Chapter XI

At the track in the morning, what a difference. Now the horses held the stage. Passenger Boy was out and Old Hundred and Holy Mackerel. Tom was tooling Passenger Boy himself. He and Holy Mackerel, a gelding, and a three-year-old Tom reckoned was the fastest thing he had, were going to do a mile together after they got warmed up.

Passenger Boy was old, fourteen years old, but you would never have guessed it. He had a funny cat-like way of going--smooth and low and fast when it did not look fast.

Tar went over to where there were some trees in the center of the track. Sometimes, when Tom didn’t come for him and paid no attention, he went along afoot and got there early in the morning. If he had to go without breakfast, it was all right. You wait around for breakfast and what happens? Your sister Margaret says, “Get some wood in, Tar, get some water, mind the house while I go to the store.”

Old horses like Passenger Boy are like some old men Tar knew long afterwards, when he was a man. You’ve got to warm the old ones up a lot--prod ’em--but when they get going the right kind--boy, look out. What you’ve got to do is heat them up. At the stables Tar once heard young Bill Truesdale say that a lot of men, of what he called antiquity, were the same way. “Look at King David, now. They had a lot of trouble trying to heat him up at the last.” Men and horses don’t change much.

Will Truesdale was always talking of antiquity. People said he was a born scholar but he got soused about three times a week. He claimed there was plenty of precedent for it. “A lot of the smartest men the world ever knew could have put me under the table. I haven’t got the stomach they had.”

That kind of talk, half in fun, half serious, at the stables where the men sat around, but over at the track mostly silence. When a good horse is going fast even a talky man can’t talk much.

Out in the very center, inside the oval track, there was a big tree, an oak, and when you sat under it and edged slowly around you could see a horse every step of the mile.

Tar went over there once in the early morning and sat down. It was a Sunday morning and that, he thought, was a good time to go. If he stayed at home Margaret would say, “You might as well go to Sunday School.” Margaret wanted Tar to learn everything. She was ambitious for him but you learn things at the tracks, too.

“On Sunday, when you dress up, your mother has to wash your shirt afterwards. You can’t help getting it dirty. She has enough to do as it is.”

When Tar got to the tracks early, Tom and his men and the horses were already there. One by one they brought the horses out. Some they worked fast, others they just jogged for miles and miles. That was to harden up their legs.

Then Passenger Boy came, a little stiff at first, but after they had jogged him a long time, getting more and more into that easy cat-like way of going. Holy Mackerel went high and proud. The trouble with him was that when he was in his speed he would, if you weren’t mighty careful and pressed him a little too much, break and spoil everything.

Now Tar had got it all down fine, the words of racing, the slang. He loved to say over horses’ names, racing words, horse words.

When he sat that way, alone over under the tree, he kept talking to the horses in a low voice. “Easy, boy, now, now ... get along there now ... hi, boy ... hi, boy ... hi, boy ... hi, boy ... hi, boy” ... pretending he was driving.

The “hi boy” came when you wanted a horse to flatten himself out into his stride.

If you aren’t a man yet and can’t do what men do you can have almost as much fun pretending you are doing it ... if there isn’t any one around looking and listening.

Tar watched the horses, he indulged in dreams of some day being a horseman. On the Sunday when he went to the tracks something happened.

When he got there, in the early morning light, it began a gray day, as so many Sundays are, and it rained a little. At first he thought the rain might spoil the fun, but it didn’t last long. The rain only laid the dust on the track.

Tar had come away from home without his breakfast, but as it was getting late summer and soon Tom would be sending some of his horses to the races, some of his men were living at the tracks, keeping the horses over there and eating there themselves.

They cooked out of doors and had a little fire. After the rain the day half cleared, making a soft light.

On the Sunday morning Tom saw Tar coming in at the fairground gate and calling to him, gave him some fried bacon and bread. How good it tasted, better out of doors that way--than anything Tar could ever get at home. Maybe his mother had told Tom Whitehead how he was so crazy about being at the tracks that he often left home without his breakfast.

After he gave Tar the bacon and bread--Tar made into a sandwich--Tom did not pay any more attention to him. It was just as well. Tar did not want attention, not that day. There are certain days when if every one leaves you alone it just suits. They don’t come often in a life. For some the best day is when they marry, for some when they get rich, have a lot of money left them or something like that.

Anyway there are days that just seem to go high and fine, like Holy Mackerel when he doesn’t break in the stretch, or like old Passenger Boy when he finally gets into that soft cat-like stride of his. Such days are as rare as ripe apples on a tree in the winter.

As soon as he had bolted the bacon and bread Tar went over to the tree where he could look all around the track. The grass was wet going over, but it was dry under the tree.

He was glad Jim Moore wasn’t along, glad his brother John, or Robert, wasn’t there.

Well, he wanted to be alone, that was all.

He made up his mind early in the morning he wasn’t going home all day, not till night.

He lay on the ground under the oak tree and watched the horses work. When Holy Mackerel and Passenger Boy got down to business, Tom Whitehead standing over by the judges’ stand with a stop watch in his hand and letting a lighter man drive, it was exciting, of course. A lot of people think it’s great when one horse nips the other right at the wire but if you are any horseman you ought to know pretty well which horse is likely to do the nipping. It isn’t settled at the wire but probably over on the back stretch where there isn’t any one to see. Tar knew that was true because he had heard Tom Whitehead say so. It was a shame Tom was so fat and heavy. He would have been as good a driver as Pop Geers or Walter Cox if he hadn’t been so fat.

It is settled on the back stretch which horse is which, because back there one horse says to another, “Come on, you big mutt, let’s see what you’ve got.” Races are won by the little extra something that you’ve got or you haven’t.

What happens is that these wire-nippers always get in the papers and stories. A newspaper writer likes that stuff, “nipped at the wire, the wind sobbing through the mighty lungs,” you know. Newspaper men like it and the crowd at the races likes it. Tar reckoned sometimes that, had he been a driver, his Dad would have been that kind and maybe he would himself, but the thought made him ashamed.

And then sometimes a man like Tom Whitehead says to one of his drivers, “You let Holy Mackerel get down in front. Take old Passenger Boy back a little up there at the head of the stretch. Then let him come on.”

You get the idea. It doesn’t mean Passenger Boy couldn’t have won. It means he couldn’t win, given the handicap he had, being taken back that way. It was to give Holy Mackerel the habit of landing in front. Old Passenger Boy maybe didn’t care quite so much. He knew he’d get his oats all right anyway. If you’ve been down in front a lot of times and heard the cheering and all that, what do you care?

If you know a lot about racing or anything, it takes something out of it, but you gain something too. It’s all bunk winning anything if you don’t win it right. “There’s about three people in Ohio know that and four of them are dead,” Tar once heard Will Truesdale say. Tar did not quite know what it meant and yet he did know, in a way.

The point is that the way a horse moves is something in itself.

Anyway, on the Sunday morning, Holy Mackerel won, after Passenger Boy had been taken back at the head of the stretch, and Tar saw the taking back and then the way Passenger Boy ate up the space between and almost made Holy Mackerel break at the critical moment. He might have broken had Charlie Friedly, driving Passenger Boy, given a certain kind of a whoop at the right moment, as he would have done in a race.

He saw that and the movements of the horses all around the track.

Then some other horses, colts mostly, worked out and noon came and afternoon and Tar did not move.

He felt all right. It was just a day when he did not want to see any one.

After the horsemen got through their work he did not go back over to where the men were. Some of them went away. They were Irish and Catholics and could maybe get to a mass.

Tar was lying on his back under the oak. Any one in the world any good has had such a day. Such days make a person wonder, when they come, why they are so scarce.

It may have been just a feeling of peace. Tar was lying on his back under the tree looking up at the sky. Birds flew overhead. Now and then a bird landed in the tree. For a time he could hear the voices of the men at work with the horses but could not make out any words.

“Well, a big tree is something in itself. A tree can laugh sometimes, smile sometimes, frown sometimes. Suppose you are a big tree and a long dry time comes. A big tree must need a lot to drink. There isn’t any worse feeling than being thirsty and knowing you can’t get anything to drink.

“A tree is something, and grass is something else. Some days you aren’t hungry at all. Put food before you and you don’t even want it. If a mother sees you just sitting around and sitting around and not saying anything, it’s likely as not the first thing she thinks of is food. ‘You’d better eat something.’ Jim Moore’s mother is like that. She’s stuffed him until he is so fat he can’t hardly climb a fence.”

Tar stayed for a long time under the tree and then he heard a sound far off, a low humming sound that occasionally grew louder and then died down again.

What a funny sound for Sunday!

Tar thought he knew what it was and presently got up and walked slowly across the field, climbed a fence, crossed the tracks and then climbed another fence. When he crossed the tracks he looked up and down. When he stood on the tracks he always wished he was a horse, young like Holy Mackerel and full of wisdom and speed and meanness like Passenger Boy.

Tar had got outside the racetrack now. He crossed a stumpy field and climbed a wire fence and got into a road.

It wasn’t a big road but a little back country road. Such roads have deep ruts in them and often rocks sticking up.

And now he had got quite out of town. The sound he had heard grew a little louder. He passed farmhouses, went through a wood, climbed a hill. Presently he saw it. It was what he had thought. Some men were threshing grain in a field.

What the deuce! On Sunday!

“They must be some foreigners, like Germans or something. They can’t be very civilized.”

It wasn’t anywhere Tar had ever been and he knew none of the men, but he climbed a fence and went toward them.

The stack of wheat was on a hill near a wood. As he got nearer he went more slowly.

Well, there were a lot of country boys, about his own age, standing around. Some were all dressed up, for Sunday, some were in their every-day clothes. They were all strangers. The men were strangers. Tar went past the machine and the engine and sat down under a tree by a fence. There was a large old man with a gray beard sitting there smoking a pipe.

Tar sat near him, staring at him, staring at the men at work, staring at the country boys of his own age, standing about.

What a queer feeling he had. You’ve had such a feeling. You are walking in a street you’ve been in a thousand times, and suddenly it is all different. Wherever you go people are doing something. On certain days whatever they are doing is full of interest. If they aren’t working out colts on a race track they are threshing wheat.

You would be surprised how the wheat runs out of a threshing machine, like a river. Wheat is ground up into flour and made into bread. A field that isn’t very big and that you can walk across in no time will produce bushels of wheat.

When men are at work threshing wheat they are like they are when they train colts for the races. They make funny remarks. They work like the very deuce for a while and then lay off and maybe wrestle around.

Tar saw one young man, at work on the top of the stack of wheat, push another to the ground. Then he crawled back up and the two put down their forks and began to wrestle. There was a man on an elevated platform feeding the wheat into the separator, and he began to dance. He took a bundle of the wheat in his hands, shook it in the air, made a motion like a bird trying to fly that can’t fly, and then began to dance again.

The two men on the stack wrestled as hard as they could, laughing all the time, and the old man by the fence near Tar growled at them, but you could tell he did not mean what he said.

The whole job of threshing came to a stop. All were intent on watching the struggle on the stack until one fellow had thrown the other to the ground.

Some women came along a lane bearing baskets and all the men went away from the machine to sit by the fence. It was in the middle of the afternoon but in the country when threshing is going on, people do like that. They eat and eat, just any time. Tar had heard his father talk of it. Dick liked to be painting a house in the country when the threshers came. Lots of people served wine then--some they had made themselves. A good German farmer was best. “It takes the Germans to eat and drink,” Dick often said. It was funny Dick wasn’t fat, the way he could eat when he was away from home and could get it.

When the people of the farm, the visiting threshers and the neighbors who had come to help, were all sitting by the fence eating and drinking, they kept offering Tar some but he would not take it. Why, he did not know. It wasn’t because it was Sunday and it seemed strange to see people at work. It was a queer day for him, a dumb day. One of the farm boys of about his own age came to sit near him, holding a large sandwich in his hand. Tar had taken nothing to eat since breakfast at the track and that was early, about six o’clock. They always work the horses as early as they can. It was now well past four in the afternoon.

Tar and the strange boy sat by an old stump that was hollow and a spider had built his web in it. A large ant crawled up the farm boy’s leg and when he knocked it off it fell in the web. It struggled furiously. If you looked close at the web you could see, away back in a kind of cone-like place, the old fat spider looking out.

Tar and the strange boy looked at the spider, they looked at the struggling ant, they looked at each other. It’s queer that on some days you can’t talk to save you. “He’s a goner,” the farm boy said, pointing at the struggling ant. “You bet,” Tar said.

The men went back to work and the boy disappeared. The old man who had been sitting by the fence smoking his pipe went to work. He had left his matches lying on the ground.

Tar went and got them. He gathered up some loose straw and shoved it into the front of his shirt. Why he wanted the matches and the straw he did not know. On some days a boy just likes to touch things. He picks up stones and carries them when he doesn’t want them at all.

There are days when you like everything and days you don’t. Other people hardly ever know just how you feel.

Tar went away from the threshers, drifted down along the fence and got into a meadow below. He could see the farm house now. At a farmhouse, when there are threshers, a lot of neighbor women come in. More come than need to come. They cook a lot of food but they fool around a lot, too. What they like to do is talk. You never heard such a chatter.

It was funny though, their doing it on Sunday.

Tar walked across a meadow and then crossed a creek on a fallen log. He knew in a general way the direction in which lay the town and the Moorehead house. What would his mother think of his being gone all day? Suppose it would turn out like Rip Van Winkle, and he had been gone for years. Usually when he went off to the race track alone in the early morning he was back at home by ten. If it was Saturday there were always a lot of things to do. Saturday was John’s big paper day and Tar was expected to get busy.

He had to split and bring in wood, get water, go to the store.

Sunday was, after all, a lot better. This one was a queer day for him, an exceptional day. When an exceptional day comes you’ve got to do just what comes into your head. If you don’t, everything is spoiled. If you want to eat, you eat, if you don’t want to eat you don’t. Other people and what they want don’t count, not for that day.

Tar went up a slight hill and sat by another fence in a wood. When he came out of the wood he could see the fairground fence and knew that in ten or fifteen minutes he could get home--if he wanted to go. He didn’t.

What did he want? It was growing late now. He must have been in the woods at least two hours. How quickly the time went--sometimes.

He went down a hill and came to the creek that led to waterworks pond. At the pond they had built a dam and backed the water up. There was an engine house near the pond that put on full steam when there was a fire in town and that also furnished the town with electric lights. When it was moonlight they did not turn on the lights. Dick Moorehead was always grumbling about it. He did not pay any taxes and a man who doesn’t pay any taxes is always the best grumbler. Dick was always saying the tax payers ought to furnish the schoolbooks, too. A soldier serves his country and that makes up for not paying taxes, Dick said. Tar sometimes wondered what Dick would have done if he hadn’t got the chance to be a soldier. It had given him so much to grumble about, brag about, talk about. He had enjoyed being a soldier, too. “It was a life just made for me. If I had been to West Point I’d have stayed in the army. If you aren’t a West Point man the others look down on you,” Dick said.

At the waterworks engine house they had an engine with a wheel twice as high as your head. It whirled round and round, so fast you could hardly see the spokes. The engineer never said anything. If you went to the door and stood looking in he never looked at you. You never saw a man with so much grease on one pair of pants.

Up the creek, at the place to which Tar had now come, there had been a house once but it had burned down. There was an old apple orchard, the trees all let go, so many little shoots growing out of the limbs you could hardly climb up. The orchard was on the side of a hill that led right down to the creek. Beside it was a cornfield.

Tar sat down by the creek at the edge of the cornfield and the orchard. When he had been sitting there a long time a ground hog on the opposite bank of the creek came out of his hole, stood on his hind legs and looked at Tar.

Tar did not move. It was a queer notion carrying that straw around inside his shirt. It tickled.

He took it out and the ground hog disappeared into his hole. It was growing dusk now. Pretty soon he would have to go home. Sunday was a funny kind of a day, some people going to church, others staying at home.

The ones that stayed at home dressed up, anyway.

Tar had been told it was God’s day. He gathered some dry leaves along the fence by the orchard and then went a little way into the corn. When corn is almost ripe there are always some outer leaves that have dried and withered.

“Barren corn makes bitter bread.” Tar heard Will Truesdale say that one day as he sat with the other men on the bench before Tom Whitehead’s stable. He wondered what it meant. It was poetry Will was quoting. It would be nice to be educated like Will, but not a souse, and to know all the words there are and what they mean. If you put words together in just a certain way they sound nice even though you don’t know what they mean. They go well together like some people. Afterwards you are walking along alone and you say the words to yourself, liking the sound they make.

Nice sounds at night by an old orchard and a cornfield too, about the best sound you can hear. The crickets are going it and the frogs and the grasshoppers.

Tar lit the little pile of leaves, dry corn-leaves and straw. Then he put some sticks on. The leaves weren’t very dry. There wasn’t a big quick fire--just a gentle one with white smoke. The smoke curled up through the branches of one of the old apple trees in the orchard some man had planted, thinking he would make a home there by the creek. He had got tired or discouraged, Tar thought, and after his house burned had moved away. People were always leaving one place and moving to another.

The smoke went lazily up, into the branches of the trees. When a little breeze came some of it was blown through the standing corn.

People talked about God. There wasn’t anything very definite in Tar’s mind. Lots of times you do something--like carrying that straw from the threshing inside your shirt all afternoon (it tickling you) and you don’t know why you do it.

There is a lot to think about you never can really think about. If you talk about God to a boy he gets all mixed up. Once some of the kids were talking about death and Jim Moore said that when he died he wanted them to sing at his funeral a song called, “Let’s go to the fair in an automobile,” and a big boy that was standing near laughed fit to kill.

He didn’t have sense enough to know that Jim did not mean what he said. He meant he liked the sound. Maybe he heard some one sing that song who had a nice voice.

A preacher who came to the Mooreheads’ house once and talked a lot about God and hell scared Tar and made Mary Moorehead mad. What’s the use getting all worked up?

If you sit at the edge of a cornfield and an orchard and you have a little fire and it is almost night and there is a cornfield and the smoke goes up lazy and slow toward the sky and you look up....

Tar waited until the fire had all burned out and then went home.

It was dark when he got there. If your mother has any sense she knows enough to know that certain days are certain days. If you do what she doesn’t expect on such a day she never says a word.

Tar’s mother said nothing. When he got home his father had gone away and so had John. Supper was over but his mother got him some. Margaret was talking with a neighbor girl in the back yard and Robert was just sitting around. The baby was asleep.

What Tar did, after he had his supper, was just to sit on the front porch with his mother. She was sitting near and now and then touched him with her fingers.