Authors: Mark Wisniewski
DEESH
NIGHT THIS FAR WEST IN JERSEY
is twice as thick as it gets in the Bronx, and trying to see through it out my window
gets me thinking about Madalynn and her complaint, before she got pregnant, that I
never asked for what I needed, her claim back then being that there was only one way
couples in poverty stayed true: awareness of need nursed by constant mutual asking.
Had my pride allowed me to
ask,
she’d say back then, we could have both known our needs and
been
something, and I now wonder if maybe, when you really get down to it, she was right,
and after we pass a sign that says
DELAWARE WATER GAP
, another says
ENTERING PENNSYLVANI
A
,
and I shiver.
Even if those cops in Passaic wanted my arrest to catch me by surprise, I tell myself,
they would have pulled this bus over by now. Everything’s cool.
But across the aisle from me the white woman, ponytailed, maybe college age, keeps
glancing over, like she’s ready to ask something—until I’m set to say what’s up, when
she sighs and faces the all but black night. And now, with her eyes off me like that,
my mind won’t stop seeing the cop down. Won’t stop focusing on how blood filled the
hole in his face. Won’t stop thinking about how that was
it
I was looking at—death—and how it forever would be caused by a bullet fired from
the gun now pressed against my hip bone so hard it hurt.
A mile marker says Pennsylvania will stretch three hundred miles. I watch darkness
grow darker, thanks to more trees and monstrous hills. Only here and there are the
lit yards of lone houses, but still I think:
Keep going.
You need to be in pure nature.
JAN
DEVILETTE HELD HIS HEAD HIGHER
than the rest of the field, trying to see beyond the odds board, and Jorge Garcia,
in bumblebee-colored silks, sat on him comfortably, going with the bounce of the canter.
“Prepared to lose?” Tom asked.
“Why?” Tug said. “You don’t think he looks right?”
“I think he’ll be there. But a savvy handicapper never bets a penny he can’t afford
to lose.”
“I can afford it,” Tug said, and Tom stood, and Tug handed him the fifty. “Ten to
win on Devilette,” Tug said, and it wasn’t lost on him that Tom was about to do for
him the very kind of thing that had gotten Tom in trouble, and Tug considered asking
for the money back, but Tom raised a thumb and walked off. Tug wondered how he’d pay
Tom back if Devilette didn’t win, then
convinced himself that, if he lost, he’d find work, any kind of work. He imagined
himself trying for jobs he’d never considered—truck driver, auto mechanic, gas station
cashier—and his horse farm struck him as the kind of dream that makes you look foolish
unless you’re born with a silver spoon, and his face grew hot from shame and sentiment
about certain horses he’d cared for and that god-awful feeling he sometimes got when
certain he’d never know what he was feeling.
Don’t worry, he thought. No one sees you now. He also believed that no one but Tom
would know they’d bet this race, and that the only reason he, Tug, had bet was because
he loved me. In that sense it seemed good and even admirable that he had done it,
and then Tom returned with Tug’s ticket and change, all of which Tug folded into a
square he shoved well into a front pocket, and then it was post time, and an assistant
starter Tug didn’t recognize was loading Devilette into the third stall. Tom slouched
back in his seat, his eyes, intent and forlorn, on the midnight blue starting gate,
and Tug wanted to grab his wrist but told himself they were too old for that, and
then the flag was up, and they were off, and Devilette took a bad step and Tug’s heart
went dead. Jorge let out the reins right then, and Devilette, nine lengths behind,
found his stride, and they were all into the turn but the seven horse led by one,
and then the pack tightened, Jorge’s bumblebee colors gaining, and Jorge took him
at least six wide and used the whip. Tug didn’t hear it crack until a moment after
it struck—and Devilette shot ahead into third, and Tom rose and Tug stood, too, and
Devilette, game, closed the gap. Well down the stretch they were even, Devilette and
the seven, and Jorge now whipped cruelly, and Devilette nosed ahead, then hung on.
“Sweet,” Tug said, though all this victory had done was bring his mood back to even.
Tom glanced off, toward the finish line more or less, then focused on the results
board.
“You bet him, too, right?” Tug asked.
“I put him in an exacta with Capizzi’s entry.”
Tug skimmed race two in his program to see which number Capizzi’s entry wore. The
exacta, he knew from Tom’s past advice, was not a bet Tom generally endorsed.
“Capizzi’s was the one horse,” Tom said. “She photoed for second with the seven.”
The results board showed three in the
WIN
box, the
PLACE
and
SHOW
boxes blank. Tug stared at the darkness inside the
PLACE
box, trying, for Tom’s sake, to will the numeral one to appear in it, and as Tug
stared, he knew Tom was watching that darkness, too. Tug tried not to jinx things
by wanting more than one thing at the same time, but right then he more than anything
wanted to run in the dark with me: He was not, he finally realized then, in that minute
of that hour on that day, what Tom would consider an ideal gambling pal. Devilette
had gone off at three to one, which meant Tug himself would profit at least thirty
dollars, but what did Tom care about thirty bucks flowing from the track to Tug?
And wasn’t thirty only a small step toward payment for the diamond earrings Tug now
wanted to give me?
Then the
PLACE
box flashed seven, and Tom said, “Dammit.”
“I’m sorry,” Tug said.
“For what?” Tom said. “
I’m
the one who screwed up. I shouldn’t have gotten greedy and gone for the exacta.”
“You didn’t bet Devilette straight up at all?”
“No. I lost everything. Which shows you how fucking out of my mind I am.”
Lost everything? Tug thought. “How much did you bet?” he asked.
“That’s not the issue. The issue is why.”
“Well?” Tug said. “Then why?”
Race three’s odds appeared on the board, staring back at them.
“I borrowed some money,” Tom said.
He assessed Tug unabashedly, as if he’d just explained everything irrational he’d
ever done in his life.
“And I wanted you to be an attorney someday,” he said. “
And
have your horse farm.”
“We gotta be realistic,” Tug said, even as he thought: He just lost his ass and then
some. He’s out of control doubling down.
“Not to mention
someone
had to come up with the cash to pay Jan for those muskies,” Tom said now.
“You’re saying you won that muskie cash gambling?”
“At first.”
“But why? I mean, why pay her to fish?”
“Because Cindy was too proud to take a direct handout. Cindy and Jan were
broke
, Tug. They couldn’t pay their rent in Arkansas. Your mother and I—this whole thing
started with us trying to do the right thing.”
The odds up on the board flashed and changed. One of the outside-post entries in the
upcoming race was a one-to-nine favorite, meaning some owner had piled on it so heavily
it would barely bring a profit.
“But now you’re doubling down with borrowed money?” Tug said.
Tom shrugged.
“And
losing,” Tug said. “To chumps.”
“Don’t worry about the chumps. The chumps will never touch you.”
“What about Mom? What if they go after her—or Cindy or Jan?”
“They wouldn’t. They never touch the women. That’s code.”
“They got The
Form
Monger’s wife.”
“No, they didn’t, Tug. The
Form
Monger’s wife ran off.”
“With one of them?”
Again, Tom shrugged. “What’s the difference, Tug? It makes no difference. The man’s
wife left town, and then the only one they went after was him.”
Tug couldn’t stop shaking his head, unable to say as much as one darned word, shocked
as he was that Tom knew so much about crimes of that magnitude.
“So don’t worry about that, Tug,” Tom said. “You worry too much. Anyway, let’s just
go. But you do need to realize that you worry too much. I don’t know where you
got
that. Your mother—your mother? Your mother probably wants both of us home.”
DEESH
SOMEWHERE PAST MILE MARKER 220,
the bus veers onto an exit ramp, then brakes to a halt at a stop sign. It turns right
and comes to rest in a minimart parking lot, and I think, Someone’s here to cuff me.
The engine clicks off. The driver stands and passengers stir. An old maroon minivan
sits in the fluorescent light spilling outside the minimart’s front windows.
“Ten minutes,” the driver calls, and he heads down the stairs and off. Men behind
me glance at each other. I am hungry, so I leave the bus, walk over the gravel parking
lot toward the store. Armed as I am, I fear power. A small TV beside the coffeemaker
shows cable news, and I see the words
BREAKING STORY
. I glance off, hear the news reporter explain that, for the fatal cop shooting
in the Bronx, police have someone in custody, and this someone, the police are saying,
is Cornelius Barker.
Bark.
Then a detective being interviewed declares Bark merely a person of interest.
Bark, this detective says, has cooperated fully.
And thanks to Bark, this detective says, a country full of capable law enforcement
is now searching for me.
I pretend to read the nutrition information on a small jar of bean dip. I am sweating
full-out. The broadcaster talks on, about the shot cop’s wife and kids, the hand at
my side now a fist. Madalynn and Jasir keep walking up to me in my mind, stopping
to face me on that sidewalk in Brooklyn, but mostly I’m trying to keep composed while
squaring myself with the truth that, goddammit, Bark sold me out. I fear the suspicion
of the redheaded woman at the register and decide not to go back on the bus—Bark knows
I was on it. I grab a chocolate bar, then two more, walk to the counter, pull a ten
from my cash, trying too late to keep the hundreds hidden. I pay, nod at the cashier
as I take the change. She doesn’t nod back, and to keep myself calm I tell myself
she’s just shy.
Then I’m out the door, headed for the bus, the driver, now seated, watching me or
someone behind me. I stop on parking lot gravel twenty feet from him, pocket the chocolate
bars, touch my toes as if I’m stretching, take a step away from him toward the middle
of the bus, where I stretch again. Other passengers leave the minimart, headed toward
me. Did they see the news broadcast? Did they listen? I reach overhead as if stretching
my arms, step a little more toward the rear of the bus. I am alternately
stretching and easing myself toward a spot behind the bus, where I hope the darkness
of this night, thicker still here than it was in Jersey, will soon hide me completely.
Then I am back there, five feet behind the warmth and bitter smell of bus exhaust,
not stretching, facing neither the minimart nor the bus driver, facing the nearby
woods, not doing much except maybe appearing suspicious. It’s my fear of wilderness—bears
and wolves, yeah, but what’s always scared the shit out of me is how even the tiniest
mouse can have rabies—that keeps me from sprinting into the woods, the border between
this asphalt I stand on and all those trees not even forty feet off.
I am that close. I am that scared. I consider how Madalynn and Jasir would feel if
I were arrested, and with them well in mind, I think: Go.
JAN
FOR A COUPLE NIGHTS AFTER
Tom Corcoran took me and Tug to the track’s backside, I finally slept well, almost
luxuriously, seduced into all but sexy dreams rooted in my confidence in becoming
a jock, dreams about crisp morning workouts and braided manes and nationally televised
post parades, about turquoise and maroon and lime green silks blurred gloriously as
I’d weave a game colt through an unyielding pack, about gearing down graded-stakes
champs yards before the wire to save their gas for future wins. In one dream, I sat
in this huge chrome grandstand packed with Ecuadorian farmhands chatting and laughing
controllably like wealthy folks do, and I woke from that dream certain these people
and I had won some revolution, then lay there, on the Corcorans’ summer-porch cot,
savoring this sense of victory, pushing out my heels to stretch my calves, which felt
leaner and not at all sore. And
it was then, lolling around like this, that I realized how I could use Arnie DeShields:
Ask him to get me a track ID.
That’s really all you need, I thought.
Access.
And I faced the lake and rose for the day.
The living room, still untouched by that dawn’s sunlight, was soundless as I walked
through. In the kitchen, Colleen stood beside the table, staring down at an unopened
Form
.
“Morning,” I said, and I headed for the coffeepot, which wasn’t on. “And I really
do mean it, Colleen. This has got to be one of the best.”
I filled the pot at the sink, measured out the coffee.
Colleen didn’t move, not even to nod.
“Colleen?” I said.
“Jan,” she said quietly.
“What.”
“Tom is gone.”
And right then the screen door opened, and Tug walked in. He faced Colleen as if he
and I had never met. “Nothing odd, really. The pickup’s still there, so maybe he went
for a jog?”
Tom’s glasses lay there, near the
Form
.
“You know the drum’s gone, right?” Colleen asked Tug.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Our forty-gallon drum,” she said. “For burning leaves.”
“So?” Tug said, sour-faced.
“He didn’t say anything to you, Jan?” Colleen asked. “About anything having to do
with horses?”
I remembered what Tom had said to Tug and me just before I’d met Arnie DeShields,
about the effects of betting horses on the human heart, and I figured Tug would now
pipe up about this, but Tug just stepped back to the screen door and stared out.
“Not really,” I said, to play things safe.
“You have no idea why he might be gone?” Colleen asked.
I shook my head no, worried she was thinking about the hours Tom had spent without
her in the kitchen in the middle of most every night. Was she implying she suspected
he’d come on to my mother?
Didn’t she know he studied past performances while the world slept at night? Wasn’t
it common knowledge that, if Tom Corcoran were at all a religious man, the
Daily Racing Form
was his bible?