“Jan—”
“And I know he could get bumped coming out of that gate and have zero chance. But I also know he can break in full stride easily. And if he gets out in front alone, Tug?”
And it was now, all these days and years after the deaths of Tug’s father and mine, that tears finally came from me in Tug’s presence, two of them falling fast, plenty more gathered in wait.
“If he gets out there alone, Tug?” I managed to say. “They simply won’t be able to catch him.”
And it was maybe my tears right then that had Tug lost for words. Why did everyone we loved end up making us sad? The early evening sun had us both marigold orange, as it did the infield and the homestretch and every grandstander, and it was in this orange light that it must have struck Tug that, yes, if his father’s efforts as a gambler had ever brought the Corcoran family inside information worth betting a pile on, Equis Mini today, at forty-five to one, was it.
67
DEESH
“SO I GUESS,” GERELLI SAYS, “I do feel obligated to make it clear to you that, in my professional opinion, we should probably consider other options.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you should consider making a deal with the prosecutors, Mr. Sharp. I think I can get you a life sentence in New York to keep you off death row in Pennsylvania.”
“But I’m not guilty, man!”
“I’m saying even so.”
“But a suicide,” I say, and the need to swallow quiets me, barraged as I am by thoughts about what I’d say to Bark if somehow given the chance. “I mean, an expert . . . a forensics expert could tell that Gabe shot himself, right?”
“And another could say Gabe didn’t. We don’t want to rely on bullshit games like that, Mr. Sharp. As you can probably imagine.”
Fuck, I think. Fuck everyone.
“Mr. Sharp, three of your actual peers—your two pals and a woman who loves you—think you’re a killer. A jury would be comprised of theoretical peers.”
“Yes, but one of my pals knows for a fact that I’m innocent.”
“Yet that’s not how it appears. Remember, Mr. Sharp, we’re not talking about truth here; we’re talking about legal truth—which, for you, when you get down to it, is defined as whatever your jury will believe. And in Pennsylvania, as you might well imagine, a person or two on any jury—regardless of how carefully we screen—might happen to hate you on sight.”
Then we both do nothing but sit facing each other, not even blinking.
“Well, that’s true,” I say.
“Unfortunately,” he says, and for a while there, rather than thinking about Pennsylvania, I think about the pigeon-toed sister whose phone call to Bark started this whole business with that drum in the first place.
About how she probably made that call as a favor she owed to the mob because she’d messed herself up by tricking or using.
About how I, sitting here, assume she tricked or used because, after all, she was black.
And I’m pissed at this.
I’m pissed at how my own blackness made me so confident in judging her.
Finally I say, “So at least we agree I have a color problem.”
And Gerelli shrugs at this, sour-faced.
“Mostly, Mr. Sharp?” he says. “You have a belief problem.”
And it’s now clear to me that he’s long ago convinced himself that, unless someone out of nowhere takes up my cause, I can’t possibly win.
And that if a guy like me fears he was born to lose, he should stick himself behind four walls that will never let him run anywhere.
68
JAN
THEN THE BUGLE SOUNDED, and out came the post parade, Equis Mini now officially wearing the nine, diminutive, yes, but on his toes, sort of bouncing on them. I pulled myself together as the apprentice on him murmured into his ear, and then there I went, up and off and away, certainly gone from Tug, probably, as Tug saw things then, to bet three hundred though he could still hope not, with there now also being that speck of chance that I, like anyone, could soon prove to have left him as permanently as his father had. He avoided thinking like this by admiring Equis Mini, then finally stopped admiring Equis Mini to check Equis Mini’s odds, which, right then, bumped up to fifty to one, which would mean I’d clear $15,000 if I bet three hundred—and if Equis Mini won.
And then there were eight minutes to post, a rather long time for any gambler, inveterate or not. And for the first few minutes of those eight, Tug no doubt considered me impetuous and foolish in my desire to bet. Maybe he figured that for me today—after everything I’d been through this summer and in my life—impetuosity and foolishness were virtues of sorts, and maybe he knew, for certain now, that he would always love me. Maybe he imagined me on a line behind numerous eager gamblers, probably all male, some twitching here and there, most of them compulsive, probably one or two he knew shallowly, and he probably wondered how I would decide how much to risk—and if I was considering hedges like place or show or going across the board, and whether I’d grow tempted to try something greedy, like an exacta.
If she isn’t greedy, he probably thought, she’ll bet simply to win, then never bet again.
And if she wins, he might have promised himself, we’ll never again sit in this grandstand.
Then it was only two minutes to post, and I was still gone, and, if I knew Tug, he seized up like his father had when people kept the Corcoran family from a wager on yet another sure thing, and then he alone, Tug, sweated a hot swath down his back and well up into his scalp. He’d told me nights earlier that he considered this quick sweating a symptom of mourning, but now, in the grandstand, this was no way to mourn, not when a guy might also grow faint, and maybe he would’ve left the track for good right then if it hadn’t been for my absence.
And absence, I realized then, means nearly nothing if you’ve never loved whoever is absent, whether they’re someone from your past or from a future you’ve conceived. And for Tug right then, I knew, Tom Corcoran would always be absent, powerfully absent, but for me right then, as I waited in line to place that bet, the most powerfully absent person was Tug.
And then a TV monitor overhead told me it was post time, and behind the starting gate beyond the pond stood Equis Mini, well back of every horse except the ten and the eleven, dwarfed even by the teal saddlecloth worn by every nine, and an assistant starter was loading the four, a roan muscle freak who glowed in that blood-orange sunlight. And I was still waiting to bet, and Tug hadn’t told me to seek out the shortest line, and I’m sure Tug remembered the countless times his father had cursed crudely while some chump at the front of a line delayed progress by rereading a Form, and for Tug and I both right then—for our future—time was now passing too quickly, because things just kept happening as if they were out of control, as if there had never been a way we could stop them, and then a hand grabbed Equis Mini’s bridle, leading him, and the teal number-nine saddlecloth slipped from sight as he entered the gate, and the ten walked in without delay, as did the eleven, dammit, and the flag was up, and they were off.
And no one near Tug cheered or stood, but this was race nine, the last of the day, most grandstanders silenced by losses of their own, losses of cash and sanity and respect, losses of the aspiration any day’s first few races bring, losses of children and siblings and parents and spouses and youth and the brightness of this sun before its orange hue had collected them, and now here I was, my legs maybe more splendid to Tug on those patched concrete stairs, standing still, out in the aisle, poker-faced, maybe uncommonly pretty in that way he sometimes found me, green blue eyes aimed well beyond him to decipher if Equis Mini had indeed broken well. And on the backstretch there did appear to be only one entry out in front, its saddlecloth the teal of the nine reddened by that sunshine—or were we seeing the purple of the eleven?
—and I drew close and said, “That’s him, Tug. That’s him. He’s out there.”
“Did you get it in?” Tug asked.
I handed him a tote ticket, and there, on that square of thin white paper, was this:
$1,100 Win #9
“Jan, this says you bet eleven hundred dollars to win.”
“Correct,” I said.
“Why did you—”
“We want him and the farm forever, Tug. And he’s three lengths ahead. And the next horse is a length ahead of the rest.”
“He’s flying. He’s going too fast.”
“No, he’s not, Tug. This is what we wanted.”
“Jan, don’t get excited.”
“Tug, he’s out in front.”
“I know. I see it.”
I had him by the wrist now. “Tug, he’s out there,” I said. “He looks comfortable. He looks like he’s not even trying.”
“Did the jock even ask him?”
“Don’t ask him, jock. Don’t ask him!”
“Just let him run. Just let him enjoy taking that turn.”
“Don’t even show him the whip—Tug, he’s ahead by five.”
And no one in the grandstand was cheering. There was one scream down near the finish line, an incredulous, touristy shriek, but that was it, because, as the odds board attested, Equis Mini had gone off at sixty to one, and now here he was, halfway down the homestretch, still unwhipped, his elongated shadow a good seven lengths behind him, the closest contender a length behind the shadow itself.
“We’re gonna do it, Tug,” I said. “We’re gonna do it.”
And that little colt of ours ran on boyishly, without a single glance over at us, as game out there, above that familiar dirt, as any soul we’d known.
And as he crossed under the wire, neither Tug nor I shouted or screamed or made a sound.
Tug, though, stood beside me with his arms raised over his head, a well-pronounced fist still on each, as if, I thought, trying to cajole fist bumps from both of our fathers. He stood like that watching Equis Mini continue to run well past the finish, as if he, like I, feared for Equis Mini’s physical safety, and then he kept right on standing like that. Maybe, I thought, he was thanking his father’s spirit for having arranged this miraculous coincidence, and then, as if finally realizing he’d been drawing attention to himself, he lowered his arms and sat back down and nodded and winked at me.
“This is huge,” he said, and he grinned. “Do you realize how much you won?”
I wouldn’t look over, trying as I was to read the odds board.
But I did say: “We.”
“Pardon?” Tug asked.
“We won, Tug.”
“No,” he said. “You. You were the one with the guts to put down the eleven hundred.”
And for a white-hot while then, I couldn’t think. Or maybe it was just that my mind couldn’t choose now that it swam inside its own suddenly privileged new wealth of good thoughts.
When I could finally speak, I said, “Still. I want it to be us, Tug. Us. I want Equis Mini to be ours. But the money—I can’t imagine. I really, really just can’t. This isn’t like anything else, Tug—you know what I mean?”
“Sixty grand plus,” he said. “You could walk it right down to that winner’s circle,” he said, “and buy him with just a fraction. If they won’t sell for three thousand, you can offer four. Or five. Or, hell, whatever the fuck they want.”
I handed him the ticket. “Can you go?” I asked. “I mean, do you mind? I want to see how he looks in the winner’s circle. I want to see if he likes it.”
“You might see me down there buying him,” Tug said, and he was grinning more impishly than he had all summer, and now I wanted to go with him but he was already off with the ticket in hand, bounding up the grandstand’s concrete stairs, and I told myself it was better this way. I had no idea how I’d react with cash like that in my hands—who knew what I might do—it was out of this world, really, everything that was happening—I couldn’t believe it.
And then I could believe it, but hardly. Maybe belief was difficult because I’d never had luck like this, the kind people in love had and shared with each other, the most excellent kind, I thought. Anyway I liked how it felt to have so much. Luck scared me and made me feel like a stranger to myself, but, really, I really did like it.
And I liked watching Equis Mini run on, how he kept going even though the race was getting to be long past over, how he resisted the reins and the jock’s command to take it easy, how he must not have wanted this run (ahead of so many bigger, professionally trained horses) to end, must now have been trying to savor that feeling of having burst from the get-go into the lead, of knowing so soon that everyone who cared had to admit that he was the very best. And I liked how he obviously wanted to go around again, in order to feel more of that caring. To him, I believed, crossing under that wire would now always mean this pleasurable business of being patted and petted and lovingly kissed and talked to. And Tug, being his father’s son, would know how to handle getting the cash, would then know how best to first approach the trainer and owner, so all I needed to do was keep watching Equis Mini cool down; if I just kept doing that, I believed, Tug and I—and Equis Mini!—would all see one another soon.
So that’s what I did: kept watching. And then, with no apparent prompt from his jock, Equis Mini downshifted into a canter, his tendons intact, I hoped, and then, after he again made the bend around the far turn, I watched him ease into a loping walk toward the finish. He was a beautiful horse, truly. There was beauty in his smallness. And I could see this beauty all the way from the rusted blue steel grandstand, could see it better here than when I had ridden him in my sprint, and any grandstander who hadn’t left his seat for the day could now certainly see it, too. And I remembered the feeling Equis Mini had given me as we’d won that sprint, that sense of actual physical flight he lent, the notion of escape but mostly of running with. And now here he was, again evoking that voice in my head, the one I’d considered my father’s back then, the same voice now saying to me, You did keep on; I’m proud, and I’m still with you—and now he, Equis Mini, would be mine to share with Tug, and maybe, if he ate well tomorrow and struck us as eager a month later, we’d consider letting him race here again.
And in case my father’s spirit was now actually—in real truth—with me, I let myself whisper, “Thank you.”
And the jock patted Equis Mini’s withers as they entered the winner’s circle, where, finally, without command, Equis Mini stopped completely, wanting to nod, it seemed, but keeping within rein, letting his tongue hang out the left side of his mouth—playfully, I hoped—and all around him were handshakes and smiles and pats on backs and hugs and pumped fists and the raising of fingers done by proud men when victory finds them. Maybe they won’t sell, I thought, but I was too happy to worry, and I was all the happier now because Equis Mini was in his element, nodding as freely as he was then and there, engaging as he did in a tossing around of his head I’d never quite seen a horse of any breed try, a sort of dance done by everything above his shoulders while the rest of him remained beneath the jock and within the jock’s command to keep still. And I wished Tug could see Equis Mini dance like this, wished I had gone with Tug so Tug and I and Equis Mini could all the sooner dance like this together.
But this way I’d gotten to watch Equis Mini run beyond the finish eagerly as any, and now that I’d seen this, I thought, I could talk about it with Tug. That was the way it was and was always supposed to be, all three of us winning and sharing victory’s good results, sometimes all together, sometimes not but with one watching another and soon telling the one who’d been gone, and we were good at that, Tug and I: We were good at talking and listening.
And I was still happy now but already missing Tug. And I wondered: Was I becoming a sap this way—wa
s I becoming a sap? No, this was no sap. This was natural. This was just the process of love, just two peoples’ love becoming one and the same. It happened all the time. Love like this was no privilege. I was privileged to have been fathered by a jock, and Tug had been privileged to have had a father who’d jocked, too, much as Tug and I both had sometimes privately cussed our fates for having been intertwined with gambling, and Tug and I and our mothers and Jasper and everyone at that secret sprint past Geneseo had been privileged to witness Equis Mini’s speed, and now fewer people than that, far fewer, had been privileged to bet their life’s savings on that same speed at sixty to one, so there was some privilege. There was, and there would always be, some unfair privilege, if only a little. And now I had to admit that, yes, I, like those upper-crust folks I had long envied and resented, had benefited from privilege, but still: When it came to love itself? Love itself had nothing to do with privilege.
Love, the more I thought about it, was the opposite of privilege.
And then I thought: Come on, Tug. Let’s go buy us a horse!
But Tug didn’t appear then or anytime soon, probably, I thought then, because collecting winnings this sizeable took a decent amount of time. I had heard men on the backside whine about IRS windows, and I had seen an IRS window when I’d made this very bet, three lines over with no one but a teller at it, which must have meant IRS windows existed for cashing in huge tickets only. And if the IRS needed some of these winnings, there were probably papers to sign, and I was fine with that; I was fine with the IRS; I was fine with sharing a few dollars, even if politicians would then kick some of those dollars back to their wealthy friends; I wanted only Tug and Equis Mini and the horse farm as well as just a few remnants of this happiness I felt now. I didn’t want to worry about the IRS.
And now the handshakes and hugs and dances in the winner’s circle were over, a stable hand now removing Equis Mini’s saddle, the proud men inside forming a line so each could follow the next out, Equis Mini then led out, too, the stable hand guiding him back onto the track, then walking him slowly enough to allow him the slight nods caused by the steps he took. And I thought: Okay, Little One. Talk to you in your stall. And I watched him complete the clubhouse turn and leave the track for the backside, and when he was gone from sight I missed Tug all the more, to the point of impatience. I told myself that this meant maybe something was wrong, wondered if impatience could live in me if there really was true love between me and Tug. Shouldn’t I, ideally, trust that he was doing his best to return?
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