The van stopped, woof, down comes the ramp, and a kid, unhealthy-looking like all racetrack kids, worm white, skull bones poking out of his skinny head, stood at the top of the ramp with a small black horse that couldn't even stand right: Lord of Misrule already rocked, or seemed to rock, on the flat floor of the van like a table with one short leg. And those legs-they were so swelled out from long-ago bowed tendons on both sides that they were one straight line from knee to ankle, drainpipes without contour except for the waffling left over from firing and blistering agents and god knows what.
Old Devil get behind of me, said Medicine Ed.
I'm scared, Maggie said, why am I scared?
You see what it's gonna cost Spinoza here just to chase after him, Deucey said.
What do you mean? Maggie said. We're not racing him. Are we?
Deucey added: Because that horse don't know from pain.
Notice the white six of syphilis on his forehead, Tommy Hansel said. They all looked away from the horse, and looked at him. Tommy leaned against the tack room door. The planes under his eyes were luminous with some peculiar idea, and sweat pearled his handsome, heavy forehead.
Say what? Medicine Ed asked.
But Tommy Hansel smiled as if he had been making a joke, and, relieved, they turned back to look at the horse.
Tell you what, Medicine Ed said. He ain't get them bad wheels from standing in no stall.
All kinds of people had come to watch from the grass bib of the shedrow, horsemen, grooms and ponygirls, hot-walkers and assorted riff-raff. They were waiting. Then the terrible thing happened. The back door of the Racing Secretary's pre-fab office shack opened and a large bald man with mastiff jowls and tea-colored eyeglasses came out and stood on the wooden stair. It was Standish Chenille himself. People blinked, for the racing secretary was seldom seen. He descended the stair and scuffed at a leisurely pace towards Lord of Misrule's van. The face in the cab of the van was freckled, boyish and rough, with a Western squint and a broad snub nose. Mr. Standish Chenille leaned over and said to him, low, but not so low that everybody couldn't hear: Barn Z. Raymond called ahead. His eyes pinched up, and all at once he had a hole similar to a smile punched into his heavy face. It was a welcome, a princely welcome. They all looked at each other. They could scarcely believe their ears. They looked at each other, and they thought, This is big, and, How can we get a piece of it, and, We'll take anything, even a hoof paring, sawdust, loose change.
The horses around them felt it too. Joe Dale Bigg's were all of a sudden beating up the red dust under the hot-walking machine, tearing around the aluminum carousel at a thrilled gallop that few of them ever showed at the far turn.
Going into the stretch it's Nobody's Nothing, with Nowhere making his move on the inside, Deucey called the race. A few people laughed. Lord of Misrule threw back his head, snorted out dust and rolled his eye at the other cheap horses. His black tail arched and, ugly as Rumpelstiltskin, he let drop great soft nuggets, part gold, part straw, all the way down the ramp.
THERE WAS A HAYBALE up against the shingle between the young fool's tack room and his stalls, and Medicine Ed sat here in the afternoon and studied, and after a while he let his heavy head fall back against the wall and he might doze. He didn't care these days to walk out the back gate over to Zeno's old Winnebago. He couldn't sleep in it no more if he did, for now he start to worry that he gone to lose it. Yes, he had that draggyfied feeling he was about to lose his good home one more time.
It wasn't the horses gone sour. Horses gone good: Mahdi. Pelter. Even the mare and Railroad Joe run in the money now and then. Wasn't the money. Seem like all of a sudden it was money in the young fool's pocket, New York money, might could be money from some crime character, since the young fool so jumpy and no owner in sight. No. The young fool's reason have clouded, what it is. Ever since he come back with Pelter from Joe Dale Bigg's farm, he be wandering in his mind. He talked to the horses about King Death, then he listened to the quiet, like they talking back-it give Ed the creeper crawlers to hear it. You think you are stronger? he say to Mahdi, remember, they come from Nebraska, where King Death keeps his court in beauty and decay. The little hairs stand up and wave on the back of Medicine Ed's neck.
He fixing to put The Mahdi in that special race against Lord of Misrule, and not just for the teenchy cut of the purse they slipping to all the entries, half a per cent or two hundred bucks or what it is. No, he gone try against common sense to win with the horse, good against evil, some catawamptious idea, sure to bring the Devil down on him if it ain't the Devil messing up his mind already. And if the gangsters whose race it is don't get to him first, him and anybody work for him. Or Joe Dale Bigg-since they take away Pelter off his farm, Joe Dale has turned cold as grave dirt. You can see why Death run in the young fool's mind, even if he is crazy. Medicine Ed pushed two fingers deep in his shut eyes, gold scum rippled through the black in his head, and hot as it was, he shivered.
Somebody pulled his sleeve. What do you know, Ed? It was the frizzly girl. She sat down on the haybale next to him, she say What do you know? and then she don't say nothing. Since she come back from Joe Dale Bigg's farm with Pelter, the hot sauce was gone out of her, the longnose newsbag too. She taken care of her horse, that was about it. She showed up in the morning before even Ed and mucked the stalls and set out the feed buckets and don't say nothing to nobody, and by the time Ed dragged in, and he ain't lay in no bed past four in the morning in forty years, she walking her horse. Pelter-he her horse now. She walked him slow, slow as the horse in front, whosomever it happened to be.
She say, Ed, what do you know? and the rest of the time she quiet. Or what she will say: I gotta get us home. All I want is to get us home in one piece. Who is us, Medicine Ed want to ask. Do that count him, Medicine Ed? But he don't ask and she don't say.
She knows things is falling apart, that's all she know. Deucey and her and Medicine Ed standing under the eaves Sadday last in the steaming hot rain, and the young fool look in and say, Nebraska, k, n, a, sumpm, sumpm, he spelled it out-even Medicine Ed knows Nebraska don't start with no k. That spells knacker, he say, you see how it's almost the same word? Medicine Ed, he don't say nothing. He don't want to get in no disputes with his boss about how you spell this and how you spell that.
But Deucey say, Nebraska spells b, u, t, e, bute, you mean. That's the only thing they got going for them up there, I been there, I know what I'm talking about, and that's the only reason that horse still wins. They pickled him in bute.
It's more to that horse than bute, Medicine Ed put in.
Bute or no bute, the young fool say. Bute is the work of man. We'll see who the forces of good like on race day. Anyhow, bute is not entirely unknown here at the Mound.