Million Dollar Road (10 page)

Lireinne remembered that arrangement had been okay. She'd liked Miss Penny because the old woman pretended to drink the make-believe tea. She also drank out of a brown bottle she kept in her purse. While the stuff in the bottle would put her to sleep on the sofa, Miss Penny had been fun when she was awake. She used to make Lireinne sugar-and-butter sandwiches, too. There'd been plenty of salty potato chips and discount-brand soda, lunches of canned pineapple rings dotted with maraschino cherries and mayonnaise. Those calorie-dense, nutrition-poor meals and snacks had tasted better than good to Lireinne. They tasted of safety, of caring. She ate and ate and ate, remembering the sweets her grandmother in Mississippi had sometimes given her, and her mother's warm fudge.

And living so far out in the country as Bud did, until Lireinne grew older there'd been only a couple of other children to play with, like Miss Penny's niece Shayla who'd come to visit her aunt sometimes. Then, too, for a few months there'd been another little girl who lived down on Million Dollar Road in a trailer, one lacking indoor plumbing, but with a pack of cur-dogs in the yard. The little girl had given Lireinne a case of head lice before one of the mean dogs had bitten her and consequently Bud put an end to Lireinne's visits to the other trailer. Anyhow, soon the little girl moved away.

So, for the most part, Lireinne had grown up with companions who lived in her toy box—the pink bear, the Barbie Bud had bought her—and her friends who lived in the trees and fields, like Mose and the crows. After he got to be old enough, sometimes Wolf had joined her. Those times had been the best, climbing and exploring, and making up compelling, dramatic adventures. Her brother had been a prince, she'd been a princess, and Mose had been a noble steed. Wolf outgrew those games before Lireinne did, although he'd loved it when she read him the gorier stories from the old, dog-eared book of fairy tales Miss Penny had left behind when she went to live with her sister in town. Lireinne's favorite story had been the one about Cinderella, but now she knew better than to hope for a fairy godmother. Now, she knew
more
than enough to believe Prince Charming was a nice guy. There were no real princes in the world.

Only Bretts.

Mose nickered again outside her bedroom window. Lireinne groaned, wanting to put her pillow over her ears. Under the covers the bed was warm, smelling of laundry detergent and the scent of her own body. Unwilling to rise and face the day, she'd have loved to escape into sleep again, but there was Mose to feed. Only a scant pan of oats left in the bag, Lireinne thought again. How was she going to get to town to buy more? That worry and the sound of hooves splashing in the mud along the fence line finally drove Lireinne out of bed. She couldn't escape her ironic life forever.

Lireinne had just pulled a sweatshirt on over her nightgown, figuring that Mose wouldn't care what she was wearing, when Wolf knocked on her door.

“Yo—sis, somebody here to see you.” His muffled, sleepy voice on the other side of the door sounded deeply aggrieved at the early-morning visitor who'd disturbed his rest.

“Oh, yeah?” Who in the hell would have come out to the trailer this early on a Saturday morning? Lireinne wondered. Nobody ever came here, nobody who wanted to see
her,
anyway. It couldn't be somebody from the alligator farm, could it? No, she decided, they wouldn't bother to come to her house to fire her: there'd be plenty of time for that on Monday, after all.

“Who is it?” Lireinne called through the door.

“I dunno—some lady in a truck. She's waiting outside, so, like, hurry up. I was trying to
sleep
.”

“Okay, okay. I'm coming.”

Lireinne threw a pair of jeans on underneath her sweatshirt and nightgown and combed her tangled hair with her fingers. Wolf was a grumbling heap underneath the blankets when she hurried past the sectional. “Sorry,” she said, opening the door to the cool, fresh-smelling morning. Once outside, she blinked in the bright sunlight at the rare visitor.

Wolf had it right. There was a woman in the yard, waiting beside a big, shiny truck, looking like she was freaked out some and maybe a little bit lost. She seemed familiar, and after a confused second or two, Lireinne recognized her as the quiet lady from the feed store last Saturday—the gray-haired one who'd been there with the old woman, Sarah Fortune.

Hanging out in the yard next to the burn pile and all of Bud's other junk, the gray-haired lady was ridiculously overdressed: her soft cotton sweater, khaki shorts, and brand-new-looking Top-Siders screamed of the casual luxury women like her always seemed to take for granted. What was
she
doing here? Lireinne shut the door and paused at the top of the cement stairs. She folded her arms over her sweatshirt, wishing she'd taken the time to put on real clothes. She was still wearing her nightgown, and was sure she looked like a lazy slob.

“Yeah?” Lireinne said to the woman, feeling resentful. “What do you want?”

“Hello.” The woman from the feed store smiled an anxious, wavering smile. “Um,” she said, swallowing. “We, uh, haven't actually been introduced, have we? I mean, Sarah told me how to find your place, but I was afraid I might be at the wrong, uh . . . house.”

With a quick, barely disguised glance of apprehension at the old green-streaked trailer, at the minivan on blocks in the weeds, and all the other crap Bud hadn't gotten around to hauling to the dump yet, the lady said, “I'm, uh, um, Emma Favreaux.” She sounded unsure, like she didn't really believe that was her own name.

“Okay,” Lireinne said. “I'm Lireinne. What do you want?” she asked bluntly. Emma-whoever widened her pale gray eyes, her fingertips going to her mouth.

“I'm so sorry—am I here at a bad time?” She sounded more nervous than ever. “I mean, I could come back later if that's more convenient for you. I didn't realize it was that early. When I went to the feed store first thing this morning, I had no idea so many people would be there. It seemed to take such a long time to get the, uh, oats, that I guess that's why I thought it was later than it is. Ricky helped me get the right kind of feed, but I had to wait for him to finish with a big line of customers who were there before me, and so I'm sorry if . . .”

Oats? Lireinne thought. The feed-store lady, Emma-whoever, hurried on in a breathless babble while obviously trying not to stare at the chain saw stuck in the oak tree stump, or at the random collection of engine parts and bald tires scattered around the clearing like a sale day at the salvage store. Lireinne hadn't ever really given much thought to how bad the yard might look to strangers, not until this woman had showed up this morning. Well, who the hell did this Emma think she was, anyway—the freaking feed fairy come to visit the poor?

Still, Lireinne's practical side reminded her, the woman
said
she brought oats.

Ignoring Emma's endlessly repeating how
sorry
she was, Lireinne marched down the cement steps to the truck, skirting the big puddle in the middle of the yard, the rain-soaked dirt cold and wet under her bare feet. Sure enough, there in the truck bed was a fifty-pound bag of oats. Maybe this lady really
was
the feed fairy, Lireinne thought, marveling at her luck. Now she could be sure Mose got fed this week. As if he'd heard her thoughts, the old horse whinnied behind the trailer. Lireinne noticed there was a big brown paper sack in the back of the truck, too.

“That's for you, too,” Emma-whoever said. “Sarah told me you needed basic grooming equipment and something called a hoof pick. It's all in the bag. Sarah told me . . .”

She was off again, yapping, but now Lireinne didn't care because inside the sack she found some brand-new brushes and a small, sickle-shaped, metal tool that had to be the hoof pick.
Awesome,
she thought. Perpetually itchy Mose was sure to love this stuff, although it might take a little while to get the hang of using most of it. Lireinne ran her fingertips over the soft plastic bristles of a brush, imagining how good it would feel on the old horse's face.

“I could bring the oats inside for you,” this Emma person offered. “Since you don't have a barn. I always carry Sarah's feed for her because she's getting on—eighty-one this month. It'd be no trouble to take it in your, um, house, no trouble at all.”

Before she could say another word about getting inside the trailer, Lireinne cut her off. “No!—I mean, that's okay. I got it.” She wasn't about to ask the woman inside the double-wide, even though Bud would've wanted her to be polite to a visitor. It was a total mess. She'd been too worn out last night to pick up after her brother, and anyway, this woman looked like she'd pass out from suburban trailer-horror if she set foot in the double-wide, even if it was hospital-clean in there.

Lireinne dropped the tailgate and grabbed the fifty-pound bag, slinging it over her shoulder with a grunt as it heavily settled. Emma hovered beside her truck, twisting her hands. It was like she was at a party where she didn't know anyone, like she wanted to leave, but couldn't get away yet without being impolite. People like her were always big on acting polite when they didn't know what else to do.

“Hold on, I'll be back to get the brushes and stuff.” Lireinne headed for the steps. Still glancing around the yard as though there were something dangerous lurking there, the woman nodded in distracted agreement.

Inside the trailer, Wolf groused from under the blankets. “Aw, c'mon! What's that all the hell about?” he said, his voice muffled. “Is it the septic tank again? She from the Parish or something?”

“Nope. Just a feed delivery.” Hurrying, Lireinne dropped the new bag of oats in the corner of the kitchen with a rustling thud. She poured what was left of the old bag into the dishpan. “Don't come out, okay? Go back to sleep.” She slid her feet into her red flip-flops and stepped outside again, shutting the door behind her firmly. On top of the steps, she balanced the dishpan on her hip and surveyed Emma with a skeptical eye.

“So, like, why'd you do all this?” Lireinne knew she probably sounded ungrateful, but she didn't much care. “I can't pay for it.”

In her experience, the world was full of people who wanted to get their noses into your business if for no other reason than to find out if something smelled bad. Her grammar school teachers had always been asking nosy questions about Lireinne's family, wondering why her stepfather never made it to back-to-school night and couldn't attend conferences. It didn't do any good to explain that Bud was
working,
that he couldn't get time off. One of the teachers had called the Child Protective Services people, sending them out to the trailer a couple of times to investigate. Bud had been forced to take an expensive day off to meet with them. Even as a little girl Lireinne had known that these visits could be dangerous for her family, that she and Wolf could get taken away. People like her old teacher were so smug, so positive they had a right to poke around in your life—no matter how much trouble they caused. Worse, they expected you to be
grateful
for it.

Emma hadn't answered, so Lireinne asked again. “Why'd you do this, huh?”

Looking as though she wanted to jump in her truck and drive back to suburbia, nonetheless Emma swallowed hard and, after a long beat, she said, “Because . . . I like horses?”

“Right. I bet you go around delivering feed all over St. Tammany Parish, just 'cause you get a bang out of it. Merry freakin' Christmas—only it's not Christmas, huh.”

Emma seemed crestfallen. Dropping her eyes, she shrugged and wrapped her arms around her waist, looking so defeated and miserable that Lireinne couldn't help but pity the woman. She did seem kind of nice, if only she wasn't so damned nervous all the time. Maybe this Emma was really okay, like Sarah Fortune. Lireinne liked Sarah. Even though she was full of advice, it was different: that kind of nosy person was useful, they actually
helped
.

Shoulders drooping, Emma opened the door to her truck. “I'll go now,” she said, her voice dispirited. “Sorry to have woken you up. It won't happen again.”

“It's all right.” Lireinne suddenly decided it was, in fact, all right. “You're not too early, not really.” She was feeling generous now. “You want to meet Mose?” she offered. “I'm going around back to feed him. Bring the grooming stuff, will you?”

 

Emma-whoever prudently stayed outside the barbed wire while Lireinne fed her horse and knocked the caked mud off his legs and back with the stiff-bristled brushes. She used the soft one on his face, and Mose lowered his head with obvious pleasure.

The woman didn't seem as nervous anymore, Lireinne reflected as she carefully brushed Mose's dusty ears. Maybe she'd finally gotten used to the trailer and all the crap in the yard, or maybe she felt more at ease, now that she was a little less clean.

“You seem to have a way with horses,” Emma said, her tone respectful. Her smooth brown legs were splashed with mud and her cotton sweater had a dirty smudge on it from hungry Mose's curious nose. As soon as Lireinne had put the feed on the ground, he'd buried his face in the dishpan, so ready for breakfast he ignored her as she ran the new brushes over his body. Emma said, “I confess I'm completely ignorant. Horses are so big, they scare me.”

“I don't know a whole bunch about them, not like Sarah does,” Lireinne confessed. “Mose is kind of like, well,
family,
but until the other day I didn't even know he needed feed. Did Sarah say what I'm supposed to do with this hoof pick? I've never seen one before.”