Stories (2011) (58 page)

Dynamite pulled ahead.

White Mule was not so low now. He was even staggering a
little as he ran.

“Easy, boy,” Frank said. “You can do it. You’re the best
goddamn mule ever ran a road.”

White Mule began to run evenly again, or as even as a mule
can run. He began to stretch out again, going low. Frank was surprised to see
they were closing on Dynamite.

Frank looked back.

No one was in sight. Just a few twists of dust, a ripple of
heat waves. It was White Mule and Dynamite, all the way.

As Frank and White Mule passed Dynamite, Frank noted
Dynamite didn’t run with a hard-on anymore. Dynamite’s rider let the mule turn
its head and snap at White Mule. Frank, without really thinking about it,
slipped his foot from the saddle and kicked the mule in the jaw.

“Hey,” yelled Dynamite’s rider. “Stop that.”

“Hey, shitass,” Frank said. “You better watch that limb.”

Dynamite and his rider had let White Mule push them to the
right side of the road, near the trees, and a low-hanging hickory limb was
right in line with them. The rider ducked it by a half inch, losing only his
cap.

Shouldn’t have told him, thought Frank. What he was hoping
was to say something smart just as the limb caught the bastard. That would have
made it choice, seeing the little axe-faced shit take it in the teeth. But he
had outsmarted his ownself.

“Fuck,” Frank said.

Now they were thundering around a bend, and there were lots
of people there, along both sides. There had been a spot of people here and
there, along the way, but now they were everywhere.

Must be getting to the end of it, thought Frank.

Dynamite had lost a step for a moment, allowing White Mule
to move ahead, but now he was closing again. Frank looked up. He could see that
a long red ribbon was stretched across in front of them. It was almost the end.

Dynamite lit a fuse.

He came up hard and on the left, and began to pass. The
axe-faced rider slapped out with the long bridle and caught Frank across the
face.

“You goddamn turd,” Frank said, and slashed out with his own
bridle, missing by six inches. Dynamite and Axe-Face pulled ahead.

Frank turned his attention back to the finish line. Thought:
this is it. White Mule was any lower to the ground he’d have a belly full of
gravel, stretched out any farther, he’d come apart. He’s gonna be second. And
no prize.

“You done what you could,” Frank said, putting his mouth
close to the bobbing head of the mule, rubbing the side of his neck with the
tips of his fingers.

White Mule brought out the reinforcements. He was low and he
was stretched, but now his legs were moving even faster, and for a long,
strange moment, Frank thought the mule had sprung wings, like that horse he had
seen on the front of the book so long ago. There didn’t feel like there was any
ground beneath them.

Frank couldn’t believe it. Dynamite was falling behind,
snorting and blowing, his body lathering up as if he were soaped.

White Mule leaped through the red ribbon a full three
lengths ahead to win.

Frank let White Mule run past the watchers, on until he
slowed and began to trot, and then walk. He let the mule go on like that for
some time, then he gently pulled the reins and got out of the saddle. He walked
the mule a while. Then he stopped and unbuttoned the belly band. He slid the
saddle into the dirt. He pulled the bridle off of the mule’s head.

The mule turned and looked at him.

“You done your part,” Frank said, and swung the bridle
gently against the mule’s ass. “Go on.”

White Mule sort of skipped forward and began running down
the road, then turned into the trees. And was gone.

Frank walked all the way back to the beginning of the race,
the viewers amazed he was without his mule.

But he was still the winner.

“You let him go?” Leroy said. “After all we went through,
you let him go?”

“Yep,” Frank said.

Black Joe shook his head. “Could have run him again. Plowed
him. Ate him.”

Frank took his prize money from the judges and side bet from
Crone, paid Leroy his money, watched Black Joe follow Crone away from the
race’s starting line, on out to Crone’s horse and wagon. Dynamite, his head
down, was being led to the wagon by Axe-Face.

Frank knew what was coming. Black Joe had not been paid, and
on top of that, he was ill tempered. As Frank watched, Black Joe hit Crone and
knocked him flat. No one did anything.

Black man or not, you didn’t mess with Black Joe.

Black Joe took his money from Crone’s wallet, punched the
axe-faced rider in the nose for the hell of it, and walked back in their
direction.

Frank didn’t wait. He went over to where the hog lay on the
grass. His front and back legs had been tied and a kid about thirteen was
poking him with a stick. Frank slapped the kid in the back of the head,
knocking his hat off. The kid bolted like a deer.

Frank got Dobbin and called Black Joe over. “Help me.”

Black Joe and Frank loaded the hog across the back of Dobbin
as if he were a sack of potatoes. Heavy as the porker was, it was accomplished
with some difficulty, the hog’s head hanging down on one side, his feet on the
other. The hog seemed defeated. He hardly even squirmed.

“Misses that mule,” Black Joe said.

“You and me got our business done, Joe?” Frank asked. Black
Joe nodded.

Frank took Dobbin’s reins and started leading him away.

“Wait,” Leroy said.

Frank turned on him. “No. I’m through with you. You and me.
We’re quits.”

“What?” Leroy said.

Frank pulled at the reins and kept walking. He glanced back
once to see Leroy standing where they had last spoke, standing in the road
looking at him, wearing the seed salesman’s hat.

Frank put the hog in the old hog pen at his place and fed
him good. Then he ate and poured out all the liquor he had, and waited until
dark. When it came he sat on a large rock out back of the house. The wind
carried the urine smell of all those out-the-window pees to his nostrils. He
kept his place.

The moon was near full that night and it had risen high
above the world and its light was bright and silver. Even the old ugly place
looked good under that light.

Frank sat there for a long time, finally dozed. He was
awakened by the sound of wood cracking. He snapped his head up and looked out
at the hog pen. The mule was there. He was kicking at the slats of the pen,
trying to free his friend.

Frank got up and walked out there. The mule saw him, ran
back a few paces, stared at him.

“Knew you’d show,” Frank said. “Just wanted to see you one
more time. Today, buddy, you had wings.”

The mule turned its head and snorted.

Frank lifted the gate to the pen and the hog ran out. The
hog stopped beside the mule and they both looked at Frank.

“It’s all right,” Frank said. “I ain’t gonna try and stop
you.”

The mule dipped its nose to the hog’s snout and they pressed
them together. Frank smiled. The mule and the hog wheeled suddenly, as if by
agreed signal, and raced toward the rickety rail fence near the hill.

The mule, with one beautiful leap, jumped the fence, seemed
pinned in the air for a long time, held there by the rays of the moon. The way
the rays fell, for a strange short instant, it seemed as if he were sprouting
gossamer wings.

The hog wiggled under the bottom rail and the two of them
ran across the pasture, between the trees and out of sight. Frank didn’t have
to go look to know that the mule had jumped the other side of the fence as
well, that the hog had worked his way under. And that they were gone.

When the sun came up and Frank was sure there was no wind,
he put a match to a broom’s straw and used it to start the house afire, then
the barn and the rotten outbuildings. He kicked the slats on the hog pen until
one side of it fell down.

He went out to where Dobbin was tied to a tree, saddled and
ready to go. He mounted him and turned his head toward the rail fence and the
hill. He looked at it for a long time. He gave a gentle nudge to Dobbin with
his heels and started out of there, on down toward the road and town.

THE BIG BLOW

tueSdaY, SePtemBer 4,
1900, 4:00 P.m.

Telegraphed Message from Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau,
Central Office, to Issac Cline, Galveston, Texas, Weather Bureau:

Tropical storm disturbance moving northward over Cuba.

 
 6:38 P.m.

On an afternoon hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock,
John McBride, six-foot one-and-a-half inches, 220 pounds, ham-handed, built
like a wild boar and of similar disposition, arrived by ferry from mainland
Texas to Galveston Island, a six-gun under his coat and a razor in his shoe.

As the ferry docked, McBride set his suitcase down, removed
his bowler, took a crisp white handkerchief from inside his coat, wiped the
bowler’s sweatband with it, used it to mop his forehead, ran it over his
thinning black hair, and put the hat back on.

An old Chinese guy in San Francisco told him he was losing
his hair because he always wore hats, and McBride decided maybe he was right,
but now he wore the hats to hide his baldness. At thirty he felt he was too
young to lose his hair. The Chinaman had given him a tonic for his problem at a
considerable sum. McBride used it religiously, rubbed it into his scalp. So
far, all he could see it had done was shine his bald spot. He ever got back to
Frisco, he was gonna look that Chinaman up, maybe knock a few knots on his
head.

As McBride picked up his suitcase and stepped off the ferry
with the others, he observed the sky. It appeared green as a pool-table cloth.
As the sun dipped down to drink from the Gulf, McBride almost expected to see
steam rise up from beyond the island. He took in a deep breath of sea air and
thought it tasted all right. It made him hungry. That was why he was here. He
was hungry. First on the menu was a woman, then a steak, then some rest before
the final meal—the thing he had come for. To whip a nigger.

He hired a buggy to take him to a poke house he had been
told about by his employers, the fellows who had paid his way from Chicago.
According to what they said, there was a redhead there so good and tight she’d
make you sing soprano. Way he felt, if she was redheaded, female, and ready,
he’d be all right, and to hell with the song. It was on another’s tab anyway.

As the coach trotted along, McBride took in Galveston. It
was a Southerner’s version of New York, with a touch of the tropics. Houses
were upraised on stilts—thick support posts actually—against the washing of
storm waters, and in the city proper the houses looked to be fresh off Deep
South plantations.

City Hall had apparently been designed by an architect with
a Moorish background. It was ripe with domes and spirals. The style collided
with a magnificent clock housed in the building’s highest point, a peaked
tower. The clock was like a miniature Big Ben. England meets the Middle East.

Electric streetcars hissed along the streets, and there were
a large number of bicycles, carriages, buggies, and pedestrians. McBride even
saw one automobile.

The streets themselves were made of buried wooden blocks
that McBride identified as ships’ ballast. Some of the side streets were made
of white shell, and some were hardened sand. He liked what he saw, thought:
Maybe, after I do in the nigger, I’ll stick around a while. Take in the sun at
the beach. Find a way to get my fingers in a little solid graft of some sort.

When McBride finally got to the whorehouse, it was full
dark. He gave the black driver a big tip, cocked his bowler, grabbed his
suitcase, went through the ornate iron gate, up the steps, and inside to get
his tumblers clicked right.

After giving his name to the plump madam, who looked as if
she could still grind out a customer or two herself, he was given the royalty
treatment. The madam herself took him upstairs, undressed him, bathed him,
fondled him a bit.

When he was clean, she dried him off, nestled him in bed,
kissed him on the forehead as if he were her little boy, then toddled off. The
moment she left, he climbed out of bed, got in front of the mirror on the
dresser and combed his hair, trying to push as much as possible over the bald
spot. He had just gotten it arranged and gone back to bed when the redhead
entered.

She was green-eyed and a little thick-waisted, but not bad
to look at. She had fire red hair on her head and a darker fire between her
legs, which were white as sheets and smooth as a newborn pig.

He started off by hurting her a little, tweaking her
nipples, just to show her who was boss. She pretended to like it. Kind of money
his employers were paying, he figured she’d dip a turd in gravel and push it
around the floor with her nose and pretend to like it.

McBride roughed her bottom some, then got in the saddle and
bucked a few. Later on, when she got a little slow about doing what he wanted,
he blacked one of her eyes.

When the representatives of the Galveston Sporting Club
showed up, he was lying in bed with the redhead, uncovered, letting a hot wind
blow through the open windows and dry his and the redhead’s juices.

The madam let the club members in and went away. There were
four of them, all dressed in evening wear with top hats in their hands. Two
were gray-haired and gray-whiskered. The other two were younger men. One was
large, had a face that looked as if it regularly stopped cannonballs. Both eyes
were black from a recent encounter. His nose was flat and strayed to the left
of his face. He did his breathing through his mouth. He didn’t have any top
front teeth.