Jaimy Gordon - Lord of Misrule

And which is why every now and then when some kind of a good thing come together in nature, it make the whole world new. Seem like once again he have found that harmony, how they is a power in charge and strong secret threads lead around and under, and tie it all together.

And which is what happened that night with Little Spinoza.

He might have knowed that Alice Nuzum, who didn't resemble no other human being he has ever seen, man nor either woman, would have to be a luck thrower of some kind. The way she look-not ugly but like something born between mud and river water, like something out of a creek swamp-a person must figure fate has already laid a shaping hand on her and is satisfied. Or can't do no worse. Or maybe mean to make it even to her in some way.

Nothing in Little Spinoza's routine changed behind that bad race. It was still Alice on Little Spinoza at four fifteen in the morning and old Deucey peering into the fog from the river with her spyglass and stop watch, clocking Little Spinoza's little bit of speed. And which was still there, the speed, but now it ain't even no one to hide it from. Earlie Beaufait has done them the favor to badmouth Little Spinoza and his trainer and three cockamamie owners too. Horse be no count, they say, a killer in the gate and a quitter in the stretch, with a hard, ruinated mouth. One more incident and management gone be stamping his foaling papers NOT FIT FOR RACING.

And the apprentice jockey them three have found under a rock somewheres, since Earlie quit them! A townie, a female, and ugly enough to scare a hound dog off a gut wagon-and a bugboy at that, you know how they say about a bugboy, he save you seven pounds in the gate and add thirty pounds in the stretch-and this is a horse even Earlie Beaufait couldn't get no stretch run out of him. So this time for two weeks everybody keep that clear of the horse you think he carry that equine selfalitis. Not even Joe Dale Bigg come round. And then Deucey drops him in for three thousand.

Everybody think they see them coming, everybody figure the plain obvious truth-them are the broke, pityfull owners of Little Spinoza that done shelled out their last two-dollar bill on that horse-the colored groom, the he-she trainer and the lost college girl-them three are gone try and get him claimed for what they paid for him, which was far too much money already.

But what Alice Nuzum say is this. Whoever come up with that idea that Little Spinoza has early speed? He has speed all right-and it is an exact amount coiled up in him the way a black snake will live snug under your well cover all winter. He is a one-run horse but of a very classy kind, Alice say. He has an exact amount of speed which could last an exact time, from the last possible moment when you call on him, until that wire. But until now he has squandered it early. He is like some corner zoot suiter cut loose with his mama's death benefit before he has become a man, before he has grown sense to put it in the bank or either a choice bit of real estate. He come out the gate going every whichaway in terror and pure foolishness. He go every whichaway and finally he tire and die, and if the boy hit him he wither up besides. And yet he is a dreamer horse who like to look at ducks splashing down on the river and hawks sailing on the wind. Alice say: What if he can sleep like Sleeping Beauty, only on his feet, with no pain, and stay asleep till I wake him up at the quarter pole? And Medicine Ed can follow her idea: As long as the pace up front ain't too slow, as long as the frontrunners be halfway honest, he might could get there.

To rate him, Alice has to hypmotize the horse a little, and she say she can do it. How can she? O she has her little ways, she say, maybe I sing him to sleep, and she smiles that no-lip smile that put Medicine Ed in mind of a newt.

Alice couldn't prove it. She showed them, in a little trial with Grizzly and Miss Fowlerville and Railroad Joe, how Little Spinoza come swooping by in the stretch. True, them others wasn't but 2000 or even 1500 dollar horses-and two belong to Hansel, but the young fool had suddenly drove off somewhere for two days to see about a horse, and left Medicine Ed in charge. Naturally a lit-up grandstand and a thousand screaming bettors be something different from dark and silence of first morn-let alone a paddock judge poking in his mouth, and the starter man grabbing his ear or snatching his lip in the gate. All the same, that is Alice's idea, which do have the beauty to tie all the parts together.

They look for a weekend race, so it is a decent handle. They don't talk about it, but they all fixing to cash that bet. Won't anybody in the house like Spinoza save for them three, thank you Lord! Of course Medicine Ed must tell Two-Tie, for he will need him a small advance. And Two-Tie have his own people, no way round that. And might probly that old porkypine Deucey have somebody she got to let in, some orphan or hard case. And who can doubt but what the frizzly hair girl gone to tell the young fool all?-though old Deucey may have suspicioned that, and maybe she liked this week on purpose, when Hansel has disappeared somewhere to see a man about a horse.

All signs saying that Sadday, first Sadday in December, be a fair day and a good track, not wet and heavy nor either too hard froze. And soon's they was a card to study, Deucey and Medicine Ed and Alice went over the entries prepared to scratch if it was no speed in the race. But they was two clear frontrunners for sure gone to fight it out up there, the one horse, Ink Spot, and the six horse, Navy something, and the four horse might be in it too, Medicine Ed disremembered the name.

Little Spinoza drew post position number eight in a eight-horse race, but this time that high number work to his good. This way Little Spinoza automatically be the last to load in the gate instead of a problem case, getting the starters nervous and mad until they might do something in anger that could hurt the horse, or worse, wake him up. And anyhow Alice Nuzum been with Little Spinoza in the gate three times already since that bad race and say he is cured.

Lord put me wise. Alice Nuzum say she going to sing Little Spinoza to sleep, and that is exactly what she do.

Them three are standing in the gap for the post parade when Alice and Little Spinoza tack by, them all three look at each other and they mouths fall open and they close them again. Deucey yanks the stiffened handkerchief out from under her flask and wipes her head. The frizzly hair girl laughs kind of funny-time behind her hand. Deep in his pocket Medicine Ed rubs a red flannel bag between dog finger and thumb. For they have heard Alice singing, it ain't a big voice but pointy and sharp as a stick: By and by, when the morning comes. All-l-l-l the saints…

Why, it is a song his mother used to sing in church, one he knew long ago. All the saints gone to gathering home. And maybe it is his imagination, but he think Little Spinoza is listening. The horse go along last in line, faraway in his face but collected. His ears prick up tall, quivering-and there is Alice high up on his back with her little bony knees pointed in, hypmotizing him with her small steely voice. Alice lean into his neck in them raggedy silver silks which Deucey bought for four bits from somebody stable that was busting up. Medicine Ed had to pin them together behind her neck with a bandage pin. He never hear no announcement, so many minutes to post time. He hear his mother's voice from the wings of New Life Baptist Church in Cambray, not a little metal threadwire like Alice's, but big as a house:

In the land of perfect day when the mist has rolled away We will understand it better by and by.

Then he ain't hear nothing. His mother's voice was all around him. He didn't recall looking at no tote board, but yet and still he knew when the numbers stand at 35, then fall to 22, back up to 25, and 22, and all of a sudden down to 12. And then the horses were at the gate, and in the gate, each by each. He saw Little Spinoza step into the eight slot civil as you please, like a man walk in a cloak room to ask for his hat.