The Healing

by Gayl Jones

  She looks like a winner, I said.

  She’s top-class, said Josef. Bred right here.

  Well, she looks like a winner.

  She is a winner, said the groom. He held out a sugar cube or some bit of sweet for the horse. A good horse on a gummy track is a good horse anywhere. And when it comes to a stretching duel, she’s the best. When it’s a fast track, the mature horses, though, have got more confidence than this one. She ain’t a nervous filly, she just needs more confidence in herself when it’s a fast track and she’s amongst the mature horses. But when it comes to a stretching duel, she’s the best, I ain’t never put no green goggles on this filly. This filly knows who she is and knows who she wants to be. That’s how you train a horse. If I was a trainer myself and ain’t just a groom, that’s how I’d train my horses, I wouldn’t train them how I want ’em to be, I’d find out what they want to be, and that’s how I’d train ’em. Course you gotta have a top-class horse for that. You gotta have a classy horse for that. Some horses the only way you can train ’em is how you want ’em to be. They make good horses, but the best horses is them that knows what they want to be. Then all you gotta do is find out what they wanna be and that’s how you train ’em.

  The Thoroughbred flicked her tail, turned a huge brown eye towards me. It wasn’t a fierce eye now. It was more curious than fierce. She whinnied. I wondered if any of them horses ever thought of training and taming people.

  I usually like them with more exotic background, though, I said.

  This is exotic to me, said Josef, waving his hands at the rolling green of his four-hundred-acre farm. America is exotic to me. So you think she’ll win?

  Win easily, I said. She’ll start good and slow, though, move gradually, then she’ll rally. As long as the pressure’s good.

  Yeah, that’s when she behaves her best, said the groom. Ain’t nothing nervous about this filly. The media man that said that is a liar. And the sportswriting women is as good prevaricators as the men. Them sportswriting women thinks if they’s as good prevaricators as the men then that’s equality. Why, when Mr. Fremd bought this farm, there was someone come out here talking about urban development. Now, they weren’t talking urban development until Mr. Fremd bought this farm. ’Cause they didn’t want a man like Mr. Fremd to own a farm like this, so they started talking urban development. They’s good prevaricators, ain’t they, Mr. Fremd?

  A light urging, I said.

  A little light urging, not too much, said the groom.

  The jockey should ride with her, let her pull, I said.

  Yeah, the jockey should let her lead. Let her lead, said the groom. ’Cause she knows who she is and who she wants to be. You know your horses.

  You sound like you know her, said Josef.

  For sure. She’s the best. I could be a sportswriting man myself, and I know enough about horses not to prevaricate. I usedta wanna be a jockey myself, though, but then I started getting too tall for a jockey, you know, so I become a groom. But this filly, she’s the best.

  And those were the days when you never really expected a filly to win.

  And that’s exactly what the groom said. There’s them that don’t expect a filly to win, but I’ll bet on a filly any day.

  On the shelves are books for horsemen: The Illustrated Veterinary Encyclopedia, Breeding Management and Foal Development, Treatments and Medications, Feeding to Win, Equine Genetics and Selection Procedures. I read somewhere once that Lexington had been a breeder’s town in slavery days. Lexington at Cheapside had been the principal marketplace: horses, cows, Negroes. Negro Genetics and Selection Procedures. I wondered if they’d had such books. The Illustrated Negro Encyclopedia, Breeding Management and Pickaninny Development. I wondered whether people who used to breed slaves, when slavery was abolished, started breeding horses, transferred their knowledge of breeding slaves to breeding horses. I thumbed through the volume on Breeding Management while waiting for Josef to come back from the yard. The book was a gift to Josef. It said To Josef with Love, from Stellina. Mrs. Fremd? Or another Stellina?

  Here you are, he said coming in, holding two glasses of white wine. He wore a blue-and-white-striped silk robe and a white cloth wrapped around his head. He looked like a Moroccan nobleman. Maybe he’d got that robe when he was in Alexandria, which he said ain’t in Morocco, but Egypt. Morocco a land without rivers, but that Egypt got the Nile. Ain’t that Nile supposed to be the oldest river in the world? The river of civilization. He was wearing sandals. The straps on them were made of a rope-looking fiber, probably sisal.

  I like her, I said, meaning the horse.

  He handed me one of the glasses. Cheers, he said. And then he said the same thing in German. I said kampai, a Japanese word I’d learned from Joan. I tried to think of a drinking song I’d once heard. Seem like that drinking song had something about rivers in it.

  He stood sipping his. I pushed my legs up in the leather chair and sat on my feet. The farmhouse was colonial, almost a mansion, built in the 1850s with high ceilings and long windows. The attic was shaped like a castle turret. I think they’re turrets, though they look sorta like dunce caps. The base of them is stovepipe-shaped and then at the top they’s what looks like a dunce cap. And he got one of his security people sitting inside that dunce cap. And I think Nicholas’ room somewhere up in that turret. It was like the builder of the farmhouse was trying to suggest something of the Old World in the New, and since there weren’t true castles in America, to claim something of royalty. This supposed to be a democracy, somebody said, but throughout its history you still have people wishing they’s kings, or wishing for kings and other royalty, and if they ain’t trying to transform theyselves into kings and other royalty, then they’s trying to transform other people into kings and other royalty. That’s why they always likes to refer to other Americans as the king and other names of royalty. The real kings in Europe and America’s kings fiction. They’s even got a few true castles in America, because they’s always them that think that a nation ain’t a true civilized nation unless it’s got castles. Seem like one of them early American writers said something about that, that America weren’t a cultured and civilized nation ’cause it didn’t have no castles in it. But they’s always looking at the people’s architecture to decide whether they’s civilized or not. If they architecture look different from they own architecture, or if they civilization ain’t in they architecture, then they ain’t civilized. This mansion ain’t a true castle, it just got a little turret on it, like it a wannabe castle. There are former slave quarters, but they’d been converted into bunk-houses where some of the hired men stayed. His top security people, though, like Nicholas and the former Vietnamese soldier who’d fought in the tunnels of Cu Chi, had rooms in the farmhouse. I stared out the window at a man sitting in a walnut tree. I think he one of the former CIA people, or one of them men claim to be former CIA or other government security people. He wearing braids, though, and I don’t think when he worked for the CIA they would have allowed him to wear braids unless they’d wanted him to infiltrate some group of Rastafarians in Jamaica or something, but I don’t believe the U.S. considers them Rastafarians a threat to their national security, so he must’ve started wearing braids after he left the CIA and started working for Josef. Maybe even that groom might be a security person disguised as a groom. I thought of a book of Joan’s called The Tree of Culture. It had a Rastafarian-looking man sitting in a tree like that. The first chapter was about the pygmies of the Ituri Forest. Different people sat in trees indigenous to their cultures. An African sat in a baobab tree. Them Japanese sat in them banyan trees, I think they’s banyan trees. Then them Japanese have got them miniature trees; they cultivate them miniature trees. I remember when Joan was in Japan, the Japanese announcer had introduced her as a “musical giant” from America. She’d mumbled before going onstage, “Musical pygmy.” I didn’t understand Japanese, so I didn’t know he’d introduced her as a musical giant, but when I’d asked her why she�
�d mumbled “musical pygmy,” she explained that it was because he’d referred to her as a musical giant, and she herself didn’t think she was worthy of that title. “At least in America I’m a musical pygmy,” she’d said. “But I heard someone say even Americans like to make people superstars before they’re deserving of that title.” Josef, beside me, held his glass in one hand and stroked my shoulder with another.

  Kampai, I said again.

  I like you, he said.

  There’s a man in the tree, I said. How come you got so many security people?

  Josef looked toward the window. When people wanna play dirty tricks on you, you gotta be a prudent man. Do you want me to close the curtains? he asked.

  Unless you want him to take pictures, I said.

  I noticed he was sounding more like me, and I was sounding more like him.

  At the corner of the stable, I watched the young groom rub Absorbine Hooflex on the hooves of a yearling. The young man sniffed some as he worked. A lean young man with the physique of a young Kenyan I’d once seen win the marathon.

  Is that a good high? I joked.

  He handed the bottle over to me, I sniffed some, felt my forehead ready for takeoff, passed it back. Too strong for me, I said. What does it do for the horse?

  It’s supposed to keep the hooves flexible. You know your horses on a racetrack, but you don’t know your horses, do you? Horses are intelligent. They know you if you don’t know them.

  I watched him clean and brush the yearling, using a tiny vacuum cleaner to clean the hair on the flanks and remove dirt from the hooves. I watched him brush the horse’s head and mane, apply medication to the bottom of one of the hooves. He had a handsome, clean, dark oval face, a tiny mustache and intelligent but unsettled eyes.

  I think she’s got a little infection on the hoof here, he said. She had a splinter fracture in the cannon, but that’s all healed.

  Will it mean a problem? I asked. I mean the infection.

  Should clear up in a day or two. Get her ready for her first set of shoes, ain’t that right, darling?

  He rubbed her silken mane. You want to get out there and graze, don’t you girl? You know I can’t let you out there till tonight. Sun’s too hot now. Bleach your hair. You don’t want the sun to bleach your hair, now do you girl? You won’t be as pretty with your hair all bleached out. He patted her. She’s a good girl.

  Someone came up behind me. Thinking it was Josef and without turning around, I grabbed at his hands and caressed them. Then I turned to stare up into Nicholas’ face. I felt like a fool.

  Why didn’t you tell me it was you? I asked.

  You already had hold of me, he said.

  I moved away from him and walked back to the house.

  She’s a good girl, I heard the groom say again. You can’t fool a horse. A good horse knows you better than you know yourself.

  Nicholas said something that I couldn’t hear. I don’t know whether he was talking about the horse, though, or me.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  And now Ladies and Gentlemen, our star, the fabulous Joan Savage, or as she prefers to be called, Savage Joan the Darling Bitch! Ain’t that a contradiction in terms? A Savage Darling? A Darling Bitch? I like a good bitch, even a darling bitch, who allows you to call her a bitch, though, ’cause some bitches even the nicest darling bitches, when you calls ’em bitches, even the bitches that they are, even the bitches that they know they are, even wonderful bitches, like this wonderful bitch, or my wife who’s a sometimes bitch, ’cause she ain’t a bitch with everybody, bitches at you for calling ’em a bitch, and you better not call certain bitches bitches, even the bitches that they are, even bitches who are bitches and knows that they’s bitches, even knows that they’s wonderful bitches, even bitches as wonderful as this wonderful bitch, or my wife, who’s sometimes a wonderful bitch herself, and even knows she’s a wonderful bitch and knows how to bitch wonderfully, ’cause if you call certain bitches a bitch even when they call themselves a bitch like my sometimes bitch of a wife sometimes calls herself a bitch even if you calls ’em a wonderful bitch even a nice bitch then you learn the true meaning of bitch. This routine comes to you with apologies to you know who, who should never apologize for calling a mean bitch a mean bitch even when he calls the wrong mean bitch even a nice mean bitch a mean bitch. I heard somebody refer to comedians like us as comedians to the niggerphobics, but as a young comedian to the niggerphobic myself, with apologies to the author of Negrophobia, I could tell you the truth about some of the meanest bitches, and I ain’t just talking about bitches of color neither, ’cause everybody likes to call bitches of color bitches but that ain’t every bitch, except you know who, who should never apologize for calling a mean bitch a mean bitch even when he calls the wrong mean bitch even a nice mean bitch a mean bitch. . . . Anybody who watches the politically incorrect Comedy Channel knows who I’m talking about, but you better not call ’em a bitch, even every bitch. . . . My wife ain’t no mean bitch, though, she’s a sweet bitch, I mean a nice bitch, when she’s a bitch sometimes, but suppose every woman’s a bitch, suppose every bitch’s a bitch, the mean bitches and the sweet bitches, the nice bitches, the wonderful bitches, the darling bitches, and the good bitches, if bitch was as common as woman or lady or girl, then you’d have A Portrait of a Bitch, Maggie: A Bitch of the Streets, Fanfare for a Common Bitch—there’s a fanfare for a common bitch the same as a fanfare for a common bastard—I better say bastard or some of you bitches’ll, especially my wife, start bitching at me for not being a egalitarian, Don’t Let Cowbitches Fool Ya, you gotta be literate to understand my allusions, Fanfare for a Common Bitch is a piece of music, though, but I usedta be a professor of English before I became a comedian, but being a professor of English was a bitch, so I became a comedian, ’cause as a comedian I get to call a bitch a bitch, but suppose every noun was a bitch, then you’d have A Bitch of a Bitch, suppose every verb and verbal was a bitch, then you’d have The Bitch of a Bitching Bitch, but Bitch and Bitchibility. . . . and ain’t none of y’all better call my little daughter no bitch.

  Joan marched onstage to applause. The announcer, a local entertainer-comedian, a round-faced dark-complexioned man, who called himself Mr. Show Biz Hisself Though Not the King of the Comedians to the Niggerphobics with Apologies to the Author of Negrophobia, kissed her hand, referred to her as “our darling bitch” again, made a few gallant flourishes like the knights of old, or like the court jesters, and marched offstage. She was dressed in golden leotards with her hair in golden strings, She was wearing a sweatshirt that said SAVAGE JOAN THE BITCH DARLING rather than Darling Bitch as the announcer had said. She was wearing deep red lipstick and her cheeks were the color of Delicious apples. She was grinning. She was glowing. Then she just stared at the audience. Even from backstage, I could see that little wrinkle above her nose, A wrinkle or scar I’d noticed the first time I’d seen her. She said she didn’t know what it was. She’d been born with it. A sort of birthmark. Anyway, she just stood and looked at her audience. Then she asked, Have you read the Kama Sutra today? then she started singing.

  I watched from backstage. She was always good to hear. Always. A golden peacock. Like her other fans, I watched as she pranced across the stage. I remember when she first asked me to manage her. Do you like my singing? she’d ask. Yes, of course, I’d answered. She said that she knew of a certain singer whose manager didn’t like her singing, but he managed her anyway. That seems sorta duplicitous, don’t it? she’d asked. To be somebody’s manager and don’t like their singing your ownself. Not duplicitous. Duplicitous ain’t the word I mean for it. I mean, you don’t know when they’re managing you and when they’re managing you. She was drunk on gin and tonic and kept talking about this singer she knew, managed by someone who didn’t like her singing. So she had to be sure I liked her singing, at least liked most of her songs, before she let me manage her. She sang mostly in English, but when she spotted a Japanese woman in the audience, she said
something in Japanese and then sang a snippet of a song she’d sung in Japan. Then she sang in English again.

  Onstage she was wonderful, but after each performance she’d shake her head and wring her hands in the dressing room. She craved but never trusted the applause. Sometimes she rushed backstage almost before the applause had happened. She reminded me of a young French woman violinist in a movie that we’d seen, a young woman who always needed assurances that she was good.

  That’s me, that’s how I am, she’d said after the movie. I can’t understand artists who are so sure of their goodness.

  Why would someone want to be an artist who didn’t think themselves good? I’d ask, for I thought that every artist had the conceit that they were good, or they wouldn’t be artists, and then I wasn’t sure what sort of goodness she meant.

  When I sing, I can’t hear how I sound to others, and when I listen to myself I’m too judgmental.

  You were great, I’d say. She’d sit in her dressing room, silent. You were great, I’d say again. Don’t toady me. I really fucked up tonight. I’d poured myself a glass of bourbon and her a glass of a weird favorite, a combination of tomato and pineapple juice. They love you out there, Joan. They love you. Don’t you know it? And that bit of Japanese you sang, that sounded really good. It adds another dimension to you. You ain’t just another girl singer, you know. She’d light a cigarette, gulp a bit of the tomato and pineapple juice, sip some of my bourbon, then jump up and hug her shoulders.