Behind the Bonehouse by Sally Wright

looking at the piles of hair around Sam.
    Jo raised an eyebrow at Toss, then walked over to the IRS man and took the card from his hand. “You’ll have to wait for me to finish grooming my horse. You could walk back to the house and sit on the porch if you’d like, and I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
    He considered it, and turned around, and started off down the north-south drive that ran along the high ridge from the barns back to Jo’s house.
    â€œDamn!” Toss’s fists were on his hips, and blood was flooding across his face, as he kicked the barn cat’s water bowl out the back door.
    Sam’s head jerked toward the ceiling, and his whole body levitated like a tennis player leaping for a serve that doesn’t clear the net. He kept himself from jumping into Jo, and then stood right where he’d been and shook all over.
    â€œSorry, Jo. I wasn’t thinkin.”
    â€œSam’s okay.” She laid her arm across his withers and told him he was just fine, and then went back to currying him. “You know it’s because of Carl. This guy spent eight whole weeks at Equine. Here he’s got two separate businesses, plus Alan and me. He could be here for months!”
    Toss went out and picked up the cat’s bowl, and set it back on the floor, then took his hat off and ruffled a hand through his thick graying hair. “You fight in their wars for ’em. You hard-scrabble every day trying to make a livin’, and maybe, if you’re lucky, you put somethin’ by for your old age so you won’t be a burden to your family. Every year ya live they tax your every dollar, and then they do it again when you die—when you already paid taxes on every cent you ever made! What gives them the right?”
    â€œYou’re preachin’ to the choir here, Toss.”
    â€œYou and me, we never even thought about cheatin’. We’ve cared for horses as good as we can, and treated their owners fair, and paid our dues to federal, state and local. And what do we get for it? A fireant like Carl Seeger tellin’ his buddy to make our lives a livin’ hell! This here, Jo, this is real persecution! What’s to keep ’em from turning you inside out ’cause they don’t like the way ya vote?”
    â€œYou know that’ll happen. What am I saying? I bet it already has.”
    Thursday, March 12th, 1964
    Spencer wasn’t completely asleep when he got the call. Tracker had had a mild case of colic, and he’d walked him around from eleven o’clock on. He hadn’t been in so much pain that Spencer’d thought he had to oil him, and when Tracker had finally pooped on his own just before two-thirty, Spencer’d come in to get some sleep, before he checked on him again at four.
    He was just dozing off, finally, when the phone rang at three. He rubbed his eyes, as he said hello, and felt his chest pound the way it does from a call in the middle of the night. A voice he didn’t recognize said, “Mr. Franklin?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThis is Chief Anderson from the Fayette County Fire Department. Blue Grass Horse Van’s on fire. We’re doin’ our best to save it, but I reckon it’s touch and go.”
    â€œWhat!”
    â€œBlue Grass Horse—”
    â€œSorry, I heard you. Was anybody hurt?”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œGood. Thank God for that. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
    Saturday, April 4th, 1964
    They were racing at Keeneland, and although Alan and Jo hardly ever went to the races, a three-year-old she and Toss had foaled and raised the first nine months of his life was running in his fifth race, so she and Alan and Toss got dressed up the way everybody did—Jo in a dress, Toss and Alan in sport coats—and went off to the races.
    They talked about Blue Grass burning, wondering what caused it, and what it would mean to Spencer, all the way to Keeneland,