Lisa Wingate - Word Gets Around

Word Gets Around

Books by Lisa Wingate

D AILY , T EXAS
Talk of the Town
Word Gets Around

T ENDING R OSES
Tending Roses
Good Hope Road
The Language of Sycamores
Drenched in Light
A Thousand Voices

B LUE S KY H ILL
A Month of Summer
The Summer Kitchen

Word Gets Around
Copyright 2009
Wingate Media, LLC

Cover design by The DesignWorks Group, David Uttley
Cover photograph by Steve Gardner, PixelWorks Studios, Inc.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wingate, Lisa.
Word gets around / Lisa Wingate.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7642-0491-3 (pbk.)
1. Horse trainersFiction. 2. TexasFiction. I. Title.
PS3573.I53165W67 2009
813'.54dc22

2008044285

F or my two small-town boys
who know that moms (and writers) need quiet time,
and that trips to town to deliver forgotten ball gloves,
left-behind track shoes, lost band instruments,
and trash bags full of sweaty football pads
are a great way to get it.
Thanks for looking after my peace of mind,
and for making every day an adventure.
What a blessing!

CONTENTS

In considering this second visit to Daily, Texas, Id be a pretty poor neighbor if I didnt thank all the people who made the first visit such a hoot. To all the readers who became honorary Dailyians last year when Talk of the Town hit the shelves, thank you for taking time to send notes, e-mails, cards, letters, Texisms, historical snippets, book club reviews, and little stories that might be useful for the installment. Your companionship on these journeys completes the circle of blessing in ways that are truly amazing. Because of you, the population of Daily is growing by leaps and bounds, the stories keep flowing, and Imagene and the girls are up to their elbows in small-town mischief again. I cant wait for you to drop on in and see whats happening now!

Id also like to thank a few hometown friends whove helped with technical details and other research for Word Gets Around . First of all, thanks to A-number-1 coach, Bennett Fields, for sharing the Bigfoot story in the teachers lounge, and for letting the folks of Daily borrow your mysterious creature for a bit. In some cases, truth is even more fun than fiction. Thanks to film producer and screenwriter, and generally sweet and funny person, Cynthia Riddle, for introducing me to the world of moviemaking, and for hanging on the phone through endless silly questions. Thanks to Sharon Mannion for proofreading, Janice and Lawrence Wingate for helping with books and feeding wandering Wingate boys, Teresa Lohman for helping with online scrapbooking, and Ed Stevens for getting me going on Youtube and for being the worlds best encourager. How in the world did I ever get so lucky as to have all of you?

Lastly, Id like to thank the folks who do all the hard work that turns ideas into books. Thank you to my agent, Claudia Cross at Sterling Lord Literistic. A special measure of gratitude goes out to the amazing folks at Bethany House Publishers, who make this process such an incredible joy. In particular, thanks to Dave Long for always giving invaluable input and support, to Julie Klassen for astute (and funwho would have thought?) line edits and suggestions, and to the amazing crew in marketing and publicity, who bring the books to the hands of readers with enthusiasm, innovation, and tender loving careSteve Oates, Jim Hart, Brett Benson, Debra Larsen, Carra Carr, and Noelle Buss. Thanks for welcoming me and my crazy cast of imaginary friends into the BHP family!

Word Gets Around

Lauren Eldridge

They say you cant go home again, but the truth is, if youre a small-town Texas girl, you can never really leave. The town travels with you like an extra layer of skinsomething flamboyant and tight fitting. Even though you may hide it beneath the trappings of sophistication, its right there under your clothes, your secret identity. Whether you admit it or not, you have an affinity for big hair, shirts with pearl snaps, cowboy boots, and faded blue jeans. Even in the most upscale restaurants, you secretly search the menu for comfort foods like chicken-fried steak and catfish, especially on Fridays. Any Texas girl knows its not Friday without all-you-can-eat catfish.

The world would be better off if everyone ate fried food at least one night a week, and drank coffee you could cut with a knife, and lingered with their neighbors. Wed understand each other a little better, and maybe wed understand ourselves. Perhaps wed ponder, over the plastic basket with the grease-stained tissue paper, the need to run so far, so fastto have, to do, to achieve, to gain, to winto be all that and make sure everybody knows it. A pecan pie does not toil, nor does it spin, but it sure tastes good, and it makes a fine conversation piece.

In the right setting, you can talk for twenty minutes about the merits of a good pecan pie. You can discuss the pecanspaper shell, Stuart, native, chopped, broken, whole. You can talk about the fact that farm-fresh eggs make a better pie than store-bought. You can theorize as to why that might be. One thing thats wrong with society todaytoo many chemically altered chickens living in giant egg factories, toiling mindlessly, uninspired by their work.

Theres a whole world out there that doesnt know one egg from another, and for some reason, that world had always held an attraction for me. My limited contact with the strange and wondrous realms outside our little town of Daily, Texas, was the subject of my earliest childhood fascinations. That world seemed like the place to be, even when I was too young to understand it.

In the farthest reaches of my memory, there are hippies. Theyre sitting on a street corner in Los Angeles, shaking tambourines, playing guitars, railing against nukes and advocating love. Its a nice song, I think, and Im enthralled by their swinging leather fringes, and the fact that theyre dancing half-naked on the sidewalk. We dont see things like that back home in Daily, Texas.

Aunt Donetta grabs my hand and drags me across the street and we go find my father, who is delivering a herd of our ranch horses to their winter jobs at a movie studio. The horses have been ferrying city kids and troops of Girl Scouts out at Boggy Bend Park all summer, so theyre dog gentle , says my father as he and the studio wrangler, Willie Wardlaw, watch the herd exit the trailer and blink in the bright California sunlight. The wrangler, my dads old rodeo buddy, laughs. Just because Girl Scouts can handle them horses dont mean movie actors can, he says.

Standing there in my new pink cowgirl suit, proudly wearing my latest goat slapping championship belt buckle, I catalog that information in my six-year-old brain. Movie actors are worse horse riders than Girl Scouts. Even at six years old, I have suspected as much from watching TV westerns, but my theory is confirmed when Willie grins and says, You know they only ride for the camera. Other than that, not a one of em knows the head from the hind end.