Stars Always Shine

by Rick Rivera

  “I’ve read your resume and your letters of recommendation,” Jacqueline began. “They seem to be impressive.”

  “Well, thank you,” Michelle replied. “When I saw the ad in the paper, I thought about what it called for and what I had done years ago and what I am currently employed in, and I felt that I was as qualified as anyone around.”

  “Well, you do understand that the position calls for an on-site manager of this big ranch?” Jacqueline asked. “There’s a lot of work on a ranch this size. But I’m sure you know that. If I asked you to go out to a pasture and halter a horse, do you think you could do it?”

  “Do you have a horse and halter here?” Michelle asked. “I can go out and halter it now if you want.”

  Jacqueline looked away. She sublimated her surprise at Michelle’s eager offer by looking over her and talking to the living room wall. “Uh, no, we don’t have any horses on the place yet. We just bought it. But when we start to get some horses in, you need to be ready. We need reliable on-site people now because it will take us about a year to wrap up our business at our ranch in Woodside. Mickey is a building contractor and he has some projects to finish. I’m a trainer. We can’t just walk away from our customers, you know.”

  “I understand what you mean, Mrs. Kittle,” Michelle replied, and then asked, “What kind of a spread do you have in Woodside?”

  Both Mickey and Jacqueline were caught off guard by the turn in the interview. None of the previous candidates had asked any questions and had mumbled and stuttered and sidestepped through Jacqueline’s tense questioning. The couple looked at each other quickly, and Mickey said, “Well, it’s a two-acre place. We’ve outgrew it a long time ago, and we finally decided that we needed a bigger ranch where I could do my roping and Jacqueline here could relocate her training business. This place was a steal.”

  Michelle, accustomed to asking questions, proceeded with another. “What kind of training do you do? English? Western?”

  Jacqueline looked down at her pad and drew in a deep breath while clenching her distinct jaw. “Am I doing the interview or are you?” she asked brusquely.

  “Oh! I’m sorry, Mrs. Kittle,” Michelle answered, unrattled. “I just get carried away when people start to talk horses.”

  “She’d talk to Mr. Ed and Francis the talking mule if she could,” Plácido chimed in, thinking he was witty.

  Mickey laughed loudly and long. Michelle looked over at Plácido with a straight face. Jacqueline sat looking matronly and unamused.

  “This one letter says you’ve been training out at North Coast Stables,” Jacqueline said as she studied the document with a detailed letterhead of a horse running on a beach.

  “That’s right,” Michelle said. “Benny Manfredi runs a tight ranch. I was fortunate to last with him for these past five years. Plácido has been a ranch hand on the place during those years. So the arrangement we had with Manfredi is similar to the one you’re looking for.” Michelle did not flinch at the lies she had delivered. It was her strategy not to reveal that she was a lawyer, anticipating that the connotation alone could render unsubstantiated images of urban sophistication and rural ignorance. And Manfredi, along with the authors of the two other thoroughly bred lies that represented letters of high praise, were quite willing to say nice things about Michelle and then sign their names to the documents in exchange for advice in wiggling out of precarious litigious situations.

  The first revelation this interview yielded was that Jacqueline did not like Michelle’s confidence. She cared even less for her strangely named sidekick of a husband. But having impulsively purchased a sixty-acre ranch, and not having anyone to watch and maintain it while they wrapped up business on their other property in Woodside created an urgent situation. She looked at Plácido for a few indifferent moments before asking coolly, “What kind of name is that, anyway?”

  At times, Plácido was not as patient as his wife, and there was an ethnic impulse about him. References to his name were, in his mind, unsolicited references to his ethnicity, his culture, to an entire nation that helped shape and nurture California as well as other southwestern states before they were claimed by intruders. His deep blue eyes widened hatefully at Jacqueline for fleeting seconds. His high cheek bones twitched the tendons under his light brown skin as he tightened his jaw. In his mind the answer flashed, “It’s an American name.” But what emanated from his voice was: “It’s a Mexican name, I guess. I’m Mexican American. My parents were going to name me Zeferino, but they decided on Plácido instead. People who know me call me Place.”

  Jacqueline remained as stoic as a statue. “Well, people who know me call me Jacqueline,” she said, unimpressed. Then thinking she had uncovered a flaw in Michelle and Plácido’s presentation, she asked accusingly, “Didn’t you two introduce yourselves with different last names?”

  Under the table at which they sat, Michelle’s foot lightly tapped Place’s leg. She knew his anger would begin to flame as it always did when he became irritated by the conjugal question that never seemed to have any relevance to the arena in which it was presented. “Yes, we did,” Michelle explained. “I’m not quite sure why you’re asking, but we are married. I just didn’t change my name when Place and I got married. Why should I?” She looked at Jacqueline with questioning eyes and a blunt expression that expected an answer.

  Jacqueline shifted in her seat and raised a hand to play with the hair at the back of her neck. “Well I just find that peculiar,” she said, and then diverted the discussion back to Plácido. “You say you worked on this North Coast ranch too?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Plácido answered politely, the tide of his anger ebbing as he remembered how badly he and Michelle wanted to live in the country, away from the urgent demands of progressive society, criminals, too-close neighbors, and door-to-door salespeople. Especially lately, because the academic world did not seem to need his intellectual talents, Place had developed a snarling attitude toward life as an argyled, elbow-patched professional and he felt a sour-graped urge to abandon the institutions that didn’t want him. “I mainly mended fences, kept the barns up, made sure the waterers stayed clean, that sort of stuff,” he responded, remembering from the previous night’s rehearsal not to say too much and to keep things general. Plácido, as Michelle playfully teased him from time to time, was a dude. He had not had ranch exposure, even though as a young boy and before education made him more sapient and resourceful, he had worked with his parents and brothers and sisters as a migrant farm worker in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Plácido was tremulous from the mendacity of his words. As he waited to see if Jacqueline would accept his response, he felt the same gnawing nervousness from years ago as he flashed back to his final academic act when he delivered an oral defense of his thesis, The Pastoral Violence in the Early Writings of Hamlin Garland. Jacqueline maintained the same severed look that Plácido received from stern professors who determined whether he had produced anything defensible.

  “I guess you noticed that this place has a few barns too, and things to keep up?” Jacqueline asked both of them. Before a response came from either Michelle or Plácido, Jacqueline added, “You say Manfredi’s ranch had more than one barn? It must have been about as big as this place.”

  Michelle answered quickly. She knew Plácido did not have the experience or knowledge to offer an impressive response. She had grown up with and around horse people and began riding when she was four years old. Michelle had ridden in Pony Club for about as many years as she went to school, and before law school, she had been certified as an instructor by the British Horsemasters Society. As an amateur, she showed and jumped horses from Pebble Beach to Fort Worth. In her bohemian days as a young, adventurous adult, she had wandered into Colorado where she eventually found work at a dairy. Achieving experience working with cattle, Michelle learned how to milk, feed, perform artificial inseminations, maintain calving and health records, and eventually, she came to manage the one thousand head of cows as sh
e supervised a crew of a dozen milkers, feeders, and assistant managers. She knew horses, cows, and ranches as well as she knew the law. And for this interview, she was willing to risk that should she depict a convincing and complete scenario, her words alone would be enough and nobody would check her references—especially from the two who sat in the county jail awaiting their trials for nefarious horse deeds and dealings. “Oh, it was a sizable spread, Mrs. Kittle. The useable portion of the ranch consisted of a hundred acres. Then there was another sixty acres that was mainly a flood plain. We only used it to pile junk on. That ranch has a lot of the same features that this place has. Manfredi has a hay barn that will hold forty tons and a twelve-horse stall barn with automatic waterers. Two of those stalls have cameras so you can monitor your mares in foal. There is also a smaller ten-stall shed-row, a hot walker, round pen, wash rack, and a tool and hot-feed barn about the size of that little help house you have over there.”

  Plácido smiled deeply—to himself. He was amazed at the effectiveness of the tale that Michelle had just spun. How nicely woven, he thought. And it made Manfredi’s ten-acre dirt patch, which was home to a mule that drank beer, a billy goat sexually enraptured with the mule, and dogs which were the products of an orgiastic period of random estrus, and where the roofless barn was almost in as good a condition as his house, seem so well kept, so organized, like something he imagined would be in Kentucky next to Churchill Downs.

  Jacqueline Kittle sat and stared. She was unaware that Michelle’s narrative had impressed her enough to cause her mouth to drop open, weighted wide by her heavy jaw, while her brain tried to figure out things like hot walkers and shed-rows and round pens.

  Michelle, highly trained in body language, human nature, and the subtle, silent gestures and expressions that say so much, knew when and how to take advantage of such things.

  “Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Kittle, I realize that Plácido and I might not be qualified to meet your standards, and I realize too that you have other applicants to interview. We’re just extremely grateful for the opportunity to have this interview. Fortunately, we have another one tomorrow at a ranch in Napa County.” Michelle was now appealing to her jury of two, and the same energizing force began to consume her when she knew toward the end of a trial that she had delivered a convincing final argument. She had honed her professional presentations to include analogical paradox, curious understatement, and tacit accusations. Jacqueline Kittle sat pricked with the subtle acupuncture of words.

  But Jacqueline was a fighter too, albeit an already beaten one. And it was really only black-eyed pride that forced her to answer the bell for another round of this rhetorical bout. “Why are you leaving Manfredi?” she asked.

  The thoughts rotated and flashed in Michelle’s mind like a kaleidoscope. There were so many options at this point with respect to answering such a simple question. She scrolled through the citations in her brain as she thought about how long to continue this exchange, in what direction to lead the interview, and what would really win the Kittles over.

  “Manfredi’s dying,” she said as she looked deeply into Jacqueline’s eyes and knowing that at most, Manfredi might be drunk and passed out in his hammock. “He’s had so much radiation pumped into him, he probably glows at night. He really doesn’t have much longer. Maybe a year at most. We offered to stay with him, but his children are going to help with the ranch now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mickey whispered, now hunched over in his seat with his elbows on his thighs, looking down, pursing his lips, and shaking his head from side to side at the brutal indignation of life.

  “Yes, that’s too bad,” Jacqueline said, regarding the wall she seemed to have grown fond of.

  “But please, do call him if you wish to talk to him,” Michelle said. “Or better yet, go by his ranch. Since I presume you aren’t too familiar with the county, I can give you directions to his place. He is still strong enough to get around and talk to people.”

  Place regarded Michelle admiringly. He recognized that she was now presenting her case in what he referred to as her out-of-body mode, or as a woman possessed. She had done that over coffee in their initial conversation at Berkeley. She did this at home whenever they got into arguments. And she thrived on it in the courtroom. It was her talent to drive the main points home and then keep driving them into the foundation while adding bits and pieces of other details, comments, and developments until they overwhelmed or confused or frustrated. He wondered how much more she would bring into the exchange, but he did not have to wonder much longer.

  “How much irrigation do you need to do a day?” Michelle asked. “I understand that the North County Irrigation District requires ranchers and farmers in this area to use up a certain amount of tertiary treated water each day. What does your contract with them call for?”

  Jacqueline turned quickly to Mickey, who sat up straight after his mourning for Manfredi. She hesitated, coughed, cleared her throat and replied, “Uh, well, now that’s a very good, uh, question you ask, Michelle, we understa—.”

  Michelle was now successfully surfing the discursive pipeline of churning words and feeling the exhilaration of such an experience. She interrupted to calmly offer, “Please, Mr. and Mrs. Kittle, call me Mitch. He’s Place and I’m Mitch. At least down at Manfredi’s and at the feed store and with the shoer and the vet.” She smiled in a heavenly way at Mrs. Kittle and then at Mickey. She knew that the advantageous position of being the least ignorant one in a conversation usually made the other grope and flinch and squirm. She sat demurely but with postural aplomb as she waited for an answer.

  “To be honest with you, Mitch, we aren’t sure,” Mickey revealed, the huge hat on his small head making him look like a disproportionate caricature. “The real estate agent just sold us this place so quick, we didn’t have much time to figure a lot of things out or ask many questions.” He was sheepishly embarrassed at the thought of having his wife pay half a million dollars for a piece of property thirty times bigger than anything either one of them had ever owned without finding out the details. But that was what moved Mickey—not knowing the details. Details got in the way of those other things Mickey had his sights on. Becoming a cowboy and working his own ranch were simple enough goals in his mind. Why should they be complicated with details?

  Jacqueline tried to ease the growing flush both of them were increasingly feeling as the room languished in an uncomfortable silence. “We will be going to the county offices tomorrow to research those vital issues,” she said, using words that seemed to exceed her true intelligence. Then abruptly, to ease her annoyance, she decided the interview was over. She stood to indicate such, and thanked Mitch and Place for their time. “We’ll call you within a week to let you know the results,” she said.

  As they left the ranch, Place waved to the little round house. They drove down Sweet Wine Road, following the right angles toward the Redwood Highway. Place and Mitch stared out at the exposed land as they quietly drifted home. He thought about those individual parcels of private lives that were supported, encouraged, and motivated by the earth. Without announcing it, Mitch took a side road, delaying the inevitable hubbub of the Redwood Highway, and drove deeper into the honeycombs of valleys to visit land she had come to miss. After silent minutes of wandering through various shades of green, Mitch accelerated as she merged with the ambitious traffic of the highway.

  “That was brilliant, honey!” Place said, reviewing what had taken place in the interview. “Are you sure you don’t want to continue practicing law? I know you’re burned out, but you really have a talent for twisting, bending, spindling, stretching, and contorting the truth and other facts. Simply brilliant!”

  “Oh, it was nothing, really nothing,” she said with a huffed tone of dispassionate refinement. Then changing her tone to one of serious concern, she added, “They’ll call within two days, maybe even tonight to let us know we have the position. Something’s not right with those two. There is something peculiar about this
whole situation. And I’m not talking about their obvious age differences. You don’t go into this kind of a property uninformed. It appears that they didn’t look into things before they committed to buying the place. Probably because there’s a lot to read and it’s easier to just look at something and say, “I want it.” It’s kind of late to be researching things now. Yes, that ranch does need a whole lot of work, but the fencing alone is worth tens of thousands of dollars. That’s not a casual investment. Let’s just get home to see how Rosa is doing and wait for their call.”

  The phone rang early the next day. Before Mitch picked up the receiver, she was confident that Jacqueline Kittle would be on the other end of the conversation. She hesitated for a few seconds while she gathered her thoughts and answered, “Good morning, North Coast Stables, this is Mitch speaking.”

  Jacqueline Kittle, despite not really liking Mitch and Place, was impressed with the professional tone. She had no reason to suspect that her words, after being spoken into the receiver and traveling with electric speed through wires, cables, and transformers, reached their destination not at Benny Manfredi’s allegedly bucolic ranch, but instead found a home in Mitch’s ear in a metropolitan condominium only walking distance from the county administration complex where she really worked.

  “Mitch, we’d like to have you over for another interview. We’ve narrowed the applicants down to three, and you’re one of them.”

  Jacqueline and Mickey did not have any other applicants. Their three days of interviewing produced candidates who either wanted more money, more amenities, fewer working hours, or a combination of those requests. In Jacqueline’s mind, all of the applicants had been frauds, ne’er-do-wells, and parasites.

  Mitch wanted to keep her bargaining chips stacked high. She informed Jacqueline that they still had to consider their options should they be given a position at their fictitious interview in Napa county. She knew who was capable of what in Sonoma county’s horse world, as most of her associates and acquaintances were ranch owners, trainers, veterinarians, jockeys, grooms, horseshoers, and horse traders, so she was not concerned with the competition that Jacqueline Kittle spoke of. In addition, Mitch trained beginning riders and rode on weekends at a busy equestrian facility, and she knew talk on ranches was akin to linguistic brush fire—it spread rapidly.