Stars Always Shine (24 page)

Place watched as the big men danced freely, wildly—careening like dancing mavericks that dared to be corralled. Knees jerked high and elbows flapped and flailed. Legs kicked out in all directions and partners were flung around and about and reeled back in like yo-yos. Place was impressed by their size. It was their size that allowed them to be who they thought they were. Their size alone spoke many things to others. To other bigger men, size was a factor that could be challenged or respected, or challenged first and then respected. To some women, size was a protective and comforting thing, a tangible sign that a body was capable of trading labor for wages. To smaller men like Place, size could be a quick attribute with which to measure a man’s disposition, because with size came force and big men often walked with a confident sense of force and puffed-up recognition. Place doodled on a cocktail napkin with a short, eraserless pencil that looked as if it had logged the scores of countless frames of bowling.

The fiddler pumped his instrument as he skillfully drew whining, screeching sounds that danced with the steel guitarist’s unwinding and seductively sorrowful notes, his fingers gracefully skating along the strings. The thumping sounds from the drums and the sharp strumming of guitar strings followed the lead of the deeply modulated voice that expelled twangy, romantic lyrics of lost love for which only the singer was to be blamed. Looser, coarser dancers twirled and spun and swung arms and took impromptu steps as Place no longer looked but wrote on the cocktail napkin. Words were scratched out and more effective ones were put in their place. Arrows made curving points to show where lines needed to be rearranged, and alongside each line was a number to identify the order the lines should follow.

“What ya got there?” Mitch asked, sneaking a look like a school kid cheating on a test.

“A song,” Place answered, sublimating an inclination to cover up the personal nature of writing and words. “Want to hear it?”

Before Place recited the lyrics he explained the three verses he had and pointed out what would be the chorus. He started slowly, as if reading poetry.

“That’s the first verse,” Place said. “Should I go on?”

“Well, of course,” Mitch urged, interested by Place’s poetic perceptions and social interpretation.

“Honey, that’s good!” Mitch marveled. “When did you write that?”

“Just now,” Place answered, a little surprised that Mitch actually thought his song was good. “Want to hear the chorus?”

Place started from the beginning again and after the first verse he threw in the chorus.

“It’s called ‘Big Man,’ ” Place said, not waiting for the question and feeling pleased that his song made sense to him. He liked it, even if it didn’t have music yet.

“Well, you’re catching on to the ways of this arena,” Mitch joked. “We can get you more familiar with this culture by getting you home and to sleep so you can work a ranch tomorrow,” she added to indicate that perhaps it was time to end the evening, especially as a louder and rowdier crowd had begun to infiltrate all corners of the dance floor and bar.

Silent from the experience of the evening, the emotion of Salvador’s birthday, and the exhaustion that accompanies learning and practice, Mitch, Place, and Salvador moved along dark roads as the headlights of the pickup stabbed a lighted path into the black scenery that revealed little.

Turning the pickup off Sweet Wine Road and into StarRidge Ranch, Mitch whispered slowly and squinted into the darkness as she forced her eyes to focus. The pickup idled quietly as Mitch looked past Place and Salvador. “Ah, shit!” she uttered softly.

Off to the side, to their right and tucked alongside the milk barn apartment, sat Jacqueline and Mickey’s conspicuous truck.

J
acqueline and Mickey’s arrival surprised Mitch in many ways. Yes, it was unexpected—something that at first perturbed Mitch more than it bothered Place and Salvador, who had separately decided to work together in safe silence regardless of the demands—but Mitch was also caught off guard by the company the Kittles had brought along with them to live on the ranch.

First, there was the old paint cayuse, Duchess, a black-and-white splattered mare that had seen decades of riders and miles of trails and was now, in her senescent stage, facing the tribulations brought on by living too long. Duchess was Jacqueline’s first horse from a time when she was a younger, more exuberant woman. When Mitch first set eyes on the decaying pony she wondered why the Kittles had even bothered to transport the animal to its new rest home at StarRidge Ranch. Duchess seemed long overdue to be packaged neatly and efficiently as Rosa and Coquette’s food. Once at the ranch, Duchess was given her own private accommodations, a corral closest to Jacqueline and Mickey’s milk barn apartment.

Duchess’s bloom had long since abandoned her now cadaverous body, and her hide was splotchy with bald patches where hair refused to grow. Her sides were sunken, not from malnourishment—Mitch could see that, even if she did suspect underfeeding—but from years of gravity that tugged at the horse’s once straight spine that was gerontologically swayed and a meager appetite brought on by boredom when one lives longer than even God may have intended. Her hip bones protruded, pointing outward against skin that seemed to hang and drawing her hide taut over a shrinking frame. Her body appeared dented like a well-used tube of glue. Her mane was mangy now, no longer possessing the full and long curtain of hair that had once draped her neck. Her forelock was completely gone. Her hoofs were free of the weight of horseshoes because there was no need for her to be shod, but Jacqueline had made sure that the horse’s hoofs were regularly trimmed and well-cared for. The mare’s teeth were tentative ones now, with her grinders worn close to the gum line; she was on a steady diet of soft, nourishing feed.

Mitch could see as Jacqueline stroked her old friend that the horse’s eyes were dull; there was little life left in them. But it wasn’t Duchess that Mitch observed as Jacqueline scratched her horse’s neck and held her muzzle gently.

Jacqueline seemed to truly care for Duchess. She was devoted to the horse, and in the week since the Kittles had moved on the ranch permanently it was clear that only Jacqueline would feed this dying horse. Even when Mitch had offered to take care of Duchess to free Jacqueline up so she might be able to tend to less mundane chores and business, Jacqueline had declined the offer. Mitch noticed too that Jacqueline was proud of Duchess, and she admired the fact that the horse was meaningful enough to keep alive and be allowed to finish her days in dignity in a bucolic pasture on StarRidge Ranch. The halcyon care served as a tranquilizer for the feeble horse, and as a side effect medicated the scowling surliness that had been Jacqueline’s primary symptoms.

Duchess’s presence seemed to somehow draw Mitch closer to Jacqueline. During free moments of a busy work day, Mitch and Jacqueline would lean against a fence or sit on a deck and talk about the aging animal, with those conversations often drifting off into other areas concerning the ranch, the community, and the county.

Mickey’s new pet was a gigantic, powerful Clydesdale named Bunny. When Bunny arrived two days after the Kittles had settled in, Mitch, Place, Salvador, Jacqueline, and Mickey watched as the professional transporters eased the huge horse out of a long slip of a trailer. Slowly they backed the behemoth from the trailer and down a wide, slight, short ramp. The two handlers worked like tugboats carefully and methodically pushing a large vessel out to sea. With each deliberate backward step, the handlers leaned away from Bunny, surveying the open ocean of land behind and around him. Once Bunny hit the dry dock of solid earth, he craned his neck, reaching high and somewhat nervously scanning the new environment before and around him. His ponderous steps sent radiating waves that rumbled and vibrated through the feet and upward to those who looked on. He was fully developed, and his body blossomed with massive muscles. Bunny’s high, straight back, wide hips, and loglike legs were punctuated by big, brawny bones. The unique full feathers on his lower legs hung loosely and swayed like hula skirts as he strode alert but relaxed toward his new pasture. He was oddly controlled by only a lead rope attached to a halter that looked like a string compared to the vastness of the animal. Holding the lead rope cautiously, Mickey walked carefully beside Bunny, the handlers on the opposite side guiding him delicately with outstretched arms. Bunny drifted compliantly into the harbor of his new home. Easy, swaggering steps affected cut and plated muscles that armored the draft horse’s body, which shifted and slid slickly with each movement.

Bunny was a brontosaurus of a horse whose capable musculature interested Mickey. His goal was to someday hitch the workhorse up to a plow to work the pastures as had been done a century earlier. Reaching easily over the fence, Bunny sucked up a whole carrot from Mickey’s hand and chewed it with the same nonchalant pace that his movements indicated.

Although Mitch found both new tenants to be peculiar choices for the Kittles to have, she was also slightly impressed with the concern that Mickey and Jacqueline showed for Duchess and Bunny. This made Mitch feel a little foolish, and she wondered why she hadn’t realized months earlier that much of what she disliked about the Kittles, and had experienced because of them, may have been due to the tremendous strain they had been under. After all, it was Mitch who once tried to explain to Place that StarRidge Ranch was a tremendous responsibility with many demands. Mitch herself had told Place that should they some day own their own StarRidge Ranch, she would not want a spread even half that size. Place had agreed, along with Salvador, that a property the size of this ranch was simply too much work with little satisfaction in return. As she watched Jacqueline one morning lovingly feeding her first Duchess, Mitch scolded herself for not being more understanding and tolerant of the Kittles. She questioned her ability, honed by her professional training but now left to grow dull with little verbal sparring to keep her in disputative shape, and wondered if for some self-centered reason she was slipping when it came to reading and knowing people, clients, criminals, and critters and the motivations that drove them. In her pensive moment, Mitch thought that she had perhaps been too quick to judge what she and Place had experienced with the limitations of fleeting events and occurrences. She had taken such pride in being compassionate and fair-minded—sometimes to a fault. Now she felt ashamed and admonished herself for forgetting one of the vital tenets of introductory law. Mitch had fallen into the stifling quicksand of making murky assumptions.

Place, however, was not impressed. If anything, he was gleefully, almost arrogantly suspicious, and he advanced his position in elaborate detail as he tried one night to persuade Mitch that the Duchesses and Bunnies of the world were distractions for deeper, more dysfunctional attributes. Many families had those distractions; they made things appear normal in an abnormal world. They were necessary links in the social chain of human interaction and discourse. Those distractions came in many, often subtle, forms. Going to church was one. Obvious displays of volunteerism and community service were another. Social recognition—an effective diversion for those
other
things that were happening behind the barn, Place theorized. “I think the mind does that,” he stated matter-of-factly, “as a way for us to convince ourselves that we are really okay as people, even though we are, for the most part, contradictory and hypocritical animals.” To show how credible he was, he added: “I do it all the time. We both know I have a lot to resolve with myself.”

There was too much charm in what was developing and how it was developing, Place argued. The actions were too pastoral, too affected, and he wondered who it was that the Kittles might be trying to impress. Certainly, he propounded, it couldn’t be him and Mitch. Also, Place suggested, as he pointed a knowing finger at Mitch while she sat up in bed listening to her postulating husband as he paced back and forth, what had been the Kittles’, especially Jacqueline’s, reaction to the murdered ducks? What kind of sympathy had they shown after Mitch pointed out the dried blood on the pipe fencing and the embedded feathers that lay scattered in the dirt? Pounding a fist into a palm he shouted dramatically, “Nothing! No reaction! Nada.” Now lowering his voice almost to a whisper and showing that he had paid close attention on those now faraway nights when Mitch had asked him to critique her closing arguments, judging for artistic performance as well as content, Place ingratiated himself by elaborating on his own ignorance, his own confusion, which really was a seductive move that indicated he wasn’t buying any of it.

“Ms. Stanton,” he said formally, “wouldn’t someone who is truly concerned about life, someone who truly cares about the welfare of all creatures, especially when you own those creatures, when those creatures who are your very subjects, under your care, and it’s faith and trust that causes them to care—wouldn’t that person show a little more emotion and concern for what happened to those flightless, helpless ducks, ducks as capable as a dodo bird, ducks bound to the ground and restricted in their survival like immigrants with their own foreign language, than what you yourself admit was a dismissing reaction on the part of Jacqueline Kittle?”