A Gentle Rain

  "These here," I said, pointing through the hot sunshine to three waist-high rubber barrels painted with bright orange stripes, "are either gonna be Estrela's best friends or just something else to bite. I figure she needs a focus, like I said. It's worth a try just to work off some of her cowchomping, man-hating energy."

  "You call this a sport?" Karen asked from on-high, her hands resting jauntily atop the horn of Estrela's saddle. She indicated the three barrels, set up in a large triangle in the outdoor ring. Joey, Miriam, and everybody else watched from the fence. "Estrela can learn this pattern with her eyes shut."

  "It's called barrel racing," I deadpanned. "It's harder than it looks. Even if it is a sissy sport compared to other rodeo events. Mostly, onlygirls do it." I wasn't in a mood to be diplomatic. Plus, I figured Karen would rise to my challenge.

  "Sissy?" she countered, arching a brow.

  Fish, meet bait.

  "Well, yeah, but only because `sissy' is a girl word."

  `Because the sport is dominated by women riders, you mean? Because the object of the event is simply to beat the clock, and doesn't involve jerking some helpless calf off his feet at the end of a rope or provoking some poor horse or bull to buck convulsively via the use of loin straps and spurs? My research shows that in recent years the top-earning rodeo champion, nationwide, has been a female barrel racer. It's sissy, then, in terms of women out-earning men?"

  "Yep." Okay, so she knew how to Google, 'Barrel racing, women's success at,' on a computer.

  She smiled. "You've thrown down the gauntlet. I accept. Tell me more."

  I pointed. "Three barrels. Set up like so." I signaled with my hands north to south, like I was landing a plane. "Two equal long sides, about ninety feet each." I drew a line west to east. "One short side on the bottom. About seventy feet."

  "In other words," she said, "an isosceles triangle."

  This brought ooohs and ahhs from the hands. "What language is she speaking now?" Lily asked me.

  Karen smiled down at her. "It's-"

  "Greek," I put in. "Isosceles triangle. It's a pattern with two long sides and one short one." I looked at Karen. "Euclid thought it up, way back. when."

  She looked down at me with glowing eyes. Like we were slow dancing and she liked what she found when she accidentally on purpose brushed against my thighs. "Impressive," she said.

  "I watched math week on The History Channel."

  "Tell me more."

  I gestured from her to the gate. "The object is: You ride in at a dead run. Circle the first barrel to the right, the second barrel to the left, then head to the third barrel-top of the triangle-and circle it to the left. It's called a cloverleaf pattern.

  "Then do a flat-out dead run back out ofthe gate. Everything depends on the horse turnin' the barrels as tight as it can, as fast as it can, without knockil' one over. In a show ring, there's an infrared beam at the gate. Reads your time down to hundredth of a second. World-class times are no more than thirteen-to-fifteen seconds.

  "In the big shows a few hundredths are all that separate first place from no place. But that's beside the point. You start out training a horse to run barrels by just walking the pattern. Walk the cloverleaf, work. on the cues. Tuck Estrela's head, keep her muzzle in tight to the barrel, like she's attached to the barrel and it swings her around by her nose; you sit back in the saddle on the approach, lean forward on the away.

  "Shift your weight, shift the horse's center of gravity. Slide and turn and pivot and sprint. Like rehearsing a dance."

  "Indeed," she said primly. Like I was sellin' obvious ice to Eskimos. "We'll walk the pattern a few times."

  "Not a few. A million. Take it slow It takes most horses awhile to get the idea."

  She nudged Estrela forward. I shook my head at how Karen rode. She held the reins in both hands, English style. The mare ambled toward the first barrel, her walk lazy, her gray tail swishing. Her gray ears flicked back and forth faster as she got closer to the barrel, then she pinned her ears to her head and stared at the barrel like it was evil.

  Her tail swished faster, the way a cat's does when it's mad. Karen pulled her nose in and they ambled around the barrel with a good six feet of wasted air between them and the rubber.

  "She'd pay better attention if you'd teach her to neck-rein, westernstyle," I called to Karen. "She may need a bit with some shanks on it. Not that sissy English snaffle-"

  Boom. Estrela flung out a back leg. Made a solid hit. The barrel went flying.

  Karen looked back at it. Then at me. "In competition, would we be disqualified, now?"

  "Unless she was auditionin' to kick field goals for the Atlanta Falcons, yeah. Either disqualified or penalized."

  "Allright, then the pressure's off She'll be fine, now."

  Karen nudged Estrela into a slow lope toward the second barrel. Nice change of leads, real slick and agile, but a wide turn and then, BOOM, Estrela nailed that barrel with a hind kick, too. On to the third barrel, and BOOM, there went the barrel, end over end.

  Karen loped the mare to the gate, slid her to a stop, and frowned. "What do you think?"

  "I think she oughta take up bowlin'."

  You must admit, she has amazing aim and intense purity of purpose."

  "Nobody gets points for brealuii' the rules."

  "Maybe they should."

  "Estrela's just nervous," Lily said. She limped up to the gate, holding out a carrot. Mac followed, pushing Joey in his wheelchair. "Poor baby," Lily crooned to Estrela. "You just don't like things that get in your way." Estrela ate the carrot. In the background, Miriam and the others looked disappointed.

  But Mac nodded proudly. "Our horse is s-special," he told Karen. She's a barrel kicker. They ought to g-give trophies for that. She'd win."

  Karen nodded. "I agree."

  "Is there a Special Olympics for horses?" Joey asked.

  I groaned. I didn't need a needy horse that couldn't even run a simple barrel racing pattern without putting the barrels into orbit. I rubbed the line of tension in my forehead and stomped off to set the barrels back in place.

  My cell phone rang. Okay, it didn't just ring; it played the opening bars of Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird. I jerked the phone to my ear. "Yeah?"

  "Ben, it's Mary Lee. At the bank."

  My loan officer.

  I stopped. "Yeah?"

  "Ben, you're not going to believe this, but some big investment company bought all of Sun Farm's agricultural loans. Including yours. The board couldn't refuse the deal. It was huge." She lowered her voice. "Even Glen Tolbert couldn't out-vote it, that asshole."

  "Mary Lee, are you saying I'm in the clear? My cattle barn's safe? I don't have to sell any of my cows?"

  "Yes. The new mortgage holder offers ninety-day grace periods on late payments!"

  I thanked her, tucked the cell phone in a back pocket, and turned around to find Karen and Miriam watching me. "Good news?" Karen asked.

  I told them, grinning.

  Miriam clutched her mermaid-ringed fingers to her heart. "A miracle," she whispered.

  Karen just smiled at me some more.

  Kara

  It worked. I'd short-circuited Glen through the judicious use of Whittenbrook money and influence. Sedge, it turns out, merely asked a Whittenbrook cousin to have his investment firm buy all of Sun Farm's agricultural loans, as a favor to me. No questions asked. A portfolio of small loans worth millions had traded hands with no more thought than cards in a casual poker game.

  Frightening, how easily Big Money plays games with the lives of so many people. "It's known as `dealing in commercial paper,"' Sedge explained. "Ownning mortgages can be good business."

  "Such a shame the slave trade has been outlawed."

  "I prefer to think of it as `maximizing the bright side of the force."'

  Nepotism is the gilded glue that creates or destroys families. Would my network of relatives still help me with so few inquiries if they knew I was a Whittenbrook in name only? I put the
thought out of my mind. Subversive excitement prickled my skin. I'd discovered a discreet way to help Ben, Lily, Mac, and anyone else who needed a little ready cash.

  In the daisy-decaled mirror of Lily and Mac's guest bath I studied myself intently: Red hair growing wilder and curlier; freckles spreading in all directions, ruddy skin turning browner despite copious daily applications of sunscreen.

  And my eyes, sapphire blue and gleaming. Filled with passion.

  "You," I whispered, pecking at my reflection with a scruffy, unmanicured nail, "finally have a purpose. You're alive."

  Chapter 13

  Kara

  Now that I'd found a way to play Secret Santa, I was alert to every opportunity. Another one came my way sooner than expected.

  "Ssssh," Miriam said loudly. "This is a test. Leave Karen be. Let her think."

  Lily, Mac, Miriam, Lula and I stood beside Joey in his wheelchair, looking up at Fountain Springs' statue of Ponce de Leon. I adored the tiny town, enclosed by forest and time; it had a combination of charm and practical function few villages still manage in America.

  "Ponce de Leon looks like ..." I said slowly, chewing my lower lip and squinting in thought. "He looks like ... oh! I've got it. He looks like Bob Hope."

  Everyone applauded. Joey pounded the arms of his wheelchair. Squatting on his shoulder, Mr. Darcy bobbed his blue head. "Thankyaverymuch," he intoned.

  "Did I pass the test?"

  "Yes," Lily said. She took my hand. "But even if you didn't, we'd still love you."

  I smiled at her then pretended to study the statue some more, blinking back tears. "Bob is quite silly, yet quite handsome."

  "Aw, bullshit," Miriam said jovially. "He's a joke. But he's our joke, and we're glad you get the punch line."

  "Does Senoir Ponce de Leon always look so solemn?"

  She hooted. "Naw. Usually he's got a bra in his hand."

  When I turned to gape at her Lula joined in, laughing. "Everybody takes a poke at him. Every October he holds a football with SCHS scrawled on it, for the Saginaw County High Seminoles, and every summer, somebody plops a baseball cap on his helmet. He gets a different team cap every week, some years. In between seasons he holds purses, bras, baby dolls, plastic cemetery flowers, and political signs. He once campaigned for McCain, Giuliani, Obama, Ralph Nader, and Hillary. All in the same week."

  I laughed. "A non-partisan fountain."

  "Yeah. Well, around here, we're more alike than different, at least when it comes to what we laugh at."

  I thought about that as Mac and I took turns pushing Joey in his wheelchair down a coquina-stone sidewalk. To Mother and Dad, humor had been an intellectual exercise, meant to display the wittiness of language, the droll ambience of circumstance, or the sharp retort of reason over lowbrow whimsy. Have you heard the one about God debating existential theory with Nietzsche? But sometimes, entire worlds of context could be summed up as neatly as a bronze Bob Hope with trickling fingers. Simplicity is complexity. Absurdity is the great unifier.

  My head ached. "Where are we off to, now?"

  "Banana splits at the drugstore," Miriam said over her shoulder. "While we wait to pick up the prescriptions."

  Between Joey's heart medications and the myriad other drugs needed by the ranch's hands, `prescription day' at the pharmacy was a lengthy event.

  "I like bananas," Lily said, tucking her hand in my elbow. "They're yellow, like daisies."

  We sat on little chairs with heart-shaped wire backs around a marble table at the Fountain Springs Pharmacy, digging into banana splits the size of Viking ships. Mr. Darcy waited on the steering wheel of Ben's truck, outside.

  At first I didn't notice the trio of local women glancing back at us from their stools at the soda fountain's main counter. My first awareness came when Miriam leaned over to Lula and whispered, "Look out. Here come the bitches."

  "Hi, Miriam, hi, Lula," the gang's leader said. "Had any offers for `flipper world' yet?"

  "Naw," Miriam said, "But if anybody wants to buy something that smells like fish, we'll sure mention your name."

  "You wait much longer, your old butt'll be whale-sized. Flop, flop, flip, flap. Look at me, I'm a fat old mermaid."

  The trio chortled as they went out the pharmacy door.

  Lily ducked her head. "They're mean."

  I looked at the grim-faced Miriam and Lula. "What was that about?"

  "Aw, nothing."

  "Miriam and Lula own Kissme Woomee World," Lily supplied.

  "Kissme Woomee World?"

  Lula shrugged. "We don't own it; we just own shares with about three-dozen other old mermaids."

  "Old mermaids?"

  "Alumni from Weeki Wachee and other theme parks. Mostly in their sixties and seventies, now. We got this crazy idea that maybe people'd like to visit a Florida mermaid museum, see? Cause being a performil' mermaid back then was special."

  Miriam sighed. "It was like bean' Miss America, only with sequins and fins."

  Lula nodded. "We were so proud. A lot of us small town girls got a chance to meet people and be somebody glamorous. We met astronauts from Cape Canaveral and TV stars from Miami."

  "Jackie Gleason called me a babe," Miriam said.

  "I met Fabian," Lula said. "I got his autograph. And Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Being a performil' mermaid wasn't just a job. It meant you were a kind of celebrity."

  "Like my mother," Joey said solemnly.

  "That's right, hon. Like your wonderful mama."

  I leaned closer. "Tell me more about Kissme Woomee World."

  Miriam shrugged. "A bunch of us got together a few years ago and bought sixty acres of nothing off the main highway to Gainesville. We've managed to build a little theater. Every six months or so we put on a show. That's what the bitches are making fun of A bunch of old mermaids trying to interest folks in something that used to be the cat's meow back when sex was as racy as a James Bond martini and everybody thought girls swinmin' underwater in rubber mermaid tails were real sophisticated."

  I dabbled a spoon in my banana split. "How far is Kissme Woomee World from here?"

  "Oh, twenty miles, I guess. A half-hour or so."

  I stood, rattling the keys of Ben's big pickup truck. "Let's go. I want to see it."

  Miriam frowned. "Why? You like old-fashioned ideas and lost causes?"

  I thought a moment. "As a matter of fact, I do."

  I had seen gorgeous Brazilian women, nearly naked and perched atop stiletto heels, balancing enormous, heavy, feathered topknots on their heads during Brazil's version of Mardi Gras, the infamous Carnivale; I had seen athletic Polynesian women dive off hundred-foot cliffs to seek pearls; I had seen incredibly graceful African women carry more than their weight in water on their shoulders.

  But I had never seen chubby, gray-haired white women in Spandex mermaid tails gyrating to Dolly Parton singing Nine to Five.

  Underwater.

  Accompanied by curious turtles, aggressive largemouth bass, and several small alligators.

  "They're fish angels," Lily whispered in awe, clutching my hand in hers.

  "They're gonna get bit by something," Joey whispered back. Mr. Darcy whistled and shrieked from his vantage point on Joey's shoulder.

  "They're gorgeous and brave beyond all reason," I concluded.

  We stood in what might be called the orchestra pit of a small, subterranean auditorium, fifteen feet below the surface of the crystal-clear waters of Kissme Woomee Springs. The auditorium would seat no more than two hundred people. On the water-bearing side of ten tall, thick, Plexiglas panels supported by thick metal frames, Miriam, Lula, and a woman named Teegee undulated to the song. Each wore a wig of long, flowing, synthetic hair, a spangled bra and matching mermaid tail. Each smiled and held a bubbling oxygen tube in her left hand. Every ten seconds or so, they took a quick sip of oxygen.

  Teegee, who lived in a small house on the Kissme Woomee property, was the youngest at sixty. None was svelte or glamorous, yet all be
came magically alluring in the water. Soft, theatrical lights flickered among the spring's fake plastic coral and real fish.

  Minnows shimmered pink, then gold; a fleeing baby turtle became a sparkling star. When the baby alligators meandered into the performance the lights glinted off their slitted yellow eyes and turned them into gilded, gliding water tigers. The sandy bottom and silver-blue water of Kissme Woomee Springs made an ethereal setting.

  A Florida spring is not a mere pond. It is a bubbling fountainhead at the top of a mysterious and bottomless water vent. Kissme Woomee's waters not only formed the spring, they formed the headwaters of Kissme Woomee Creek, which flowed to the famed Suwannee River, and then to the vast oceans, there to be channeled and evaporated, raised up into clouds, rained back on the earth and drained back into aquifers, to rise again in Kissme Woomee Springs. An infinite cycle, filled with the echoes of soft mermaid music.

  Nine to five, they've got you tivhere they tivant you, There's a better life; you dream about it, don't you?

  The song ended. Miriam, Lula and Teegee disappeared stage left, which was a wooden ladder that deposited them inside a small "backstage" changing room built atop a long, wooden platform that bisected the roof of the submerged auditorium.

  "Let's go," I said. Lily helped me push Joey's wheelchair up a steep ramp between rows of molded plastic stadium seats. We emerged through a pastel archway into the bright afternoon sun. I wheeled Joey along a plank walkway so freshly constructed the boards had not yet weathered gray. We went to the Kissme Woomee gift shop and ticket booth, a square little building of concrete block painted pink, with fake palm fronds covering the roof. A sign near the door said it all:

  FUTURE HOME OF KISSME WOOMEE PERFORMING MERMAID MUSEUM.

  Around us, the Florida forest hummed with mating insects. Heat hung in the air like a mist. Aside from Teegee's small tract house and garage, Kissme Woomee Mermaid World was an oasis of quirky obscurity among the saw palmetto and pine trees. A gravel road trailed through the forest toward the paved route back to Fountain Springs.

  Miriam, Lula and Teegee waited in wet glory on a fake stone bench in the gift shop. Behind them was a gaudy backdrop of palm trees and pirate ships. Around them were postcard racks and shelves of kitschy treasures.