Horse Race

36 the minnesota review Antony Oldknow Horse Race There was a horse race once in our town, not at a racetrack in a meadow, but suddenly, down our street. The baker's man with the red face had his horse and bread cart hurtling down the hill, and he was swearing and cracking his whip, and his white horse still had its nosebag of oats tied around its neck. Alongside, going hell-for-leather down the wrong side of the road was the grimy coalman on his cart. His horse was no racer but his coal cart was empty, while the baker had just loaded with fresh bread and tea cakes; his young white horse was having to sweat. They lashed with their whips and the horses flew and the ragged kids who heard the men's loud curses, and sudden screams from other children in the street who'd also heard and run, ran into the roadway and cheered and just had time to see the two men glaring as they passed head to head in the sunlit street . . . and then they were gone with coal dust in a cloud surging and swirling behind them. Oldknow 37 Miraculously, they had no accident though ours was a busy street; miraculously, their horses survived to come back again day after day leaving behind their lucrative deposits, and gratefully we shovelled them and received small coins from pinched old ladies with dry infertile gardens; and baker's man and coalman, not reported on or fired, passed each other daily with neither nod nor word, but frowned and looked away. Who won, we never did find out. Some said the race was fixed, done to advertise the places where they worked; some said the thing was done because of women, that the men had seen the flash of eager eyes round curtains in the boxlike houses of the street, eyes that watched and blinked as the hot men passed; yet others said it was mere madness in the sun, that madness in a horse's eye was catching, and men who saw their placid steeds patiently surrendering to reins grew suddenly dismayed at so much broken will and power, and sprang up in their seats and found their whips. And as for me, I know at least from that day on I couldn't stay and merely gaze at cats and sheets and underwear like ghosts fluttering wanly from their ropes and pegs, but listened always for the sound of hooves and gasped out cries, come sun or snowflake in the street. ...