Jungle Horses

by Scott Adlerberg

  He returned to the track. He began again to bet through Smits and watched in dismay as horse after horse he bet on lost. Favorites he chose came home last; stretch runners he backed showed nothing. Once he did have a horse that won, that crossed the finish line leading by a neck, only to see that horse disqualified, its jockey suspended for reckless riding. Luck was not his. He found himself caught in the cold streak he had been afraid he’d have, and in his mind he kept on hearing the words he associated with Brushwood: You won’t win a farthing off us anymore. Not a one.......We’re sick of it, the way you judge us, size us up.

  But why cave in to silly fears? It would never do to believe himself the victim of a curse. Superstitious gamblers were losing gamblers, people who followed ridiculous whims with no basis at all in the numbers, and he was determined to persevere with his tested methods, studying the rub, heeding the odds, watching the parade before each race to see how the various horses looked, to see whether he should change his picks according to the horses’ appearance. He always liked a horse that approached the gate with its head up and a bounce in its legs, and no matter what the statistics said, he would reconsider a horse walking lazily, any horse dragging itself as if it had no interest in running. Arthur took risks, bet safe, factored into his final decisions everything he knew about racing, and yet nothing he tried worked. A week went by and he kept losing.

  Nearly broke, he reviewed his options. He could ask his wife for a loan or appeal to Vaughn for money, or he could wait until the arrival of his next pension check. Waiting would mean three weeks of impatience, of fretting in pubs but drinking little since he had this shortage of cash, and asking either Jenny or Vaughn would involve revealing his gambling habit. He didn’t want to do that yet, not when he seemed such a loser, and in any event, he knew full well that neither of them would lend him money for betting. Jenny, disturbed, would take control of his pension money, cashing his checks and doling out the pounds so that he’d have a pub allowance, nothing more. Vaughn, with his businessman’s perspective, would regard the loan as a poor investment. And both would doubtlessly have advice, urge him to stop going to the track, offer to get him professional help if they viewed his habit as an addiction. That left the alternative of waiting, three weeks of sober fidgeting. Or he could tap other sources for a loan despite the pressure this would put on him.

  In a solemn mood, Arthur walked through the wet streets one night after dinner. He and Jenny had eaten at Vaughn’s and then those two had gone to the theater, but instead of holing up back at the flat to listen to the radio and stare at the walls, he had decided to embark on this stroll and let his thoughts foment as he rambled. Over the Thames and throughout London, the fog had descended once again, a shifting film of cool vapor that left cold droplets on his face, and when he heard Big Ben’s chimes the sound came to him as something muted, something low and quite mournful, like a gong rung for ghosts. Solitary figures passed in the fog, elongated men carrying cases and plugging along in bowler hats, curvier shapes in calf-length dresses, their heads wrapped up in plastic or scarves, and as he crossed Picadilly Circus, painted ladies in tawdry outfits whistled at him to catch his attention.

  “See anything you like, mister?”

  “Looking for a bit of fun, guv?”

  They flexed their hips, they motioned, they smiled, but on he went feeling inside the ever present deadness of desire. He advanced through the grayness and the moist clinging air, through the shreds of mist that softened all sound, and over his body came the sensation of feeling both tired and light. Tired because the walk fatigued him, because, sadly, physical exertion quickly sapped his energy reserves; light because the encircling fog made him acutely aware of his aloneness. He moved ahead, knowing that he was a cut-off person, someone with no attachments of consequence, and this in turn gave him the feeling that he himself was composed of vapor, nothing but insubstantial particles, and that when a wind blew up strong he would dissipate into nothingness.

  In Soho, in a cobblestoned alley, he stopped at a door with a brass handle cut in the form of a dragon’s head. Here he pressed a silver button that set off a ringing inside. A panel in the door slid back, and out through the slit peered two gray eyes. Arthur identified himself, saying that he wanted to see the man’s boss; it was urgent. The eyes blinked twice, scrutinizing him, before a voice distinctly Welsh ordered him to wait, and Arthur thought almost with pride that his old comrade in arms had done quite well since the end of the war. A private club, wary guards, and never a day spent in jail despite the breadth of his activities. Browner was succeeding on his own terms just as he had said he would when they’d been fighting Rommel in Egypt.

  Allowed in, Arthur was escorted by the redheaded Welshman. The man took him through a carpeted room where seven men sitting at a table were playing poker in dinner jackets. From there they proceeded down a dark hallway, and Arthur noticed a series of doors. Behind the doors, he had to guess, were other rooms for gambling, for cards and dice and roulette betting. Arthur could smell cigarette smoke along with the stench of cigars. Then a knock on a red door by the Welshman, a soft-voiced answer from within, and Arthur stepped into a room lit by a shaded lamp on a desk. Bathed in shadow, a pen in his hand, doing the paperwork of an accountant, Browner said nothing to him at first, but with a brusque lifting of his arm he invited Arthur to take a seat. Arthur did so, across from the desk, and as the Welshman left the room, shutting the door silently, Arthur felt like he’d come to a bank and gained access to its president.

  Browner laid aside his pen. He closed his notebook of figures. He reached for the lamp and dimmed the light and so brought his face into view for Arthur, and as they both extended hands, shaking warmly, Arthur commented on how well the passing years were treating his friend, a man who’d never added a belly, who retained a shock of black hair, who still had skin taut and unlined. Browner had preserved himself somehow. He’d grown coffee in Kenya and fought through the war in one piece, but neither the army nor his ranching were for him fond recollections. With the end of the war he’d sold his land, and only later, here in London, had he made a success of himself.

  “You came for money,” he said. “Or am I presuming too much?”

  “You’re not.”

  “The horses?”

  “Just a bit of rotten luck. It happens sometimes.”

  Browner chuckled, leaned back in his chair, cleared his throat. The shadows had swallowed him up again, but still within the area of light were his bone-pale hands, stretched flat on the chair’s armrests. As Arthur watched, one of his fingers, the left index, started to tap against the leather, and Arthur heard him humming to himself as he worked things over in his mind.

  “I’ve only come to you twice,” Arthur said.

  “But when are you going to give it up? Do something else?”

  “And I’ve been good for the loan each time.”

  “You have. Each time. But where does it end? What’s your goal?”

  “Africa,” Arthur said. “With some wins this time I really will stop, and then I’m going on a long trip.”

  “Africa’s not the same as it was.”

  “I know.”

  Browner shifted and shook his head but finally took some money from his desk. He admitted with a smile of resignation that old loyalties had their worth, that he couldn’t let a friend dangle in the wind. But then his face went hard and professional and he told Arthur not to forget that what they were doing here was business. On collection policy he brooked no exceptions; he never let a person renege on a debt.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to,” said Arthur.

  “Good. That’s good. But for old time’s sake I’ll give you a very low interest.”

  So now Arthur had new money to bet with, material for a fresh start. And when he resumed his handicapping, he did it with the utmost care and alertness, knowing that Browner would stick to his word and expect every pound of his money back, plus the vigorish. Browner’s reputation in criminal circles wa
s one of intelligent ruthlessness; men beaten up and made to use wheelchairs had refused to testify against him. Wealthy and secretive, Browner had an army of muscle in his employ, and none of these thugs knew him, Arthur Hudson, from a hole in the wall. If given the order to hurt or kill him, they would do it without hesitation. It might distress Browner to issue such an order, but that wouldn’t stop him from carrying out his business.

  “Cooperate with me,” Arthur would say to the horses at the track. “Help me out here.”

  A couple of wins, a touch of luck, a little momentum so he could regain his betting confidence: these were the modest wishes he had--yet the goddamned horses refused to comply. Arthur’s streak of losses continued and though he tried to keep a level head, he began to think it actually possible that some exterior force was causing this, some paranormal influence. To go so long without a single win qualified as odd enough, but on top of it all was the uncanny way the horses behaved after the races he bet. A horse he picked for a certain spot would come on home in disappointing fashion, and as the jockey led it up the track to cool it down and return it to the paddocks, he would see it swing its head and locate him among the crowd. There he’d be standing on the grass with the others, as close to the rail as he could get, and the horse that had sunk him deeper into debt would stare at him and only him with its luminous eyes. Time, for a second, would stop; the noises around him would fade; he’d hear again a variation on what had been communicated to him the day Brushwood had broken her leg--You won’t win. We warned you. You can’t win money off us anymore.

  And then the horse would straighten its head and go on trotting under its rider--a horse that to everyone else watching must have seemed unremarkable. Perhaps, in his demoralized condition, he should have stopped going to the track. Perhaps at least he should have paused and let his clouded faculties clear. Before a race now he’d look at a horse wondering whether it was one that would give him a telepathic scolding, and he’d tell himself that no sane gambler could afford to function like this. No one who bet could make good picks believing that behind the furious races there was a supernatural agent. At breakfast with Jenny, on the train trips to and from the track, during meals with Vaughn and the bridge games at Vaughn’s flat, Arthur had the races on his mind, ponies on the brain, and even when he slept he didn’t escape because he’d started dreaming of the other kind again, the jungle horses, the strapping magnificent wild horses running through a landscape thick with greenery, rife with growth, luxuriant with all the colored beauty absent from grey, smoky London. Admittedly he enjoyed these dreams, but on waking up he would always feel a tinge of sadness, knowing that ahead for him that day were the infernal thoroughbred horses.

  Due for a payment to Browner, Arthur took off on another of his nocturnal strolls. Opalescent fog hung in the air and engulfed him the moment he stepped outside (for Jenny and Vaughn it was a concert night), and Arthur felt tempted to walk until lost, walk until the fog broke up. And imagine if then, when the sun rose, he found himself somewhere else; imagine if some magical process carried him off to a distant place where he had no debts on his head. To start all over, to begin a new life, might be the only answer for him, and he doubted very much that he would be missed. For a short time perhaps Jenny and Vaughn would search for him, regretting his disappearence, but they would soon realize they’d shed dead weight and devote themselves wholly to each other. That, in the long run, would have to please them.

  Somehow, with a will of their own, his feet had led him back to Browner’s. He had to knock, say hello to the Welshman, wait to be ushered down the corridor and into the gloomy rear office. “I lost,” he said in a flat tone, but Browner didn’t move in his black leather chair or act as though the news surprised him. Arthur could hear him breathing through his nose as he sat still behind his desk, and this silence from a man he’d known for years began to rasp on Arthur’s nerves. He would have preferred menace, an explosion, some indication of anger. But then Browner did slide forward in the chair and prop his elbows against the desk, and Arthur saw that in his face there was no ill temper showing, just a rock-hard sobriety.

  “You’re asking for more?”

  “I could wait for my pension check.”

  “That won’t cover what you owe.”

  “In installments I could pay it. Half my check would go to you, half to the track. I could make the rest in two or three days.”

  “You know what you sound like, Arthur?”

  “I know. I know. But you wouldn’t believe what I’ve been seeing. The horses......It’s as if they’re conspiring against me.”

  Browner gave Arthur some money, assuring him that he had one week. This seemed fair to Arthur and he said so, but he was unsettled by his friend’s eyes. As stony and black as a shark’s eyes, they turned the blood in him to ice, and as he walked out into the fog and passed the beckoning whores in Soho, he kept repeating four words to himself: Win or be hurt, win or be hurt, win or be hurt.

  Several days later, in the evening, Arthur and Jenny were leaving their flat to cross the street and have dinner at Vaughn’s. As Jenny turned the key, locking their door, Arthur walked down the stoop to the pavement. A car passed so he had to stop, allowing Jenny to catch up, and when they both stepped off the curb, Arthur saw a hulking shape emerging from the shadows near Vaughn’s building. Someone had been standing in the narrow alley that connected this street to the one behind Vaughn’s, and the sudden appearance of this person made Arthur think the man was a thief coming out of the darkness to rob them. He froze, muscles tensed, but light from the lamp the man passed under revealed him to be Browner’s Welshman, dressed in a black double-breasted suit. Arthur’s lips curled into a smile, more from relief than in greeting, and he told Jenny to go on ahead; he’d join her inside after he had a word with the man.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Just a bloke I know from the pubs.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “We made a little bet on a football game.”

  “You? Betting?”

  “It’s nothing serious. I owe him ten quid.”

  Jenny shook her head and went up the sandstone steps to Vaughn’s door. She glanced back once while letting herself inside and Arthur flapped his left arm as if to reaffirm that nothing was wrong, that her lingering presence was an embarrassment. He turned then to address the Welshman, to ask after Browner and say something courteous, but in front of his face he saw a spread hand indicating that the Welshman meant business. The redheaded guy, freckles and all, looked as glum as a messenger of death, and for the first time Arthur noticed the solid meat in his physique, the brawn that could surely snap a man’s bones.

  “It’s only been five days,” said Arthur. “I thought I had seven.”

  “You do.”

  “So?”

  “Mr. Browner wants to know how you’re doing. If you’re doing well.”

  “Quite well,” Arthur said, managing to say it persuasively. “At the end of the week, I guarantee it, I’ll have all the money.”

  “He hopes so,” said the Welshman. “Browner really hopes so.”

  And Arthur felt a long-fingered hand clamp down upon his shoulder, knew that there’d be no more appeals he could make to his friend. Time was running out for him, and somehow he had dug himself a hole from which there seemed little chance of escape.

  Chapter 4

  Arthur became dreamy and stoical. During the war his life had been in danger countless times and so he had the self-control not to fall apart in the subsequent days as he waited for the men from Browner. His losing streak at the track had continued, the horses had continued to give him the stare, his disbelief at what was going on had goaded him into betting and betting since he thought that a string this bad would have to end eventually. Down to nothing but his pension check, he conceded to himself that he was finished and he went to a pub and ordered a Guinness and sat in a corner thinking about how constricted his life had become.

  In
his life he had the track, the drinking, the evenings with Jenny and Vaughn. He had the walks he’d take at night in the fog. He had the routine so regular a person with a monkey’s brain could have followed it. But in Africa, he remembered, nothing had seemed this pinched or tedious. The vastness of the landscape, the stretch of the plains, had created inside him a corresponding feeling of openness. He thought now that he’d never been happier than when living on his farm in Kenya, when tending his stable of horses there, and he knew he’d been foolish after the war to sell the farm and come back to London. Jenny would have loved to stay in Kenya, and like some of the other white farmers, they could have tried to adjust themselves to the changes going on in Africa. There, he remembered, horses had been his friends and he had bred decent racers; here he’d become as distant from horses as a person who’d never set foot out of London. It was lamentable, he thought, and not unironic, that a person who’d raised thoroughbreds, who knew the track inside and out, could fail so miserably in his wagers. He felt not only impotent, but stupid.