A Gentle Rain (45 page)

"Benji, do I get World Sports Network on this TV?"

I sat by Joey's hospital bed, finagling a remote control. "Probably. Let's see." Poke a button. Poke. Poke. "Yep. Right there. There you go.11

"Good!" He raised an arm strung with I.V. tubes, then pointed to the heart-monitoring wires attached to his chest under his hospital gown. "How long do I gotta wear all this stuff?"

"Aw, a day or two. Then we'll go home."

"Promise?"

"I swear to you."

He smiled.

Karen walked in. She was still dressed in her pink barrel racing outfit from the night before. Her red hair was a wild mess bound up with a rubber band. She had big blue shadows under her blue eyes and her face was pale. But she grinned at Joey. "I have a surprise for your mid-morning snack."

She set an insulated packing box on his tray table, opened it, and took out a frosty, quart-sized container. She opened it. "Chocolate caramel ice cream with peanut-butter sprinkles. From Cold N'Creamy, Incorporated."

"Oh, boy! How'd you get that?"

"The owner of the Cold N'Creamy shops sent it. He saw Estrela on television last night. Since you're one of Estrela's owners, he wanted you have a `Get Well Soon' gift."

"Wow." Joey balanced the quart container on his stomach and scooped a spoonful of ice cream to his mouth. He swallowed and grinned. "Ice cream before lunchtime! Is it health food?"

She arched one tired eyebrow in a bad-ass way. "No. It's wickedly sinful and delicious. But it's good for your smile!"

He ate another spoonful.

And smiled some more.

"That ice cream," I said to Karen. "You called some people."

"Yes. Our secret."

"Thank. you. Thank you. Thank you." I kissed her forehead. "Thank you."

"Ben," Joey called.

We walked back into his cubicle. He sat up in bed, watching TV. Miriam sat beside him, spooning the second quart of ice cream from Cold N'Creamy into her mouth. Joey was full, so she had to take up the cause on his behalf. "Looks like they're gonna send him this damned ice cream every hour on the hour," she grunted.

Joey pointed at the TV. "They'll show Karen and Estrela tonight. They just said so."

Me and Karen traded a look. She went to Joey and took his hand. "Joey, Ben and I are going to tell them we aren't racing."

He gaped at her. "Why?"

"Because we want to stay here with you, instead."

cIvV .•Y ? • " VV 11

I took over. "Bro, it's okay. Karen and Estrela made it to the finals. Nobody ever thought they would. That's good enough. They don't have to win. I promised you I wouldn't leave you here, alone."

"You can't quit, now!"

"Joey, it's okay-"

"I have Miriam. I have ice cream. I have World Sports Network on TV. It's all right for you and Karen to go back to the arena. I want to watch Karen and Estrela win!" His eyes filled with tears. "I do! Benji, please!"

I looked at Karen. She nodded.

I looked back at Joey. "If that's what you want, that's what you'll get."

Chapter 27

Kara

Sunday Afternoon

"I have water in a bottle," Lily said. She rapped the plastic bottle on the trailer's side door. "And a pill. It's called aspirin." Tap, tap, tap. The sound of an aspirin bottle on metal.

I opened the door. "Thank you. Do I smell bad?"

Both she and Mac stood there, gazing at me.

Lily shook her head. "No. You don't smell like throw-up at all."

Mac nodded. "Anyhow, we d-don't mind."

The three of us sat on the trailer's running board in the hot September sunshine. My pink cowgirl shirt and blue jeans were freshly washed and dried, thanks to a laundromat Lily and I had found in Orlando. Mr. Darcy squatted morosely on the matted grass in front of us. "Creature," he said, watching an ant struggle its way up a tall stalk of fescue.

"He misses Joey," Lily said. "So do I."

"M-me t-too." She and Mac stared at me. I sighed. Damn stutter. There it was, again.

Mac bent his head near mine. "You know what I t-think about sstuttering, n-now?"

I leaned against him. "What?" I whispered.

"That if you d-do it, too, it's nothing to be ashamed about."

I couldn't speak for a few seconds. I merely continued to lean against him.

Lily bent our head into our huddle. "I know what that ant's thinking."

"What?" I asked gently.

"That all you have to do is get to the top of your own big, tall piece of grass. If you can do that, you're special, no matter how far anybody else can climb their piece of grass."

My throat ached. "You are two of the wisest people I've ever known."

Ben

A person can set worry aside and carry on. It's like you lock your sadness in a cage, knowing it'll escape later but not now. I tried to think about the night ahead of us, instead of about Joey. Tomorrow I'd have to tell him that he wasn't going home from the hospital anytime soon. Maybe not ever, but I wouldn't let him know that.

An executive from World Sports Network came to the stables and gathered the twenty finalists. "Drama. That's what we're looking for tonight," she said. "This is the climax! Emotion, passion, real feelings! So don't get shy on me! If one of our camera crews follows you around backstage this evening, open up!

"Give us your honest reactions. If you have a complaint about one of the other contestants, or a worry, or a personal problem, share it with the camera. America loves honesty."

Karen stood beside me with her pink arms folded over her pink cowgirl shirt. Her worn-out eyes looked like puffy pink slits. "Perhaps," she said in her coolest little perhaps voice, "what America loves is honest competition, not the theatrical equivalent of naked mud-wrestling on horseback."

Tami Jo snorted. "Like anyone wants to see you naked."

Karen ignored her.

The exec eyed Karen with a sour smile. "If only I could convince you girls to mud-wrestle naked on horseback. The network would give me a bonus and a corner office."

"We're women. Not girls."

"Oh? It's not called the Million Dollar Cow Women Ride-Off: And by the way, get the make-up people to dab some hemorrhoid cream around your eyes. It'll shrink those bags."

Tami Jo laughed.

I pulled Karen down a hallway before things got out of hand. "How you feeling?" I asked.

"Not as exhausted as you, I expect."

"I admit, I feel like I been rode hard and put up wet. I gotta go to the hospital and check in with Joey and Miriam again. I promised him I'd come back before dinner." I paused. "To help him eat the next quart of Cold N'Creamy that comes in."

"Sorry. I'll make a call."

"Miriam says the nurses in CCU are takiu' bets as to which one of them can eat the most leftover ice cream without gettin' high cholesterol."

She smiled. "I wish I had a quart. I'm going to drink another cup of coffee, now. With extra sugar in it. And then I'll eat some hearty protein to off-set the glycemic roller coaster the sugar will produce. I need all the energy I can get."

Protein? There was only one kind of protein within walking distance, and we both knew what. I pointed toward the arena's food court. "Grade-A, Florida-raised, all-beef hotdogs and quarter-pound burgers. Thataway."

She sagged. "Don't tell anybody I've finally been corrupted."

"I prefer to call it, `Won over."'

She peered at my plaid shirt front. "What's that sticking out of your pocket?"

"Aw, nothing."

"A soy granola bar!"

"I brought it for you."

She looked up at me in wonder. "I'm so proud of you."

"Don't tell nobody I been corrupted," I mimicked gently.

Her eyes filled with just as much tenderness. "I prefer to think of it as `Won over."'

Kara

Five p.m. I found an empty stall full of soft, clean wood shavings. I napped in one corner. Lily and Mac insisted on guarding the stall door. They sat just outside it, in lawn chairs. I dreamed about them. Their soft, sweet voices came to me, just as in my childhood dreams. And then ...

"I have to get Karen," Possum said loudly.

I opened my eyes.

"No, no, she's sleeping in the wood chips!" I heard Lily say.

"Sh-she needs her n-nap," Mac added. "Or they're gonna p-put cream on her eyes to shrink `em."

"I have to get Karen! Ben's still with Joey at the hospital. And Ben said, `If anything worries you, GO GET KAREN."

"What worries you?" Lily demanded.

By now, I was fully awake and reaching for my pink hat.

"Tami Jo Jackson is saying mean things on TV! Right in front of Estrela's stall! Where Estrela can hear her!"

I scrambled to my feet. There is a classic scene in the second Alien film, which Joey and I had watched recently, one afternoon at the ranch. Sigourney Weaver, fighting to protect a small girl child from the giant, vicious, queen-of-the-alien beings, straps herself into an industrial-robot exo-skeleton, clumps her way up to the alien queen's snarling face, and says with steely maternal calm, "Get away from her, you bitch." Then Sigourney proceeds to pummel the giant alien queen into submission and jettison her crustaceous behind into the dark vacuum of Space.

I felt the same way.

Tami Jo had better get away from my mare.

"I just think people and horses should earn their place in the world," Tami Jo was saying to the World Sports Network camera. She stood about three feet in front of Estrela's stall. Clearly, this was the kind of spontaneous drama the network executive had encouraged.

Behind Tami Jo, the bright light of the video camera glared in Estrela's eyes. Estrela stomped the stall floor, shook her head, pawed, and nervously lipped the latch of her stall door. Cheech, Bigfoot, Roy and Dale stood nearby, wringing their hands as Lily, Mac and I hurried up. "Isn't this what America is all about?" Tami Jo went on, batting her eyes under a decorous, post-modern shag of streaked blonde locks. "I read Ann Coulter's last book well, I listened to it on my iPod, anyway, and she says, `Liberals hate America. They want everyone to be equal.' Or something like that. Me, too. Equal. But equal can mean separate, you know? I mean, we can't just let any horse come in here and race, can we?" She waved a long-nailed hand at Estrela. "But they're welcome to use the stalls. That's separate but equal."

"Only to a blithering idiot," I said loudly. I prodded the camera man on one arm. "You're upsetting my mare."

"We'll be done in a few seconds."

"No, you're done now. If you continue to agitate a helpless animal, I'll complain to the officials."

Tami Jo laughed. "Go ahead and complain, fatgirl. They're all friends of my daddy's."

Don't let her psych you out. Psych her out instead.

"Why don't you tell the nice cameraman how you and I met?" I asked. "When you parked in a handicapped spot at the Cold N'Creamy, refused to move your car, and referred to several Thocco ranch hands in terms that decent people consider extremely cruel."

"Turn off that camera," Tami Jo ordered.

"It's off," the guy lied. No idiot, he. This was prime footage.

She pouted. "The light's still on."

"My camera takes a minute to shut down."

Believing herself to be off-the-record, Tami Jo morphed back into her alien form and sneered at me. "There's nothing wrong with the word `retard.' I can't help it ifyour friends are retards." She smiled at Mac, Lily and the others. "Retards. Poor retards."

Lula, who had been at the food court buying snacks for Cheech and Bigfoot, shoved the food into their hands then grabbed me by the arm. "Come on. Let's take a walk."

Tami Jo laughed. "Retards," she repeated, and laughed louder. The laugh threw her a bit off balance and she took a step back. She was now within biting distance. Estrela flattened her ears.

I had misjudged the analogy. In this scenario, the Sigourney Weaver character was not me.

It was Estela.

The mare's lips curled. She arched her neck like a coiled, silver cobra, preparing to strike.

Lula gasped. "That'll get Estrela disqualified."