Mother and Dad were there. They were everywhere. They hadn't gone away, they didn't die, they just shifted, to make room for Mac and Lily. I could feel them, their presence. Imagine their voices, see their smiles. The rest of my life stretched before me, not orphaned, but re-birthed.
Mother and Dad had regarded God as an extremely pragmatic CEO. They did not pray to Him or Her because in their opinion God didn't hear stockholders' individual prayers; instead He/She served the best interests of the corporation and was, in fact, as unconcerned with individual fates as his rampaging partner, Mother Nature.
God was in every detail of nature, the energy behind every element of thought, the magic that made fish breathe underwater and polar bears survive the Arctic winters. God could not be summed up in simple concepts.
But there are times when a person simply needs to pray. I hoped someone was listening. I bowed my head, whispering so only God and I could hear.
Amen.
I raised my head and spoke to the assembled birds. "I'm very thankful for every blessing God has granted me, but I really need to have Ben, too."
"I've been tellin' God the same thing," Ben said behind me. "How much I need you."
I clambered to my feet and whirled around. He stood there, at the forest's edge, leading the horse he'd ridden. I was too stunned to do more than lift a hand to my throat. He tethered his horse next to mine then stood still, looking at me. A soft breeze ruffled his black hair; he was dressed in khakis and a cotton shirt. He held out a hand. My gold locket gleamed in the sunshine. "I got the message," he said gruffly. "I came here to trade it back to you."
"Trade?" My voice was tearful.
"I'll give you this gold heart back if I can have yours in return."
"Ben, that's the most poetic and profound-"
"I don't want to be poetic. I want you to com'ere and kiss me."
We met halfway. He swung me off the ground. We kissed a thousand different ways. When we were finally calm enough to talk, we bent our heads together and did little more than whisper, while holding onto to each other tightly.
"I love you, Ben Thocco. I've loved you since the moment you elbowed a Pollo brother for me. I've loved you since you saved my mermaid behind from an alligator at Kissme Woomee World. I've loved you from the day I put your hat on my head after Estrela threw me. I've loved you in-between, and before, and since, and I love you now, and always."
"Karen. Kara. Kara Whittenbrook-Tolbert-Johnson ... I love you, too. I love you to my dying day and on beyond."
Above and around us, the assembly ofAmazon birds, those feathered nobles, chattered loudly about such an inordinately human display of sheer passion.
God, after all, was listening.
Ben
"There you go," I said to Karen gently.
I sat back from the small hole I'd dug with a spade she'd brought in her saddlebag. We were besides the thick roots of a tree so tall it looked like an endless tunnel of green when I tiled my head back to look.
"This will do, thank you," Karen said. She knelt beside me, holding the locket to her heart with both hands. She shut her eyes. "This is for my sister of the heart, the baby girl whose body Mother and Dad buried in this forest thirty-two years ago. They're with me in so many ways. I can do without this token of them. I'm giving it to her, instead."
She slowly dangled the locket over the narrow grave, then lowered it into the darkness, and let it drop. We filled the hole and tamped the dirt for sakekeeping.
We walked back to the horses, holding hands. I faced her. "Just for the record, what you said in your letter about bein' a fan of El Diablo ... that was just to be nice, right? You can tell me the truth."
"Ben." She lifted her hands to my face again, stroking my jaw, admiring me, shaking her head in amazement. "When I was seventeen years old, I was the president of El Diablo Americano's Brazilian fan club."
Chapter 33
Ben
There's nothing better than having hot, sweet sex with a woman who loved you even when you wore a mask and tights. A woman who's wanted you since she was a teenager, even though back then you were just a young, slicked-up, soap-opera-silly-bad rudo. A woman who always suspected The American Devil was a hero at heart.
That night me and Karen lay in a bed in a screened cabin built forty feet up in the Amazon tree canopy. A tree house. It was so dark the only thing we could see were little glow-in-the-dark bugs and lizards that hung on the screens like jewels. We watched them while we lay flat on our backs, holding hands, worn-out, sweaty and naked.
Every one in a while one of us would just start laughing for no clear reason, and the other one would join in.
"I cried when El Diablo Avnericano died," she told me softly. "I was truly upset. I could barely stand to look at all my magazine clippings and posters. Too painful. I watched my videos of his telenovas until they failed from constant repetition." She paused. "A few years ago, I bought the DVD collection. Sentimental reasons."
I curled her against my chest. "Please don't tell me you got posters of El Diablo Americano somewhere in storage." Silence. All I heard was guilty silence. I groaned. "How many you got?"
She chortled. "All of them."
"I don't reckon you'd consider burning `em?"
"No! They're collectibles." She rose on an elbow and looked down at me in the deep darkness. She put a hand to my face, feeling my reaction by touch. "And I'd like ... Ben, I'd like for our children to know about your career in Mexico. We don't have to settle this issue tonight, but I hope you'll at least be willing to talk to me about it."
Children. Kids. "What if-"
"We can handle whatever happens. Good or bad."
"Awright."
She got up, pulled me out of bed and to a pair of cushioned chairs that faced each other. We sat there naked in the dark, across from each other, middling our bare feet together. Karen stroked the pad of one foot up the inside of my leg. I caught her foot in my hand and trapped it against my thigh. She wiggled her toes in a good spot. `Ben, Marjorie I i nnan Rawlings said, `A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one."' Karen laughed softly. Her toes tickled just right. "I've got El Diablo and you. And I am so thankful."
"I'm thankful you got soft toes."
"I want you to be thankful for something else."
"Move your heel just so. Yeah. I'm thankful for that."
"The money."
I lifted her seductive foot to my knee. "Baby, I'm yours. But I don't know how we ought to handle the money thing."
"Thocco Ranch, Incorporated. Make me your business partner. I'll invest. We'll appoint Joey, Mac and Lily as junior partners, and everyone else at the ranch can be stockholders. We'll have board meetings. At the company picnic, I'll insist that everyone eat soy cheese on their hamburgers."
"Now you're talking! "
"We'll use my money to start, but any profit we earn will be our money. Money we earned together."
"Awright," I said softly. "That's a deal."
Pardon me for quoting again, but Jane Austen said, paraphrasing, `A man with a fortune must be in need of a wife."
"What fortune do I have?" I asked gruffly, while I rubbed a hand up the inside of her ankle, her knee, and then-
"It might take years for me to list all the riches you have," she said softly.
Kara
"Are you ready to go home?" I asked Mama and Papa the next morning. "We need to get back to Joey. Phil might teach him bad habits."
They were so happy since Ben had arrived. They smiled at him and me across a breakfast table. Mr. Darcy squatted on a perch nearby, merrily flinging orange rinds at us. Their smiles faded a little. Lily said, "Only if you're going back, too."
"Of course."
"Hold on," Ben said somberly. "Karen can't come back to the ranch until I have a talk with the two of you."
They stared at him. "She's not any t-trouble," Mac told him. "She doesn't eat much. She can keep stayin' with us."
/>
"We said we'd add on a room," Lily reminded him.
He cleared his throat. "Well, no, here's the thing. I want her to live with me."
Mac scowled at him. "Me and Lily are gettin' married. I think you ought to marry our baby girl ifyou want her to live with you." Lily nodded fervently.
"Well, yeah. That's what I'm askin' you two. Can I have your permission to ask her to marry me?"
Lily leaned toward him and whispered, "Shouldn't you ask Karen, instead of us?"
"Yeah, but I want to know if it's okay with y'all, first. Would you mind if I ask Karen to marry me?"
Lily smiled widely. "We'd be happy!"
Mac nodded. "If you marry K Karen, we'll have a son. Two sons. You and Joey."
"I don't know for sure she'll marry me."
They looked from me to Ben. Lily's eyes twinkled. "Well, she's sitting right here. Ask her."
Ben stood. "Awright."
This was the part I didn't expect. The part where he turned me and my chair outward to face him, then knelt on one bluejeaned knee in front of me. What had been a light-hearted moment suddenly became intensely emotional.
He took my hands in his and looked up at me. "Karen. Kara. Daisy. Will you marry a cowboy?"
I cried and smiled. "Yes. Will you marry a cowgirl-mermaid?"
"Yes, I will. I've always wanted one of those."
Kara
Autumn
Joey came home from the hospital with a prognosis that neither condemned his future nor guaranteed it. "We've given him at least a few more good years," the surgeons told us.
"We'll take `em, thanks," Ben answered.
One pleasant morning in late September, Joey gave us all a great gift, in return. He walked into the kitchen for breakfast. Yes, he still used oxygen at times, and he moved slowly, but he was walking again. And every day after that, he walked more, until the wheelchair sat in a closet most of the time, gathering dust.
Glen relinquished his guardianship of Mac after some brief bluster but without a real fight. We heard that he was spending a great deal of time at a beach home in South Carolina.
Ben went with me to Sweden when I accepted the Nobel Prize on Mother and Dad's behalf When I introduced him to Al Gore, they had a long conversation about manure and biofuels.
We hired a designer to draw up a plan for a park and Cracker history museum on the land in Tolbert where Mac and Lily gave birth to me. Lily and I poured over seed catalogues, selecting varieties of daisies to plant there in the spring.
Kissme Woomee World paved the auditorium parking lot, put in an anti-alligator screen around the performance grotto, and began drawing up plans to expand the gift shop and build a mermaid museum. With a generous donation from Ben and me, they hired a publicist.
At the first board meeting of Thocco Ranch, Incorporated, we voted to fix the hole in the pantry wall, screen the back porch, buy a larger television for the community room, and purchase a new van that didn't smell like mums. We also voted to buy the remainder of the Dooley farm and began stage one of converting it into an environmentally friendly dairy farm, featuring water buffalo.
We moved Ben's office out of his bedroom, and I moved in. We planned our wedding for winter, before the spring calves and foals started to drop.
Estrela retired from barrel racing. After all, she had nothing else to prove. As if she knew she had earned both confidence and peace of mind, she made friends with the other mares, stopped biting the cows, and was thus able to roam the pastures with the herd. If she decided to mate with Cougar, she'd let him know in her own good time.
Phil disappeared. It was that simple. One of his Roadkill employees dropped off the bar's deed and a note he'd written to Ben. It said, Sell the place and buy yourself a Hummer. Time to move on. Talk to you someday soon. Phil.
"Well, damn," Ben said. "Now that I can have a Hummer, I don't really want one."
Funny, how our desires fade when they become too easily acquired.
Uncle William and Sedge came to my christening ceremony. We held it outdoors in Fountain Springs, by the statue of Ponce de Leon. Mama and Papa sprinkled me with water from his trickling fingers. Though I would continue to be known as Kara or Karen, I was christened Daisy, as Mama and Papa had intended. In a way, the ceremony also anointed me as a resident of Fountain Springs and as an adopted Cracker.
Mac and Lily, my mama and papa, were married in a wonderful ceremony at the ranch. They wanted simplicity, and so they had it: An outdoor ceremony on a cool November day. I played the harp. Mr. Darcy perched atop it, bobbing his blue head and saying "Boink." Joey was the ring bearer, Ben, the best man, Miriam and Lula and Dale the maids of honor, and Roy, Cheech and Bigfoot the groomsmen.
Possum acted as flower girl.
Papa wore a suit and tie; Mama wore an ankle-length white dress and a small veil. She carried a bouquet of daisies. The reception included the grandest barbecue dinner in county history, plus an alternate buffet of vegetarian dishes. The Roadkill band played our favorites, including samba music.
Late that night, after all the guests had left and the ranch slept under a large autumn moon, Ben and I stood at our bedroom window watching Mama and Papa dance.
Wise men say only fools rush in, Elvis crooned from a CD player Mama had set on a table. Papa cradled her head into the crook of his sun-weathered neck, his jowly face burrowed into her graying red hair.
Horses and cattle grazed in the moonlight but kept a protective eye on their young. A heron, roosting atop one of the barns with his deadly long beak tucked lazily under one long, large wing, shifted and fluffed. All was right with this world of sandy yards, sun-burned rooftops, infinitely deep limestone springs and dark, swampy forests, far from the beaches of the fabled coasts or the glitter of the tourist cities. This was the real Florida. This was the old Florida-home to tough people, tough cattle, and horses descended from the first Spanish herds.
This wild, beautiful land hinged the peninsula to the continent above Tampa. Cracker Florida. A night breeze rattled stubby palmetto palms like soft castanets; wispy gray tendrils of Spanish moss undulated in the oaks' massive bowers.
Papa shifted from one foot to the other in rhythm with Elvis's lyrics. Mama balanced her left foot on the toe of his shoe. She looked up at him in the moonlight, smiling. They kissed.
So itgoes, Elvis sang. Some things are meant to be.
Ben
It had been quite a summer, and the autumn was quite an autumn. I kept trying to put it in words, but this was the best I could do: People want to be part of something bigger, something deeper, than themselves. Something that's worth livin' for, worth dyin' for. Something so wonderful they'll risk being laughed at, risk being called crazy, risk swimming alone through the darkest water, determined to dive so far down they find something special, something that can last forever. Something they'll risk lovin' even after that love hurts them.
I believe in that something, now.
I believe in lovin' Karen.
The night after Mac and Lily's marriage, as Karen and me were climbing into bed, I handed her a little package wrapped in gold tissue paper. She unwrapped it and started smiling.
"It was in my office safe," I confessed. "It's the mask of the notorious El Diablo Americano."
Her smile became a sly simmer. She looked at me with love and happiness and a gleam of pure, wicked invitation in her blue eyes. She held out the mask. "Put it on," she whispered.
I obliged.
It's the cowboy way.
About Deborah Smith
With more than 2.5 million copies in print worldwide, Deborah Smith is one of the best-k nownn and most beloved authors of romantic, stylish, contemporary Southern fiction. Her novels have been compared to those ofAnne Rivers Siddon, Pat Conroy, and other prestigious Southern writers. Among other awards, her work has been nominated for the Townsend Prize for Literature and she has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times magazine, which also named her 1996 New York Times bestse
lling novel, A Place To Call Home, one of the top 200 romantic novels published in the twentieth century. In 2002 Disney optioned her novel, Sweet Hush, for film in a major six-figure deal.
As a partner, co-founder and editor of BelleBooks, a small Southern press owned by her and four other nationally known women authors, Deborah edits the acclaimed Mossy Creek Hometown Series. She lives in the mountains of north Georgia with her husband, Hank.
Heirloom Florida Recipes
Boiled Swamp Cabbage
The Seminoles call this "Taal-holelke." First, you'll need the heart of a cabbage palm - one of those short, stocky palms that grow wild all over the state. It's also known as a sabal palm. It's Florida's state tree.
Remove the palm's tough outer fronds down to the tender white center. Chop that center into narrow strips or cubes, just as you'd cut an ordinary cabbage for cole slaw. Cook slowly in a little water for about a half hour. Add salt and sugar (or cane syrup) to taste.
Have you noticed the "Hearts of Palm" sold in the grocery store? Yep, that's from the cabbage palm.
A note from Kara: Harvesting the tender "bud" of this palm kills the tree. Commercial harvesting of wild cabbage palm is decimating native palm forests in Mexico.
Seminole Fry Bread
This sounds simple, but it takes practice. You'll need oil, self-rising flour, and water. In a big bowl, mix the flour and water with your hand, stirring slowly. Once your dough is ready, dust your hands with flour then form the dough into small pancakes. Drop those into an iron skillet at least two inches deep and filled with enough oil to make the pancakes float.
The oil should be very hot before you drop the dough. If your oil is right, your pancake will only need to sizzle for about five seconds per side. When the pancake is golden brown, dip it out and drain the excess oil on a towel.
Seminole Grape Dumplings
Cook a half gallon of wild grapes until they boil (use just enough water to cover them.) Strain the juice out through a fine, clean cloth. Save all your juice. You'll need it.
A Gentle Rain Page 37