Author: Heidi Vanderbilt
Category: Other
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“Hey, Billie, you up?” Richard asked. He sounded relaxed and friendly, as if they hadn’t had their previous conversation assigning blame for Alice Dean’s injury.
“I am.” She heard the grin in her voice.
“I saw that you called.”
So this wasn’t anything more than that.
“Can you help me out with some names of people to talk to for the article? I’m here in Shelbyville.”
“I’ll text you.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Read the paper.”
“I have.”
“Well then,” he said. “We’ll catch up later, okay?”
She tried to keep disappointment and anger from her voice.
“No problem.” She had hoped he would guide her to the right people to interview, people who were knowledgeable about soring, involved with it, whistle-blowers who might give her an insider’s view. If nothing else, at least he could tell her what farms to visit. But he was gone, the connection ended. He acted as if Dale’s problems were his own. Or was that just an excuse to distance himself from her? Maybe he was back with his wife.
She laid the phone on the table and glanced around. The girls had left without her noticing. She sat with her cold coffee and wrinkled newspaper, the day stretched sourly ahead of her.
Back in her motel room, sprawled on the bed, goose-bumped from the chilled air, Billie reached into her bag for her knitting. Just a few minutes, she promised herself, some stitches to soothe her, a few rows. The counting always helped, so did the repetition with her hands, the little stabs of the needles, the deft looping of yarn, the way the fabric grew into her lap like a cat.
It wasn’t until she’d sorted out the body of the sock from the ball of yarn that she remembered her metal needles had been confiscated by airport security back in Tucson. The stitches lay unanchored and in danger of unraveling without the needle to hold them in place. Carefully, she folded the sock over and returned it to her bag. She Googled knitting Shelbyville and found just one shop. When she went out today, she’d find it and buy another set of needles.
Then she typed in walking horse barns Shelbyville and made a list, checking each farm against the Google map in her iPhone, selecting first those closest to the motel, then the ones that were farther away. Frank always wanted the elite, the rulers of every underworld. Billie looked up each farm’s website and Googled the owners’ names. Some she found. Many she didn’t. It was as if they didn’t exist.
CHAPTER 21
BILLIE PARKED IN the first space she found in the town square and peered out the windshield, searching for the yarn shop where she could replace her knitting needles. An ice cream parlor with LUCILLE’S stenciled in blue and pink paint occupied the address she was looking for. She decided to get an ice cream cone at Lucille’s and ask for directions.
She locked the rental car then noticed that she’d left her unfinished sock lying on the front passenger seat. She unlocked the door and retrieved it.
On the sidewalk in front of each business, identical folding signs featured the silhouette of a Big Lick horse on a bright green background:
PROUD SUPPORTER OF THE
TENNESSEE WALKING HORSE BIG SHOW
We love our breed!
The sign in front of the ice cream parlor had been set down haphazardly, so it practically blocked the entrance. Billie sidled past it and pulled open the screen door. A bell jangled overhead as she stepped inside. She glanced at herself in a mirror that covered the entire wall—trying to double the width of the narrow room, she figured—and wished she had combed her hair and chosen something to wear other than a faded blue and red University of Arizona Wildcats T-shirt.
“Can I help you?”
The voice of the woman who appeared through swinging saloon doors at the back of the shop was soft, Southern, welcoming. Her hair was mounded on top of her head like the burl of a gnarled oak tree, and Billie wondered how much hair spray it took to keep it there. The woman wore turquoise eye shadow, thick black liner, and pink lipstick. She smoothed a pink and white striped apron over her dress, Lucille embroidered on its breast.
“Get for you?” Lucille asked.
Billie sat at the counter. “Decaf, please. No! Wait! Regular.”
Lucille slid a cup and saucer into place in front of her, followed by a pink china bowl stacked with creamers. “You take sugar, honey?”
Billie shook her head as the older woman poured her coffee. “But I am hungry. I don’t suppose you’ve got any breakfast ice cream?”
Lucille laughed. “Now that’s a first. Scrambled eggs in a waffle cone. I should add it to the menu. I do serve food besides ice cream. Specials are there.” She pointed behind her to a whiteboard leaning against the mirror, the menu written in blue cursive handwriting.
Billie looked at the list. “Macaroni and cheese, please, with sweet potato fries. Ranch on the side.”
“You sure are hungry.” Lucille smiled, tucked her order pad into the apron’s frilly pocket, and disappeared through the swinging doors.
While Billie waited, she looked around at dolls in ruffled Gone with the Wind style dresses, teacups, butter dishes shaped like cows, patchwork squares salvaged from antique quilts that had been remade into pillows, placemats, and stuffed animals—all with tiny white paper price tags. Along the back wall, to one side of the swinging door, she spotted shelves of yarn for sale. She got up and went over to look, feeling squeezed between the shelves. She fingered the hanks, daydreaming about what she’d make with them.
Lucille returned with Billie’s meal and set it on the counter. “Ketchup?”
“Please.”
Billie squeezed her way back through the cluttered shelves and took her seat. She poured a puddle of ketchup beside her mac and cheese then reached into her bag for her knitting and laid it on the counter beside her plate. “I was looking for the yarn store when I found you.”
“One and the same,” Lucille said.
“My needles got confiscated at Tucson International. I forgot and brought metal, but I’ve never had a problem like that before. They didn’t take anything else, not even my little scissors. Do you have any circular bamboo size 2s, so I can get them home when I return?”
Lucille rummaged in a bin until she found what Billie wanted, placing it beside the knitting.
“I couldn’t help noticing the sign outside,” Billie said.
“Ah-huh,” Lucille replied.
“You a fan?”
“Of the Big Lick? Hell, no.”
“But the sign?”
“Forced to display it.”
Instinctively, Billie glanced around, looking for whoever might have forced Lucille to display a sign against her will.
“Aw you won’t see anything,” Lucille told her. “There’s no one hiding behind the counter with a baseball bat or a torch. Those sons of bitches know what I think, and they know I won’t shut up about it. But I had to listen to their threat, so I put out the damned sign.”
“What was the threat?”
Lucille moved Billie’s cup down the counter and refilled it. “You a fed?”
“I’m a writer, working on a piece.”
“About?”
“Walking horses.”
Lucille pulled up a stool and sat down. In the mirror, Billie watched the back of her lacquered head, the towering brown hair bobbing as she poured herself a mug of coffee. “You interviewing me?”
“I’d like to.”
“You walk around this town and ask everyone what they think, you’ll get a bunch of different answers. Some of them’ll be true, others lies, on both sides of the issue. You’ll find people who might talk to you. Some of them are against soring, like me. Some of them are for it. Of course they don’t say it like that. You’ll hear them moan about the threat to our industry, our way of life. But those are all euphemisms for soring.”
Abruptly she stood up as the bell jingled and the door opened. Three men in business suits, jackets slu
ng over their shoulders and ties pulled loose, leaned against the counter. Lucille greeted them as friends and regulars, joking with them as she poured Cokes and made up cones. She collected their money and wished them a good day.
When they left, Billie said, “I met Richard Collier at a horse show in Arizona near where I live.”
Lucille pulled a stool over and perched on it, stretched out her legs, and crossed her ankles. She wore thick white support hose and yellow pumps with little flowers on the toes.
“Richard gave me the names of some people to talk to here,” Billie said, which was almost true. That had been the plan anyway.
“He tell you to talk to Vern Stockard?”
“That sounds familiar,” Billie lied.
“Winning trainer over on the dark side. You should talk to his mother.”
Billie nearly groaned. Talking to someone’s mother was a brush-off, a dead-end, hopeless and useless. She made herself nod.
“But will you talk to me too, Lucille? You’re right here. You’re outspoken. How do you feel about what’s going on?”
“What is going on?”
“Soring,” Billie said. “How do you feel about that?”
Lucille placed the backs of her fingers under her chin and batted her eyelashes. “Why, sugar-child, that is a thing of our evil misguided past. It’s gone the way of tarring and feathering and Saturday night lynchings. We good Confederate Christians won’t abide it anymore. Mind you, there are always a few bad apples in every barrel, in every sport. I am thinking now of reports about the use of performance-enhancing drugs by some major sports figures. But except for them… Can I sell you a bridge?”
Billie grinned. “Do you have any tips for me?”
“I sure do. Go home.”
“Anything else?”
Lucille twisted her fingers in and out of the mug handle. “If I were writing a piece?” she asked.
Billie nodded, encouraging her.
“Vern’s mother, Addie, works for our local papers. She’s covered everything that’s got to do with walking horses and horse shows for decades. Then you should go to some local shows, and the Big Show here, of course.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“And I’d go to the barns too if I was you.”
“I heard the barns used to be open to the public but that they’re closed now so you can’t get in. Too many animal rights activists nosing around making trouble.”
“That’s true. A lot of trainers are just plain sick of being criticized. But all trainers want to make sales. They’ve got to win ribbons and sell horses. That’s their job.”
“My father trained reining horses.”
“So you know then.”
“Yeah. I do.”
Lucille leaned across the counter, close to Billie.
“I’d hang out. There’s one more local show nearby, then the Big Show. Buy a soda and a program at the shows and look interested.”
“I am interested.”
Again Lucille rose to take care of customers, this time a harried mother with screaming twin boys in a stroller. Lucille silenced them with cones dipped in jimmies, and got the mother a chocolate shake to go. When they left, she fished her cell phone from her apron pocket.
“Adeline. Lucille here. Get yourself on over, I’ve got someone for you to meet.” Then she returned to Billie. “Like I said, I’d go to the barns. I’d go when no one’s there. That’s what I’d do. But I’m advising you against all that. I’m telling you to go on home and write about something else.” She ducked back through the door and returned with a fresh pot of coffee.
“Mind if I ask how you got that?” Billie gestured toward a puckery scar on the back of Lucille’s hand.
Lucille sat back down. “Here in the South, we deal with dissension by burning and lynching. I haven’t been hanged, yet.”
“Someone burned you? Why?”
“You mean, why me? Well, I own this place and others. I have some clout around here, by which I mean I’ve got some money. I own walkers, I don’t let anyone hurt them, and I speak out about what’s done to other folks’ horses. I called the Times-Gazetteer and spoke with their reporter, Adeline. Told her what was what, used names. Blew the whistle. Next thing I know, there’s a bottle of acid that just shows up on this shelf here in my sweet little store and just happens to not have its lid on tight, and when I take a hold of it to see what it is, it slips and splashes on me. Could have been worse. Could have been my face, could have been one of my horses.”
“Did you report it to the police? Was there a trial?”
“Have you ever heard of Apple Hollow Farms?”
Billie remembered the name from the list of farms she had gathered on the internet. Judging by its website it was huge, with barns and outbuildings, a massive Tara-like home, three trainers, and an on-premises veterinarian.
“Well, our present chief of police owns it,” Lucille pronounced it po-lice and gave the word a contemptuous ring. “His daddy owned it before him, and he was chief of po-lice too. You getting my drift?”
“So that’s why you didn’t report it.”
“What would have been the point? Everyone knew what had happened and who had done it. I’d have been asking for a second helping of trouble.”
Lucille cut a huge slice of peach pie, slid it into the microwave, then topped it with a double scoop of vanilla ice cream. “You want some sauce on this? Caramel butterscotch?”
Frank’s disapproving face flashed in front of her. “You’ll get fat,” he’d said, as if it was any of his business.
“Sure,” Billie grinned. “Why not?”
The sauce Lucille ladled on cascaded into puddles around the pie and hardened to candy where it touched the ice cream. She handed Billie a spoon and another couple of napkins then fixed a plate for herself.
“How did they force you to display the sign out front?” Billie asked.
“Threats against my animals. I take them seriously, as you can imagine. A lot of barns around here catch fire after people make accusations. Horses burn to death.”
“Mine did,” Billie said. “In Arizona.”
“You met Richard out there?”
“Yes.”
“I’m betting you made some trouble in the walking horse world that brought attention to you.”
“I took a filly that a groom was hurting from their barn to my place, middle of the night.”
“Whoa! You got a set of nuts the size of Texas, girl!”
“My barn burned with the filly in it.”
“They were being kind to you. Could have been your house with you in it. Do not underestimate who’s playing on the other side in this game.”
Lucille ripped Billie’s check from her receipt book and tucked it under her coffee cup. “No hurry. When these signs first showed up the big guns in the industry offered them to us, the businesses in town, to display. They wanted us to put a sign outside that says we approve of horse abuse. If we objected, we got threatened.”
Billie was about to ask if she could take notes when the bell jingled, the door opened, and a Miss Marple-ish woman entered. She and Lucille were of a similar age and size, women thickening throughout their late fifties.
“Lucille, honey, how you spelling stupid these days?”
“This here’s Adeline. She’s the writer I told you about. Plus that, she’s the mother of one of our top trainers, right, Addie? Listen, Addie, this gal here’s writing a book.”
Billie didn’t correct her.
“Didn’t get your name,” Addie said.
“Billie Snow. Arabella Snow.”
The woman frowned. “You’re Arabella Snow? Why didn’t you tell me, Lucille?”
“Tell you what?”
Adeline plopped onto a stool and ordered fries.
“I’ve read your work,” Addie said to Billie. “In Frankly.”
“I work for them.” It was a stretch—she used to work for them; she might work for them again if Frank approved the
article—but not an outright lie.
“What brings you here?” Addie asked.
“The magazine wants a piece on the walking horse industry, who’s behind it.”
“I told her you’d help out,” Lucille offered.
“Lucille, girlfriend, you are just begging trouble for me. I love my son and his pals as much as the next mother loves hers, but I don’t want to cross them, especially right before the Big Show. It’d be like dropping our new friend here into a pit of massasaugas. And by the way, you’re asking for a lawsuit unless you move that sign outside your door before someone trips over it and gets killed. You forgot you didn’t finish setting it up, right?”
“I didn’t forget.”
“What you want to know?” Addie asked Billie.
“Horses are sored so they’ll walk big and fast and win ribbons, and become champions and make money for their owners.”
“That’d be about it,” Addie said.
“Why don’t people who hate torturing animals rise up and shut them down?” Billie reached into her bag for her phone and held it up. “Mind if I record?”
“If someone comes in, you’d better hide that thing or turn it off or whatever you do,” Lucille said.
“I will.”
A passing truck caught Billie’s eye, a one-ton silver dually like Richard’s. She felt flooded with missing him and, like a schoolgirl with a crush, wished the truck were his. It pulled into the parking space at the corner of the block.
“Dang that girl! She’s doing it again!” Lucille said.
“You going to call the cops this time?” Addie asked. “That’s a handicapped slot,” she told Billie. “And she’s not one bit handicapped, physically.”
The truck door opened and Sylvie got out, slung her pink, fringed handbag across her shoulders, and headed across the green away from them.
“That one’s a right piece of work,” Addie said.
“Amen,” said Lucille. “Now let’s get back to what we were talking about. You wanted to know how soring’s allowed to continue?”
“Yes.”