of the common roll you had staked and blown—none of that low-grade wifely nagging for her—but if you could do it, by god so could she, she wasn’t going to sit home and roll out biscuits.
And not that she was above nagging. She just dragged it up to her monumentally unruly level, drilling you with green-yellow monkey-witch eyes every time you came back from the racing secretary’s office, wanting to know whether you had entered Pelter in a race yet, and if so for how much? None of this out loud, of course, at least not yet, but it went without saying you were a chicken and a liar too if you ran him in anything better than a 1500-dollar claimer after all this.
But if you lost that horse wouldn’t all your hidden luck go with him? Wouldn’t the magic of a chosen one desert you? Your twin sister carried your soul in her velvet box, but after all it had been Mr. Hickok who picked you out, gave you a job, saw somethingin you. It was better than winning any race, that red, beautiful, melancholy autumn afternoon, when the old man had limped around the corner and sat down on a bale of hay by you, seeming idly to want to talk horses—you always knew how to get him going, he liked your respect for the old ways—the subject of bute, luckily, hadn’t come up. And suddenly turned and offered you, resignedly, wearily, for 1500 dollars, what was left of his one great horse—and so hooked to you that silken thread of merit that bound you forever to him as it had bound him to his famous father before him.
Class. A
month later he was dead.
Hickok himself had run Pelter in low-grade allowance races, non-winners of a bologna sandwich in their last three starts, that kind of thing, no fear of a claim there, but now and then in a 1500-dollar claimer too, for a two-grand purse, and the horse win easily at that price. Hickok had so much class he could put up the legend of that horse against the risk of an upstart claim, and no one dared to take him, and no one cried
lèse majesté
. It was a kind of gallant joke, on the racetrack at that time, to let the old stakes horse pay for his own dinner. Now she challenged you with her monkey green eyes to do the same, but she didn’t understand what it was to have no glorious family ties, nothing and nobody knitting you into this world but a grimy snarling gnome of a so-called father in the shop of a used car lot in Trempeleau, Wisconsin. What sort of class could you use to fend off an upstart’s claim, when you were an upstart yourself? She didn’t have to know what you knew, that if you lost that horse, you would lose her too.
W HEN MEDICINE ED FINALLY HAD Little Spinoza alone, he tell it into him: Get ready, son. The women gone to take your manhood, he broke the news, not like it was the end of the world, and next come disease, hospital cases, and death, but like it was a thing the horse ought to know. The first cold had come and they were walking round and round the shedrow in a silver fog that beaded up the cobwebs and the horses’ eyelashes.
Wasn’t no idea of mine. I say wait a short while, see how he do. Nothing ain’t gone change that horse much at his age. I say he a little bit of a crybaby, that’s all, but easy to settle once he riled. You be surprised, I tell em. Ain’t even all that interested in the señoritas compared to what you would think. They don’t want to listen. They don’t want to take no chances. They don’t want to lose they edge. I say what if casteration change him the other direction, into a chucklehead girl? They start to laughing. Pretty soon they cackling like witches. Got me outnumbered, what it is.
Medicine Ed checked himself. This was a stab-back and two-face thing to say about the women. They don’t mean no harm, he added. He didn’t want to be a wrong influence on the horse. What good it do if the horse love him and hate them others? They a bidness now.
Little Spinoza don’t fuss. Ma’ fact he had to admit the horse taken to prancing
And not that she was above nagging. She just dragged it up to her monumentally unruly level, drilling you with green-yellow monkey-witch eyes every time you came back from the racing secretary’s office, wanting to know whether you had entered Pelter in a race yet, and if so for how much? None of this out loud, of course, at least not yet, but it went without saying you were a chicken and a liar too if you ran him in anything better than a 1500-dollar claimer after all this.
But if you lost that horse wouldn’t all your hidden luck go with him? Wouldn’t the magic of a chosen one desert you? Your twin sister carried your soul in her velvet box, but after all it had been Mr. Hickok who picked you out, gave you a job, saw somethingin you. It was better than winning any race, that red, beautiful, melancholy autumn afternoon, when the old man had limped around the corner and sat down on a bale of hay by you, seeming idly to want to talk horses—you always knew how to get him going, he liked your respect for the old ways—the subject of bute, luckily, hadn’t come up. And suddenly turned and offered you, resignedly, wearily, for 1500 dollars, what was left of his one great horse—and so hooked to you that silken thread of merit that bound you forever to him as it had bound him to his famous father before him.
Class. A
month later he was dead.
Hickok himself had run Pelter in low-grade allowance races, non-winners of a bologna sandwich in their last three starts, that kind of thing, no fear of a claim there, but now and then in a 1500-dollar claimer too, for a two-grand purse, and the horse win easily at that price. Hickok had so much class he could put up the legend of that horse against the risk of an upstart claim, and no one dared to take him, and no one cried
lèse majesté
. It was a kind of gallant joke, on the racetrack at that time, to let the old stakes horse pay for his own dinner. Now she challenged you with her monkey green eyes to do the same, but she didn’t understand what it was to have no glorious family ties, nothing and nobody knitting you into this world but a grimy snarling gnome of a so-called father in the shop of a used car lot in Trempeleau, Wisconsin. What sort of class could you use to fend off an upstart’s claim, when you were an upstart yourself? She didn’t have to know what you knew, that if you lost that horse, you would lose her too.
W HEN MEDICINE ED FINALLY HAD Little Spinoza alone, he tell it into him: Get ready, son. The women gone to take your manhood, he broke the news, not like it was the end of the world, and next come disease, hospital cases, and death, but like it was a thing the horse ought to know. The first cold had come and they were walking round and round the shedrow in a silver fog that beaded up the cobwebs and the horses’ eyelashes.
Wasn’t no idea of mine. I say wait a short while, see how he do. Nothing ain’t gone change that horse much at his age. I say he a little bit of a crybaby, that’s all, but easy to settle once he riled. You be surprised, I tell em. Ain’t even all that interested in the señoritas compared to what you would think. They don’t want to listen. They don’t want to take no chances. They don’t want to lose they edge. I say what if casteration change him the other direction, into a chucklehead girl? They start to laughing. Pretty soon they cackling like witches. Got me outnumbered, what it is.
Medicine Ed checked himself. This was a stab-back and two-face thing to say about the women. They don’t mean no harm, he added. He didn’t want to be a wrong influence on the horse. What good it do if the horse love him and hate them others? They a bidness now.
Little Spinoza don’t fuss. Ma’ fact he had to admit the horse taken to prancing
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