Jaimy Gordon - Lord of Misrule

And now awash with love of you, not that she knows who you are, or cares, the slut, she opens into that cave of spirits, tomb of your lost twin, and you cast off upon the black satin waters, gliding, gliding. And so easily in that medium, so deep so quick, so soon sliding over the falls rather than patiently stroking, it is impossible for you not-to laugh. O yes, O yes, the perfect over-brimming willingness of her to you! She is the very body of luck giving herself to you, asking no questions. In fact she thanks you for taking her, such a blind wave of thanks that she never even sees you down on your knees in the straw in front of her, shooting dice for her mercy, begging her never to leave you.

HE DID LAUGH. She woke up, and he was clinging to her in the straw like a boy to a driftwood raft. What's going on? she asked him, picking straw out of her hair. But the horses were waiting. Miss Fowlerville went in the bad stall. Railroad Joe was escorted to the stall hidden behind the track kitchen, in Barn J. They put The Mahdi in Z, the transient barn, where Maggie could have watched him through a spy hole if he were going to a race tonight. But it was already five in the evening: no way he was going to a race tonight, Maggie thought, thanked god and the hurryless van man, hid the Telegraph and kept her counsel.

And now Tommy was backing Pelter out of the van-he was a long horse and had a long way to come. His shoes screeked on the diamond frets of the aluminum ramp and she pressed her hand on the warm rump to steady it, raising a hand-shaped dust mark on the velvety nap. Pelter had the commonest coloring for a racehorse, which was, to Maggie, also the most beautiful: dark bay, a dense nut brown with black mane, black ear points and tail, and gleaming black knees, ankles and feet. She liked especially the shallow, faintly darker gulley that deepened over his spine just above the tail, dividing the hindquarters into plum-like lobes. Now she pushed her nose into his hip and smelled him.

They started across the backside, towards the beautiful faraway stall in Barn B. What does it mean? What are they trying to do? she asked Tommy again.

Who the hell knows, Maggie? Maybe they got no stalls.

That's when he laughed. She peered at Tommy to see if he was joking, it wasn't quite possible to tell and instead she found herself staring at little aquamarine flakes like bits of glass in his pond-dark eyes. They made threads of a similar color jangle in his old tweed vest. Without even trying he was a dapper man-he'd pick up some gray rag for a quarter off a church rummage-sale table in Martinsburg and the next day it was a shirt that draped around his throat just so, even ruffed a bit in the back, and had turned a smoldering sage green. With perfect cuffs. But shoes he bought new, and only the best: ankle high paddock boots of a burnished-copper color with zippers up the back and cecropia-moth elastic insets, custom-ordered, ninety dollars a pair, from Hornbuckle of London.

What do you mean, Maggie said, I saw dozens of stalls when I was traipsing around the backside getting these ready. There are four in Barn Z alone, all better than the one they gave us.

They're not going to inconvenience horsemen they know just to accommodate me. They think I'm a nobody. I am a nobody. And again he laughed. He pulled a straw out of her hair, then tangled his fingers in the dark rich knots of it. Look, Maggie, if you're so worried, maybe you ought to call up that shady Uncle Rudy of yours, see what he can do for us.

Chrissake, Tommy! That's just what we need to get in and out of here fast-to get ourselves tied up with some petty gangster who used to go to seder with my mother.

Tommy laughed uproariously. Presumably he had been joking. Uncle Rudy, he said fondly, what was he anyway-some kind of tout or tip-sheet writer, or what?

I have no idea. It was not a suitable topic at the family dinner table. Tommy, this old girl of a gyp, Deucey is her name, says they want to get a look at what we have.

Tommy shrugged. Let em look. Hell, I've been around cheap claimers long enough to know you can't tell from looking at these horses whether they'll run or not. Everyone of them's beat up, bowed, got a knee, a foot, a sessamoid, something. Plenty of times, on a track like this, the worse they look, the better they run. If they run.

Ours look that bad?

Let me see… Railroad Joe…

O yes.

O yes.

There was no disagreement here. The right front cannon bone on the black horse resembled an old ragged galosh right down to the lumpy buckles. Blister, cautery, everything had been done. And in Maggie's eyes he had a giant, prehistoric head-armor plated, scarred like a boxer and ugly as a rhinoceros.

Pelter?

Pelter. I don't know, Tommy said. He's old. He was a famous horse in his day. There was no claim. Mr. Hickok used to take very, very good care of him. Nothing wrong with his legs. His back always was too long and it looks lumpy now, if anybody's looking at his back.

Maggie ran a hand down the side of the horse, the long dark barrel of his ribs. The short hair there, like good dope, left a slight stickiness on her fingers, not unpleasant. They were in the fine stall now and Pelter let out a squeal and threw himself on his famous back in the straw and rolled. They stepped away, watching him carefully. The horse had been known to get cast in a stall, just when he was feeling good. Tommy hooked the webbing behind them.

You'll be sorry you fell in love with that horse, he said.

I know.

Because I'm going to run him where he belongs.

I know. But I still don't see somebody claiming him after all these years.

It was Mr. Hickok they left alone, not the horse. I'm not Roland Hickok.

Maggie was silent. They walked back along the ranks of shedrows to Barn Z.

Tommy sighed. I don't know, Maggie, I don't know what people will think. He's old, that's the best thing. He looks mercifully bad on paper-except for the Lifetime Record, of course-not even a show in the last year. And he bled, not that long ago. Some of these oldtimers probably saw it.

We should make him a blanket that says One more race and I'm through, Maggie said. It would be the truth.

If we did, somebody'd be sure to take him, Tommy said.

How about The Mahdi?

The Mahdi, The Mahdi, The Mahdi, Tommy said. The Mahdi is one of us.

They stood at the webbing and looked at the gleaming red bull of a three-year-old who was settling, with his usual composure, into the fairly good stall in Barn Z. He was not the most interesting to her of the horses. The Mahdi was a heavyweight, remote and gentlemanly in a men's club sort of way, and he was red, although, to be fair, not red like a carrot-rather the more medieval red that stains the edges of old books. He was a sprinter, deeply wrapped in his muscle and sure of himself. He wasn't sore. He did not require the coaxings of women. Any businesslike groom would do.

Still, you could not say he lacked poetry. The Mahdi stood at the webbing, awake and calmly looking into the dark, like an airplane pilot. Maggie's eye traced the lyre of muscle up his heavy chest. She suddenly realized that, despite his calm, he was not at all as usual for this hour of night. The horse almost seemed to think, himself, that he was going to a race. Why hadn't Tommy fed him yet? She didn't want to know.

What do you mean, The Mahdi is one of us? she asked. Who exactly is us?

Tommy's face opened like a fan. This is my horse, he said. This is the one I wanted, the one I worry about. Not a mark on him.

Tommy had eyes a mile apart and, when he was gambling, a kind of pearl shone on the long planes under them. He looked like a bodega saint in a rapture. Maggie stared at him in uneasy admiration.

You mean he'll get claimed?

You may be absolutely sure of it, Tommy whispered in a sort of singsong. As soon as they know. If they get the chance.