She must have blinked up too grimly at Jojo. The jockey began to speak: We wasn't even trying, he whined, I never called on him but he wasn't that far out of it and then it opened up and he just strolled across the finish. She wanted to say, Schlemiel, I can't even count on you to lose when our two lives depend on it, but she knew he was telling the truth. Jojo had surely bet his pushke on Nebraska like everybody else. Forget it, she said. Jojo slid down from the horse, took his saddle and slunk away.
Joe Dale was still staring at her with an oddly empty face. I'll catch you later, baby, he finally said. I'm going to try not to waste you. I'm going to try to keep each part of this thing in the right box where it belongs. I'm going to give you a chance to work your way out of the deep hole you're in. Then he walked away in his slacks that were sleek but puckered at the hip-just a little too tight. Maggie looked around for someone, but all the others, Deucey, Tommy, Alice, Medicine Ed, were seeing to their horses, or themselves.
The worm white kid went by with Lord of Misrule, whom outriders had finally cornered in the backstretch. The small black horse pranced loopily, somehow off whenever he moved-could he be nerved in all four feet? As they passed through the crowd the kid, showing off, snatched at the shank, the horse threw up his head and by chance his liver-flecked, oddly malicious eyes swept over Maggie. She felt an electrical crawling at the back of her neck. He was so far past the point where other horses quit that he had come out the other side. They would have to shoot him to stop him. But you see, I do have to live, Margaret explained to Deucey. I do want the world. I can't die yet. I need to find out how it all ends.
Then there was nothing left for her to see there, no one left for her to talk to. Two men from the spit box loafed politely in the gap, waiting for her. Slow as she could drag him, she started up the gravel path with Pelter, towards the test barn. Pelter was in a fine mood, and why not-he'd had an easy outing, he'd just been getting going when the race ended, and his blood was silky with bute. He blew gusts that smelled like flowers out his handsome nostrils, shook his head, maps of rich sweat broke out along both his flanks. His winner's number dangled under his throatlatch. The two men from the spit box had hung it there. Now they scuffed along, one at his head, one at his tail-Lyle and Johnny were their names, she recalled-the Odom brothers, supposedly on the lookout for cheats, though they themselves were cheats, somebody's cousins from the secretary's office, or worse. Were they what you bought, if you bought the spit box? Who knew? They were ordinary looking country boys, round leathery faces and short weak chins, one blond and going bald, one dark with a stringy pompadour. The dark one looked sullen, the fair one, smug, but they had faces like gravediggers, not murderers.
Whether they were crooks or not, she knew she was dead, at least as far as the purse went. So much for getaway money: For a race she hadn't even meant to win, she would come up positive. She could make it easy for the boys and drop a tablet of phenylbutazone in their specimen cup right now. Plop. She had one on her: ran a finger down her pocket, felt the carbuncle of the big white horse pill studding her hipbone. By now bute would likely be found in every cc of blood or urine the spit box took at this low-rent bullring-or would be if they bothered to test for it. This time they were sure to test for it. Weren't they? Of course, lost money was only money, shame was moonshine and maya, and getting ruled off the track would be a relief. It was the other kind of death that had her worried.
So she was in no hurry. She even hoped that Pelter would stretch and piss on the gravel path like a nervous filly, done before the boys could get the plastic wrap off the cup. Then maybe she'd be safe in the test barn all night, walking round and round and round behind the razor-wire fence, letting the horse lead her while she slept with her eyes open. But of course no such thing would happen. Pelter was a schooled gelding with exemplary manners. They walked slowly on. Some bettors had had enough. Their automobiles, leaving early, mashed over grass and pebbles in the ruined meadows that were overflow parking lots. Headlights swept the path, then it was dark and quiet again as only a racetrack is quiet-munching, scratching, glimmering. In the dome of false dusk over the still-lit racetrack, a million bugs were whirling, and from time to time, slow and studious by comparison, came the fluttering swoop of a bat. The eighth race went off. Surge of voices like a big rolling surf-the rest of the bettors, at it again.
This here hoss bought me my '56 Chevy pickup, the blond brother suddenly remarked to the dark brother, over Maggie's head. Yep. Pelter, the Darkesville Stalker. First Horse of West Virginia. The truck that would not die. Good little truck. Blue. Was that the one had a hole in the floor by the gearshift where you could see the road going by? the dark brother asked. I remember that freezing piece of blue shit. Well now. You go on and be that way, said the blond brother, rolling the ends of his mustache in his fingers. I reckon quite a few people are in a sour mood because they lost money tonight. But not me. The dark brother said: Aw, you bet like a girl. Put twenty dollars on Pelter to show, please, Mr. Two-Tie, sir. You bet like a damn girl and except for a miracle you can't win enough to buy you a grease job.
The blond brother turned to Maggie. Who's signing the card on this horse? You work for that Hansel fellow? The brothers exchanged sly grins. I can sign, she said, starting to shiver in her little striped jersey. The black damp rising from the river had rolled away the heat like a stone. Is them goose pamples? said the blond brother said, running a finger along her arm. She drew her arm away. I wasn't planning to be here this late, she said. Let's get it over with.
On they walked around the rim of the test barn, Maggie and Pelter as slow as they could go, the brothers strolling behind. She peered into the glinting, clanking dark beyond the test compound and asked herself why she had medicated the horse for a race he couldn't win. She didn't seem to know anymore how an animal would act if required to live on the racetrack in its own nature. In fact she wished she, too, were padded right now in a good gray cloud of drugs-a dome of false dusk with Gothic bats in it, a soft pearl of the mind. She feared disfigurement. Death next. Pain least. But she feared pain too.
She was in no hurry to go back to Barn Z, but Pelter was. He drank, they walked a turn, he drank again, and before she could whistle, the horse was pissing into the steaming sand. Then there was nothing else to do but to head for the gate of the compound. They passed a tiny office lined with dusty bottles where a light was shining. The long flickering fluorescent tube hung a greenish mask on a small man hunched at a desk. In front of him was an open fifth of some off-brand bourbon. She saw the familiar lariats on his cowboy boots. It was Kidstuff.
Howdy, Miss Margaret, he said.
What the hell are you doing here? she whispered.
Filling in for my friend Rollie. I believe there was some horse he wanted to play.
This place is crooked as a dog's hind leg, Maggie said.
It's just for the one race, Kidstuff smiled. It was a special race. He passed her the open bottle. She took a swig and so did he. It was clearly not his first.
Tell me, is Indian Mound Downs going to send my urine sample to the lab with its usual diligence?
Now why would you ask that question? Kidstuff said. Yall haven't been trying that new B vitamin out on this horse, have you?
Certainly not, Maggie said, although I must say at his advanced age it would be a kindness.
Kidstuff cleared his throat. I believe the racetrack will handle that test with just as much care as every other day. Nobody in racing needs a positive.