Love Mercy Part 2

So Mel started going out there Tuesday and Thursday afternoons after her riding lesson with Benni. She'd show August what she'd learned by exercising their two horses, Duke and Daisy. Polly usually had some sort of little ch.o.r.e that she needed done. She'd pay Mel in cash, pressing the soft, old bills into her hand and telling her with a gentle laugh not to spend it all in one place. Mel had saved every penny they paid her, keeping it in a blue Maxwell House coffee can in her cupboard. A stupid hiding place. A burglar with the IQ of a banana slug would find it in twenty seconds. Right now there was 241 dollars. Mel didn't know what to do with the money. It embarra.s.sed her to take money from Polly. She couldn't imagine spending it.

So Mel saw them two days a week, and Love found an excuse to drop by Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Since Polly and August faithfully attended Rocky's church every Sunday, that only left Sat.u.r.day when someone wasn't checking on them. Love always found some reason to phone on Sat.u.r.days. The plan was working, for now.

Mel worked hard at pretending she wanted to learn ranching, though she couldn't imagine anything she'd less want to do. She was a born and raised city girl, a native Las Vegan. Though she loved the quiet, ordinary pattern of Morro Bay town life, ranching and its never-ending ch.o.r.es didn't appeal to her. She liked doing a job and walking away, preferring someone else shoulder the responsibility of the larger issues. That's what she'd liked about patrol work. She did her ten-hour s.h.i.+ft, wrote her reports, then, along with the patrol car, turned the whole thing over to the next officer. Unlike a lot of cops, advancing into detective work had never tempted her. She had no desire to delve deeper into victims' lives or to take her work home. Get in, take care of business and get out. That's what had been so perfect about being a street cop. No long-term relations.h.i.+ps.

She helped the Johnsons as a favor to Cy and Love, to whom she owed a huge debt for taking her in, though she knew they'd protest that. When she drove into Morro Bay almost three years earlier, she had a desperate agenda that she was sure Cy and Love had eventually guessed, though they never asked her outright about why she came to this town in particular. Their innate kindness and respect for a person's privacy was, she felt sure, what kept them from asking personal questions about her past.

She turned at the long driveway that led to the Ramsey-Ortiz ranch, driving under the wrought-iron archway. In the distance she could see the low, one-story ranch house with the deep front porch. A cheery Christmas flag showing a Nativity scene hung from one of the porch's pillars. When she pulled her truck around the circular driveway and parked in front of the house, Benni's white-haired grandmother, Dove, stepped out on the porch.

"Hey there, missy," she called, as Mel opened her truck door. Her eighty-seven-year-old face was a road map of deep wrinkles, the result of too many unprotected years in the sun. "Before you leave, I have some pumpkin bread for y'all." She made her way slowly down the three porch steps, using her four-p.r.o.nged cane that was painted with bright red, yellow and green stripes, like a psychedelic barber pole. Her long, waist-length braid flicked like a mare's tail.

"Great," Mel said, coming around the truck to accept the older woman's embrace. Though Mel was not a demonstrative person, she learned the first time they met that there was no use trying to dodge Dove's enthusiastic hugs. They were as much as part of her as her Arkansas roots. "I love pumpkin bread."

"USA Today claimed there was a shortage of pumpkins back East this year," Dove said. "Some kind of fungus. Apparently it galloped right past us without stopping, because I have enough pumpkins for ten families."

"Yes, ma'am," Mel said.

"How's things in Morro Bay? You keeping those Rice boys on the straight and narrow?"

"Trying to," Mel said, smiling at Dove, who had bent down to pull some weeds that had dared to stray into her pristine flower beds.

After Cy died thirteen months ago, unable to manage the feed store and help Magnolia with the cafe, Love sold the feed store to Bill Rice, a millionaire farmer down in Santa Maria. He bought the business for his twentysomething grandsons, Brad and Evan. He renamed it B & E Feed, hoping to instill in them some pride of owners.h.i.+p. Bill asked Mel to stay on, take care of the books and work the counter full-time. He liked how she organized and kept track of the store stock. He decreed that the feed deliveries and heavy lifting be done by Brad and Evan, confessing to Mel that he hoped the physical labor would knock some of the wildness out of the boys, who preferred to spend their time surfing, checking out girls and partying.

Though they were both as flaky as bales of timothy hay, Mel liked the young men, calling them Bert and Ernie or the Muppet Brothers right to their faces, which only made them laugh. They were nice enough guys, especially for growing up so privileged. She understood that Bill had tacitly hired her as an expensive babysitter. She and the boys had an agreement. She'd cover for them when they had hangovers, and they'd pay her double time under the table from their generous trust funds. Because of their little deal, which she suspected their indulgent grandpa was all too aware of, she made enough money to meet her simple needs. And Bill made sure she was covered on his company's health insurance plan. It was a fair exchange.

"Benni's out in the corral," Dove said, sticking the handful of weeds into a plastic grocery sack she pulled from her flowered ap.r.o.n pocket. "Maisie's practicing barrels. She had to change her lessons from Wednesdays to Thursdays because she's taking some kind of special math cla.s.s or something. She's real good with numbers, Benni says."

"Maisie?"

Dove c.o.c.ked her head, squinting into the sun. "Maisie Hudson. Guess you two haven't crossed paths. Benni's giving her barrel racing lessons. Her daddy's a deputy sheriff, old friend of the family. He's kind of a smart mouth, but he grows on you. He works cold cases."

"Oh," Mel said, not particularly interested.

Since she'd left the force three years ago, her old life as a cop mostly seemed like a television show she'd watched as a child, familiar in a vague sort of way. Benni's husband, Gabe, a retired police chief who now taught a couple of philosophy and criminal justice cla.s.ses at Cal Poly, seemed to understand that better than anyone. Whenever they met at a barbecue or when he'd come to buy feed, they'd talk about ranching, the weather, the price of cattle, how the Dodgers were doing. Never about their former law enforcement careers.

"Guess I should get out to the barn," Mel said.

"Don't forget that pumpkin bread before you leave," Dove called after her. "Otherwise I'll have to throw it to the pigs."

"You don't have pigs," Mel called back.

"You are one sharp snickerdoodle," Dove replied, giving a loud cackle.

Out in the corral next to the barn, Benni sat up on the top rail with her dusty boots dangling, watching a copper-haired girl in her late teens canter a gray mare around three blue-striped barrels set in a triangular pattern.

"What's up?" Mel said, joining Benni up on the railing.

"Hey," Benni said, turning to look at her. Her long, red blonde hair was pulled back in a braid almost as long as her grandmother's and dangled through the back of a bright green San Celina Farm Supply cap. "Maisie's almost done. She had to change practice days."

"Yeah, Dove told me."

"Good run," Benni called out to the smiling teenage girl, who held up a hand in reply. "Want me to time you?"

The girl nodded and trotted the horse to one end of the corral. When she got the mare calm and situated, she waved at Benni.

"Okay," Benni called. "Go!" She punched the stopwatch b.u.t.ton.

The teenage girl raced around the barrels, hugging her horse's sides with her long, jean-clad legs. It amazed Mel that she stayed in the saddle as the horse flew around the barrels in a cloverleaf pattern. The girl circled the last barrel and raced down the middle of the arena. Benni clicked the stopwatch.

"Twenty-three seconds. Good run!" she called. "You're getting there. Cool off Shoney while Mel and I tack up Redeye." She jumped down off the fence. Mel followed suit.

"So, how's things at the feed store?" Benni asked, her sun-freckled face smiling up at Mel.

Mel smiled back, still a little amazed that she actually looked forward to talking with Benni. The first time they met at one of August and Polly's barbecues, Mel was certain she wouldn't like this woman whose tiny, narrow-hipped body never seemed to stop moving and whose upbeat, talkative personality was the type that would normally set Mel's teeth on edge. But it only took ten minutes for her to discover the kind heart behind Benni's cheery personality and the sharp, often bawdy sense of humor that Mel recognized came from spending so much time around cops and ranchers.

"You know Bert and Ernie," Mel said. "They're a couple of flakes . . . but, as they say, they're my flakes."

"They'll straighten out," Benni said, laughing. "You know Gabe's son, Sam? Gabe and Lydia, Sam's mom, despaired of him at times, but he eventually grew up and became a responsible adult. Though Gabe still teases Sam about where he went wrong since Sam decided to join the fire department."

"I can imagine," Mel said.

They walked into the cool, dim barn where Redeye, the dark red gelding that Mel had been riding for the last few months, stuck his head over his stall door.

"Hey, Red," Mel said, gently rubbing her knuckles over the horse's nose. He blew warm, moist air in reply.

Benni glanced at her watch. "I have to go in and take a roast pan out of the oven for Dove. Her arm's still weak."

"Darn, I meant to ask her how it was feeling," Mel said. Dove had fallen and sprained her shoulder a month ago and was supposed to wear a brace to keep her from using it.

"It's much better," Benni said. "But she ditched the brace despite the doctor's order, and she's not supposed to lift anything heavy. Trying to keep her from doing that is a full-time job. She hates asking for help. I'm trying to just 'accidentally' be there when she needs something lifted or moved."

Mel nodded. "Reminds me of August and Polly."

"Yeah, they're all of a kind. You tack up, and I'll be out shortly."

"No problem."

While she gathered the horse tack, Mel thought about how much time they were all spending trying to help these older people maintain their independence. It felt right to her, like she was part of something bigger and more important than herself.

She opened the stable door, fitted the halter around Redeye's ma.s.sive head and walked him outside to tie him to the railing. While she brushed his slick, warm coat with long, regular strokes, the scent of horse and hay and the sharp, metallic odor of rich soil floated around her, reminding her of Cy.

"I'm worried," he'd said the last time she saw him, only hours before he died. Love had gone into San Celina for a long-overdue mammogram appointment. Cy insisted she go, though she complained it could wait. Mel suspected that he'd done so because he wanted to talk.

"Why?" She'd been reading to him from Shane, one of his favorite novels. She hugged the musty-scented book to her chest, saving their place.

"I didn't think I'd die this young. I'm afraid Love won't have enough to live on. The women in her family are long livers." He managed a shadow of his old grin. "I mean, they live long, not that their livers are-" He started coughing, the fluid in his lungs thick and wet-sounding. It seemed cruel and unfair to Mel that Cy, who had never smoked, would contract lung cancer.

Mel patted him gently on the back until the coughing subsided. She held back her tears with a supreme physical effort, knowing they would distress Cy.

"I'll take care of her," she promised. "Don't worry."

He nodded, unable to speak. His eyes, deep in their sockets, were filled with trust. "She'll fight you," he was finally able to whisper. "You know how independent she is. And you know she's annoyed at me for not trying harder, not going for more chemo." His eyes grew watery. "I'm just so tired . . ."

"No," Mel said. "She's not mad at you. She's . . . we're . . . we just don't want . . ." She choked, then coughed, trying to dislodge the rock that felt like it was cutting off her airway. Don't die, she wanted to cry.

"Chicky, she's gonna have her some tough times. You try to help her, okay? No matter how hard she tries to push you away."

"I will, boss." Chicky was the nickname he'd given her the first day they met. Whenever he called her that, a tiny flower of warmth bloomed inside her chest. "I promise. I . . ." She stuttered, not knowing how to a.s.sure him any further that she'd look after Love. "I promise." She would have done anything for this man.

It was almost three years ago now, the first week of January, that she drove into Morro Bay, more hopeless than she'd ever felt in her life. She'd quit the force on a Friday morning, spent the day aimlessly driving around Las Vegas, out to Hoover Dam, up and down the streets of Henderson, up to Mt. Charleston, where she drank hot rum toddies and watched skiers in their bright, geometric-print snow jackets and silly knit hats tumble down the powdery runs.

She ended up that night at a stale-smelling casino bar off the Strip. It seemed vaguely familiar to her, and she remembered after her second whiskey that when she was a rookie, she and her partner, an old-timer named Buzz, busted up a fight there between a black guy and a white guy over a bleach-haired c.o.c.ktail waitress. Around ten p.m. she realized no amount of whiskey would wash away the scene with Sean that kept replaying in her head, a b.l.o.o.d.y nightmare loop that wouldn't stop-his outstretched hand, face the color of concrete, the sound of the music box knocked over by his fall, the song, "The Entertainer," a cruel joke.

She stumbled out of the casino and found her small white pickup. She started driving, flash-bang images of his empty eyes flitting through her head like a thousand wild bats. Her eyes and head throbbed with a pain that made her pull over in the middle of the desert and puke until electric stars dotted her vision.

When she stopped for coffee in a brightly lit McDonald's outside of Barstow, she remembered Morro Bay. She'd gone there once with her handsome, black-haired father when she was ten years old. It was February, and they stayed for two days and nights in a motel called the Castoff Inn. They ate clam chowder, fried shrimp and stacks of hot, syrupy b.u.t.termilk pancakes. He bought her a huge bag of salt water taffy and a red sweats.h.i.+rt printed with sea lions. They watched seals from a boat ride where, as always, he charmed the other pa.s.sengers with his winning smile and seemingly impossible card tricks.

In her memories Morro Bay was a magical place, where her father said he'd one day buy them a little house with seash.e.l.l wind chimes, and they'd live forever next to the ocean. He'd win custody of her, he told her. Her mother didn't really want her, didn't she know that? He put into words what she'd always suspected, that her mother didn't love her but loved the child support. But that didn't matter, because Mel and her dad were going to leave Las Vegas and live in Morro Bay. He would buy her a dog. A big, s.h.a.ggy one named Ralph or Henry who would follow her everywhere and save her life if she fell into the ocean just like in the movies.

On the third day, they drove back to Las Vegas, and he dropped her off in front of the pink apartment where she lived with her mother, two blocks from downtown. It was late, and Mom was out as usual, probably dating the man who would eventually become her second of five husbands.

"Au revoir, Melina Jane LeBlanc," her father said, flas.h.i.+ng his devastating smile. He pulled a s.h.i.+ny silver dollar from behind her ear, bowed and presented it to her with a flourish. Las Vegas's only Cajun magician was how he billed himself. "Be a good fille for your old papa." He blew her a kiss and drove away. She never saw Varise Alphonse LeBlanc again.

"Best get over it," her mother said when Mel moped around the phone for weeks, waiting for his call. "He's a magician, little girl. Disappearing is what he does best."

Her vague plan the morning after she quit the force and drove to Morro Bay was to go to the beach near Morro Rock, hopefully deserted that early, and use her .45 one last time. She'd make sure she was close enough to the water that the tide would take her body out to sea, where it would be picked clean by crabs. Even as she mentally planned this on the dark eight-hour drive across Nevada and California toward the ocean, she knew it was a fantasy. Bodies left for any amount of time in a lake or an ocean weren't clean white bones. They were bloated and smelled like rotten fish mixed in a cesspool and were gnawed at and partially consumed by any number of hungry life-forms. But it wouldn't matter, because she would no longer inhabit that body.

It all changed because of a chicken, a Silver Spangled Hamburg, she would later discover. She drove into town when the sun was still a rosy whisper on the horizon. She carefully maneuvered the foggy back streets, trying to find the beach, while her stomach twisted and heaved with the mixture of coffee and alcohol.

Out of the misty gray fog, what looked like a polka-dotted chicken with blue gray legs flew up on her truck's damp hood and performed a clicky-clack, cartoon tap dance. Mel slammed on her brakes. The bird slid off, hit the ground and started running. Another chicken darted in front of the truck. It squawked so loud Mel could hear the agitated sound inside the cab. Another followed, its mouth open in a comical silent chicken scream.

Following them, cursing to beat the band, came a man, six two or three, about two hundred pounds. He was big-chested, had a bushy head of unruly chestnut hair and a full beard. He held up the flat of his hand to Mel, even though she was already stopped, and ran in front of her truck, slapping his wide palm on the right front fender.

"Need some help here!" he called.

Instinctively, she pulled the emergency brake, grabbed her keys and opened the door. It was her duty as a police officer to render a.s.sistance, even though she'd officially become a civilian as of noon the day before. She realized in that moment that turning off that part of her wasn't just a matter of saying, "I quit."

Despite the alcohol still in her system, Mel finally caught one of the escaped chickens. She held it under her arm like a football, a flapping, screeching, pecking football.

"What do I do with it?" she yelled to the man who'd managed to capture two and was holding a flapping bird in each of his hands.

"Pen's inside!" He nodded toward the little red tongue-and-groove feed store that she hadn't even noticed was there.

Inside, she managed to drop the hysterical chicken into the pen, whose open gate the man closed and latched. For the next hour she helped the man, who introduced himself as Cy, and his teenage employee, Josh, chase chickens. They were joined by a few locals, retired farmers out for their early morning const.i.tutionals and familiar with the unpredictable ways of poultry. By eight a.m., two hours after Mel's truck had been attacked by the Silver Spangled Hamburg, the frantic fowl were all captured.

The chicken posse was enjoying hot coffee and homemade donuts brought over by one of the neighbors when a bleary-eyed newspaper reporter from the Morro Bay Post-Gazette walked up and said someone had called him about a breaking news story on Harbor Street. The story, complete with color photograph, was the next day's front-page news. The caption read, "Harbor Hens Run Amok." The photo showed Cy, Mel and Josh, each holding a chicken, standing in front of the feed store. Love had been in Kentucky visiting her cousin Tally and never got over the fact that she missed the whole incredible sight.

"Say, Chicky," Cy had said when Mel downed her third chocolate-iced French donut, the best food she'd tasted in months. "You're quite the poultry wrangler. You looking for a job?"

Mel put down the wood-handled brush, remembering that moment like it was yesterday. She scratched Redeye on the spot near his withers that always made his eyes roll with pleasure. She never had a pet growing up, so she wasn't naturally comfortable with animals. In the last few months, as she'd taken the baby steps in learning to ride, Redeye's easygoing personality had wormed its way into her heart. She looked forward to the old horse's nuzzling, amazed that an animal this large and capable of inflicting hurt on a human being could be so gentle. She'd slowly grown to love Redeye, the same way she'd grown to love Morro Bay, August and Polly, the feed store and the b.u.t.tercream, Love and Cy.

Yes, that moment with Cy almost three years ago was imprinted on her heart, like an orphaned gosling attaching to the first breathing thing it laid eyes on. That question whose answer would forever change her life. The answer that would save her life.

"You looking for a job?" His face had been hopeful.

She remembered taking a few seconds to contemplate what he asked. Then she took a long drag of that strong, hot coffee and replied, to her utter surprise, "Actually, I think I am."

FOUR.

Rett Brother Dwaine's trucker friends took Rett the rest of the way to Morro Bay. Though she would never admit to anyone that she was scared, it was a big relief that she didn't actually have to hitchhike across the country.

Jim, a truck driver from Spokane who had three daughters of his own, dropped her off at a McDonald's in Santa Maria, about an hour or so from Morro Bay. He made a couple of quick cell phone calls and found another of Brother Dwaine's friends who happened to be in Santa Maria visiting someone in the hospital. Rocky Sanchez agreed to drive her to Morro Bay, where he also lived. Though Rett's trust in G.o.d's people had gotten a little shaky in the last few years-the small-town county fair and gospel circuit could do that to a person-she had to admit that Brother Dwaine and his friends seemed pretty cool.

Rocky Sanchez told her he was a minister right off, so she gave him points for not trying to fake her out. He could have, because he sure didn't look like any preacher she'd ever met. In the churches where she and her sisters had regularly sung before the the Son Sisters fell apart, thanks to her freakazoid older sister, Patsy, the ministers tended to wear baggy gray or navy blue suits with lapel pins of little gold crosses or American flags. Rocky had a shaved head, a tattoo on his right forearm of a bleeding red heart surrounding a greenish black crown of thorns, and a gooselike laugh that reminded Rett of Brother Dwaine's truck horn. It made her smile, something her mom always complained she didn't do enough.

On the drive to Morro Bay in an old Chevy pickup sun-faded to a pale pink, he talked nonstop, which she kind of liked, because it meant she only had to nod her head. She found out he was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where he once sold drugs and served time in prison for various drug-related crimes. In prison, he found Jesus after seeing him in a dream and used the time inside to get his bachelor's degree in pastoral care. He also worked in the prison barbershop. Two weeks after he got out, he met his wife, Magnolia Rosalina Fabrizio, at a casino in Las Vegas.

"I was pa.s.sing out tracts at the old Aladdin," he said. "Magnolia was the freebie headliner in the bar that night. Man, she could sing the hair off a dead man's chest." His laugh filled the truck's warm cab. He swatted at the wooden cross hanging from the rearview mirror. "I fell for her like a lodge pine to a chain saw. Asked her out that night. We ate pancakes and sausage at Denny's on the Strip. Been together ever since." He smiled to himself, keeping his eyes on the road. "Thirty-one incredible years. We have two girls. Jade is twenty-nine, and Cheyenne is thirty." Rocky looked over at Rett; his dark brown skin seemed to glow when he spoke of his wife. "She doesn't sing in bars anymore, except on the third Wednesday of the month at the Rowdy Pelican saloon."

"Why there?" Rett asked.

"For four hours, from six to ten p.m., they agree not to serve liquor. Then she sings all the songs that made me want to marry her the first moment I heard her. She won't sing anymore while people are drinking, and her fans love her enough to honor her beliefs. That's her picture there." He gestured at a photo paper clipped to Rett's sunshade. It showed a woman with curly, dark hair and a gleaming smile holding a red pancake spatula across her heart. Somehow the photograph made her look like she had a halo, which Rett thought looked kind of cool.

"Her best friend took that photo," he said. "Really caught her personality."

"Oh," Rett said.

True to his profession, he did try to find out if she was in any kind of physical or spiritual trouble. But at least he wasn't sneaky. He just flat-out asked if she needed any advice, then left her alone when she made it clear she was fine and didn't want to discuss why she was coming to Morro Bay.

"Say," he said, glancing at her banjo case. "Do you know 'On the Rock Where Moses Stood?' "

"Sure." His request impressed her. The old guy really knew his bluegra.s.s gospel. Normally when people saw a banjo, they always asked her to play "Dueling Banjos," like that was the be all and end all of banjo music. "Can't play it alone," she always lied. People were so lame sometimes.

She pulled out Dale's . . . her . . . banjo and started tuning it by ear.

"Beautiful instrument," Rocky said, glancing over.

"It's a 1933 prewar Gibson Granada," she said, pretending it was actually hers. "Who knows how many people have played it? It has all its original parts. And the rim has never been cut."

"I don't know what all that means, but I do know old fiddles often play the sweetest," Rocky said, smiling.