Fistful of Rain, page 6
Later on I lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling. I was consumed and humbled by the complete and utter sense of normalcy and peace that lived inside that room, and simultaneously suffused with guilt at the solitary ugliness I brought there and into my sleep most nights. My breathing began to race, and my gut felt as though I had swallowed a hot stone. I rolled over on my side, my back toward my wife, and my eyes began to water. I felt Jesse’s body shift beneath the covers and the brush of her soft fingers on my neck.
“You’re burning up,” she whispered.
I don’t believe she had any idea how much truth was contained within the simplicity of her statement.
CHAPTER NINE
“You’re out of bed early,” I said to Cricket when I stepped into the kitchen the next morning. She was standing over a cookpot, her forehead wrinkled in concentration as she gently stirred its contents with a long-handled wooden spoon.
“Paramount’s shooting a movie up this way. Mom’s got me scouting locations for them.”
“Another western?”
“I doubt it,” she said without looking up from her work. “Cowboy movies are on the way out.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t take it personally, Dad. Times change.”
“That’s what I’ve been hearing,” I said.
My wife and I had met shortly after my return from Korea twenty-some-odd years ago. I had taken a job as a wrangler for the same Hollywood studio where Jesse was working as a location scout. Soon after we married and moved to Oregon, she formed her own company, and continued to operate as an independent consultant to the studios. As Cricket neared her college graduation date, she had begun to display greater interest in her mother’s occupation, and now worked for Jesse whenever the opportunity arose.
“Is your mom going with you?” I asked.
“She’s letting me do this one on my own.”
“Big step for you,” I said. I took a porcelain mug from the cupboard and waited for the coffee to percolate. “What in the hell is that smell?”
“Oatmeal.”
I leaned over and sniffed at the steam cloud that rose from Cricket’s pan.
“Did you scrape that stuff out of the barn?”
“I got it from the health food store.” Her eyes flickered sideways at me. “I made extra, want some?”
“Thanks, but no. You can offer my share to the chickens, but I doubt they’d eat it.”
She ladled her breakfast into a bowl and drizzled honey over the raisins and walnuts she sprinkled on top. I took a seat at the table with her while she ate.
“Have you ever had dealings with the kids who live out on the commune?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said, shrugging as she spooned another mouthful from her bowl. “They run the sandwich shop and health food place where I bought this oatmeal though. I see them in there all the time.”
“What do you make of them?”
She put down her spoon and cocked her head as she looked at me.
“Harmless, I guess,” she said. “Kind of lost. Trying to find themselves.”
“Find themselves,” I repeated.
“That’s not something your generation ever did, is it?”
I couldn’t be sure from her tone whether or not she was mocking me.
“I suppose we thought we already knew where we were,” I said.
“Did you?”
I studied my daughter in the pallid light that shone in through the window. She had Jesse’s fine features and physical stature, but the way she employed her stiff-necked resolve was all me. It was increasingly difficult for me to reconcile this beautiful, strong-willed young woman with the little girl I had taught to ride horses, and how to tie the laces on her shoes.
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
“I did battle in a foreign war,” I said. “I lost my grandfather and both my parents within a year of my return. This ranch got handed down to me lock, stock, and barrel, but I never felt more alone and scared than when I found out I was going to be a father.”
“You weren’t ready?”
“Nobody’s ever ready,” I said. “But when you were born, it was the best day of my life. And you’ve proven me right every day since.”
My chair grazed the floorboards as I pushed myself back from the table. I stood and kissed Cricket on the forehead before I headed out the screen door.
Caleb Wheeler was hunched over his desk in the ranch office, studying a bound ledger where the breeding lines of our bulls and cattle had been meticulously recorded for the last eighty-plus years. He didn’t look up when I pulled the door closed behind me.
“Calf weights are up,” he said.
“That’s good.”
“Yes, it is. But spot prices are down.”
“Not much we can do about that.”
He looked up at me and ran his fingers over his mustache.
“No, there ain’t,” he agreed. “This economy don’t make too much sense. A-rabs are drowning in oil, but we spent the last year waiting in line for it. I remember when bread cost a nickel for a loaf.”
“How’d the colt do yesterday?” I asked, steering away from an old source of Caleb’s complaints.
“Damn fine, if I do say so myself. So gentle you could snub him to a hairpin.”
“S’pose he’s ready for the remuda?”
“Gotta start him out sometime.”
Through the pebbled jalousies, I could see the vague shape of a horse and rider coming up the dirt track that ran between the Diamond D and Snoose Corcoran’s place. I glanced at my watch and saw that it read 7:10. Caleb followed me out and we waited for Snoose’s nephew to rein to a stop outside the crowding pen.
“Swing down offa that cat-backed nag,” Caleb said. “And step over here.”
The kid slouched before both Caleb and me, not knowing whom to look at, or what to do with his hands. He wore the same sullen expression he had shown me at my dining table.
“You going to announce yourself, or do I have to do it?” I asked.
“Tommy Jenkins,” he answered. “But people call me TJ.”
Caleb took a step forward, intentionally crowding the kid’s space.
“Let’s get a couple things clear, straight out of the chute,” Caleb said. “First one is, I ain’t ‘people,’ I’m the goddamned range boss around here. Second, a cowboy gets a nickname as a sign of respect and acceptance, and both of those things is earned. I’ll call you ‘Tom,’ or whatever the hell comes to mind, and you’ll call me ‘Mr. Wheeler,’ or ‘Boss,’ either one suits me fine.”
Tom Jenkins’s face reddened and he shoved his hands into his pants pockets.
“You own a timepiece?” Caleb said.
The kid looked blankly into our faces for a few seconds before he said, “Yeah.”
“Does yours say ten after seven like mine does?”
“I guess so.”
“Let’s be clear about something else while we’re at it. If you’re not early, you’re late. Understand?”
“Makes sense,” Jenkins said.
“Are you razzing me, son?”
“I ain’t your son.”
Caleb squinted and pulled the brim of his hat low over his eyes.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “I wasn’t making no claim. Let’s start off by having you empty out your war bag and let’s see what kind of equipment your uncle sent you over here with.”
I shot a quick grin at Caleb while the kid untied his pack from the back of his saddle. He lugged it back in our direction and shook the contents onto the ground. Caleb sorted through it like it was dirty laundry, making grim faces as he poked at various pieces of tack with his boot.
“I’m going to advance you some wages so you can pick up some proper gear. Get yourself a decent pair of spurs with Texas rowels and a goose neck. I’m surprised the ones you got on haven’t gutted that horse you’re riding. Then pick you up some boots while you’re at it. You couldn’t strike a match without burning your feet on them you got on there.”
Caleb took up the boy’s catch rope and tossed it at him.
“That critter you’re riding is pet food on the hoof,” he said. “I’m going to loan you a new colt from the remuda that I trained up myself. He’s young, like you are, but he’s saddle broke. We’ll wait while you swap out your seat, then I want you to shake out a loop and take the pins out from one of those cows in the pen. You got all that?”
“Yeah.”
“’Scuse me? I don’t think I heard what you just said.”
“Yes, Boss.”
I watched in silence while the kid saddled up and rode in through the gate. Caleb shut it behind him and we both stood at the rail as Tom Jenkins cut a young cow from the small group that had clustered itself at the far end of the corral. The cow started off at a slow trot as Jenkins rode up behind it and threw the loop over its head. He dallied the string on the horn and backed the horse up to draw it tight. When he did, the young colt he was riding began to crowhop and spin, and dropped Tom Jenkins into the dirt.
“Looks like your horse decided to come un-broke,” I said to my foreman.
Caleb shook his head and muttered a string of profanities under his breath.
PART THREE
BROKEN ARROW
CHAPTER TEN
MILA KINSLOW
(Excerpted from interview #MC1803/D)
Sweet Pete had a beater of a car and a little bread he’d set aside from playing with the band, so we took our time driving up the coast. We celebrated my eighteenth birthday at a seafood restaurant outside of Brookings, Oregon, and took a walk after dinner by the bay. We watched seagulls fuss over fish scraps that had been washed from the boat decks, and the otters and seals as they played inside the breakwater, the whole place smelling like decaying seaweed and old fish.
I knew that Pete had a thing for me that went all the way back to when we’d first met at the Whisky. But, like I told you before, he was always a gentleman, and set his feelings aside the whole time I was with Jack McCall.
Pete and I made love for the first time that night, on a squeaky spring mattress in a motel room with a long view down the coastline. Afterward we stood outside on the balcony in the cool wind, lit up a J, and watched the lights of the night fishermen move along the horizon. Earlier that day, I had picked up an inexpensive souvenir from one of the tourist shops we’d visited. It was a medal with the image of Saint Christopher sealed beneath a layer of blue enamel, hanging from a chain just like the pull-cord on a bedside lamp. That night on the balcony, after we’d made love, I slipped it from around my neck and gave it to Sweet Pete.
That drive was so peaceful I don’t think either one of us wanted it to come to an end, but it did, and two days later we finally located the tiny turnoff that led off the paved road to the Rainbow Ranch. At first we thought we’d taken a wrong turn. Branches of wild berry bushes scratched against both sides of the car as we drove through the tall timber, but the road was so narrow we couldn’t turn around even if we wanted to. It seemed like it took half an hour to break into the open, and get our first peek at the place.
I don’t think that either of us really knew what to expect, and I admit to being a little bit freaked out as we drove past the gates. But the first person to greet us was a sweet little slip of a thing with big doe eyes and chestnut-colored hair that the sun had turned to gold down at the ends. The minute she spoke I could tell she was a Southern girl like me, except she had a Coppertone tan and the healthy orthodontics of someone whose daddy had money. She told us she’d been there six months. Her name had been CeCe—short for Celeste—when she first arrived, but the Deva had rechristened her “Aurora.” Pete and me had no idea what a Deva was, but I knew we would figure it out.
The air smelled like pine trees and reminded me of the hill country back home, and I felt a stab of sadness in my stomach. I didn’t have the time to think about it too long, though, because Aurora took hold of Sweet Pete and me just then, and practically skipped up the stairs to the house behind where we had parked.
She tugged us inside and introduced us to this burly guy with the longest, blackest hair I had ever seen on a man, and a beard that crawled all the way up past his cheekbones, almost to his eyes. He stared at us and didn’t speak for so long that I thought something was wrong with him, but then he reached out and took one of my hands inside both of his and he smiled like he’d been expecting us all along.
Both me and Pete took to the guy right away, but you could tell there was something about him that he held back for himself, like a man who was hiding, but hiding right out in the open—a combination of a big friendly bear and a mountain man who had just wandered out of the wild. I don’t know, cause it’s hard to explain, but one part of you wanted to give yourself over to him, while another part wanted to run.
There was a circle of big army surplus tents where everybody crashed. There were probably nine or ten of them scattered around, and you just found a place inside one where you felt good and made up a soft mat on the floor for yourself. Outside, in the center of the tent village, was a huge fire pit that was encircled by stones. At night after supper, everyone gathered around it and sang songs, or smoked weed, and the Deva would assign chores for the following day.
The first few nights were strange, and I had a hard time falling asleep. I felt out of place, lonely, and homesick for Sandi and our friends in LA. Sweet Pete would hold me close to him, but I could not accustom myself to the sounds and the smells of lovemaking and bodily functions inside a tent we shared with so many strangers. I was embarrassed and conflicted, kind of mad at myself for the way that I felt. I had wanted to come here because I craved something that seemed like a family, which was weird because when I’d actually had one, I didn’t think I had wanted or needed it at all. But, by the end of the first cycle—we did not use conventional calendars at Rainbow Ranch, we marked time by the phases of the moon—I felt like I finally fit in somewhere.
There was a ceremony of sorts that marked the occasion, at the campfire, where Sweet Pete and I were officially welcomed into the community. Nobody called it a “commune”; it was a “community,” because it’s not like we sat around talking about Chairman Mao or anything. It was about sharing, and living, and love. You contributed what you had and what you were good at, and shared in the fruits of what others did real well. Sweet Pete gave up his car for the use of the community, and I gave up most of the clothes I had packed inside the suitcase I’d carried with me since I split Tennessee. I even handed over that beat-up old American Tourister too.
As Deva says, “Who owns the daisy? Who owns the thistle?”
Thing is, we all felt like we were part of some beautiful outdoor palace, where all of us were royalty, but there was not a crown in sight.
I made friends with the girls I did chores with; the men and the women were separated for these. The men hunted for game or butchered the livestock, worked in the woods, or at building or repairing whatever was broken. We had a huge grove of old pines that they sawed down by hand, then cut up the logs for firewood with gas-fueled log splitters. There were a couple of guys who were really good with mechanical things who worked inside a big metal building on the far side of the forest where the generators and cars and motorcycles were stored. They didn’t hang out with the rest of us too much, which was okay, cause both of them gave me the creeps, and I didn’t want them even thinking about putting their hands on me.
The women tended the fruit trees and vegetable gardens, operated the record store and the sandwich shop in town, and took care of all the food preparation for the whole Rainbow Ranch community. Meal times were called by the ringing of an iron bell from the terrace of Deva Ravi’s house. We took turns doing the cooking or cleaning up afterward, and there was always someone playing music of some kind. Those were the times I liked best because it gave us the chance to get to know one another, and to talk about where we were on our individual paths. Often the conversations would drift to the messages that Deva would share with us about the mystical threads of the Universal Mind.
Some of the other girls at the ranch had been runaways, angry at their parents, and angry at the world. They talked about parochial schools, having to dress exactly like everyone else, and being hovered over and hounded by gray-faced women wearing long, scary, black outfits. Their stories sounded sad to me, and I was grateful that we didn’t have those kinds of schools where I came from. Of course, we also talked about sex.
It wasn’t the feminist woman, hear-me-roar kind of thing that was popular at the time. We loved being female and being appreciated for what we were. It was empowering to have control over what we all knew men wanted. It’s primal, you know? You can’t pass rules or laws to make that go away. It wasn’t about bra burning or marching or politics, either, it was all about pure freedom for us. The whole women’s lib deal just seemed like some other old ladies’ club. If you wanted to stay home and cook and do dishes and raise kids, that was cool. I can dig that. We figured if that’s what you want to do, then do it. Bliss out on your own trip. It was impossible to imagine doing something you didn’t want to do. But the whole sex thing is a natural deal. I mean, it would be a total drag to eat the same food for every meal, right?
One afternoon, I was called up to the main house for an aura check with Deva Ravi. It was the most beautiful afternoon of my life.
I had seen the effects that hard drugs had on people, had seen it up close with Jack McCall. It had never been my bag, so I stuck with pot, or maybe a hit of acid every once in a while. Truth is, I never dug acid too much; I’ve got strange enough thoughts in my head without adding chemicals, and I didn’t need spiders or rats crawling under my skin, or to see someone’s face melting off their skull.
