Authors: Mark Wisniewski
And now the handshakes and hugs and dances in the winner’s circle were over, a stable
hand now removing Equis Mini’s saddle, the proud men inside forming a line so each
could follow the next out, Equis Mini then led out, too, the stable hand guiding him
back onto the track, then walking him slowly enough to allow him the slight nods caused
by the steps he took. And I thought: Okay, Little One. Talk to you in your stall.
And I watched him complete the clubhouse turn and leave the track for the backside,
and when he was gone from sight I missed Tug all the more, to the point of impatience.
I told myself that this meant maybe something was wrong, wondered if impatience could
live in me if there really was true love between me and Tug. Shouldn’t I, ideally,
trust that he was doing his best to return?
And the longer this question bothered me, the harder it was to wait, because, dammit,
I just wanted to be with Tug. I considered going to look for him but then remembered
his father’s old rule for Tug when Tug was a kid, the one about there needing to be
a stay putter, and, with this rule in mind, I sat still longer and waited.
And it was this rule of Tom Corcoran’s that caused me to stay put for what seemed
to be well more than half an hour.
Tug’s back there making the deal, I then thought. He’s got to be.
And then I stayed put yet another half an hour beyond the first, and I knew so because
the odds board said so.
And then, after gazing at the trees well beyond the odds board and even beyond the
backside, I stood.
I wished I could run down to the ground level and out onto the concrete apron and
hop the chain-link to take a shortcut across the homestretch and the infield, and
maybe, with the track now fairly empty of patrons and workers and security, I could
get away with this, especially if I jogged, but I thought: No.
You’re an owner now.
Act like one.
And I walked up the concrete stairs that led out of the grandstand, past the betting
windows now abandoned by bettors and tellers, the IRS window abandoned, too, and then
I took the escalator down, walking quickly down it as I did.
And I walked quickly to the turnstiles as well, then past them, The
Form
Monger, of course, gone, pretty much everyone gone. Only the pockmarked guy who sold
beer at the burger stand was there, just now getting into a rusted old Chevy parked
several spots away from the familiar Corcoran family pickup, and the sight of the
pickup assured me Tug was indeed on the backside, that, no, he had
not
taken my sixty-plus grand in winnings and skipped town, and
my confidence in Tug as well as my humoring myself for having ever let a worry like
that cross my mind helped me walk as gracefully as a young woman could along this
unkempt side of the old steel blue grandstand. I was on the wide asphalt lane that
hugged the far outside of the clubhouse turn, headed for the backside, following Tug’s
recent footsteps, I was sure. And I again thought about jogging, but again thought
no. Tug wouldn’t have gone to the backside alone if it hadn’t been for the best. Maybe
he’d figured that, without me with him, he’d save us money on Equis Mini’s haggled-over
price, what with how obviously fond I was of Equis Mini and all that.
And again, I trusted Tug as I walked. If nothing else, I believed he was smart.
But when I reached the backside, I went up and down all the shedrows twice, but there
was no sign of him. Worse, I came upon Equis Mini being given a hose bath by a hand
in shade thrown by an oak, and I asked this hand if he’d seen Tug, and this hand shrugged,
then ignored me more coldly than the hose water must have felt, making it clear he
was resolved not to talk to me anytime soon. And Equis Mini wouldn’t look over at
me; he just kept shifting his weight from both left hoofs to his right, and trying
to chomp the hose and letting his tail swat at a stubborn twitch in his hide. And
then, after I left Equis Mini to keep asking around about Tug, I saw Arnie DeShields
near the shedrow fifty feet away—not his own barn, curiously—at least as far as I
knew—and he, too, ignored me and quickly ducked back inside, and then, when I stepped
inside, neither Arnie nor Tug were anywhere, as if they had left through some back
door or were hiding crouched in the feed bin, and no one in that barn would answer
my questions about them. It was as if somehow neither Tug nor Arnie had been there
all day, or they both had and no one wanted to think about that, let alone talk.
But this reticence wasn’t like the one I’d endured there the day after Tom Corcoran
had disappeared. This was something new, with its own kind of opaque sheen. Certainly
it made me more queasy than the one about Tom had. Were the barn hands here today
quiet because they knew I’d slept with Tug? But how would they have known—unless Tug
had told them? And why would Tug have said anything about
that
? Why on earth? And if for some reason he had, what would this mean about his deepest
true feelings for me?
Then all I could think was: Go home. I knew the Corcorans’ house wasn’t my home, never
had been, really, but for me it now served as the next closest thing, and I felt compelled
to be there. Tug could be sitting in the kitchen, or, at the very worst, napping on
the couch. Maybe he was hiding the sixty grand in some cranny up in his room?
But even as I imagined Tug doing these things, I didn’t feel good. I did
not
. If Tug had been worried when his father had told him he’d worried too much, I now
had to admit that I, alone here on the backside, was worried, too.
And all I could do now to fight this worry was run, so then there I was, doing it,
more or less jogging across the backside’s gravel parking lot. And it wasn’t long
before, over the railroad ties, I was running undeniably. Again the ties challenged
me but I didn’t care; I tripped and fell once but kept on. And then, just after the
first prick of perspiration through my scalp, it occurred to me that, now, this time,
this evening, with today’s sun still not quite gone from sight, the longer I ran the
more I worried, to the point that it now seemed possible everything would turn out
opposite of the way things were supposed to be. Tug and I, I realized, were supposed
to be together. He, the responsible Corcoran, was
supposed to return. And Equis Mini was meant to be ours to bathe, not some stupid,
tongue-tied barn hand’s.
And now I found my legs accelerating, maybe because worry was fueling me. I was acting
like a Corcoran whether I’d end up being one or not: They, the Corcorans, had all
been worriers, all of them second-guessers, too, but primarily worriers, with nothing
ever right in their minds, and nothing good ever trusted in as being able to remain
good. They were wrong. They were wrong. The Corcorans were wrong about that, but they
were also just plain wrong in what they did, and in how they conducted themselves.
After all, they argued. They argued a heck of a lot. And held grudges. They kept secrets
and pursued familyhood in a business that thrived on greed. They treated love as if
it were some privilege you needed to earn, or at least Tom and Colleen had.
And what about Tug, anyway?
Could he really love?
On the other hand, could he really have first assessed me as nervously as he had and
not been as bonkers about me as I’d been about him? Could eyes as spontaneous as his
lie? Could kisses like that? And the way he touched me, and the way he’d kept me awake
talking long after he’d made sure I finished. What kind of guy
did
that? Who on earth did that with a woman like me unless there was out-and-out love?
But what I was really trying to ask myself was: Could he really have taken my winnings
and run? Could he really, really have played me? I was now jogging so fast I wished
he
had
taken my winnings, all sixty-plus thousand, and driven the pickup so far I could
never find him, because that would have been easier, that would have been cake compared
with what I feared now, and, yes,
fear could be bad; fear nearly always
was
bad; no human body should ever need to fear, but sometimes there came the kind of
fear animals felt, the necessary kind, the honest kind, the kind that’s akin to survival,
the kind that makes bees sting and hummingbirds quit humming to zip off into woods,
the kind that makes fish, of any size, know when not to bite and instead dart and
zigzag toward depth. And it was this kind of fear, my legs now told me, that I, Janette
Price, the daughter of the renowned jockey Jamie Price, had inside of me, inside my
legs certainly but also now up into the rest of me including my mind and soul and
whatever else I was made of, maybe even inside any bits of Tug still carried by me,
at least inside any cells of his skin still beneath my fingernails from when I’d squeezed
his shoulders, back when his coming had made me come, too.
And when I reached the hedge of milkweeds, I wanted to sprint to the house as I always
had, but such a sprint was pointless—because if he was now in the house, he wouldn’t
need me, not as direly as he might if he was where this fear in me sensed he was.
And now, here, undeniably on the Corcorans’ lawn, I took the right onto the trail
he and his father had blazed, the narrow one into the woods, my shins and ankles tearing
through the thickened berry canes, my feet dodging the fattest roots, and I didn’t
want to keep going but then there I was, needing only to duck under a birch log he’d
probably cut, and then I was on the inside, letting go of the birch fence and sprinting
again, this time over the horse farm, over turf that, dammit, was supposed to be his
and mine, wanting to stop on it, needing to cross it, and after I cleared the August-narrowed
creek, I was puffing all out, headed toward, yes, a forty-gallon drum, just as I had
so many times back in June, except, face it, this wasn’t that drum; this drum was
orange, the same orange as that but this one rust-free, this one, you could say, Tug’s
and Tug’s only, and everyone at the track knew why Tug had bought it and shown it
around. And of course I knew why he’d made that move, too; I knew all about how assertion
worked among men whether they gambled or not. And I now guessed what was inside this
orange drum of Tug’s, and now it was at most ten feet away, now fewer than four, and
I hated how knowledge married you but forced you to keep running, and then I was up
against it, this newer, rustproofed drum, my fingers needing to squeeze its rim to
keep the rest of me up, because, yes, my fingers were fine and strong and not in the
least trampled upon, but breathing was the problem, mine and his, he being this brand-new
Tug now just beyond my fingertips, his eyes bulged and tongue swollen horrifically
like his father’s had been, and it was clear to me that this strangulation—this one
smack in front of me now—was done by the same goons who’d strangled Tom Corcoran,
maybe wiseguys connected to The Nickster, and now that this truth was obvious to me,
the rush of thoughts flying through me like a herd scared by thunder included one
of the last things Tug had told me: “If this Douglas Sharp is innocent, we both probably
owe him an apology.”
And I couldn’t hide now from how I needed to make that apology on my own, how I alone
needed to remind anyone who’d listen that accusation doesn’t mean guilt, how one of
Tug’s last thoughts must have been that he was leaving a world where enmity was an
odds-on favorite to defeat truth.
Because one glance at Tug assured me there’d be no saving his life, since those goons
had not only used wire on his neck just like they had on Tom’s, they’d also obviously
snapped his spine while stuffing him completely in. He was a mess is what I’m saying—at
first all I recognized were his lips and the uneven wear of the heels of his shoes—and
what made the shock of it worse was I still felt
this need to know if there was hope, if there was anything I, as the first one to
find him, needed to do without pause. There was, when I saw his neck, this flash of
compulsion in me to see if the wire had severed more than just skin, but I couldn’t
look inside him like that, not in my state then—I could barely get myself to reach
toward him. But when I did I took hold of a hand and pulled, as if I had the strength
to yank him all the way out and straighten him into standing again on that meadow.
The fingers in mine felt cool and limp and careless all the way into the meat of his
palm, and it was probably then that I stopped kidding myself about my belief that
departed souls speak through starlight—I mean, it was hitting me squarely that everyone
knows any star’s light was sparked into being centuries ago, that maybe everything
good I’d believed about my father had been lies piled up to protect me.
Even so, I kept holding Tug’s hand and pulling, and something in me, the lover, I
guess, must have kept clinging to the chance that your heart can stop beating yet
your ears and brain can still work, because then there I was, whispering out loud,
actually trying to communicate, but I screwed that up, too, since all I could manage
was one word, and that word was
“Baby.”
And just after I said it I remembered him asking me never to call him that, so then
there I was, wishing he’d been dead and gone long enough not to have minded, which
then had me cussing myself out, meanly, almost viciously, using words adopted by pretty
much only the most callous of gamblers—probably because there was no way I was set
to say anything like good-bye.
“TEN MINUTES,”
the guard said, and now here was Jasir, quickly stepping inside this small bright
space yet just as quickly gone still, well held together across the table from his
father.
And here were those same skinny arms of Jasir’s, not folded like they’d been on that
sidewalk in Brooklyn, no longer protecting him as they had then, just poised in wait
at his sides, his back parallel to the door, his right hand behind him even after
the door had clicked shut, his left adjusting his purple baseball cap, which was too
big on him anyway.
“That woman who just left—she your attorney?” he asked.
“She’s an angel,” Deesh said.
Jasir nodded. “I got eyes, man,” he said. “I could see she was fine.”
“Not what I’m saying. She just came here to help. I mean, help get me the hell out
of here.”
“Really.”
“Uh-huh.”
“How?”
“Gonna testify that no way did I kill the jockey. ’Cause the killer offed another
dude while I was in here.”
And Jasir loosened up enough to move his arms, but only to set his hands on his hips,
wrists now flexed but again gone still, as if he needed to steel himself to reconsider
his prospects as Deesh’s son.
Finally, he said, “You need more angels than her.”
“No doubt, man,” Deesh said. “But it’s a start. You know how it goes, man: People
scared, but as soon as they see it’s cool to step forward, they start stepping forward
so much they form a line.”
Jasir kept on standing, still like that.
“And then a crowd,” Deesh said.
“Yeah, but on TV they’re saying you’re set to plead guilty to keep your ass off death
row.”
Deesh sighed with his cheeks puffed out, now sure, with no more thought needed, that
he would definitely plead innocent until the day he took his last breath—and he’d
keep pleading innocent whether they put him on death row or not.
He asked, “And you’re gonna believe them without asking me first?”
And it was here, finally, that Jasir glared angrily, and, worse, he had turned pointedly
away from Deesh, facing a corner of the small white ceiling.
“Okay,” Deesh said. “Understandable.”
And Jasir said nothing, just glared like that.
And while Jasir took his time doing this, letting them both feel
the room’s smallness and also its unrelenting brightness, Deesh tried to conjure things
a father should discuss with a grown son, things like how, yeah, when you finally
get down to it, you’ve got only yourself, so you might as well let yourself be your
own best friend. Things like how fishing is just an excuse to miss the coziness of
your home, but how, mostly, it’s the people you miss, and how after the people are
gone, it’s the apologies you remember, theirs and yours both, and how maybe, more
than anything, you shouldn’t be shy about forgiveness. How a room as private as this
wasn’t a bad place at all for any abandoned son to let loose of his resentments.
And with these things and more at the ready inside him, Deesh said, “I’m sorry, Jasir.”
And there were Jasir’s fingertips, on his side of the small white table.
“For what?” he said.
“Jasir—”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t call me that stupid-ass name. Fucking
Courageous
One. That is just bullshit.”
And now Jasir was yelling about all sorts of things, starting with his belief that
fame as the son of a killer was worse than not knowing who your dad was at all, letting
Deesh hear how his words sounded when his harshness burst out. He was yelling at Deesh
loud enough that the guard could possibly hear, certainly loud enough that Deesh figured
saying he was sorry a second time was pointless and probably even a bad idea, because
any brother knew that saying it even once could be damned near impossible, and that
hearing it more than once was not what a brother lived for—a brother just wanted to
be heard.
So you had to just sit for a while, with your newly grown-up son who was this ticked
off. Because sitting with him without saying a
thing was gold. It was letting him know you were there to absorb his shit in case
he still needed to get more off his chest, and that meant more than pretty words because
it said, Yeah, yeah, right, I messed up, but I’m staying here to respect you if nothing
else.
And Deesh’s sitting like this with this brother who was also his son meant doing what
his own father had failed to do. It meant saying, We’re it—we’re in the same thing,
and it was a lot, Deesh thought, like being part of the knot of brothers at the end
of a fast break stopped by a hard foul, where there was always then arguing and finger-pointing
and cussing and shouting, where every mind focused on whether or not what happened
broke the rules, on who initiated contact and who needed to get tough, on who needed
to quit being a prick who was just out there trying to knock guys down, on what, really,
the latest rules said—but then, Deesh remembered, they would get back to the actual
game, with the fouler and the guy who’d taken the hit wordless and back out there,
everyone again trying to win to hold the court, again zipping no-look passes on breaks
as freakishly as they could, and as they’d run it all melted away—all the anger and
hurt, all the shock there was in yet again learning that muscle and bone and ego and
skin were far more tender than you’d thought. There was always, Deesh remembered,
something uplifting about this resumption of play, about these two wounded brothers
having abandoned argument to continue on.
And now, in this room, with Jasir’s tirade mellowing, Deesh took heart in how the
two wounded brothers could then forge a certain power: how as long as they kept pushing
their pace over that sunbaked asphalt, their time together on earth would become more
of a life in which only they, these lovers of this game with all of its well-felt
dangers, could orchestrate so many unforeseen moves to create the next unstoppable
drive.