Sneaky Pie for President

by Rita Mae Brown

  “You’re slowing down, old man,” Dixie shouted, as Ozzie pulled ahead.

  Two lengths behind, Dixie reached as far as he could with his neck. Baring his teeth, he made a great show of anger.

  Knowing the younger horse was gaining, Ozzie headed straight for the three-board fence, jumping up and over with ease. For him, it was a piece of cake, nothing compared to the fences he’d taken in his glory days.

  Dixie was still being taught how to properly jump but didn’t flinch. He soared over that fence in high style.

  As they neared the house, Tucker, Tally, and Pewter raced out from inside and onto the back porch, then onto the little patio. The dogs knew better than to chase the horses; plus, the horses were rolling at great speeds.

  Hearing all the ruckus, the C.O. also ran out.

  “Uh-oh.” Ozzie turned wide, ran straight back, and jumped the fence into the pasture.

  Dixie, intent on Ozzie, flew by him in the opposite direction. Halting for a moment, the youngster looked up to behold an unhappy human moving in his direction.

  He, too, turned on his haunches, one quick twirl, ran back, and jumped the fence at the same place where he’d jumped out.

  Ozzie, head down, grazing, didn’t even look up at Dixie’s entrance.

  Dixie was no dummy. He also began grazing as though nothing at all had happened.

  The running C.O. had reached the fence. She climbed over without much grace. “What the hell are you all doing?”

  Ozzie raised his head and looked at her with his sweetest expression. “Nothing.”

  “Dixie!” The C.O. walked right up to Dixie, who raised his head for a scratch.

  The bright chestnut appeared surprised. “Who, me?”

  “What are you two doing?” the human demanded.

  Ozzie returned to the serious business of eating. “Enjoying a fine spring day.”

  “You all better behave or I’ll herd you in circles,” Tucker barked from the patio.

  Both horses acted as though it were just another spring day. La-di-da, this grass tastes fine.

  The C.O. threw up her hands as she walked back to the house. “If I live to be one thousand years old, I will never understand what gets into them!”

  Tally trotted along, her little tail straight up. “Mental, they’re mental.” The little girl enjoyed adopting this superior attitude, ignoring her own frequent outbursts of emotion.

  “Well, you should know,” Pewter snapped, unable to resist. She’d hopped up on the fencepost to see what would happen when the C.O. reached the horses.

  “Smartmouth.” Tally glowered.

  Back in the pasture, the two horses exhaled loudly.

  Dixie turned to Ozzie. “You still got it, Gramps.”

  “Damn right I do.” The bay smiled.

  “They stopped,” Blue Sky said, back in the paddock. “Did she scare them?”

  “No, they shined her on.” Jones laughed.

  Shamus sidled up next to the old horse, “Back in the day, Ozzie did win a lot of money. Hundreds of thousands.”

  Jones snorted. “Now, now, squirt, Ozzie gilds the lily.”

  “He did win,” said Sneaky. “I think one year he won about a hundred thousand.” The cat then quickly added, so as not to contradict her elder, “But it’s true he overstates his case.”

  “Every day. Every single day.” Jones sighed. “Still, Ozzie’s good about knowing his worth and what we horses generate. After all, just last year we generated one hundred two billion dollars for the economy. Of course, that’s with the multiplier effect. If it’s just horses, not feed stores, blacksmiths, it’s thirty-nine billion dollars, but, hey, that’s a lot of money for a species that people predicted would die out with the advent of the motorcar. Horseless carriages? What a mistake!”

  The tiger cat nodded. “Well, they seem to still have use for you, even today.”

  “Ozzie told me that eighty percent of horse owners have an annual income of less than seventy-five thousand dollars, and about half of those make less than fifty thousand dollars,” said Shamus. “So you know this is really about love.” The old horse turned his blind eyes to the south for the scent of moisture had intensified. “Gonna rain tonight.”

  “Thank the Lord,” Blue Sky bellowed.

  “Actually, Jones, I came into your paddock to tell you I was chased by coyotes in broad daylight,” said Sneaky. “If it wasn’t for the Yellow Warbler and Cyril, the fox, I’d still be up in the tree. They let me know when things were safe.”

  “Oh, those coyotes are trouble,” said Jones, walking over to the water trough. “The only predator that kills them is humans, and the coyotes easily evade them. You shouldn’t go out in the woods or pastures far from the barns alone.”

  “I came back with Cyril,” said Sneaky.

  “Yes, he’s a good fellow. Usually you don’t get on with foxes.”

  “We hunt the same game, but there’s enough for everyone,” Sneaky replied.

  Jones laughed. “Cyril comes in the barn every night and eats what we’ve dropped. He’s tried to get into the feed room to open the molasses bag. Foxes have that sweet tooth, you know. But I’ll say it again: Cyril’s a good fellow.”

  “That he is. When they start fox-hunting in the fall, I’ll get him a fixture card.” Sneaky mentioned the card with the times, dates, and places for hunting: insider info especially useful to foxes.

  “Oh, he can outrun anybody, and you know they don’t kill, but I do think that would be a nice gesture.”

  “Jones, why do you think you’ve lived so long?” Sneaky asked.

  “I’ve had the best of care. Still have my teeth, still get a bit of exercise. I think that’s it, plus I do have good bloodlines.” A hint of pride came into his voice.

  “Mother says you go back to the great mare, Golden Apple.” Sneaky knew this would please the old fellow. “And that goes back to the Tetrarch.” She mentioned a famous stallion from England. “But most of all, she brags about Domino. You have Domino blood, from 1891.”

  “I do. One of the greatest. Stamina, brains, speed. Well, I did not have the career that Domino did, but, you know, Sneaky Pie, I didn’t enjoy the track. I don’t want to run around in circles, even though they’re big circles. Some horses love it. Me, hated it. Once the C.O. found me down in South Carolina, brought me up here, well, everything changed. I was outside. I learned to fox-hunt so I could run over meadows, splash across streams, soar over fences, and be with other horses. Jolly fun. I need to be in the wild, kind of, you know.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” Sneaky did, too.

  “Well, I think I’ll go up to the house.”

  “Stop by those two loonies, will you? Tell them in my day I would have smoked them!” Jones’s eye brightened.

  “Indeed I will.”

  The cat loped across the paddock, ran under the fence, and came out onto the pasture where Ozzie and Dixie grazed.

  She delivered Jones’s message.

  Ozzie stopped eating. “Well, he would have given us a run for the money. Old as he is, look at his conformation.” Dixie paused, stared toward the old fellow. “I can see that.”

  “Jones also told me, Ozzie, that you keep up with equine developments, especially those involving profit,” said Sneaky. She was becoming quite the economic expert, at least when it came to animals.

  “I do,” answered the retired steeplechaser, very pleased to talk about one of his favorite subjects. “You see, pussycat, anything that creates money is valuable to humans. That which is valuable lives. Therein lies the problem. A racehorse, a steeplechaser, loses value when we are injured, become a step slow. We used to head straight to the slaughterhouse, a horrible fate but better than abandonment or starvation.”

  “The worst,” Dixie chimed in. “I come from Lane’s End Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, and they do everything right there. Horses are treated with respect. I’m here because, really, I wasn’t meant for the track. I’m kind of like Jones that way. H
e tells me he didn’t like to run, and I didn’t either—not at all—but I like what I’m doing now. I even like the exercises over the tiny little jumps, cavallettis, and the bending stuff. Makes me think.”

  “Me, I loved running but I ran over grass and fences,” said Ozzie. “Oh, I truly loved it. I love the roar of the crowd.” The steeplechaser beamed.

  Sneaky Pie teased the handsome Thoroughbred: “I like running under fences.”

  “We horses make a lot of money, and I don’t even know what we bring in through spectator spending. People pay at the gate, they buy food, and at tracks like Keeneland there are wonderful clothes and stuff you can buy. I don’t know if anyone knows that, but just the Kentucky Horse Park alone brings in two hundred fifty-one million dollars each year. That’s a lot of oats—certainly nothing to sneeze at.”

  “Very impressive.”

  “State horse parks do a lot. Virginia’s center in Lexington is always busy. The Carolina Horse Park brings in thirteen million dollars, and then you go to places like Palm Beach Polo and its International Equestrian Center, and they generate maybe eighty million dollars a year.”

  “That’s a lot of revenue,” Sneaky remarked, and Dixie raised his head.

  “One-point-nine billion dollars in taxes to all levels of government,” Dixie added. “I’m not as interested as Ozzie in what we do for the human economy, but I remember people back in Kentucky talking about taxes. I don’t really understand taxes.”

  “I don’t, either.” The cat sat between the two horses. “It’s a human thing.”

  “They fight over it,” Ozzie remarked.

  “The C.O. likes to do research, and every now and then I’ll hear her explode about how income taxes are unconstitutional,” said Sneaky. “If another human even mentions the subject, it sets her off. She’s wrong about a lot, but on this sub I’m with her: Income taxes make no sense.”

  “How’d they pay for government before 1913?” Dixie asked.

  “Customs took care of a lot of it. I also remember her saying that before 1861, the U.S. government flourished with customs money and the South paid seventy-five percent of those duties but only received twenty-five percent back. Doesn’t make sense to me.”

  Both horses shook their heads. “How can you take money from those who earned it?” said Dixie. “What good does it do?”

  “Builds the interstate roads, bridges, stuff like that. Weapons for defense. Other than that, looks like theft to me.” Ozzie watched a jet trail high overhead.

  “Like I said, it’s a human thing, and whoever is in power lies about it,” said Sneaky. “Doesn’t matter if it’s state or nation. I think it’s a little harder to lie at the county level, because your neighbors tend to know where you live.”

  This made them all laugh.

  “I can tell you one thing.” Ozzie looked back at the two friends. “Horses are the future, not the past.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Sneaky. She felt that cats also had a bright future.

  “The Chinese.” Ozzie took a deep breath and dramatically declared: “Horse City! The Chinese are building a horse city. They plan on training eight thousand people to work with horses there.”

  “You’re kidding.” Dixie couldn’t fathom that.

  “It’s all true,” swore Ozzie. “They’ve got to find quality stallions because they want to breed a thousand of them for an eight-hundred-twenty-three-acre park in Tianjin. They don’t have really good horses, as I’m sure you know. Well, anyway, they intend to make horse feed, veterinary stuff. They say they will build luxury hotels at this city to promote horse tourism. I mean, the plan just goes on and on. They swear that within five years, it will bring millions upon millions of dollars to the area, and ultimately the country, as the horse business expands. And that doesn’t take into account all the salaries of the thousands of people who will find employment as Horse City takes off.”

  “Ozzie, that’s fantastic.” Sneaky Pie meant fantastic as hard to believe. Now that she was interested in politics, she found it important to be perfectly understood.

  “They aren’t stupid. The Chinese know the money that’s made from special events. The World Equestrian Games brought in three hundred eleven million dollars in Aachen, Germany, and we just had it here in the U.S. last year. Two hundred five million dollars just from the games in Kentucky.”

  “Wonder if the Russians will do the same thing?” Sneaky thought out loud. “They used to be great horsemen.”

  “Whenever human governments crash or millions die in revolutions, a lot of that from starvation, not just war killing, all animal life is imperiled. Yes, the Russians used to be extraordinary horsemen,” Ozzie said with conviction. “But the Chinese know horses are the future. Remember, millions of Chinese humans are now making money hand over fist. And jobs plus horses exude an allure, don’t you agree? The Chinese want all that goes with it. Some businessman makes a bundle trading in Shanghai, next thing you know, he buys horses to impress his friends. Hires a trainer. The whole nine yards.” Ozzie could see it all unfold in his equine imagination.

  “I sure hope they take good care of them,” Dixie noted.

  “They have an equestrian association, but they really have to learn everything all over again,” Ozzie said.

  “Americans never forgot.” Sneaky Pie smiled. “Oh, fewer folks know horses than they once did, say, in 1900, but plenty still do. It’s a passion passed down through families. But maybe, like the Chinese, someone gets money in the pot, and they court the allure of owning horses. Hey, just the smell of saddles and bridles alone is worth it.” Sneaky laughed.

  The two Thoroughbreds laughed, too, and the tiger cat bid them good afternoon. Walking back to the house, she became more and more excited about animals working together.

  She was sure the key to success was money—not political graft but good old-fashioned American capitalism.

  Hanging Out

  At 2:30 A.M., forty-mile-an-hour winds (with sixty-mile-an-hour gusts) hit the house like Thor’s fist. Despite double-glazed windows, the wind whistled through the tiniest apertures. It whooshed down chimneys, throwing fine soot up from the fireplaces into the air.

  Sneaky Pie, asleep on the C.O.’s pillow, awakened with a start. Pewter was out cold on the other pillow. Below, on the rug by the bed, the two dogs also opened their eyes.

  “That shook the whole house,” Tucker remarked.

  “Been a long time since we’ve had wind like that.” Sneaky stretched, jumped off the bed.

  “Come on.” Tally led the way to the kitchen. Outside the windows, the sky was pitch black.

  “Here comes the rain.” Tucker was startled for a moment when the rain smacked the house with force. “It’s like it’s come all at once. No lead-up.”

  “Strange.” Tally listened to the wind rattle the shutters on the windows. “We’re going to have a lot to clean up tomorrow.”

  “At least the horses, and Addie and Great Bess, will be all right,” Sneaky noted. “They’ve got their run-in sheds.”

  “Half the time they stand out in the rain.” Tucker shook her head. “Once I asked Addie why she did that, and she said the rain felt good on her heavy coat. Rinsed the dirt and dust out.”

  “She can always swim in the river,” Tally said.

  “The cows do sometimes. The horses go in the river, in the pond, and in the water troughs, but I bet they’re not out in this mess,” Tucker observed. As she was speaking, the sky lit up hot pink, a blinding flash followed by a roar of thunder that must have sounded like the huge cannon, Big Bertha, in World War I.

  All three animals jumped.

  “Where’d you go?” Pewter skidded into the room, eyes wide. “You left me!”

  “You were dead to the world,” Sneaky Pie informed her.

  Pewter jumped onto the counter, peered out the kitchen window over the sink. “Black as the devil’s eyebrows.”

  Just then another searing flash caused her to blink and move away from
the window. A tremendous clap of thunder sounded directly overhead. It seemed the sky was falling.

  “Good Lord,” Tucker exclaimed.

  “That hurt my eyes.” Pewter jumped down to the floor.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Sneaky Pie agreed.

  The rain lashed on the house so loudly, the thunder boomed so steadily, that the four animals didn’t hear human footsteps padding down the hall.

  Pewter ran to the C.O., rubbing on her leg. “I’m scared.”

  “All right, Pewter.” The human picked up the rotund kitty, who hid her face in the person’s neck.

  She clicked on the lights. Walking to the porch, she switched on the outside light. The rain was so heavy, there was nothing to be seen.

  “Mother, it’s going to be a big day tomorrow,” Tucker said, preparing her for the work ahead.

  “Let’s check the basement.” The C.O. opened the door, wooden steps reverberating as she descended, followed by the three animals.

  Pewter remained on her shoulder.

  Tally ran over to the puddle forming in a corner of the basement. “Roof’s leaking again.”

  “Dammit. Dammit to hell.” The C.O. put Pewter down on a low table there, grabbed a bucket kept for this purpose, and put it where the water dripped. “Come on.”

  They hurried back upstairs, the thunder deafening as their human grabbed a powerful flashlight from a kitchen drawer. Down the hall they trotted, Pewter bringing up the rear.

  Pulling a stepladder out of the hall closet, the C.O. set it up under a trapdoor, climbed up, and lifted the heavy door, propping it open.

  She shined the light around before descending again. Hurrying into the kitchen, she pulled out a bucket from under the sink, returned, and climbed up again with bucket and flashlight. The cats were already in the attic, as were many bats hanging upside down.

  “Cats,” one of the bats warned the others.

  “Don’t worry. We’re here to fix the leak,” Pewter thoughtfully said.

  “You won’t fix it tonight.” A second bat swung a little upside down as he watched the human hoist herself up onto the attic floor.

  “The bucket should catch the worst of it,” said Sneaky. “Tomorrow she’ll get up on the roof, unless it’s too wet.”