He didn't try to read all the words in the chart, or the horses' names. Time was short and that was beyond his learning. Z-e-n-o he found readily enough. Over on the owner's side, to his surprise, he saw the same thing again, Own.-Zeno G II. Then he looked at the numbers. Numbers he could read as good as Einstein. The thing that struck him right away about Zeno's three-year-old was the fewness of the numbers. For some reason they had shut the fellow down after two races as a two-year-old. He was somebody's big red secret, for the horse had hardly run.
Maggie raked and limed and spread golden bedding in one very fine stall in Barn B, by the front entrance, with a view through the backside fence of rufous hills packed close as tripe east of the river. But then it turned out the crewcut old hag knew what she was talking about. The next stall that Suitcase dealt her lay five minutes south in Barn J, out of sight behind the track kitchen. When she finished in Barn J, it was only three minutes to Barn M, but this was a dank concrete block building with heavy traffic going by on its way to the track, and from this particular corner a nervous horse could watch the heads of exercise boys and girls bobbing along the racetrack fence, and hear the constant drumming of hooves. Some previous tenant had worn a trench a foot deep around the four walls, like the dried-up moat of a castle. Maggie found a shovel and did what she could with it. You'd put the horse you didn't care about in here.
What was Tommy going to say? He might laugh. He had that side. But this was not meant to be a long shot, this move. Shipping into Indian Mound Downs was the logical culmination of Tommy Hansel's science of running them where they belonged. He planned to steal with these horses, who were all better than they looked on paper. It was slumming and flim flam, yes, but a sure thing. Almost. Or so he said. Or so she thought he'd said.
Back in Charles Town, T. Hansel Stables was deep in the red. To get to the Mound, Tommy was staking everything they had, and a few things they didn't exactly have-the souring patience of the last owner, the good will of the feed man, the hay man, the tack shop, the last tired spark of game in Mrs. Pichot, their landlady, a racetrack widow herself. They had staked Maggie's puny tax return, Maggie's dead mother's cherry Queen Anne dining room table, chairs and highboy, even Maggie's job in the real world, as a writer of food copy for the Winchester Mail Thursday grocery store supplement-a laughable calling, but one job she was sad to let go.
And now that he had cash to play and Maggie's free labor and four ready horses who looked pitiful on paper, the trick was to get in and get out fast. It was Tommy who said so, Maggie had only soaked this stuff up faithfully for months-sitting on the curb of the shedrow writing headlines for Menus by Margaret: ORANGE RUM FILLING RAIDS MARGARET'S TEA RING, MANY LIVES OF WORLD'S OLDEST BEAN (no one watched what she wrote at that rag), and gazing up at Tommy more hypnotized than credulous, like a chawbacon at a snake-oil show. Get in and get out fast, he chanted. They had to arrive at a small track unnoticed (small but not too small-it had to have a respectable handle), drop each horse in the cheapest possible claiming race before anybody knew what they had, cash their bets, and ship out again, maybe without losing a single horse.
And now already part one, Get in fast, was down the drain. They hadn't managed to sneak under the fence unseen, as planned, with their penny-ante operation. They had been noticed. Just like that, the sure thing careened out of management. Now they had to figure out what the track officials were trying to do. Busted by a stall man named Suitcase Smithers, for the love of god! These guys were cartoon creepy-but someone could get hurt. She was ready to back out right now.
But Tommy wouldn't back out. Tommy might well laugh. Fat risk made his eyes brighten and soften, his forehead clarify, his nails harden, his black hair shine. The way Tommy thought, if you could call that thinking: He had been born lonely, therefore some bountiful girl would always come to him-he required it. Luck was the same. It came because you called to it, whistled for it, because it saw you wouldn't take no for an answer. Luck was the world leaping into your arms across a deep ditch and long odds. It was love, which is never deserved; all the rest was drudgery. So he might well laugh at this news-laugh that soft, fond, mocking laugh-just as he laughed at all fools, including himself, who rose to iridescent, dangerous bait, where they could be caught-the same way he laughed, softly, in bed, when she came.
(That soft laugh had got its hook in her, yes, but she thought she knew where Tommy came by his guts. He wasn't quite right in the soul, really. There was that missing twin he talked about all the time-his mother, Alberta, a waitress in Yonkers who rarely made sense, swore she'd been carrying twins, but one had got lost in the womb, she said, and for once Tommy believed her. He had the notion he'd swallowed his twin up himself, her he said, swallowed her up, big fish little fish, before he knew any better. Anyway there was a kind of spinning emptiness in him where things like sensible fear should be, a living hollow where light was dark. As some grown trees, oaks even, are full of leaf but wind-shook, with a stain of hole at their center.)
And finally another five minutes south to barn Z, one wooden stall in fair repair in the transient shedrow near the back gate. Gus Zeno, a trainer they knew from Charles Town, kept some stalls here, watched over by an old black groom; and so did the buzz-cut crone, Deucey, the one who had seen this coming. Well, you were right about the whole deal, Maggie said when she saw her, and Deucey said: I wrote the book on two-faced false-hearted luck, girlie, anything you want to know about going it on your own at the races, come to me. And grinned at her with black-edged teeth. She was a dilapidated hull of a woman with wrestler's muscles and a bulge at the waist of her filthy undershirt that could only be what was left of her breasts. She had one stall with a horse in it, and not even a second stall for a tack room, but you had to think she was getting by. More than getting by-in the know, scared of no one and don't care who knows it, although Maggie thought her half mad and far too cozy.
Psst, girlie, the old woman stuck her head in the stall that Maggie was raking. You looking for a place to coop for the night?
I'm not certain, Maggie said carefully. Of my situation. It could change any time. Thanks, though.
Your do-less boyfriend might roll in here yet with them horses, is that it? And whatever is he gonna say, tsk, tsk.
Maggie dragged a rake to the darkest corner of the stall. How did she know, that was the question. Do you really have just the one horse? she asked.
One horse and no home, that there is your basic definition of a gyp, which I am, Deucey said. Although I am right now under some pressure to expand my stable to take in this beauty-full boy-only now Maggie looked up and saw that the old girl was walking, on a loose shank, the loveliest little dark bay horse she had ever seen on a cheap track-only, A, I don't got no playing room, which is the long definition of a gyp operation, and B, I don't like them that's pushing me. And anyway, you know me-(Maggie didn't know her)-gyp I was born and gyp I'll die, or hope to, in the saddle and not in no hospital, that is.
Maggie peered at her. Are you an actual gypsy?
Ha. Soon as I can understand it, Deucey said, I'm a nothing. Though I wouldn't put it past me. They took everybody in them coalmines at the start, even gypsies. To be honest I don't know what I am. Just a coalville orphan from Dola, 40 mile down the Short Line from the river. Everything I know about horses was learned me by the age of eight in a one-man one-pony punch mine, where me and this pony Redrags pulled the tub. Uncle Stevo was the man, I was just part of the pony. I used to sleep on haybales in a coal mine, which makes Barn Z look like the Dewdrop Inn, dearie. Now you let me know if you need a room in this fine hotel. And she winked hideously.