Lord of Misrule (28 page)

In front of his stall sat the sickly-looking punk with the almost shaved head and bumpy headbones, smacking flies on his legs with a rolled-up comic. The boy was too young to be in anybody’s pay. He must belong to Nebraska. He had his father’s curving soapcake of a nose. His fingernail worked some red spot near his mouth corner. He made a point of looking baldly at the sweaty crotch of every girl who passed. Look at the prune on that, he said out loud, over and over, hawked and spat. That’s how bad he wanted some grown person to talk to him.

M
EDICINE ED DON’T WANT
to talk to him. He can’t be distracted. He watches the boy through a crack in the tack room wall. The goofer dirt need a little time to take.
He must be very deeply in earnest
. Maybe he should have throwed it round last night, but last night he ain’t make up his mind yet. Everybody say that horse can’t lose. The jocks in on it. All the grooms in it. Every big trainer at the meeting have a piece of it. Yet and still, he have to be sure. His hope, his peace, his little tomorrow be riding on it. You want to be down on a sure thing—long as it is a sure thing—even if the horse don’t pay but even money. He can double his nut in one minute and, after all, what do the Peoples Savings and Trust of Wheeling pay? Three point four percent in a year! If he call Two-Tie and draw on his whole bankroll and win he land up with 5000 dollars, exactly enough to buy him that trailer in Hallandale, the one with the green stripe awning in the old park for colored behind the track and the little yard of clean gravel with a palm tree sticking up out of it. If he have him a home, he won’t hardly have to work no more. Then if he still be getting up awake all night like he do now he can get him a little job—somebody be glad to put him on as stall watch for pocket change. And then he don’t need nobody. No more young fool. No more frizzly hair girl. That is his plan.

For every night the young fool can’t sit nor rest, he going up
and down the shedrow, going in the stall and out again. He talk craziness to that red horse, the one Zeno taken from him, and which he claim back, and which he think is going to win that race for him. He whisper about the expected one and saints in Ireland and that. He think that secret is between him and the horse. He don’t even see where Joe Dale Bigg’s boys are cruising up and down the dirt road watching him through the blind windows of that midnight blue gangster car.

Yesday Medicine Ed just cooling on his haybale, braiding a busted shank, waiting to hose out the feed tubs, when the De Ville come grinding over the red dirt in front of him, so slow it don’t even raise no dust. The window slides down in the door and it’s Joe Dale Bigg.

You going to collect a couple dollars for losing tomorrow?

Sho is, Mr. Bigg.

That Speculation grandson don’t figure, am I right?

Sho is.

I know you ladies ain’t gonna turn Nebraska around. You ain’t that stupid.

Medicine Ed watched the air wiggle over the manure pile.

What about Hansel’s horse? The one he filed his nut hand over? Whassaname of that horse?

Medicine Ed shook his head.

Red horse.

I disremember the name.

Don’t know nothing, eh? I’ll bet. Hansel drops him in for twelve fifty it’ll come back to you. His name. Something like Mahdi. Could that be right?

Medicine Ed shook his head.

So I hear Hansel’s buying up castles in Ireland from that horse. I hear Hansel thinks he’s St. Jack and the Beanstalk or Jack the
Giant Killer or somebody. He freed all the slaves of Ireland, is that right? Hope I’m not the giant. Joe Dale laughed. I better not be the giant. Am I?

Medicine Ed shook his head again,
Don’t know nuthin bout nuthin
, and looked away at a sparrow taking a bath in the dirt. For these was the type of wandrous secrets the young fool was swapping with that horse all night long.

They say this business will drive you crazy, Joe Dale said. The lying and the cheating and you can’t be sure of nothing. I think that college boy ain’t coming back from wherever he ended up at. Which is a sad sight to see, a talented young man like that, but it ain’t no excuse for getting in other people’s business. If Hansel has to go around with his fly hanging open, his shoes untied and his hair sticking up on end, that’s his lookout. If he comes untied, that’s your-all’s lookout. He better not bust up my deal, you colly?

Joe Dale practically yelling now and Medicine Ed cut his eyes up at him briefly, went on with his plaiting

I’m putting you on that case, you hear? You old timey negroes from down around Aiken in the hunt country, I know you got your little ways. You use em, you hear me?

That red horse ain’t gonna last in no race with Lord of Misery, Medicine Ed said. He a sprinter, nemmind what the young fella say.

I don’t want him even trying, Joe Dale shouted. I don’t want no loose wheels out on that race course. I don’t want no uncontrollable factors. I’m holding you responsible to stop it or let me know. You hear what I say?

Slowly Medicine Ed raised his eyes to him. Already the purple window was riding back up in the door. Joe Dale’s black sunglasses gleamed in the crack of it. Unh-huh, Medicine Ed said. Sho is.

Yesday he full of cautionary thoughts. He a owner now and a co-trainer too. The horses gone good. Everything coming they way. He, Medicine Ed, might could have five more years. Or six. Or ten. His eyes be good, his ears still good, his draggy leg no worse, ma’fact better than it was last January when the shedrow spigots freeze and he have to haul full buckets down from the clubhouse; his remembrance still good, can’t he be content to make it little by little? His pay coming in punctual, plus twenty dollars when anything run in. The young fool wander in his mind, yes, but he freehearted. He dig even deeper than Zeno. He don’t forget Medicine Ed. Yesday evening Medicine Ed was thinking let it go, call Two-Tie, put some down on the horse, only just a little—don’t get greedy, don’t stir up the Devil, don’t cunjure with that old stakes horse from Nebraska, don’t take his life. And then there come Joe Dale, all the sign he need that bad evil is lurking round and he must cover himself.

In the Winnebago he pulls together the pink plastic curtains over the sink and sinks his head and washes his hands. He must think about his dust and nothing else save his dust. All the while he is mixing it up he must think about his dust until his thinking put a kind of holy spirit on it. He takes the jars out the wall one by one, and he is careful to bring to mind what they each contain.
He must be very deeply in earnest
. This one is a controlling powder, coltsfoot, not just dusty coltsfoot from beside of any road, but the dark green velvet hand-shape leaves, soft as a lady’s glove, that creep along the ruin of a stone stable deep in a woods in Cambray, South Carolina. In this stable his grandfather, Eduardo Salters, born in slavery, once was king. Ain’t nobody ever had the control of a four-legged animal better than Eddy Salters. When he was coming up, folks say, he could
climb on a fence and jump on a cow and make her run.

He ain’t invite it, and it’s no use crying. Yet and still. Evil has come out after him. Something must be done. Back in his crushed in trailer he make what he need. First, forward and foremost, he need speed enough to overtake and turn the wind of a horse into money. And money, too, need drawing and controlling: In a little whiskey bottle is boil of moneyplant, moneyplant gathered far from water which run itself away.

In this jar is one teenchy pinch, all he have left, of the blood of Platonic. Platonic is early speed, and Cannonball is speed early and late, and here, mixed in the grave dirt of Cannonball, if you dig you find four glassy glittery things—wings of the botfly that can overtake and grab on the legs of any horse, so long as he be running. Yet and still. No use crying. Common judgment tell you that. For fact is, and it say so right in the Bible, a
horse never saved nobody
. Psalm 33. On a plate of glass, he move around a little of this, a little of that. He seek for that spirit of imagination wonder, to know what to do, and when is enough.
You must be very deeply in earnest
, Madame Eulalie said to him when she learned him doctoring,
then luck will come
. But he has trouble tonight to keep his mind on one thing only. His remembrance acting up, he can’t get that little filly Broomstick off his mind. He keep thinking of the frizzly hair girl, he can choose to tie her to him, he know how. He can tie the bad luck off himself. But he can’t make out to himself like he used to done that it is a harmless goofer he mixing. He know the truth now. Harm is coming, it ain’t his fault, but still he is doctoring so that hurt, when it come, it will go on others and not on him.

He can say he is only tying the bad luck off himself and he mean no harm to anyone. He can say the young fool has drawn this trouble on the three of them, like he always knew he would.
He can say the young fool is a lost, crossed, through-and-through fixed man-soul. And which he is: there ain’t no cure nor doctor to undone what has already been done to the young fool. He don’t eat nor either sleep. He don’t pray nor cunjure. He whisper all night to that red horse, the one he lost to Zeno, and which he claim back, and which he think is going to win that race for him.

Therefore it ain’t no fault nor doing of his and he must save himself as he can. No one else will. Yet and still, when Medicine Ed try to lay his spirit into this dust, he hear the young fool whispering. Medicine Ed writes sixes in the dust with the fat of his thumb, cuts it in nine lines with a razor blade. He tries to stay on the good side of the Devil, but that holy spirit of wonder be missing from him and when he has mixed up the dirt, it don’t feel the same in his fingers and he don’t wholly trust it. It don’t feel like hissen. For once in this life he is not sure of his dust.

What exactly do he mean to do? Is he fixing to goofer that red horse who is near used up anyhow? Should he see to his bankroll and help that old black stakes horse out of this life? He has knowed tired horses too proud to loaf. He has knowed sour animals that wanted out even if they still could run. But Nebraska, sore and tired, have that special hard heart, black as acey spades, which will hold him out past his burying day. And mean he was never nothing but alone in this world, with his bum seed and getting passed down owner to owner, all the way down to the ground, and he know it. And yet and still he want to live and do, he can’t help hisself. Which medicine can sort the right end out? Which dust will serve? He cannot be sure. He need help, O Lord. And he try to pray, from the 35
^th
Psalm of David, loud over the young fool’s whispering:
Pick up my cause, O God, against them that’s driving me. Fight against them that fights against me
.
Let them fall in the net they done stretched out to catch me. How long, o Lord, wilt thou stand there looking? Now get me away from these lions
.

The frizzly hair girl come by hauling two buckets, a shank in her mouth. Wanna have a party? ask the sickly boy from Nebraska. Frizzly hair girl turn round and look at him. Has she heard right? Got a cigarette? he say. Medicine Ed steal up behind the boy and show himself to the frizzly hair girl, nods his head. Frizzly hair girl moves on down the shedrow with the sloshing buckets, makes a sign with her head for the little boy to follow, and which he do.

Medicine Ed slips into the stall behind that black horse, Lord of Mercy, who is standing with his front feet in a tub of ice like he ain’t have a trouble in this world. Medicine Ed limps fast as he can from south to north and east to west in the straw, first crossways of the world, then putting the world back right again. He has a handful of dust for each way of the cross, opens his hand, and blows.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I ask you to take all the bad luck offen me and send it back to the Devil where it come from. Spare this horse if you can, but if hurt must come, make it go on them that would hurt me. I swear O Lord when I have my home I am through with the medicine. Only this one last time, do my work
.