Lord of Misrule

by Jaimy Gordon

  The queerest thing was the long, thin, infinitely elastic tubes hanging down like spittle from the shiny balls before Haslipp snipped them away. Maggie saw Medicine Ed slide out of the tack room and pick up the testicles out of the grass in a silver can-it could have been a soup can, nicely washed out and with the label neatly removed. And then he faded away again, presumably around the corner. She blinked. She hadn't known he was there. In fact he hadn't been there, or Tommy would certainly have called him over and made him drag away the ten-dollar goat, instead of doing that ridiculous job himself.

  These days when Maggie was alone with Little Spinoza, after he had walked or worked and had his bath, she rubbed him-she didn't exactly know the derivation of this ancient slang for what a groom is supposed to do to a horse, only that was what the old guys told people they did: Been rubbing horses nigh on thirty-five years now, or, Back when I rub horses for Happy Blount at Hot Springs, whatever it meant. But she sensed a thread had been dropped somewhere, the route to some secret heart of this business had been lost. She didn't know anyone who literally rubbed a horse, not even old Deucey.

  She asked Medicine Ed. That come from way back, in England or Paris, France, or somewhere, when the thoroughbred racehorse run five miles over open ground, hills and stone walls and that, and come back half dead under a blanket to a barn with no running hose water, let alone hot. So they rubbed the horse dry and warm. Babies get rubbed, he added, if you work for a barn that got babies. Rich folks had babies. Tommy Hansel had the geezers of the trade.

  Back in Charles Town she had hauled to the laundromat a bunch of old croker sacks she had found in Pichot's barn. They had been many times stained, washed and dried until they were the color of a healing bruise; long ago, someone had left the pile of them stiffening in a corner. But she figured that like the mysterious hand-tied leather netting hanging from a nail, and the old wooden names-lord knew what anybody had farmed on that flinty spread before racehorses-they must be there for a reason, and they washed out soft and sweet. And now she rubbed Little Spinoza up with them from his ankles to his ears.

  She rubbed in a round, hypnotic fingerpainting motion, but hard, feeling for some remotely erotic synapse of z's from the ends of her fingers into his bones and muscles, which wasn't as easy through the pink gunny as it had always been barehanded with Pelter. She had to slow down time, go into a kind of trance state where sweet electricity pooled at her nerve endings like nectar on the pistil of a honeysuckle. And then by running her fingers over the animal she could find his hidden landing places. Not that these were jungle airstrips, few and hard to find. They were all over the place. But you had to approach the body boundary reduced to this one brooding spark. You dangled from a headland, black empty space rushing by, and suddenly you were across. The key was being tuned down so fine that you felt the crossing. Without that your fingers were just dead prongs on a rake and nothing happened.

  True, it helped to be stoned, which she was rather often. Zeno had left behind in the crushed trailer a chunk of hashish the size of a square of baking chocolate, the ginger color and yielding consistency of puppy feces, and Tommy had bought it from Medicine Ed, who had no use for that stuff, for a yard. Plenty of times they had a little curl like a cedar shaving for breakfast.

  Rubbing Little Spinoza without it took more concentration, a willed death of talky ratiocination up there under the pigtails. She had to hang up on the telephone of her mind and then it worked. O, didn't it work. Come to find out the dangerous Speculation grandson was a pushover, the model of innocent delight. It was alarming, in fact, how trusting he was once you made him feel good, how forgiving of all the predecessor pain, how unsuspecting that joy would ever end. Unlike Pelter who shot up out of her intimate handling from time to time without warning, with a rip-roaring snort and the urge to do mischief, nip or kick, Little Spinoza melted away into the dream of bliss. He let her do anything to him. After she rubbed him dry and warm, she brushed him deep all over with an ordinary charwoman's scrub brush, then every day worked a little at his mane and tail, patiently dug through and pulled the years of knots and snags.

  Then she worried. Why did she like doing this so much? How was it that she could bear these hypnotic repetitive tasks at all, such physical primitivity in the service of some other living organism? She used to love to brush her sister's hair, not that Ursie often let her. Maggie let herself down so easily into the engorged pastime of physical service. It was a kind of honeyed sleep, with only a thread of something repulsive about it that she could not pluck out. She was at home there, except for that. Was she some kind of born slave herself, a prostitute in a temple, a hierodule?

  Little Spinoza stood for all of it, his dapples came up like god's golden fingerprints, he crackled, he glowed. Even when she felt the pleasure running along his withers and flanks in waves and literally crimping up his spine, he didn't protest, just bent into it like a ballerina in a pas de deux.

  Look at you, you big silly, how are you ever going to fend for yourself, she mumbled into the warm curve of his back, but then, you never were a man's man either, were you. Well, I hope you can still run, now that you're not scared. She looked him in the eye and he blew into her face a great warm drench of hayflowers.

  You know, she said, take my word for it, a sex life would have been far too hectic for a boy like you. What you need is a world that's just a whole lot of different flavors of good.

  His answer to this was rather grandly, like a dog at a dog show, to stretch taut behind him his shining black ankles, to let down his ashen penis and piss a fine steady arc into the straw.

  Spinoza, she whispered, I know you won't see this-sex is a kind of slavery at best, I mean it's a great thing, kind of like religion, original religion, I mean that old-time religion you can grab with your senses, but the long and short of it is, you as you get burned away…

  But Little Spinoza had lost interest in the subject, showed her his plum-shaped rump and nosed through the bedding at the back of his stall for some bit of golden straw that pleased his eye.

  She fretted over him. He was a gelding now, but he lacked that gelding irony. A gelding needed-and she needed-a more byzantine itinerary. An old gelding always seemed to her as complex as Disraeli. Sly, civilized and determined, well aware he hadn't got the world exactly to his order, he got there one way or another. Now that he was a gelding, could Little Spinoza do it on pure arrant babyhood alone?

  Deucey had led him back from the track in the early morning shaking her buzz-cut head. I hope that Little Lord Fauntleroy here ain't taking it easy as a lifetime project, now that he ain't scared.

  He isn't scared anymore, is he, Maggie agreed, as long as the secret was out.

  Alice says he ain't. Deucey suddenly kicked at the billy goat who had pushed his long face into the open tails of her raincoat. Alice was the exercise girl. Damn it all, ain't I said I can't get lucky with more than one horse? Now I get what's coming to me. I got a feeling this is the pay-off, Deucey said.

  Aw you always saying this the pay-off, Medicine Ed pointed out.

  I'd like to know what's wrong with a horse taking a little pleasure in life, said Deucey. He eats up his dinner now, that's progress, ain't it?

  What else does Alice say? Maggie asked.

  He like that damn goat, Medicine Ed observed.

  I tell her there's speed in that animal somewheres. I seen it myself. Just cause you ain't found it don't mean he ain't got it. Well I don't know where it's hiding, she says, maybe it's on vacation now that he ain't scared. And if I show him the stick he up and quits on me.

  Now that he got all these female women petting and nursering him, Medicine Ed mumbled. He took from his pocket a box of black Smith Brothers cough drops, worked one out of the inside paper for himself, one for the horse.

  Kidstuff was shoeing a gray horse in a dry spot under the shedrow, and now he looked behind his shoulder and said: Maybe yall ought not to have tinkered with the natural machinery of the horse. I mean, him b
eing as old as he is. He was pressing the horse's foot upside down between his knees, in a posture at once adept and oddly feminine. He smiled at Maggie, his scuffed black cowboy boots curled up at their toes like genie slippers, and she thought to herself: You're the one I love.

  This is what I get for showing off for Alice, Deucey said. You know I got a thing for Alice. I thought she would take an interest in Little Spinny. Make a project out of him. Now Alice says he's dreaming and don't want to wake up.

  Earlie Beaufait gone to ride that horse, not Alice, Medicine Ed said.

  I know that, Deucey said. But I wanted her to beg me to put her on him. I was gonna say no. But I would like her to beg me.

  Can Alice ride in a race? Maggie asked.

  Kidstuff laughed. Now that there is debatable, he said. I believe Alice has had a bug since last spring. She don't pick up any mounts except at the fairs.

  That's prejudice, Deucey said. She is the living expert on them pokeweed and poison ivy racecourses. You gotta give her that. On them tight turns she is slick as gut. She has win some races on horses that shouldn't be walking, never mind running.

  That's because she don't fear for her pretty face, Kidstuff said.

  You ain't looked at her right, Deucey said.

  What else does Alice say? Maggie repeated.

  You know, for the first few days I rousted Spinny out to the track so early I was taking a chance on breaking Alice's legs and his, Deucey said. The moon ain't set yet and the infield had the morning star over it, pitch black. It looked like a Shriner's ring out there-that's how scared I was a clocker would get a load of his speed. Well I got me all hissified for nothing. Alice says he's moony. Don't get me wrong, she tells me, he's having a good time out there, looking at the geese flying down to the river and listening to the wind. You know, when he was still scared, at least he busted out of the gate every time like something was chasing him.

  Except when he didn't, Kidstuff said.

  Yeah. And now Alice can't hardly get him to gallop.

  Maggie looked at the horse's delicately modelled head, which seemed, more than ever, small and charming, with huge, alert, artless eyes, fringed with sentimental lashes. It's embarrassing, like any minute now he's gonna ask when the birthday party starts or can he hang up his Christmas stocking, she said. Like he used to be tragic and beautiful, now he's cute.

  You wait till he come back from running his first race after six months off, he'll wish the world was made outa cotton. He ain't gone be cute then, Ed said.

  If he runs, Deucey said.

  There came along a good race for Little Spinoza, a good race, that is, for him to lose, for the race was too high-priced, too far and too soon for the horse to win, but at least they could be sure that no one would want Spinoza at that price. A 5000-dollar claimer was a princely race at the Mound, where 6000 was the highest price tag an animal could wear (to go higher you sent a horse to the Races, but the traffic generally was headed the other way), and Little Spinoza was no longer a prince. He was a Speculation grandson, but he was common, a bad-acting six-year-old who was more trouble than his little bit of run could pay for, who had not raced in half a year, who had changed hands not long ago from the leading trainer at the Mound to a half crazed old lady gyp who won races now and then with the reanimated dead. And the owners, who were they? There was room in the chart in the Telegraph for only two names under Own.- I owned a dozen horses before, Deucey said, what do I care? So it was Salters Edward II amp; Koderer M. Medicine Ed and that girl. Racetrackers snickered or shook their heads. The distance, a mile, was at least an eighth and maybe even a quarter of a mile too long for Little Spinoza to keep up his speed, if he had any speed. Still, it was time. Little Spinoza needed a race, a race to harden his muscles and prove his spirit, if he had any spirit, a race to get him ready for a race, but also a kind of crystal ball of a race so the three of them, old Deucey, and Maggie, and Medicine Ed, could see what type of misery they had in front of them.

  Earlie was hot as a pistol at Two-Tie's last night, so I asked him quick while he was raking in a pot, and he said yes.

  That's fine, Ed commented.

  Are you sure we can get Earlie Beaufait? Maggie asked. What does the leading rider at the meeting want with the likes of us, she was thinking.

  He's doing me a favor, Deucey said, and that ain't good, but he's the best they got in this dump.

  Earlie so big this year he don't even show up at Joe Dale's barn till he good and ready. They hot at him too, what I hear.

  They felt better to have a jockey if Joe Dale Bigg was mad at him too.

  I hope you all know what you're doing, Maggie said. I mean it. I can't tell anything about jockeys from looking at them. Not their age. Not what they're thinking. Not their morals and not their good will towards men.

  Hell's bells, nobody knows what a jock is thinking, Deucey said. Their brains are so hot-wired, what with speed and the hot box and flipping the Saturday night smorgasbord at the Polky Dot Cafe, they don't know what they think.

  Earlie out of Loosiana.

  What does that mean?

  He's Cajun or something out the backwoods, Deucey said, what's the difference? I watched him all year. The midget is strong in his hands, smart on the track and brave as a bobcat. He's busy, though. Can't see Spinny till Friday. Alice'll have to get him ready.

  In fact the jockey came by Friday noon to look at the horse. He was shorter than Maggie, a very little man in pressed slacks and a spotless canary yellow windbreaker, with the collar turned up high and wrap-around shades. He had a deeply lined brown face, a tight, taciturn upper lip and a shiny pompadour on top like the painted hair on a doll. He stared at Spinoza in the shadow of the stall for some time and then said: Say, this the hoss that kick in Biggy's headlights?

  Shucks. Biggy was born with his head kicked in. The horse just scratched him a little on top of that, Deucey said.

  I punish the horse if he act bad on me, the jockey said.

  Fair enough, Deucey said. He's been easy as kiss my hand over here. A little too easy, if you wanna know.

  I find the run in the horse, Earlie said, if he has any run.

  Just remember he has to run again, Deucey said. We ain't trying to win this time out. We just want to find out how much horse is there and what he wants to do without letting it show.

  Okay. I don't let him win. But I make him work.

  I don't think that work ethic stuff is going down so good with Little Spinoza, Maggie said when the jockey's hard little fist of an ass in its knife-pressed chinos turned the corner.

  Somebody got to get serious with the horse, Deucey said. This ain't the 4-H Club Rodeo at the Pocahontas County Fair.

  …

  Friday evening, Little Spinoza stood dreaming with his feet in a bucket of ice. Deucey, a towel marked COMMERCIAL HOTEL, GRAND ISLAND, NEBR. over her shoulder, was feeling all around his ankle.

  Anything? Maggie asked.

  Cold as a flounder. It's big but no bigger'n it ever was. He's got no excuses that I can tell. That don't mean he'll run.

  Then all of a sudden the midnight blue Sedan de Ville with the starry silver hard-top was taking up the whole dirt road between shedrows. The driver's side window dropped into the door beneath it with a noise like a bumblebee. They couldn't help it, they both looked up.

  Deucey, said a hoarse voice, fatty yet reproachful, a kind of masculine gravy with metal shavings in it.

  Hello, Joe Dale, Deucey said. Maggie squinted at him. In a heavy-fleshed way, he was handsome, she thought, felt her cheeks warm and registered her own incipient interest with something like despair. He was a Byronic libertine type in the face, clean shaven, with blue shadows modelling his plushy red lips, and thick black groves crowning the temples behind an evenly receding hairline. He didn't look old enough, or crude enough, to have a great grown bully of a son like Biggy.

  Hey, Deucey, he said. I'd like to know what kinda joke this is, with the girl groom and the spook. You tryna ma
ke a monkey outa me or what?

  Crude enough after all, Maggie thought.

  Excuse me?

  What's with the girl and the colored groom in the owner's column for my horse?

  You don't expect me to ruin my own good name with the horse, do you? Deucey said.

  You don't think Little Spinoza's gonna run good?

  It ain't impossible, Deucey said. Sumpm might fall into his feed bucket between now and then, who knows? This is horse racing.

  You got my boy up on him, I see.

  Maybe Earlie can tell me what's wrong with the horse.

  Deucey, I told you. You didn't have to put nothing down on the deal until he showed you what he could do.

  That's not how I do business.

  Joe Dale Bigg shrugged. I want you to have your money back. Hold on, I got it right here-He leaned into the car, reaching for the roll under his buttock.

  It ain't my money. Not anymore it ain't.

  Don't gimme that, Deucey.

  I ain't giving you anything, Deucey said. And I ain't taking anything from you either. I got the foaling papers. You're out of it.

  Have you been thinking about that good deal I offered you? Joe Dale Bigg said patiently.

  No I haven't, Deucey said.

  Well, I think you better. I'm looking out for your business even if you ain't. Is this the girl?

  What if it is? Deucey said.

  Nice little body, not even hardly there-my favorite kind, that's all. What's your name, sweetheart?

  Margaret Koderer. What's yours?

  He smiled unpleasantly, with his rather beautiful dark red mouth. You like it on the racetrack?

  Yeah. Except for all the dirt, Maggie said.

  He looked her over carefully. The window purred up and he drove away.

  AMONG MANY UNRULY ACTS, my dear Maggie, this was certainly your unruliest.

  You were aware of yourself fully dressed and standing over her in her little pink silk underpants, the Telegraph folded back in your hands and-something new-another Telegraph open in her hands. She circled something awkwardly with a pencil.