A Gentle Rain by Deborah F. Smith

Lily didn't need nicknames. They just needed each other and their mysterious love for daisies. I envied that. Sitting between them, Rhubarb, Joey's dog, shifted his brindled, sixty-pound mutt butt and licked the air at me, as if I tasted as good as his fart smelled.
    "Thank you, Rhubarb," I said grimly. "Now, we're all ready to go.

    The horses for sale at Talaseega were divided like highschoolers at a prom. Jocks and beauty queens got their own roomy stalls with their pedigrees posted on the doors. The brainy types got smaller stalls with catalog numbers. The losers and the hoods got stuck in community pens, with numbered stickers on their rumps.
    I paid a fee to put my yearlings in a preview stall alongside the purebred Quarter Horses and Arabians. On their stall door I hung a color print-out Lula had designed on the ranch computer.
    Registered Crackers, Thocco Ranch, Fountain Springs, Florida. By Walking Soft Cougar. Out of solid Cracker mares from the oldest Cracker bloodlines in the state. Already Displaying Cougar's Famous Coon Rack.
    My yearlings were pretty bays and one chestnut, all with a lick of flash in their carriage and their daddy's walk. People paid, on average, a thousand dollars each for the best ones. Not much by other breed standards, but gold for a Cracker. You buy a Cracker, you're proud.
    "What's a coon rack?" a little girl asked Possum, who stayed inside the stall with the yearlings. Possum, who was only about five-three even in boot heels, looked like a cowboy hobbit. Kids took to him.
    "It's a square, four-beat walking gait," he recited in a squeaky drawl. Possum took his role as our salesman seriously. He was big on facts and rote answers. Most autistics were. "Exhibited by many breeds of horses including Tennessee Walking Horses, American Saddlebreds and Paso Finos." Possum peered through the slats of the stall door at me. I nodded. He was doing fine. "The Cracker Horse is descended from gaited Spanish stock brought over starting with the explorer Ponce de Leon," he went on. "The Cracker performs a slow version of the square gait called the `Coon Rack."'
    The girl's pa, a suburban type in a Soccer Dad t-shirt, looked around to see if anybody in the vicinity might tell him what a square gait was. "What's a square gait?" he asked me. I tried not to crowd Possum's territory but I knew his explanations were clear as mud. "It's the way a raccoon walks," I put in. "Kind of a glide. A smooth ride. Pretty to watch."
    "Ahab." Soccer Dad looked intrigued. Like a lot of folks, he didn't know much about Crackers; didn't even realize they were a recognized breed, now. A lot of horse lovers, me included, had worked hard over the years to build up the breed registry. It was a start.
    Another Daddy-kid combo walked past the stall. "What's a Cracker Horse, Daddy?"
    "It's a wild horse nobody wants. Don't get too close. It might have diseases."
    Possum yelped. He launched into another one of his spiels.
    The daddy eyed him warily and hurried away with his little girl in tow.
    "Easy, Possum, you can't win `em all," I soothed.
    "Thocco Ranch?" a nasty female drawl said behind me. "Hmmm. So you're Ben Thocco. You're the stupid cowboy who towed my daddy's Jaguar a week ago."
    I pivoted on a boot heel and looked down at a little blonde. She was dressed in tight jeans with torn knees, a pink baby doll, snakeskin boots, and enough diamond jewelry to say `I'm rich and you're not.' Like Paris Hilton, only not so likable. Her entourage watched from behind her. A bunch of cocaine-and- chardonnay college boys, if you ask me. I tipped my hat to her. "I take it you're J.T. Jackson's daughter. I see the resemblance."
    "You've got balls. I'd like to give them a test ride, sometime. I doubt you'd survive."
    Miriam hustled over. "You kiss your daddy with that dirty mouth?"
    The blonde ignored her, continuing to give me the once-over like I was meat on the hoof. "Not bad for a hick," she went on. "I hear you used to be a wrestler. A