You honestly think Bigg ain't holding some cards? Wait till he sees that fresh young woman, he'll think up some angle even if he didn't have one in front.
To tell you the truth, if I'm you, I don't worry about it.
What does that mean, Vernon? I don't like the sound of that.
When did you ever see Joe Dale Bigg with any type of broad but a diamond dolly? Balloons out to here and bleach blond hair by the cubic foot. Joe Dale likes to pay top dollar for his girls and let's face it, the niece is a hippy, they give it away. They have ideals, but still. For free! And no more tits than a Boy Scout. And how about that afro on top?
She's a very charming girl, a great deal like her mother Dorothy, except for the hair, said Two-Tie in an injured tone.
Forget it. She's safe. She ain't his type, Suitcase said.
AN HOUR BEFORE Little Spinoza's first race they sat around in a funeral mood-all except Little Spinoza who stood in his bucket of ice as cool as a Tiffany cocktail stirrer, dreaming in black jewelry eyes of emerald alfalfa and clover of Burmese jade. He had miraculously regained his innocence as they had all lost theirs. He had forgotten what it was to go to the dirty races, but they were owners now-maybe they should have stayed drudges, toadies and slaves. They should have known they weren't the lucky type.
Deucey turned up the collar of her gray raincoat and plopped a soggy woolen golfing cap on her head as if it had been an ice bag. She reached in her pocket and went to work on a pint of Early Times. Medicine Ed sat in a metal folding chair with his stick leg propped straight out in front of him on a bale of hay. His liver brown hands were floury from the cold. He was oiling a petrified curl of leather from a halter, the little blackened end piece that went through the buckle. It ain't a decent piece of tack in the outfit, he had complained and set to work gravely, so he could sit there looking down in his lap and wouldn't have to talk to the women. Maggie lay on her back in the straw next to Little Spinoza, staring at him and trying to understand, but without her fingers spidering over his legs and back, his horse brain was closed to her, dark as an Ocean City frozen custard stand in December.
They were all expecting the worst. Maybe he had turned into a chucklehead girl on them. Or like these boys round here anymore he did not want to work. Or maybe he was woolgathered about his manhood, not knowing what he was. Even though he wasn't supposed to win, they had thought he'd be pawing up sparks by now, thinking about his race. They had thought that Earlie or whoever it was would have a hard time pulling him, but at forty minutes to post he didn't seem to have noticed yet that he would have to run.
Around 6:30, the pony-girl Alice Nuzum ambled along. How y'all doing tonight? she said. At first no one bothered to answer her, for they weren't cheered by her visit. I'm taking this one lying down, Maggie finally said, from the straw at Spinoza's feet. Who wants to know? Deucey said, passing the pony-girl the open pint of Early Times without looking at her. Alice, I'm going to share my likker with you even though you ain't said nothing good about my horse in a month. Tell you the truth, Alice began. Don't, Deucey said.
Medicine Ed stood up and limped off to the tack room, carrying the discolored bit of halter out in front of him like a dead snake. He always kept a respectful distance from Alice, for to him she look like some cunjure woman's helping hand, that do her bidding in the deep of night and the rest of the time live alone under a rock.
I can see this ain't the right time, the pony-girl said and stepped up to the webbing where the horse stood in a tub of ice. Little Spinoza nickered with pleasure at the sight of her.
Deucey groaned. Cussed horse is more interested in his pals than in the damn race. Hey, tell him he's in the gate in less than thirty minutes, will ya. Maybe he listens to you.
Alice sank her chewed-off fingernails in Little Spinoza's topknot. Wake up, little buddy. O well, I guess today ain't the day, eh?
Maggie gazed at them from below. Suddenly, today of all days, she found herself liking Alice's looks. Alice was profoundly short-waisted; her Brunswick High School Marching Band jacket might have been on display in Puterbaugh's Department Store window, holding its shape with a full gut of tissue paper. It was a hard, round, muscular chest with small breasts that just rounded it out. Her legs were skinny as wires. The black hair that hung through a red rubberband behind her head was greasy, her skin was bumpy, and her fingernails ended in half moons of blue dirt. She didn't care one straw how she looked. She was around Maggie's age. She was fearless, though, and she knew how to crouch on the back of a horse.
Okay, so maybe this ain't the time, she said without turning around, but what the heck, this afternoon I'm lying on my cellar floor pumping iron?-(she lived with her mother in East Liverpool)-and suddenly I get this, like, flash of light what kinda horse you got here. I had him wrong-now they stared at her out-and-out hostilely-yup, well, no hurry, but I know this, you'll be calling me up tomorrow. If Earlie and the horse make it through this race alive, don't give up, gimme a call, I'm the one you want. You're gonna have to put me on your horse. Look under Nuzum in East Liverpool. I don't have no agent yet. You'll be in touch. See youse later.
They gazed dully after the shiny black jacket loping on wires for legs across the wet and floodlit road. Put her on their horse, when they had the leading rider? Fat chance.
They stared Alice out of sight, nobody spoke, and then they were dragging off through the puddles to the post parade, all down in the mouth except Little Spinoza, who might have been a small boy on his way to dip tadpoles in the woods, marching along, splish splash, across the rain-glazed parking lots, gazing at everything brightly and airily, swinging his little pail.
Even when they got to the track where on a race night, so stories had it, Little Spinoza used to go pop-eyed with terror, exude yellow lather like sewer foam under his belly and bite or kick anyone that strayed into his path, he only blinked, at first, at the milling crowds. What were all these loud obnoxious people doing here? Where was his fly-light rider Alice Nuzum? What about his working companion Grizzly-where was he? Were they going for another lazy gallop towards the long white hem of sun just showing in the south? No they were not. Instead of that glowing, silent, bird-scattered seam of morning along the horizon, there rose up this raucous light-soaked clubhouse crawling with human beings.
Little Spinoza looked around for Maggie, his handmaiden who had made it her job to shape the world comfy or even ecstatic. Where she was, was no pain. And here she was, but getting smaller and weaker while waves of something hurtful and chaotic, some harsh old world he dimly remembered, were getting louder, faster and taller. By the time they turned into the paddock, Little Spinoza looked offended and suspicious, and after the tattoo man rolled up his lip-naturally he didn't like for anyone he didn't know to poke around his mouth-his eyes opened wide. Wide and round and blank.
He was the six horse. Could be worse, Deucey had said: If he comes out of the gate straight, he can still get to the rail with his speed. And he didn't go crazy yet. He wasn't awash between his legs in sickly yellow sweat. When Deucey tightened the girth on his racing saddle he almost pulled Maggie off her feet, slashing down once with his teeth, but in the last moment Maggie snatched on the shank and he came up looking dazed and embarrassed-after all it was only Deucey, smelling of whiskey and bubblegum. Even after the call, Riders up! he held together, only pinned his ears and looked, in his usually perfect face, smeared and wild. He didn't even change that much when Deucey gave Earlie a leg up and the jockey landed on his back.