Bridge of Clay

And still he paid homage to Penelope.

“What about Hector then?”

The champion of all the Trojans.

There were nods and murmured approvals.

* * *

—

Next morning, out in the racing quarter, there were turns I’d never known of, and we came to Epsom Road. Not far from the Lonhro Tunnel. The train line rattled above. It was one of those forgotten streets here, with a single forgotten field. The fences were mostly wayward. The trees were molting stringy barks; they towered and stood their ground.

At the bottom was the patch of land; and grass, like fists, in the dust. There was a barbed wire fence, corroded. A shack had faded to greyness. And a caravan, old and weary; a drunk at three a.m.

I remember the sound of his footsteps then, how they slowed on the potholed road. Clay never slowed down at this point of a run; it was up and only up—and soon I understood. Once I’d seen the caravan, and the unkempt segment of land, I saw that logic didn’t live here, but mules most definitely did. I walked and spoke with disgust.

“You called the number from the Tribune, didn’t you?”

Clay walked purposefully on.

His breath was so quick to normalize, from running to everyday life.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And then we saw the sign.

Looking back, there was something right about it.

I can see it and say that now.

At the time, though, I was suspicious—highly annoyed, as we walked to the fence line—and the sign had once been white. Musty and dirty, it hung diagonally, from the middle of the highest wire—probably the greatest sign in the racing quarter, if not racing quarters worldwide.

In faded thick black marker pen, it said:

ENYONE CAUGHT

FEEDING THESE HORSES

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WILL BE PROSECUTED!

“God,” I said, “look at that.”

How could a person spell anyone wrong and get prosecuted right? But that, I guess, was the racing quarter. That, and there weren’t any horses there, and for a while, it seemed, nothing else—

But then he came rounding the shack.

Quite suddenly there was a mule’s head, and the expression that often defined him:

He watched, he gleaned.

He communicated.

Like a supreme-yet-derelict being.

Already he had that what-the-hell-you-lookin’-at look on his long, lopsided face—till he’d watched a moment longer, and seemed to say, Oh, okay then.