“Want to hear,” he mumbled.
“I’ll check on it. Cait, Timmy, stay with him, okay?”
Hoge saw me coming. He didn’t look real happy.
“Announce it,” I said. “Huh?”
‘Announce Johnny’s time.”
‘Here’s your money.” He dumped the contents of the hat on the table between us. “I wouldn’t push farther.”
I stuffed the money in my pocket. Then I shoved the table aside so that nothing stood between us. “Announce it,” I said, giving him my best death stare, “or I’m going to hurt you. Bad enough so you won’t forget it for a long time. And fast enough to keep anybody from helping till it’s all over.”
Neither of us moved. For an instant I thought it wasn’t going to work. Then he lifted the megaphone.
“WINNING TIME . . . SIX MINUTES THIRTY-NINE SECONDS.”
He broke the damn record,” I snapped. “Say it’s the record!” Look.” He gestured at the grandstand.
I looked. It was two-thirds empty. Those remaining looked on silently, faces slack and staring.
“Say it anyway.” I took half a step toward him.
“A NEW HAMILTON COUNTY RECORD.” He lowered the megaphone. “That’s all you get, mister. You’d best not stay around here.”
It sounded less a threat than a statement of fact. There was something chilling in it. I took his advice, half carrying Johnny.
“My wheel, Sam.”
“Timmy’s walking it.”
“Wait.” He struggled to shake free of my arm, failed, and, feet dragging and body twisting, shouted at the grandstand, “DID YOU SEE ME?”
“Come on, Johnny,” I urged.
He dug his feet into the dirt. “I’M CHAMPION! I’LL RACE Y’ALL! RIGHT NOW! EVERYBODY!”
His shouts echoed in dusty silence. I glanced at the stands and saw a knot of men beginning to exchange looks in a way I didn’t like.
“We’re going,” I said, and picked him up bodily. I carried him clear out of the fairgrounds, Cait and Timmy moving fast to keep up. Tears formed rivulets in the grime on his face, disappearing into his sopping jersey. The tears didn’t stop completely until we were halfway home on the train.
“Look,” I said, pulling out the money. “You won more than just the race.”
He counted it and looked up. “Fifteen hundred?”
“Five’s mine. The rest was the purse. It’s yours. Not too bad, your first time!”
He looked at it wonderingly. “You bet that much on me?”
“Johnny, you rode that last lap in a minute twenty-nine. You smashed the record by nearly a minute!” I laughed. “Those guys paid a stiff price for doubting you.”
“I want to be a racer!” Timmy said. “Will you show me how?”
“That’s right, ain’t it so,” said Johnny, unheeding. “I made ’em pay, didn’t I?”
“You sure as hell did.”
Cait looked at me. I knew what she was thinking: They might have paid, but they’d only let him on the track with an animal.
“Nobody’s ever believed in me like that, Sam.”
It was sad to think it might be true.
Chapter 23
What would you think if I dressed in man’s clothing?” Cait said, lowering her newspaper.
“What?” We sat side by side in the parlor, swaying in our rocking chairs like an elderly couple. The gas jet cast a cozy light. It was almost ten o’clock. Timmy was asleep. O’Donovan and the others were still away. We were alone. “You heard me,” she said.
“I suppose,” I ventured, wondering if she visualized a Fenian uniform, “it would depend on the man.”
“Not a bit funny,” she said. “Read this.” She handed me that day’s Enquirer and pointed to an item titled “Women in Men’s Clothes,” by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
The true idea is for the sexes to dress as nearly alike as possible. . . . A young lady on Fifth Avenue dressed in male costume for years, traveled all over Europe and this country. She says it would have been impossible to have seen and known as much of life in woman’s attire, and to have felt the same independence and security. . . .
There are many good reasons for adopting male costumes. First, it is the most convenient dress that can be invented; second, in it woman could secure equal wages with man for the same work; third, a concealment of sex would protect our young girls from those terrible outrages from brutal men reported in all our daily papers.
“Well?” she said, when I’d finished.
I’m not sure just changing clothes will remedy all those things,” I said, mindful of jeans-wearing women of the future. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a true argument about women’s rights in general,” she said. “Mrs. Stanton wore those horrible bloomer costumes enough years to find out.”
“Yeah? Bloomers?”
“Samuel, you haven’t said what you’d think of me in male dress.”
“Well . . .” My eyes roamed over her, moving up from the tips of her small shoes peeking beneath the hem of her heavy, pleated, full-length skirt. I wondered whether she was cinched in just then by a corset. A cream-colored blouse—she called it a “waist”—was fronted by a bow that de-emphasized the swell of her breasts. The mass of black hair was pulled high and secured by combs. Her neck looked pale and slender and—had I already adopted the peep-show mentality of Victorians?—very sexy. I tried without success to imagine her slouching around in pants.
“I like the way you look now,” I told her, “but everybody should have the right to be comfortable.”
She’d blushed a little as I inspected her. Now she looked at me curiously. “It would be a blessing to dress differently at times, but it’s a rare man who’ll hear it.”
“If you mean bloomers, I’m not sure—”
“You big gossoon,” she said, rising and facing me. “Not bloomers, just . . .” She gestured to indicate her torso with a small movement of her hands. And blushed furiously.
She was achingly provocative in the gaslight.
I stood up too, no fool I.
She moved into my arms and kissed me gently.
“It’s my appearance you fancy, then, is it?” She leaned back, green sprites dancing in her eyes.
“That’s it,” I replied, and kissed her again, not so gently. Her fingers tightened on my neck
