Racehoss

by Albert Race Sample

  A flash from a passing car’s headlights shot through and I saw movement at the other end. My heart was in my throat as I squinted to make sure I saw what I thought I saw. The harder I looked, the clearer the outline became. The large shadowy figure sat up and started brushing off the hay with its hands. I closed the can opener, opened the big blade, and slid the knife just underneath my sleeve.

  Standing up and walking over to the doorway, the tall man harked and spat several times out the door. In a gruff voice, “I saw you when you got on way back yonder. Got any idee where we at?”

  “Nope,” knowing by his voice he was a white man.

  He walked toward me and stopped a few feet away, his body swaying to the rocking of the train. “How bout a taste uv them sardines?” He was so close I smelled the stale booze from his clothes.

  “I jes got enuff for myself,” all the while easing the knife into my hand, ready to fight to the death over a funky, nickel can of sardines.

  “Oh yeah? Well, you little shit, we’ll see about that!”

  He lunged and stepped right off into hell. I let him have the full force of the blade. He doubled up in pain, clutching his groin and cursing, then backed away toward the open door. I leaped and threw my shoulder against him as hard as I could. Out the door he went. He rolled and tumbled into the weeds. I watched until the caboose passed the spot I last saw him. After that, I hardly slept the rest of the trip to California.

  At night, the Golden Gate Bridge was everything Lonzo said it was, “It looks lak a diamond (whistle) neckalis stretched ‘cross the (whistle) ocean.”

  I had learned how to pick pockets while traveling with the Smith Brothers Show so the Alameda Race Track became one of my regular stomping grounds. Armed with a single-edge razor blade, I stood at the rail. When the horses came into the far turn and headed for home, the excitement grew. While the men jumped up and down rooting for their horses to win, I cut their back pockets with the blade.

  When I made one of my better cuts the billfold almost dropped into my hand. By the time the horses crossed the finish line, I could collect two or three billfolds. There were eight races today. That meant mucho crowds and mucho bucks. When the races started, I went to work. I had a feeling it would be a good day at the tracks.

  During the third race while pretending to watch, I accidentally cut the wrong pocket of the guy next to me. He let out a painful yell, looked at me and pointed his finger, hollering, “I’ve been cut! This guy’s trying to rob me!”

  I took off through the crowd, pointing up ahead and shouting, “Hey somebody, stop that guy! Stop that guy!” My racetrack pick-pocketing had to be abandoned. The one thing I didn’t want was to get busted, and so far, I’d been extremely lucky.

  Lady Luck was still on my side. An older woman, Gladys, living at the same rooming house in Chabot Terrace took note of my worldly ways and youthful good looks. One day she commented on “what pretty eyes” I had. Learning from Emma what to say and how to say it, I took her advice, “Don’t be no fool. If a woman got somethin else to gi’ ya ‘sides pussy, take it.”

  Gladys placed me under her ever-loving wing. All I had to do was provide her with loving and let her show me off. She provided the rest. Attractive at thirty-five, she was a recent divorcee whose ex-old man was pretty well off. She took him to the cleaners and was living there until her house was ready in Vallejo. When Gladys moved, I moved in with her.

  I stayed with her over a year, not “hittin a lick at a snake” as Aunt El would say, until the call of the wild hit me again. In the dead of night while she lay sleeping, I got up and put on my traveling clothes, took half the money from her purse, and eased out the door.

  In the glow of dawn I caught a freight to L.A. That little dab of Gladys money soon disappeared and I was in my full-time survival mode: hustling, stealing, gambling, cheating, doing everything but the right thing. The heat was on, and it was time for me to boogie. I hooked a freight and took off for Texas. I made good connections in Phoenix and Tucson. I took the Missouri Pacific (MOPAC) out of El Paso going East.

  I hopped off on the outskirts of Dallas and made a sweep through, treading on a strand of a spider’s web, not having enough sense to give a damn. I was in and out of jail, laying out all jail-time fines. When released, I did my best to steer clear of patrolling police cars. Most of the time I only came out at night. Somebody (gamblers, cops, whores) was always looking for me for something because somewhere down the line I had cheated, robbed, taken advantage of, or kicked somebody’s ass. I bilked the wrong people in North Dallas with the dice. I wore their asses to a frazzle with my smooth roll until they figured out they didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance, and I had to leave running.

  It was late night when I got out of North Dallas. I took a Rayfield chance and headed for “Frog Town,” a shantytown of shotgun houses and mud huts where Aunt El was living. I asked around and found her. When I knocked on the door, ducks started quacking and the lamp came on. “Who is it?” I knew it was her.

  Trying to talk over the quacks, “It’s Albert, Aunt El.”

  “Emma’s Albert?”

  “Yes mam.”

  “I’m comin baby,” and the lamp went up another notch. She opened the door and gave me a big hug, “You look so good, all growed up an everthang.” The ducks were going wild. “Cum on in baby,” then, “you muthafuckas git out the fuckin way an hush!” Obeying like dogs, the fifteen or twenty ducks stopped quacking and waddled away. I stepped in a big pile of duckshit soon as I walked in the door.

  Leading me toward the only thing in the mud hut to sit on, her lumpy bed, she grumbled, “Muthafuckas dun stole everthang I own. Thas the reason I got these Gotdam ducks an a butcher knife ready for they ass.” We sat down. “Reach under the pillow an hand me my stuff.”

  I handed her the half-pint and she took a swallow, coughed a little bit, “How’s yo mama?” No response. “When’s the last time you seen her?” No response. “Well, I kin see we ain’ goin nowhere wit this shit. She’s my big sister an I love her, but I never lak’d the way she treated you. Jes wudn’ right. Well, you stay wit Aunt El awhile, baby. I be glad to have yo company. Now, tell Aunt El whut brangs you to Dallas?”

  I hardly finished my story when somebody knocked on the door. The ducks began quacking like crazy and flapping their wings. I crawled underneath the bed and hid. I could only see the man’s boots when she opened the door. He said something about “poonté.” She told him, “Naw, no poonté tonite.”

  “Poonté!!”

  “Gotdam muthafucka, I tole you I ain’ sellin none tonite! You unnerstand that?!” He said something else in Spanish. “Cuz it’s my fuckin pussy, thas why!” slamming the door in his face. Thank God! The rusty springs were almost touching my nose already. She muttered, “Gotdam crazy-ass Meskin. You awright under there baby?”

  “Yes mam. Why don’t you g’on back to bed, Aunt El. I’ll be awright under here.” She turned the lamp out and within a few minutes, I heard her snoring.

  Hiding out from the cops and pissed-off gamblers, I ended up spending most of my days and nights under her bed. That houseful of fluttering ducks quacked all day long. At night, some of them roosted on the iron rails of her bed while the rest sat on the floor where they could keep an eye on me. Duckshit everywhere! When she was at the joint next door or outside trying to hustle a drink, some of them squatted on the floor at the front door waiting on her and followed her around begging when she came back in. I had the only duckshit-free spot in the mud hut.

  She’d bring me a plate of food from the little Mexican cafe next door and shove it to me under her bed. I kept shoveling her money and she was happy as a fee lark. I had a waistband around my waist full of money, but it wasn’t doing me much good where I was.

  The ducks had gotten fairly used to my presence, and I came to appreciate them. They had become my own personal security system because they were a bunch of good-watching motherfuckers. The slightest noise and they sounded the alarm.

>   Lying there at night getting drunker by the minute, leaning off the side of her bed, Aunt El brought me up to snuff on the family news, “Baby, you ain’ gon bleeve this shit, but Sally kilt her o’ man afta she caught ‘em fuckin Bama. Them rich whitefolks she wuz a maid for got her out uv it. Talkin bout change, that bitch went frum lil’ goody two shoes an her Eastern Star bullshit an turnt into a muthafuckin killer. I always knowed she wuz fulla shit as these fuckin ducks. Jes tried to hide it wit that church-goin shit uv hers,” reaching the bottle down to me. “You wanna shot baby?”

  “Yeah, hell yeah, why not? Them fuckin ducks ain’ gon lemme git no sleep no how.”

  “Shit, I dun got use to the muthafuckas. They don’t bother me none. You git use to ‘em.”

  Still leaning off the side, her motor was running down and it wasn’t long before she was snoring. I scooted back under the bed to keep from getting slobbered on. She slept like a log and never broke her snoring gait. She may have been used to their quacking, but that half-pint she downed every night helped.

  On the fifth day before daybreak, I crawled out. The ducks quacked their asses off, but Aunt El was hung over and didn’t even stir. I took five hundred dollars from my money belt and eased it under her pillow next to her bottle, and left.

  Once I cleaned the duckshit off my shoe heels on the railroad tracks, I walked on across and hid out in the bushes watching the freight train making up on the yard. When it pulled out, I hopped on.

  The wind whispered—Longview called, pulling me back like a horseshoe to a magnet. Just like Lonzo said, “Once you drink the water … you keep comin back.” As I sat waiting for my ride and thinking of what I would say to Emma after all these years, the cool March wind had my head throbbing. I hopped my first diesel driven train, the Cotton Belt Route. I realized after I settled down in the boxcar that the Cotton Belt didn’t go to Longview, close as it went was Tyler, thirty-two miles away.

  It was midday when the train stopped in Tyler. I hurried out of the freight yard and found my way to a joint in the colored part of town. In a matter of hours, I was in a fight and in jail for assault with intent to kill. When I went before the judge he gave me a choice, “army or jail.” With my police record longer than two dollars worth of link sausage, I joined.

  A deputy marched me from the courthouse to the recruiting office. With a lot of help from the recruiting officer who looked over my shoulder and guided my hand to enough correct answers on the entry test, two days later I was in Fort Riley, Kansas. Boot camp was a breeze. I grew up in one under a drill sergeant named Emma. Unlike the majority of pimply faced rookie soldiers who were away from home for the first time, I was street tough and had been hoboing around the country, in and out of jail, hustling and surviving. After basic training and breaking everybody in the barracks shooting craps in the shower stalls, I got my first furlough and caught the Greyhound for Longview.

  Instead of taking a cab from the bus station, I gambled that she hadn’t moved and decided to walk the six blocks. I felt like a million bucks. My adrenalin was pumping and I could hardly wait for them to see me in my soldier suit. At five-foot-eight and a solid one hundred forty-two pounds, I was a svelte welterweight, muscular, with a good set of shoulders and a smooth, confident gait. My boot-camp haircut had grown out a little and tiny dark-brown curls covered my head. With the cotton broker’s hazel-blue eyes and Anglo facial features, I was often mistaken for Italian or Puerto Rican. I was asked many times “what” I was, placing me in a position to choose for the occasion. I crossed the line back and forth and drank the wines of many vineyards.

  After covering the five blocks to the Junction, my old neighborhood, I walked into the corner liquor store. I was surprised not to see any of the pulpwood trucks parked in the rear until I looked at my watch. It was only two thirty, too early. “Hi, Mr. Milton,” I greeted.

  “Hi. What’ll it be?” Taking a better look, “Say, ain’t you Big Emma’s boy?”

  “Thas right.”

  “Damn, boy. It’s good to see you,” extending his hand to shake. “How’ve you been?”

  “Jes fine,” I answered as he pumped my hand.

  “Well, you sure ain’t the scrawny little kid you used to be. Looks like the service agrees with you. What’ll you be havin today, Albert?”

  “Lemme have two quarts uv hockey-proof Old Grand Dad.”

  “Bet you gittin this for Big Emma, ain’tcha?” he asked while reaching on the shelf.

  “Yeah. Do she still live up the street?”

  “Yep, same place,” rubbing his chin, “seems like I recall her and Pat in earlier. Yep, they were,” he said with certainty. “They were gittin ready for the weekend,” winking his eye. “Be needin anything else?”

  “Naw, thas all for now.”

  After tabulating the adding machine, “That’ll be twelve dollars and sixty cents.”

  I paid him and stuffed the two bottles into my duffel bag. “Be seein you, Mr. Milton.”

  “Take care now, cum back in to see me.”

  “I will.”

  With only a half block to go, I stopped to wipe the dust off my spit-shined paratrooper boots, fix my cap, and square my shoulders. I could see the house. It looked pretty good with a fresh coat of white paint. It even had a new front porch.

  Pat and another girl were playing in the front yard. I walked right up on them before either looked up. Pat saw me and let out a squeal. “Oh! Bubba, it’s you!” throwing her arms around my neck.

  “It’s me alright.” Holding her away from me, “Damn, lemme take a look atcha. You nearly tall as me! I can’t bleeve how you growed up so fast. Whut you doin over here?” I asked.

  “I live here.”

  “Oh you do? Where’s Mama Joe?”

  “She died three years ago.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah, when she got sick she wouldn’ go to the hospital at first, lak I tried to git her to. When she did go, it wuz too late. I been here wit Mama ever since.” Looking around at her playmate, “Girl, I’m sorry. I’m so glad to see him I forgot. Bubba, this is my friend, Betty Carol. She live next door.”

  “How you, Betty Carol?”

  She almost blushed right down through the ground. “Hi,” she managed, then got the young girl giggles.

  Pat admonished her teasingly, “Betty Carol, stop actin so crazy, girl.”

  “Where’s Emma?” I asked.

  “In the house. Betty Carol, wait for me. I’m goin in the house wit Bubba. I be back in a minute.”

  “Awright.”

  Walking toward the steps, “Bubba, boy you suure look good.” Snickering, “Didja see the way Betty Carol wuz checkin you out?”

  Chuckling, “Yeah, I saw her.”

  “How cum you didn’ let us know you wuz comin?”

  “I wanted to surprise y’all.”

  I dropped my duffel bag in the hall and followed Pat through my old room into the crap room. Emma wasn’t at her usual station. Jake was running the game. “She mus be in the kitchen,” Pat surmised. The ten or fifteen players gathered around the crap table hardly noticed us passing through to the kitchen. She wasn’t there either. “She mus be in her bedroom, Bubba.” When we walked back out of the crap room into my old room, Pat paused, “I got yo room.”

  “I kin see that.” I said jokingly, “Looks lak a girl’s room. But how do you sleep with all the noise in the crap room?”

  “Same way you useta. I close the door an go to bed.”

  “That ain’t the way I did it.”

  “How’d you do it then?”

  “I didn’ go to bed til the game wuz over.”

  “Well, I can’t stay up lak that. Mama makes me go to bed.”

  Stopping in the hall to get the bottles out of my duffel bag, “Say,” I whispered, “why don’tcha go on back an play with Betty Carol. I wanna go in by myself an really surprise her.”

  “Okay,” she whispered back, “but don’tcha go off nowhere.”

  “I won’
t,” I assured her.

  Pat tipped down the hall and I knocked on the door, “C’mon, it ain’ locked.”

  I pushed the door open; she was lying across the bed. Without looking to see who it was, “Whut is it?” I didn’t answer. She turned her head toward me, wiping away the tears, “My God, is that you baby?”

  “It’s me, Emma.”

  She rushed to hug me. “Damn! Let Emma gitta good look atcha. How long you been in the Army?”

  “A couple months.”

  “Do Pat know you here?”

  “Yeah, I talked to her out in the yard.”

  “Damn, you sho look good in yo uniform, look lak it wuz melted an poured on you.” Smiling as she squeezed my arms, “An muscles too.”

  Smiling back, “Yeah, I got a few.”

  “Set down, set down,” she said leading me toward the bed. “I can’t git over how good you look!”

  “Sorry I can’t say the same for you,” inoffensively.

  “Yeah, I know.” Seeing the two sacks in my hands, “Whut’d you brang me?”

  “Aw, I stopped by the liquor store an picked up two O.G.D.s.”

  “Well, bust one. I kin sho use a good drank right bout now.”

  “Whut’s th’ matter?” I broke the seal and passed it to her.

  “Whut’s th’ matter?!” She took a big swig and wiped her mouth, “Pat didn’ tell you?”

  “Tell me whut?”

  Her eyes quickly refilled with tears, “Blue’s dead.”

  “Whut? When?” I asked in amazement, handing my handkerchief to her.

  After drying her eyes, honking her nose and another long snort, “Two days ago. Died right out there on the front porch, bless his heart.” Vainly biting her lip to stop the flow of tears, “He wuz tryin his best to make it back to Emma.”

  Astonished, “On the front porch?” I repeated more for myself than her. “How’d it happen?”

  “Wuzn’ long afta you left, an Blue started comin to the house again. Thangs picked up afta the war an he wuz over here much as he wuz at home. When the game wuz over an everbody wuz gone, I got out my bottle an me an him would jes set an talk. We’d been doin that for a long time. Finally got roun to sayin we still loved each other. We jes sorta left it hangin, cuz neitha uv us didn’ have no ready answers for whut we oughta do bout it.