by Maggie Estep
They were a long few days. But, on the fourth day, she told me I could go. She’d gotten Mary, a young girl just out of high school, to take over the horses I was rubbing. I packed up my clothes and waited till no one was around. I’d never said good-bye to anyone other than my mother and I didn’t feel like starting. Even with the horses. Even Glassy Jane. She’d be fine and somewhere in her she’d know I was thinking about her. Crow and I walked to the parking lot where I had the Chevy parked and got in and started heading north.
As I got farther and farther up the New Jersey Turnpike things got uglier. Meadows and fields gave way to factories and swamps. There was more traffic than I’d ever seen in my life and the sky was filled with stinking smoke. Crow didn’t seem to like it. He’d curled up in a tight ball and had long stopped looking out the window.
Eventually, we were in a line of traffic waiting to go through the Lincoln Tunnel and I could see the skyline. It looked like nothing I’d ever seen, even though I had seen it in pictures.
Once we were in the city, I didn’t really know what to do. There was traffic and noise everywhere and people kept getting in the way of the car. Crow was sitting up again now, looking out, and he seemed as baffled as me.
We ended up sleeping in the car, in an outdoor lot. You weren’t supposed to sleep in your car but I paid the guy an extra ten bucks and he let me stay there. I didn’t sleep much though. Woke up before dawn with my teeth feeling mossy and my stomach rumbling. I locked Crow in and went around trying to find a working pay phone. I needed to call Belmont to get directions. Originally I’d thought I’d wander around Manhattan a little but now that I was here, I just wanted to get out to the track. Only I didn’t know where it was.
All the phones I tried were broken. Some of them had no dial tone, others didn’t even have a phone, just a silver cable with wires dangling like veins from a severed neck. I finally found a working phone inside a tiny grocery store. I dialed the number I had for Belmont but there wasn’t any answer. I tried three or four times and I could feel the guy at the counter staring holes in my back. I turned around and looked at him. He was a round, dark-skinned man drinking a beer even though it was barely past dawn.
“You know the address of Belmont Racetrack?” I asked him.
He looked at me like I was insane and told me to get out of his store.
The sun had come now, streaking the sky violent pink against the cold gray of the city. I went into a bagel store and bought bagels for Crow and me. Cream cheese on his, jelly on mine.
I went back to the car and the dog and I ate in silence, staring out at the weird world beyond the car windows. A pack of dark-skinned kids wandered into the parking lot and started looking at the cars. They were mostly boys but there was one girl who seemed like the leader. She was wearing a red down vest and skintight red pants that barely contained her body. She had a black slinky ponytail down to her ass and huge gold hoop earrings that danced when she walked. She shimmered toward my Chevy. I could see her skinny eyebrows knitting together, wondering what I was doing sitting in my car in a parking lot like that. She came to stand right in front of the car and leaned her forearms on the hood and grinned at me. Crow was growling low in his throat. The girl and I stared at each other like that and then she came around to my door and motioned for me to roll down the window.
“Whatchudoin’ in there?” she said, jumbling her words together so fast it took me a minute to figure out what she’d said.
“I was sleeping. Now I just ate. Me and the dog,” I said, motioning at Crow.
Crow had stopped his low growl and was just staring at her.
“Whereyoufrom?” she said with the words all mashed together.
“Oklahoma,” I said and then wanted to kick myself because I’d decided I was never going to tell anyone where I was from lest it lead me to trouble.
“Gethefuckouttahere,” the girl said.
She turned around, facing the half-dozen boys she had with her. “My man here’s from Oklahomahhh,” she said in a mocking drawl.
None of the boys said anything. They were restless, jiggling change in their pockets, punching numbers into their cell phones.
“Come on, Denise,” one of them said.
“Suck my dick, Razor,” she said.
It occurred to me that these kids might have firearms tucked under their puffy down jackets. Crow didn’t look like much but he was fifty pounds of solid muscle and, the one time someone had tried to kick my ass at Laurel, Crow had jumped the guy and actually gone for his jugular. The moment I’d told Crow to stop, he’d stopped but he’d done damage. The guy had to go to the hospital to get stitches. After that, no one fucked with me.
Now, I figured if any of these kids made a wrong move, Crow would be on them.
“You know the address of Belmont Racetrack?” I asked the girl.
She squinted at me. “What?”
“The track, Belmont.”
She looked puzzled.
“You came all the way from Oklahomahhh just to go to Belmont?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Shiiit,” she whistled through her teeth.
“Kareem,” she said, turning to one of the boys, “where’s Belmont at?”
“Long Island,” the kid said.
“Where on Long Island, motherfucker?” the girl asked impatiently.
“Out at the end of Queens. You gotta take a train at Penn Station I think.”
“My man here ain’t on no train, he got himself a vehicle,” she spat. “Come over here, tell him how to get to Belmont.”
“I dunno how you get there by car, Denise.”
Denise was losing patience with her troops.
“Any of you motherfuckers know how to get to Belmont by car?” she said.
They all shrugged. One of them piped up saying he could ask his uncle. Denise pulled a cell phone from her pocket and handed it to the kid. The kid dialed. Pretty soon he was talking. Denise impatiently took the phone from him.
“I want you to tell my friend how to drive from Delancey Street to Belmont,” she said into the phone before handing it to me.
I put it to my ear and listened to another fast-talking voice telling me a lot of incomprehensible shit. I pretended I understood it all so that maybe Denise and her friends would leave me be.
I handed the phone back to her.
“You got it?” she asked.
I nodded.
“All right then. You have a nice day, mister. God bless.”
With that, she gestured at her crew and they all walked away.
By the end of that day, after getting lost a few dozen times, I finally made it to Belmont. The security people wouldn’t let me in the backstretch though and I was too tired to think fast. I parked the car in a little lot behind a beauty salon and hunkered down for another night in the vehicle. My body was sore from sleeping in the car but now I didn’t even care anymore. Darwin was in a stall somewhere on that vast backstretch and I would see him soon. I got in the backseat. Crow took the front.
I really needed to brush my teeth.
ATTILA JOHNSON
14.
In the Hole
When something bothers Ruby she sleeps. Which is what she’s doing now. It’s barely eight P.M., and no sooner did we check in to our hideout at this somewhat sinister motel than she released her cats from their carriers, unceremoniously peeled off all her clothes, got under the covers, and passed out.
For almost an hour now she’s been sleeping soundly between the cheap yellow sheets. And I’ve just been sitting at the edge of the bed, trying to read but staring into space. Maybe I’m thinking some things through. Maybe not. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what’s happening inside yourself.
Ruby’s big cat, Stinky, is lying right near my girl’s head, apparently unruffled by the new environment, but Lulu has been cowering under the bed since we first got here and I suddenly feel terrible about this. I get down on all fours and crawl under the bed, trying to coax the
little cat out. Right at that moment, my phone vibrates in my pocket, startling me and causing me to bang my head on the bedsprings.
I curse, crawl back out from under the bed, and go into the bathroom, closing the door before looking at the phone. I don’t recognize the number but I sense that it’s Ava calling again. I put the phone back in my pocket and stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. The circles under my eyes are getting bigger and my crew cut is growing out, making me look like an exhausted rooster.
I come back out of the bathroom and find that Ruby has come to life and is sitting up, smoking in bed.
“You’re smoking,” I say.
“I am,” she agrees. She keeps claiming she’s down to two cigarettes a day—but I’ve already seen her put away half a pack today.
“You’re going to come with me tomorrow?” Though she’d said she was planning to come to the track, with this apparent mood of hers hanging like a curse over the evening, I’m not sure of anything now.
She narrows her eyes, takes a pull on her cigarette, and then nods.
“Something wrong?” I venture, sitting down at the edge of the bed.
“Why?”
“You don’t seem like yourself.”
This statement evidently amuses her. She smiles, then reaches for me, pulling my head to her chest and cradling me as if I were a child. This gesture gives me a pang as it makes me wonder how my own child is doing. I wish I could just call Ava and find out, but any information she might yield about our daughter’s well-being would be prefaced by an insane litany that I’m not willing to deal with.
“You don’t seem like yourself either, Attila,” Ruby says into my hair.
“I’m myself,” I assure her, and then one thing leads to another, and, proving to each other that we are indeed ourselves, we start rolling around on the bed, dislodging Stinky and making the ancient bedsprings creak.
Once Ruby and I have climaxed and all is apparently well in our little corner of the world, we lie back with our heads resting on one pillow. I feel my eyes closing and, next thing I know, I’m being shaken awake.
“What?” I say groggily.
“You were screaming,” Ruby says, bunching up her forehead.
“I was?”
“About a horse. You kept saying, ‘Get the horse up, get the horse up.’”
“Oh,” I say.
“What were you dreaming?” she queries. But I don’t want to tell her. I was dreaming about an accident. An ugly one involving a great many broken bones. My broken bones.
“Don’t worry,” I tell Ruby.
She looks like she’s ready to issue some sort of lecture but thankfully the cats start clamoring for food, blessedly distracting her from whatever was at the tip of her tongue.
Still naked, Ruby goes to forage through her duffle bag, producing two cans of Pet Guard which, she loves to tell me, is one of the few brands of commercial pet food one should ever feed one’s cats. Not that I have any cats. Ava is allergic and my parents weren’t animal people. How exactly they came to spawn someone like me—who feels sympatico with each and every living creature—I’ll never know.
Ruby opens the cans, dumping the contents onto two paper plates. As the animals crouch and attack their meal, Ruby stands watching them. She has one hand propped on her soft, white hip and her hair is falling over her breasts. She looks like she’s nursing a thought that I will never be privy to. I’d very much like to coax it from her but I don’t think I’m in a position to press issues of secrecy considering that my wife is leaving me dozens of messages a day.
“I want to go to the Hole,” Ruby suddenly announces.
“Oh?” I say. “Now?”
She nods.
“It’s cold,” I say simply, knowing she’s as weary of the cold as I am.
“I know,” she shrugs.
“That’s why you wanted to stay at this frightening motel? To go to the Hole?” I ask.
“No, not at all,” she frowns, “just it’s one of the only motels I know that’s sort of halfway between Coney and Belmont. I told you that. But since we’re here, I wouldn’t mind going to the Hole.”
She looks determined and it’s probably in my best interest to humor her. A few minutes later, we’ve both bundled up and are ready to head out. Ruby seems hesitant about leaving the cats though, like someone is going to break into this horrible little motel room to steal two aging felines.
“They’re great cats,” I tell her, “but I promise you, no one else considers them priceless.”
This actually makes her laugh and I feel a weight lift off me.
The wind whips our faces as we cross Linden Boulevard and walk downhill onto an ill-paved little road. The glow of a half moon throws light over our surroundings. Disused truck trailers are stacked two high all along the road. Tall metal fences surround small barren yards. It’s not exactly a bucolic setting. As we walk closer to one of the fences, I see that some of the truck trailers have been made into stalls. Hearing our footsteps, several horses poke their heads out over their half doors.
“I can’t believe there are horses here.”
“It’s kind of beautiful, huh?” Ruby says.
I nod, though I’m not sure I agree.
“Hey,” Ruby says, “I think Coleman’s here.” She indicates a light that is emanating from a stable about a hundred yards ahead of us.
We walk over and are greeted by two surly-looking pitbulls. Ruby starts talking sweetly to the dogs but this doesn’t seem to soothe them much until an older black guy emerges from the ramshackle stable.
“Shush up, Honey,” he calls to one of the dogs. “Who’s that?” he says, squinting into the darkness.
“It’s me, Coleman. Ruby Murphy.”
“Ruby? Where the hell you been?” The man fumbles with the gate’s lock, his big knobby fingers working slowly at the padlock.
He pulls the gate open and squints at Ruby, like he’s still not sure it’s her. His brown eyes are slightly milky and it’s not until Ruby is standing a few inches in front of him that his whole face lights up. He puts his arms around her in a loose hug and looks at me over her shoulder.
“Who’s this you running around with?”
Ruby makes introductions but the cowboy seems wary of me.
“He’s a jockey,” Ruby tells Coleman.
This appears to elevate me slightly in the cowboy’s esteem.
“Oh yeah?” He cocks an eyebrow at me.
I put my face into a pleasant expression.
“What kind of name is Attila for a white man?”
I smile and shrug though in truth I’d like to slug him. This is probably the hundredth time someone has asked me that question. Although the only other Attila I know of is Attila the Hun, who was, as far as anyone knows, a Mongol, Attila Johnson evidently sounds like a black man’s name. People of all colors have asked me about it and the fact is, I long ago demanded an explanation of my name from the responsible parties—my parents—to little avail. My father would grunt and my late mother would get defensive. It is one of our family mysteries. No one knows what possessed my parents. They weren’t hippies, intellectuals, or anything other than working-class white Southerners. My brother’s name is Wayne and my sister is Susan. I was their last child but, since I have only two siblings, it’s hard to imagine they’d already exhausted the list of conventional names. At one point I considered changing it, but eventually, I came to embrace it. Besides, by all accounts, the original Attila was an excellent horseman.
Coleman invites us inside his tiny barn. Horses poke their heads out in the aisle and appraise us with varying degrees of interest. As Ruby and Coleman talk, I visit with some of the horses and just zone out, not thinking of anything at all.
I snap out of my reverie when I realize that Ruby has led an Appaloosa out of its stall and appears to be tacking the horse up.
“What are you doing?” I ask my girl.
“That girl needs to get on a horse,” Coleman intervenes irritably,
like I have personally been keeping Ruby away from horses.
“You’re gonna ride now?” I ask, looking from my watch to Ruby. “It’s almost ten P.M.”
“Lucky doesn’t care,” Ruby states.
I gather that Lucky is the horse and that I have no say in any of this.
I feel a sudden and complete sense of powerlessness. The one thing I felt certain of during this erratic week was the developing bond between Ruby and me. Now it seems like that’s tenuous too.
I stand to the side, watching her tighten the girth on the saddle. He’s no great beauty this Lucky. His head is a big square thing stuck haphazardly at the end of a thin neck. His body is small and not particularly developed, but the horse is well groomed and there’s a healthy shine to his flecked-with-rust white coat. As Ruby leads him outside, I notice that Lucky’s croup, the engine at the back end of him, looks good, like the horse could really generate some power if he needed to.
I follow girl and horse to a small riding paddock behind Coleman’s barn. Coleman drapes his arms over the top rail of the paddock and I take a seat on a barrel nearby. To my right, I can see the towers of the nearest housing projects, looming there in the shadows just half a mile away. Behind us the traffic on Linden Boulevard is grinding down to a dull roar, its furor slowing as night advances. All in all, it’s a damn strange place to be riding a horse. But Ruby is riding all right. She’s completely transformed. Her face is smoothed of all the worry and her body seems to have melted into the horse’s. Her legs are dangling, feet out of the big western saddle’s stirrups, as she and Lucky slowly walk the periphery of the paddock. I can see she’s getting him used to her, letting him know she’ll do her best to be light with her hands and keep her body in alignment with his.
I’ve never seen Ruby on a horse and it does something to me. Over the years, working at the track, I’ve seen a lot of attractive women on horses but for some reason it didn’t affect me the way this is affecting me. I can actually feel the undiluted joy flowing out of the girl. And Lucky is responding. Though at first he was holding his head up high, protecting himself from these unknown hands and the way they might pull on his mouth, already he’s trusting her a little, dropping his head, beginning to use the muscles in his back.