“I don’t know, but we’d better figure it out.” Fair felt great sympathy for people who needed physical labor performed by reliable individuals. And he understood the illegal worker’s desire to improve his or her life by working in America. “We’ve got about eleven and a half million illegal immigrants. Send them away and the economy will go down like a B-52 with its tail shot off.”
Exasperated, Booty raised his voice. “Help them become citizens. They work, they buy stuff like milk and shoes. I know they use our social services and schools, so help them become citizens and they’ll pay taxes for those services.”
“Good reason not to become a citizen,” Harry ruefully commented.
“Ever think about how much money we throw away? What will those INS stooges do? Write reports. What does any public official do? Write reports.” Booty snarled, a real flash of anger.
Fair, more balanced in his outlook: “Booty, depends on the public official. The closer someone is to their people, the better job they do most times. Sheriff Howlett knows everyone, the fire chief knows everyone, plus they know how important this show in particular and the fairgrounds in general are to Shelby County. To someone from the INS, Shelbyville is a place to raid, not a place to live. That’s the problem with large state agencies. Put it on the federal level and the disregard for local sentiment reaches gargantuan proportions.”
Booty nodded. “What’s the expression, ‘You rise to your level of incompetence’?” He brightened a moment. “I’ve risen to mine.”
They laughed.
As Harry and Fair left the barn, Booty returned to checking harnesses. Tucker and Mrs. Murphy pondered a moment.
“Don’t go,” Pewter begged.
“Why?” Mrs. Murphy asked.
“If I wait long enough, hunger and thirst will bring this little bitch down.”
“Bring you down first, Tub.” Miss Nasty felt bored up there, and she wanted Bag Balm on her paws. She knew right where Booty kept it. She liked a little pinch of the other substance, too, since Booty used his Bag Balm tin to store a bit of cocaine. Miss Nasty also enjoyed a sip of spirits occasionally.
“Come on, Pewter. This solves nothing,” Tucker reasonably said.
A flash of indignation illuminated Mrs. Murphy’s countenance. “Miss Nasty, you brag. You don’t have the pin. You can’t even describe it.”
“Oh, yes, I can. It’s a sparkly diamond horseshoe with a ruby and sapphire riding crop through it.”
Tucker, often in tune with her friend, called up, “You probably noticed it when you were on the rail of the Kalarama box. You sat right in front of Joan.”
“I have it!”
Mrs. Murphy shrugged, turned to leave. “You almost had us there, Miss Nasty.”
“You’ll see,” the monkey, stung, promised.
Pewter, realizing she’d better join her pals, backed down the stall pole. The three reached the end of the aisle.
Following them overhead on the high rafter, Miss Nasty shouted, “You’ll see!”
T he day, sultry, kept everyone sweating. Harry could smell the salt on her own body as well as on other humans and horses. She wanted to drive over to Lexington to Fennell’s, a marvelous tack shop at Red Mile, the harness racetrack right smack in the middle of town. Whenever she’d get a little money to the good, she would order one of their bridles. The leather and workmanship held up for decades if properly cleaned. Harry wanted value for her dollar, and Fennell’s couldn’t be beat.
The drive over would take an hour, and the heat and excitement over Shortro had already tired her a little. The van explosion upset her more than she realized, as well.
For a moment she stood in the Kalarama temporary tack room, studying the bits and equipment used, much of it different from what she used. Saddlebreds achieved a stylish tail carriage, the top of the thick tail rising above the rounded hindquarters by use of a tail set. This light harness utilized a padded crupper, which went right under the tail to elevate it. Sometimes a vet would cut the ventral tail muscles, a simple procedure, which allowed the tail more movement without harming it. Thoroughbreds and hunters bypassed these refinements, for they had no need of them. The tail carriage was the reason hunter–jumper people dubbed Saddlebreds “shaky tails.”
Each type of equine sport developed its own tools, although the basic principles remained the same. Saddlebreds generally used longer-shanked bits than foxhunters, who often rode out in a simple snaffle bit or Tom Thumb Pelham, so named because the shank was short.
Bitting, a discipline in itself, required wisdom. Many a poor trainer made up for his or her inadequacies by overbitting the horse—using too much bit because they didn’t know how to achieve the result with patient training. That was an excellent way to ruin a horse’s mouth, but the short-term result might be that the animal showed well, the trainer snared his fee as the animal sold, and the new owner soon discovered all was not as it seemed.
Much as Harry deplored this, as well as running Thoroughbreds too early, she knew in her heart it would probably get worse. The tax laws forced most professional horse people to get quick results from young horses.
Laws reflected the needs of city people to the detriment of country people, which isn’t to say that city people received adequate funding for their needs, either. A law that on the books might make perfect sense to someone in the depths of Houston could hurt the horsemen. Something as simple as removing income-averaging for farmers drove everyone to their knees when it happened. People lost farms; those that hung on battled the arbitrary rule that you had to show a profit every four years. Sounds so easy unless you’re a horseman. A quarter horse might mentally mature, understand its training, and be sold by age three or four. A Warmblood would take six or seven years to be fully made. No way to sell the slower-developing animals within the unrealistic time frame. If the horsemen diversified and grew corn, that took money as well as time away from the horse operation.
Harry sighed deeply. “Try telling that to someone who graduated from law school and is currently honing their mastery of the sound bite.” She half-whispered this, but her animals overheard.
“Talking to herself again.” Pewter, still fuming over her encounter with Miss Nasty, sniffed.
“Mind goes a mile a minute.” Mrs. Murphy understood Harry and loved that the human often understood her intent, although she rarely knew what Mrs. Murphy was saying.
Harry inhaled the heady perfume of leather and oil; the steel of the bits even gave off a light odor. She could smell the hay in the hayracks in the stalls, coupled with the sweetest aroma of all—horses. She looked down at her friends. “Sometimes this wave washes over me and I feel like I will live to see our way of life vanish.” Tears filled her eyes.
“Don’t worry, Mom. People can’t be that dumb.” Tucker smiled, her pink tongue hanging out.
“Are you kidding?” Pewter, still sour, replied. “Think about the revolutions. Everything goes. People die by the millions and so do cats, dogs, and horses. Humans have no more sense than that horrible, stinky monkey.” She puffed out her chest. “Figures.”
“When an ear of corn costs fifty dollars, when mulch and manure for those suburban gardens climbs to thirty bucks a bag, they’ll wake up fast enough,” Mrs. Murphy predicted.
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Agribusiness keeps the cost down.” Tucker followed Harry everywhere and overheard her conversations with other humans who farmed.