on horseback or at the grocery store or in the skinny bed in Tim’s apartment without a stitch on. Then again, people came to gawk at the limerunners. No one, as Ma pointed out now and then, was there to see me.

  No one cared how nice the rider looked, as long as the horse won.

  The railbirds of the day’s races had given way to nightbirds. Tim and I trotted, the limerunners spaced well apart and even-pacing, and Eel felt calm enough beneath me that I looked to the fence. Crowds were drawing in, gossiping about the new postmaster in town, rumored to have a color television, sniping one another for frivolous bets. Folk filled space along the rail and claimed benches on the concrete apron. The Grove didn’t allow the upper stories to be used for seating during limerunner races, nor access to the tote board. Gambling on limeys went hand-to-hand, off-track in theory and under-the-table in practice. Exotic wagering had a different meaning at night.

  “That little girl’ll do it, mark me,” someone called to someone else as we trotted around the clubhouse turn. I didn’t see the man, nor who he was talking to, but the air felt heavier, as it did when chancy bets were being placed. My eye skipped along the fence—Maria de Carlo the abortionist, Trotter Henry and his bullyboys, Caesar Charles with wallet in hand, ready to lose his paycheck and maybe his soul—counting off familiar faces and a few strange ones, a girl a little older than me with air on either side of her, and three men lounging.

  I didn’t get a chance to see if their faces matched those of the trappers who’d been to see my mother, because Tim yelled
and Eel shied. There was a riderless limerunner bolting toward us.

  Feral limeys were dangerous enough; borderline-tame limeys without a rider were worse. Either way, I knew as the limerunner crashed into Tim and his mount that the porous rock beneath the track was about to be drinking blood.

  Tim catapulted off his horse like one of the carneys over in Gibsonton had shot him out of a cannon. I left my eyes on him long enough to check that he’d rolled under the fence, and then I grabbed Eel’s mane and dug my heels into his sides. A ruckus blew up along the rail, people shouting for help and some putting money down. As Eel galloped toward the backstretch, a couple of outriders on ponies passed us heading the other way. I didn’t envy them their job. Breaking up a pair of tussling water horses was dirty work.

  “Bad for business,” someone observed from the makeshift gate when I slowed Eel on the dirt. The man turned so that the sunset no longer lit him from behind, and I saw that it was Faran Humphrey. If he didn’t quite run the limey game in these parts, well, the bigwigs at the Grove didn’t hate him, either. He grimaced at me. “Who’s that beast belong to?”

  I shrugged. I could guess, and I figured he could too.

  “I’ll have Matt Hancock’s hide.” Humphrey waved as one of the clockers came up. “Where the fuck is that boy? He looking to get banned from this establishment?”

  This establishment, he said, like there was any other game in town.

  Humphrey and the clocker fell to gossiping. I held Eel tight between the beams of the gate we used to line everyone up. Limerunners never cottoned to iron, so the standard starting gate was out. I didn’t know who had figured out that a sort of latticed lean-to, like something you’d put up for a sixteen-year-old girl’s birthday party in the back yard, worked best. Oak supports on either side, roofed with bay and moss threaded through, and up to a dozen limeys lined up snapping their teeth at each other. I had been expecting six competitors today. Looked like we were down two.

  Tim came limping up, favoring his left knee. His face could’ve pickled eggs. “I find Matt Hancock, he’ll be pissing blood for a week. The hell was he thinking?”

  Everyone had questions for Matt Hancock, it seemed.

  “Listen, Bea,” Tim said, leaning on my shoulder. He smelled like tobacco and horse, not the honest musk of warmbloods but limey-rank, a drop of blood in spring water. The warmth of him and the scent worked on me like they always did. “Bea—I don’t like this. People are talking, and I…Christ, I needed that money. And for next week—you think you could—you know I’m no hand at hooking ‘em.”

  He was shamefaced. I was less interested in his embarrassment over needing me to catch him a limerunner and more in what people were talking about. I nodded, then tilted my head toward Faran Humphrey and the clocker. A few more riders and their mounts were trotting up to the gate, while Humphrey had his head together with the clocker and Kathleen Montgomery, who handled the more genteel bettors. Tim snorted.

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t like to be Matty when Humphrey gets his hands on him. Say, you don’t think…” He paused, like I was going to finish the thought for him. Sometimes even Tim forgot. “Them trappers your momma went in with. What if they’re trying to—to winnow out the field?”

  I thought about it. Ride with the same batch of failed bankers’ sons, grove boys, and weekday fishermen for long enough, and the odds are obvious. Even had Matt Hancock walked up with a half-broken limey fresh from the water, he’d have been the favorite. Whoever the trappers were running, they wanted to win. I wished my mother had told me the exact terms of the bet. I held up my left hand, rubbing my fingers together in the signal that meant gambling.

  Tim’s eyes jumped from my hand to my face. “Bea. She ain’t told you?”

  Someone laughed just behind my shoulder, and Hank Fremont said, “Get it while you can, Timmy boy. Bea’s not long for this track.”

  Usually it was helpful, how expressive my face was. Made it easier to communicate with people. Just then I hated what I knew my eyes were doing, my lips. Tim wasn’t looking at me anymore. Hank laughed again and kept walking, his limerunner mincing over the raked sandy dirt. I hated Hank Fremont on a good day. This was turning out to be a bad day.

  “You gotta lose, Bea,” Tim said. His voice was low, slipping beneath track-chatter and the wind and the distant rattle and roar of cars. “Miss Mira…I don’t know whether she’s drinking or what, you’d know, but you don’t—I can’t believe she ain’t told you.”

  She says ride, I mouthed to him, my fist coming up on ride to emphasize it. She wasn’t here at the track and she wouldn’t be tonight; she placed her bets with Kathleen Montgomery and sent Lemmy, our hired boy, to collect the winnings or pay out. She had never seen me win. She wouldn’t leave our property if a hurricane was coming, and she had the corpse flower to think about besides.

  And she hadn’t told me to win, exactly. Riding crafty didn’t always mean riding to win.

  “They got your momma and Mason Greeley between wind and water.” Tim reached for my shoulder and Eel’s teeth snapped just below his elbow. He yanked his arm back, glaring at the water horse. “You win, you go with them. You lose, they take that—whatever it is they want off that stinkin’ flower. Look, I don’t know what all. All I know’s you gotta lose.”

  So it wasn’t Eel Ma had bet, then. That was why the men had looked at me on the porch. I supposed I could be useful to the trappers; I was generally counted the best around at catching and breaking limerunners. If they stuck around Springfed I’d make them money, and if they took me away I’d make them money too, racing at the Bushnell track or in St. Augustine, or the little ring just far enough away from Hialeah for propriety. Maybe they wouldn’t ride me at all. Maybe they’d pitch me into the cypress flats and prairies and tell me not to come back ‘til I had a limey they could sell for speed or teeth or hide.

  I didn’t care to countenance other options for use by trappers.

  “We’ll fix it so—” Tim said, and stopped. He rubbed his hands on his jeans. Blotchy freckles bled together when he wrinkled his nose. “It’ll be ok. We’ll figure something out.”

  I was glad Eel was feeling ornery. I didn’t want Tim touching me just then. He didn’t often get like this—protective, superior—he didn’t usually act like he was doing me any favors. If there was any figuring to be done, I’d do it myself. Mainly I was annoyed Ma hadn’t warned me, that she’d let me hear it from Tim, from Hank Fremont.

  I could wish I were more surprised that she’d pull this, but our family ran on commerce, not love, and Ma hated nothing more than a debt unpaid.

  “Get that nag in the gate,” Faran Humphrey snapped, coming up on Eel’s left, just far enough away. “Sun’s about set. McDonough, with me.”

  “Sir?” Tim said, playing dumb, but I saw his brown eyes gleam. Sure, he’d think about me, ‘til there was money to be made.

  “Hancock’s backers will compensate you for the limey,” Humphrey said. I felt bad for rolling my eyes at Tim. He had his mother and brother to take care of, after all. “Munro’s poorly. You’ll take over the mount.”

  “Yessir,” Tim said, and stepped to the side as I swung up on Eel. I didn’t look back when we trotted for the gate, but I kept my ears peeled for sounds that meant Tommy Munro’s limerunner wasn’t taking to its new rider.

  Munro, doing poorly. I looked down the row of water horses and men, jiggering the chess pieces in my head. Matt Hancock and his limey out of commission, Tim’s Corker not racing and Tim aboard a mount he didn’t know. Munro absent. Three outland trappers fronting I knew not who. My mother backed against the barn, unable to lose the corpse flower and plenty able to lose me. Folk who bet on limerunner races were even more brainless than those who bet on Thoroughbreds; the payout was juicier than anything at Hialeah. The pawn-man Mr. Greeley, to whom the corpse flower’s pollen had been promised, held shifty bets, and Kathleen Montgomery the town clerk held cash, and the only person who went home scot-free and richer at night’
s end was Faran Humphrey.

  Eel wriggled beneath me. He had a slink to him even standing still, a sly motion that had given him his name. I gathered his mane in both hands, just tight enough to make him pay attention. He eyeballed our neighbor through the bay slats, and I watched Tim and Tommy Munro’s limey slip into the last post. I wasn’t at all convinced Tim riding that limey—a fresh one, a female I didn’t recognize—was a good idea, but Humphrey wouldn’t countenance being down three runners. Bettors liked a big field. Better chance of blood.

  “No moon,” Will Cypress observed. He spat onto the sand beneath our mounts’ hooves. I didn’t like to notice it, but the saliva landed on the edge of Eel’s shadow as it faded with the sun. “Big race, huh, Bea?”

  Everyone knew. It made no difference. I ran over the men in my head, flexed my fingers in Eel’s mane and pretended I was touching the other water horses’ coats and nostrils and hocks. I didn’t want to go away with any trappers. I didn’t want Mr. Greeley’s shop in flames from a fired hex piece, nor the house down around Ma’s ears from the trappers’ wrath. It was hard to blame her for trying to wiggle out of this. It was only her out there if Lemmy and I weren’t around, and her sharp tongue might’ve kept me in line but wasn’t enough to stand up to three men with Christ-knew-what in their saddlebags.

  I waved to Will and when he looked at me again I held my right hand up, moving the fingers slowly, showing him gambling, three men, whose horse. He frowned, tongue poking out over his bottom lip. Then he mouthed Jasper and shrugged. He looked sore about it, like it was some personal offense. Miccosukee men had strict ideas about fair play.

  Jasper Huss. I liked him less than Hank, slightly more than leeches or malaria. He rode dirty on the best occasions, and this was no good occasion. I thought again of my mother’s words. Ride crafty. Ride hard.