Joseph’s passion for horses was not of the same character as the old man’s had been; Joseph’s was searching, secretive, concerned with lore, confined to books. It was not love. When his wife asked him what he was doing, staying up so late night after night, he said he was working on an article. Joseph was a professor of history. The article was a lie. He was reading about horses. A good horse sholde have three propyrtees of a man, three of a woman, three of a foxe, three of a hare, and three of an asse. Joseph was born in a poor, backward town to a couple reckoned to be one of the poorest and most backward. It was a world of outhouses, chicken coops in backyards, eyeglasses purchased from Woolworth’s, bad teeth that never got fixed. On the afternoon of October 29, 1949, when his mother’s water broke his father ran down the lane to get Pepper Carmichael to drive them to the hospital. Rupert Kelsey didn’t own an automobile, not even a rusted collection of rattles like Pepper’s.
