“You managed to get here, Hencher,” the man says.
“I thought I was on the dot, Larry … good as my word, you know.”
“Yes, always good as your word. But you’ve forgotten to take off your cap.”
Hencher takes it off, feels his whole head exposed and hot and ugly. At last he allows himself to look, and it is only the softest glow that his torch sheds on the man before him.
“We got the horse, right outside in the van … I told you, right outside.”
“But you stopped. You did not come here directly.”
“I did my best. I did my bloody best, but if he wants to knock it off, if he wants to stop at home and have a word with the wife, why that’s just unfortunate … but no fault of mine, is it, Larry?”
And then, listening in the direction of the car, waiting for a sound — scratch of the ignition key, oiled suck of gear-lever — he sees the hand extended in front of him and is forced to take hold of it. One boot moves, the other moves, the trenchcoat makes a harsh rubbing noise. And the hand lets go of his, the man fades out of the light and yet — Hencher wipes his face and listens— once in the darkness the footsteps ring back to him like those of an officer on parade.
He keeps his own feet quiet until he reaches the yard and sees the open night sky beginning to change and grow milky like chemicals in a vat, and until he sniffs a faint odor of dung and tobacco smoke. Then he trudges loudly as he can and suddenly, calling the name, shines the bright torch on Cowles.
“Pissed off, was he,” says Cowles, and does not blink.
But in the cab Hencher already braces the steering wheel against his belly; the driver’s open door swings to the movement of the van. Cowles and the jockey and stableboy walk in slow procession behind the van, which is not too wide for the overgrown passage between the row of stalls, the long dark space between the low stable buildings, but which is high so that now and again the roof of the van brushes then scrapes against the rotted eaves. The tires are wet from the dampness of tangled and prickly weeds. Once, the van stops and Hencher climbs down, drags a bale of molded hay from its path. Then they move — horse van, walking men — and exhaust fumes fill empty bins, water troughs, empty stalls. In darkness they pass a shovel in an iron wheelbarrow, a saddle pad covered with inert black flies, a whip leaning against a whited post. Round a corner they come upon a red lantern burning beside an open and freshly whitewashed box stall. The hay rack has been mended, clean hard silken straw covers the floor, a red horse blanket lies folded on a weathered cane chair near the lantern.
“Lovely will fetch him down for you, Hencher,” says Cowles.
“I will fetch him down myself, if you please.”
And Lovely the stableboy grins and walks into the stall; the jockey pushes the horse blanket off the chair, sits down heavily; Cowles takes one end of the chain while Hencher works with the other.
They pry up the ends of the chain, allow it to fall link upon ringing link into bright iron pools at their feet until the raised and padded ramp swings loose, opens wider and wider from the top of the van as Cowles and Hencher lower it slowly down. Two gray men who stand with hands on hips and look up into the interior of the van. It is dark in there, steam of the horse drifts out; it appears that between the impacted bright silver flesh of the horse and padded walls no space exists for a man.
Hencher puts the unlighted cigar between his teeth and steps onto the ramp. Silent and nearly broad as the horse he climbs up the ramp, gets his footing, squeezes himself against the white and silver flesh — the toe of one boot striking a hoof on edge, both hands attempting to hold off the weight of the horse — then glances down at Cowles, tries to speak, and slides suddenly into the dark of the van.
And Cowles shouts, doubles over then as powerless as Hencher in the van. The ramp bounces, shakes on its hinges, and though the brake holds and the wheels remain locked, the chassis, cab, and high black sides all sway forward once at the moment they absorb that first unnatural motion of horse lunging at trapped man. Shakes, rattles, and the first loud sound of the hoof striking its short solid blow to metal fades. But not the commotion, the blind forward swaying of the van. While Cowles is shouting for help and dodging, leaping away, he somehow keeps his eyes on the visible rear hoofs and sees that, long as it lasts — the noise, the directionless pitching of the van — those rear hoofs never cease their dancing. The horse strikes a moment longer, but there is no metallic ringing, no sharp sound, and only the ramp drags a little more and the long torch falls from the cab.
Then Cowles is vomiting into the tall grass — he is a fat man and a man as fat as himself lies inside the van — and the grass is sour, the longest blades tickle his lips. On his knees he sweats, continues to be sick, and with large distracted hands keeps trying to fold the grass down upon the whiteness collecting in the hollow of bare roots.
Hencher, with fat lifeless arms still raised to the head kicked in, huddles yet on the van’s narrow floor, though the horse is turning round and round in the whitewashed stall. The jockey has left his chair and, cigarette between his lips, dwarfed legs apart, stands holding the long torch in both his hands and aiming it — like a rifle aimed from the hip — at Cowles. While Lovely the stableboy is singing now in a young pure Irish voice to the horse.
“Give me a hand with the body, Cowles, and we’ll drag it into the stall,” the jockey says. “Can’t move it alone, cock, can’t move it alone.”
2
SIDNEY SLYTER SAYS
Fastest Track at Aldington Since War …
Thirteen Horses to Take the Field …
Rock Castle Remains Question in Reporter’s Mind …
Oh Mrs. Laval, Oh Sybilline … Your Mr. Slyter has all the luck you’ll say! Well, we drank each other’s health again last night, and she confessed that she knew me right along, and I told her that everyone knows Mr. Sidney Slyter, your old professional. I never lose sight of love or money in my prognostications, do I now? But it’s business first for me. … A puzzling late entry is Rock Castle, owned by one Mr. Michael Banks. And here’s the dodge: if the entry is actually Rock Castle as the owner claims, then I know him to be a horse belonging to the stables of that old sporting dowager, Lady Harvey-Harrow, and how does he come to be entered under the colors (lime-green and black) of Mr. Banks? Something suspicious here, something for the authorities or I miss my guess. However, I shall speak with Mr. Banks; I shall look at the horse; I shall telephone the dowager. Meanwhile, Sidney Slyter says: wish you were here. …
It was Tuesday next and Margaret began to miss Michael in the afternoon. She tried to nap, but the pillow kept slipping through her fingers; she tried to mend the curtain, but her knees were in the way of the needle. Something was coming toward the window and it made her lonely. She went to the closet and from behind the duster and pail took down Banks’ bottle of spirits and drank a very small glass of it. The missing of Michael came over her, the loneliness, the small grief, and she was drifting quickly down the day and time itself was wandering.
“Here puss, here puss. …”
Limping, bristling its hairs, the cat appeared near the pantry door. It ate quickly, choked on every mouthful, the head jerked up and down. The silver of the fish and speckles of the cat’s eye caught the light. Now and then the dish scraped a little on the floor. Her back to the window, kneeling, Margaret watched the animal eat. And the cat, creature that claws tweed, sits high in the hallway, remains incorrigible upon the death of its mistress, beds itself in the linen or thrusts its enormous head into an alley, now sucked and gagged on the fish as if drawing a peculiar sweetness from the end of a thin bone.