“Hold your hand on your neck,” Boon said. “You aint going to wash that nohow.”
“Why dont you bathe then?” I said.
“We aint talking about me. We’re talking about you.” So I went to the bathroom and bathed and put my clothes back on and went to the dining room. And Ned was right. Last night there had been just the one table, the end of it cleared and set up for us. Now there were seven or eight people, all men (but not aliens, foreigners, mind you; in fact they were strangers only to us who didn’t live in Par-sham. None of them had got down from pullmans in silk underclothes and smoking Upmann cigars; we had not opened the cosmopolitan Parsham winter sporting season here in the middle of May. Some were in overalls, all but one were tieless: people like us except that they lived here, with the same passions and hopes and dialect, enjoying— Butch too—our inalienable constitutional right of free will and private enterprise which has made our country what it is, by holding a private horse race between two local horses; if anyone, committee or individual, from no further away than the next county, had come to interfere or alter or stop it or even participate beyond betting on the horse of his choice, all of us, partisans of either horse, would have risen as one man and repulsed him). And besides the waiter, I saw the back of a maid in uniform just going through the swing door to the pantry or kitchen, and there were two men (one of them had the necktie) at our table talking to Boon and Miss Reba. But Everbe wasn’t there, and for an instant, second, I had a horrified vision of Butch finally waylaying and capturing her by force, ambushing her in the corridor perhaps while she was carrying the chair to mine and Boon’s door with my laundered clothes on it. But only for a second, and too fantastical; if she had washed for me last night, she had probably, doubtless been up quite late washing for herself and maybe Miss Reba too, and was still asleep. So I went on to the table, where one of the men said,
“This the boy going to ride him? Looks more like you got him taped up for a fist fight?”
“Yes,” Boon said, shoving the dish of ham toward me as-I sat down; Miss Reba passed the eggs and grits across.
“He cut himself eating peas last night.”
“Haw haw,” the man said. “Anyway, he’ll be carrying less weight this time.”
“Sure,” Boon said. “Unless he eats the knives and forks and spoons while we aint watching him and maybe takes along one of the fire dogs for a snack.”
“Haw haw,” the man said. “From the way he run here last winter, he’s going to need a good deal more than just less weight. But then, that’s the secret, huh?”
“Sure,” Boon said; he was eating again now. “Even if we never had no secret, we would have to act like we did.”
“Haw haw,” the man said again; they got up. “Well, good luck, anyway. That might be as good for that horse as less weight.” The maid came, bringing me a glass of milk and carrying a plate of hot biscuits. It was Minnie, in a fresh apron and cap where Miss Reba had either loaned or hired her to the hotel to help out, with her ravished and unforgiving face, but calm and quiet now; evidently she had rested, even slept some even if she hadn’t forgiven anybody yet. The two strangers went away.
“You see?” Miss Reba said to nobody. “All we need is the right horse and a million dollars to bet.”
“You heard Ned Sunday night,” Boon said. “You were the one that believed him. I mean, decided to believe him. I was different. After that God damned automobile vanished and all we had was the horse, I had to believe him.”
“All right,” Miss Reba said. “Keep your shirt on.”
“And you can stop worrying too,” Boon said to me. “She just went to die depot in case them dogs caught him again last night and Ned brought him in to the train. Or so she said—”
“Did Ned find him?” I said.
“Naw,” Boon said. “Ned’s in the kitchen now. You can ask him—or so she said. Yes. S<> maybe you had better worry some, after all. Miss Reba got shut of that tin badge for you, but that other one—what’s his name: Caldwell— was on that train this morning.”
“What are you talking about now?” Miss Reba said.
“Nothing,” Boon said. “I ain’t got nothing to talk about now. I’ve quit. Lucius is the one that’s got tin badge and pullman cap rivals now.” But I was already getting up because I knew now where she was.
“Is that all the breakfast you want?” Miss Reba said.
“Let him alone,” Boon said. “He’s in love.” I crossed the lobby. Maybe Ned was right, and all it took for a horse race was two horses with the time’ to run a race, within ten miles of each other, and the air itself spread the news of it. Though not as far as the ladies’ parlor yet. So maybe what I meant by crying looking well on Everbe was that she was big enough to cry as much as she seemed to have to do, and still have room for that many tears to dry off without streaking. She was sitting by herself in the ladies’ parlor and crying again, the third time—no: four, counting two Sunday night. Until you wondered why. I mean, nobody made her come with us and she could have ‘gone back to Memphis on any train that passed. Yet here she was, so she must be where she wanted to be. Yet this was the second time she had cried since we reached Par-sham. I mean, anybody with as many extra tears as she had, still didn’t have enough to waste that many on Otis. So I said,
“He’s all right. Ned will find him today. Much obliged for washing my clothes. Where’s Mr Sam? I thought he was going to be on that train.”
“He had to take the train on to Memphis and take his uniform off,” she said. “He cant go to a horse race in it. He’ll be back on the noon freight. I can’t find my handkerchief.”
I found it for her. “Maybe you ought to wash your face,” I said. “When Ned finds him, he will get the tooth back.”
“It aint the tooth,” she said. “I’m going to buy Minnie another tooth. It’s that … He never had no chance. He … Did you promise your mother you wouldn’t never take things too?”
“You dont have to promise anybody that,” I said. “You dont take things.”
“But you would have promised, if she had asked you?”
“She wouldn’t ask me,” I said. “You dont take things.”
“Yes,” she said. She said: “I aint going to stay in Memphis. I talked to Sam at the depot this morning and he says that’s a good idea too. He can find me a job in Chattanooga or somewhere. But you’ll still be in Jefferson, so maybe I could write you a post card where I’m at and then if you took a notion—”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll write to you. Come on. They’re still eating breakfast.”
“There’s something about me you dont know. You couldn’t even guess it.”
“I know it,” I said. “It’s Everbe Corinthia. I been calling you that two or three days now. That’s right. It was Otis. But I wont tell anybody. But I dont see why.”
“Why? A old-timey countrified name like that? Can you imagine anybody in Reba’s saying, Send up Everbe Corinthia? They would be ashamed. They would die laughing. So I thought of changing it to Yvonne or Billie or Ken. But Reba said Corrie would do.”
“Shucks,” I said.
“You mean, it’s all right? You say it.” I said it. She listened. Then she kept on listening, exactly as you wait for an echo. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what it can be now.”
“Then come on and eat breakfast,” I said. “Ned’s waiting for me and I got to go.” But Boon came in first.
“There are too many people out there,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t a told that damn fellow you were going to ride him today.” He looked at me. “Maybe I shouldn’t a never let you leave Jefferson.” There was a small door behind a curtain at the back of the room. “Come on,” he said. It was another corridor. Then we were in the kitchen. The vast cook was at the sink again. Ned was sitting at a table finishing his breakfast, but mainly saying,
“When I sugars up a woman, it aint just empty talk. They can buy something with it too—” and stopped and rose at once; he said to me: “You
ready? Time you and me was getting back to the country. They’s too many folks around here. If they all had money and would bet it, and the horse they bet on. would just be the wrong horse, and we just had the money to cover it and knowed the right horse to cover it with, we wouldn’t just take no automobile back to Jefferson tonight: we’d take all Possum too, to maybe sugar back Boss Priest’s nature. He aint never owned a town before, and he might like it.”
“Wait,” Boon said. “Aint we got to make some plans?”
“The onliest one that needs any plan is Lightning,” Ned said. “And the only plan he needs is to plan to get out in front and stay there until somebody tells him to stop. But I know what you mean. We gonter run on Colonel Lin-scomb’s track. The first heat is at two oclock. That’s four miles from here. Me and Lightning and Lucius gonter show up there about two minutes beforehand. You better get out there earlier. You better leave here soon as Mr Sam gets off that freight train. Because that’s yourn and his plan: to get to that track in time to bet the money, and to have some money to bet when you get there.”
“Wait,” Boon said. “What about that automobile? What the hell good will money do us if we go back home without—”
“Stop fretting about that automobile,” Ned said. “Aint I told you them boys got to go back home not much longer than tonight too?”
“What boys?” Boon said.
“Yes sir,” Ned said. “The trouble with Christmas is the first of January; that’s what’s wrong with it.” Minnie came in with a tray of dirty dishes—the brown calm tragic hungry and inconsolable mask. “Come on,” Ned told her, “gimme that smile again so I’ll have the right measure to fit that tooth when I brings it back tonight.” _ “Dont do it, girl,” the fat cook said. “Maybe that Mis-sippi sugar will spend where it come from, but it wont buy nothing up here in Tennessee. Not in this kitchen, nohow.”
“But wait,” Boon said.
“You wait for Mr Sam,” Ned said. “He can tell you. In fact, whilst me and Lucius are winning this race, maybe you and Mr Sam can locate around amongst the folks for Whistle-britches and that tooth.” He had Uncle Parsham’s buggy this time, with one of the nv’es. And he was right: the little hamlet had changed ovcrni ht. It was not that there were so many people in sight, any more than yesterday. It was the air itself—an exhilaration, almost; for the first time I really realised that I was going to ride in a horse race before many more hours, and I could taste my spit sudden and sharp around my tongue.
“I thought you said last night that Otis would be gone when you got back from town,” I said.
“He was,” Ned said. “But not far. He aint got nowhere to go neither. The hounds give mouth twice during the night back toward the barn; them hounds taken the same quick mislike to him that human folks does. Likely soon as I left this morning, he come up for his breakfast.”
“But suppose he sells the tooth before we can catch him.”
“I done fixed that,” Ned said. “He aint gonter sell it. He aint gonter find nobody to buy it. If he aint come up for breakfast, Lycurgus gonter take the hounds and tree him again, and tell him that when I come back from Parsham last night, I said a man in Memphis offered that gal twenty-eight dollars for that tooth, cash. He’ll believe that. If it had been a hundred dollars or even fifty, he wouldn’t believe it. But hell believe a extra number like twenty-eight dollars, mainly because he’ll think it aint enough: that that Memphis man was beating Minnie down. And when he tries to sell it at that race track this evening, wont nobody give him even that much, so wont be nothing left for him to do but wait until he can get back to Memphis with it So you get your mind off that tooth and put it on this horse race. On them last two heats, I mean. We gonter lose the first one, so you dont need to worry about that—”
“What?” I said. “Why?”
“Why not?” Ned said. “All we needs to win is two of them.”
“But why lose the first one? Why dont we win that one, get that much ahead as soon as we can—” He drove on, maybe a half a minute.
“The trouble with this race, it’s got too many different things mixed up in it.”
“Too many what?” I said.
“Too many of everything,” he said. “Too many folks. But mainly, too many heats. If it was just one heat, one run, off in the bushes somewhere and not nobody around but me and you and Lightning and that other horse and whoever gonter ride him, we would be all right. Because
we found out yestiddy we can make Lightning run one time. Only, now he got to run three of them.”
“But you made that mule run every time,” I said.
“This horse aint that mule,” Ned said. “Aint no horse ever foaled was that mule. Or any other mule. And this horse we got to depend on now aint even got as much sense as some horses. So you can see what your fix is. We knows I can make him run once, and we hopes I can make him run twice. But that’s all. We just hopes. So we cant risk that one time we knows I can make him run, until we got to have it. So the most we got at the best, is two times. And since we got to lose one of them, no matter what, we gonter lose the one we can maybe learn something from to use next time. And that’s gonter be the first one.”
“Have you told Boon that? so he wont—”
“Let him lose on the first heat, providing he dont put up all the money them ladies scraps up for him to bet. Which, from what I seen of that Miss Reba, he aint gonter do. That will make the odds that much better for them next two. Besides, we can tell him all he needs to know when the time comes. So you just—”
“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I meant Boss’s—”
“Didn’t I tell you I was tending to that?” he said. “Now you quit worrying. I dont mean quit thinking about the race, because you cant do that. But quit worrying about winning it. Just think about what Lightning taught you yesterday about riding him. That’s all you got to do. I’ll tend to all the rest of it. You got your sock, aint you?”
“Yes,” I said. Only we were not going back to Uncle Parsham’s; we were not even going in that direction now.
“We got our own private stable for this race,” Ned said. “A spring branch in a hollow that belongs to one of Possum’s church members, where we can be right there not half a quarter from the track without nobody knowing to bother us until we wants them. Lycurgus and Uncle Possum went on with Lightning right after breakfast.”
“The track,” I said. Of course, there would have to be a track. I had never thought of that. If I thought at all, I reckon I simply assumed that somebody would ride or lead the other horse up, and we should run the race right there in Uncle Parsham’s pasture.
“That’s right,” Ned said. “A regular track, just like a big one except it’s just a half a mile and aint got no grandstands and beer-and-whiskey counters like anybody that wants to run horse racing right ought to have. It’s right there in Colonel Linscomb’s pasture, that owns the other >horse. Me and Lycurgus went and looked at it last night. I mean the track, not the horse. I aint seen the horse yet. But we gonter have a chance to look at him today, leastways, one end of him. Only what we want is to plan for that horse to spend the last half of two of these heats looking at that end of Lightning. So I need to talk to the boy that’s gonter ride him. A colored boy; Lycurgus knows him. I want to talk to him in a way that he wont find out until afterward that I talked to him.”
“Yes,” I said. “How?”
“Let’s get there first,” Ned said. We went on; it was new country to me, of course. Obviously we were now crossing Colonel Linscomb’s plantation, or anyway somebody’s— big neat fields of sprouting cotton and corn, and pastures with good fences and tenant cabins and cotton houses at the turnrow ends; and now I could see the bams and stables and sure enough, there was the neat white oval of the small track; we—Ned—turning now, following a faint road, on into a grove; and there it was, isolate and secure, even secret if we wished: a grove of beeches about a spring, Lightning standing with Lycurgus at his head, groomed and polished and e
ven glowing faintly in the dappled light, the other mule tied in the background and Uncle Parsham, dramatic in black and white, even regal, prince and martinet in the dignity of solvent and workless age, sitting on the saddle which Lycurgus had propped against a tree into a sort of chair for him, all waiting for us. And then in the next instant I knew what was wrong; they were all waiting for me. And that was the real moment -when—Lightning and me standing in (not to mention breathing it) the same air not a thousand feet from the race track and not much more than a tenth of that in minutes from the race itself—when I actually realized not only how Lightning’s and my fate were now one, but that the two of us together carried that of the rest of us too, certainly Boon’s and Ned’s, since on us.depended under what conditions they could go back home, or indeed if they could go back home—a mystical condition which a boy of only eleven should not really be called to shoulder. Which is perhaps why I noticed nothing, or anyway missed what I did see: only that Lycurgus handed Lightning’s lead rope to Uncle Parsham and came and took our bridle and Ned said, “You get that message to him all right?” and Lycurgus said Yes sir, and Ned said to me, “Whyn’t you go and take Lightning offen Uncle Possum so he wont have to get up?” and I did so, leaving Ned and Lycurgus standing quite close together at the buggy; and that not long before Ned came on to us, leaving Lycurgus to take the mule out of the buggy and loop the lines and traces up and tie the mule beside its mate and come on to us, where Ned was now squatting beside Uncle Parsham. He said: “Tell again about them two races last winter. You said nothing happened. What kind of nothing?”
“Ah,” Uncle Parsham said. “It was a three-heat race just like this one, only they never run but two of them. By that time there wasn’t no need to run the third one. Or maybe somebody got tired.”
“Tired reached into his hind pocket, maybe,” Ned said.
“Maybe,” Uncle Parsham said. “The first time, your horse run too soon, and the second time he run too late. Or maybe it was the whip whipped too soon the first time and not soon enough the second. Anyhow, at the first lick your horse jumped out in front, a good length, and stayed there all the way around the first lap, even after the whipping had done run out, like it does with a horse or a man either: he can take just so much whipping and after that it aint no more than spitting on him. They they came into the home stretch and it was like your horse saw that empty track in front of him and said to himself, This aint polite; I’m a stranger here, and dropped back just enough to lay his head more or less on Colonel Linscomb’s boy’s knee, and kept it there until somebody told him he could stop. And the next time your horse started out like he still thought he hadn’t finished that first heat, his head all courteous and polite about opposite Colonel Linscomb’s boy’s knee, on into the back turn of the last lap, where that Memphis boy hit him the first lick, not late enough this time, because all that full-length jump done this time was to show him that empty track again.”