You're going to show in this race, she told Pelter. It's the poor people's derby. Now it's hot as the devil out there so take it easy. You have seven-eighths of a mile to come to yourself and you don't have to win. You don't want to win even if you could win, that wouldn't be healthy, for me or for you. But even with that clown on your back you ought to run third. Just get some exercise and run your race.
Little by little the pool of pale pink oil of wintergreen horse liniment vanished under her fingers. She felt deep tremors moving like waves below the brown glistening fur, from shoulders to loins of the horse's very long back. He buckled away from her with a whinny and came up biting and kicking a little. She stepped out of the way. We just need getaway money now, she told him. That's why I'm betting Nebraska. Just run your race, you'll make me 800 dollars. I have a good feeling about you. I don't know what the heck it means but I do.
THE SUN HAD FINALLY gone down. The yellow twilight, made out of air that fried all day, had something greasy about it. The backside smelt like hot pennies, turpentine and dung. The horses picked their way along a dusty track, first beside a parking lot, then along the racecourse fence. This dotted line of bald spots in the grass was the shortest route to the racetrack from Barn Z. Everybody went this way.
An ancient pony-boy came for Lord of Misrule on a tall spotted rodeo pony. The old pony-boy, known as Wuzzy, was always exactly on time. So Lord of Misrule set out first on the long walk to the paddock, the wormy kid trailing along behind.
Wuzzy had been hired just for show. Lord of Misrule went calmly and lightly on his small pitch-painted feet, although above them the waffled, battered black ankles stuck out of long white bandages, not even clean.
Tommy Hansel came next in the parade. He too walked lightly, for he had lost a few pounds, since he no longer needed to eat or sleep. He wore a black vest with some sort of round emerald green and gold saint's medallion pinned to one side. He knew it was a bowling club stick pin from a Czech social club in Steubenville. He had found it in the trailer. But he also knew it was a magic pin, a mark from St. Jack.
On the way to a race he had used to dawdle till last or next to last, a habit left over from the schoolyard and the family gas station and used car lot in Trempeleau, Wisconsin, but madness (he knew he was mad) had polished away the crude burr of all that schoolboy sedition and procrastination. It had been a way of dreaming off, and at the same time of needling his father, his teachers and his bosses, but that was over. He knew now he couldn't lose and so did his horse. It was impossible to lose to lesser beings than you were-no mere mortal man, not even a king, could swallow up God, though he might eat of Him. You looked around for your twin. She wasn't there. She carried a curse for taking away your horse. She would get to post last.
Now that he had it all figured out, he gleamed like a king in a classic comic (he saw this himself), although his ruffled shirt was a little grimy, something he could not make out by himself in the dead blue fluorescent light of the trailer. A cold blue fire burned at the backs of his eyes and the eyes seemed off on their separate missions, one east one west, wider apart than ever. His boots had been burnished to amber by a Charles Town bootblack, but he wore, not by accident, one red sock, one blue. His madness had wrecked the careful economy of the body. His color was high, his beauty spendthrift. It couldn't last.
Tommy Hansel leads the Mahdi. The Mahdi won five times in the winter. Then Hansel claimed him back. In March, in jail for 2500 dollars, he showed once, closing; in April, ran second, then sixth, then fifth. Last week he didn't quite last for 1650. What does it mean? Just because Hansel is nuts, you can't say for sure he doesn't know what he's doing. He might be working for Nebraska, he might think he's taking orders from some reptile king on Pluto and he still might win, who knows? The Mahdi rolls along the path to the race track as red, broad and shining as a John Deere tractor, but when he walks, can that be a tiny catch or halt, an almost insignificant shortening of the smooth action of his brawny forearms, some little tightness or twisting in the subcutaneous cables? Can he be sore?
Sonia's Birthday, a tall gray six-year-old mare with rundown heels in front and a ruffle of sweat like a dingy tutu between her thighs, crunches her way along the gravel path, swinging her head from side to side and backing up as they near the paddock gate. She is not happy about this race, but her trainer needs 200 dollars. Next comes Sudanese, a neat and abstract black horse, no markings, well made, with a crop of uneven knots about his delicate joints and an air of deep self-absorption. Who recalls that six years ago Sudanese ran in the Gold Bug Futurity for $200,000, led to the sixteenth pole and held on to show? Certainly not he. Next come Wolgamot, Island Life and Hung The Moon, all mainstays of the 2000-dollar allowance field, la creme de la crud of Indian Mound Downs, track favorites, each with his loyal following, all routers, all grizzled regulars of the ninth and tenth race, named on many an exacta ticket, each dragging his day of glory behind him, some Farmers and Merchants Cup or Pickle Packers Association Handicap or even some just-missed minor stakes. All are reasonably clean for this race, scarred and gleaming dark bays of various shades and descriptions-the commonest run of racehorse, dirt cheap, bone sore and all more beautiful than chests of viols of inlaid rosewood and pear. Hung The Moon, an amiable gelding of ten years old, stops to snatch at a dusty tuft of crabgrass along the parking lot fence. If this race is anything special he hasn't noticed.
Next to last comes Little Spinoza. Old Deucey Gifford has borrowed Penny's exercise pony Bob, put on a cowboy shirt and a bandana and they go to the track in style, Spinoza doing a crab dance on his tippy toes, rubbed and oiled to a brown-black pearl. He might be sweating a little under the floodlights but who ain't? The little philosopher is in the highest of spirits. All his friends are near.
Deucey leaned down and whispered to Medicine Ed: It's his distance and he's ready. Alice wants to try with him. What do we got to lose by letting him run? Goddamn he's ready to ramble. Goddamn he looks fine. It's no way in the world, said Medicine Ed. Yall don't want to win with that horse today even if he could win. You might could stir up the Devil that way and how you gone settle him down again when it's done? Somebody could get hurt. Hell I'm getting paid two hundred dollars to run the horse, not hold him. I didn't sign up for nothing but to bring him to the gate at post time, and here I am. I don't want it on me, Medicine Ed said. Joe Dale Bigg in with Nebraska. If you cross them gangsters or mess with they game, you don't want to meet them riding nor walking. I already don't want to meet them riding or walking, Deucey said. Ain't that good enough? Say, you down on Nebraska? Hell I am too, but I'll take that purse money instead, come to that, I'll be covered and wouldn't that just be horse racing. I never been afraid of dying. This world ain't been so good to me I can't stand the thought of leaving it. Deucey ball up her jaw like a bullfrog and march on.
Medicine Ed lowered his eyes from her. For that's how it was for him too. Ma'fact it was behind that one thing, how the world ain't give up her bounty to him yet, that he couldn't make up his mind to leave her but give her, over and over, one more chance and one more chance. He look in back of him for the frizzly hair girl. She kicking along in the dirt with Pelter, gray as a ghost. He drift her way. Alice and Deucey, they fixin to turn Spinoza loose, he whispered. She stared at him, shook her head. Then she laughed a little. My word. Whatever happened to majority rule in this partnership? Everyone seems to have lost their way on the road to this weirdo race. But what can we do, Ed? She laughed again, still shaking that frizzly head but but scared awake and beginning to believe. I guess we can't complain to the racing secretary that our partners are on the square. Somebody could get hurt, Ed said. I know. Spinoza might could run round that black horse. What then? She shrugged. Take the money and run?