You mean he'll die?
He moved away from her with the pitchfork. He ain't no race horse no more. What I mean.
They were whispering. Are you with me? Tommy rang out suddenly, not at them, but at something only he heard. With me! He laughed, rather scornfully. Is that such a ridiculous question?
Tommy, she called. Won't you please come out of there?
Maggie? Where are you?
I'm out here.
How did you get out there?
What do you mean?
You were in here, Maggie. A minute ago. On account of the light-you have to get out of that light. You know the light I mean. From the gatehouse.
Why, she said reluctantly.
They use it to give you a weird kind of feeling they're drawing the insides out of you. You know that feeling? Maggie?
Yes? she said.
Why did you leave me?
I'm here, she said.
You may be a traitor.
Well, Maggie said. Maybe.
I know you can't help it. You're weak.
He's lost his mind, she whispered to Medicine Ed. Now what do I do?
Why you want to do anything? They carry him away soon enough without you doing nothing.
I need to get a van right now, she said. Why did I wait? That fucking race, that's why. Now where can I get us a van at this time of night?
You don't need no van.
I want to call my Uncle Rudy. You know my Uncle Rudy. The one they call Two-Tie.
I know Mr. Two-Tie.
He has vans. He told me to call him if I got in trouble. If I needed anything. He gave me his number, I swear he did, but I lost it. You have his number, don't you.
Mr. Two-Tie done had vans, Medicine Ed replied carefully. He many long years out that bidness. Who say he have vans?
She shrugged. It had been the Koderer family version, sanitized, she supposed, of Uncle Rudy's business. I bet he could get me a van, Maggie said, all the same.
Might probly he could, if he was home. But he ain't home.
After the races, Two-Tie is always home. Everybody says that. Even I know that.
He ain't home, Medicine Ed said. You can call him if you want to. I give you the number. But he ain't home. He busied himself about Pelter's feet. You want that number? He looked up at her for the first time and she saw the stony judgment in the set of his mouth. He had taken his teeth out, and his long, thin-lipped mouth made one deep line like a stitch. She did not reply. After a while he repeated: You don't need no van.
Tommy won't leave without the horses.
They gone send a van all right. They gone send a van directly. But not for yalls horses.
What do you mean?
They ain't gone let you take them horses. The trainer ain't fit. And he owe money. They gone take his horses.
I don't believe you. How can they just take away his horses?
He looked up at her again with something between pain and fury. Ima tell you, young woman. His horses ain't nothing. And he ain't nothing. They do what they want. It's no owners for them horses. His horses is gone to the block. Why you worry about them sorry horses? You gone have enough trouble to get you man out the can again, or either out the state hospital, or wayever they put him.
Get him out? Maggie said. For she had never perceived the care of Tommy as her job. Tommy's horses were one thing. Tommy was quite another.
Nobody gone pay the keep on them horses. They at the end of the line. They gone to the block. So much a pound to pay his bills.
They can't have my horse. Pelter is not going to the dog food factory. I'll see to that much.
You gone train him? Or pay somebody else to train him?
Maggie searched in her pockets, unfolded the foaling papers with shaking hands. I'll take care of that right now. How do you spell Salters?
You a fool. I got no money to fool with that horse. He ain't improving. I throw him on the block tomorrow if he come up lame.
There's a little horse left there. You know there is. It's an honor to own this horse.
Nothing but trouble is what. Big race gone wrong, and Mr. Hickok's old horse, he come out of nowhere and win it. First Horse of West Virginia. It gone be in the papers. And then some young girl who ought not to own the horse in the first place, gone sign the horse over to a colored groom. They gone try to take him from me. They will look for some way.
There's not that much horse left, Maggie said sharply. Come on. Be a man. S-A-L-T-E-R-S. Is that right? Or should I just write X? She wrote the name, then pressed the paper at Medicine Ed, whose hands stayed where they were, patiently unrolling yellowed bandage bolt by bolt. He wouldn't look at her. The paper fluttered down to the straw. She ducked under the webbing. She did not have to watch him pick it up. She knew he wanted that horse. True, the old man wasn't the mask of joy. His long, deeply graven face was closer, indeed, to the mask of grief than the mask of joy, but what he resembled most was himself. She wasn't sure she hadn't been snookered. She could not look behind her at Pelter, his darkling ankles as if he had stepped in rich black swamp water, his long, gleaming back. She looked up and down the shedrow, feeling broken in two. The ancient racetrackers who had discouraged this attachment all along nodded their ghostly heads, satisfied.
An Indian Mounds Police Department station wagon was inching its way up the dirt road, so slow it boiled in the greenish dust of its own headlights, and scuffing along duckfooted in front of it, pointing the way, was Archie, the track stooge who manned the back gatehouse when races were on. Suitcase Smithers hadn't even seen fit to come in person to clear away the difficulty. Ima tell you, young woman. His horses ain't nothing. And he ain't nothing. The racetrack had called in the town police. Maggie wanted to borrow the can't-see-me act of Medicine Ed and slip away sidewise between the shedrows, but she felt obliged to stand there and show the police that Tommy was not vacant of human ties and connections. She stepped back around the corner and waited in front of the barricaded stall. That was all it occurred to her to do.
Boss, Medicine Ed whispered roughly from Pelter's stall on the other side of the shedrow. She heard it through two walls. Po-lice car is coming. Two town policemans and Archie.
She realized that for some little while there had been no more jerks of chain, no more gritty thuds and swipes of the great body against the stall wall. One way or the other, The Mahdi was past struggling.
Maggie?
I'm here.
Is it true? a cop car?
Yes, she said.
Did you call the cops on me? He waited. Maggie? Did you?
Stallman drop a dime, boss, Medicine Ed said tiredly. Everybody know.
She heard a great clatter and squeal of wood splintering. Up and down the shedrow horses trumpeted in panic, thumped and swished around in their stalls. Tommy was kicking his way out of the back of the stall. It was quickly done. Some of the planks near the dirt floor were short and new, a patch job where the wall had been kicked in by horses many times before. They had kept The Mahdi in here because he was an easy horse.
The police wagon came around the corner, ground to a stop and idled irresolutely. In its head beams, white dust dully chased itself. After a time the car doors flopped open. Maggie woke up. Now that Tommy was gone, she didn't have to answer any questions. She backed out of the light and ran back around to the far side of Barn Z. At Pelter's stall she paused. The foaling papers had vanished. Pelter nosed the hay bag in the front of his stall, calm, brushed and shining. As Medicine Ed's horse, he looked better already.
Medicine Ed squatted before a ragged hole in the back of the next stall, his stiff leg out to one side in its usual mirthless kazatsky. He was inspecting a mass of shadow on the other side of the wall. The thick sleek throat curved up where The Mahdi had sunk to the ground on his tie-chain. His mouth was wide open. The horse was dead. The town constables were knocking on the other side of the barricaded door. Tommy Hansel? Tommy Hansel? Indian Mounds Police. Please open the door. Medicine Ed's lips twitched, getting ready to say Mr. Hansel he gone and I don't know nothing bout nothing. Maggie faded off zigzag between the shedrows.