Authors: Mark Wisniewski
JAN
A FILLY WARMED UP ALONGSIDE ME,
her tongue hanging out despite the bit, her eyes strained to see the pinks and yellows
and magentas on the dresses and wide-brimmed hats, and I thought, Get into your stride,
girl, wanting to watch her run rather than worry about trying to find Tom Corcoran,
but then, near the finish line, I saw Jasper, patting his forehead with a folded handkerchief
as he waved at me, and he was walking toward me, his own stride so fast I was sure
he had news.
Then, closer to me, he shook his head no, and Colleen appeared from beneath the grandstand
and waved, but took her time walking toward us. After she reached us, she stood directly
in front of me, her face too close to mine and her eyes sort of mechanical, I thought,
and she said, “Let’s go see your mom,” and it hit me that, on this trip to Saratoga,
she’d been treating me like I was Tug’s
girlfriend—and I mean
really
hit me, to the point of confusion greater than my confusion about where Tom could
be, since to me it was obvious that, today, Tug had as much interest in dating me
as a muskie did in chomping down on an exposed hook. Of course neither Colleen nor
I then mentioned any confusion, keeping to the entrenched Corcoran manner of not saying
shit when anything important hung in doubt, and as she and I and Jasper walked back
to the Galaxie, I wondered if there’d ever be a time when I’d know that, in actual
fact, she cared about me.
And then there we were, she and I and Jasper, bearing down on the Galaxie, and my
own mother, from the backseat, asked Jasper if he could take her to a church, and
Jasper, as if relieved to have an option, said, “I don’t see why not.”
And now here came Tug, from the direction of the grandstand, loping steadily if not
passionlessly, arms crossed, making it clear to the entire world, it seemed, that
he no longer cared enough about me to as much as glance my way.
And the rational, unselfish part of me sensed this was because Tom’s disappearance
had Tug despondent, but let’s be real—there was also the other part of me that wished
I could be at the top of the list of the people Tug worried about.
I mean, doesn’t everyone want that?
To be considered, by at least one other living person in the world, as the body who’s
most important?
DEESH
AS SMOTHERED BY GABE’S MOUTH
as his gunshot sounded, I keep hearing it in the back of my mind. And I know he was
right that any gunshot this time of year will have a warden hauling ass toward it
quicker than wildfire.
So I’m back on land, walking. Again in woods, this time hoping to see a road. The
gun is still in the stream, where I should have tossed it before I fished.
But the gun doesn’t matter now, I keep telling myself. I need to approach someone
peacefully before anyone stalks me and shoots. I need to explain I just want to go
back, so it would be stupid to run—I need to stay within myself, like I had on those
sweet shiny courts in my hoop-playing days.
And it’s here and now, in these woods in Pennsylvania all these years after I ran
fast breaks over those courts, that I finally realize why I loved that game. Ball’s
a team sport if there ever was one.
The more you play it and win and pursue championships, the more you cherish teammates
whose flow and moves click with yours.
Y’all pushed that ball, I think.
Fast and together, and that’s why you won.
And that’s why you clicked with Gabe.
Old white man was on your team.
He got what you’re about. Understood your shit. Even had a term for it.
Fucking real but unsustainable.
And I walk on, crunching last fall’s leaves, trying to understand exactly why he offed
himself.
Maybe what he had with his wife was never real.
Maybe that’s why he was all messed up about hatred.
And hatred of hatred ain’t enough to get by on.
Maybe you also need love.
I try to focus on tree roots, fallen branches, any birdsong anywhere, anything but
my memory’s insistence on those bloodied pieces of the man’s brain sinking into that
pool.
You’re in shock, bro, I think.
This is how a brother in shock feels.
But you need to keep hanging in.
You don’t need an out like he did.
Sustainable or not, that Madalynn love was real.
Get your ass back and sustain whatever’s left.
And it’s right about then that I hear something, or someone, kicking up leaves.
And from behind trees emerge four figures, two ahead and two to my left, each stone-faced
and white as hell, all of their guns black and aimed square at me.
“Okay, Sharp!” one of them yells. “Picnic’s over!”
JAN
JASPER WAITED IN THE GALAXIE
while my mother knelt between pews and prayed and Tug and Colleen and I stood in the
aisle. I was beside Tug then, both of us more or less facing the altar, and I thought
about my own father’s early departure, about whether my mother felt about him back
then the way Colleen now felt about Tom. It occurred to me that, no, back then my
mother had probably felt quite a bit differently, since here she’d been, pregnant
with me, on top of still maybe feeling that swirled feeling you get when you’re with
the love of your life, and the longer I thought about all this, the worse I felt,
because now, with Tom gone—a supposedly responsible adult I’d actually known enough
to have fondness for—a sudden disappearance like that felt to me like a very real
thing.
It also occurred to me that, back then, in those days of my
father’s passing, my mother had had to endure plenty of talk about her pregnancy with
me, gossip so widespread it would reach Jasper and someday me, too, as well as invade
my father’s heart and mind and maybe even his soul. All that speculation about whether
I’d end up proving to be Ronny’s daughter—Jasper’s granddaughter—it all seemed so
old-fashioned now, this whole business of how the color of my skin would supposedly
tell the world which man my mother had loved most. Still, I now also sensed, by my
mother’s persistence in remaining on her knees, that nothing back then had been easy
for her, and I wondered, as she kept right on kneeling between those pews, if those
days struck her now as being buried deeply by time, as they always had seemed to me.
Today I know that, most probably, my father’s passing has always hit her as having
just happened, because I now understand how, after you’ve gone through certain things,
there’s this acceleration in the passage of time that can scare you almost as much
as the disappearance of anyone, but on that day, as I stood in the aisle of that church
in Saratoga, I was still unaware of how quickly time passed for her. I was, you could
say, far younger in my thinking at the start of this summer than I am now, prone then
to focus on only myself, at most on Tug’s prospects and mine to end up together.
And then, after I thought through all these things, about mothers and fathers and
the progression of time, Tug’s arm bumped mine, maybe accidentally, and it occurred
to me that if Tom hadn’t won and lost the races he’d ridden and gambled on, Tug and
I might be all out in love—I mean, crazy enough to marry. I knew impulses to marry
at my age were unwise, especially for a woman who wanted a career, but still, right
there, in that gray stone church in Saratoga Springs, I let a few dance through me.
And I think it was right about then, just after Tug’s sticky skin
touched mine, that it began to really sink in that the chances of Tom returning were
slim, that I’d been looking the other way when it came to why Tom was gone. Obviously
he was gone because he’d gambled too much, and it was also very clear he’d lost far
too much—so much he couldn’t borrow from even the cruelest of loan sharks—and I, like
the rest of us, needed to deal with this.
And it was also sinking in that he’d lost to the kind of people no one should bet
with in the first place, heartless, greedy men who see in racing not the beauty of
speed but the chance to book bets made by people shocked by loss and therefore sure
to lose more.
And it was then, in that church, that I first sensed why gamblers like Tom bet on
horses in the first place: Every person on earth ends up trying to love someone else,
and let’s face it—it shreds your heart to try at love and lose, whether it’s because
love was never destined to come your way, or it was but your lover’s moved on. I mean,
the thing about trying to love is that no victory in love lasts. No matter how joyful
you feel, no matter how young and healthy your beloved and you might seem, you can
never, in truth, rely on love, because as love plays out, if you get right down to
it, there’s never any permanence of victory.
But in horseracing there is. There are races of certain lengths, with certain numbers
of entries. And there’s always a definite finish line, with the first horse to cross
that line the winner and everyone else a loser. And, yes, sometimes there are jockeys’
objections, but soon enough it’s true that a winner is declared official. And once
things are official there’s an official reward for the second-place finisher, too,
and there’s even recognition of the mediocrity of taking third, and it goes on like
that, all orderly and numerical and charted out for posterity to read in the
Form
.
And it was in that stone church in Saratoga Springs that it grew
undeniable to me that there’s this whole community of people who live for such certainty,
such unchallengeable declarations about the results of races that are as heated and
full of surprises as love.
My mother wasn’t one of those people, maybe because the results of the love she shared
with my father had ended as officially as you could imagine.
But Tom
was
one of those people, as are most grandstanders.
And I will always understand such people, always hope that, despite the infinite number
of ways they choose to risk their time and money, they could all—somehow—win big.
DEESH
“LET’S GO,” A TROOPER SAYS,
as I sit on a guardrail alongside I-80 with my hands cuffed behind me. “Up.”
I stand as four or five hands keep me balanced.
“You read him his rights?” one trooper asks another. All but one of them—and there
are dozens—are white.
“Yes, sir,” I hear.
“Straight off the yellow card?”
“Absolutely.”
“Did you
hear
your rights, sir?” the first one asks me.
And to spite him, I don’t answer. Maybe there’s wisdom to this: If I didn’t hear my
rights, I wasn’t truly told them?
“Sir?” I hear.
Again I don’t answer. At least twenty marked and unmarked cars and SUVs have gathered
here, on this stretch of I-80, traffic funneled into one lane by orange cones.
“Do you hear
me
, sir.”
Traffic beside me has stopped, more staid white folks staring.
“Then I’m going to read your rights again,” I hear. “With these three—Tierney, get
over here. I’m going to read your rights again, Mr. Sharp, with these four officers
present to witness.”
And again come my rights, this time shouted distinctly. A bus in traffic rolls ahead,
followed by a parade of semis and pickups and cars. Three older guys huddle near an
unmarked SUV, one of them, in a suit, on a skinny cell he snaps shut as he heads toward
me. There is shouting, between him and Tierney, between Tierney and the trooper who
arrested me, between the guy in the suit and the latest caller on his cell.
Then the guy in the suit approaches me. He says, “You took him down, you take him
in,” and I’m confused—until it hits me that he’s talking to the white guy who first
cuffed me.
“Yes, sir,” that guy says.
“Do you have an attorney, Mr. Sharp?” the guy in the suit asks calmly.
I shrug.
“Do you want one?” he asks, and here I understand why people confess even after they’ve
heard their rights: There are things you want to say,
need
to say—and here someone is, a person the world has deemed important, paying you attention,
waiting somewhat kindly for any word from you.
And maybe it’s because of this kindness that I say, “Possibly.”
“Then I’ll get the folks in the Bronx started on that,” he says. “Okay?”
Again, I shrug. I don’t want an appointed attorney, since the street taught me Legal
Aid does little but hold your hand as it walks you into prison—because no Legal Aid
lawyer wants to lose
at trial. But I can’t afford my own lawyer, certainly not for this mess. And now two
troopers, one a woman, guide my shoulders toward a squad car’s backseat, and now I’m
put there and the woman closes the door. I’m inside the stink of hot vinyl.
There is silence, then radioed static. For a long time, I watch armed men chat while
my guts and lungs rise toward my throat.
And now here’s the guy who tackled me headed my way, and now he’s here, with me. He
closes the door, adjusts his rearview to check me out; I’m dizzy and blinking and,
yeah, taking slow breaths like Gabe did to calm my own heart, because we are rolling
ahead into traffic, back toward the Bronx, merging with people free to flee their
troubles, squad cars behind and in front.
“You have any idea how much this all costs?” the trooper asks, and his rearview image
makes eye contact.
And I won’t answer, of course. But I wish I would. I wish I would speak up right now
to say,
Yes
, I know. I know this costs a lot. And I know that some of its cost is to pay your
salary, probably also to pay you for as much sweet overtime as you want. And I know
that, because this money ends up in your pocket, you can afford to sustain any lover
who loves you.
Then I tell myself to chill.
I will not speak to this jerk.
I will let him avoid the question Gabe and I never discussed: How long can my lover’s
love stay real?
And to face this question myself, I look pointedly away, at the green blur made by
the thousands of trees we rush past.
Because,
man
, are we moving.
We will not be stopped.
We are flying down a long, steep straightaway.