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 slung 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
