The Whole World Over (29 page)

"Actually, it's not like that," said George. "No one's riding
me.
"

Greenie was struggling to find a better analogy when she heard Ray
calling her from below. She led George down a staircase to the kitchen,
the only room that did not smell aggressively of sawdust, leather, and
mothballs. The ranch cook, McNally, had a body as dense as a stump
and nearly as short. He looked as if he'd been sustained for his sixty-some
years on a diet of jerky and buckshot. He was clean-shaven, his
gray hair combed neatly back, but his cheeks blazed with broken veins
and acne scars. Two of his fingernails were black right down to the cuticle.
Greenie had spoken with McNally on the phone, but this was the
first time they'd met.

"Cake Lady!" he exclaimed. "Come to sweeten our lives."

"That's me. Sweetener of lives," she said.

"Ray says you're going to teach me a thing or two about pies."

"I can do that," said Greenie. "Pies are just know-how and practice.
The only secret's a light touch."

McNally squinted. "I look like a light touch to you?"

George, still standing beside her, said, "I want to see the horses now.
Can I please?"

McNally yelled toward the living room, "George! Tall George!"

Small George shrank against Greenie's leg at the force of McNally's
voice. Clearly, this was not a sedate household of intercoms, like the
mansion in Santa Fe. It was a house of men shouting from room to room.

Ray's driver appeared in the doorway. "Yo there, Small, my wish is
your command. Nowhere else I got to drive today. Hey, we forgot!" He
held his hands up and the boy slapped them hard, laughing.

"Five up, five down, five twist around!" the two Georges chanted in
unison, performing the ritual greeting they had devised.

"I want to see the horses, Tall," said Small, and out the door they
went, hand in hand, without a backward glance at Ray's two cooks.

"When does the buyer get here?" Greenie asked McNally.

"Tomorrow lunch. I got that squared away. For tonight, I got ribs, I
got potatoes in foil, I got three-bean salad. You just conjure those pies
and I'll look on. About the fanciest dessert I make in this kitchen is
whiskey poured over coffee ice cream."

"Sounds good to me," said Greenie. She asked McNally if he
stocked lard.

"More flavors than Baskin-Robbins." He pointed to a freezer the size
of a toolshed.

Greenie made enough pastry for five pies. She showed McNally how
to divide it into flattened cakes, wrap them, and put them away to chill.
Using fruit she had brought from the city, they filled two shells with
apricots, two with cherries, and one—for Small—with butterscotch
custard.

At dinner that night, Greenie was the only woman. It was an easy,
inclusive meal. Everyone ate at the wooden table in the kitchen, a table
about as long as a stretch limousine—still only half the length of the
dining table at the mansion. The maid had left, but five cowhands
remained, along with Small George, Tall George, McNally, two security
men, and Ray. The cowhands said grace in Spanish and then talked
mostly among themselves; one security guard (jacket discarded, holster
and gun fully exposed) punched away at a GameBoy; Ray talked intermittently
on a cordless phone; and the Georges colluded like playmates,
their bantering inaudible from where Greenie sat. McNally grilled
Greenie about New York City. When he told her that he subscribed to
Gourmet,
she had such a hard time not laughing that a green bean
nearly lodged itself in the back of her nose. He told her that he read the
restaurant reviews and kept a list of the places in other cities where he'd
like to eat if he were to travel.

After three and a half pies had been demolished, Tall took Small to
see the horses again. "We'll watch 'em do bed check," said Tall. When
McNally insisted on washing the dishes, Greenie caught up with them.

The center aisle of the horse barn was floodlit, its glazed brick floor
shinier than the floor in Ray's Santa Fe kitchen. The order and cleanliness
of the place—the martialed hay bales, the detailed feeding schedule
chalked on a blackboard, the racks of harnessings and silver-pommeled
saddles—took her by surprise. At the far end, she saw Tall lifting Small
so he could stroke the nose of a speckled gray horse.

"Mom!" he called when he saw her, "Ray's favorite horse! Mica. It's
a she. She's the mayor of the barn, like the mayor of New York City."

Tall George smiled at Greenie. "Hey, Small, a mare is what you call a
lady horse. But you're right. She probably is the boss of this place. She
be the queen."

The barn contained twelve stalls, all occupied. The horses looked up
as Greenie passed, yet they were clearly used to strangers. It
was
odd
that people could control these enormous animals, "break" them. She
thought of the circus, of elephants made just as docile. Greenie had ridden
horseback one summer, at a camp, but never since. She knew much
more about controlling a sailboat. Perhaps the sea could be said to have
a mind of its own, but never the boat.

"Pet her!" Small George commanded.

"She's very soft." Greenie smiled at her son, held in the arms of a man
who was not his father, who looked nothing like his father yet with
whom he seemed completely happy.

She looked into a room beside Mica's stall. She saw a locked glass-front
medicine chest holding pharmaceutical vials and boxes; a rack
supporting two long guns; and, stopping her for a moment, a crucifix—
small and dark but gruesomely detailed—hanging alone on a white
wall. One of Ray's men, passing by with a bale of hay, must have seen
her staring. He paused and, assuming she'd focused on the guns, said,
"Do not be alarmed if you hear shots in the night. Coyotes."

"Coyotes would kill a cow?"

"Cows, no. But when we have calves . . . and dogs, goats. Cats—ah,
cats are very tasty." He grinned like a hungry predator.

"Oh," said Greenie, aware how dumb she must have seemed to these
men. The night, she realized when they left the barn, was noisy and
filled with unseen activity of so many kinds.

On the way out, she heard Small George whisper loudly to Tall,
"Look at that bit. That is a horrible kind of bit." She looked back and
saw them standing before a pegboard hung with bridles.

"Hey, Small, I bet that's an antique, up for show," said Tall.

Small shook his head. "Look how it's pointed. That goes on the
tongue of the horse."

Tall swung the boy's arm. "You are some kind of sharp-eyed guy, but
don't let that imagination go nuts." He led Small away from the bridles.

As Greenie tucked George into bed that night, he said, "Actually, I
saw a horse in a blindfold."

"Here?" said Greenie.

"No. At Diego's dad's farm. I think he was being punished."

Greenie did not know how to answer. She kissed George on the forehead.
"Ray's horse is beautiful, don't you think?"

George smiled. "She's like silver."

Greenie climbed into her own bed. When George fell asleep, she
turned out the light. She listened. No coyotes (and no gunshots), but she
heard relentless crickets, the mild complaint of a cow, the jingling of a
dog's tags as it was called into the house long after she'd thought the rest
of the household asleep.

Next morning, McNally took care of breakfast. Ray liked to go for a
long ride at dawn; before setting out, he would eat a platter of steak and
eggs. It was Ray's voice, after his return, that woke Greenie and George.
He stood by the nearest barn, calling orders to his men. Cattle were
being paraded in and out, soaped up, scrubbed, hosed down, brushed.
Some of them protested loudly.

"That doesn't sound like mooing," said George. "That's like
yelling.
Is Ray being mean to the cows?"

"Once upon a time you hated baths, too," said Greenie. "You
should've heard how loud
you
yelled."

An hour later, she and George were standing under the cottonwoods—
the only cool place out of doors—feeding handfuls of grain to the goats,
when a pickup cruised down the drive, a truck larger and more macho
than those she'd seen coming and going, driven by the hired hands. It
pulled up at the house.

As a tall woman got out of the cab, Ray came running from the
barns.

"Claudia, Claudia!" He pronounced her name
Cloudia
and bent to
kiss her hand.

Claudia pulled her hand from his, but she looked pleased. "None of
your chauvinistic nonsense. And none of your Wal-Mart Italian." When
Ray straightened up, Greenie saw that this woman stood an inch or two
taller than he did. They hugged in a slapping, comradely way, a hug
between men.

"Long time, Claudia Rose."

"Ray, only my dad calls me that nowadays. And yes, thank you, I'd
love something cool to drink. Shall we go inside?"

"You are one step ahead of me all the way," Ray said as he followed
her into his own house. "You are."

Once Ray took Claudia out to the barns, Greenie, McNally, and the
two Georges had the house to themselves all afternoon. Outside, it was
over ninety degrees, so Greenie had insisted that George stay in. He
whined in protest, but Tall said he'd teach him a new game. They sat in
the living room, drinking lemonade under a fan, shouting "Spit!" and
slapping cards on a table. Small George squealed with abandon.

The maid had closed all the windows and drawn the upstairs curtains;
the thick walls of the hacienda would hold the cool night air for
a few hours still. Greenie worked in front of the kitchen windows that
faced the barns, where cattle and people had stirred up a pall of sunstruck
dust. Through it, she could make out Claudia and Ray sitting
on a bale of hay in a narrow strip of shade against a wall, eating the
sandwiches McNally had made before Greenie even came downstairs
that morning. The most audible voice was Ray's, typically clamorous,
whether it sounded ornery or joyful.

McNally had no copper bowls, so Greenie rubbed vinegar and salt on
the surface of a deep ceramic basin. Angel food cake required perfect
egg whites, stiff and lofty. After she had finished the beating, she paused
to watch McNally coil two layers of bacon around several filets of beef
and thought of Walter, with whom she now spoke at least twice a
month. She imagined him working here in her place. Walter would like
McNally; vice versa might be a different story. Not that the two would
ever, in a million years, come face-to-face.

McNally looked up when he heard Ray shouting his name. He
opened the window. "Set an extra place!" yelled Ray.

"Roger and out!" McNally yelled back. He slammed the window.
Greenie started laughing.

"What?" said McNally, smiling at her over his shoulder.

"It's just so . . . hilariously male around here. Even this buyer—this
Cloudia
—what's her story?"

"Hoo boy," said McNally. "He don't know it, but that man's met his
high noon. Ray went to school with her big brother. She goes off to get
some fancy-ass eastern degree, works in Washington as a lawyer, marries
another shiny-butt lawyer, gets divorced, finally comes to her senses
and hightails it back out here. She called Ray a couple months back and
said she's got herself a ranch up across by Telluride. And is that woman
a pair-a legs or what!"

"That woman can literally look down on Ray," said Greenie. "He'd
never go for that."

"Who knows what that man would go for! His time's come, that is all
I can say. Nearly all of us, our time comes. Pairing up, same as death.
Difference is, you need to be smart enough to see it." McNally tapped
the spot between his crinkled eyes. He placed the filets in two iron skillets.
Over them he poured most of a bottle of brandy.

"What about your time, McNally? When was your time?"

He turned to her with a look of amusement. "Oh my time? Well, I
ain't so smart. I figure it came and went in a big bright whoosh, like a
wildfire gunnin' through, but likely I was passed out cold and missed it.
Can't even tell you her name, that's how dense I am. But that's why I'm
a ranch cook, not a governor. The dense part." He put the brandy bottle
to his lips to drink the few swallows left in the bottom. He winked at
Greenie. "Hey, Small!" he bellowed, and George came running through
the door, faster than he would have come for Greenie.

As McNally ignited the filets and rolled the skillet to spread the
flame, the front-door knocker sounded. Greenie could hear the vacuum
cleaner on the second floor and knew the maid wouldn't answer, so she
wiped her hands and went to the door herself. Back in the kitchen, she
heard Small George exclaim in amazement.

She opened the door to Other Charlie. They both laughed.

"I'm stalking you," he said, kissing her cheek. He walked past her
and stood in the living room, gazing around. "I've been granted a private
audience to plead my case. Will I get another great meal in the
bargain?"

"You will," said Greenie. "You'd be the extra place we've been
ordered to set."

He followed her to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. She
pointed him toward the barns. Through the window, Greenie watched
him shake hands with Ray. They walked around one of the buildings,
out of sight.

The angel food cake that Ray had requested was to be a birthday
cake. The birthday was Claudia's, Ray told Greenie that afternoon,
clearly pretending that this had just occurred to him. "How 'bout with
some kind of berry sauce?"

"That's her favorite cake?" said Greenie.

"I have no idea what the woman's favorite cake is. Everybody likes
angel food, right?"

"Maybe," said Greenie suggestively.

Ray gave her a testy look. "I got cows to sell here."

"How many candles?" goaded Greenie.

Ray considered this. "Don't know as we have birthday candles on
hand," he said. "But you get McNally to fork over some sparklers from
his personal munitions. And how about pink frosting? The feminine
touch." He walked out the door before she could tell him that Claudia
did not look like a woman who needed or even wanted the feminine
touch.