“Right.”
“The meat is served in our restaurants, owned outright or in partnership with other local families. Just drive down Main Street here in town, or anywhere around here, and you’ll find family-owned restaurants and chain restaurants—Flippy-Flapjacks, for example—where the animals are served. Your eggs. Your bacon. Your ribs and broilers. Sausages and roasts and stews. All raised right here. Also in the supermarkets. You getting some idea of the scope of this one family? Okay. Now let’s start to link them up, say to Dale and Eudora Thornton since Dale was in the news today.
“Those folks own the mortuaries. We have a dozen in this township, all with different family names—Addison’s, Howard and Pyke, Forever Beloved—so it looks diversified, but they’re all owned by Eudora’s family. The churches belong to Dale’s in the sense that his family donates more money than any other. They’ve funded the construction of a half dozen or more churches and Christian schools. Different denominations, all beholden to the same people. People who also own our correctional facility, and some might say our courts.
“Did I mention that the mayor is Richard’s brother-in-law?”
Billie stared at her. “No.”
“And the mayor’s father-in-law is our US senator.”
“Which one?”
“Springer.”
“And they all sore horses?”
“Nope. Not all of them. But they won’t cross those who do. Soring didn’t get going until the 1950s. I was just starting to work for the paper then. I covered the little horse shows around here. Not the big shows, not the championships. I wasn’t trusted to write about those yet. I saw trainers start burning the horse’s legs and hurting their feet a few years after I came to work. By the ’70s it was so bad, you’d see blood running down their legs in the show ring.”
“What started it?”
“Just some dumbass guy riding a hurting horse in a show. The judges liked the way it pranced when its feet hurt, gave it a blue ribbon, and here we are, what, sixty, seventy years later.”
“What keeps it going?”
“Senator Springer needs those votes, that money, his friends. Now, I happen to think that piece of shit doesn’t care what’s done to anything but himself, but even if he did, he’d have a devil of a time opposing the Big Lick. By supporting it, he gets everything he needs or wants.”
Billie took a long draught of her lemonade. The sugar hadn’t sweetened it enough and she shuddered.
Addie smiled. “I enjoy a good shiver in the summer,” she said. “And I like sweating in the winter. That’s the best time for chores if you ask me. In a snowstorm. Can I pour you some more?”
Billie shook her head no. “What effect is the current scrutiny of the walking horse industry having on people here, on the industry itself? And what about the case against Dale?”
“It’s a damper, for sure. Trainers are pulling out of shows. A lot of them are selling their farms. It looks pretty bleak for the walking horse world.”
“And your son?”
“Bleak for him too. Like everyone else here. A way of life ending, yadda, yadda…” She filled her own glass. “But…”
“But?”
“The good old boys are being called names in the press, trashed on the internet, exposed for the slime they are. All very unpleasant. But really, is this any reason for them to stop?”
“What do you mean? I thought that everything was falling off—attendance and sales. I thought the big shows were closing or going to close.”
“And so they are. The walking horse world is letting the media, the outraged public—get what it wants. The walking horse world is shutting down and, in quotes, going away.”
“But that’s not what’s really happening?”
“Bingo, my friend. The Big Lick world is a chain of linked interests going all the way from the stable hand to our man in Washington.”
“Your man in Washington?”
“Really, there’s more than one. Senators. Congressmen. But for now, let’s stick with Senator Springer.”
Billie recalled the senator’s round face and aggressive manner from TV appearances. He was popular with certain conservatives for his positions on gun control—he was against it, and abortion—also against it, and war—in favor, it seemed to her, of every conflict the administration considered.
As if reading her mind, Addie said, “It’s not just the right wing. Liberals like Dickinson are on the wrong side of this too.”
Dickinson was a favorite of Billie’s. She had long admired his compassion for children in the courts, and for those in foster care. Kids like herself. “Why?”
“Money,” Addie said. “The lickers pay off a lot of politicians. They make donations to their causes and their campaigns. Sixty thousand and more.”
Billie whistled.
“The scrutiny now on soring isn’t enough to stop it, but it’s enough to be making people uncomfortable. For example, you’re here. And other reporters covering protests and issues. In years past, there’d be a spurt of interest, outraged articles. Then it’d die back.”
“Now?” Billie asked
“Social media. This won’t fade out the way it used to. There’s a brighter light shining on it. Twitter. Facebook.”
“That’s why Dale and Eudora went to Arizona?”
Addie nodded. “They went there to get horses ready for the shows where they won’t be hassled. Where they can do whatever they want to get ready for the Big Show, somewhere no one knows them or cares about them. Listen, when you get to the show, find me. I have seats above the fried chicken stand. Same seats every year. Stop by.”
CHAPTER 22
BILLIE PULLED OUT of Addie’s driveway, wondering about the trainers like Dale and Eudora who were looking for places to continue to abuse their horses, out of sight of people like her, journalists who fed outrage to activists. A few yards down the road, she pulled off onto the
