The Healing by Gayl Jones

Author:Gayl Jones [Jones, Gayl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-6316-3
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2005-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

The groom held the reins of the mare, a blackish-brown beauty, graceful, delicate. A horse like that could only be a Thoroughbred. I wondered what sort of horse I’d be. I mean if people were classified like horses. Well, I guess some people do classify people like horses. When they talk about such things as breeding. Only certain kinds of people are said to have breeding. Usually rich. Usually not nonwhite. Still I often found it curious that in horses Thoroughbreds were mostly nonwhite. You didn’t see white Thoroughbreds. In the movies, sometimes the good people rode the white horses, or the wannabe good people rode them. But in the real world, the world outside horse racing, the people with breeding were mostly not nonwhite. Except in Africa itself. But somebody said that the names they have for African people in the New World are actually names of different breeds of horses or donkeys. Mulatto, for example. Some type of mule. Or like that woman I heard lecture, Joan videotaped her and made me listen to her lecture. The University of Creation Spirituality. Her name? I just remember Joan said from the University of Creation Spirituality, And she said the word ass. Said she preferred the word ass to the word donkey, because ass was a good American word, a good Anglo-Saxon word. Did she say Anglo-Saxon or just American? And fool. Her other favorite word. And Joan said those were her own two favorite words. Except that woman said, or seemed to say, that the only acceptable fool was a fool for the Lord. I don’t know if Joan considers any fool an acceptable fool. Something about native religions. Part Native American, but a Catholic nun. Mary Jose? Joan had to explain to me some of her vocabulary. “Your vocabulary’s gotten better since you met me, you know,” she says. Except ass and fool. I don’t think there’s anyone who knows the English language who don’t know the meaning of ass and fool. Anyway, Josef and I stood behind the black fence scrutinizing her.

She looks like a winner, I said. I leaned across the fence. She gave me a fierce look, as if she were not yet broken in, but I knew she was. I’d seen her maiden race, and I had the autograph of the jockey who rode her.

She’s top-class, said Josef. People at the Fasig-Tipton wanted me to sell her, but I won’t. Said one of their clients saw her and wanted to buy her. For breeding purposes, though, not to run any races. At least I think they said for breeding purposes; the client who wanted to buy her was kinda ambiguous. She’s a fine specimen. She’s top-class. You don’t sell a top-class horse.

The groom holding the reins glanced at me and Josef. When Josef didn’t give the horse more praise, he praised her himself. Her maiden race she did six furloughs in one and ten. Now you know this is a good horse. Ain’t nothing ambiguous about a good horse.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.