Jaimy Gordon - Lord of Misrule

That's enough, Elizabeth. Quiet down. Biggy, get back in the house. I ain't going to hurt you. Your old man don't need you, you colly? Nobody gets hurt, because here's my niece. You lied in my face, you dumb jerk, but I got no beef with you. You don't got the brains to know what you did. Now get in the house. He made little pushing movements with the gun.

Biggy sniffled with rage but backed away into the ranchhouse, feeling behind him for the storm door.

Whaddaya expect of a pityfull retard like that, Uncle Rudy said. Come on, I'll take you home, Margaret.

She was crawling over the frozen bumpy ground toward the back door of the taxicab. The door handle looked as high as a weathervane.

What about the horse? He's running loose, she said hopelessly. It was all too complex. She had no strength to chase the horse, D'Ambrisi owned the horse Joe Dale Bigg had paid for the horse, and the horse had disappeared up the long dirt driveway into the woods.

You get your horse back tonight, my dear. Guaranteed. I took care of it already. Now let's get the hell out of here, Margaret. We don't want trouble. I come to take you home.

Maggie stared up at him in amazement. She had a funny feeling it was all true-that she would get her horse back tonight even though Pelter had never really been her horse, he was Tommy's-that mountains had been moved for her by this seedy fastidious gangster for unfathomable reasons, mysterious threadlike reasons that all looped around to the unseen and long ago.

Did Joe Dale harm you in any way? the man with two bow ties asked, gazing delicately off to the left of her and up into the woods. A hood's gun dangled down by his side but he had the introverted and long-suffering face of a melamid, one who teaches the rude young and gets little thanks for it.

No, she replied, thinking that, as long as she was rescued, she honestly couldn't say just what Joe Dale Bigg had been up to, and besides, if she kept her mouth shut, she might still end up with the foaling papers for Pelter, all clean and legal and everything. So she might be glad to have been tied up with Joe Dale Bigg after all.

You're getting your horse back, my dear. Certain important people, I don't mean me, looked into it for you. You believe me?

Maggie nodded.

And do me a favor. From now on, don't take nutting else from Joe Dale Bigg. Not a ride home. Not a french fry. Nutting. You colly?

Maggie nodded.

Not a nickel. Babkes, he clarified. You need money? Listen carefully, my dear. Lord of Misrule, he whispered loudly. Lord of Misrule, Margaret. Memorize that name.

THE DESIRE TO BLOW Joe Dale Bigg's head off with the Browning 9mm was so unreasonable yet so vast that Two-Tie was sorry to see him come running out of the near barn towards his cab. In a mood like this, things could come apart. Two-Tie had the aging loan shark's strong disinclination to die in jail, which would be the likely result of giving in to a passing fit of temper and emptying the Browning into Joe Dale's white forehead. In the can, Two-Tie knew, if his ticker went bad, he would have to pull strings to get a ten-minute appointment with some state-issue sawbones from Pakistan who probably spoke less English than a Mexican groom, and besides, Two-Tie had people depending on him, and he had Elizabeth.

Therefore he thought it best to try and remember what he had used to like about Joe Dale Bigg before he got too big and the leading trainer thing went to his head and brought out his Mediterranean guile and his sicko skirt-chasing tendencies. As he ran along the paddock fence, Joe Dale was huffing and puffing. His tits bounced under his tweed jacket and his face turned gray. Two-Tie didn't wish to gloat, he himself had painful neuromas under his metatarsals and occasional angina, but Joe Dale was twenty years younger than he was.

Joe Dale was West Virginia coaltown Italian but the mother had been a schoolteacher from the Bronx. Joe Dale had used to be smart, almost intellectual, compared to the average racetrack trombenik. He had had a little something extra up there under the stingy-brim, so that back then Two-Tie could have a almost decent conversation with him about the type of people they knew and the nature of business it was. But then Joe Dale won a few races and married that police chief's daughter from Steubenville and had his idiot son, and soon he turned into some kind of strange business himself. He was fundamentally a shmeer artist. He bought things and people, and horses, just to squash the notion that they were worth having. He smeared them with himself, then he got rid of them. The wife lived in Wheeling. Nobody lasted with him, except Biggy. He had classy taste, it showed in his car and his clothes, but he overdid it. He overestimated himself. His jackets cost a fortune, but you always thought he'd gained twenty pounds since he last saw his tailor. His shiny slacks pulled taut over his big behind, and fans of wrinkles crowded the armpits of his eighty-dollar sea-cotton shirts. He was bulging and creamy white at the collar, like a cheese danish, and the sight of him made Two-tie a little sick. But at least Two-Tie had talked himself out of shooting Joe Dale, or even wanting to.

For his part, as soon as he spotted Two-Tie, Joe Dale cooled down. He wiped a smile back onto his face and composed himself. He ran both hands through his stiff black hair and smiled genially and said: What can I show you, Two-Tie? He pretended not even to notice Margaret crawling over the frozen mud.

What did you do to the girl? Two-Tie started down the stoop, meaning to help his niece into the taxicab, but as soon as she saw Joe Dale coming, she managed to flounder into the back seat all by herself. You slipped her a mickey, for god's sake-what kinda pimp's trick is that? I thought better of you, Joe Dale. I really did.

Joe Dale shrugged. I honestly don't know what kinda pills she ate. Goofers. Mushrooms. These kids today. Who knows? I was just tryna give her back her horse when she went meshuggy on me. And Two-Tie. His smile got that wounded, do-me-a-favor squint. What are you waving a piece around for? This is a respectable business I run down here. It don't look good.

She didn't rat on you, for your information, Two-Tie said. She's got too much class for that. I knew her mother once, a perfect lady-educated. The dames in that family never wanted no assholes beaten up in their honor, not like some bloodthirsty snapper skirts I used to know.

Maybe they didn't have no honor to lose, Joe Dale said. Now do me a favor and as long as your taxi's here, get the fuck off my farm with the gun. You make me nervous.

The storm door burst open and it was Biggy again, this time with a deer rifle in his hands.

Put it away, shit-for-brains, Joe Dale said. I got the matter under control. I said put it down. Biggy leaned the gun in the angle of the railing. Okay, Joe Dale said. Okay. You remember Two-Tie, don't you, son?

Actually, I and Biggy were conversing only a couple minutes ago, Two-Tie said. It was about the horse. Exactly where is the horse now?

I changed my mind, said Joe Dale. I don't want to do that burnout hippy chick no favors no more. What are you in it for anyway, pal?

Don't talk about this nice young girl like that, right in front of her face. She's not feeling well. You haven't heard from D'Ambrisi?

D'Ambrisi? What the fuck are you talking about?

Two-Tie couldn't quite bring himself to make the announcement. He stood there thinking how to word it. There was no tactful way to say they were taking the horse.

D'Ambrisi's going to tell me. Joe Dale laughed. You're slipping, old man, you know that? I heard it on the grapevine and now I see it's true. The thing I don't get is what you're doing in this particular deal.

They all heard creaking and scraping and looked up the hill. Bouncing down the dirt driveway where little Margaret's horse had disappeared came the worst-looking horse van Two-Tie had ever seen, rusted out and patched in different colors like a gypsy wagon, some of its holes plugged with gray gobs of unsanded fiberglass and smeared with pink primer, the trailer sagging down dangerously over one wheel. And it was pulled by a little lime-pie green six-cylinder Valiant that ought not to be pulling nutting, even when it was new. Two-Tie shook his head. Why was he mixed up in this? He had never put a van that pityfull on the road, not even in the days when River Van and Horse Transport was nothing but an excuse to have a phone and an office, before him and Posner seen there was good money in it. Then it was sheer luck they were in place for the golden age of West Virginia bullrings, when Charles Town started siphoning off the low end claimers from Pimlico, Laurel, Bowie and Atlantic City-all of a sudden, boom, two thousand horses a year turning over at the twin half-milers on the Shenandoah. For a while they bought every used crate with wheels they dared set on the highway and the money rolled in. And now horse racing was already dying again. But he had never seen a van as pathetic as this in all his days.