“JAUNDICE’S” LAST RACE
There remains some of the Christ-spirit in the worst of us, perhaps, but the most optimistic of missionaries would hardly have assayed the soul of “Jaundice” O’Keefe with the hope of discovering even a trace of that quality. Jaundice was a product, or by-product, of the race-track. He had run away from his home in St. Louis at the age of eleven, to escape the beatings administered by a drinking father and a sodden mother, and had found refuge in a freight car loaded with horses which were being shipped to a race-meeting in New Orleans. Two hostlers were drinking from a bottle when not sleeping on a pile of hay. They welcomed the boy, gave him a drink, fed him, and allowed him to burrow into the hay for warmth. Perhaps it was kindness, perhaps they saw in him a means of escaping the work of feeding and watering horses during the long journey.
Jaundice was happy. He loved horses. Perhaps that was the remaining trace of good after the rest had been bred or beaten out of him. He had loved the horses which drew the coal wagon his father drove when sober, and the sight of the trim thoroughbreds filled him with awed admiration. Arrived in New Orleans, he followed the horses to the race-track, found refuge in the stables, and was adopted into the army of those who follow the races. A year later he had acquired a master’s degree in profanity and obscenity and developed a ratlike viciousness in fighting when cornered. He was undersized and undernourished, with the remnants of a fighting spirit from generations of Irish sustaining him. Stable-boys learned to fear the savageness of his methods and left him alone. Occasionally a trainer or stable boss beat him with a whip and cursed him.
Instinctively horses loved him. In one year he was an exercise boy. At fourteen, with all the wickedness and viciousness of the race-track and stable concentrated in him, he could ride and was awarded a jockey’s license and a suit of gay-colored silks.
He rode winners. Winning, with Jaundice, was unselfish. He rode not for personal glory or for money, but for the honor of the horse on which he was mounted. When he was beaten he gulped dry sobs and went away with his mount to console it.
For four years he rode races on the flat, at tracks all over America. During these four years he made as much money as the average man makes in a lifetime, and at the end of it had nothing. To him money meant only expensive meals, clothes remarkable for colors and patterns, wine, women of a sort, and large yellow diamonds. At eighteen he was an old man. His face was yellow and drawn; he had ceased to be “Kid” O’Keefe and become “Jaundice.” He was gaining weight and beginning to pay the penalty of the carouses which followed each temporary period of prosperity. For a year he fought to hold his standing. His mounts became fewer and fewer. When the owners ceased to employ him to ride on the flat, he became a steeplechase jockey.
Riding steeplechasers in races means in the majority of cases moral and physical suicide. Jaundice had no fear of physical consequence, nor any conception of morality. With two drinks of whisky poured into his outraged body, he would have tried to make his mount jump the Grand Cañon, had the course led in that direction. Falls and broken bones failed to break his nerve, but his subconscious honesty was shattered. On the flat he never had ridden a crooked race. He was restrained by no consciousness of right or wrong. He tried always to win because he loved the horses he rode. Over the jumps he had no such scruples. The steeplechase horses were “has-beens” like himself and entitled to no consideration. He commenced to ride queer-looking races. He was nineteen when he fell off the favorite in a steeplechase race to permit an outsider to win and the stewards ruled him off the tracks for one year.
What Jaundice did in that year of banishment he alone knew in detail. Barred from the only home and the only associates he had ever known, the great loneliness came upon him. He was broke. He stole and was sent to prison. When the suspension was lifted he went back to the tracks. He had grown heavier and his eyes and his mind were blurred by drink. He lived with the horses, attaching himself to the stable for which he had been a star jockey, and lived in the stalls and the cars. His love of the animals themselves had waned. Drudgery and vicious living had warped even that instinct. When he dared he became a tout, whispering information to petty gamblers at the edge of the betting ring. When he left the tracks at night it was to betray stable information to bartenders in return for drinks.
When he was twenty-two there remained two loves by which it was proved that all good can not be smelted out of a human being. One was for Doc Grausman, the gallant bay stake horse of the stable, whose dam he had ridden to victory many times. The other was for Lord James.
On race-tracks there is something in a name. Jaundice received his because his complexion had become a dirty yellow. Lord James was so called because the one spark of decency remaining in him caused him to conceal his family name. It was reputed that he was the son of an English nobleman and that he could have a title and estate if he returned to England. Rags of an old pride and remnants of decent breeding restrained Lord James from mentioning the family name as his own or from returning home to disgrace them. He had come to America, a younger son, with a stable of race-horses and high hopes. Robbed, fleeced, he had “quit.” Jaundice can not be spoken of as having degenerated. His original height permitted but a slight fall. But Lord James had sunk to even lower levels. He was a cadger, a tout, and a sneak-thief at such times when no risk was involved.
No one around the tracks hated either Lord James or Jaundice. They pitied Jaundice, but the touts themselves despised Lord James. He had lost all his courage, if he ever possessed any, and drink had sapped his health and his brain. Of the trio, only Doc Grausman bore his name honestly. His names were those of his sire and his granddam, and he was of royal blood and three years old.
When Lord James and Jaundice had become friends no one knew. Probably it was during Jaundice’s career as a winning jockey, while he scattered money recklessly after every winning race. Upon such boys Lord James had preyed for years. These two had nothing in common. Race, religion, birth, breeding, and education made them different, but they met in the thick scum of vice and became inseparable. For Lord James, Jaundice stole and betrayed stable secrets, pulled race-horses, bought drinks, and furnished food and lodging. It is not recorded that Lord James ever did anything for Jaundice.
These two sank lower and lower together. When the majority of the race-tracks of the country were closed, they disappeared from the world of sport, starved, and served prison terms together. When racing reopened, they reappeared. Jaundice had developed a cough. His wasted body revealed the ravages of tuberculosis. Lord James was wearing, with a pitiful effort to maintain an air of decency, a suit purchased with his last remittance money two years before.
The horses were racing at Jamaica and the weather was raw and rainy. They experienced difficulty in gaining an entry to the track and were compelled to remain outside, shivering and wet, until the day’s sport ended. Then a negro stable-boy allowed them to sleep with him in a stall, and Jaundice procured food from the camp-fires, where no one ever is refused.
Lord James did not get up the next morning. He had crawled into the hay with wet clothing and in the morning he had a fever. Jaundice brought him food, but he did not eat. All day he remained huddled in the hay, covered with horse blankets, his face turned to the board wall. He was thinking and his mind was Gethsemane.
During the night Lord James touched Jaundice with his hand and waked him. Very quietly and with a return of long-forgotten dignity, he entrusted to Jaundice an envelope upon which was written an address in England, charging him to mail it and allow no one to see it. He asked Jaundice to see the boys and ask them to bury him decently. Then he gripped Jaundice’s hand and died gamely, sustained by the traditions of his race and class. Jaundice alone wept. It was the first time in many years he had wept, and he was ashamed of his tears.
Around the race-track no man connected with the game dies and lacks a decent funeral, but there was scant sympathy for Lord James. The hat was passed, bookmakers, jockeys, trainers, owners, grafters, even the pickpockets, contributing, but their contributions were small. The whole amounted to eighty dollars. Jaundice was not satisfied. Had he been satisfied, there would have been no story to tell.
On the day following the horses moved to Belmont Park to open the racing season on that track, and Doc Grausman was entered to start in a high-weight handicap. Doc Grausman belonged to a wealthy man whose colors Jaundice had often carried to victory. This owner had not entered the horse in the handicap with any expectation of winning. The colt needed work, and he wanted to see how well the three-year-old could carry weight racing against all aged horses.
Jaundice had not slept. His clothing still was damp and he was coughing. For the time his abiding love for Doc Grausman was put in the background while he went from man to man begging money to give Lord James what he considered a proper and fitting funeral. The undertaker wanted one hundred and fifty dollars. Jaundice was determined to raise the sum before the afternoon’s sport ended.
Shortly before the bugle sounded, calling the horses from the paddock for the first race, a fractious colt lashed out with his feet and kicked the jockey who had been employed to ride Doc Grausman in the fourth. Jaundice heard of the accident within a few minutes. It was he who hurried to the club-house and informed the owner.
“Thanks, Jaundice,” the owner said carelessly. “I wanted the colt to have the workout. Now, I suppose I’ll have to scratch him. I don’t want to put a strange boy up.”
“Mister Phil,” said Jaundice, inspired with a sudden idea, “let me ride Doc Grausman. I’m down to weight, Mister Phil. I only weigh a hundred and twenty-eight now. Let me ride him, Mister Phil, and I’ll win.”
His voice was pleading, his eyes and manner appealing, and he coughed harder. The owner was surprised and laughed slightly. “I’m afraid it can not be fixed, Jaundice,” he said lightly. “How do you stand with the stewards?”
“I’m clean with them now, Mister Phil. They ain’t got nothin’ on me. They never could prove I pulled Lady Rose. I’m down to weight, Mister Phil, and that Doc Grausman horse likes me.”
His eagerness and the truth of the final statement decided the matter.
“I’ll see the stewards and explain,” said the owner. “He’s only in for the workout, and perhaps they’ll stand for it. Sure you’re strong enough to handle the colt?”
The owner had observed the cough, and Jaundice checked it with an effort.
“Yes, Mister Phil, I’m all right. Just caught a cold. Get this mount for me, Mister Phil. I’ve got to plant Lord James decent.”
“That old bum dead at last?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got to get a hundred and fifty to plant him, and the boys ain’t kicking in fast. Let me ride this Doc Grausman hoss and I’ll plant Lord James swell, like his family would want him.”
The owner passed over a twenty-dollar banknote. What he told the track officials no one knows, but when the fourth race was called, Jaundice, carefully hiding his cough, rode forth for the first time in four years wearing the colors of his old stable.
The bookmakers were laying thirty to one against Doc Grausman, and a wit in the ring said it was ten to one the colt, twenty to one the boy. What was not known was that Jaundice had taken the money that had been contributed to bury Lord James and wagered it three ways, straight, place, and show, on Doc Grausman. A new generation of jockeys faced the start, a generation that knew nothing of the skill of the boy who had ridden champions. The new boys, with the contempt that youth holds for the “has-been,” jeered at Jaundice, and hurled insulting epithets at him as they wheeled and maneuvered for the advantage of the break. Jaundice did not retort with oaths and vilifications as he would have done in other days. He was afraid he would start to cough.
The barrier flashed. Jaundice had been holding Doc Grausman steady during the milling of the others. Out of the corner of the eye he had caught the betraying arm movement of the starter an instant before the barrier flashed upward, had shot Doc Grausman at the starting line just the instant it flickered past his nose, had beaten the start a length and a half while the others were taking the first jump and sent him roaring down the long straight-away for four and a half furlongs. Riding him out desperately at the end, he held the lead by half a length over the favorite.
As the horses paraded back past the stands, he held his lips tightly pressed together. He staggered a little as he weighed out, and in the paddock his lips were reddened. The strain of the ride had opened the old wounds in his lungs.
An hour later he ordered the undertaker to give Lord James the best funeral he could for one thousand two hundred dollars and paid over the money. There remained for his share of the victory just twenty-seven dollars.
The news spread around the track that evening that Jaundice was to give Lord James a “swell funeral.” Curiosity was aroused. Touts, stable-boys, bookmakers’ helpers, a few jockeys, attended. It happened that Jaundice came to me to consult as to the minister, and I had secured the services of a wonderful little rector who is much interested in all human beings.
The funeral was the strangest one I ever attended. The little minister was doing his best to comfort the mourners, but plainly was at a disadvantage because Jaundice was the only mourner. Jaundice, through some instinctive sense of respect for the dead, was standing very awkwardly and tears were rolling down his cheeks. He was weeping for the second time in his life. Finally the little rector read from the service: “He is not dead, but sleeping.”
Jaundice started, then stared, reached instinctively for his pocket, and sobbed in a whisper: “Ten dollars will win you twenty-seven if you think old Lord James is only sleeping.”
His reversion to instinct raised a laugh. For the first time the assemblage was getting its money’s worth. The little rector was very much shocked. He could not understand that Jaundice meant no disrespect. He argued that no man could live in the United States and be so completely ignorant of religion. I said that Jaundice thought Jesus Christ was a cuss word and that his only knowledge that he possessed an immortal soul was from hearing it God damned by trainers and others.
A week later I heard that Jaundice was in a Brooklyn hospital and in bad shape. I went to see him to get for a newspaper the story of a jockey who, while sick to death, rode in a race to win money enough to bury a friend. He was propped up in bed, coughing. The doctor had told me he had but a little time to live. He was glad to see me and inquired how I liked Lord James’ funeral.
“Great class to that, Jaundice; best I ever attended.”
“No one can’t say that I piked,” he responded, beaming at the praise. “I planted Lord James swell, and his folks can’t ever say I didn’t.”
“You’re looking better,” I lied. “Be back on the track pretty soon?”
“Lord James won’t beat me more than a neck,” he said without emotion. “Something busted inside me during that race. Have you heard how Doc Grausman is comin’ along? He sure ought to win that stake this week.”
Presently he spoke of the little rector. “What do you think of that guy?” he asked, rather contemptuous of the ignorance of the minister. “He thought Lord James was only sleeping, but he wouldn’t back his opinion with coin.”
I strove to explain, without much success.
“That little guy is all right,” said Jaundice. “Did you hear what he said about Lord James havin’ a chanst on that track he was talking about? Say, Lord James has about as much chanst as I have.”
“Everyone has a chance,” I said feebly.
“Me?” he asked in surprise.
“Sure; the Book says everyone has who repents.”
“I ain’t got nothin’ to repent of exceptin’ pullin’ three or four of them bum chasers. The stewards couldn’t get nothin’ on me at that.”
“The Judges up there know it all.”
“Know everything? Then, say, what chanst has a guy got?”
As a religious prospect the case was too hard, so I telephoned the little rector and gave it over to him. He called upon Jaundice several times, and the following week I went to the hospital again. Jaundice was weak but smiling.
“Say,” he whispered hoarsely, “I got a chanst. That little man says that them Judges up there knows I was carryin’ too much weight to run true and that you can’t blame anyone for losin’ when he is handicapped out of it. I told him about pulling them chasers and lyin’ and stealin’, and he said that didn’t make no difference, that the Judges don’t set a guy down forever if he is sorry he done wrong.” He remained thinking for a time.
“He didn’t have to tell me to be sorry,” he whispered. “Honest, I always was sorry when I pulled one of them bum chasers when he was trying. It wasn’t square to the horse. This is the softest bet I ever had,” he whispered. “I’m going to play it. Them’s good odds—a chanst to win all them things he told me about and only be sorry. It’s like writing your own ticket.”
I found the little rector very thoughtful and amazed at this new manner of man he had discovered, and when he buried Jaundice the next week he got right down among us and talked about handicaps and weights, and keeping on trying all the time. He talked just as if he had been in the paddock half his life, and the last thing he said was: “If I were a bookie, I’d lay odds that Jaundice cashes that last bet.”
TOUTIN’ MISTAH FOX