Good grief, Cait, what’s wrong?”
She looked at me silently, took a deep breath. “I’m not sure.”
It struck me as an honest assessment. She had been distant and fretful for several days. When I’d told her about the nine going West, she said, “How nice for Andy,” and asked how long the trip would be. I said it would take the better part of a month. Would I be going? she asked. I said I didn’t know yet. What I didn’t say was that it depended partly on her. Her matter-of-factness upset me. I wanted more from her. I wanted to talk about the jangling inside me that the prospect of going to San Francisco set off. Of the hauntingly strange pull I felt, almost like what had drawn me to her. But I couldn’t. Why was she being so distant? Didn’t she care?
“Whatever is wrong with me, as you put it,” she said a moment later, “you are likely the cause.”
I felt stung, as if she’d slapped me.
“Your coming to help truly was a miracle,” she added quickly, “but you must know that it brings pressure.”
“From O’Donovan, you mean?”
She looked troubled but said nothing. The silence stretched between us.
“Is it something else?”
Her answer was barely audible. “Knowing that you desire me . . . as a woman . . . it’s . . .”
“It’s what?” I said. “Pressure?”
She nodded, looking down.
“You think I might want you”—a blush crept up her face at that—“and so you feel pressure? That’s all?”
“Samuel, I—”
“Don’t you have desires of your own?” Anger was rising quickly, dangerously, in me. “Or maybe it’s that yours don’t involve me.”
“Samuel, please, I cannot—”
“Just how did Timmy come about?” I demanded, overriding her. “Did Colm force himself on you?”
I regretted it the instant it left my mouth. Christ, we’d never even alluded to sex and now I say something like that.
“I gave myself to Colm,” she said, her eyes flashing.
“Because you loved and wanted him,” I replied. “Was that pressure?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“Fine.”
We sat through another silence.
“I can’t see you for a few days,” she said finally.
I kept from asking what difference it made. “Why not?”
“I can’t tell you.”
I stood up. “It was okay when I was a visiting nurse, but now I guess it’s back to real life: Fenian war games.”
“Samuel, I didn’t mean to upset you, but you will NOT speak slightingly to me of the society!”
“I’m going,” I said. “Good-bye.”
Helga didn’t want to charge me for the room, but I paid two weeks in advance at Gasthaus zur Rose. I took to sleeping there most nights and rising early to stop at the nearby Backerei for sweet rolls and coffee. Then I sauntered along the river—following any breeze that carried its pungent smells away—and through the jumble of narrow streets. I loved the old-world brick houses with clean-swept sidewalks and garden plots and gingerbread windows swelling with flowers. I loved the early-morning bells in tall churches with clock towers. I tested my pidgin German on old women wearing wooden shoes who sat knitting in the sunshine, and on their husbands smoking long pipes nearby, figures out of Brothers Grimm.
I also kept my room at the Gibson, where I dropped by the aromatic barbershop more to hear the latest sporting talk than to have my beard trimmed. I liked the downtown bustle: cries of bootblacks and vendors; rumbling carriages and drays, their drivers shouting furiously; clanging bells of streetcars and omnibuses; organ-grinders and oom-pah bands in squares and parks; the busy squalor of the riverfront; the cool green hills ringing the city basin. I’d fallen in love with Cincinnati, I realized. Why had that feeling—and everything else, lately—taken on such urgency?
Afternoons I worked out with the Stockings, mostly because I had little else to do. Johnny and Helga had the concessions running smoothly. I’d doubled their pay as they took complete charge. Johnny had used his earnings to buy a gleaming top-of-the-line velocipede to race in the county finals at the upcoming annual fair. Several mornings I watched him train on the track at the Union Grounds. His spindly legs generated impressive power on the new machine. I hoped he had a real chance to win, suspecting that losing would devastate him.
Meanwhile, with the western trip looming, there was no reason to work harder or dream up new promotions. My job, already marginal, would soon end. With the passing of baseball season I’d have to confront the issue of purpose in my life. Sports offered a cozy refuge from reality. On the other hand, what was real? Some mind-numbing job to keep me from wondering what to do with myself? I had enough money—over six thousand dollars remained from Elmira—not to worry for a while.
I tried to stay calm about Cait. But not seeing her made me realize how large a void she and Timmy had filled. Insofar as I could remove them from my thoughts, memories of my old life seeped in. My job at the Chronicle didn’t seem so inconsequential now. Working at one’s craft—wasn’t that essential? And the idea of raising my daughters, even part-time, brought back old aches. Ah, the biological imperatives. Had I deluded myself in thinking I could satisfy them with Cait and Timmy?
We met the visiting Rochester Alerts two days after my fight with Cait. I sat at the scorer’s table in street clothes for the first time, feeling decidedly less glamorous. Harry had already hired Oak Taylor, the star of the juniors; he would make the western trip. I toyed with the thought of disabling him.
My own status cleared up a bit when Champion assured me that sufficient space existed and that he had no objection to my going. That was how Mr. Warmth put it. But I’d have to pay my own way. Did I want to do that? I told him I’d let him know before final ticket arrangements had to be made. Did I want to go? God, yes, I wanted to go—in some inexplicable way I had to. And yet was unaccountably afraid of it. I didn’t know what I wanted.
Seeing the Alerts in their crisp white jerseys took me back to the first game I had witnessed, on that distant rainy day—was it really only three months ago?—when I’d awakened in Rochester. They were a good-looking club, second only to the Rockford Forest Citys among all-amateur clubs we’d faced. But in the fourth, sparked by Mac’s gargantuan homer and Andy’s steal of home, we broke things open.
The Alerts matched us afterward but couldn’t gain, and it ended 32-19.
Images of San Francisco haunted me. At night, my sleep torn by exhausting dreams, the city beckoned me like a lover, calling me to come back, whispering that my destiny waited there. But the city in my dreams was the one I had known. Not whatever existed there now.
After vacillating for nearly a week I went to Champion and asked if the club would consider paying half my train fare if I covered all food and lodging. No, he said. How about a fourth? I’d help with security, run errands, and provide Harry a second substitute. I reminded him of the Troy game, when two regulars were injured, and said I’d hate to see the perfect season ruined for the sake of saving a few dollars. My salesmanship was never better. With some reluctance he agreed.
Next I visited the Enquirer and Gazette and made each an identical offer: pick up half my travel costs, and I’d wire them exclusive reports. I pointed out that if only Millar went, readers would buy the Commercial to follow their beloved Stockings through the exciting West. The Gazette was lukewarm, but not so the Enquirer. Tired of being scooped by their Republican competitor, they hired me on the spot and handed me an advance check.
Having taken care of half my living and 3/4 my transportation costs, I told Champion to book me on. I felt relieved. That night the dreams stopped.
I found the note in my box at the Gibson:
Samuel,
We miss you. Will you visit tonight?
Caitlin
My heart nearly catapulted from my chest. I let out a yell that lifted the feet of lobby dwellers from the gleaming parquet floor.
I arrived with a 150-piece Noah’s Ark set fashioned in Bavaria that I’d found in Over the Rhine. We covered the floor with intricately carved animals and birds. Timmy fell asleep with the lions in his hand.
“This is for you,” I said, handing Cait a small box.
She smiled. While I played with Timmy she’d watched quietly. She wore her green dress, the one that made her eyes even more jewellike and at once concealed and suggested the contours of her body. I could scarcely look at her. Or keep from it. She was too beautiful.
“Samuel,” she breathed, holding the heart-shaped silver locket by its chain. It gleamed in the lamplight.
“Like it?”
She cradled it in her hand and gazed at it. “When I was a girl,” she said, “I hoped . . .”
She didn’t finish. “I missed you, Cait.”
“I couldn’t follow the Circle leaders’ talk,” she said, smiling, “even when they spoke of the most serious military matters.”
“Why was that?”
“Thinking of you.”
I moved toward her. “Are you marching off to war?”
“Not just now, for a certainty.”
I took her in my arms, pressed her to me as our mouths met. She held me so tightly that I could feel the trembling of her body.
“I do want you,” I breathed into her hair.
She kissed me again, then leaned back and looked into my eyes. She fastened the chain around her neck and lifted my hand to cover hers holding the locket. Around its edges I felt the soft swell of her breasts. “Can you be patient, Samuel?” she said softly. “I care for you, very much.”
Although attention was focused on the trip, the local baseball scene was not entirely quiet. A letter appeared in the Gazette arguing that the game was fast becoming, like boxing and horse racing, “a sport for gamblers and blacklegs to make money on.” It should not be played for pay, but solely “for the exciting and health-giving exercise it affords,” and employers should give their “best young men” time off to form amateur teams.
It was a popular argument. The country as a whole seemed obsessed with the subject of youth’s corruptibility. The Stockings weren’t impressed. “They’d grab for the cash fast enough if it came their way,” Waterman said bluntly of critics. “But who’d pay to see raggedy-ass muffins?”
The Pittsburgh Olympics came in to try their luck against us. Since Johnny now spent all his time training, with the fair about to open, I turned the score book over to Oak Taylor and busied myself feeding the multitudes. When the last of the hot dogs and hamburgers sold, I was more wrung out than after one of Harry’s workouts.
The game was a blowout. The Stockings took a 10-0 lead in the first and never slackened. In the face of Brainard’s two-hitter, George’s eight hits and six steals, and Andy’s two homers, Pittsburgh fell, 54-2, in only two hours. A most efficient drubbing.
That night Johnny and I packed our supplies and equipment. The Stockings would not play here again for at least a month, until after California.
Departure was five days away.
Next morning I brought Cait and Timmy to the Hamilton & Dayton depot, where Johnny waited with his sparkling three-hundred-dollar Demarest with its gleaming steel rails, ivory handlebars, silver-plated wheels, and hard rubber tires.
“Take me for a ride!” Timmy pleaded, eyes riveted on the mechanical wonder.
“I dunno, Tim,” said Johnny.
“For a certainty not!” Cait said.
“Tell you what,” I said to Johnny. “You save your legs. I’ll give him a spin around the platform.”
“You can ride?” said Timmy wonderingly, as if it were a wild bull.“I’m an expert.”
“Sam, I don’t think . . .” Johnny began nervously.
“Real slow and easy.” I straddled the bike and lifted Timmy onto the handlebars. “No problem.” We set off over the planks of the platform.
“Samuel!”
“Jeez, Sam!”
I wobbled a bit, giving Timmy several unintended thrills. Then I got the feel of it and we roiled smoothly. At the far end I set him on my shoulders for the return trip.
“Wheeeeee!” He clutched my hair, his knees pressing the sides of my neck, his elation fusing into me, making me young again.
“Look, Ma!” I said, lifting my hands from the bars as we coasted back.
“Samuel!”
“Where’d you learn?” Johnny said as we dismounted.
I waved at the bike and started to say it was something you knew as a kid and never forgot—then remembered that few people had mastered the new two-wheelers. “Guess I must be a natural,” I said.
“Wow, Sam!” said Timmy.
“Just jump on and ride my Demarest!” Johnny said incredulously.
“Ain’t Sam a dinger?” Timmy demanded, sounding for all the world like Andy.
“Samuel’s fond of his surprises,” Cait said, hugging him and looking at me over his shoulder. “For a certainty.”
I saw the locket hanging at her throat.
When the train arrived we lifted the velocipede aboard. Johnny was already edgy.
“You’ll make a fine showing,” Cait told him as we pulled out of the city.
“Fine ain’t enough,” said Johnny.
Cait smiled uncertainly, not sure if he was serious. To her it was a marginal pastime. To him it was a new identity, the launching of his future.
Carthage lay ten miles north. We arrived at noon and shuttled by coach to the fairgrounds. Clouds of dust rose from the road. We passed beneath a banner.
FIFTEENTH ANNUAL FAIR
HAMILTON COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY
At the gate Johnny let it be known that he was a racer and we were his guests. The ticket taker gave him and the velocipede long looks, then let us pass. The prize and concession booths were just opening. A sad-faced clown stood nearby holding balloons.
“Yo,” he called, “Jughandle John!”
“Yo, Fish,” said Johnny. “How’s business?”
“Poor of late,” he said.
I bought a balloon for Timmy. Johnny had worked with Fish at Robinson’s Circus. When Fish could no longer do the strenuous routines, he’d gone into balloons. Even without his makeup, Johnny said, Fish was a sad case. “Could go like that for me.” He patted the velocipede seat. “If not for my new career.”
We ambled past hog pens. The prizewinner, a 935-pound leviathan, inhabited what a sign called “the most spacious apartment in swine-dom.” Farther on was an amphitheater in which young bulls were being shown. Attendants led them by rings in their noses, jerking upward to force their heads high. People in the stands watched attentively. Judges examined each bull in turn, prodding and measuring, feeling the tightness of skin, having the attendant jerk the nose ring or walk the animal once more.
“I’ll not witness this,” said Cait. “It’s torture for the poor creatures.”
We bypassed an enclosure where horses were judged and entered, at Cait’s urging, Floral Hall, where we walked among fragrant lantana, heliotrope, begonia, achyranthes, moss fuchsia, myrtle, and countless rose varieties. Johnny and his velocipede drew curious stares. Every five minutes he asked me to pull out my watch. Finally he said he’d go out to the track; he was too nervous.
“We’ll go too,” I told him. “Here, we brought something for you.”
Cait squeezed my arm. The gift was my doing. I handed him the package I’d been carrying. He opened it and pulled out a maroon cyclist’s suit and a pair of canvas shoes.
“It’s silk,” I said. “Remember Mrs. Bertram, does the uniforms? She made it from your measurements. Here’s the cap, underneath. Those are the new light sporting shoes Harry’s ordering for the team.”
“Hell, Sam,” he said, swallowing as he fingered the silks.
“Come on, let’s sign you up and find the dressing tent, see how you look.”
We walked to an oval track behind the exhibit halls where contestants already wheeled around the circuit. We followed Johnny to the judges’ stand.
“Bruhn,” said Johnny. “Sent in my deposit a month back.”
The official, a pleasant-looking man with ruddy cheeks and yellow hair that matched his straw hat, ran his finger down a list, found the name, glanced at Johnny, then stared.
“You funning me?”
Johnny stood silently, very still.
“What’s the problem?” I moved forward. “Don’t you have his entrance money?”
“This isn’t for coloreds.”
I stood dumbfounded for an instant, then wondered how we’d been so naive not to think of it. Hadn’t Johnny known? I glanced at him. Kinky red hair, flat nose, coffee skin—features suddenly overwhelmingly dominant. Had he hoped to brazen his way through? I couldn’t read his frozen expression. Christ!
“Look,” I said placatingly, “if it’s a question of compensation, maybe we can reach some sort of—”
“Niggers don’t race here,” the man said flatly, pleasantness draining from his face. “Here’s your fee.” He held out two greenbacks.
Johnny did not move.
He shrugged and laid the bills on his table. “I’m sorry, I didn’t make the rules.”
“You can’t turn him away,” I said. “He’s practiced for weeks.”
“Don’t beg, Sam,” said Johnny quietly. He turned his velocipede and started back the way we had come.
“What is it?” I heard Timmy say. “Is Johnny a nigger?”
“Hush,” Cait said.
With the helpless feeling that something enticingly close was slipping away, I yelled, “Wait!” I caught Johnny and wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “Come on, we’ve got to think of something.”
“I’ll never get used to it.” There was a faint quaver in his voice. “In the circus it didn’t matter, ’cause in makeup nobody noticed, leastways you could pretend they didn’t.”
“We’ll work something out,” I told him, without a glimmer of an idea.
“. . . no dignity in it, Sam.” His voice shook more perceptibly. “All’s I want is the chance to be something on my own.”
“Makeup!” Cait suddenly said behind us.
I turned. “What?”
“If Johnny borrowed clothes from his friend,” she said, “and wore makeup . . . you see?”
I saw. It was brilliant. Or at least an answer. “Let’s go!” I practically knocked Johnny down trying to turn him around.
“No, no, NO!” He dug his heels in, anchoring himself. “Miss Cait, I appreciate you trying to help me.” He held the racing suit up; the fabric shimmered. “I want to wear these colors you got me, like a racer’s supposed to.” He turned toward me. “Sam, I don’t want to be no damn clown no more.”
Cait and I looked at each other. Timmy held her hand. We stood there. In the distance we heard the official’s megaphoned announcement that the race would begin in five minutes. People were moving past us toward the track.
“This isn’t right,” I said. “Walking away, giving in.”
“That’s ’cause of who you are,” Johnny said, sounding calmer. “Tell you what, we’ll watch ’em race. Find out about the competition.”
I suspected he was doing it more on my account than his own. We made our way back to the official.
“No problem with us going in to watch, is there?” I said dryly.
“Matter of fact,” he said, looking less than pleased, “there is, but I won’t push it. ’Less there’s trouble.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a hell of a lot.”
“Samuel, don’t,” Cait warned.
We sat in the grandstand. Johnny secured his velocipede below us, where he could watch it. It attracted a lot of attention.
Over two dozen entrants gathered at the starting line. The winner’s prize would be fifty dollars, the distance two miles—four times around the long oval. Johnny scrutinized the racers disdainfully. Only two wore racing gear. All of the machines were wood. Closely bunched, the cyclists pedaled furiously through the first lap. The pace slackened noticeably as the pack stretched into a thin line during the second and third laps, and fell off dramatically in the stretch run.
“Nothing,” Johnny muttered.
One burly farmboy looked like something, though, his thick legs still pumping tirelessly as he flashed across the finish line a quarter lap ahead of the second finisher.
The straw-haired official stepped forward and droned through his megaphone, “THE WINNER . . . SILAS ALSTON OF SYCAMORE TOWNSHIP!” Scattered applause sounded in the stands. We sat silently. A small-time, dismal affair, I thought. It was hard to see how winning this could take Johnny or anybody else very far.
“THE WINNING TIME . . . A TWO-MILE RECORD FOR HAMILTON COUNTY . . . SEVEN MINUTES, THIRTY SECONDS!”
“I’d’ve beat that,” Johnny said.
“You sure?” I said, thinking it would take half a dozen of his spindly shanks to form one of the winner’s tree-trunk legs.
“He would’ve!” Timmy said loyally.
“For a certainty,” added Cait.
I had an inspiration. “Johnny, why not race him in a special heat?”
“They won’t do it” His mouth bent downward. “You’re wasting your time, Sam.”
I got up. “Well, let’s see.”
“You again,” the official said. “What now?”
“How about he takes on the winner in a special race?”
He shook his head wearily.
“Nothing officially connected with the county,” I persisted. “Just an exhibition.”
He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. The sweatband had flattened his pale hair in a wet oval. He put his megaphone down. “Look,” he said, “it’s done. The winner don’t need to race, he already won. ’Sides that, he’d be a mite tired to do it again.” He regarded me sourly. “And ’sides that, you don’t seem to understand the nature of things here. Suppose the nigger raced—presuming a white man’d go on the same track with him, which he wouldn’t—and he happened to win. You think it’d do him good? You think folks wouldn’t resent one of theirs shown up by a nigger? You don’t picture trouble?”
“Stop calling him a nigger,” I said. “His name’s John.”
A grimace of irritation passed over his face. “Suppose your . . . boy loses. Well, that’s what everybody figures should happen anyway, see? Either way no good can come out of it.”
“Nice of you to consider everybody’s feelings,” I said. “Well, then, how about a special exhibition, just him against the clock?”
“He’s welcome to use the track. After hours. But you’re touched if you think folks’d come out to watch a nigger wheel around in circles by himself.”
I’d had my limit. I shot a hand out and clutched his shirt, yanking him so close that I felt his gasp of tobacco breath on my face. “Next time you call him a nigger, I’m going to slap your fucking head.”
Eyes large, he gulped and managed, “All right.”
I released my hold. “Now, let’s go on considering possibilities.”
He smoothed his crumpled shirt. When he looked up again, something in his face had changed; a hint of calculation leavened his wariness.
“Why is it you think your nig—think the boy’s so hot? He don’t look like any great shakes.”
“Tell you the truth, I don’t know how good he is. I just want him to get his chance to ride today. Here. In front of people. With you announcing it.” I paused. “I’ve got money to argue he is pretty damn good, though, if that’s what’s called for.”
“Wouldn’t hurt none,” he said carefully. “Tell you what. I’m willing to match my trotter again’ him, five miles to his three. Full harness rig. Hundred dollars each to make a purse. Oughta draw a fair crowd.”
“I’ll check,” I said. “We might have a deal.”
“In fairness I should mention that my mare’s never lost. Nobody hereabouts’ll go against her anymore.”
“Right.”
I put the proposition to Johnny.
“No!” exclaimed Cait. “Samuel, how could you even think of it? Compete with an animal!”
Somewhere in my mind a memory was sparked: a reproduction of a slave-auction poster advertising the raffle of a horse and a woman, each to become the chattel of some lucky winner. “It’s the best I could do.” Suddenly I didn’t feel so good about it.
“I want to,” said Johnny.
“You sure?”
“Wow!” said Timmy.
Johnny said, “But I’ll go two miles ’stead of three, same distance as the county race. Show them I’d’ve won, see?”
“That’s a point.”
“Tell him I’ll do two miles against anything over that for his rig.”
“You may end up with worse than he’s already offered.”
“I’ll ride.” He gripped my arm, and his yellow eyes burned into mine. “I’ll beat anything on legs or wheels today, Sam. You could bet the sky on it!”
Probably what I’ll have to do, I thought.
The official licked his lips and looked thoughtful when I proposed that Johnny ride two miles against his horse’s three and a half. “Shorter distance could work against me,” he said cautiously. “Three and a quarter?”
“Three-eighths.”
“How about a third?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“You got yourself a match.”
I thought I detected a trace of smugness. “But,” I went on, “I want to raise the bet to five hundred—”
“That,” he said, grinning pleasantly, “strikes me as a sporting—”
“—against your thousand.”
His grin slackened. “That’s a stiff amount.”
“Your mare’s never lost, remember?”
Considering it, he said, “You got it with you?”
I nodded.
“It’ll take a spell to get mine in cash,” he said. “But I think I can raise it from friends right here. Race in two hours?”
“Fine.”
“Nigger’s gonna race Brad Hoge’s prize mare!”
We heard it spread over the fairgrounds. People gravitated toward the track. Cait and Timmy and I walked the other way, killing time. We viewed turbine waterwheels in Mechanics’ Hall, eyed prize food displays—Mohawk potatoes, firestone peaches, canned white cherries—and Jersey cattle and black Spanish chickens.
Cait led us into Fine Arts Hall. There, despite Timmy’s overt disinterest, we saw prizewinners in an astonishing range of categories: best “fancy” painting, best decorated cake, best collection of insects, best woolen mittens. At the ladies’ exhibit we chatted with an exuberant seventy-six-year-old whose rag rugs had clobbered the competition. We viewed the latest sewing machines. I carried Timmy on my shoulders.
We returned to the track as Johnny finished his warm-ups. There was scattered talk of betting, but nobody seemed willing to back Johnny at any odds. Maybe Hoge had gotten a bargain at two to one. Given Cait’s disapproval of gambling and dim view of this race, I didn’t tell her of my bet. In a privy I slit the lining of my coat and pulled out the five one-hundred-dollar bank notes I’d sewn inside for emergencies. They, along with a shower of coins and bills from Hoge, went into a hat held by a man introduced as Constable Williams. I kept a close eye on him.
The harness rig appeared, guided by a boy handling the reins with casual arrogance. The mare’s roan coat glistened, rich with highlights in the hot sun. Muscles rippling, radiating nervous energy, she pranced and tossed her head like equine royalty. We’d been suckered, I thought. Poor Johnny.
The stands were packed. A few admiring oohs mixed with the laughter that followed Johnny and the shining Demarest to the starting line. It was obvious that the crowd had never seen anything like the velocipede. Or exactly like Johnny either. The maroon trunks bagged above his skinny, knotted legs. The new shoes looked enormous. The jockey cap perched on a cushion of orange-red wool.
“. . . RACING IN A PRIZE MATCH AGAINST THE CHAMPION TROTTER, SARAH JANE . . . JOHANN SEBASTIAN BRUHN!”
I’d dictated the form, but I couldn’t control Hoge’s intonation. “Johann” came out comically, with hard “J” and flattened “a,” the three names drawn out to ridiculous length. The spectators, their numbers by then swelled to nearly a thousand, roared with laughter.
“The nigger fancies hisself Dutch,” somebody behind me chortled.
I tensed and started to turn. Cait gripped my arm. “You wanted him to have this,” she said, “so let it be.”
Hoge raised a heavy cane and slammed it on the judge’s stand. THWACK! On the far side of the track the mare surged forward, energizing the harness rig smoothly and instantaneously. Johnny started slowly, wobbling as he built up speed. Before he was halfway through his first circuit, Sarah Jane pounded past him on the outside, enveloping him in swirls of dust.
“Oh God,” murmured Cait.
“She has to go six-plus laps to Johnny’s four,” I said. “It’s not over.”
Not reassured by my own words, I tried to reconcile myself to having thrown away a hell of a lot of money.
“ONE FIFTY-EIGHT!” Hoge boomed through his megaphone as Johnny swept below us, completing his first lap. I made a calculation and groaned mentally. To post his record time, the earlier winner had averaged 1:52 per lap. Johnny was well off that pace, and was bound to slow from fatigue. Meanwhile, the damned mare was burning up the track as if her life depended on it.
In the second half mile Johnny appeared to get his stroke, though Sarah Jane came on very fast and was about to lap him again.
“THREE THIRTY-EIGHT!”
He had done his second circuit in a minute and forty seconds, nearly twenty seconds faster than the first. My gloom brightened a tiny bit. He was closing in on the earlier winner’s pace. It would be something if he could at least beat the record.
The third lap was brutal. Johnny labored in dust stirred by the rig.
In the searing heat it streaked to mud on his face. His drenched silks drooped on his straining body. He bent low over the handlebars and drove his legs in churning, pistonlike rhythm.
“The poor man,” Cait said.
“He’s still in it,” I said.
“FIVE MINUTES, TEN SECONDS!” droned Hoge as Johnny flashed past the line below us.
A minute thirty-two. Somehow Johnny was getting faster with each lap. Incredible pace. If he could only sustain it, maybe . . .
The rig passed before us to enter its final circuit, scarcely a third of a lap behind Johnny. The winner would be the first one across the line. Sarah Jane’s driver used his whip to lash her heaving flanks. The rig sped around the oval, gaining inexorably.
“He’s losing ground too fast,” I said. “Come on!”
“It’s a cruel thing,” said Cait grimly, her hands clenched, “to man and beast.”
“Johnny, Johnny, Johnny!” yelled Timmy, waving his arms.
Johnny leaned into the final curve, chest heaving, strokes no longer smoothly rhythmical but frantic and flailing. Strain knotted his arms and swelled his back as he began the homestretch. His eyes were nearly closed, his mouth gasping, lips stretched in a sneer of agony.
Behind him, like a thundering storm, Sarah Jane rolled on, closing the distance. Johnny took a desperate glance over his shoulder and forced his legs faster.
“God in Heaven,” breathed Cait, hands on her face, “he’ll burst his heart!”
Sarah Jane gained steadily. The driver worked the whip furiously over her ribs. Streamers of foam trailed from her mouth. Her hooves drummed a dull thudding beat on the track.
A roar around us seemed to lift us to our feet.
“Yes, Johnny!” I yelled.“COME ON, JOHNNY!” we screamed.
He swept toward the finish line. Sarah Jane came up on the outside, nose almost even with his rear wheel. They were in the last twenty yards.
“WIN IT, JOHNNY!”
The mare’s straining head reached the velocipede’s saddle, Johnny’s shoulder . . .
Cait covered her eyes.
They crossed the line.
“HOLY CHRIST!” I shrieked. “HE WON!”
The result was unmistakable. There was no doubt, no argument. The crowd’s hubbub subsided to a buzzing.
“Oh, he’s hurt!” cried Cait.
The Demarest wobbled violently and toppled sideways, pitching Johnny to the track, where he lay unmoving. I vaulted over the grandstand railing. He was conscious, but his eyes were filmy and his chest heaved as he gasped for air. Must be badly dehydrated, maybe heatstroke, I thought, and carried him to the shade of the stand. Cait found ice somewhere and brought it in her scarf. She swabbed his face and wrists. Johnny stirred and groaned,
I bent over him. “What?”
“. . . win?”
“You did it, buddy,” I told him. “Looked impossible, but you pulled it off.”
He smiled weakly. “Time . . .?”
I looked around. Hoge and the man holding the stakes were talking, frowning, heads close together.
“Hasn’t been announced yet,” I said. “But I know you broke the record.”
“Want to hear,” he mumbled.
“I’ll check on it. Cait, Timmy, stay with him, okay?”
Hoge saw me coming. He didn’t look real happy.
“Announce it,” I said. “Huh?”
‘Announce Johnny’s time.”
‘Here’s your money.” He dumped the contents of the hat on the table between us. “I wouldn’t push farther.”
I stuffed the money in my pocket. Then I shoved the table aside so that nothing stood between us. “Announce it,” I said, giving him my best death stare, “or I’m going to hurt you. Bad enough so you won’t forget it for a long time. And fast enough to keep anybody from helping till it’s all over.”
Neither of us moved. For an instant I thought it wasn’t going to work. Then he lifted the megaphone.
“WINNING TIME . . . SIX MINUTES THIRTY-NINE SECONDS.”
He broke the damn record,” I snapped. “Say it’s the record!” Look.” He gestured at the grandstand.
I looked. It was two-thirds empty. Those remaining looked on silently, faces slack and staring.
“Say it anyway.” I took half a step toward him.
“A NEW HAMILTON COUNTY RECORD.” He lowered the megaphone. “That’s all you get, mister. You’d best not stay around here.”
It sounded less a threat than a statement of fact. There was something chilling in it. I took his advice, half carrying Johnny.
“My wheel, Sam.”
“Timmy’s walking it.”
“Wait.” He struggled to shake free of my arm, failed, and, feet dragging and body twisting, shouted at the grandstand, “DID YOU SEE ME?”
“Come on, Johnny,” I urged.
He dug his feet into the dirt. “I’M CHAMPION! I’LL RACE Y’ALL! RIGHT NOW! EVERYBODY!”
His shouts echoed in dusty silence. I glanced at the stands and saw a knot of men beginning to exchange looks in a way I didn’t like.
“We’re going,” I said, and picked him up bodily. I carried him clear out of the fairgrounds, Cait and Timmy moving fast to keep up. Tears formed rivulets in the grime on his face, disappearing into his sopping jersey. The tears didn’t stop completely until we were halfway home on the train.
“Look,” I said, pulling out the money. “You won more than just the race.”
He counted it and looked up. “Fifteen hundred?”
“Five’s mine. The rest was the purse. It’s yours. Not too bad, your first time!”
He looked at it wonderingly. “You bet that much on me?”
“Johnny, you rode that last lap in a minute twenty-nine. You smashed the record by nearly a minute!” I laughed. “Those guys paid a stiff price for doubting you.”
“I want to be a racer!” Timmy said. “Will you show me how?”
“That’s right, ain’t it so,” said Johnny, unheeding. “I made ’em pay, didn’t I?”
“You sure as hell did.”
Cait looked at me. I knew what she was thinking: They might have paid, but they’d only let him on the track with an animal.
“Nobody’s ever believed in me like that, Sam.”
It was sad to think it might be true.