(2005) Wrapped in Rain (28 page)

She put her hand on her hip, and her face grew tight. "I'm not leaving here with a shoulder shrug or half an answer. I need more than that. I need to know if you are okay with us staying for a few weeks. Is it at all problematic?" She pointed to the cottage, and the words few weeks rang in my ears.

I nodded. "Yes, I am okay with that," I said and then shook my head. "And no, it is not problematic."

She started circling again. "Thank you." Another half circle and she said, "I can pay you."

Tucker if you take one red cent of this woman's money, I will personally slap the taste out of your mouth. If you thought my praying could bring down heaven while I was on earth, you ought to see what it can do now that I'm up here.

"No, I don't think Miss Ella wants your money."

"You sure? I mean, about us staying."

"I'm sure."

She kept her head down and retraced her steps, further beating down the hay like a horse in a round pen. "Please tell Miss Ella I said, `Thank you."'

I raised one eyebrow, "Knowing Miss Ella, I don't think that's necessary. She had eyes in the back of her head and could hear your thoughts even when you whispered them to yourself. And being up there"-I pointed up-"doesn't change that. It only makes them bionic."

"Even if you're called off to shoot some more alligators, you don't mind if Jase and I stay in that house?"

"You really do like to get things nailed down, don't you?"

"Maybe if it were just me. But"-she looked toward the cottage-"I'm not asking for my sake. I'm asking for his. He needs to know that I can see past today. Past next week even. It's the same reason I told him to call you Uncle Tuck."

I should've seen that. "Yes," I said quickly, "regardless of where I am or what I'm doing, you're welcome. And you can ride Glue all you want. But as to my travel, I don't see how I can go real far with Mutt around. Him being here is going to change more than I thought. Last night taught me that."

Katie shaded her eyes. "The truck looks nice, but you've got your hands full."

I squinted toward the barn. "Something like that."

THE NEXT DAY, MY MORNING RUN TOOK ME AROUND THE pasture, out through the buzzard graveyard, up through the pines, and along the hard road. What I saw stopped me. On the south side of the road-our property-fresh tire tracks in the mud showed where some type of heavy sedan or van had pulled off the shoulder and stopped. In the tall grass of the ditch, I found several cigarette butts and a jumbo Styrofoam coffee cup. Any passing car could have stopped there for a break; that wasn't unusual. But when I looked up, I began to worry. Tracks led from the car through the woods to the fence where a good eye, looking through a camera lens or a pair of binoculars, could have seen both the back of Waverly and Miss Ella's front porch. I leaned against the fence and saw a dozen or so cigarette butts stamped in the dirt. Someone had stood here this morning, and I'd say they stood long enough to watch Katie walk across the pasture and circle me like a horse in a round pen. By now, I figured that news had circulated to New York.

When I returned to the barn, Mose was making coffee. He poured me a cup and studied my face. "Something bother you?"

I considered for a moment and said, "I think we need to start keeping our eyes peeled." Mose's eyebrows lifted. He nodded toward Miss Ella's cottage and raised his chin in question. I continued. "I found some cigarette butts this morning down along the fence near the road. Someone had stood there this morning." I looked up over my coffee cup. "A long time." Mose looked out over the pasture and sipped.

"You want to call the police?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Katie's ex-husband has got friends in the FBI and all over the government. I think if we register her with any local authorities, that'll filter north, if it hasn't already. I think they'd be expecting us to do that."

Mose nodded in agreement and said, "Then we'd best be quiet and on our toes." I set down my cup, walked inside, and made a mental note to check for shotgun shells in Rex's gun closet.

Mutt woke at ten and found Jase and me standing atop the ladder looking at him. Jase pinched his toe and shook his leg. "Hi, Mr. Mutt."

Mutt looked around and pulled the wool blanket up to his neck. "Hi."

Jase pointed to his right hand gripped tightly in a fist. "Why do you have that rock in your hand?"

Mutt opened his hand and studied the black, polished granite. "It helps me remember my name."

"You forget your own name?"

Mutt nodded. "Sometimes. But reading it here helps me remember."

"Can I see it?"

Mutt looked at the rock, then back at Jase, and extended his palm. Jase leaned over the top of the ladder and looked. "Can you make me one?"

Mutt pulled it back to his chest, hiding it behind the blanket, and nodded.

Jase took one step down the ladder and then climbed back up. "Mister Mutt, I don't know how to spell my name. Do you know how to spell my name?"

Mutt nodded.

"Oh, okay. 'Cause if you don't, you could ask my mom or Unca Tuck."

Mutt nodded again.

Jase climbed two steps down, reversed course, and then two steps back up. "Are you hungry?"

Mutt nodded as if the previous four nods had never occurred. "Unca Tuck and my mom are gonna cook eggs, toast, bacon, and biscuits. And something else, but I can't remember." Jase counted all five fingertips, but the answer didn't come.

Mutt lifted his head off the pillow and his eyebrows lifted. "Grits?"

"What's a grit?"

Mutt looked around, threw off the blanket, stuffed the rock in his pocket, grabbed his fanny pack, and climbed down the side of the loft, opposite Jase and me.

Mutt led the way to the cottage and pushed open the back door. Katie was whipping grated cheese into the eggs. He walked over to the stove, smelled the grits, and spread his chess set on the kitchen table where he promptly dispatched of me in seven moves.

Quiet through breakfast, Mutt forked an empty plate, turned to me, and said, "I want to go to church."

"Okay, which one?"

Mutt shrugged. "The one on the corner." I understood what he meant, even though it made little sense.

"I think it'd be a good idea if you took a bath first."

Mutt smelled his underarms and his hands. "Do we have any money?"

"Yes."

"Can I have some?"

"Yes."

"Can I have the keys to your truck?"

I pointed to the hook by the back door. Mutt stood up, grabbed the keys, and opened the door. Halfway out of the house, he turned around and said, "Money." I pointed to my wallet on the counter. "Visa card. The one that says `Rain LLC' at the bottom."

Mutt extracted the card and slid it in his pocket, opposite the rock. Thirty seconds later, the truck started and disappeared down the drive, pulling a small trailer. I don't know how long it'd been since he had driven, but when I looked out the front window, he was driving down the center of the drive.

Mutt returned at noon and began unloading the back of the truck and trailer, both of which were packed full with what looked like a hundred gallons of bleach and several large boxes of cleaning supplies. He handed me three receipts and disappeared into the barn. When I counted the receipts, one from Wal-Mart, one from a hardware store, and the last from a pool cleaning supply store, they totaled over two thousand eight hundred dollars.

Katie looked over my shoulder, read the receipts, and whispered, "Good Lord."

I stuffed them in my pocket and said, "It's cheaper than Spiraling Oaks."

I spent the next hour grooming Glue, but he didn't really need grooming. I wanted to know what Mutt intended to do with all that bleach and what was in those boxes. With the tack room stuffed with bleach, the smell of which was filling the barn, I let Glue out the back door into the pasture and watched Mutt climb the water tower with his belt looped through four one-gallon jugs of bleach. He reached the top of the ladder, tossed the jugs into the tank, and then disappeared into the tack room. He returned wearing knee-high rubber boots, a white face mask filter tied around his neck and mouth, and carrying two stiff brushes and an industrial-sized mop. He stuffed the brush handles into his back pockets like paintbrushes and slung the mop over his shoulder. He repositioned the mouth filter and climbed the ladder.

For the next several hours, all I heard from up above was scratching, brushing, grunting, and someone sloshing about in several inches of liquid. Every few minutes, layers of scum or algae sparkling with tadpoles would fly out of the top of the tank. At a quarter to four, Mutt appeared at the top of the ladder, covered head to foot in black and green algae, his clothes splattered with spots of white. He descended the ladder, leaned on the large wheel that turned on the water from the quarry, and waited for the two-inch pipe to carry the water up. The pump hadn't worked in years, but Mutt's mind hadn't yet centered on this dilemma.

When no water appeared, his thoughts turned to the pump that sat rusted and long-since dead outside the barn beneath a rotten and brittle blue tarp. He took one look at it, hung up his breathing apparatus, slipped off his boots, climbed into the truck, and disappeared. An hour later, he reappeared carrying a new one-horsepower pump and a dozen or so pipe pieces and fittings. He exchanged the pumps, primed the line with a hose from the house, and turned on the pump. After a few seconds of sputtering and blowing out the air, the two-inch line gurgled and then resonated with the sound of flowing water. Mutt slipped back into his boots, donned his face mask, and ascended the ladder, carrying an extension cord connected to a spotlight. At 10:30 p.m., I couldn't prop my eyes open with toothpicks, so I left Mutt to himself and walked into the house.

I woke at first light, fraught with cricks and muscle cramps, in a chair in front of the kitchen fireplace. I swallowed two Advil with three sips of orange juice, mixed some hot chocolate, and sipped my way to the water tower, where I found no sign of Mutt. The truck sat idle, engine cold, and looked as if it had been cleaned again because it was sparkling and surrounded like rose petals by a bed of discarded towels and spray bottles.

I checked the loft but found his bed empty. The water pump was running, but above that noise I heard sloshing. Almost like a kid swimming. I climbed the ladder and pulled myself to the top of the tank. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and strained against the sun that was beaming. Inside, bathing amid sparkling clear water and polished stainless walls, swam Mutt. Frolicking about like a dolphin at Sea World. He was stark naked, covered in soapsuds, with a bar of soap in each hand. I shook my head and began the tenuous steps down the ladder.

"Tuck?"

I poked my head above the rim of the tank and tipped my chin at Mutt. He pointed behind me and returned to his swimming. Sunrays streaked through the pines and melted the dew, which steamed skyward, making the pasture look as if it were simmering on the stove. Outlined against the far side, a single speck sitting atop a larger single speck trotted across the pasture.

Katie returned to the barn thirty minutes later. Despite the cool morning air, both she and Glue were sweating and breathing hard. "I didn't know you could ride," I said, taking the reins.

"You didn't ask," she said, climbing down out of the saddle.

"By the looks of things, you've done this before."

"A time or two."

I loosed the saddle, carried it to the stalls, and slid the hackamore off Glue's nose while Katie nuzzled her nose against his.

"I'm going to get cleaned up before Jase wakes."

"I got him; go ahead."

While I groomed Glue, she walked toward the porch and untucked her shirt. She opened Miss Ella's door and Jase came running out, decked out like a cowboy. He ran around Katie, said, "Hi, Mom," and headed straight to me, where he ran up and latched onto my left leg. He was excited and speaking real fast. "Unca Tuck! Unca Tuck! Can I ride? Can I ride?"

I needed to get on the phone with Doc, to tell him of my plans, but one look at Jase and I figured Doc could wait. I resaddled Glue and walked him out the barn door, where Mutt stood with his arms crossed and back turned, butt-naked and soaking wet beneath the water tower. Not exactly what I wanted to see first thing in the morning. Or any time for that matter. Stark white against the backdrop of a field of dead peach trees, Mutt stood motionless, the muscles in his back and butt sagging after years of medication and forced sedation.

"Mutt?"

Mutt looked up from the ground but didn't respond. He just looked out over the orchard and dripped.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." I left Jase standing in the barn and walked around the side of Mutt.

"What're you doing?"

Mutt looked at his arms and legs. "Drying."

I pointed toward the house. "You want me to get you a towel?"

Mutt looked from side to side and nodded over his shoulder. I gave Jase the reins and said, "Don't worry, Glue won't move unless I tell him. Just don't kick him in the sides." Jase took the reins, smiled, and pulled his hat down tight, pretending.

With Mutt standing in his birthday suit, looking out over the orchard, I ran up to Miss Ella's front door and knocked, but Katie didn't answer. I pushed it open and said, "Katie?" Still no answer. Figuring she slipped into the house for breakfast, coffee, or I'm not sure what, I pushed open the bathroom door.

Katie stood, bent at the waist, toweling her hair, while the steam from the shower rose off her hips and hung in the corners of the bathroom. She stood and I heard myself whisper, "Good Lord!" She eyed me, breathed calmly, and held the towel to her chest. It concealed everything but her outline. The water dripped off her shoulders, along the lines of her ribs, around her thin waist, the points of her pelvis, and streaked down the fronts of her thighs-a picture of twenty years ago.

The kid in me wanted to stay, to wrap myself in the memory of yesterday, but the man in me wanted to run, and in some odd sense to protect Katie from anyoneincluding myself-who would see her as anything less than the little girl she was or take from her anything she hadn't offered.