Oooo. Must be a helluva horse, huh. The Mahdi, eh? Joe Dale said, pretending to be impressed.
He's a piece of junk, but he'll win at the Mound for a while. If he stays sound.
What's that again-fourth race Saturday night? But of course you hadn't said which race. He was letting you know he knew. You peered at him without answering.
He shrugged. Hey, you know what you're talking about. I'll see what I can do.
And he departed. So it looked like luck, which had been doing her best to claw her way through to you, had decreed that you should have The Mahdi back after all, which made beautiful sense-but of course you had no intention of doing what Joe Dale Bigg asked you to do, unless it happened to coincide with your own intention. A small-town mafioso like that couldn't hurt you. You'd have to look out for Maggie now-she wasn't as strong-but Biglia deserved no loyalty. He was dark and rich in flesh like duck meat, but shallow. He talked dirty about women to men he hardly knew. Never mind that Women are more patient crap. Joe Dale, same as Biggy, went into rages at spirited horses and kicked and bullied them-the whole family was famous for it. He didn't even like to come in his barn and dirty his shoes. In fact he hated animals. He was vulgar. He couldn't love. He was nothing but a dark emptiness-the absence of good. He could do you no harm.
SEEM LIKE EVERY DAY since time he been thinking what a shame and pity it is how the world is coming down, how the pride of work has disappeared, until they just laugh at him, the boys that come on the racetrack now-how the horses is misused and abused, started out racing too young before they bones is hard, not rested proper and dosed with all kind of shots and pills, and so consequently don't last-how these five-and-dime horsetrainers and they ten-cent owners anymore be tighter than the bark on a beech tree, when it come to anything but rush rush rush them horses back to the track and collect a bet. It ain't no real sportsmen round here no more, if it ever was, or either sportswomen. And John Q. Public wasn't no dumber than he used to was, but also he ain't no smarter.
Seem like since time, that was the most fun old Medicine Ed been having, studying on it every day, every day, how this good thing has come down and this other thing that once was fine, has went to pieces on him. Until he be sick and tired of his own self. And then he land up in his mashed-in trailer in the deep of night, mumbling through his bald gums and mixing up some pocket toby to get his own back. Snatching blind at any thread that maybe tie his luck to him.
And which is why every now and then when some kind of a good thing come together in nature, it make the whole world new. Seem like once again he have found that harmony, how they is a power in charge and strong secret threads lead around and under, and tie it all together.
And which is what happened that night with Little Spinoza.
He might have knowed that Alice Nuzum, who didn't resemble no other human being he has ever seen, man nor either woman, would have to be a luck thrower of some kind. The way she look-not ugly but like something born between mud and river water, like something out of a creek swamp-a person must figure fate has already laid a shaping hand on her and is satisfied. Or can't do no worse. Or maybe mean to make it even to her in some way.
Nothing in Little Spinoza's routine changed behind that bad race. It was still Alice on Little Spinoza at four fifteen in the morning and old Deucey peering into the fog from the river with her spyglass and stop watch, clocking Little Spinoza's little bit of speed. And which was still there, the speed, but now it ain't even no one to hide it from. Earlie Beaufait has done them the favor to badmouth Little Spinoza and his trainer and three cockamamie owners too. Horse be no count, they say, a killer in the gate and a quitter in the stretch, with a hard, ruinated mouth. One more incident and management gone be stamping his foaling papers NOT FIT FOR RACING.
And the apprentice jockey them three have found under a rock somewheres, since Earlie quit them! A townie, a female, and ugly enough to scare a hound dog off a gut wagon-and a bugboy at that, you know how they say about a bugboy, he save you seven pounds in the gate and add thirty pounds in the stretch-and this is a horse even Earlie Beaufait couldn't get no stretch run out of him. So this time for two weeks everybody keep that clear of the horse you think he carry that equine selfalitis. Not even Joe Dale Bigg come round. And then Deucey drops him in for three thousand.
Everybody think they see them coming, everybody figure the plain obvious truth-them are the broke, pityfull owners of Little Spinoza that done shelled out their last two-dollar bill on that horse-the colored groom, the he-she trainer and the lost college girl-them three are gone try and get him claimed for what they paid for him, which was far too much money already.
But what Alice Nuzum say is this. Whoever come up with that idea that Little Spinoza has early speed? He has speed all right-and it is an exact amount coiled up in him the way a black snake will live snug under your well cover all winter. He is a one-run horse but of a very classy kind, Alice say. He has an exact amount of speed which could last an exact time, from the last possible moment when you call on him, until that wire. But until now he has squandered it early. He is like some corner zoot suiter cut loose with his mama's death benefit before he has become a man, before he has grown sense to put it in the bank or either a choice bit of real estate. He come out the gate going every whichaway in terror and pure foolishness. He go every whichaway and finally he tire and die, and if the boy hit him he wither up besides. And yet he is a dreamer horse who like to look at ducks splashing down on the river and hawks sailing on the wind. Alice say: What if he can sleep like Sleeping Beauty, only on his feet, with no pain, and stay asleep till I wake him up at the quarter pole? And Medicine Ed can follow her idea: As long as the pace up front ain't too slow, as long as the frontrunners be halfway honest, he might could get there.
To rate him, Alice has to hypmotize the horse a little, and she say she can do it. How can she? O she has her little ways, she say, maybe I sing him to sleep, and she smiles that no-lip smile that put Medicine Ed in mind of a newt.
Alice couldn't prove it. She showed them, in a little trial with Grizzly and Miss Fowlerville and Railroad Joe, how Little Spinoza come swooping by in the stretch. True, them others wasn't but 2000 or even 1500 dollar horses-and two belong to Hansel, but the young fool had suddenly drove off somewhere for two days to see about a horse, and left Medicine Ed in charge. Naturally a lit-up grandstand and a thousand screaming bettors be something different from dark and silence of first morn-let alone a paddock judge poking in his mouth, and the starter man grabbing his ear or snatching his lip in the gate. All the same, that is Alice's idea, which do have the beauty to tie all the parts together.
They look for a weekend race, so it is a decent handle. They don't talk about it, but they all fixing to cash that bet. Won't anybody in the house like Spinoza save for them three, thank you Lord! Of course Medicine Ed must tell Two-Tie, for he will need him a small advance. And Two-Tie have his own people, no way round that. And might probly that old porkypine Deucey have somebody she got to let in, some orphan or hard case. And who can doubt but what the frizzly hair girl gone to tell the young fool all?-though old Deucey may have suspicioned that, and maybe she liked this week on purpose, when Hansel has disappeared somewhere to see a man about a horse.
All signs saying that Sadday, first Sadday in December, be a fair day and a good track, not wet and heavy nor either too hard froze. And soon's they was a card to study, Deucey and Medicine Ed and Alice went over the entries prepared to scratch if it was no speed in the race. But they was two clear frontrunners for sure gone to fight it out up there, the one horse, Ink Spot, and the six horse, Navy something, and the four horse might be in it too, Medicine Ed disremembered the name.