Two on a Horse
1.
The black horse on the inside rail is the fastest. The beach urchins know these quick physics, wrestle each other through the turnstiles to claim him, calling dibs. For luck, they rub the shiny bald spot where his paint’s worn thin, then jerk their burnt fingers away from sunbaked metal. He takes many names: Jack, Blackie, Seabiscuit—but “Number One” is what the carnies shout when he wins, plucking stuffed ponies and doll-babies from pegboards, pressing them into sticky ice cream hands.
To break the dark horse’s centrifugal spell, you must first bribe fat Hetty O’Brien with promises of red hots and half-used ride tickets, dredged out of trashcans where yellowjackets swarm for soda and sting. As long as there are fewer than twenty-five holes pocking any ticket’s toothy cartoon face, you can wipe off the mustard and ride anything, free of charge. The Steeplechase is the best of all. "Half a Mile in Half a Minute - And Fun all the way!"
Fat Hetty hates the horses, but she loves free rides on the Trip to the Moon. When she’s not holding court under the boardwalk, you will find her in that dim cyclorama, gazing starry-eyed at the pictures that fly past as the room spins on steel rollers. The running joke is that she craves the mid-show snack of moldy cheese, scraped from the lunar surface by costumed Selenites. She really goes to dream about joining their glimmering ranks. Someday, she will take her place among them, and leap in sea-green silk and sequins, her feet festooned with jingling bells, the first girl on the moon.
Hetty O’Brien smells of boiled cigarettes and cabbage, but you pinch your nose and endure, because her weight will send any horse plunging into first as soon as the bugle sounds—wheels giddily whizzing down the metal rails, wind stinging your wet teeth. The signs say “hold fast,” but that won’t stop you from waving at the landlubbers below. They say “don’t look down,” but that’s just a double-dare.
And for a holy moment you are soaring, the ocean a distant gray whale.
3.
The gray has long been the ladies’ favorite, good old lucky number three. He was called “the white” in the early days, back when he was factory fresh and unicorn-new, but that first coat of paint rubbed off long ago. Now hard gray wads of forgotten gum cling between his legs, and some of his wooden mane has been chunked away with penknives. But Victorias and Bessies alike still choose him, wheedling their dates and brothers away from the black horse or the brown with wide, entreating eyes.
Debutantes, housewives, match girls—all were expected to ride sidesaddle, legs swept uselessly to the left, petticoats billowing. These elegant handicaps made the gray horse the safest bet, since only his wheels are welded securely into the center of the elevated track, well away from the sheer drops on either side, where a caught hem or gust of salted air can get you smashed like popcorn on the pavement below. Everyone knows someone who knew someone who saw it happen—a woman sidesaddle on number four slid to the wooden floor under the track, where she got smacked bloody by her friends’ horses. A thousand shoes flung from dangling toes. Babes-in-arms dropped between the rails, tiny scalps dented like Kewpie dolls. The ride had no brakes.
These were but a few of the horrors that the suffragette Eugenia Clare evoked during her modestly publicized lecture at rival Dreamland Park, situated cattycorner to Steeplechase’s caparisoned spires.
Though she herself was not an avid horseback rider, the diminutive Miss Eugenia claimed that sitting aside on a Steeplechase mannequin was far more dangerous than doing so on a well-trained animal. A real horse is a slave to human reason, not gravity, she cried. What’s more, some bright spark had the Steeplechase ponies jointed at the shoulder, so that layers of metal would flex realistically as each horse circled the Pavilion of Fun. After one painful experience, gentlemen learned to beware worn saddles, and stand up in the irons when going over a whoop-dee-doo. But where did that leave the unfortunate woman who, hobbled by modesty, could not rise?
Miss Eugenia concluded her sermon by declaring that she herself intended to ride Steeplechase astride, and what’s more, any woman wishing to view her demonstration would receive admission to that park free of charge. Dreamland authorities attempted to block her from leaving the lecture hall, but that only drew a larger crowd. She was a lightning rod in a rust-colored split skirt, her whip swinging at her uncorseted waist. The papers said that she stormed the gates at Steeplechase Park in the company of at least thirty clamorous reformers. It must have been a quiet war. Tilyou was expecting her, had sent a retinue of attendants dressed in jockey silks to escort her up the five-story spiral staircase that led to the park’s signature ride. Rubberneckers cluttered the pavement below the racetrack, hoping for a glimpse of revolution or lacy bloomers.
The signs in the mounting area said two to a horse, but it had been arranged in advance that Miss Eugenia should ride alone. Of course she was given first choice. She had honestly thought that she’d like to ride a horse-rollercoaster, the way she used to love merry-go-rounds. That’s what she’d imagined when she agreed to this stunt, sight unseen: a pony fantasia, pastel rumps festooned with gold, or flowers, or fleur de lis, each carved steed a different child’s dream. Tilyou’s five horses come molded to match and match and match, frozen in mid-stride, awful in their symmetry, and so high above ground. She spooked when she first saw them, her heart a moth in her ribs.
The crowd began to murmur that she wouldn’t go through with it. The lady-reformers slated to ride alongside her questioned first her nerve, then their own. But before anyone could speak, Miss Eugenia Clare took a sharp bolt of salt air and strode toward the white horse, swinging aboard before Tilyou himself could offer a leg-up.
Those who saw Miss Eugenia swoop through the sky at Steeplechase naturally assumed that she, like so many women before her, chose the white for safety alone. But really they were all compelled by some deep-boned half-memory—a childhood pony ride, the soap-sweet scent of Mother clutching them against a brass carousel pole, or a storybook engraving of the lady-centaur Godiva, become her own white knight.
2, 4.
There have always been two brown horses on the Coney Island Steeplechase. This was originally a concession to realism—the ride’s German manufacturer, like everyone else in those days, had simply seen enough horseflesh to know that it usually comes in brown. But long after the last New York streetcar unhitched its equine engine, it remained tradition to keep two browns on the ride. Along with the black, they make their odd-colored stablemates stand out, shiny gray and bay against the robin’s egg sky.
Now the flappers and sheiks come down to the sea in Fords, hot leather backseats sticky under the bathing-suit knees of girls with Clara Bow mouths and rough names like Charlie or Dot. They are a package deal, like most tenement sheilas. If a fella wants to show Charlie a good time, Dot’s got to come too, for deep is the dread of the boardwalk bellydancers’ shimmy-shake, of Charlie’s arms flung about Harry’s neck, or Dot’s creamy Irish thighs cushioning a stranger’s sudden tumble on the Flopper, instant moral ruin. Each girl is meant to preserve the other’s virtue, in a jungle of machines subtly engineered to press skin against skin. It is well known among the swinging youth of America that the right cocktail of gravity and terror will turn the most demure girl into a wild-eyed clutcher—and so they swarm the turnstiles at Steeplechase, combination tickets (Harry’s treat!) safe in hand, pink threads of spun sugar stuck to sun-chapped lips.
Charlie and Dot end up on the browns, they are just the type: too busy fussing over who’s riding with whom to care which horse they take, too fizzy from the gin picnic Harry passed around behind the Loop-de-Loops, he’s so thoughtful to have brought a flask. Of course he clambers up behind Charlie on horse number four, they’ve been on the make all day. Poor Dot is left to the tender mercies of a sallow fellow in a straw boater, some vague acquaintance she’s been trying to shake since the Human Pool Table, where he careened into her headfirst. He says his name is Pete, but she’d swear he originally introduced himself as Paul, and this (plus gin) makes her nervous. She dilly-dallys behind horse number two as long as she can, hoping he’ll get on first. But he’s crouching beside the horse’s shoulder, interlocked palms outstretched, and the old bugler looks ready to get this show on the road, so she must mount.
The brown horse’s springs shudder as he swings up behind her, his sweaty heft pressed close against her back. Dot can smell the gum in his mouth, sour mint and dentistry. She thinks she should’ve worn the blue skirt. It would’ve covered her legs more.
And they’re off—greased wheels clattering in steel housings as the horses gain momentum, shaking the wooden supports until the whole boneshaking works feels like it’s creaking toward imminent collapse. Of course Harry’s football weight sends Charlie zooming ahead, whooping and laughing and look-ma-no-handsing as they rattle around the near turn. The horses on either side blur as they blow by, transforming into bright smears of bathing suits and gleaming metal. The wind roars past Dot’s ears, drowns out the calliope. At the first turn, the sallow man leans hard into her, one clammy hand fumbling with her breasts, the other creeping up her thigh.
She screams, but everyone is screaming. Halfway down, she shuts her eyes.
5.
The blood bay on the far rail is always the last horse chosen, and with good reason. His orbit swings out a full six feet farther than the number four horse, perilously close to the gingerbread-thin rail that separates the track from open sky. Though the finest views of the beach beyond are available from the bay’s back, he is reserved for the daredevils and thrillbillies, those foolish few who swallow their churning stomachs and place utter trust in inertia.
Pupetta Gargiulo is his secret queen, though you’d never know it to see her punching dough in her father’s Surf Avenue pizzeria, flour dusting her black hair, butter smudging her puggy nose. The nickel slices at Gargiulo’s are the biggest on the boardwalk, so the front window stays busy most weekends, when sandy customers throng the counter to watch Uncle Giuseppe spin the dough. From her station in the back of the shop, Pupi can just see the tops of their heads, sunburnt red as marinara. When thunderstorms blow in, the scent of grease and ozone sifts through the propped screen door, and customers collect under the awning for shelter, where Papa cajoles them into buying whole pies. These are passed steaming over the counter like giant communion wafers, mozzarella baked into crisp brown lace.
Pupi is thirteen, but she has to stand on a soapbox to refill the mixer, making little avalanches of flour and salt. She pulls tangled dough off the beaters and throws it back into the bowl to be reabsorbed. Dinner rush ends around sundown, then they sit on crates in the alley, listening to the sky pop as fireworks chase the workaday crowds back to Brooklyn. On good nights, Papa and Uncle Giuseppe smoke cheap cigarillos and divvy up the profits, one for him, one for him, a nickel for her. On bad nights, they drink.
Pupi’s mother used to say that when the men are in the wine, it is best for women to be forgotten, kept out of sight. She used to shepherd Pupi down to the sea, floury hands cupped around her daughter’s shoulders, swollen belly slicing through the crowd like a ship’s prow. The doctor said it would have been a boy, a little Antonio or Carlo or Enzo, a strong young hook to hang the family’s hopes on.
His phantom hand in hers, she wanders up the strand, past sandy jellyfish and forgotten sandwiches, damp from the sea. After the ocean licks away the sun, Coney is set ablaze. Shooting galleries and popcorn stands flash sodium bulbs. Ozone tangs the air. Most of the rides run late, advertising twice the thrills in the dark. At this hour, it’s easy for a girl to limbo under the turnstiles, her petty crime camouflaged by drunken crowds clamoring for cut-price admission to the illuminated swimming pool. High above it all, the Steeplechase slices the sky like a comet, its metal skeleton limned in fairy light, the dark drop beneath the rails making the ride seem twice as high. The five wooden horses carry on careening down the artificial hill, with or without screeching jockeys. A winner is called, then each horse is slowly drawn back uphill to await the next leg of their endless derby. Pupi squirrels her shoes away behind the wooden box that conceals the mechanism and scales the sandy stairs barefoot. A year ago, she was scared to ride the Steeplechase. She’d be by the water with Mamma, molding sandcastles in the dark. A year ago, she didn’t have to melt into the bedroom wall and watch as Uncle Giuseppe reeled onto her, reeking of anchovies and gin.
Now Pupi picks the bay every night, or he picks her. No one helps her climb onto his back, or tells her to wind the soft leather reins around her fingers. If the ride attendant looked up from the funny papers, he might be surprised to spot such a young girl alone in the saddle at this hour, bare feet barely grazing the stirrups, hair backlit by the orangeade sky. But still he pulls the lever that sends her horse soaring out into the black, lights flashing, heart churning, near wild heaven.
Nobody ever asks Pupetta Gargiulo where she lives. If they did, she would not mention her father’s green-roofed pizzeria—instead, she would point to the long straightaway abutting the Pavilion of Fun, where the track is smoothest. When the bay’s nose passes the quarter pole, she holds steady, pressing her feet into the irons. Then, quick as a whip, she ducks under the reins, shimmying the leather over her shoulders until it reaches her waist. She becomes a human slingshot, rampant atop the speeding machine, her bony arms outstretched, her smile a three-ring circus.
ξ
“Two on a Horse" first appeared in The Indiana Review.
J. Bowers is an assistant professor of English at Maryville University in St. Louis, Missouri. Her short fiction, which is mostly about animals and technology colliding, has appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Portland Review, Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, and other publications, including anthologies from Ashland Creek Press and Sundress Publications. Read more at www.jbowers.org.
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