Giacomo's Revenge

By H. Turnip Smith

Old Giacomo slumped in the workshop, feeling the sullen warmth of the autumn sun on his shoulders, watching an aging fly slowly stagger up the wall. The pendulum of the grandfather clock in the corner swayed mournfully. Full of morose self-pity Giacomo poured himself another glass of Pernod. This time he didn't bother to add water.

He sipped the bitter amber aperitif that tasted like distilled licorice. It must have been his sixth since eating, but then again he wasn't sure. He didn't eat much anymore. Well this time he wasn't going to talk to himself he said with determination, suddenly becoming aware that he'd said "Today I won't talk to myself," aloud.

None of the discarded carved horses, or toy dancing bears, or baby cradles, or snazzy wooden Masseratis answered back. They were very polite in that respect, but sometimes he wished for a little company. Oh well, when he got sober, no really sober, so his hands would move with the deftness of a surgeon he would carve a most beautiful female horse and sell her to the circus and make a small fortune. But in the meantime there was much Pernod to drink.

It must have been some time in December with the snow piled inches deep on the workshop window sills that old Giacomo actually finished Lucinda. She was a bright blue filly, eleven hands high, perhaps three years old, with slender ankles, graceful haunches, an arching tail, and a wonderful smile playing constantly at the corners of her mysterious mouth.

Once Lucinda was completed, Giacomo realized that he didn't really care to sell his masterpiece at all, but there was the small matter of paying rent to deal with, so he had to use his phone card. Finally he made a hook up with his brother Grasso's son-in-law, Glaxo.

As usual Glaxo sounded loud, brassy, and over-confident at the other end of the wire. However, the deal was made.

Old Giacomo's hand trembled as he handed over Lucinda to Glaxo. Glaxo had a bad reputation on the street, but all the circuses were shut down these days, and so Giacomo had no choice but to let Lucinda go to Glaxo.

"Be very kind to her," Giacomo said. "She's so fragile and special, and I've worked on carving her for three years."

Glaxo rubbed his hands together greedily, his white teeth gleaming, his black beard ursine. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a business deal. Who cares how long you worked?"

Old Giacomo stroked Lucinda's rippling mane. "Don't you worry, girl. I'll be checking to make sure he's good to you."

"Sure you will," Glaxo said, throwing Lucinda in the back of his filthy truck with some wrenches and dirty tires and driving off.

Glaxo's carousel was a sorry thing with no music and stationary ponies on a short lead. Lucinda was hooked up next to an old, rotting pinto whose ear had been chewed off by mice and an overweight stallion whose golden paint was chipping onto the carousel floor.

Lucinda didn't care for her new employer. It was disgusting the way Glaxo would come and stand too close, his hands moving all over her, his breath foul with whiskey. "Let me get you off this merry-go-round, Sister. I got a way you could make some real money if you know what I mean!" Glaxo whispered in her ear.

Lucinda didn't know what Glaxo meant, but she knew she didn't want anything more to do with Glaxo than to work for him. Unfortunately his carousel was over a hundred miles up in the Catskills beyond the reach of city bus service.

"No deal," she told Glaxo, "some day Mr. Giacomo's coming back for me."

"No way," Glaxo said. "Get real! Giacomo's dead. The old bastard drank himself to death."

After that Lucinda's heart was heavy and her only pleasure was seeing children come to the carnival and having little ones up on her saddle, bouncing, as she went round and round. Then one day Glaxo came over to her and stood especially close. He put his hands on her flanks in his insinuating way and said, "Guess what, baby. You're out of here. I'm selling this junk merry-go-round and you go with it unless you change your mind about my offer."

"I'll never go with you," Lucinda said.

"Sure you will! You'll change your mind soon enough, chick."

However, Lucinda didn't change her mind. She was loaded onto a huge truck and carted to a distant amusement park some place in outer New Jersey. Glaxo's other sorry horses were scrapped at the new amusement park, but Lucinda was recognized as a "Giacomo" and retrofitted onto a huge, hi-speed, electrical merry-go-round with jazzy pipe organ music and horses that went up and down. She was afraid at first, but then she realized how much better it was to be far from Glaxo, and then one day something wonderful happened. Bartolomew was hired to be next to her on the carousel.

Bartolomew was a prancing two year old stallion with gleaming blue paint, a turquoise mane, and flaring nostrils. All day long he galloped up and down on his pole with such magical energy that Lucinda's heart inevitably swelled with love. In the nighttime after the park shut down and the lights went out, she and Bartolomew would be released from harness to roam the fields and nuzzle in the moonlight.

Sometimes they would race to the edge of the ocean. Standing on the crest of steep cliffs, they would stare down at the crashing ocean and talk.

"If it weren't for you, Bartolomew, my life would be nothing," Lucinda said.

"I love you too, Lucinda," Bartolomew said.

"Do you think we can be happy for ever after?" Lucinda said.

"I don't see why not," Bartolomew, who was young and inexperienced, said. "We should get married as soon as possible."

However, the next afternoon big trouble developed. It was a Wednesday and the crowd at the amusement park was small. Unfortunately, too, Glaxo had come to visit and he stood next to Lucinda on the platform with his hairy hands proprietarily on her neck as he tried to whisper in her ear.

"Listen, baby, why don't you and I blow this dump. I could show you a good time in the big city. Understand what I mean?" Glaxo winked and his hands roamed promiscuously. Bartolomew saw what was going on and he was furious, but he was part of the carousel during the daytime, and, in tether, he could only go in circles.

"Hey," he shouted anyway. "Leave her alone!"

"Leave who alone?" Glaxo said to Bartolomew. "Listen, you better quit horsing around with me, stupid, because I know what to do with punks like you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bartolomew said.

"You'll find out soon enough, corn-eater," Glaxo said.

That night fire broke on the carousel. Tongues of flame suddenly roared through the amusement park. Coughing and screaming, the horses bolted in panic through clouds of thick smoke. Lucinda almost went crazy with the pitiful shrieking of her friends in the next stall as she struggled for safety through the smoke. She cried out for Bartolomew, but he was no place to be found, though Glaxo was there pretending to help the other frightened horses that had escaped.

"Is everyone safe?" Lucinda moaned.

"Everyone but Bartolomew," Glaxo said, "but no big loss. What the hell--he's only a wooden horse. Stick with me, kid. I'll get a new merry-go-round together. We'll go to Manhattan. Don't worry. Glaxo doesn't let his women starve."

Lucinda screamed. Life without Bartolomew wouldn't be worth living. It would be better to starve.

"You can go to hell, Glaxo," Lucinda said.

"Yeah, you say that now," Glaxo answered, "but just wait until you try earning a living, buying horseshoes and feeding yourself; you'll find out what I'm offering ain't just hay."

"I don't need you, Glaxo," Lucinda said, but she soon discovered life without a carousel wasn't easy. She found a living pulling a trash wagon through the streets of Manhattan. Wearing a battered felt hat, Lucinda plodded through the years with a heart heavy as concrete. She no longer felt young. Life without Bartolomew was crushing. Often she thought of the days when the carousel lights had shut down for the evening and she and Bartolomew had galloped through the darkness, the wind in their manes, but now it was only clomp, clomp, clomp--garbage.

It happened one blistering day in July as the ragman plied the streets of lower Manhattan hunting for salvageable shoes in garbage cans. Head down, Lucinda thumped along, ignoring everything but straight ahead when she suddenly saw a newspaper lying in the street. The headline read--Mysterious Blue Whips Competition. It was a story about a former carousel horse that was blowing away rivals at Belmont Race Course. Lucinda's knees grew weak when she read the story, and she fell down in the middle of the street and couldn't move until the ragman helped her up.

"What is it, Lucinda? Are you sick?" the ragman cried, but all she could do in reply was moan. After an hour or so of hyperventilating, Lucinda finally managed to explain her situation to the ragman.

He was happy to give her an afternoon off because the rag business was going to hell anyway. Lucinda immediately took a cab to the racetrack and sat in the grandstand by herself. Her heart nearly exploded with joy before the sixth race when she saw a grand blue horse come strutting out of the paddock under a jockey in red silks with a gray polka dot cap. She wanted to cry out, but didn't dare for all the people at the racetrack.

Bartolomew won the race by two and a half lengths, and afterwards in the barn Lucinda caught up with him. His mane had a slick New York razor cut and he was wearing a deadly pair of aviator sunglasses. He seemed extremely busy trying to pee for a drug test.

"Bartolomew?" she said softly.

"Yeah, what do you want?" he said. And suddenly Lucinda realized that the fire and the years of pulling the rag-wagon had ruined her looks. Bartolomew couldn't even recognize her. She was an old nag.

"Oh nothing," she said, bursting into tears and hurrying off.

Lucinda couldn't sleep that night. She nervously rubbed her scalp raw, going back and forth on the wooden boards of her tiny stall behind the ragman's flat, and finally she determined that life was no longer worth living if Bartolomew was alive but couldn't care for her. Some time in the night she walked out of the stall and headed for Battery Park where she was determined to leap into the Hudson River and drown.

She was slumping along in the rain, nearing the park, when her heart suddenly turned over. There weaving along in a tipsy fashion was Giacomo. Obviously drunk, he looked very old and defeated. She went up behind him and nuzzled his back gently.

Old Giacomo turned in the rain and stared drunkenly at Lucinda. At length he took off his glasses and wiped them dry. "Lucinda? My beautiful Lucinda?" he said, almost to himself.

"Oh Mr. Giacomo," she wept.

When she could finally compose herself, Lucinda managed to tell her story. Old Giacomo had to sit on a fallen trash can in order not to faint. However, when Lucinda had finally finished pouring out her story, he stroked her mane gently and said, "Now just relax, my dearest one, you come with Giacomo and I will make you beautiful again."

It took nearly a month. Old Giacomo used the knife with the skill of a surgeon despite his shaking hands as he applied paint at strategic points and made Lucinda glitter with the beauty of her youth. Finally she was ready to go back to the race track.

She had barely entered the barn when a breathless blue horse came charging her direction.

"My God, it's you, Lucinda. My prayers have been answered," cried Bartolomew.

The two of them nuzzled each other joyfully and when Bartholomew finally caught his breath from surprise and elation, he explained his side of the story.

"You see Glaxo came the night of the fire and threw me in the back of a big, dirty truck. Then he took gasoline and started the fire. I thought you perished. My heart died right there. I hated Glaxo but what could I do? He sold me in short order to a racing horse owner. That's how I wound up here. I became famous, but I was nothing on the inside. For awhile I was even on drugs. I took Lasix every day. But about a month ago I kicked the habit. Then wonder of wonders you came back!"

Bartolomew and Lucinda had hardly finished embracing when an elderly man with patches on his knees and elbows came limping hurriedly up.

"Mr. Giacomo," Lucinda cried. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm so excited, Lucinda. I had to tell you," Giacomo waved a copy of the New York Times. His voice was very loud. "Look here! They arrested Glaxo for the fire. Insurance detectives tracked him down. He's on Riker's Island right now!"

Lucinda's heart had so long been without even tiny joys that all the good news at once threatened to overwhelm her. She sank to her knees and thought she would pass out, as Bartolomew patted her forehead with his great, blue fetlock and Giacomo hurried to get ice.

It was only later that night that Bartolomew and Lucinda galloped in the grass of the racetrack infield by moonlight and listened to the rustling of the leaves and in the morning heard the cooing of the mourning doves. It was six months after that Lucinda gave birth to a foal.

He was a fine, little, gray, wooden colt with rippling shoulders and gleaming haunches. They named him Giacomo 2. Some day he may run in the Derby, but as for right now he's content to be a carousel pony, the living embodiment of his mother and father's triumph over hatred.

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