Jaimy Gordon - Lord of Misrule

Gimme that, you idiot. He snatched at the rude hardware of the gun barrel in his side and yanked it upward and twisted on it. He had some crazy, hopeless idea of getting hold of it and shooting Elizabeth himself, and at the same time everything opened up very wide around him, and he knew this was giving up, like taking a fabulous suite at the Sans Souci in Miami Beach for a week, which he knew he wouldn't be around to pay for it. Three shots, bang bang bang. He saw the first one, a little round hole winking at him from the back of the driver's seat, smoking and frying black along its edges, and he was studying it, thinking it wasn't so bad, when he remembered about the other two. Where were they? I'm hit, Breezy yelled, then heavy crunching and swishing leaves, like a elephant in the jungle, and, whomp, a tree in the middle of the windshield. Fuck, fuck, fuck, Biggy screamed, Daddy said don't shoot him in the car, and look what I done, I shot him in the car. Elizabeth, barking in this one's face, that one's face, not grasping what had went wrong, making a terrible racket. I'm hit, Breezy wept, oh jesus, oh jesus, let's get outa here. A whirr like getting sucked up in some machine-the taxicab, tryna back out. Wait, punk. Biggy slapped the back of Breezy's head and they rocked to a stop. Two-Tie wanted to explain that it didn't matter, he always thought if you died, everything went black, like, the whole picture went and you was off like a TV set, but it wasn't like that at all. He could feel some of his middle was gone, gut, tubes, pupik, the whole bucket of shit, you would think you needed your middle but it was better like this, blown away was the right word, sky blue, wide open, all like bubbles going up. Quiet, he wanted to say, quiet, but he couldn't find his breath.

Light, shade, light. He was travelling through the woods, his head bouncing softly along, trying to piece together the cut-out puzzle of sky between the treetops. And then it really was quiet, perfectly quiet, not even Biggy grunting no more, so he didn't have to say it. Quiet. Elizabeth's face was looking down into his. She had that black mole under her chin, and the long shiny black whiskers that sprayed out of it, like a daddy-long-legs. The face sank away, he couldn't see her, she groaned that familiar groan, settling in-he moved his wet hand an inch or so and there she was. God forgive him, some caretaker he turned out to be, he was glad she was there. He should of kept the lid on till they threw him in the dump. Then, who knew, some clyde out shooting squirrels might have come across her and took her home. Only she'd never go, she'd lie there affen shpilkes, worried but patient, waiting for him to come back. She would make like she didn't see the guy calling to her, till the fool decided she was sick or mad and got his gun and shot her. Which wouldn't be the worst thing. Here, who knew what would happen to her? Nothing would happen to her. That was the worst thing. It wouldn't end. It would keep on ending as far as you could see. But everything ended. He tried to move his fingers in her beautiful fur. He couldn't feel her no more. But he knew she was there.

BUT THAT HADN'T BEEN the hottest day of the summer, for this one was. All of them sat on haybales in the shade under the shedrow, panting like dogs and squinting stupidly into the heat. Through eyes in the backs of their heads they watched their horses. They watched them because of the race, even though the race was a queer race that none of them was supposed to win.

The sun beat down and by three the red dirt glowed back around each barn and strip of grass like the works of a toaster. The heat was a bullying heat that muffled sound, so that a person saw a brush or bucket fall or a tiechain drop and heard nothing, just a kind of clap of air, a flat toneless echo. Every now and then a sparrow flopped down in the dirt and scratched around. Even the baby sparrows in the eaves gave up, peeped listlessly under the heat as under a strangler's pillow. Every puddle save the one by the back gate had given up the ghost, and now even that one shrank between hideous cracked lips. Some joker had left a horse's skull drying beside it. You didn't want to think where he'd gotten it, the ivory molars still sharp-edged and young.

Barn Z, the transient barn, stretched low along the backside fence, the heat from its long tin roof a waggling, meaningless mirage. In front of almost every stall a cheap box window fan whirred and shuddered irrelevantly at the end of an extension cord, its back side bearded with straw and cobweb. Usually a trainer would be fearful of fire but with the heat and the race a go-to-hell mood rolled over them all. On Friday afternoon, racetrackers cleaned every fan out of Ted's Appliances, West Carbonport. By Saturday they hooked up anything that turned, even old electric heaters with the heat turned off.

Margaret came around the corner and blinked at the sheer oddity of the sight. The shedrow was like a temple to pain, its hay-specked portico held up by the row of noble sore horses, each rising out of a zinc tub of ice with a palsied electric fan next to it. Every one of them was going to the same race, and the race itself was funny, not quite a fixed race but not quite square either. Pelter, Spinoza, The Mahdi, a few more nameless bays and chestnuts, and in the end stall, Lord of Misrule, a small, black, slinky horse who nosed around his stall with a certain junkyard style. Now and then he raised his head to slash vindictively at his hay bag, and sized up the traffic out of the custard white corner of his eye.

In front of his stall sat the sickly-looking punk with the almost shaved head and bumpy headbones, smacking flies on his legs with a rolled-up comic. The boy was too young to be in anybody's pay. He must belong to Nebraska. He had his father's curving soapcake of a nose. His fingernail worked some red spot near his mouth corner. He made a point of looking baldly at the sweaty crotch of every girl who passed. Look at the prune on that, he said out loud, over and over, hawked and spat. That's how bad he wanted some grown person to talk to him.

MEDICINE ED DON'T WANT to talk to him. He can't be distracted. He watches the boy through a crack in the tack room wall. The goofer dirt need a little time to take. He must be very deeply in earnest. Maybe he should have throwed it round last night, but last night he ain't make up his mind yet. Everybody say that horse can't lose. The jocks in on it. All the grooms in it. Every big trainer at the meeting have a piece of it. Yet and still, he have to be sure. His hope, his peace, his little tomorrow be riding on it. You want to be down on a sure thing-long as it is a sure thing-even if the horse don't pay but even money. He can double his nut in one minute and, after all, what do the Peoples Savings and Trust of Wheeling pay? Three point four percent in a year! If he call Two-Tie and draw on his whole bankroll and win he land up with 5000 dollars, exactly enough to buy him that trailer in Hallandale, the one with the green stripe awning in the old park for colored behind the track and the little yard of clean gravel with a palm tree sticking up out of it. If he have him a home, he won't hardly have to work no more. Then if he still be getting up awake all night like he do now he can get him a little job-somebody be glad to put him on as stall watch for pocket change. And then he don't need nobody. No more young fool. No more frizzly hair girl. That is his plan.

For every night the young fool can't sit nor rest, he going up and down the shedrow, going in the stall and out again. He talk craziness to that red horse, the one Zeno taken from him, and which he claim back, and which he think is going to win that race for him. He whisper about the expected one and saints in Ireland and that. He think that secret is between him and the horse. He don't even see where Joe Dale Bigg's boys are cruising up and down the dirt road watching him through the blind windows of that midnight blue gangster car.