The Hat She Wore For Horsemanship

She looked up when I came in. Her face did something complicated.

“Jodi,” she said.

“Kaycee’s entry.” I set it on the desk with the check clipped to it. “And the fee.”

Renee picked it up and read it. She saw “Dot” on the line for the horse. She looked at it a long time.

“I wasn’t trying to be mean,” she said finally. “You know that. I’ve watched what that contest does to girls who don’t have the money. I watched it do it to mine. I just didn’t want Kaycee to get her heart broke in front of the whole county.”

“I know why you said it,” I told her.

“Then you know I was right.”

“No,” I said. “I know why you said it. That’s different.”

She didn’t answer that. I didn’t push it. I don’t believe in making a speech at somebody in their own office.

I just asked her if there was anything else Kaycee needed to bring, and she gave me the schedule on a sheet of pink paper, and I thanked her and went back out into the sun.

I sat in my truck in the parking lot for a few minutes after that. I said a little prayer, not for Kaycee to win, because I’ve never believed God cares much who wins a ribbon, but for her to ride well and come home with her head up whatever happened. Then I drove to work.

People have asked me since why I didn’t report Renee to somebody, or ask her to step aside that year. But report her for what?

She runs that contest fair, by the rules, and she doesn’t judge it. Three judges from out of county score every girl.

Renee only said something unkind on a porch. There’s no rule against that.

The contest was the last Friday in July, the first day of the county fair. It was hot.

It was the kind of hot where the air over the arena shimmers and the dust hangs and gets into your teeth, and the 4-H kids walking their steers to the wash rack look like they’ve been dipped in flour.

The speech and interview part was in the morning, in the exhibit hall where the quilts hang, with box fans in every corner.

I wasn’t allowed in for the interview, but I sat in the back for the speeches, between a woman with a cooler of sandwiches and a grandpa in a feed cap.

There were six girls. They were all lovely. I want to say that plainly, because none of this was ever about those girls.

Every one of them had worked hard and every one of them had a mother sitting in that hall with her heart in her throat, same as me.

Kaycee went fourth. She wore her turquoise western shirt, the good one she’d bought with her own money at the western store, and her grandpa’s hat, and her plain jeans and boots.