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out to strike the ball over and over again, in solitude, away from the heady turbulence of the game, where, unexpectedly, from any quarter, the ball might come rushing at one headlong.
    Besides maintaining his aim and coordination, stick-and-ball kept his ponies accustomed to the swing of the mallet and alert to the game’s jostling and collision. He had constructed a rig which harnessed them together in a combination of bridle and surcingle. Now, astride Gaited Amble, he was still able to lead both horses with his left hand. With his right he was free to strike the ball from either side of the horse; sometimes his mallet inadvertently flew out and harshly whipped Big Lick, dragged about haphazardly by the rig. Slipping and stumbling on the lot’s pitted, uneven surface, the horses sometimes crashed brutally into each other, rearing up, bucking, their shoulders and flanks in a steady, nervous scrimmage.
    With Gaited Amble primed and ready, it was Big Lick’s turn, and, mallet in hand, without losing momentum, Fabian vaulted onto the saddle.
    At once, free of his weight, Gaited Amble picked up speed, sprinting and trotting as much as the harness would allow. The mare now became the target for some of Fabian’s flaring strokes, but still did not shy from them, keeping its pace. Once again, Fabian reflected, his ponies had demonstrated their acquiescence to his will, had justified his reliance on them in the game.
    In short spurts of trot, canter and gallop, grasping the reins and a whip in his left hand, the mallet in his right hand, Fabian entered upon the ritual of stick-and-ball. He began to drive the ball forward across the lot with a relentless volley of forehand shots; as it bounced and veered off course, he caught it in a steady flow of backhand strokes. Then, describing another pattern in the crisscross intersection of parking lot transmuted into polo field, he reversed his strategy, angling to the left over the horse’s withers and propelling the ball backhand; as the ball rushed back, he followed it and lofted it with a forehand shot.
    The intense running exhausted Big Lick; the mare stumbled and lost its footing. Fabian tied the animal, foaming, to the back of the VanHome. Sensing its turn, Gaited Amble began to prance and sidestep eagerly, ears twitching in nervous expectation. Now Fabian placed an array of empty wine bottles upright at the far end of the lot, scattering several balls in the space between. Mounting the pony, he prodded its sides sharply. From its easy standstill Gaited Amble shot out in full racing mettle, legs stretched, hoofs pounding.
    Fabian kept the mare in tight check, in a sequence of pivot, half-turn, gallop, with the ball always near the horse’s forelegs. Shuttling his eyes between the ball and a bottle, he accelerated for the fury of a strike, wielding an erect mallet, his right arm arched up and back, his elbow and wrist locked. Rising with the spring of his taut knees and feet, thighs clutching Gaited Amble, he thrust his left shoulder forward and, like a great slicing scythe, swung his upraised mallet in a mighty blow at the scampering ball, sending it fifty yards in a graceful jet before it shattered one of the bottles, splintering the afternoon’s silence.
    Suddenly a shower of flying glass fell away in the distance todisclose the figure of a derelict huddling, as if fixed to one of the grimy walls that enclosed the lot.
    Fabian slowed Gaited Amble and rode it toward the wall where the man cowered. The mare whinnied and shied uneasily, reluctant to inch closer to the vagrant. The man, his pants smeared and caked with dirt, was wrapped in a tattered raincoat, one of its sleeves half torn off at a jagged angle.
    “What’s the riding for, captain?” he asked, revealing his missing teeth.
    “To make a living,” said Fabian, prodding his horse closer.
    “In that Big Top?” asked the man, pointing to the VanHome.
    “It’s my home.”
    The man raised one hand—its swollen