Lord of Misrule (18 page)

They look for a weekend race, so it is a decent handle. They don’t talk about it, but they all fixing to cash that bet. Won’t anybody in the house like Spinoza save for them three, thank you Lord! Of course Medicine Ed must tell Two-Tie, for he will need him a small advance. And Two-Tie have his own people, no way round that. And might probly that old porkypine Deucey have somebody she got to let in, some orphan or hard case. And who can doubt but what the frizzly hair girl gone to tell the young fool all?—though old Deucey may have suspicioned that, and maybe she liked this week on purpose, when Hansel has disappeared somewhere
to see a man about a horse
.

All signs saying that Sadday, first Sadday in December, be a fair day and a good track, not wet and heavy nor either too hard froze. And soon’s they was a card to study, Deucey and Medicine Ed and Alice went over the entries prepared to scratch if it was no speed in the race. But they was two clear frontrunners for sure gone to fight it out up there, the one horse, Ink Spot, and the six horse, Navy something, and the four horse might be in it too, Medicine Ed disremembered the name.

Little Spinoza drew post position number eight in a eight-horse race, but this time that high number work to his good. This way Little Spinoza automatically be the last to load in the gate instead of a problem case, getting the starters nervous and mad until they might do something in anger that could hurt the horse, or worse,
wake him up
. And anyhow Alice Nuzum been with Little Spinoza in the gate three times already since that bad race and say he is cured.

Lord put me wise
. Alice Nuzum say she going to sing Little Spinoza to sleep, and that is exactly what she do.

Them three are standing in the gap for the post parade when Alice and Little Spinoza tack by, them all three look at each other and they mouths fall open and they close them again. Deucey yanks the stiffened handkerchief out from under her flask and wipes her head. The frizzly hair girl laughs kind of funny-time behind her hand. Deep in his pocket Medicine Ed rubs a red flannel bag between dog finger and thumb. For they have heard Alice singing, it ain’t a big voice but pointy and sharp as a stick:
By and by, when the morning comes. All-l-l-l the saints …

Why, it is a song his mother used to sing in church, one he knew long ago.
All the saints gone to gathering home
. And maybe it is his imagination, but he think Little Spinoza is listening. The horse go along last in line, faraway in his face but collected. His ears prick up tall, quivering—and there is Alice high up on his back with her little bony knees pointed in, hypmotizing him with her small steely voice. Alice lean into his neck in them raggedy silver silks which Deucey bought for four bits from somebody stable that was busting up. Medicine Ed had to pin them together behind her neck with a bandage pin. He never hear no announcement, so many minutes to post time. He hear his mother’s voice from the wings of New Life Baptist
Church in Cambray, not a little metal threadwire like Alice’s, but big as a house:

Then he ain’t hear nothing. His mother’s voice was all around him. He didn’t recall looking at no tote board, but yet and still he knew when the numbers stand at 35, then fall to 22, back up to 25, and 22, and all of a sudden down to 12. And then the horses were at the gate, and in the gate, each by each. He saw Little Spinoza step into the eight slot civil as you please, like a man walk in a cloak room to ask for his hat.

Then they break, and it was all eight of them in a line. Yes, Little Spinoza was right with the others, on top of his feet, his feet drumming in that cold sand, his head stretching forward, but then Medicine Ed get that draggyfied, sunken feeling that him and Deucey and the frizzly hair girl be the only ones looking. The onliest ones looking where Little Spinoza be at, that is, for where he was, it wasn’t no other horses to see. Then they was all together in one small sinking boat, him and Deucey and the frizzly girl and Alice and Little Spinoza. That’s how far back Little Spinoza was running.

They hadn’t no strength even to shout his name. Trouble cotton up they lungs. Disappointment sit heavy on they heads. They can just about lift they chin and watch. It was no way in the world that horse could make it back in this race. That Alice Nuzum so far off in her rating until she have to be thinking of getting there yesday. Or maybe tomorrow. Not today. Medicine Ed look up front. It’s a whole nuther race gone on up there, the four horse trying to open it up in front, the one horse stalking him two lengths back on the rail and the three horse dogging
the one horse at his elbow. And the rest of the field knotted up on the inside five, six lengths back, like soup greens hanging off a long spoon. But even if you want to lose Little Spinoza in this pack, you can’t. He is lollergagging along ten lengths back of the others, dead last.

Medicine Ed is gone to be not two-fifty but four-fifty in the hole with Two-Tie. And Two-Tie himself will take a beating in the race. Medicine Ed will look like a damn fool, more than what he already do, and on top of that, his good credit gone. Just when he want to drop his head in his hands for shame, Medicine Ed hear the words:
We will understand it better by and by
.

And that’s when Little Spinoza start to make his move. Alice climb up some way on his neck and take hold but she don’t use no stick. They have got just three-eighths of a mile to go and they don’t even look at that mess on the inside. In their hurryment they go round. And they it is again, gobbling up ground like a black steam shovel—here come Little Spinoza and Alice flying up the stretch. Here come the Speculation grandson flat out, sailing around the six and seven horse and sliding up between the five and the two like a black polish cloth in a mahogany hand, opening, closing, opening out again, inside the four horse, who done faded out of it, and the three horse, who make one last push but it ain’t enough, and swooping up on Ink Spot whose boy look round at the wire but it is too late.

Only Deucey yelled a little. Medicine Ed done lost his voice. He bowed his head for the beauty of it and because it come from his dead mother. Also the frizzly head girl ain’t squeal nor holler. Her eyes was wide and shining and she sink her fingers into his bony arm behind the elbow and squeeze so hard it hurt. I can’t believe I saw that, she say, it was so … great. For once he almost like her hungry ignorance, which at least it wasn’t small or mean.
After all she Two-Tie’s blood kin. The three of them head for the winner’s circle, floating on they cloud through the people towards the gap, just believing they luck, kicking through dead tickets and grease-pearled pizza plates, hardly moving they feet.

Man takes his picture. Then they waiting to see what Little Spinoza will pay. In that cloud, Medicine Ed ready to feel free. He wished Gus Zeno was alive to see him. Or Charles Philpott. He wished anybody was alive to see him. The young fool was away up north somewheres, seeing about a horse—he hinted it was a owner in the works. The young fool had been let in. In a winking, sporting way he had rode ten dollars on Little Spinoza, but he didn’t have no faith.

Only, when Medicine Ed caught Joe Dale Bigg standing yonder outside the winner’s circle, he come down to earth with a thump. For Ed could see it: Joe Dale believed. Joe Dale believed, and it was worse than the other white boss disbelieving that them three were able. Joe Dale Bigg believed more than it was there to believe
in
. He believed it have all been one big plan, and which was to make him look like a fool.

Joe Dale Bigg was a half bald man with a big forehead. Just now the forehead glow blue white and push out round and damp in front like a boiled egg. His thick hair stand out a little crumped from his head. His dark eyes were watching them three. His arms was folded across his chest like a judge. Medicine Ed remembered to taken the little red flannel bag between his fingers and softly rub. He knew he couldn’t do nothing for Deucey. Her trouble was coming. He knew the frizzly hair girl must suffer too. But he would be safe. Inside his pocket piece used to be anvil dust and a thumbnail of blue Getaway Goofer Powder, dressed with a drop of Jockey Club fast luck oil he order in from Lucky Heart Curios, Memphis, Tennessee. Every dimestore cunjure in South Carolina
had the same. But now it’s a strong Leave Alone powder in there too. He has the scooped-up going-away tracks of all three of them white bosses at the Mound who like to scheme and get in your bidness, and can’t be satisfied, and want it back, what anymany little bit of anything you finally lay hold of. This speckle stuff give him keepaway power over the stallman, Suitcase Smithers, and Racing Secretary Chenille, and the leading trainer, Joe Dale Bigg. And just in case, his boss Tommy is in there too.

Medicine Ed taken the red flannel bag between his fingers and rub. He said:
In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, I ask you to take all the bad luck off me and make it go on them who tryna take from me, what I done rightly win, put the harm on them and let it go back to the Devil where it come from
. And he rubbed and listened to them clicking softly together in this strong Leave Alone powder, the carefully parched manly parts of Little Spinoza, smoked down to the size of marbles, over a dry wood fire.

O
NE JANUARY NIGHT
when snow was sifting white moons into the rusty rims of the kitchen portholes and softening the periscopes of the sewer hookups in the Horseman’s Motel trailer park, Maggie realized that she liked this life. Not life in general—this life right now. She was pouring cans of beer over soaked drained cowpeas and all at once she understood she was happy on the racetrack with Tommy.

True, whenever she had had a similar revelation in the past, the man of the day had been temporarily off somewhere, and Tommy happened to be in New York, seeing about a horse. But he had to be home by tomorrow night to saddle Pelter. And anyhow he was present in the food she was cooking. When she had had no lover, she had had to write about food instead of cooking it. Maggie liked food, but food had to be offered, that was its nature; therefore,
Menus by Margaret
in the old days. Now she had Tommy, and these coarse savory dishes powerfully expected him. He was in the beans lazily seething and plopping like tarpits, in the braided loaves bloating by the stove.

She could cook and yet she was not the homey kind. She was the restless, unsatisfied, insomniac kind. But when she came to rest, it was often with a ladle in her hands. She had been surprised to find out that beans and bread could bind anyone to her, but then, there had never been any telling what would bind anyone
to anyone. Tommy also liked her collarbone, and the flat Cossack triangles under her eyes.

Three pounds of beans, three cans of beer. Three cloves of garlic smashed to a xanthous pulp. Three smoked ham hocks, purple-striped, stiff, and reeking, like obscene little baseball socks. Cider vinegar. Thyme honey. Hammered pepper. McNinch’s Loosiana Devil Aged Intensified Chili-Water (
From an Olde Family Receipt
). In her family house (her mother had hardly cooked and had died young), dry beans had been unknown, and Maggie could believe that the lifelessness of her childhood had had something to do with that fact, for surely sterile luck follows the exile of the bean. Beans, as the Pythagoreans knew, were the temporary lodgings of souls on the highway of transmigration. They sprouted beanstalks to giants in nameless upper regions. They were lots in the lottery for Lord of Misrule and his lady, king and queen of Saturnalia, when the order of the world turned upside down. They were cheap. They were proverbial. They were
three blue beans in a blue bladder. They wouldn’t give two beans. They didn’t amount to a hill of beans. They weren’t babkes
—which also meant goat turds. In order to feel like a savvy old crone in her own kitchen, a woman need know only two things: the stations of the bean, and the immanence of a loaf of bread in a sack of flour. She had to know not only how, but how easy.
Bread, bake thyself. Bean, boil thyself.
Then she was free to fly about the snowy skies on her broomstick, while, below, ancient arts uncoiled from her hands.

She knew Tommy a lot better now than when they had set forth on this racetrack adventure. Just as she had been thinking, How could I ever trust a guy like that?—wormwood green eyes, blueblack mustachios, torn silk shirts, pure theater—she noticed she was happy. She was relieved. She’d been feeling flashes of
shame like she’d fallen for some ridiculous confidence man. And was that what he was? If so, he believed himself in what he was flogging. She was glad she didn’t have to introduce him to her father, but she was beginning to see that Tommy was a genuine racetracker, in his virtues as well as his defects. He was riddled with suspicion but also flamboyantly credulous—far more credulous than she was. Sometimes he even admitted it, for instance, the day he’d driven that ten-year-old white Grand Prix, with torn red naugahyde bucket seats, bumpety bump down the long dirt driveway to the Pichot place. Pitifully blatant was what that car was, showy and humiliated, not in equal parts but in the same part, a sick pimp in gem-studded shoes begging a buck for a drink. He had taken it for a nine hundred dollar stable debt from the last of his blown owners, Bugsy Bugnaski of Bugsy’s Auto Sales. I thought it was a pretty good deal, Tommy said, and Maggie exclaimed: My god, and you used to sell used cars. Tommy shrugged: Nobody springs easier than a salesman, and she saw that it was true.