Lord of Misrule (27 page)

Nice doggy, D’Ambrisi said, nice dog, and Two-Tie saw that his hands were trembling as he twisted them in her collar.

She ain’t gonna hurt you, Two-Tie said. Let her alone.

I swear it wasn’t my idea, D’Ambrisi whined.

What’s it about?

Shut up, Biggy said, and nudged Two-Tie with the barrel of whatever he was packing.

Possibly it was only a warning, not that he was taking any warnings, not from these two, not from nobody. Maybe they were supposed to bring him to Joe Dale, or to Donald. He would have thought that Donald, or Joe Dale, being the type of men they were, would wish to take care of such a thing themselves. Sew the matter up with their own hands, so to speak. Tell him in his face where he had went wrong, try to make him whine how sorry he was, let him beg for a break, now that he was a dead man, then burn him anyway. He had been expecting this for some time now. He sat back in the back seat of Roy’s Taxicab and watched the blue cables of Powhatan Point Bridge dip down and tick by, one by one, like magic wands that weren’t working. He didn’t want a break. He didn’t have to degrade himself. Only, there was Elizabeth to think about.

In the crack at the bottom of its steel-plate railing, the river
glittered like broiler paper. Then they were off the bridge. Bushes whizzed by, and trees. If this was what he thought it was, he should be looking at Nature for the last time. But, maybe he was a klutz at heart, Nature didn’t interest him. Even when he was a young man, what he liked was taking care of somebody. The big picture wasn’t like a painted picture on a wall, it was more like a scroll, an ever unfolding piece of goods, pulling forward so many lives, the living threads. He liked to be the shuttle what touched them all and brought them together, whether they knew it or not. When he was young he had never really moved out of his family, not even once he hooked up with Lillian and settled her in an apartment. By then his parents were old and they needed him and he had the money from his finance business, so he never even noticed he was doing it, taking care of somebody. Maybe he didn’t do that good a job of it, Lillian would have said so, she did say so, but still it must be what he was put on earth to do, considering how much he’d ended up doing it, one way or the other. Then Mickey went to jail and Lillian took Donald and flew the coop, not that he blamed her for quitting him, and pretty soon Alvin was dead and his mother in Levindale and his sisters scattered. After that it was just the money, his various partners and business deals, his protection, the tarnish odor of money and the mutt pack for company. For a few years he had low-grade muscle around him all the time, getting into scrapes in bars, bad crap games, brainless rhubarbs and shoving matches in his kitchen. The boys didn’t have enough to do. After a while, around when Ike was elected the second time, he let the protection go.

That was when he got Elizabeth. For protection. What a laugh. She would have looked after him if he’d let her. But he was too afraid she would get hurt. Like now, she knew something was wrong and she was worrying—looking across at him with a
dent in her black forehead, her gold-pointed eyebrows bunched together, just like a mother. He put his hand on the back of her neck. She was an old lady, a little slow on the uptake, anymore she didn’t see so good or hear so good, and she didn’t like her routine interrupted, but she was clocking now and ready to rumble, if it came to that.

Roy’s Taxicab passed the cut-off to Indian Mound Downs—Two-Tie looked over his shoulder but got no last eyeful of the jewel green bullring, the bottomland by the river was still a basin of fog—sped past the Horseman’s Motel and Trailer Court, the length of the little strip that passed for a town, and up into the hills. Two-Tie prepared a few words,
I always run a honest business, I thought more of you, family comes first
, but then the cab bounced past the steep driveway down to Joe Dale Bigg’s farm. D’Ambrisi was pushing it too fast for the patched and cracked West Virginia blacktop, taking the snaky curves along the ridge on two wheels, stomping the brake at the same time. He was no lowrider, he must be afraid somebody would see them. It looked bad and sounded bad—nobody saying a goddamn word and D’Ambrisi’s hands shaking on the steering wheel.

Do me one favor, Breezy. Don’t leave the dog with nobody to look after her. She’s an old dog. She won’t know what’s happening. Where I go she goes. You follow me?

Nobody ain’t gonna hurt the dog, Biggy said. I like dogs. You want to come home with me, fella? Whaddaya say, duke? He roughhoused Elizabeth’s head, and her lip curled up.

She’s a lady, she don’t like that rough stuff, Two-Tie said. He despaired of explaining anything to Biggy. Promise me, Breezy. You hear? She won’t know where she is. If anything happens to me, put a bullet in her head. He had a picture of Elizabeth shambling blindly around some pile of rubble deep in the woods that
still smelled like him, confused and hungry, lying down, getting up, lying down again, walking around in circles looking for him, waiting for him to come back, till she starved.

He wants we should off the dog, Biggy said indignantly. His own dog! What kinda guy is that?

I ain’t packing, Breezy whined.

These two lames would be no help whatsoever. Two-Tie sank back hopelessly into the seat cushions. If it wasn’t for Elizabeth, he saw, and it was like a slap across the head with a two-by-four, he wouldn’t care if they took him out. Not even these assholes. Be my guest. He was so sick of assholes he was almost ready to go. He looked back in his mind and saw the zig-zag line of his actions lately, that craziness with the niece, he done things that weren’t like him, weren’t prudent. Why? What did he care if little Margaret knew him or not? If they croaked him, would she cry? She’d gasp when she heard the news, then forget him in five minutes. You could even believe he’d been trying to buy it, the way he’d been making a weird nuisance of himself lately, like he’d seen other chumps who didn’t have nobody to look after them go off the deep end in the past.

But the big boys should at least have sent somebody halfway intelligent, somebody more respectful. The best you could say, it was fast, the way these dumb hoods brought it to you—or otherwise he waits to get decrepit like Elizabeth, and who looks after him when he’s old and blind? Nobody. If he didn’t have Elizabeth to worry about, he’d have to worry about himself, and where was the sense in that? He didn’t care no more, if he had ever cared. Of course nobody likes the idea of turning up dead in a garbage bag in a culvert, scaring some poor Cub Scout out of his wits with your empty eye holes and eaten-up head, it ain’t dignified.

The taxicab jolted off down an oiled rock lane behind a little
black and white arrow sign, Ohio County Landfill 1, then they turned at once on another unmarked two-track into the woods, some old mining or logging road, or maybe a back way into the dump. They passed one of those country oil wells that nod up and down like mechanical donkeys at the trough. Then the road got worse. The taxicab splashed into a puddle that was really a creek bed, and spun its wheels coming out the other side.

Goddamn cab’s gonna be mud all over, Biggy lamented, you heard Daddy, just don’t throw me no heat, now what if we get stuck back here? I thought you said the road was okay.

It used to be okay. You didn’t give me no time to think, Breezy said.

Bushes swatted the windows, like Nature wanted to punish them but didn’t have the equipment. The cab’s old springs creaked as they dipped into a hole. Bastid, Biggy muttered, rolling against the door, and the gun wavered where it was pushed up against Two-Tie’s kidney. Just then the sun popped through the trees and smacked Two-Tie’s eyes in a great big blank of glittering light. He couldn’t take no more.

Gimme that, you idiot. He snatched at the rude hardware of the gun barrel in his side and yanked it upward and twisted on it. He had some crazy, hopeless idea of getting hold of it and shooting Elizabeth himself, and at the same time everything opened up very wide around him, and he knew this was giving up, like taking a fabulous suite at the Sans Souci in Miami Beach for a week, which he knew he wouldn’t be around to pay for it. Three shots, bang bang bang. He saw the first one, a little round hole winking at him from the back of the driver’s seat, smoking and frying black along its edges, and he was studying it, thinking it wasn’t so bad, when he remembered about the other two. Where were they? I’m hit, Breezy yelled, then heavy crunching and swishing leaves, like
a elephant in the jungle, and, whomp, a tree in the middle of the windshield. Fuck, fuck, fuck, Biggy screamed, Daddy said don’t shoot him in the car, and look what I done, I shot him in the car. Elizabeth, barking in this one’s face, that one’s face, not grasping what had went wrong, making a terrible racket. I’m hit, Breezy wept, oh jesus, oh jesus, let’s get outa here. A whirr like getting sucked up in some machine—the taxicab, tryna back out. Wait, punk. Biggy slapped the back of Breezy’s head and they rocked to a stop. Two-Tie wanted to explain that it didn’t matter, he always thought if you died, everything went black, like, the whole picture went and you was off like a TV set, but it wasn’t like that at all. He could feel some of his middle was gone, gut, tubes, pupik, the whole bucket of shit, you would think you needed your middle but it was better like this, blown away was the right word, sky blue, wide open, all like bubbles going up. Quiet, he wanted to say, quiet, but he couldn’t find his breath.

Light, shade, light. He was travelling through the woods, his head bouncing softly along, trying to piece together the cut-out puzzle of sky between the treetops. And then it really was quiet, perfectly quiet, not even Biggy grunting no more, so he didn’t have to say it. Quiet. Elizabeth’s face was looking down into his. She had that black mole under her chin, and the long shiny black whiskers that sprayed out of it, like a daddy-long-legs. The face sank away, he couldn’t see her, she groaned that familiar groan, settling in—he moved his wet hand an inch or so and there she was. God forgive him, some caretaker he turned out to be, he was glad she was there. He should of kept the lid on till they threw him in the dump. Then, who knew, some clyde out shooting squirrels might have come across her and took her home. Only she’d never go, she’d lie there
affen shpilkes
, worried but patient, waiting for him to come back. She would make like she didn’t see the guy
calling to her, till the fool decided she was sick or mad and got his gun and shot her. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing. Here, who knew what would happen to her? Nothing would happen to her. That was the worst thing. It wouldn’t end. It would keep on ending as far as you could see. But everything ended. He tried to move his fingers in her beautiful fur. He couldn’t feel her no more. But he knew she was there.

B
UT THAT HADN’T BEEN
the hottest day of the summer, for this one was. All of them sat on haybales in the shade under the shedrow, panting like dogs and squinting stupidly into the heat. Through eyes in the backs of their heads they watched their horses. They watched them because of the race, even though the race was a queer race that none of them was supposed to win.

The sun beat down and by three the red dirt glowed back around each barn and strip of grass like the works of a toaster. The heat was a bullying heat that muffled sound, so that a person saw a brush or bucket fall or a tiechain drop and heard nothing, just a kind of clap of air, a flat toneless echo. Every now and then a sparrow flopped down in the dirt and scratched around. Even the baby sparrows in the eaves gave up, peeped listlessly under the heat as under a strangler’s pillow. Every puddle save the one by the back gate had given up the ghost, and now even that one shrank between hideous cracked lips. Some joker had left a horse’s skull drying beside it. You didn’t want to think where he’d gotten it, the ivory molars still sharp-edged and young.

Barn Z, the transient barn, stretched low along the backside fence, the heat from its long tin roof a waggling, meaningless mirage. In front of almost every stall a cheap box window fan whirred and shuddered irrelevantly at the end of an extension cord, its back side bearded with straw and cobweb. Usually a
trainer would be fearful of fire but with the heat and the race a go-to-hell mood rolled over them all. On Friday afternoon, racetrackers cleaned every fan out of Ted’s Appliances, West Carbonport. By Saturday they hooked up anything that turned, even old electric heaters with the heat turned off.

Margaret came around the corner and blinked at the sheer oddity of the sight. The shedrow was like a temple to pain, its hay-specked portico held up by the row of noble sore horses, each rising out of a zinc tub of ice with a palsied electric fan next to it. Every one of them was going to the same race, and the race itself was funny, not quite a fixed race but not quite square either. Pelter, Spinoza, The Mahdi, a few more nameless bays and chestnuts, and in the end stall, Lord of Misrule, a small, black, slinky horse who nosed around his stall with a certain junkyard style. Now and then he raised his head to slash vindictively at his hay bag, and sized up the traffic out of the custard white corner of his eye.