Stars Always Shine (16 page)

A
nd it was a Dios that Mitch, Place, and Salvador gave thanks, each in his or her own way. As November approached, the Indian summer offered a warm, temperate climate for the ranch work that remained before the rains limited the scope of outside activity.

Place watched with amazement as the forty tons of hay were unloaded from the two-trailered truck and stacked neatly in the hay barn with a forklift suited specifically to grab and move many bales of hay at one time. The barn stood stuffed with hay, and the last few tons remained on the truck.

“Well, where are you going to want the rest of this?” The forklift driver asked as he sat looking down at Place. “You have almost ten ton here yet.”

“Just offload it right outside the entrance to the barn here,” Mitch pointed, answering the question that was not directed at her. “We’ll have to shift some things around to make room for it.”

“You have about as much hay as I deliver to the fairgrounds when the county fair is in town,” the driver said. “The only thing is, I don’t see too many hay-eating animals around this spread. You all must be extreme vegetarians!”

Mitch shrugged her shoulders at the driver, not offering an explanation and looking, as Place and Salvador did, at the hay stacked high in the barn. There was a space from the top of the towering hay to the roof of the barn that could accommodate individual bales, but getting those extra bales up to the top would be difficult. Salvador, reading Mitch’s face, explained to Place that with a ladder and teamwork, they could squeeze the remaining hay all the way to the rafters of the barn.

Place interpreted to Mitch and added his own observations in the process. “Why can’t we just put the rest of these bales in the stall barn? There aren’t any animals in there, anyway.”

“Because,” Mitch responded, “Jacqueline gave specific orders not to put any hay in that barn. She has other plans for that space. Plus, I don’t trust them. They could show up any day just to check on us.”

Salvador leaned the tall ladder against the piled hay. He tested the ladder for stability and told Place to climb to the top of the amassed hay. He handed two hay hooks to Place before he ascended and by the time Place was situated high under the roof of the barn, Salvador was slowly making his way up the ladder with a bale perched on his shoulder. He stood sideways on the ladder as he balanced the awkward bale and took careful, calculated steps, leaning his body as close to the ladder as physics allowed.

Mitch watched worrisomely as she clutched the ladder and looked up. Hay dust floated slowly down toward her and she visored her eyes with a hand as she wondered about the possibility of spontaneous combustion once the barn was bloated with every morseled bale. Place craned his neck downward as he held the top of the ladder.

“Be careful,” Mitch offered.

“I think that’s a given,” Place retorted, and then said to Salvador, “Yeah, cuidado.”

“Yes, mexicanito, voy con cuidado,” Salvador grunted as he approached the top rungs of the ladder. When he neared the top, Place sunk the hay hooks into the bale and pulled it up toward him. As he stood at the top of the ladder with his head and shoulders poking up over the immense pile, Salvador pointed to the farthest corner of the stacked hay and told Place to begin there with each bale until the back rows were filled in, gradually working his way closer to the edge. They planned to place half of the excess hay up to the rafters on the one side of the barn, then switching to the other side to fill in that stack.

“If we still have some bales left over,” Mitch said, “we’re just going to fill in the aisle. That’s the best we can do. And when we feed, we’ll take from there first, then pare down these stacks as soon as we can.”

Mitch dragged the bales of hay to the bottom of the ladder where Salvador would lump one onto his shoulder and start the long, slow climb. Place knelt at the top with hooks in each hand, ready to relieve Salvador of the bale as soon as he was close enough.

They worked steadily and quietly for most of the day. The only sounds that echoed through the hay barn were the swishing drag of the bales that Mitch pulled toward the ladder, the accomplished grunts of Salvador heaving a bale on his shoulders, and the crunching jabs of Place’s hay hooks stabbing into the bale.

“Somos como hormigas,” Salvador said as one side of the hay barn grew plump with the bales that were locked into the last spaces like a completed puzzle.

“He said we’re like ants,” Place informed Mitch as they stood in the middle of the hay barn and assessed the remaining side to be filled in.

Salvador continued with his analogy, explaining that ants were a lot smarter in the way they worked than what the trio was presently experiencing. Ants, Salvador said as he looked at both Mitch and Place while catching his breath, work in the opposite way that we do. When they dig out their ant holes, they take each grain a measured distance away and gradually work closer and closer to their entrance. So the more they work, the shorter the distance they have to go with each grain of dirt. But we started out carrying our grains of baled hay farther than we should, and we’ll end up carrying them just as far when we finish. We don’t get that much of a break with dragging, lifting, and squeezing these bales into the rafters. Too bad we aren’t as smart as ants, he concluded as he motioned for Place to climb up to his hooking position.

Place hooked and lifted the last bale of hay, and with the precarious, limited space, he pushed the bale tight against the others. He looked at Salvador for approval, who looked past Place wide-eyed and silent. Place slowly looked over his shoulder, and in the deepest corner of the packed rafters an owl squatted, its wings tight to its body and looking back at the men with its own wide eyes. The owl slowly opened its beaked mouth and released no noise, no screech, no warning.

Salvador climbed down quickly, and Place followed.

The early morning offered a teasing promise of a summerlike day. The clear sky blazed a clean, brilliant blue as the sun began its slow scaling of the eastern horizon. The usually cooling ocean breeze remained out to sea, and Place thought about the beauty of time and location. As he stood on the deck rolling up his sleeves, Salvador walked up to him with his usual deliberate steps.

“Buenos días, americanito. ¿Qué tal?” Place said.

“Bien, gracias,” Salvador responded hastily. “Se salió un caballo!” And he pointed to Mickey’s horse feasting on forbidden hay at the entrance of the hay barn.

“Mitch!” Place yelled as he took a last gulp from his cup of coffee.

Mitch emerged from the house pulling tight on her ponytail. “What a beautiful day,” she said and then greeted Salvador.

“Look,” Place said, pointing to Mickey’s horse as it stood leisurely chewing and occasionally looking around.

“How did he get out?” Mitch asked.

And Salvador explained that he didn’t know. He had found the gate opened only enough for the horse to escape, while Jacqueline’s horse remained in the pasture, hesitant to leave its new habitat.

“Did anybody else get loose?” Mitch asked.

“No. No más el caballo de Mi-ke,” Salvador answered quickly.

“That’s strange,” Mitch said. The trio walked toward Mickey’s horse as they discussed how to pry him from his buffet of hay. Mitch carefully slipped the halter around the horse’s head as it fidgeted like a little boy whose face is being scrubbed while distracted from what he had been doing. She looked at the tightly packed hay, and then looked out at the pastures she could see from where she stood. “It’s so warm already,” she said to no one in particular as she buckled the halter securely and began leading the horse back to its pasture. “Let’s make the rounds. I want to check the gates and fences.”

The two donkeys, Gin and Tonic, grazed steadily, looking up only to see if Mitch or Place offered something more substantial. The ducks remained huddled in their safe, limited corner as they pecked the earth looking for nourishment. Mitch handed Place a bunch of carrots as she untied a plastic bag of carrot and cucumber peels, tomato cores, and limp lettuce.

“Keep those two brutes busy while I feed the ducks,” she said. “And save at least two carrots for Joker.”

Gin and Tonic pulled at the carrots stingily as they kept their greedy eyes on Place and wondered with them how many carrots they would get. They chewed hard and rapidly, and when they finished a carrot, they pushed against the wire fence and jerked their noses upward, demanding more.

As Mitch and Place walked to the end of the ranch, they checked the gates and inspected the fences for weak posts and loose wire. When they arrived at Joker’s lonely corral, Mitch pointed out that he had not stretched his neck through the gate like a beseeching beggar as Gin and Tonic had. Joker was not grazing on the yellowing grass, either, and he had not greeted them with his usual, proud, long brays that he punctuated with a traditional “heeeee hawwwww.” Mitch furrowed her brow and studied the surrounding bushes and trees. Joker stood facing south, toward Miwok Creek, and secretly snorted in low, private intervals.

Mitch swallowed slowly and, taking the carrots from Place, she entered the corral. “Here, Joker,” she said as she seductively waved a fat carrot in front of his nose. She looked back at Place, who was scanning the trees along Miwok Creek.

“What’s wrong?” Place asked. “Why doesn’t he want the carrots?”

“I don’t know,” a concerned Mitch answered as she bent over to inspect the donkey’s legs and hoofs. She ran a hand under Joker’s belly, feeling for an injury, and grasping for a clue. “I don’t know donkeys like I know horses. But listen.”

In the shadowed banks of Miwok Creek, a toad croaked in long, mesmerizing messages that only those of his kind understood. “Is that frog bothering him?” Place asked.

Mitch did not answer, but shook her head to indicate that Joker’s southern posture was not because of the announcing frog.

After dinner, Mitch decided to walk the ranch. She was not comfortable with Joker’s odd behavior, and her discomfort made Place feel uneasy.

The shorter autumn days and the less intense and now shy sun bowed to darker fall nights and a more enduring, overbearing moon. The horses stood still in their pastures and only reached down nonchalantly to nibble on the carrots Mitch threw to them. Gin and Tonic paced nervously along the fence, poking at the wire and examining Mitch and Place for carrots. The ducks nestled in their safe scoops of dirt, murmuring cautiously as they faded into a crisp night of sleep. On the deck of the ranch house, Rosa and Coquette stood in guarding poses, only watching Mitch and Place and not following.

When they reached Joker’s pen, they stood at the gate and observed as the animal continued to face south. Mitch shook her head as she had earlier that day, and Place knew that her brain was processing sights, sounds, and smells along with other events and signs that life had taught her were meaningful. Nothing in her mind fit the way she wanted it to. The carrots she had offered to the donkey in the morning remained on the ground, and Joker looked back at Mitch and Place, snorting and pausing. With each pause, Place wondered about Joker’s snorting offer—it was one of conjecture, concurrence, and deep-running communication that he could not comprehend as much as he tried. He listened harder, trying to draw meaning from a mute, punctuated language: snort and pause, snort and pause.

The full moon shone down like a nocturnal sun, and the shadows of trees, fence posts, and phantom life froze into the ground. Moonlight blanketed Joker’s back and revealed his brown markings on a white hide.

“You see how the markings run?” Mitch asked Place in a whisper. Place looked at the length of brown that started up by the donkey’s head and broadened to a distinctive post all the way down to the animal’s tail where it tapered to a point. At the shoulders, a transverse marking draped the donkey. Place had recognized that Gin and Tonic were marked in the same way.

“It’s like a cross,” Mitch continued. “And Joker, like Gin and Tonic, is really a burro. They’re called Jerusalem burros because they’re like the one Christ rode into Jerusalem. Some people still believe that all Jerusalem burros are descendants of the one Christ rode.”

Joker shifted slightly as he lowered his head. Mitch threw a carrot to one side in an attempt to gauge some type of reaction. The burro stood in a hypnotic pose. Swirls of dry dirt fluttered into the air as he snorted close to the ground. Mitch looked into the silvery water of the donkey’s trough as innocent ripples radiated from the center and bashfully kissed the sides.

In the early morning air, after a confusing night of restlessness, Place knew as he shoveled manure into a wheelbarrow that the sun would offer all of its energy to the fleeting day. The warm rays massaged his back and shoulders, and he breathed in the stillness of the ranch. Salvador walked quickly from the hay barn holding Gatita, and Place called out to see what had happened.

“Nada,” Salvador replied as he gently tossed the cat in his house and slammed the door to ensure it stayed tightly closed. “¿Otro día de calor?” he asked Place as he walked to a pasture.