A Gentle Rain (35 page)

Mac and Lily reached us, Lily bouncing in Mac's arms. He lifted her up and her hands fluttered out, patting Estrela's nose, patting Karen's knee. Karen smiled down at her and Mac. "Your mare is a wiruner!"

Mac laughed. "We knew you and her could d-do it!"

Lily put her hands over her heart. "Now we can enter that big contest! And win a million zillion thousand million dollars! Like Ben promised!"

My smile faded. So did Karen's.

What had we done? Be careful what you wish for.

Sometimes, you get it.

But other times, it gets you.

Chapter 20

Ben

Phil wasn't much of a mornin' person. Might be a vampire. That'd explain a lot. Black vampire with a tight scruff of rusty hair and dead eyes. If he had fangs, he hid `em well. He sat in the big leather armchair of his upstairs office at Roadkill starin' at me as if nothing could be stranger than me being there at ten a.m.

Unless it was him being awake before noon.

"I need you to get me into a high-stakes poker game, Phil." I outlined the reasons.

He lit a cigar. "I could loan you the money, instead."

"No. This fifty grand is doomed to go down the drain. I sure as hell don't want to add insult to injury by Navin' to pay it back after it's gone."

"Maybe the mare will win."

"Maybe we can throw a tin can at the moon and call it a spaceship, but I wouldn't bet on it getting there."

"Yet that's exactly what you're doing."

"I gave my word to Joey and everybody else at the ranch. So did Karen. Look, we're takin' this one step at a time. Right now I just need to get my hands on fifty grand for the entry fee. Quick. Tax-free. No questions asked."

He flicked a cigar ash into a crystal dish. "Can you raise ten thousand for the buy-in?"

"I'll find a way."

"All right, I can get you into a game." He took a long drag on the cigar. He was dressed in black pants and a ruby-red smoking jacket with Chinese dragon embroidery. He wore black velvet slippers. Only Phil could pull that look off and still scare people. "But it will depend"-he studied the glowing tip of his cigar-"on Karen's cleavage."

Kara

"I beg your pardon," I said. "What do my breasts have to do with a Texas Hold `em tournament on a private island in the Florida Keys?"

Ben shifted to a hipshot stance, his large, callused hands hooked in his jeans pockets. We conferred on the back porch, where only Grub, Rhubarb and Mr. Darcy could listen. I held a dustpan like a shield. Sweat slid down my face, my legs beneath my shorts, and between my nominated breasts. It was dusting day, and I helped Lily perform that chore. The consequences of Estrela's win had settled in. I didn't feel like discussing my breasts.

"All you gotta do is wear something low-cut and sexy," he grumbled. "Look, I have to dress up, too. It's not just you."

"Oh? Do you have to show your cleavage?"

"Yeah, but the cleavage I bring to the table is a lot lower and hairier." Silence. I felt a ridiculously prim blush on my face. He scowled. "I'm sorry"

Actually, the image was exciting. I feigned annoyance. "We're going to have to share the humiliation of this bizarre poker event. Correct?"

He New out a long breath. "Yeah, well. You got a better suggestion for how to raise fifty grand quick? Look, all you gotta do is act polite, look pretty, and visit with the other women while the men-folk play in the tournament. There'll only be six or seven players. This is a small tournament. You're there to be eye-candy. That's the way the host likes it, and it's his game. So be it."

"This is an insulting, sexist and quite illegal event."

"Aw, it's just a fancy private card game. About as evil as makun' your own beer during Prohibition."

"Are you confident you can play at this level of the game?"

"I can hold my own at Texas Hold `em."

My heart raced. It was time to put the cards on the table. "Ben, I realize you don't like to talk about this, but there's no point in continuing to pretend I don't know about El Diablo."

He grimaced. "Yeah, I figured Miriam couldn't keep the juicy details to herself"

"You don't have to discuss your past. I just want to know this much: El Diablo was a top-notch card shark. Are you?"

"Miriam lu-iows more about him than I thought."

Oops. "Well ... are you?"

"Yeah. I wanted him to look like he wasn't fakir' it. Everything about wrestling and acting is fake except for how hard you work to make it look real. I wasn't much of an actor or a wrestler, but I took the jobs serious. Besides, when you're on tour or makin' a show, there's lots of down time. So I spent a lot of hours playing poker with wrestlers and cameramen. Yeah, I got good at the game."

"Why haven't you played for money here at home? Wouldn't a poker game here and there help pay the bills?"

He shook his head. "Never play when you can't risk losin'. No matter how good you are, there ain't no such thing as a permanent winnin' streak."

"I see. Understandable. Yes."

"Aw right, so you trust me to give this game a try?"

"Yes.15

"It's that simple, huh? I tell you to trust me, and you do?"

c 'Yes."

"You're a strange gal."

"You've earned my trust."

"Aw. Touche."

"French!" I fluttered a hand over my heart. "More, more!"

"Sorry. That's all I got." Awkward silence. We smiled at each other. His smile faded. "So you know about El Diablo." His misery was obvious.

"I'm glad you're an expert card player. Just like him. I'm glad you took El Diablo seriously. True art is dedicated to craftsmanship. You were dedicated."

"Look, I don't want to talk about El Diablo anymore, awright? You mind?"

`Ben, if you'd just listen-"

"Are you up for this poker game, or not?"

I stared at him for several long seconds. He didn't relent. I gave up. "Just tell me what we need to do next. We'll need ten thousand dollars as a buy-in or `ante' or whatever, correct?"

GG 77 Yep.

"You could organize a local game to win that kind of money, couldn't you?"

"Yeah, but I don't want to pick the pockets of every rancher and cowboy in the county. They ain't got much, and I don't want to skin `em. It wouldn't be fair."

"You're that good?"

"Yeah."

"Then we have to think of some other way to get the money. I suppose asking Phil for a loan is out of the question?"

"Yep. I ain't borrowing money without puttin' up collateral I can afford to lose. So there's only one way to get it."

He unbuckled his belt.

My breath caught as I watched the worn, well-oiled leather slide sensuously from his hips and abdomen. He held up the belt so that it's slightly tarnished silver buckle-an emblem of the Seminole tribe's government seal-dangled before me. "This was my Pa's. He won it in a rodeo on the reservation and wore it 'til the day he died. Tomorrow I'm goin' to Fountain Springs and pawn it. Along with everything else around here that ain't bolted down. You in?"

He was willing to risk so much to honor his promise to Joey, Mac, Lily, the others, and to me. I was willing to risk everything I could ever give him, even if he never asked. "I'm in," I said.

"Estrela's our horse, too, and we have to help get the money," Lily explained the next morning, holding out her and Mac's toaster. Behind her, filling the door of Ben's kitchen, Mac carried an armful of other small appliances from their trailer.

Crowding in behind him, the other ranch hands clutched similar offerings. I saw everything from small television sets and Disney figurines to Miriam's diamond stud earrings and Dale's autographed Billy Graham biography. They had also pooled their piggy banks for a grand total, cashmoney-wise, of five-hundred-twenty-two dollars and seventy-six cents. I almost suffered permanent eye impairment helping Cheech count eighthundred and thirty-two pennies from his penny jar.

I squinted at Ben. "To quote one of your illustrious Cracker sayings, `I feel as cross-eyed as a squirrel trying to guard two acorns at once."'

As we sorted the proffered items onto the kitchen table Joey wheeled himself to our side. In his lap was a box of his favorite video games. "I bet SpongeBob SquarePants is worth a lotta lotta money," he announced, his cheeks rosy with excitement. "I can do without it for a little while."

Ben cleared his throat gruffly. "Okay. All for one and one for all. Let's get going."

We stood beside Ben amidst the clutter of Shakey Baker's Pawn mid Gold, located on a back street of Fountain Springs. Mr. Darcy clung to the arm of Joey's wheelchair and stared askance at a stuffed hawk on the pawn shop's plywood wall. When not staring at the hawk, Mr. Darcy, like the rest of us, stared at Shakey.

Shakey Baker was a bearded, three-hundred-pound ex-Marine, originally from New Jersey. Angel tattoos covered the entire length of his beefy arms, both of which were displayed via an Atlanta Falcons football jersey with the sleeves cut out. His right arm ended in a prosthetic hand. An inspired tattoo artist had inked angels on it, too.

"Two-fifty," Shakey grunted, shoving an electric toothbrush from the pre-assessed to the post-assessed section of his scratched linoleum counter.

"Two hundred and fifty?" Roy said hopefully.

"Two bucks and fifty cents," Shakey confirmed.

Roy stared at him. "But it was a birthday present from my wife and-"

"It cost over twenty dollars at Wal-Mart," Dale noted.

Ben patted Roy's shoulder. "Easy, pardner. We'll get your toothbrush back before long." Ben and I traded a look. We hope.

Next, Shakey examined Mac and Lily's portable TV. "Thirty-five dollars." He wrote the amount on the top in grease pencil.

"He wrote on our TV," Lily whispered to Mac.

Mac's mouth flattened. "M-Mister, you ti -wrote on our TV"

"He wrote on their TV, Benji!" Joey exclaimed.

"Cool off, little brother, the TV's not hurt."

I patted Mac's arm then squeezed Lily's hand. "It'll wipe off. I promise."

The crew's level of agitation was only slightly higher than my own. I watched fervently as Shakey finished sorting the pile of treasures and punched the last bit of information into his calculator. "Comes to fivetwo."

Five thousand, two hundred. With our piggy-bank cash that brought the total to a bit over five-seven. We needed ten thousand. Ben exhaled wearily. He arched a thumb toward the pawn shop's steel-grilled front door. "I can bring you another four-wheeler like the one out yonder on the trailer."

Shakey shrugged. "Yeah. So? That'll net you another five Ben Franklins."

"Why are we nettin' Ben Franklin?" Bigfoot asked. "Is that some ki ida fish?"

"Ben Franklin's on the hundred dollar bill," Miriam explained. She glared at Shakey. "If Ben Franklin was a fish, he wouldn't stink like a certain greedy Yankee scum-fish. Ben Franklin wouldn't offer two hundred lousy bucks for my diamond studs. I paid five hundred for those studs. They were marked down from nine fifty on QVC."

Shakey snorted. "Miriam, ifyou got a beef with the way I do business, go tell it to somebody who gives a-"

"Hey," Ben warned.

Shakey pursed his lips, glowered, then shrugged again. "This is a pawn shop, okay? I deal in collateral. In return I loan out a top price of ten cents on the dollar. With interest."

Miriam pointed at me. "Don't you know why we're here? To enter her and Estrela in the Million Dollar Barrel Racing Ride-Off down in Orlando. Haven't you heard about Karen Johnson and Estrela the BarrelRacing Wonder Horse? We need another five-thousand dollars to even have a chance of gettin' the entry fee in the Ride-Off, you one-handed Yankee skinflint."

Shakey stared at me. "That was you, on YouTube?"

I sighed. "Yes. The one and only."

"That ugly little gray mare can sure haul ...

"Hey," Ben growled.

He frowned at Ben. "You shoulda told me why you needed to pawn all this sh... this stuff."

Ben scowled. "I just want a fair deal. Awright?"

"Look, I want to help you out, man, but-"

I held up a hand for silence. "Perhaps this item will be worth considering." I laid a photo on the counter. "This harp is hand-carved of antique cherry wood." I didn't add that the harp had been made by a renowned harp craftsman who created instruments for symphonies around the world. Or that Mother and Dad had given it to me on my twelfth birthday.