The Hunt aka 27 (20 page)

She sat on a tall stool on the corner of the tiny stage with only a pastel spot on her, a piano, tenor sax and bass providing subtle background for a voice that hardly needed it. She had no arrangements, every song was improvised. The lights darkened in the small club, the announcer introduced her, there was a piano trill and the soft light faded in as she started singing.

“I’m not much to look at,

Nothin’ to see,

Just glad I’m living,

And happy to be,

I got a man

Crazy for me

He’
s
funny that way.”

She sang in English and her accent added to the allure. Within a few notes she owned the room

Keegan sat at the same table for hours every night. He sent two dozen roses every day, no card, assuming that sooner or later she would connect the flowers with the crazy American who came every night and sat through every performance—but she ignored him. Finally he attempted to arrange a meeting only to be told by the manager that she did not li
k
e Americans. Keegan had never before been spurned by a wo
m
an so resolutely, and he was so totally discouraged by her lack of response that he stopped going to the club.

The approaching winter became the winter of his discontent. It was a mild winter and Keegan spent most of it in the south of France in a small town called Gr
e
nois. He had decided to winter one of his racehorses there, to get her ready for the summer season at Longchamp. The mare had shown promise on the American tracks as a two-year-old, now Keegan wanted to see what she would do on the European circuit. Keegan’s trainer was Alouise
Jacquette, Al Jack for short, from Larose in the Delta country of Louisiana. The Delt
a
was known for quarterhorse racing, so named because the horses are flagged off and run wide-open down a quarter-mile straight track. After ten years, Al Jack graduated to thoroughbred racing where he became known as a keen judge of championship horses and a superb trainer. He was six feet two inches tall and had the posture of a West Point cadet. He dressed in a suit, vest, tie and Panama hat at all times, even when he was in the training ring with the horses. Al Jack was a man who believed that racing was a gentleman’s game and he dressed accordingly.

“When they speak of mixed blood
,“
he would tell you proudly, “they speak of Al Jack. I am one-quarter Cherokee Indian, two-quarters Cajun and one-quarter Negro, and the only one who knows more about horses than A
l J
ack is God himself.”

When he was working, A
l
Jack had little to say. He would express approval or disapproval by the tone of his chuckles. Al Jack was a man who chuckled all the time. If he told you the world was about to end he would chuckle while he gave you the bad news. After a while Keegan learned to tell which were good news chuckles and which were bad news chuckles. There was also a disaster chuckle but Keegan had only heard it once, when Al jack discovered they did not have crawfish in France. Luckily, he soon discovered that snails were a reasonable substitute and became addicted to escargots. So they were up at dawn every day, working out the horses until late afternoon when they would walk to the village and stuff
themselves
on escargots, washing it down with Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

“Got us a winner,
mon ami,”
Al
Jack would say in his Cajun patois. “This lady goin’ take the purse every time she go outa that gate.”

“If she doesn’t, it’s off to the glue factory with her,” Keegan would answer and they would laugh and order more snails.

“You know my dream, Kee? My dream is that I save up enough money to buy her first foal when she retires.”

“You got it, Al. Call it a bonus. When she starts losing her speed, we’ll breed her.”

“That’s a damn generous thing t’do, Kee, but I do believe I’d feel better paying for the pony.”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

It was a pleasant enough time, the days filled with hard work, horse talk and good food, but he could not get the singer out of his mind. He never talked about her but she had his heart in her hand and was never far from his thoughts. He and Bert spent the Christmas holiday in Spain trout fishing, then Rudman was off to Ethiopia for a month to report on the country many believed would be Mussolini’s first conquest, his dispatches appearing almost daily on the front page of the
Trib.
From there it was on to Spain for two months to report on the civil war everyone felt was imminent. Rudma
n
’s style continued to become more formal, more subjective, tougher. With each dispatch he seemed to be more masterful at interpreting the volatile politics of Europe for his readers. His fixation on Hitler, the Nazi movement and the advent of fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain earned him a growing reputation as one of Europe’s most respected correspondents. Keegan spent a month skiing in the Swiss Alps after Rudman left, spent a few weeks in Berlin, avoiding the Kit Kat and doing the usual party rounds, frequently bumping into the little hunchback, Vierhaus, Hitler’s personal gossip, who was always pleasant to the point of obsequiousness. Then Keegan returned to France.

In early March, Keegan and Al Jack moved to Deauville, where they drove the few miles to the beach every morning to let the filly run in the surf, strengthening her legs and building her endurance for the longer European tracks. Keegan followed his friend’s career avidly and was delighted when Rudman finally returned to Paris and came to visit them.

“She learnin’ to run backwards,” A
l J
ack said proudly, since most of the European races were run from right to left, the opposite direction from the way Al Jack had trained her in the states.

“So, tell me about it,” Keegan asked Rudman as they sat in the dunes watching Al Jack put the mare through her paces. “What’s Ethiopia like?”

“Hot, dismal, dirty, dry, sand everywhere—in your hair, your eyes, your coffee.”

“Is there going to be a war?”

Rudman nodded emphatically. “Within a year the Lion of Judah will be in an Italian cage.”

“That’s depressing. How about Spain? How are the ladies?”

“You know the type. They don’t get insulted when you invite them home and they don’t get mad when you don’t invite them to stay for breakfast. Spain’s very depressing. Civil war’s just around the corner. It’s going to be brutal.”

“That’s the way war is, Bert.”

“I don’t mean that way. Listen Kee, I saw an airfield outside of Madrid with a couple of dozen Heinkel bombers parked in hangars. The Loyalists are all using German weapons. Wait and see, Spain’s going to turn into Hitler’s personal testing ground.”

“You’re getting to be quite the political oracle, aren’t you, pal?”

“Trying.”

“We got some fine horse there, boss,” Al jack said, climbing up the dune and standing ramrod straight in his Sunday finest, his cap pulled down to his eyebrows, as Keegan and Rudman watched Rave On romp in the surf, her breath steaming from flared nostrils as she bucked and jumped in the chilly water.

In mid-April they were ready to move on to Paris where she was stabled at Longchamp, perhaps the most elegant racetrack in the world. Most of the tracks—Chantilly, St. Cloud de Maisons, Evry and Longchamp—were within forty miles of Paris. The plan was to run her in
La Coupe de Maisons,
then on to Chantilly for the French Derby and after that to Longchamp for the opening of the season in May, building up to the prestigious
Grand Prix de Paris
in June and the big one,
L ‘Arc de Triomphe,
in September.

Once they had Rave On settled at the stables in Paris, Keegan joined Rudman in Berlin.

“You’re not going to believe it,” Rudman said when they met for dinner. He was brimming with excitement. “I was just offered chief of
The New York Times
bureau here.”

“You’re kidding! Will you take it?”

“Take it! Hell, it’s the plum job in Europe. Goebbels has been threatening to lift my visa, now I’ll be too important for the Nazis to throw out.”

“Be careful, buddy,” Keegan said, and he was obviously concerned. “These bastards’ll kill you.”

“They wouldn’t dare,” Rudman said with a grin.

He went off to the States for a month of indoctrination and returned looking fit with the latest news and gossip from home. He was full of enthusiasm for Roosevelt and the future of America and had glowing reports on the Broadway season, babbling on about the new dancer, Fred Astaire, the star of Cole Porter’s new show; about James Hilton’s novel
Lost Horizons,
which he had read on the boat over; and André Mairaux’s
Man’s Fate,
which he read on the way back; about a movie called
King Kong,
about an ape that attacks the Empire State Building; and an animated cartoon based on the “Three Little Pigs.” He had also fallen madly in love with Greta Garbo after seeing her in two movies. For the first time since leaving, Keegan felt a tinge of homesickness. But the excitement of the coming racing season at Longchamp and Rudman’s return soon dispelled that. His horse, Rave On, was looking good and timing well. Rudman would not start the new job until midsummer, so they would have two months to pal around.

“Ever feel like going home for good?” Keegan asked.

“1 can’t, my future’s here,” Rudman said. “You know what my editor at the
Times
said? He said I have a keener perception of the political dynamics of Europe than any other reporter alive.”

“Good. Can we have that for dinner?”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Well, hell, you ought to. You have politics for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You’ve let your social life go to hell.”

“I see things keep getting worse here. Now they’re boycotting Jewish stores,” said Rudman. “Did you know Jews have been banned from business? Even from schools”

“It’s no secret, they brag about what they’re doing every day in that Nazi rag,
The People’s Observer.

“Know what I heard today that they’re
not
bragging about?”

“Hitler’s a transvestite,” Keegan said.

“Probably, but that’s not it. I hear they built a prison camp outside Munich for political prisoners and they’re building twenty more—twenty—just for Jews. I got a source who says they’ve arrested more than a hundred thousand people and shipped them to these camps without a trial or anything. They’re starving prisoners, beating them.”

“You better make sure about that,” Keegan advised. “Seeing’s believing.”

“They don’t conduct tours for the press.”

“I’m just saying you’ve got great credibility. Don’t give Goebbels a chance to shoot you down.”

“What’s to doubt anyway? We’re talking about a whole country that doesn’t have a moral bone in its collective body. It isn’t politics, anymore. It’s gone beyond that. I’m sure you’re sick of all this anyway, you’ve been living with it every day. What’s been happening with you? Still mooning over that singer?”

“Who says I’m mooning over anybody?” Keegan demanded.

“C’mon, Kee, you’ve been dragging your tail for a year over that girl. Hell, she’s probably got a beau, maybe she’s even married by now.”

“She’s not married and she doesn’t have a
beau,”
he said, mocking Rudman’s use of the antiquated term.

“So—you
have
been keeping track of her?”

“I heard it somewhere.”

“Uh huh.”

“Get off the singer, okay?”

“Sure. I
just never saw you knuckle under like this before.”

“Knuckle under?”

“You send her flowers for a week, she brushes you off, you give up.”

“I didn’t give up.”

“What would you call it?”

“I lost interest.”

“Francis, this is your old pal, remember? You act like a lovesick drugstore cowboy.”

“Damn
it!”

“Okay, okay. But if it were me and I was swooning over this dame
. .

“She’s not a dame—and drop it!”

“Hey, it’s dropped.” They sat in silence for a moment, then Bert said, “But, you know, if she started getting the flowers again and she realized how serious you are and tenacious
.

“Rudman!”

“I know, drop it.”

Silence fell over the table for a couple of minutes.

“I would like to hear her sing,” Rudman said.

Keegan glared at him.

“Hey, she’s an entertainer,” Rudman said, his hands held out at his sides. “So let’s go be entertained.”

The minute she started singing, Keegan was sunk.

“Some day he‘
ll
come along,

The man I love.

Rudman watched Keegan as he sat totally enthralled.

The next day Rudman sent her an enormous spring bouquet and charged it to Keegan. No card. They returned to the club that night, and the next, and the next. And each day Rudman sent more flowers. At the end of the week he told Keegan what he had done.

“She sings like a bird and if you’re not going to pursue her, I am,” he threatened.

And so it started over again, only this time Jenny Gould sensed his persistence. Out of curiosity she asked around and found out who he was. Every day for a week she received two dozen roses and every night the American and his friend reserved the same table at the edge of the stage at the Kit Kat, although he made no attempt to contact her or speak to her. He just sat and stared and applauded. Then one afternoon he showed up at her door.

“It’s lunchtime.” He was as awkward as a schoolboy. “You have to eat. I mean, you’ll get weak and faint in the middle of a song if you don’t eat.
And I just h
appened to be driving by and
she looked out at the car and back at him and finally sighed and took his arm and he led her out into the lovely late spring day.

He had arranged a picnic in a small park near the Opera House with a vase of flowers, champagne and sandwiches of Kasseler Rippchen, the little smoked and pickled pork loin she discovered he loved, frankfurter sausages, boiled eggs and sauerkraut, and for dessert there were several kinds of pastries. He had a windup Victrola and several radio transcriptions a friend had sent him and they sat on the blanket and listened to Billie Holiday sing “My Man” and “Stormy Monday Blues.” He was gracious and interested in her and funny and delightful and caring, things she least expected of this man everyone described as a rich, reckless American playboy. After that day they were together constantly. She moved into a small flat on the outskirts of Berlin soon after they met. They spent the days together and at night he sat faithfully at his customary table and listened to her sing. When he finally left to return to Paris for the opening of the racing season she lasted only three days without him. There had been three and four phone calls a day and finally she called him late one night.

“I have never been this sad in my life,” she told him.

“Come to Paris, Jenny,” he said. “Let’s give it a real chance.”

“But my job.

“With a voice like yours, you’ll never have to worry about a job.”

The next day he sent the plane for her.

The tan filly snorting like an engine thundered by them, her long legs snapping out, the jockey perched way forward, almost on her neck, going light on the whip. Keegan popped the button on his stopwatch as she streaked by. His face brightened.

Jenny’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “What do you think?” she asked.

Keegan studied his stopwatch. “Not bad, not bad at all. If
it
doesn’t rain she just might take the roses.” He looked up at the bright, cloudless sky. “But she’s not a mudder so pray that the skies stay clear.”

“A really gorgeous filly,” Rudman said. “Where did you get her?”

“Picked her up at a claiming race at Aqueduct.”

“Maybe you’ve got another Cavalcade on your hands.”

“She’s good,” said Keegan, “but I don’t think she’s got the stuff to be a Triple Crown winner.”

“She looks so beautiful, stretching out those long legs of hers,” Jenny said. “Why did you give her such a ridiculous name?”

“What would you call her?” Keegan laughed. “Honey Bunch?”

“Something other than Rave On.”

“Rave On’s a great name,” Keegan said.

“It does not make a bit of sense to me.”

“It’s an American expression,” said Rudman. “And you’re right, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s not supposed to,” Keegan said. “I once knew a racehorse named John J. Four Eyes. Now
that
doesn’t make sense.”

Jenny looked hopelessly at Rudman ‘who waved off the remark with a grin. “I can’t begin to explain that one,” he said as they walked across the infield of Longchamp racetrack toward the gate. The jockey, a Parisian whose name was Jaimie Foulard, slid out of the saddle and landed in front of Keegan.

“C’est mag
nf
ique, c’est
wonderful!” He said enthusiastically. “She can win, can’t she?” Keegan asked with some confidence.

“Qué ser
a
,”
he said with a shrug, then winked.

They walked back to the stables and watched Al Jack, who was wearing a white linen suit, wash the filly down and brush her out. He did so without getting a spot on the suit.

“You luck out on this l’il ma’mselle,” Al jack chuckled. “Yes suh, you reached in the jar an’ you come up with a gold marble.”

“You
reached in the jar, Al jack,” said Keegan. “We’ll know how golden the l’il old marble is after the third race.”

Al jack looked up and smiled.

“Ma’mselle will give it all, Kee, you can deposit that in the bank. If she don’t win, it just isn’t in the cards. This lady puts her heart in the pot when she enters the gate.”

J
enny softly stroked the filly’s long nose. “Like velvet,” she said with a look of wonderment.

“Tell you what, Al Jack. If she wins today, she’s yours,” Keegan said.

“What you say, Mistah Kee!”

“She’s yours. I never saw anybody love a horse as much as you love that one.”

“No, no way, suh,” Al Jack, shaking his head. He wasn’t chuckling. “Why, hell,
ami,
I couldn’t pay her feed bill.”

“I’ll cover you for the season, you pay me back with your purses. You can winter her on the farm in Kentucky and I’ll take her first foal when she retires.”

Al jack broke down, laughing, tears bursting out of his eyes. “Why, I don’t rightly know what to say.”

Keegan smiled at him. “You’ve already said it, friend,” he said, patting the trainer on the shoulder. Al jack turned to the horse.

“Hear
that, ma’mselle? You must win today. If you never won a race before or since, you got to go straight today. You hear what I say, lady?”

“That was one helluva thing to do, Kee,” Rudman said as they headed back toward the parking area.

“Yes,” Jenny said. “It was beautiful.”

“I wouldn’t own the horse if it wasn’t for him,” Keegan said, waving off their praise and opening the morning paper. “He picked her. He made her a winner. You got to be involved if you’re in the racing game and Al Jack lives for it. It’s just a hobby with me. Anyway, I wanted to share my luck.”

“What luck?” Jenny asked.

“Being here with you,” Keegan said
w
ith a broad grin, then he saw Rudman’s photograph in the paper. “Hey, you made page two with a photo,” Keegan said, showing them the story announcing Rudman’s appointment as Berlin bureau chief.

It was a perfectly adequate sketch, recounting the usual biographical data, most of which Keegan already knew. Rudman was from Middleton, Ohio. His father owned a clothing store and had for thirty years, his mother was a housewife. No brothers or sisters. He had a journalism degree from Columbia University and was in Europe on a graduation trip when America entered the war. Keegan learned two new things about Rudman from the article; he had written his first dispatch for the
Herald Tribune
on speculation, having hitched a ride into combat with the Rainbow Division of the U.S. Army and covering their first encounter with the Germans during the Aisne-Marne drive, coverage that was good enough to earn him a correspondent’s job at the age of twenty-three. He had also done some wrestling in college.

Keegan looked Rudman up and down. “You don’t look like a wrestler to me,” he said.

“Oh? And just what’s a wrestler supposed to look like?”

“You know, thick neck, a chest like Mae West, shoulders like an elephant, that kind of thing.”

Rudman nodded slowly. “Uh huh. With a dumb look on his face? You left that out.”

“Yeah, that too. I mean, you’re no skin and bones but you don’t look like any wrestler.”

“That’s a very prejudiced attitude,” Rudman said rather loftily.”

“What do you mean, prejudiced?”

“To you all wrestlers are the same.. They all have thick necks, their chests are popping through their shirts and they have a collective IQ
of four. That’s a prejudice. Not an important one but a prejudice just the same.”