A Gentle Rain (12 page)

This news earned me more craned heads and curious scrutiny. "Mi Dios!" a mustachioed cowboy exclaimed.

I smiled at him. "Su acento suena cubano. Si?"

He gaped at me, then looked at the others. "She can tell I came from Cuba! She reads minds!"

Ben held up his hands. "Awright, awright. Karen, this is Cheech and Bigfoot, and Possum, and Roy and Dale, and you know Mac and Lily, and in a minute or two you'll get to meet Miriam and Lula and my baby brother. And I'm Ben, yeah. Got all that? There'll be a quiz, later."

"Charmed," I said.

Silence. Some looked confused. Ben turned to them. "That means she's pleased to meet you."

People nodded. Ah hah.

"Benji!" a voice called. "I want to meet the girl who found our horse!"

Ben pivoted toward that voice. His tired, stern face instantly softened. I followed his lead, and my breath caught in my throat. A somewhat gaudy older woman, charm bracelets jangling on leathery arms, pushed a wheelchair toward us. In that chair sat a chubby, sweetly smiling young man with Ben's black hair but with features that clearly indicated Down Syndrome .

His coloring was unhealthy and he inhaled deeply through the oxygen cannula at his nose. But his smile was magnificent.

"Karen, this is my brother, Joey," Ben said. "And this is Miriam."

"The mermaid," Miriam wisecracked around a chewed toothpick, then shook my hand.

I smiled. "I sat upon a promontory and heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath that the rude sea grew civil at her song-"

Miriam yipped. "And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, to hear the sea-maid's music!" She put a hand to her heart. I nodded. She and I were simpatico. She glared at the stunned looks around us. "It's Shakespeare, you hicks. Us mermaids know these things."

Joey Thocco looked up at me with unfettered fascination. "You're a mermaid and a horse tamer?"

I squatted in front of him. "Well, I certainly can't claim to be all that. Hello. I understand from Lily that you're part-owner of this lovely gray mare."

"Yeah! Me and Mac and Lily, and everybody else, we put our money together and bought her! She was gonna be dog food, if we didn't."

"That would have been terrible. She's a wonderful animal."

"She didn't try to bite you, not even once?"

"No, but the day is young."

His eyes rose to Mr. Darcy, who was studying him from a fence post. "Is that your parrot?"

"Something like that. He's a macaw. A blue hyacinth macaw. Mr. Darcy, come say hello to Joey."

Mr. Darcy spread his blue wings and sailed downward. He luTlew how to make an entrance. He landed on Joey Thocco's right forearm. I quickly held out my hand. "It's all right, he won't claw-"

Joey burst into laughter. "I like him!"

Mr. Darcy leaned forward, tilting his head this way and that, peering at his new friend. "Boink."

Joey hooted. "Boink."

"Boink."

"What's he trying to say?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "But he likes you. I can tell."

"BoiZk, Mr. Darcy!"

"Boink."

"Awright, awright," Ben said grimly. "That's enough boinkin' for awhile. We've wasted half the day looking for this mare. And now I'm gonna drive Karen, here, to her motel. Then I'll find out what the garage in Fountain Springs has to say about her car."

"But she hasn't had any lunch, Ben," Lily said. "And we haven't heard her play the harp."

"Yeah, Benji," Joey said. "And I want to talk to Mr. Darcy about boinkin' some more."

Ben frowned. My heart sank. He didn't want to be bothered with me.

"I'm very glad to meet you all," I said quickly, "but I'll let you all go on about your day now. I'll check on the fate of my car, get settled in town, and-"

"She could spend the night in our guest room," Lily said.

"And I could talk to Mr. Darcy some more," Joey added. "Please?"

My heart stopped. Spend the night. I looked up at Ben hopefully.

But he, instead, looked at his brother. "That's what you want, bro?"

"Yes!"

Ben lifted his dark eyes to me. "Does the bird know any words politer thanBoink?"'

"He has an extensive, multi-lingual vocabulary, most of it quite tame but, indeed, some of it is off-color. He also performs sound effects, and he sings. Aside from lewd British comedy songs, his favorite tune is the opening bars from the Star Wars theme."

"Star Wars!" Joey shouted. "That's my favorite movie in the whole world! Benji!"

Ben Thocco tipped his head to me as if touching the brim of an invisible Stetson. Sometimes, partnerships are formed as simply as a song. "Welcome to the Thocco Ranch."

That first night, when I reported to Sedge via cell phone, he said, gently, "My dear, you've accomplished your mission. You've learned more about your birth parents than you ever expected to learn immediately. Is there really a need for a lengthy stay?"

"I want to know a lot more about them, Sedge. And about their lives, here. About this ranch, and Ben Thocco."

"My dear, entire nations have been destroyed by such reckless curiosity."

"Yes, but entire nations have been created by it, too. Let's hope I achieve the latter, not the former."

I lay in the dark atop the covers of a frilly twin bed in a tiny guest room in Mac and Lily's house trailer. Their trailer sat in a small clearing in the woods, a five minute walls from the main ranch house, neighbored by cabins and well-kept trailers belonging to the other hands, except for Possum, who lived in a room at the horse barn.

The bright decor Lily and Mac had chosen for their tiny, spare room seemed to glow in the dark. Daisies. Everywhere. The wallpaper. The bedspread. The pillow shams, the curtains, the rug. Pictures of daisies were framed on the walls. In the trailer's kitchen there were daisy coffee mugs, and in the living room there was a daisy afghan on the couch. Outside the trailer's front door was a happy cacophony of flower beds, bird feeders, and garden ornaments-cheap and colorful whirligigs, wind chimes, `Welcome To Our Home' signs.

All sharing one common theme.

Small, hopeful daisies.

Lily's odd adoration for that simple flower perplexed me. How sweet and innocent and ... sad.

Mr. Darcy, who had been dozing atop the bed's headboard, hopped down and snuggled his head to mine. He made soothing little noises and gnawed at my nose with his beak. His tongue, stubby and dry, like sunbaked rubber, dabbed my skin. I stroked his feathers and wished macaws enjoyed a good hugging.

I had found my birth parents and their protective mentor. He seemed a fine man, albeit brusque and sardonic. Their lives with him appeared stable, productive and content. Thanks to quirky coincidence, I had won the opportunity to be part of their lives.

I had already helped them capture a pair of horse rustlers.

Damned, thievin' varmints.

And I might have found El Diablo.

My heart raced at the possibility. I was a senior at Yale when El Diablo Americano, a bad-guy young rudo in the classic villain-hero melodrama of Mexican wrestling, died in a show-stopping grudge match broadcast live on networks across Mexico, Central and South America.

I cried my eyes out. He could have been redeemed. At least in my view.

If Ben Thocco were El Diablo Americano, finding him here, a full decade after his untimely death, would be a coup of weird fate and destiny and girlish fantasy.

Yes, I felt alone in the strange new land of my beginnings.

And yet strangely at home.

Chapter 6

Ben

Talk about your force of nature. The last time a hurricane crossed over north Florida, we saw it comin' from days away. Summer forest fires? You spot `em miles before they reach your woods. Hell, even a tornado gives folks some warning.

But not Karen.

She took over my kitchen the first morning. That dawn I walked out of Joey's room, where I slept on a recliner to be close by when he needed help with his pills, his oxygen or getting to the bathroom, and there was Karen, runnin' my army like Patton kicki i' ass in Europe. Miriam, Lula and Lily went scurrying in every direction, following Karen's orders.

"We're `organizing a system,"' Lily quoted. "That's what Karen says."

"Stay out of our way, Ben," Miriam warned. "It's dog-eat-dog in here."

Rhubarb hid under the table.

"Coming through," said Lula, hurrying in from the side porch. She carried an old, blue-enamel coffee pot I'd been meaning to throw away because the spout was rusted out and the lid was gone-well, notgone, but nailed over a squirrel hole in the living room door. Now the coffee pot was full of yellow jonquils and a branch off a swamp azalea, covered in bright orange blooms. Lula set it in the middle of the kitchen table.

"Is this an episode of HGTV?" I demanded. "I didn't order no decorator makeover."

"I thought I'd make myselfuseful," Karen said. She straightened from the oven of my ancient gas stove. She held out a muffin pan. The aroma of banana muffins hit me and I forgot about everything else for a second.

"Homemade muffins, from scratch," Miriam informed me, arranging knives and forks around the aging stoneware plates Lily was setting everso-slow on the picnic table. "Karen took your rotten bananas and turned `em into gold."

"I had a good use for those rotten bananas," I said. "I just hadn't thought of it, yet."

"Oh?" Karen asked, arching a red brow. "Raising nematodes? Cultivating a bacterial plantation?"

She looked like an irate human strawberry. But I mean that in a good way. She was pink from the heat and wore a pink towel tucked into her hiking shorts. The towel was only pink because of the time when rust from the water heater got into the washing machine, but never mind. Her t-shirt was some clay-red earth color, and had a Wildlife Federation logo on it. I liked the way the shirt fit. She had some good muffins. "In a wellplanned ecological system, nothing goes to waste," she told me, stacking the muffins on a platter. "Would you like coffee?"

"Only if it don't come with a lecture."

"Agreed." She handed me a steaming mug. "How about frittatas as the main protein dish? You have enough eggs-excellent, fresh, homegrown, free-range eggs-"

"My hens are so happy they live up to your standards."

"-also some serviceable cheddar cheese. Also, making frittatas will give me an opportunity to quickly dispose of a hunk of processed ham product in your main refrigerator. I found some slightly dehydrated tomatoes and peppers in the pantry. They're beginning to resemble one another, but they'll do. For your information, frittatas are a type of-"

"I know what they are."

"What are they?" Lily asked, clutching a crockery plate to the bib of her denim jumper, like she was scared of dropping it. We didn't often use real plates, just paper. I guess our evil, paper-wasting days were over.

"Kind of a fried egg pizza," I explained.

"Pizza for breakfast?"

"Pizza for breakfast?" Joey echoed, wheeling himself through a door and peering at us with bright eyes. "Yea!"

Karen scowled at me. "A more apt description would be-"

I jumped, sloshing coffee. Pecan crumbles fell on my head. I looked up. Karen's macaw sat on top of the freezer, eating nuts. She'd put newspapers under him to catch his dung, I guess, but not his nuts. He saw Joey and gave an ear-piercing whistle. Joey laughed then said in his best Elvis voice, "Thankyaverymuch."

"Thankyaverymuch," the bird said back.

I flicked a pecan at the macaw then wiped coffee off my t-shirt. "Look here, you big peck ... feathered thing, how'd you like to be turned into a pair of feathery, blue suede shoes?"

Joey chortled at my little joke, but nobody else did. I glanced at Karen and she was looking at Lily kind of sad. Lily was setting the last plate on the table with the kind of inch-by-inch care a little kid might use, trying not to screw up.

That's when I noticed how puffy Karen's eyes were. Whatever her history might be-nomad artist, my ass-it must give her plenty to cry about at night. When she caught me looking at her she went back on guard. All crisp business. "Miriam says you supervise the ranch chores before breakfast."

"Yeah, well, if by `supervise,' you mean, `work like a sweaty mule alongside everybody else."'

"Very admirable. Good. You can go about your sweaty, mulish chores, now. Everything's under control, here. Come back with the other hands in approximately forty-five minutes."

"Are you kicking me out of my own kitchen?"

"Yes."

"I'm not leavin' without a muffin."

She handed me one.

Never screw with Patton in pink.

I left.

Kara

Perhaps it was Ben Thocco's mix of gallantry, acerbic humor and courage. Or the kindness and respect with which he treated my birth parents. And yes, maybe it was the primitive, spine-tingling thrill ofwatching him elbow a man in the forehead in defense of my honor. Or all of the above, combined with the fact that he resembled Keanu Reeves with a heavy drawl and cowboy boots. But slightly hunkier, to coin a cheap phrase. A bit rougher around the edges. But in a good way.