Page 36 - WTP Vol.VII #2

So Much the Better (continued from preceding page)
side of the road, the Klan rode down from a side can- yon and caught up with him. They were white robed and their hoods had a pointy peak like they’d been specially tailored.
his bet. He put all his money on one horse. My daddy was short, maybe five foot four, and people looked down on us. Their smiles were all fake because they didn’t like the darkness of my daddy’s skin, didn’t like that he didn’t know his place.
“Good God, they made him suffer. Stripped off his shirt, the six of them took turns whipping him with a chain. By the time they finished, he was unconscious, his skin shredded and his shoulder bones and back ribs frac- tured. They poured water on him to revive him.”
“Tant Mieux was an underdog by far, a horse from the narrow river canyon of Cotopaxi without track expe- rience, without grooming or special diet. My daddy had carried me among the stables, and he looked that black horse in the eye and said, ‘She’s the one.’
Nadya lit a new cigarette with the nub of her last and took a deep inhalation. She exhaled the smoke through her nostrils. I tried the same and had a coughing fit. She didn’t give me notice, just stared at the wall as if she were reliving the event. A shudder went through her body.
“Tant Mieux won. My daddy squeezing the air out of me he was so excited. His seventy-five dollar bet bal- looned to seven hundred dollars. My daddy met the owner, a hick farmer, way over his head in the racing world and dazzled by the win and all the money. My daddy offered the man all of his winnings and first rights to Tant Mieux’s offspring. He intended to breed her. We rode that beautiful horse home, right down the streets of Colorado Springs and up into Mani- tou, and she lived in our backyard without stable or proper upkeep, her potential never reached.”
“The landscape was dotted with scrub oak, sage, and pinion pines, not a tree for miles around. Those devils laid my daddy out on the ground. They tied his legs together and roped him to a horse. Put a noose around his head and tied it to another horse. On a signal from the Wizard, the horses were spurred to run in oppo- site direction. Took my daddy’s head clean off.”
~
Nadya’s face was red. Her eyes bulged and became bloodshot. “Maybe you should stop this story and tell another,” I suggested. When she swallowed, an unnatu- ral constricting occurred at her throat that alarmed me. I reached aimlessly toward her, but she slapped my hands away. I ran out the front door and found Angel sitting on her front step. I picked up the now healthy cat and carried it to Nadya. With Angel in her lap, she came out of her heinous telling.
Nadya fell hard, wouldn’t you know it, during a rare occasion when I was absent. The garage where I had worked asked me to return to do a difficult piston- bore on a 1951 Mercedes. Standing on a wobbly table, Nadya was attempting to change a ceiling light bulb. When I saw her lying there, I thought her skull fractured because of the deep indentation on her forehead. And the blood, oh sweet Jesus in a slaugh- terhouse. I was certain her body could not have con- tained another ounce.
One afternoon, she became animated and started an- other story. It had been so long since she had spoken, her low voice rasped.
By November 1961, Nadya turned a full degree to- ward death. She had difficulty breathing and stared up at her billowy ceiling, her lips cracked and bleeding, her tongue dry as a piece of leather. I pressed drops
of water from a sponge into her mouth. I will admit
I examined her body, but purely in a medical sense, my previous ardor smothered by her approaching demise. Sores blossomed on her hips and shoulder blades. I turned her over and rubbed in lard. I listened to her every breath; sometimes, the pause between gasps so long, I thought she might be gone.
~
She survived and a worm-like scar formed above her eye because we could not afford a hospital.
Nadya began to stay in bed past 9:00 a.m., past 10. She ate little food, only crackers, first licking off the minus- cule nuggets of salt. She stopped drinking water, and her visits to the commode became rare. Her cheeks took on a concave shape and her arms looked sinewy, no longer supple. I was worried and began to bring home chicken fried steaks and fish sticks, but she would have none of that, nor the bowl of pistachio ice cream I placed under her nose.
~
“When I was two, my daddy took me to the horse track, carried me on one arm the whole afternoon even though I could walk. I was beautiful, and he showed me off to all people as he stood in line to place
One day, she beckoned me with a single finger, her eyes on me hard. I approached and put my ear to her
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