Jane Rice

“ Anyway, we is walking along, Jimmie and me, and I am thinking about what we is going to eat for breakfast the next day, and lunch, and supper, and Jimmie is thinking about how is he going to buy Ditsy something when we hear a rumpus going on around a corner up ahead. It increases graduallike and when we gets to the corner we meets it, head-on you might say.
There is about a dozen people who is all personal acquaintances of John Barleycorn, and they is pestering a woman who looks like she is on her way to a masquerade at a insane asylum. ”

“ What is being said is all the same color and cut equal. Howinever, I am positive that Jimmie did not do no pull. He is white as death and keeps shaking his head like there is lead shot in it and he is listening to it rattle. He keeps saying, "I cannot understand it, I cannot understand it," over and over. No, he did not do no pull. Spencer Tracy cannot act that good and Jimmie Winkie is not no Spencer Tracy. ”

“ What I mean about crowding, I figure this here horse Jimmie is up on gets crowded quick. There is some crows slow, some easy, some quick. Jimmie happens to be up on Beeknight and, the way I figure, I figure Beeknight crowds quick. You know how it is, out of the barrier, everybody trying for a inside track, some pushing maybe, though this is not noticeable unless you is up. Now them that crowds slow gets out and tries, and them that crowds easy falls in, but them that crowds quick rears up and starts doing the Highland fling. There is not many. ”

“ Jimmie says, "and, if I do, they will not call me Wee Willie no more. Guys like Moe Prentice will give me the laugh. I got to keep on winning. I cannot stop now."
"You has not got to do nothing but die," I says, "and if what guys like Moe Prentice says means more to you than Ditsy, here, I would go on off and die if I was you."
"What about your grand piano?" Jimmie says to Ditsy. ”

“ Jimmie says it is the horse and he ought to of knowed being as how he was up on him. Jimmie says it is also a great surprise to him that Peajacket wins, but, naturally, he does not say this out—but just to me—as it is not a good policy to let on that you are surprised when you bring in a winner.
How does it feel to bring in a winner? Brother, you can have the greatest symphony that was ever wrote ”

“ When Lady Luck smiles in the racing game she has got a grin so broad you can count her back fillings, but, when she quits smiling, brother, she just quits and you might as well go wrap your head in a sweat blanket and forget it. ”

“ Well, as I was saying, we is down in Tijuana and it is nighttime and we is walking down one of them crooked streets which is about as thick in Tijuana as saddle sores is in a riding academy. We is walking along with our hands in our pockets and not much else, being as how we has inadvertently got mixed up in a game knowed as faro, the same which is like being on the wrong end of a loco bronc, and which we would not of got into if Jimmie had not of wanted to increase a five-dollar bill into a ten-dollar bill so as to buy a real nice present for Ditsy. ”

“ You look like a right guy. Why should I kid you? I have not been up on a horse for four years. Six months cold for a jock is a wide turn, but four years—say, four years is—what the devil, I am washed up cleaner than a choirboy's ears. ”

“ Jimmie used to say he got so he could tell right off who was a givee and who was a gimme. Not that he does not appreciate what is give him, even if he does not keep it, and not that he does not hand out to the gimmes—it is just that he does not want nothing off of nobody and does not want nobody to want nothing off of him.
But when you gets in the major brackets that is not the way things is. So, like I said, it changes him some. Some way, he reminds me of a kid what has eat a quarter's worth of jelly beans all one flavor.
It changes Ditsy, too. Her hair is not loose-like and fluffy no more. ”

“ She fools Jimmie because Jimmie is so anxious for her to be happy that, when she keeps saying she is happy, he believes she is happy and it does not occur to him that when you are happy you does not go around saying, "My, I am happy," like you was learning a lesson in memorizing.
When a woman is happy she sings and brushes her hair a lot and says stuff like, "I declare, it is four o'clock already, can you beat that?" and she looks smily even when she is not actually smiling. So it is obvious Ditsy is not happy because she is not doing none of them things. ”

“ I am not one to stick my nose in other people's business. I am one who says other people's business is their own business and no business of mine, having found that a nose stuck in other people's business usually gets itself pinned up so as it does not look like a nose for quite a while after. ”

“ It is a awful experience to see a girl cry. It makes you feel like all your joints has swelled and your ears and feet belong to a two-humped camel.
Jimmie says, "You want me to lose?" like he is suffering from hallucinations.
Ditsy keeps on crying. ”

“ I mean she has gone in for double-jointed cigarette holders and red fingernails and them long-haired guys what paints a picture of somebody so as they have one eye here and one here and clockwork springs for the top of their head and maybe a spare tire for one hand and a fiddle for the other with a bunch of carrots sprouting out of it. ”

“ It is a swell day. One of them high, blue ones. There is music coming out of the announcing system and people is walking around and everything is kind of stirred up like—like it is before the start. It is a fast track and pretty to look at and Happy Slauderwasser comes out and says, "Move over," and we both hangs over the veranda rail and just look at how everything looks, if you know what I mean.
Then the horses is mincing past, Jimmie about as big as a good-sized pea, and then the barrier is in, and it is Beeknight in No. ”

“ Jimmie pull him? You mean on account of Ditsy saying what she said? Maybe. I thought about that angle, but I am almost sure for certain that is not the case. I seen him right after it is over and, if he is putting on a show, I am a snub-tailed bloodhound.
No, I figure horses like I figure human beings. They is subject to change. This here Beeknight might of slept restless, he might of been overtrained, he might of been scary, he might of had gas, he might of sensed Jimmie was not in no mood. Them things affects a horse. ”

“ And, while I am being cheered and thinking what a smart guy I am, this here third horse pounds ahead past Sky Eagle, a shoulder, half a length, a length, and that opening I been hovering over swings wide as a barn door and Sky Eagle is through it because I am yawping at Jimmie Winkie with his ears skinned back crouched high on Peajacket, and if I had not of knowed better I would of swore he was scared green, and while I am yawping, Black Boy bears out so, as I said, that puts the quietus on us. ”

“ I could of got in a lame fourth, but I am so whooper-jawed watching Jimmie go down the stretch like a lighted fuse that I lets this here Black Boy I am up on bear out—he was death on bearing out—and, of course, that puts the quietus on us. There is not no percentage in whipping a horse over for fourth place. A horse has got sense enough to know when you is making a fool out of him. ”

“ In fact, when he is congratulated on his ability, which he is every time he turns around, he acts like it is making him sick to his stomach. And when the write-ups come out about how modest he is and shy and retiring and how he always tries to give the credit for a win to the horse, why then he acts like he is even sicker and getting no better fast. ”

“ It is just a bridle like any racing bridle only, like I said, it is goldish-looking in a unnoticeable manner.
He gets it one year when we is finishing up the circuit down in Tijuana. This is before he hits his stride. When he is going along, like me, not snaffling no tall money nor nothing but knocking off his percentages. He is plain Jimmie Winkie then. The newspapers has not tagged that there Wee Willie on to him yet and he is not endorsing no leather jackets, nor saying as how he likes Puffie Wuffies because they is superroasted and rolled on hoops. ”

“ She has got on a sheet all draped and wrapped every which way and her feet is laced up in sandals and there is a wreath on her hair, only now it is setting cockeyed on account of as how these here people has been chasing her, and she is carrying a bridle. In fact, if I had of spent my money on John Barleycorn instead of faro, I probably would of joined in on the side of these here people who is laughing theirselves sick and grabbing at this here sheet and having a big time, for which I cannot blame them any as this woman is sure a curious sight. ”

“ You know, you is going along good, not winning no Champagne Stakes nor nothing like that, but hitting the percentages and going along O.K., see, when all of a sudden you finds that things begin to happen. ”

“ But he sure is not no foozle that afternoon at Tijuana.
There is not no barrier. You just keeps back of the line as best you can. That is one way to lose a race before the gun. I has seen them do it on purpose. You know, too tight a rein, get your horse skittered, make him break three or four times, and, when the gun goes, hold him back just long enough to let him see that he is a cooked potato. Nine times out of ten you can whip him raw and he will run, but he will not run fast enough. But your nose is clean. ”

“ Finally, Jimmie gets this here Peajacket backed in and he is lathered up like a ad for saddle soap, and the gun goes, and out of the tail of my eye as me and Black Boy takes off I sees Peajacket rearing up and I thinks, "Oh, Lordy," because it is a rule last one in has to pitch a buck in the kitty. And it is plain to see, in a field of fifteen, Jimmie is slated to be the last one in and then we will only have a buck apiece instead of a buck fifty. ”

“ She puts on like she is happy and anybody what does not know her would say, "My, she is happy," and they would be ninety-nine and forty-four hundreds percent wrong because she is not happy by no means. ”

“ She has got a new wheelchair which is streamlined and has more chrome on it than a limousine, and some bird with a Vandyke and a accent you can spread like marmalade is giving her some kind of underwater massage for her legs, so she should be very happy. ”

“ Whether he gets to be a celeb by riding horses or eating goldfish or drinking thirty buckets of beer does not make no noticeable difference—they follows. It gets so Jimmie cannot go nowheres without getting the press took out of his pants and he is lucky if the pants is not also took out with the press. ”

“ And they keeps right on happening and you can spit in the wind all you want to and chew four-leaf clovers and take a horseshoe to bed with you and it does not have no effect. Things just keeps right on happening until after a while the trainers puts the double O on you and you can not even get a leg up on a spavined brood mare and everybody takes to calling you "Jinx." ”

“ Jimmie does not answer. He is looking at the bridle like it is Lazarus arose from the dead and it is plain he is going to keel over.
He puts out his hand, as if he is in a trance, and takes the bridle from the man.
"It is all right," I says, "it is his bridle. Leave him have it. I will take him out of here." Which I do as they bring in a wicker basket and set it down by this thing on the floor around which they draws a white chalk mark before ... before they—
Guess I must be coming down with a cold. ”