I might not be in racing too much longer, Maggie said.
Anyhow, plenty of old geezers liked Pelter in that race. Not everybody was as smart as we was. He smiled again, his good teeth glowing like lightning bugs in the queer green light.
Kidstuff, if I make it off this racetrack alive, I will always think of you fondly, she said.
O? Why is that?
Because you were the best of them, she said.
He looked at her sadly and she noticed for the first time-but maybe it was the light-that his handsome face was drawn into fine lines by something more than hard weather, and the whites of his eyes were the color of putty.
I hope I ain't the best you can do, Maggie, he said. I'm a-going down the drain.
MEDICINE ED, LIMING DOWN Little Spinoza's stall, looked for the frizzly girl to come back with Pelter, and meanwhile he listened to the crazy talk of the young fool, the whapping of tie chains against the wall and the bashing and thrashing of the big horse still bleeding in his lungs and tryna catch air. Tommy Hansel had shut hisself and the horse up in they stall over on the far side of the barn. Medicine Ed pressed his ear against the wall to make out what he could. He fear to hear them and fear even more not to hear them-what it might mean. He was scared to the roots of his hair, and woolgathered all in all as to what the night was trying to tell him. I went to the goofer and even so the prince of darkness taken my horse and my money, I never see the gray gentleman but I feel him all around me. And all this while out the back of his eye he have to watch that midnight blue gangster car purring like a big black cat in the dirt road, set back a little ways for once from the light pole and the thin skirt of light it throw round the back gate. Of course he couldn't see through the dark glass who was in it, but he could guess. Medicine Ed raked and strewed white Zs of bitter lime about the stall until his eyes teared up, and all the while out the side of his eye he watched for any roll of the black glass, any hand or either long small barrel out the window or the door.
And that was how he come to seen it at the last hose of Barn Z, the hose pulled tight round the far corner of the barn and the river of water pooling and muddling there where no horse was. He had more sense than to walk round the shedrow and eyeball that in the open. He went to his tack room, leaned to the chink in the back wall and tried to make out what it might mean. It was that yellow taxicab from downstairs of his apartment in Carbonport that Mr. Two-Tie use to rode around in. Roy's Taxicab, from the lunchroom, what it was, with all four doors flapped open in the skrimpy light of the darkest corner of the fence, getting hosed up and down like a hot horse, only it wasn't no horse. The soap bubbles crawled to the big puddle by the back gate in a rusty fuzzy line, and before he could even see the color of blood in that foam he had a bad ugly feeling why they would wash the car that way with the doors wide open. Then he seen the hose run inside, the low pinkish waterfall across the running board and he knew. He knew what happened to Mr. Two-Tie. To the creeper crawlers in the roots of his hair he knew what he knew: the Devil ain't taken his money, the Devil don't need his money, for his money was all markers in Mr. Two-Tie's pocket. Now Mr. Two-Tie is gone and Little Spinoza is gone. The young fool's reason is gone, soon his horses be gone, and his woman too, and Medicine Ed's home with them. But his bankroll still wrapped up tight as head cabbage in the Peoples Savings and Trust of Wheeling. His money, not much, but yet and still not nothing-the same like it was before. And hisself alive and working, working forever, world without end. O god, soul of the world, foe of the Devil who taken the young fool's reason, so help me god, I have learned my lesson, stop now, spare my life and spare out them others life and I will never practice medicine no more.
MAGGIE AND PELTER set off across the backside, Maggie crawling with nerves, Pelter in need of his dinner. On both sides of the fence, things were alive: above the racetrack, the lights had faded to a half-world and losers streamed for the exits, shedding their dead tickets as they went. Now the headlights of a thousand snarling autos crisscrossed the path that she and Pelter picked their way along, while up and down the shedrows the long, dove gray, grainy beams sifted in and out of each other like long tall ghosts. The losers in their automobiles-Margaret trusted they narrowed their bloodshot eyes at all they saw. She felt almost safe walking here.
Inside the fence, too, the long barns were alive. Here and there hot horses were still walking, buckets squeaked, hoses hissed on and off, nozzles burst into rhinestone fans and the soapy water that grooms scraped off their horses hit the dirt with a rude clack like a hand across a face. In every shedrow a stall or two glowed yellow, and bodies, plenty of bodies, crossed back and forth in front of them. Alive.
All the shedrows were alive, but most of all Barn Z. At the far corner of the transient barn, blocking the last dirt lane before the outside fence, with its back wide open and its furrowed silver carpet rolled out, was the van that was not like a Chinese jewel box, that was in fact unmarked, pocked and dirty white, its Nebraska license plate screwed on at a tilt and dog-eared in one corner. Open, empty, black inside, it waited for its seedy royal traveler, and even so, even after the miserable race he had run, it was a gleaming lacquered box of red-gold letters. Lord of Misrule was up on his blistered fetlocks and on his way in, the worm white kid swatting absently at his rump with a rolled-up comic book. His shoes scrabbled at the frets, green sparks flew and all of a sudden one silver arc shot out, like a spring from a bad toy, and caught the worm white boy in the belly. Bastid! the boy jumped backwards and fluted half soprano. What you get for sleeping, said Nebraska, laughing, in the cab. He coulda ruined me for life. End of the line for you, old man. Aaanh, one of youse is enough.
In the yellow frame of Little Spinoza's stall Maggie saw Medicine Ed, stick thin and bent forward from the small of his back like a knife with a bad hinge. The old man's bad leg dragged its sideways foot and his long deeply grooved face was closed. To look at him, you wouldn't know anything special had happened tonight at all. He was carrying away the last pads of wet straw from the empty stall on a pitchfork. Behind him lime dust powdered the wet black floor, the sugar that ghost horses eat. He had mucked Pelter's stall first and it stood open, a cube of warm gold floating above a deep floor of fresh straw. Then he had emptied Spinoza's down to nothing. She saw that he worked to fill empty time and she remembered that he too had lost Little Spinoza. How much of a material loss that might be to the old groom she had no way to know. A few of these old guys squirreled away thousands, or that's what people said. He had no vices that she could detect. He didn't drink or smoke or snort but surely he cashed a ticket now and then. Soon she wouldn't see him anymore. Why did this distress her so? He thought her a fool and his deep suspicion of her had awakened in her, over time, its opposite emotion, a deep trust in his wisdom. She needed a counselor who had no use for her and suddenly she felt she would be helpless without him. He on the other hand probably wished he had never laid eyes on her, or Tommy Hansel either. Suddenly she laughed. No doubt she was exaggerating their importance. Medicine Ed would always find a job.
But when he saw her, something came into the closed face after all. Boss done hammer and nail hisself in the stall box with the red horse, he said.
She looked at the back wall. What is that noise?
Horse can't settle down. Horse can't get his breath. Horse ain't walked yet or either eat. Horse don't come out they soon he might probly never come out.
I could get Haslipp, she said. Try to talk Tommy into letting him in.
Don't fuss at him about that horse. Veternary can't save that horse. Horse all through.