A Feather in the Rain (3 page)

H
e slowed the rig to pull in to the truck stop at Brenham. Abbie sat up wide-eyed. “I want some candy bars. I need some strokin'.” She undid her legs and pulled her sneakers on.

Jesse eased the rig into the station looking for an unoccupied pump with easy egress. A van was just about to pull out. He started slowly forward to the pump. Out of nowhere, a Japanese sports car whipped in front of him and stopped at the pump. A tall darkhaired man with a black barbered beard got out. A woman remained in the car. Abbie said, “That son of a bitch!” Jesse pulled up close behind the car and rolled down his window. “Excuse me, sir, but I was pulling up to that pump. Maybe you didn't see me.”

The man began to take the nozzle from the pump. “Big deal,” he said, opening the gas cap.

“I don't think you want to do that, sir. It's not polite. If you'll just pull ahead and let me get my gas, you can get in behind me.” The man ignored Jesse. “Sir? You don't want to do that.” The man
turned from his task and looked at Jesse with an insolent smirk then turned away and inserted the nozzle.

Jesse eased his truck forward crunching the California license plate and pushing the car ahead until it was out of his way. The woman's head had snapped around, the nozzle pulled free of the tank. The man, roaring like a speared elephant, charged toward Jesse's side of the truck. As he reached for the door handle, Jesse pushed the door open with force enough to slam the man back into a concrete column next to the pump. Jesse leaped from the truck, clamped his hand around the man's neck pinning his head to the column and drove his fist into his guts. He felt the man's gorge rise under his grip. His fist re-cocked to smash the man's face. Through his rage he saw that the man, though bigger and younger, was stunned. Jesse hissed through his teeth, “Do you want to push this, mister, or do you just want to get in that stupid red car and drive the fuck out of here?”

The man stared, his eyes getting wider, his face redder as his air was being choked off.

“Answer me, you smart son of a bitch.”

The man managed to gasp, “Okay, okay.”

Jesse let him go and the man stumbled toward his car. Abbie stood dumbstruck.

They'd been back on the road an hour before she spoke, which was pretty much a record. “You know, I've never seen anything like that. The more I think about it, it was beautiful. An exquisite manifestation of pure rage. And then…” she tried to find just the right words, “…suddenly…a rational thought. Cool. I swear I thought you were gonna kill him.” Then she giggled and said, “And so did he.”

His voice was dry. “I don't know what in hell's wrong with me.”

Abbie looked at him for a moment. “Your son died. That's what in hell is wrong with you. It's only the worst thing that can happen to a human being. You need to cut yourself some slack, Jesse. Besides that asshole had it coming. He'll think twice before he pulls that shit again.” Two minutes later, she added, “You know you
could talk to me about it. Hard as it may be for you to believe, I could listen. And I'm pretty damn smart.”

He smiled and reached out to ruffle her hair. “Don't I know it.”

She remained silent to see if he would offer any more. He didn't.

“Want me to drive?”

He shook his head.

“Want a sandwich?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I'm starved.” She dove into a bag of groceries and pulled out bread, turkey, mustard, pickles, and a tomato.

H
olly Marie Bassett moved like a hurricane ravaging a small town. She was packing. After ten years in New York she was preparing to depart. The decision had not come easily. She had loved the city and her lifestyle, at least to the extent that she ever thought about it.

Holly Marie was more complex than a spacecraft. Not even her own superior intellect was keen enough to fathom herself, and it wasn't for lack of effort. Self-knowledge was her avocation.

With purpose formed by her beauty, and a pace driven by her industry, she'd gone where the fast lane took her. Gotta catch the 6:25 to Madrid, gotta get my hair done, gotta get to the gym, need another pair of shoes, gotta stay thin. Layer upon layer of stress and anxiety, and an overwhelming sense of emptiness took their toll, as romantic fantasy became reality without fulfillment.

Two years ago, her kid brother by one year, Brad, her best friend, her strongest ally, half of herself, was killed in an act of
random violence on a sidewalk in New York City while waiting for his fiancée to come out of a market. For Holly, it was a cannon ball in the guts.

Now, she had come to the end of a headlong rush to nowhere. She was tired and in spite of an over-populated voice-mail and a bulging phone book, alone. She wanted to go home and see her “mommy” and her father. She wanted to be a little girl again and curl up in her mother's arms and be healed. She wanted to be a comforting parent to her mother and father and take them in her arms and help them to heal. She'd already booked her flight to Denver.

T
he sign at Jesse's place said, “LAZY JB, Sport Horses Trained, Bought and Sold, Jesse Burrell, trainer.”

A pair of streaking masses of fur, one big, one small, flew across the yard to meet the Ford as it pulled up to the barn. Blizzard was a Queensland heeler, a forty-pound compact combination of relentless energy and aggressive intelligence seeking a task. Dozer was his pardner and opposite, a thickset, heavyweight golden lab, kind-eyed and handsome. A pipe smoker in a cardigan tolerant of Blizzard's relentless challenges to wrestle.

Dozer had been Zack's dog. Every once in a while, he'd cock his head and flick his ears in a surge of attention to something only he could sense, the way he used to look at Zack. Dozer was homeless, wandering lost and hungry at a construction site when he found Zack. When Zack got down with a dog, he became luminescent and giggling —a child pure as sunlight. Jesse had said, “I never saw him that open with a person…but with dogs? He'd lie down in the grass
and use a dog for a pillow and they'd let him and like it.”

They turned the horses loose in the arena to kick out the kinks and roll in the sand. Jesse's hired hand, Ricardo Valverde, had brown skin drawn tight over fine bones. Thin as a hoe handle, hard as a hound, he appeared stained by strong tea. He went straight to cleaning out the trailer and unloading the tack.

A black pygmy goat sneaked up and pressed his horns against Jesse's leg. Chauncy lived in his own world, subscribed to no pecking order, and took no shit, nor did he give any. Jesse felt he was kind of like him.

Abbie tucked the horses in, then stood square in front of Jesse and said, “Well, I guess that's it, Boss. I've got three classes tomorrow morning. I should be here about one-thirty, okay?”

“Okay.” He put his arm across her shoulder and walked her to her car. “Thanks.” He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. She looked up smiling, then got into the dusty old “bug” convertible and drove down the dirt drive. She shared a little place in Austin with another student, Alissa, a dancer studying banking, and Alissa's boyfriend, a computer nerd.

He sat deep in a leather recliner next to a wall of books with a scotch in his hand and John Coltrane easing from the speakers. Dozer was flopped on the floor. He'd built the house of stone and wood, stout posts and beams, weathered board and batten. A massive river-stone fireplace sported a thick plank mantle disarranged with family photos, unpaired spurs, old bits, and fat candles in iron holders. A wall clock was framed with trophy buckles of silver and gold, testimony to glory days. Photos of cutting horses and team roping were scattered everywhere. Splashes of bright Navajo rugs covered parts of the clay tile floors. A film of dust covered everything. He needed to get Ricardo's girlfriend, Nellie, in there to do the place up.

Any evidence of female occupancy was long gone. It'd been more than twenty years since moth holes had appeared in the fabric of his marriage and Jolene moved out. A year later, she was married
to the owner of a string of wholesale furniture stores. While she pranced around the tennis courts, her new husband golfed, smoked cigars, and indulged her costly whims.

Dozer followed him across the yard in the cool quiet night to the barn. The horses in stalls shuffled as they entered. The horses were used to the sound and sight of Jesse. He was the man who straddled their hearts. He stopped at each one, speaking softly, and stroking its face.

At the end of the barn aisle, Jesse climbed a flight of stairs to a second story loft with a door, locked. He stepped in and reached for the light switch. He shut the door behind him with a churchly reverence. It was a no-frills bunkroom. A plank bed with blankets and a pillow, a tin stove, an unpainted chest of drawers under a mirror, a corner bar for hangers behind a curtain on rings, a small table, two chairs, and a cramped bathroom. That's all there was to it.

The ranch had been a sanctuary for Damien. The loft was his space. Jesse sat on the bunk, and cupped his chin. His eyes fell on the motorcycle poster, and another of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit queen sporting breasts crafted by a master. Next to the posters, a section of old barn siding had been framed as a background for a collection of feathers fastened with unseen dabs of glue. The plumage of the Red-tailed Hawk, Brewers Blackbird, falcons, doves, owls, ravens, the Green-tailed Towhee, and the Cinnamon Teal formed a polychromatic palette that Damien would add to in his quiet times. Jesse turned to look at the pillow where his son's head had rested. He brought it to his face in search of a lingering scent of the Polo cologne Zack favored because his love, Melinda, whom Jesse thought might save Zack's life, had said it was sexy.

The resident owl hooted from the gnarled cottonwood behind the barn where Damien's boyhood swing still hung. And then silence. He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “Damien…” The word flowed out of him on one long breath.

With a groan, Dozer eased himself to the floor next to the bed.

H
e stepped out, coffee in hand, to a cold moist morning, the iron sky a haven for demons. He went back into the house, grabbed a blanket-lined jacket and went to the barn.

“I'll be back in a couple of hours.” He told Ricardo what horses to have ready to ride, then got in the Ford and drove out.

A ribbon of blacktop snaked through a wide expanse of pale, wind-bent grass. Wipers thwacked away the light rain. He turned in between brick columns bearing wide-flung iron gates and entered another world. Edgar Allen Poe might have been standing barely visible behind the swirling mists as host.

He drove slowly along a single lane of gravel, the crunch of tires the only sound, through a verdant grove of solemn oaks arching out the sky. He pulled to the right, stopped, and got out.

Nary a soul in sight. A flock of thirty ravens, crouched in their black feathers, grouped on a gathering of gravestones. He pulled up his collar and snugged his hat walking toward them. They scattered,
rising to vanish in the leafy darkness.

A wet weaving of dead grass, fallen leaves, dark feathers and twigs formed a dense duff carpet that silenced the stepping of his feet. He stopped to face a small neat stone with rough chiseled sides and a smooth polished face that said, Damien Zachary Burrell, October 3, 1976 - July 7, 2003.

Unconscious of the rain-drip off his hat brim inches from his eyes, he stood entranced by the dates as he relived his son's life from Jolene birthing him to God taking him.

His eyes were swimming. He looked skyward, the light rain diluting his tears. “I miss you, boy.” He shook his head and looked back at the stone. The wrenching agony seared his soul. “I know you're here right now. I can feel you.”

He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and looked around. It was a soothing, sacred place where angels assembled to conduct their business. He said, “Come on, take a walk with me.”

Ambling aimlessly among aisles of stone, he looked up again through the drizzle at the slate sky and said, “Give me a sign, Zack. A feather, anything.” Feathers had been a thing between them since Zack was a little kid. They'd watched a hawk stoop to a pigeon in a cobalt sky. A tail feather from the hawk had fallen out of the collision and landed at Zack's feet. He had stuck it in his hatband and deemed it a symbol of good fortune. It was the start of his collection. But even as Jesse spoke the words, he realized the ground was strewn with the dark feathers of ravens, sparrows, and little brown birds perched on limbs looking like leaves that had forgotten to drop. Finding a feather would have little significance.

The thought was no sooner complete than his gaze was drawn to the sodden ground. There not two feet in front of his right boot toe landed a still fluttering, bone-dry, pure white, down feather.

He bent quickly to pick it up, taking off his hat to shield it from the drizzle.

It was absolutely dry. Impossible. It was white as snow. A fourinch plume of fluff. He held its fragile softness lightly in his hand.

Emotion overran its banks and flooded his throat. He began to laugh aloud. He reached for the knotted neckerchief, pulled it free, and with a mother's care wrapped the feather in its folds.

And he laughed. In joy and amazement, he walked and laughed with tears in his eyes. He told Zack how cool that really was. Then he laughed again. And the ravens heard a sound they'd never heard before.

H
e listened to the machine and picked up when he heard Larry Littlefield on the other end. Larry had won the coveted title of “World's Champion All-Around Cowboy” an unprecedented six times. He was a living legend. He had parlayed his fame into a miniempire of several successful businesses and still maintained celebrity status as host of a TV show about horses. He acted in films, appeared at rodeos, horse shows, and cuttings. He was a gentleman, a husband, a father and a damn good friend.