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By Root 4314 0

done, attended to yet: the secret pre-race conference; the close, grim, fierce murmurous plotting of tomorrow's strategy. Until I realised that, strictly speaking, we had no strategy; we had nothing to plan for nor even with: a horse whose very ownership was dubious and even (unless Ned himself really knew) unknown, of whose past we knew only that he had consistently run just exactly fast enough to finish second to the other horse in the race; to be raced tomorrow, exactly where I anyway didn't know, against a horse none of us had ever seen and whose very existence ('as far as we were concerned) had to be taken on trust. Until I realised that, of all human occupations, the racing of horses, and all concerned or involved in it, were the most certainly in God's hands. Then Boon came in; I was already in bed, already half asleep.

"What've you done with your clothes?" he said. "Everbe's washing them," I said. He had taken off his pants and shoes and was already reaching to turn out the light. He stopped, dead still.

"Who did you say?" I was awake now but it was already too late. I lay there with my eyes closed, not moving. "What name did you say?"

"Miss Corrie is," I said.

"You said something else." I could feel him looking at me. "You called her Everbe." I could feel him looking at me. "Is that her name?" I could feel him looking at me. "So she told you her real name." Then he said, quite gently: "God damn," and I saw through my eyelids the room go dark, then the bed creaked as he lay down on it, as beds always do since there is so much of him, as I have heard them ever since I can remember when I would sleep with him: once or twice at home when Father would be away and he would stay in the house so Mother wouldn't be afraid, and at Miss Ballenbaugh's two nights ago, and in Memphis last night, until I remembered that I hadn't slept with him in Memphis: it was Otis. "Good night," he said. "Good night," I said.

Chapter 10

Then it was morning, it was tomorrow: THE day on which I would ride my first actual horse race (and by winning it, set Boon and Ned—me too of course, but then I was safe, immune; I was not only just a child, I was kin to them—free to go home again, not with honor perhaps, not even unscathed, but at least they could go back) toward which all the finagling and dodging and manipulating and scrabbling around (what other crimes subsequent to—dl right, consequent to—the simple and really spontaneous and in a way innocent stealing of Grandfather's automobile, I didn't even know) had been leading up to; now it was here. "So she told you what her real name is," Boon said. Because you see, it was too late now; I had been half asleep last night and off my guard.

"Yes," I said; whereupon I realised that that was completely false: she hadn't told me; she didn't even know I knew it, that I had been calling her Everbe ever since Sunday night. But it was too late now. "But you've got to promise," I said. "Not promise her: promise me. Never to say it out loud until she tells it first."

"I promise," he said. "I ain't never lied to you yet. I mean, lied bad. I mean ... I aint... All right," he said. "I done promised." Then he said again, like last night, gentle and almost amazed: "God damn." And my clothes —blouse, stockings and underwear and the riding-sock— were neatly folded, laundered and ironed, on a chair just outside our door. Boon handed them in to me. "With all them clean clothes, you got to bathe again," he said.

"You just made me bathe Saturday," I said.

"We was on the road Saturday night," he said. "We never even got to Memphis until Sunday."

"All right. Sunday," I said.

"This is Tuesday," he said. 'Two days."

"Just one day," I said. "Two nights, but just one day."

"You been travelling since," Boon said. "You got two sets of dirt now."

"It's almost seven oclock," I said. "We're already late for breakfast."

"You can bathe first," he said.

"I got to get dressed so I can thank Everbe for washing my clothes."

"Bathe first," Boon said.

"I'll get my bandage wet."

"Hold your hand on your neck," Boon said.