“I graduated from Vanderbilt, didn’t I? He wanted me to do that.”
“Yeah.” Sorting towels, Jack heard Albert chuckle. “You hired other people to take your exams.”
“Well, I graduated, didn’t I? That’s what he wanted. Now I want to improve the car I’ve got, two versions of it. I’m already signed up for a dozen races through this year, and I don’t have the perfect car for it.”
“You’ve got a great car. It almost gets away from you now.”
“I can handle it. What am I gonna do?”
“Use some of your own money? What, he gave you ten million in stock on your twenty first birthday?”
“Why should I spend my own money? The Radliegh Mirror Car, I call it. My father should pay. It’s good advertising. Anyhow, we’re not supposed to sell the company’s stock. I will, though, if I have to.”
“The mirror car is blinding. To the other drivers. It shouldn’t be allowed.”
“I have other things to do with my own money.”
“Stick it up your nose.”
“Stick it up your ass.”
“Go ahead. I’d know what to do with it. Get away from this crazy place. From you.”
Jack wheeled the towel basket into the laundry and put the towels into the industrial-sized washer.
He planned to ride back to the village later and use the pay phone.
The idea of calling his father pleased him. He had never been able to do so until recently.
He had always felt the general need for his father.
Now he felt a specific need.
What would his father think of all this?
10
“Want a beer?”
The young man who lived in the apartment next to Jack, in the same cottage, stood in Jack’s door with two unopened cans of beer in his hands.
Jack had said “Hi” to him when they both arrived back from work shortly after five. Jack was bracing his bike in the stand.
Opening the door to his apartment, the other young man had said: “Fruity bikes.”
He was wearing boots, jeans, and a checked white and blue shirt.
There was no other bike in front of that cottage.
“Sure,” Jack said. “I’ll have a beer.”
“My name’s Peppy.”
He was a tall, lean young man with clear, naturally dark skin and curly dark hair.
“Jack,” Jack said. “Where’d you get the beer?”
“From the duffel bag under my bed.” Grinning, Peppy popped one beer can and handed it to Jack. “I buy a week’s supply on my day off. It’s not cold.”
“It’s warm.”
“So?” Peppy popped his own can and swallowed half the beer in it. “It’s beer.” He belched.
With the door open behind Peppy, a light breeze coming in, Jack smelled animals.
“What do you do with the empties?”
“Put ’em back in the duffel. Take ’em back to town with me when I go.”
“People at the car compound don’t notice you’re carryin’ a duffel bag that clanks?”
“I hide it in the bushes. Pick it up on the way out; drop it off on the way back.”
“You smuggle beer.”
“Yup,” Peppy said. “You find yourself doin’ some ridiculous things, around here.”
Jack sat on the Hide-A-Bed couch. “You work in the stables?”
“How’d you guess? Because I smell of horseshit? That’s my natural odor. My pappy smelled the same way.” Peppy sat in one of the two white wooden chairs at the round table near the front window of the one-room-and- bath apartment. “I work the horses. Clean stables. Shovel shit. Want some?”
“Naw,” Jack said. “I’ve got some hamburger for supper.”
“Same shit.”
“How many horses are there?”
“Eighteen now.”
“That many?”
“Mostly unused. The old man rides. One or two of the young executives trying to attract his attention ride. Real dudes. You should see the one Japanese vice president of something or other ride. His head wobbles around so much, I swear it will fall off. You can tell he hates riding, poor guy; thinks it’s somethin’ he has to do for the glory of Radliegh Mirror, or somethin’. The old man tries to organize trail rides once in a while but he hardly ever can get any of his family to go. Chet’s been riding, recently. You know? He put me on this place. Guests occasionally ride, some of them real good. I have to exercise the horses every day, clean them up again, do it again the next day, keep them gentle. You find yourself doin’ some ridiculous things, around here. You ride?”
“No. But, if you like to ride, it seems like a good job.”
“Lonely,” Peppy said. “Never been lonelier in my life. Nobody, nothin’ around here, either. Growing up, Oklahoma, I lived with horses, slept with them. Can’t get away from them. I guess I am one, after all.”
“One what?”
“A horse.”
“How long you been here, on the place?”
“Three months. Four. Five. I have to be someplace. Do somethin’.”
“Where did you meet Chet?”
“In a bar. In New York City.”
“Not a good place for a horse, I think. What were you doing there?”
Peppy didn’t answer at first. “Trying to get away from horses? Trying to stop being a horse? Trying not to be lonely?” Peppy turned his big-eyed long face toward Jack. “I look like a horse, don’t I? I move like a horse.”
“I don’t know.”
“I am a horse.” Peppy tipped the beer can against his lips. “Neigh.”
Jack wondered how much beer Peppy had drunk.
“I hear a horse died the other day.”
Peppy nodded. “Under the old man. Dead before it hit the ground. Nearly rolled over on him. If the old man hadn’t been quick, it would have broke his leg for sure.”
“That all?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just broken his leg?”
“If the old man had been ridin’ hard, jumpin’ fences as he usually does, it could have killed him. ’Least he hasn’t been back.”
“Who?”
“The old man. Doc Radliegh. Hasn’t ridden since. That surprises me. I thought the old man would be back the next morning lookin’ to ride one of the other horses. He has eighteen of them left. But, no. Still, I’m there at the stables every mornin’ with a horse saddled, ready for him.”
“And he hasn’t showed up?”
“No.”
“Why not? Did the horse dyin’ on him scare him, do you think?”
“In a way, maybe.” Peppy shrugged. “He’s doin’ less of everything these days. His Jeep nearly threw him too, I hear. All his toys are breakin’. He’s spendin’ more of his time in his office, his lab.”
“His lab. blew up this afternoon.”
“That so?”
“Someone got killed there. A Doctor Wilson.”
“I’ll be damned. Another explosion?”
“Lethal gas. Then an explosion.”
