They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Read Online Free PDF Page A

most thrilling thing you ever saw—all right, kids, two minutes to go before you retire a little sprint, kids show the ladies and gentlemen how fresh you are—You, too, ladies and gentlemen, show these marvellous kids you’re behind them with a rally—’
    He turned up the radio a little and began clapping his hands and stamping his foot. The audience joined in the rally. All of us stepped a little more lively, but it was not because of the rally. It was because within a minute or two we got a rest period and directly after that we were to be fed.
    Gloria nudged me and I looked up to see Rollo Peters walking between Freddy and the Manski girl. I thought the Manski girl was crying, but before Gloria and I could catch up with them the siren blew and everybody made a dash for the dressing rooms.
    Freddy was standing over his cot, stuffing an extra pair of shoes into a small zipper bag.
    ‘I heard about it,’ I said. ‘I’m very sorry.’
    ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Only she’s the one who did the raping …I’ll be all right if I can get out of town before the cops pick me up. It’s a lucky thing for me that Socks was tipped off.’
    ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
    ‘South, I guess. I’ve always had a yen to see Mexico. So long …’
    ‘So long,’ I said.
    He was gone before anybody knew it. As he went through the back door I had a glimpse of the sun glinting on the ocean. For a moment I was so astounded I could not move. I do not know whether I was the more surprised at really seeing the sun for the first time in almost three weeks or discovering the door. I went over to it, hoping the sun would not be gone when I got there. The only other time I ever was this eager was one Christmas when I was a kid , the first year I was big enough to really know what Christmas was , and I went into the front room and saw the tree all lighted up.
    I opened the door. At the end of the world the sun was sinking into the ocean. It was so red and bright and hot I wondered why there was no steam. I once saw steam come out of the ocean. It was on the highway at the beach and some men were working with gun-powder. Suddenly , it exploded , setting them on fire. They ran and dived into the ocean. That was when I saw the steam.
    The colour of the sun had shot up into some thin clouds, reddening them. Out there where the sun was sinking the ocean was very calm, not looking like an ocean at all. It was lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely. Several people were fishing off the pier, not paying any attention to the sunset. They were fools. ‘You need that sunset worse than you do fish,’ I told them in my mind.
    The door flew out of my hands, slamming shut with a bang like that of a cannon going off.
    ‘Are you deaf?’ a voice yelled in my ear. It was one of the trainers. ‘Keep that door closed! You wanna be disqualified?’
    ‘I was only watching the sun set,’ I said.
    ‘Are you nuts? You ought to be asleep. You need your sleep,’ he said.
    ‘I don’t need any sleep,’ I said. ‘I feel fine. I feel better than I ever felt in my life.’
    ‘You need your rest anyway,’ he said. ‘You only got a few minutes left. Get off your feet.’
    He followed me across the floor to my cot. Now I could notice the dressing room didn’t smell so good. I am very susceptible to unpleasant odours and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed this smell before, the smell of too many men in a room. I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on my back.
    ‘You want your legs rubbed?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘My legs feel fine.’
    He said something to himself and went away. I lay there, thinking about the sunset, trying to remember what colour it was. I don’t mean the red, I mean the other shades. Once or twice I almost remembered; it was like a man you once had known but now had forgotten, whose size and letters and cadence you remembered but could not quite assemble.
    Through the legs of my cot I could