Lord of Misrule

by Jaimy Gordon

  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?

  Maggie gazed at them from below. Suddenly, today of all days, she found herself liking Alice's looks. Alice was profoundly short-waisted; her Brunswick High School Marching Band jacket might have been on display in Puterbaugh's Department Store window, holding its shape with a full gut of tissue paper. It was a hard, round, muscular chest with small breasts that just rounded it out. Her legs were skinny as wires. The black hair that hung through a red rubberband behind her head was greasy, her skin was bumpy, and her fingernails ended in half moons of blue dirt. She didn't care one straw how she looked. She was around Maggie's age. She was fearless, though, and she knew how to crouch on the back of a horse.

  Okay, so maybe this ain't the time, she said without turning around, but what the heck, this afternoon I'm lying on my cellar floor pumping iron?-(she lived with her mother in East Liverpool)-and suddenly I get this, like, flash of light what kinda horse you got here. I had him wrong-now they stared at her out-and-out hostilely-yup, well, no hurry, but I know this, you'll be calling me up tomorrow. If Earlie and the horse make it through this race alive, don't give up, gimme a call, I'm the one you want. You're gonna have to put me on your horse. Look under Nuzum in East Liverpool. I don't have no agent yet. You'll be in touch. See youse later.

  They gazed dully after the shiny black jacket loping on wires for legs across the wet and floodlit road. Put her on their horse, when they had the leading rider? Fat chance.

  They stared Alice out of sight, nobody spoke, and then they were dragging off through the puddles to the post parade, all down in the mouth except Little Spinoza, who might have been a small boy on his way to dip tadpoles in the woods, marching along, splish splash, across the rain-glazed parking lots, gazing at everything brightly and airily, swinging his little pail.

  Even when they got to the track where on a race night, so stories had it, Little Spinoza used to go pop-eyed with terror, exude yellow lather like sewer foam under his belly and bite or kick anyone that strayed into his path, he only blinked, at first, at the milling crowds. What were all these loud obnoxious people doing here? Where was his fly-light rider Alice Nuzum? What about his working companion Grizzly-where was he? Were they going for another lazy gallop towards the long white hem of sun just showing in the south? No they were not. Instead of that glowing, silent, bird-scattered seam of morning along the horizon, there rose up this raucous light-soaked clubhouse crawling with human beings.

  Little Spinoza looked around for Maggie, his handmaiden who had made it her job to shape the world comfy or even ecstatic. Where she was, was no pain. And here she was, but getting smaller and weaker while waves of something hurtful and chaotic, some harsh old world he dimly remembered, were getting louder, faster and taller. By the time they turned into the paddock, Little Spinoza looked offended and suspicious, and after the tattoo man rolled up his lip-naturally he didn't like for anyone he didn't know to poke around his mouth-his eyes opened wide. Wide and round and blank.

  He was the six horse. Could be worse, Deucey had said: If he comes out of the gate straight, he can still get to the rail with his speed. And he didn't go crazy yet. He wasn't awash between his legs in sickly yellow sweat. When Deucey tightened the girth on his racing saddle he almost pulled Maggie off her feet, slashing down once with his teeth, but in the last moment Maggie snatched on the shank and he came up looking dazed and embarrassed-after all it was only Deucey, smelling of whiskey and bubblegum. Even after the call, Riders up! he held together, only pinned his ears and looked, in his usually perfect face, smeared and wild. He didn't even change that much when Deucey gave Earlie a leg up and the jockey landed on his back.

  Earlie's face, though he was only thirty-three years old, was as fallen in and collapsed in its loose brown skin as a baked apple. He had probably had a long night already. He perched up there on Little Spinoza's neck and Deucey said, Jesus, Earlie, my horse looks like a grenade without the pin all of a sudden. All I ask is don't get him hurt, you hear? Let him get a race under him, but save him for next time. Just skip the walking ring and get him out of here now.

  Earlie nodded, and inching little tiny sideways dance steps with the horse's jaw pulled into the man, they headed out to the track. Without moving his tense upper lip the jockey muttered, or sawed his teeth, against the horse's neck. When exactly did Earlie insinuate his heart's desire to the body of his dancing partner? They tangoed frigidly, inelastically, clockwise along the rail as one by one the other horses came round them and were loaded in. Little Spinoza last-the word was out on the Speculation grandson. And maybe it happened there-some exchange of vicious endearments when they were first shut in together in the clanging intimacy of the gate. For that was where Little Spinoza went out of his mind. Reared up-filled the top of the frame with black that shouldn't be there (it was like a flash of the Jolly Roger), then plunged terrifyingly out of sight-he must be down on his knees or neck and the jockey crushed to death under him, such things happened. But then the bell rang and he sprang into the world on his feet but turned sideways. The jockey hung down his left side like a spider, one hand spun in the horse's mane, the other clamping his right ear, one soft boot barely hooked over Little Spinoza's spine. Pulled himself back onto the horse, anger pumping black life into his wrinkled little face-and then you could see him telling the horse what to do.

  But Little Spinoza hadn't waited, they were five lengths behind the worst horse at the clubhouse turn when Little Spinoza opened out, pumping in long glides like a water strider, and closed on the ragged back end of the field. He ate up the two horse who had dropped out of it. What did he want the ones in front for? Maybe he was just trying to get away from the claws stuck in his neck. He threaded his way into the flying mud and chopping legs, climbed through that up to fourth in the backstretch, where he hung, and then at the half-mile pole there was a kind of subtle jump or jerk: it was Earlie finally taking hold of him, asking him to work.

  Little Spinoza began to die. The five horse moved slowly by him on the outside, the ten horse and the three horse on the rail. Earlie rolled his hands and raised his stick, tried neck, flank, withers, and it was only remarkable how completely nothing happened. I make him work. But the horse wanted only to lose-no, not lose, just disappear in plain air, shrink out of the world altogether.

  The jockey now lost his head, began screaming words into the shapely but deaf black ears and cutting him under his belly and in any strange place that hadn't been tried, any soft flesh-the whip crisscrossed his sheath, slashed the loose folds under his forearms. It was the sixteenth pole and Little Spinoza was through. He visibly drew into himself and one by one the others streamed around him. You would have thought it would take more than the length of the stretch to end up tenth behind a horse as bad as the two horse, but he did it, or maybe he only seemed to be moving his legs.

  Standing in the stirrups, Earlie swept by the gap where they stood, not looking at them. When he pushed up the goggles his face was two brilliant little punctures in a mask of gray mud. He was furious. He wasn't afraid of them. He wasn't hiding from them. Maggie could already see in the gritty furrows along his mouth his story of the thing: He didn't owe them a horse back-they had almost got him killed. As he pulled up
he cut Little Spinoza three last times with the stick, once across the nose, once across the ears, once across the flat of his cheek.

  Get off my horse, you crazy frenchie. Deucey came charging through the gap.

  The jockey jumped off Little Spinoza while he was still slowing to a lope, wheeled and kicked him in the belly. And let go of the reins. Little Spinoza's head flew up and the horse plunged forward into the small party gathering at the winner's circle. A woman screamed and another in a black picture hat sat down in the dirt.

  He lit out for the inky darkness of the infield and Maggie ran that way too. Itty bitty, eeny meeny, eine kleine, Spin, o, za, she cried in the high meaningless singsong she reserved for the horse, nature naturing, and he stopped, seeming to know that voice. She inched closer. No no no, not the rail, not the rail, you goose, all in nursery-rhyme falsetto, to fill up the crackling space between them. Then she snatched. He reared but her hand was on the bridle. Snapped the shank on him, bunched the reins, and they made a wide arc into the darkness, away from the winner's circle, towards the gap.

  Deucey came panting, Medicine Ed dragged his leg along behind her.

  He can't open that eye, Maggie told them, suddenly sobbing.

  He be all right, Ed said.

  I might kill that sonofabitch with my bare hands, said Deucey.

  Boy scared for his life, Ed said.

  We'll be lucky if we ever get this horse back in a gate now.

  And yet Little Spinoza was tripping along with them collectedly enough, considering he hadn't been jogged to cool him down. His nostrils were wet, ruby red and cavernous. Sandy mud caked his face and chest and even his closed eye.

  At least you got to see a little of his speed, honey, Deucey added, shaking the rain off her golfing cap.

  Jesus, when was that? Maggie said, looking around in amazement.

  He come out of the gate backwards, girlie, backwards, with the boy hanging off him, and he still gets up there in the mud in fifty and change. Did you see his stride? He digs in like a steam shovel.

  But then he died, Maggie said.

  He ain't died, he quit.

  What's the big difference?

  Soon as that boy use the stick on him he quit, Ed said.

  No-it was before that-already when Earlie took hold of him at the half he lost interest, I saw it, Maggie said.

  Well, he certainly looked like shit, Deucey said, with satisfaction.

  Maybe that's because he is shit, Maggie said.

  Deucey and Ed looked at her with pity, then at each other.

  Only if you ignorant, Ed said. The story gone be right there in them little numbers if you can reckon.

  Well I never said I could reckon. What I'd like to know is who can get that goofy horse to run all the way to the end?

  There, that shut them up. They trudged along in silence. Medicine Ed sighed. They's ways, he could have said to them, they's ways of bringing a horse to his self at least one time before he, Medicine Ed, lose his nut and all hope of a home. He wasn't about to tell the women that.

  Instead he asked: Who gone ride this horse now?

  Alice Nuzum, Maggie said, has a theory.

  I mean to talk to that Alice. Deucey narrowed her eyes as if this were all Alice's doing.

  Can you tell what Alice is thinking? Maggie asked.

  Hell no, said Deucey.

  Nome, Medicine Ed agreed. Yet and still. Alice probably the onliest one will get on this horse after that damn race. If Alice will.

  She will, Maggie said, picturing the band jacket like a black satin pumpkin, the pipe cleaner legs, the long oily pony-tail in its broccoli-bunch rubberband.

  She better, Deucey said.

  PERFUMED, BARBERED, SLUG-LIPPED Joe Dale Bigg, alias (no doubt) Biglia or something of the sort, came looking for her in his big blue Cadillac, and that's what gave you your power over him from the start. The leading trainer came cruising over the rusty frozen mud between the shedrows in his dark-blue-and-stainless-steel Sedan de Ville, doing about two miles an hour. He ground to a stop and leaned out familiarly over his thousand-dollar gold wristwatch and talked to you for thirty minutes straight about this and that, about nothing really, with the motor purring the whole time, the most affable man in the world as only Sicilians can be affable, but you knew from the start, before he even rolled down those violet windows, it was Maggie he had come looking for. You could see past those laughing, fleshy, blue-shadowed cheeks right to the back of his cave.

  He was hungry. Restless, deprived, empty as a wolf. You knew the look.

  He wanted her, not you. He hadn't even thought about why or whose she was or what it was in particular about her, he just followed his thick, flat nose. Maybe it wasn't used to getting pulled, his nose. At any rate, shame didn't compel the guy to talk to you, much less guilt, so what could it be? The man couldn't stop operating, that was what it was. He was aggressive but also indirect, like warm grease. He came close and soaked in.

  You got a nice little string of horses. Yeah. You can pick em. Everybody says that. I noticed that. I wish I had that. That's talent. Naaaa, I mean it. I'm a salesman, a businessman, not a horse trader. I got good people working for me, that's all. I come up with the money, I got owners to throw away, which is something you don't got, Hansel. Am I right or wrong? But I depend on other people's smarts to tell me which horse when.

  You said nothing and he watched you tap flakes of hay into the hanging rack one by one. It was Pelter's stall, but the tall, dark, mile-long horse was lurking in the inner shadows, poking his fine Roman nose curiously through his bedding. Did Joe Dale know it was Pelter?

  Hey, I heard old Roland Hickok thought the world of you, Joe Dale said, and so he answered your question. I'm not surprised. He could pick em. I tell you what: he never thought much of me. When the money starts rolling in I say to myself, All right, now the old man will show me some respect, but no, he won't even talk to me. After a while I get the idea he thinks I'm a sleazeball. Not that he would ever say so. He had manners, you know? Class. Like he came from the type of family, the boys go to some school in New England where they play lacrosse and it snows three feet in the winter, and the girls' weddings get write-ups in the New York Times. I mean, his father and brother trained for the Ogdens-in the Hickok family he was the black sheep, and in West Virginia he had a holy air around him like fucking George Washington. So what does he need me for? But you he gives his champion horse, his old-time stakes winner-what's the name of that horse?

  You just smile.

  Punter? Naa, that ain't it. Pelter, he answers himself. The Darkesville Stalker, First Horse of West Virginia. Now that says something.

  He didn't give me Pelter. I paid for the animal, you say. I was working for Hickok at the time.

  Yeah, but money was never the issue with Roland Hickok. He had class and he picked you. That says it all.

  The guy was good-he about had you pegged-for a moment you couldn't let him see your face, because it was glowing with pride. You turned your shoulder to him, busied yourself with a case of electrolytes, counting the foil packages.

  Plus you get the girls to work for you, Joe Dale went on. I wish I had that. I got no women in my barn. Everybody knows they have a softer touch, more patient. They get more out of the animals. They don't strong-arm a horse. They finesse. There it was. You knew he'd come round to her, sliding under the door, soaking in, pearling up the edges. Instead of hiding her you pushed her towards him-surprise him a little.

  Girls work harder, he said.

  Girlfriends work cheaper, you said with a wry smile.

  She must love the hell out of you, Joe Dale said. You couldn't get me to sling hay bales for no amount of love or money, no matter how cute your ass was.

  Actually I'm only second best, you said coolly. After Hickok sold me his horse it was nothing but Pelter. She likes that horse.

  Izzat right? Joe Dale shook his head in wonderment. Yeah, some of em's like that. Even the trollops that drip diamonds, you'd b
e surprised. It's like, Ooooo, he's so beautiful, can I pet him? Sure, baby. Imagine thinking one of these dumb hayeaters is beautiful. He laughed. Must be the sight of those big shlongs that gets em sentimental. Hey, that girl of yours looks intelligent, though. I used to know girls like her back in New York. I bet she went to Barnard College or somewhere. What is she, Jewish?

  You know-she might be, you said, as if you'd never thought of that before. Why don't you ask her yourself, if you're interested? She'll tell you. She's quite a candid person.

  Maybe I will-try to get her away from you while I'm at it-into my barn, I mean. I pay better. Big open-faced smile, shining with well-groomed wop geniality.

  He talked dirty to you and that, too, was a way of looking for her. Hey, I even had a Jewish girlfriend once. She was only this big-he held his manicured thumb and index finger an inch apart-which usually I like, but it took me a long time to get around to banging her. I thought she'd have a big twat, don't ask me why-because of what they say about twats and noses, you know?-so it was prejudice, I admit it, because she didn't even have a big nose. But turns out she was incredible, a little hairy down there but tight like a pencil sharpener. I swear she ruined me for Catholic girls for three years.

  You stared at him but he was absorbed in pulling a hair out of his watchband, laughing softly at his own joke. A mean wind had blown in from Ohio on the tail of the rain. The puddle by the back gate had a thin new skin of ice. Inside Joe Dale's Cadillac the heat must have been ninety degrees. The window was all the way down, his pale aqua shirt lay open at the collar and he wasn't even wearing a coat. That was when you decided to take whatever he dangled and turn it upside down on him. Do business but do exactly as you liked. You knew an offer was coming. Some type of deal to give him power over you, only he would have no power over you. You waited and there it came.

  You know, Hansel, I got more than I can handle. You got the kind of brains behind horses I wish I had, no, I mean it, I got the humility to see I need help. I know what I do good, nobody does it better, but I need people like you. What do you say I push some owners your way, and maybe sometimes a horse that don't win for me? And you tell me what looks good to you out there and I see about getting it for you, no claim necessary. See, that's one thing about having that leading trainer hand to file. Maybe I don't know much, but plenty of times I go to the owner, make the case he's with the wrong guy, and whatever I say, the jerk's so sick of wondering if his trainer is turning him around, he does what I say. You need owners, Hansel. Am I right?