Jaimy Gordon - Lord of Misrule

Sho is. Them boys can be mean, Ed had to agree, remembering that enjoyable hot afternoon and the imprint of Little Spinoza's heel calk rising up on Biggy Bigg's forehead like a meat stamp.

And I don't want to, either. Some of em's-speak well of the devil The big car come crunching over the gravel at a slow rate of speed, raising a low cloud, more floating on the dried-out puddles and potholes, the way it looked, than driving-a Cadillac Sedan de Ville with purple-tinted windows and gangster doors, midnight blue with a brushed stainless steel top like silvery fur, and white wall tires that one of Joe Dale Bigg's boys have to be washing down regular, because the pink dust of the backside never sink into them but was new every day, like a thin smear of lady's face powder. When it was right beside of them, a yard off the shedrow and that big in the middle of the dirt road as if it just have to block the way wherever it go, the passenger's side window slid into the door with a silky whirr and, deep inside, where it was dark like a saloon, a finger crooked.

Hey, Deucey! Get in! Joe Dale wants to discuss sumpm wit ya.

Deucey got in the car, pulled the door closed after her, and it just float there, everything invisible behind the blue glass, motor on, humming.

This place is too weird for me, the young fool's frizzly hair woman announced to the world, and not in no soft voice neither, but luckily Medicine Ed had already did his fade-had ducked back in the stall with Little Spinoza and hung him on a tie chain and busied himself in one corner, where he could eyeball the midnight blue Cadillac through a chink in the wall without Joe Dale's boys looking at him. The girl was standing there with one hand on her head, just blinking at that car. Geez, she say, is that car real or did I make it up?

After a while Deucey bundled back out the passenger door, her bottom jaw lumped up like a boxing glove, mumbling cusswords through her teeth.

And right then the backseat window purred and dropped into the door. And there, to Medicine Ed's amazement, sat Two-Tie, who everybody know is ruled off. Two-Tie don't even look round to see if somebody else be watching. He stare at the girl, just stare at her. Her hand is still on her head. Good morning, Margaret, he finally say. I must say you are the picture of your lovely mother at twenty-but for the hair-she had the most beautiful auburn hair.

Then his eyes rolled up in the air as if he sooner remember than look-and the window rolled up too-and slow as a funeral, the car drove off.

That hick-town bully, Deucey says, he thinks he's Al Capone.

You done backed out?

No I ain't backed out and I ain't gonna back out. I'm in to stay. I'm gonna pay that bloodsucker off free and clear so he can't crawl back in nowheres. Then I don't owe him nothing and I can do what I want to, which I was going to anyway.

Maybe you best give up that horse if Joe Dale gone come back in and tell you where to run him.

That ain't all. He wants me to do sumpm else for him. Even Deucey wouldn't shout what she say next. She leaned over and hissed around her black front teeth: He means me to be the owner-trainer for somebody else's horses, some jailbird I guess. I don't want to front for a bunch of ruled-off crooks. I won't have no parts of it.

Medicine Ed cut his eyes at the frizzly-head girl to remind Deucey they was in company, discretion not guaranteed.

Was that baggy-face guy in the back seat by any chance Rudy Samuels? the girl asked, looking from one of them to the other, but nobody answered her, for that was not a name familiar to anyone present.

Now if I can just figger out where to lay hold of three grand fast. I got some. If Grizzly win one more for me for fifteen hundred, and I don't eat but out of a can for a month, and the feed man will wait…

Feed man always wait, Medicine Ed said.

Deucey mopped her head with a bunched up but clean man's handkerchief, and walked around in circles. I can't ask Two-Tie-he was in there with them. Although if I didn't see it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe he let them lowlifes sneak him on the grounds. He ain't said a word to me or even looked at me. I don't think he knew I was there. You think he's slipping, Ed?

Mr. Two-Tie ain't slipping, Medicine Ed said firmly. But he was worried. Generally Two-Tie was strictly law-abiding, down to the smallest details, except of course for his main business, which was finance. He would never bust through a gate if he was not invited. That would run completely against his nature and business practice, or so Medicine Ed would have said. Medicine Ed did wonder what a gentleman like Two-Tie could have to do with the young fool's woman, wayward, ignorant and obviously raised all wrong. Two-Tie had spoke of her mother. Could they be blood kin? It was too vexing to think of it.

Two-Tie ain't even old, Ed said.

I don't ask Father Time who's young or old, Deucey said.

The young fool come striding round the corner in his fedora hat and polished boots. The pack of them, Ed, Deucey and the frizzly hair girl, just naturally fell silent. His eyes flashed over them, half pleased, half suspicious, and he went his way.

That horse win for 3500 easy, Ed said. He wondered why nobody ask him to front as the owner-trainer for some fine animal. He'd be only too glad, for the right price-he'd even come cut-rate. But nobody don't even think of asking.

I've got a little money, the frizzly-head girl say.

Medicine Ed looked hard at her. He knew where she had that money from-from betting against her man. Did that make it unlucky money? Money was money.

I got a thousand, the girl give up in a whisper.

Well, I got a thousand too. Don't you need that dough to run your outfit? Won't Hansel be mad at you? Deucey asked her.

The young fool's woman turned red in her cheeks like the back of a steam crab. He doesn't want that particular roll, she say.

So it was that bad luck money, sho is, sho is, but it buy a horse just as good as any other money.

I bet Halloween Ed over there got a grand squirreled away, the frizzly hair girl said. I see him going to those windows.

Maybe she was just trying to be fresh, but old Deucey looked up in surprise.

Naaa, Medicine Ed needs his money, he wants to move down Florida some day soon, she say. But then she must have seen something in his face. Whaddaya say, Ed? Am I wrong?

He's the one keeps talking up this horse, the girl say.

It was a good thing he had the barn behind him. They couldn't see how he have to lean on it to stand upright with his weak leg trembling inside his pants. Right now he only have 750 dollars, if like a fool he take and throw behind this horse every nickel he has scraped together towards a new home since Zeno pass. Maybe somebody has run him crazy. Maybe somebody has fixed him good. Yet and still. Ain't nobody ever asked him to come in with them on a horse. And this a good horse. Baby-minded, but a very very good horse.

I study it, he say. I don't have it. I could get it.

SHE HAD SEVEN BEAUTIES like Mary mother of God, three sets of two, dexter and sinister, and one seventh universal oil that melted them all down and bound them together for you in a magic recipe-one ultimate Menu by Margaret, as she used to call her recipe column in the Winchester papers.

She had her highborn air, this came of being a Jew, of an ancient, select, and secretive people, though she didn't think anything about this herself. (You could sometimes catch her, though, idly picking out the Jewish names on any list-opera patrons, plane crashes, Nobel prize winners, This Week's Marriage Licenses, KNOWN FELONS WITH MOB CONNECTIONS REPORTED TO BE CURRENTLY OPERATING IN THE BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON AREA.) Whether it made her easy or uneasy to count herself one of this family, she was of it-she could bother to count or not, she had that luxury-and a great old family was deeply to be coveted. So much the better if they were an outsider race and small in number. They were never far from the centers of power.