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
