By now they walking the paddock fence. Medicine Ed leaned on the rail with his heart going too fast and she walked on, looking at him across Pelter's back with a worried wrinkle in her forehead. Medicine Ed scoured the crowd for a tall gray gentleman with high-heel rusty red paddock boots, a string tie and a curl in the middle of his forehead. He will be laughing through his long gold teeth. Ed didn't see Death nor either the Devil and his heart slowed down. Well fine and good if somebody got somewhere to run to, Medicine Ed said to himself. If not, you can go to the wind.
Now he standing by the hundred-dollar parimutuel window deep in thought. His whole bankroll, through the helping agency of Two-Tie, is already riding on Lord of Misery. It is too late to take back. Yet and still, his pocket full of money-though he owe Two-Tie that money-and the medicine might not take. Yesday when he was at his work, why, it wasn't that spirit of wonder and so consequently he ain't sure. In the end he take and put the powder to the four corners of the world but he ain't sure.
It's time to bet and Medicine Ed still hasn't made no move. He is standing by the parimutuel window thinking, Seven furlongs is Little Spinoza race. Horse could run in. Well fine and good if somebody got somewhere to run to, he mutter, but at the same time he is thinking, Horse might could run in.
The young fool's horse, that Mr Boll Weevil twin which last summer ain't had a mark on him, look sore and common and out of his class. Pelter is number 9, well out of it, for him the race too short and anyway he seem to know what's what, he don't even break a sweat. Could be he figured it out when that do-less jockey Jojo Woods climb up on his long back. The warhorses, all them old milers, whatever they name is, number 4 with the knee, number 5 with the feet, number 6 with some other misery so his head go down when his left foreleg come up-they will run honest enough, put no shame on nobody and do nothing to speak of. And which is exactly what they supposed to do, collect 200 dollars and go home.
But Little Spinoza, the 3 horse, his horse and the women's horse, now that horse might could run in. Deep dapples have rose in his round mahogany flanks. He jog a little, feeling good. He shine like a parlor piano. He seem to have lost his years behind the kind treatment he get, this feeling of home and family and nature with the goat and the women and that. Some way you always feel the danger laying in ambush for an animal so childish carefree in his mind. Yet and still. It's something between that horse and Alice Nuzum, who is up on the horse now in they secondhand silver silks, with them funny little half legs pressed up under her. It's something in the way she ain't man nor either woman, ain't people nor either animal, and the horse too, Little Spinoza, have never quite had his four feet in this world. It's like them two know each other mind and have somewheres to meet, some halfway place. They ain't stuck with things the same what they've always been.
Horses out on the track now and up on the board the numbers jumping like a toadfrog pond, all except Lord of Misery, he is steady at even money. Nobody was supposed to know nothing about the Nebraska deal save them that has a horse in the race, and yet and still it is so much down on the horse that nothing can pry that big 1 loose off the board. Three minutes to post and Little Spinoza stand at 6 to 1. Can Little Spinoza win? It be a peculiar day when Medicine Ed go down there and lay a bet against his own medicine. But things has changed, even if he, Medicine Ed, ain't changed. Or has he? He is not sure of his medicine no more. He sure it do something. What it do, that he can't see. Yet and still. How can Lord of Misery lose on this crooked track with all that gangster money saying he win? That bunch that play poker every night at Two-Tie's has run through money like Grant through Richmond to play they last dollar on the horse; how can the horse run out?
He is standing by the parimutuel window thinking, Yet and stilclass="underline" seven furlongs is Little Spinoza race. Horse could run in. If he do run in, them that hate me is brought low and destroyed. They will be hot at me and they will pursue me to hurt me but, gone to glory, if he do run in, wouldn't that be fine. I take that money and fly-and Medicine Ed step in line, reach his hand deep in his pocket. There is one man in front of him, and now he done.
Your wager? say the clerk.
Medicine Ed can't move his tongue. He is thinking:
But if it's no place for you and you run off, before you is nobody knowing you, nothing but disappointment, trouble, nobody that care a red nickel for you, emergencies in the night, disease, hospital cases and death.
The bell rings, the window is closed, the race is off.
NOW IT ALL FALLS INTO PLACE. Before, you thought you knew, and felt your way along blindly. And though this world is a black tunnel of love where the gods admonished you to search without rest for your lost twin, it's also haired all over with false pointers, evil instructions, lost-forever dead-ends. Thus you let Joe Dale Bigg, alias Joe Dale Biglia, get his fingers in your pie. And he gave you (maybe he didn't mean to, but she liked you better than she was supposed to) Natalie, the New Rochelle auto parts chainstore divorcee, with her big pink open mouth like a toilet seat. And she got you tangled in that New York money, and now her hoodlum son wants to take you out and Joe Dale wouldn't complain if he did. So much for the things of this world. But things of the world have this distinction: they end. They can only chase you so far, then they end, whereas you'll go on. You know, you know so much you're your own private Southland Electric, you're all energy, you no longer need food or sleep. The animals talk to you, no intermediaries needed, no condition books, no clockers, no vets. They tell you what they need.
The Mahdi wants this race. You recognize that he is out against his old enemy, that this is an epic confrontation and he may lose. This world itself may end. The frontier between the worlds awaits all heroes. You go for broke, both of you. You've put every dollar you had, or could borrow from Natalie, on The Mahdi. It's good against evil, The Mahdi, the expected one, redeemer of this world, your representative, against Lord of Misrule, the knacker from Nebraska, the Devil himself; and ranged all in between are sundry demons, lost souls, underlings and benighted ones. Including her. You know them all. Everything talks to you. The messages square. Everyone fits in the picture. You could write the book and the glossary of the book, forget the glossary, the fucking encyclopedia, all twenty volumes, but there's no time. Or rather, there is a time for the things of this world, which is now: The Mahdi wants this race. So you give it to him. You let him run.
The jockey, Earlie, has his exact instructions. Drop his head. The boy looked at you cross-eyed. In this race? You sure? Before, you always said to him: Horse has got to run again. This time: Like there's no tomorrow, because there ain't. You smiled. He got the picture. And anyway, the horse knows what to do.
The Mahdi, redeemer of this world, is a perfect actor in the gate. The gods so design that he has your lucky number, the number of her beauties and her sorrows: 7. And he has the blessed early speed to cross the racetrack in front of the noble old bums in the middle. But in this world the Devil draws a better post position. The Devil is tight with Racing Secretary Chenille, he runs stall man Smithers, Joe Dale Bigg is one of his pet flunkies, ergo, Lord of Misrule gets the post position, God, echod, ONE, 1. Disguised as God, the Devil is pretty damn cool in the gate too.