O yeah the dentist. Fletcher. Fletcha the butcha from Chesta. He and Biggy got along good. (Everybody knew that story.)
He was after the horse, or what?
After the horse, with 500 rounds of ammo.
Maybe he still ain't just the right groom for that particular racehorse, huh?
Guess not, everyone laughed.
Joe Dale tries to keep the kid down the farm most of the time, D'Ambrisi said. But that's where he use to keep the horse too. The horse don't do good in a stall.
The thing with the dentist was in a stall, said Kidstuff. Horse put a dent in Biggy's head with an egg bar shoe, which I know because I put it on myself. But, I kid you not, a lot of people said Biggy was smarter afterwards, like it might of let a little light in the bubblegum he got for brains or something. He ain't grateful, though.
He still got the exact curve of that bar on his forehead, D'Ambrisi added. Which is why, like I started to say before, Deucey is tied up tonight. Joe Dale got the idea the old jasper could solve his problem. He's making her take the horse on the cuff whether she wants him or not.
I hear she says no.
They are talking business as we speak.
Why Joe Dale don't just send that overpriced quitter to the block? Jojo Wood asked. He'd still fetch three, four big ones easy. They might not even heard he's bonkers, that horse, Lil Spinny or whatever the fuck he's called.
Little Spinoza, Two-Tie said. A Speculation grandson, out of a Rembrandt mare. Joe Dale Bigg paid twenty grand for the yearling at Keeneland. This was in 1965.
He was gonna be Joe Dale's Derby horse ya see, Earlie said. He was going to Saratoga at least, with that kind of class. This wop from East Liverpool, he was going to be a debutante. Come to find out he just got himself another space cadet like Biggy. If the horse had broke his leg first time out, he'd of put him down and forgot in a week, but the stiff refused in the gate three times. An embarrassment is what it is. Joe Dale can't give it up. He wants something back for the horse.
He would like to pass the animal to Deucey on the cuff? Nuttinginfront?
That's the deal.
And she says no? Come on, Elizabeth. Two-Tie shook his head and went to answer the back door, rolling a case of empties in front of him. His old dog was just getting to her feet when he came back.
It was Deucey, clattering out of the back stair in army surplus combat boots, which she wore without socks. I hope you gents ain't waiting for me. I mean to sit the first few out. This ain't my lucky night.
Joe Dale get your name on them foaling papers yet?
Hell no.
May I ask, said Two-Tie, what's so geferlich about his offer? Nobody ever touched that classy horse so far but thugs. Who knows what he's got?
He's got a ankle, what I heard, Earlie said. But that ain't the half. He got all the Speculation loony-tunes and none of the talent.
If I remember correctly, Little Spinoza win for sixty-five hundred going away, the one time he don't quit. True, that was some time ago.
Before the dentist?
Before the dentist.
I guess everybody knows that story, Deucey said. Well did I ever tell you fellas I was across the way in Barn Z when it happened? Me and Medicine Ed saw the whole thing. For yalls information, I don't think that beauty-full boy is one bit crazy. Spinoza I mean. He might be the sweetest little horse I ever met.
You try bringing him to the starting gate, we'll see how sweet, Earlie said.
I know I look stupid, gentlemen, but I ain't racing Joe Dale Biggs' ruint stakes horse, which he hates, at Joe Dale Biggs's racetrack, where he is king, under my good name. Many troublous things could happen to the horse, as we was just discussing, and I would still be three grand in the hole for him, to say nothing of the feed bill. I don't care if he never runs his race. A great big baby is what that horse is. And that's what I'm doing for Joe Dale Bigg, and that's all I'm doing-babysitting him.
So there, Kidstuff said. Here, here. And I give up liquor starting now, except for this one last Carling's I'm finishing off, just so as not to waste it.
You can drink yourself to hell, Deucey said, and I know you will. I ain't taking this horse.
On the racetrack may be found any number of doggy types, Two-Tie observed to himself as he surveyed his rooms over the Ritzy Lunch in the graying dark to see what his all-night card game had dragged in. It was the low nature of their appetites that tangled them up in one species together, various breeds of dog as they were. Only Kidstuff had gone home, wherever home was. D'Ambrisi, whose bubblegum-stuffed cheek lay on his last hand of cards, looked like a chickenshit dachshund, the kind that pees itself, and your shoes, whenever you give it a pat on the head. The little tout D'Ambrisi worked for Joe Dale in some obscure capacity, assistant trainer he'd like you to think, more like licker of shit and gofer. Deucey Gifford was an old broad-browed retriever dog, faithful to the death, who had some dignity with her size. The doggish part was how she never let go. Once she thought something belonged to her, or didn't, her jaw clamped down and her gaze flattened out and she could get stupid, very stupid. Jojo Wood, leaning back on the sofa with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, was the commonest dog around the racetrack, a square-headed beagle mutt who padded around the backside, nose low to the ground, hoping for that pizza crust or dropped hamburger, without a clue or a plan. Jojo was a jockey, a little worse than run of the mill. He got his mounts largely because certain horsemen was dumb enough to think that Jojo was too dumb to cheat them. The other jock on the sofa, Earlie Beaufait, a little Frenchman from around Evangeline Downs with a big Choctaw beak on him, was smarter than Jojo, but twitchy as a chihuahua even in repose. It is a known fact that dogs sleep two-thirds of the time. These four, like sixty-seven percent of the other dogs on the planet, were asleep.
Of course the whole notion was an insult to dogs, which included some of the noblest individuals that Two-Tie had ever known in his life, like his Elizabeth. But as with humans it was a question of how the dog had been raised and what had been asked of it whilst it was still young. Early on, you had to show a intelligent dog what to do. A dog like that thought good of herself and pretty soon she ran the whole show, better than what you could. On the other hand, if nutting was asked of it, a dog would expect its dog food night and morning every day of its life and spend the rest of its time looking for that bonus hamburger that fell on the floor, never noticing how good it was taken care of already, for the nutting it contributed to society. The dog got led around like a ponyride by that nose for a free hamburger, and the rest of its brain went dead.
His Elizabeth, however, was a herd dog, hustled by some ancient sense of responsibility not to let her sheep-whoever she decided her sheep were-out of her sight. As for Two-Tie she wouldn't even let him take a dump in privacy but curled up with a groan on the little wrinkled rug between the tub and the sink for the duration. He had had to curtail some of his out-of-town operations in recent years. Elizabeth no longer cared to travel. She didn't appreciate having her routine interrupted. It had cost him some bucks. But it was the least he owed her for thirteen years of devoted companionship. Around the racetrack (especially if you weren't welcome on the actual grounds no more) you had better know the value of a foul weather friend.
Two-Tie leaned over Elizabeth towards the mirror, to pull a comb across his hair and realign his redundant haberdashery, the black bow tie under the striped bow tie that he wore every day of his life. He pinched the alligator clips and patted down the loops of the rather greasy black bowknot. Lillian, he nodded at the glass, and his sagging bloodhound of a face nodded back. He didn't kid himself that Lillian, aleha ha-sholom-she'd been pushing up the daisies in some RC cemetery in Chicago for thirty years-could hear him, or would listen if she could. It was his way of trying to pay off little by little an unpayable debt. Lillian, I treated you wrong, he thought, or said-it was a kind of morning benediction with him, and sometimes he listened to himself, sometimes he didn't. Hey, I don't forget. I treated you shabby, very shabby, and the worst is, there ain't a thing I can do about it-nutting. Except, hey, your boy Donald called me up from Nebraska yesterday. He wants I should do a favor for him and I'm going to do it, Lillian, not for him-he's the same no count, worthless punk he always was, I can tell already from the phone-but for you. Look out, Elizabeth.