Lord of Misrule (33 page)

She had always liked to sink her hands into Spinoza, the Speculation grandson, at first feared to be a killer, in fact the most pliable body of all once he foolishly gave his trust. She remembered how she used to drape herself sloppily across his rump with one arm while she worked on his tail and thighs with the other—how after a while his spine would curve up like a bow and his knees slightly buckle, so they would end like two amiable drunks holding each other up before a magistrate. Now she made herself run a hand over his dead body. The hair was gritty and clotted like a mat on the floor of a taxicab, or a rug for wiping your feet in a public entrance on an ugly day. It felt filthy and contagious. She drew her hand back, wiped the open palm down the side of her jeans and leaned against the wall. She had thought the ghost of the horse might be around here somewhere, but whatever she had meant to say to him by touching his body, she had surely told him the opposite.

Hey. Do you know how much I hate you?

Joe Dale. She peered into the darkness. He was sitting four or five yards from her out in the wet weeds in the gypsy’s plastic lawn chair, with the fog boiling around him and his legs crossed. Behind him in the old infield, in a starry sea of queen anne’s lace, the midnight blue Sedan de Ville idled—she imagined it idled,
all she heard was the low growl of the generator and the throb of cicadas. A lighter snapped, Joe Dale lit a cigar and she saw the black grain of beard on his white cheeks and the bags under his eyes.

Too much to kill you, which is lucky for you, he said. I try never to hate a girl that much so she gets interesting again. But then it happens and, hey, it’s a trip. The staying power I get! And the brains, like a detective. I wake up when I never knew I was asleep. You thought you got away from me, didn’t you? Hey, once I hated you, I found you just like that. Bam. How did I know you’d be in the place?
I knew
. Now I won’t feel so bad about losing my money on Lord of Misrule tonight. I know I’m going to get something out of it. I know you ain’t going to turn me down after I tell you how much I hate you. You won’t want to miss this. I mean, you don’t get this too off-ten. At least I don’t. Am I scaring you? Hey, relax. When I hate a girl that much I only want to be with her. To experience her, you might say. There’s nothing like it. Love can’t compare. You know what I mean? Probably not. Well, like love is to you, hate is to me. I got to be with her while it lasts. Then she’s like any other broad again and I can throw her out. I’m free, she’s free. You colly?

He did not get up and she was conscious of looking down at him in the infield over the dead body of the horse. So what do you say? he asked. She opened her mouth but nothing came out; the cicadas swelled up in the interval as loud as a discotheque.

Then she saw another person coming across the infield, glinting silk sleeves, dark vest, tall and well made, the walk at once elegant and faintly simian owing to the turned-back hands. Carrying a pitchfork. Tommy. Head tipped to one side, as if listening, listening to voices—were they in or out of his head? She saw him, saw him see them, saw him lean in leisurely attention on the fins of the midnight blue Cadillac. He was insane, he thought people
were trying to destroy him, to suck out his guts, but, she noted, in the rare event that someone was trying to destroy you, to suck out your guts, insanity was a goodly metaphysics.

I see your point, she said carefully. What could be more alien to the body than someone that you hate. I understand the physical attraction of the alien. I’ve always been drawn to the alien—I mean, to anything alive that’s a completely different species from me.

Hey, that’s me, Joe Dale said. I’m a bulldog. I mean, naked I’m a little overweight, more than a little, my trainer don’t like it but you’ll like it. Wait’ll you see—balls all over me. Balls on my neck, balls around my middle, balls on my balls. When I fuck you, I’m going to tell you the whole time how much I hate you. All the time, like some kinda new music you never heard before. You’ve been waiting for something like that for a long time now—am I right or wrong?

I’ve got to admit, she said, that you are alien to me, enough so … so I can imagine you … meeting you like some kind of monster in a labyrinth.

He laughed. Some kinda monster in a labyrinth. I like that.

But there’s some aspect that kills it, freezes it, when I see you actually sitting there in front of me. Takes the life out of it.

The snuff aspect, he said.

Exactly. The snuff aspect. That you could take my life.

Hey, I’m unarmed. He pulled open his white windbreaker to show her. You could still run away from me, he said cheerfully. Go ahead. Try. You got room.

I could, couldn’t I. But I’d like to know what it is you hate about me.

Okay. To be frank—you love trouble, he said. That disgusts me. You think you’re too intelligent. You think you just accidentally
end up where it’s at, like, it’s a coincidence that horses get wasted around you, maybe people too. But it ain’t an accident. You make it happen.

How exactly do I do that?

You should have gone along with me the first time I suggested something to you, he said. It was just a small thing then. I tried to make it easy for you. To take the matter out of your hands. But you got no trust.

That’s true. But I don’t see why you couldn’t just stay on your side and me on mine.

Hey, I didn’t invite you into my world, did I? You showed up. You took, not one,
two
horses from me. You fought me, because you’re a destroyer. You eat corpses, like that one there. I just fight back.

Then we’re not so very different after all, are we.

Fuck yes we’re different. I do cold things but you make it happen. It’s like weather, it goes where it’s summoned. I wouldn’t do what I do if it wasn’t for low pressure cunts like you. I wouldn’t even think of such things, believe me.

I believe you.

You better go if you’re going to go, he said, getting to his feet. Otherwise I’m going to get my hands on you. I waited long enough to get you out of my system.

I’d like to get out of your system, Maggie said. I honestly would. But I don’t think I can help you there.

Sure you can. First I’m going to get those little-boy tits out of the way, which I admit I always kinda liked them. I bet they’re full of hard little bumps, though, like a golfball—probably cancer. He laughed. That’s a foretaste. Hey, didn’t I figure you right? Isn’t that what you like? Somebody who can reach his hand up inside you and tell you what disease you’re dying of.

He was standing at the edge of the loading platform now, his hands level with the head of the dead horse.

You know, I think you’d better stay away from me after all, she said. I don’t think you should come any closer.

What, you’re going to use that fucking dead horse to keep me away? I don’t see what else you got.

That’s because you haven’t really looked, Tommy said. He was pushing through the tall, tough blooms, pitchfork in hand. If you stood in the right place, you could see everything. But down in the dreck where you live, you can’t see.

Tommy Hansel, Joe Dale said, turning around. He raised his two empty hands in the air like a preacher, and slowly backed away towards the washed-out edge of the racetrack. You crept on me. I gotta hand it to you. Fuck, man, you got me good. But then, I didn’t know you were the sneaking up kind. I thought you were the raving looney kind. I was just saying to your woman here—

Tommy swung the pitchfork at his face sideways, like a bat. Maggie watched, in fascination, the tines of it close on the round white jowls like a barred window. He staggered backwards, his hands curled on his face. She stared at the little bush of whisker on each upper knuckle, the square glow of each clean white fingernail. He had had a manicure. Tommy swung again. The elbows in their yellow windbreaker pointed up like two yellow sails in the fog, and he went down. Tommy stood over him, holding the pitchfork low around its neck. He dislikes horses, actually, Tommy said. It’s beyond indifference.

Are you going to kill him? If you kill him, Tommy, when they catch you, they’ll never let you out.

You’re leaving me and I don’t care what happens to me, he said quite lucidly.

Things might look different in a little while. I’m not worth it. I’m really not.

It doesn’t matter if you’re worth it, he said. We’re one thing, only you’re too weak to know it. You think I’m nuts. You’re lucky I’m not nuts. Do you know why?

Why, she asked reluctantly.

Because if I was really nuts I wouldn’t let you make that mistake. I’d correct it.

She nodded. She thought there was something to that.

Joe Dale, groaning, rolled over on one side, then got his knees under him and pushed up in a salaam, his face still down in the dirt in the basket of his hands. Fuck. You two deserve each other, he said.

Tommy laughed. There you are, Maggie. Even that sick prick can see it. Why can’t you see it?

Do me one favor, Joe Dale said. I can’t see too good. Put me in my car. I need to get to a hospital.

I’m thinking of going to Ireland, Tommy said. Would you want to live in Ireland some day? You know I’m supposed to be descended from an Irish revolutionary hero on my mother’s side. James Napper Tandy?

Is that so? Maggie said. I never knew that. And she sang:

They smiled at each other.

That’s fine, she said, but I don’t think we’re going to Ireland.

You know I’m a bastard, he said. I’m not really my father’s child.

Maggie recalled the gray mechanic, a dried-up mask of Tommy, behind the cluttered desk at Hansel’s Esso and Used Auto, Trempeleau, Wisconsin. No. No, I think you really are.

You could see a resemblance?

I’m afraid I must say I did. He was almost your double. Shrunken and lifeless I admit.

He blinked at her, hurt and disappointed. I don’t think so, he said.

Joe Dale rose to a half-crouch and took three shambling steps towards the infield where the Cadillac was idling. But his ankles tangled in the jungly touch-me-not that choked the old sand track, and he sank down again and crawled on all fours. His hands on the ground were black with blood. Get me to a hospital, he muttered.

I’ll get you to the same hospital where you take your sore horses, Tommy said.

What, Hansel, you think you treated your horses so good? Joe Dale peered up at Tommy out of eyes that were swollen shut.

I did not, Tommy said. I did not. But I am leaving horse racing. I don’t believe I’ve heard you bid the sport farewell. I, however, am leaving horse racing tonight. My fallen twin sister can come with me if she wishes. Well, Maggie? Do you wish? He waited a moment. No. Well, tell me this. Do you think I could be a dancer? No answer to that either. He laughed. Then fare thee well.

He walked, in his princely yet faintly simian way, carrying the pitchfork parallel to the ground like a spear, out to the infield where the Sedan de Ville idled behind the ghostly cones of its headlights.

Joe Dale managed to hunch up unsteadily one more time in the jewelweed, trying to get a footing in the deep sand where the track had washed out to a steep slope. Finally he lurched to his feet. You two are through on every racetrack in West Virginia, he shouted.

Tommy ducked into the Sedan de Ville and revved the euphonious
engine a few times without shutting the door. The Cadillac roosted a moment on its pearly exhaust, then swished forward through the queen anne’s lace, gaining speed.

Hey, get out of my car, Joe Dale shouted, waving his bloody hands over his head. The midnight blue Cadillac left the infield and ploughed into the sand of the ruined track. Its nose bounced down and up and Joe Dale popped heavily into the air, arced backwards over the crumbly heel of the washout and landed in the spindly arms of the broken down hot-walking machine. Incredibly enough, clanking and whirring, dragging one segmented silvery leg and waving another, it started to turn with Joe Dale dangling from the housing of the motor. But then it stopped.

S
HE COMES TO SEE YOU
, not too often, at this place, zigzagging down the mountains on a Saturday visiting day in that white Grand Prix with its bumper hanging off, the
grand prize
which is all she got out of it. So in the end you got the magic car for a night, drove it off a bridge and ended up here, she got the decrepit Grand Prix and it’s still going. And she’s still going. She’s back writing recipes for that Winchester rag for a yard a week. A couple times you found an old Thursday
Mail
lying around the dayroom, perused the recipes,
FOR SATURDAY SOCIAL, TRY AUNT MARGARET’S 4-BEAN SALAD
and like that, for secret messages, but either her oracles have gone so deep they’re beyond even you, or without you she’s lost it. Lost her magic. You prefer to think the latter.

She wanted to know how your face got split. Even she couldn’t miss the stitches down the edge of your cheek and up one side of your nose—you look like a fucking tooled wallet, like the lifers make in the shop downstairs in this place. She wanted to know what happened so you tried to tell her.