A Gentle Rain by Deborah F. Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

britches. I'll be there in a second. I broke a link on one of my ankle bracelets."
    Lula and her older sister, Miriam, had been friends of Mama's. Me and Joey had known `em all our lives. Both were sixty-something, a little on the hefty side, but still full of flash and sizzle. They had some nurse training, so they helped me look after Joey and the others. Lula and Miriam shared a doublewide trailer on the ranch, but most nights Lula slept with either Cheech or Bigfoot. "Their heads may not work right," she liked to say. "But their other parts operate just fine."
    She wasn't takin' advantage of `em. Cheech and Bigfoot might be a little slow, but they were grown men, and they knew what they wanted. They liked sex. A lot. So did Lula. The arrangement worked good for all concerned.
    With Lula, Bigfoot and Cheech accounted for, I looked in on the yearlings one more time. Then I rapped a knuckle on the door of the trailer's overhead tack bin. "You all set in there, Possum?"
    "I'm set, Boss," came the muffled voice.
    "Got your water bottle and your fan?"
    "Yes, Boss."
    "You put fresh batteries in your fan?"
    "Yes, Boss. Right side up, this time."
    "Awright. Wave your bandana out the vent if you get too hot. I'll stop."
    "I will, Boss."
    Weird sensations filled Possum's world at every turn. Sometimes even the smallest things drove him to distraction. One of his doctors explained it to me this way: `Ben, you and I see a butterfly outside a window and we think, `What a pretty, soothing sight.' Possum sees a butterfly and counts every beat ofits wings. He can't help himself. That's how an autistic person thinks."
    Medication eased Possum's mind a little, but the best therapy was hiding. He loved small spaces. They focused his world and made him feel safe. He lived in a one-room apartment over the horse barn. Well, to be precise, he lived in a small wooden box in the middle of the one room. I built it for him, complete with a twin mattress, air vents, and a light. Some mornings, gettin' Possum out of his box was like pryin' a turtle out of a storm drain.
    But like everybody at the ranch, Possum had a purpose and a talent. Put him in a stall with a scared horse, and before you knew it he'd have the horse dozing with its head on his shoulder. Turn him loose in a pen crowded with panicky cows, and pretty soon he'd have `em chewing their cuds like happy campers.
    His effect worked on all kinds of critters and varmints. One time I sent him into the crawl space under the main house to check for a leaking pipe. He found the pipe and patched it, but then I had to crawl in after him because he didn't want to come out. He was talking to some mice he'd met.
    And I think the mice were talking back.
    With Possum, Lula, Cheech and Bigfoot ready to go, I moved on to the van. The ranch van was a 1983 Chevy cargo model. I'd bought it from Lucy's Florist and Decor Shop over in Fountain Springs, then installed bench seats in the back. It still smelled like chrysanthemums.
    I poked my head inside the open cargo door and eyed the fortyish couple who looked like something out of an old cowboy movie Riders of the Lost Mesa.
    As anybody with the sense to read a history book knows, there were and are plenty of black cowboys and cowgirls. I was lookup' at two of `em. Nothing unusual about a man and woman of color workin' at a cattle ranch.
    Except when they dressed like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
    Before I hired Roy and Dale I didn't know there was that much fringe and shirt piping left in the world. Not only did they dress like dude-ranch cowpokes, they were color-coordinated. That much red gingham and blue leather can hurt your eyes.
    "Roy, Dale? Did y'all take your meds this mornin'?" Both of them were born with spina bifida. Roy took pills for seizures, Dale for high blood pressure and twitchy legs. She had a shunt in her head. They were the only married couple on the ranch. Mac and Lily had wanted to get married for years, but Mac's brother, Glen, wouldn't