Stars Always Shine

by Rick Rivera

  Mitch shrank as she listened, trying to hide her shock at the news of what she considered would develop into StarRidge Mobile Home Park. She tried to recall what she knew about landlord and tenant law. More vital to her concerns and to those who presently lived on the ranch, Mitch wondered about health codes, fire codes, building codes; a collection of codes and county regulations snapped in front of her as she mentally listed the possibilities and improbabilities. Jacqueline casually and with familiarity raised her hand to summon a garçon, and as he returned with another dainty cup of creamed coffee with chocolate shavings slowly disappearing in it, she worked out the figures for Mitch to show how the trailer park business could be as lucrative as the horse business.

  Mentally Mitch evaluated the backward progression of StarRidge Ranch as she explained to Place and Salvador what would be occurring in the near future and how the living arrangements would be altered.

  Place maintained his superior smugness about the Kittles, wearing an I-told-you-so expression on his face and commenting, “Yeah, they’re going to alter this place like a bad plastic surgeon alters an already fine face.”

  Salvador now privately hated the Kittles and he searched his memory to see if he had ever hated anyone in his life before. He knew that his growing rage was wasted energy. Living in the barn was only temporary, and really all life was, but he interjected to ask, “¿Cómo voy a comer?” Then he answered his own question about how he would eat with an explanation of how he could not cook in the barn: “No puedo cocinar en el barn. ¿Qué creen ellos?” And again he answered his own question, this one about what the Kittles could be thinking: “Creen que soy como un burro. ¡No! Ni los burros ni los otros animales se tratan así.” He choked on his last words as the emotion constricted his throat and he shook his head as he stared over at where his new home would be.

  “Poco a poco,” Mitch counseled as she stared at the two men. “I’ll talk to both of those freaks and see if we can work something out. For now, let’s just proceed with their game plan and not try to change anything. What they don’t know is that we’ll be calling the plays soon.”

  Place started early on the help house, stripping it of dead and decaying material. He peeled the weather-worn shingles from the roof as if peeling skin from a sunburned body, and with the spring breeze fanning him, he enjoyed the life of a carpenter. It was a constructive life. It was a productive life. He, with Mickey’s guidance and Salvador’s assistance—once the animals were fed and cared for—could help to resurrect the short shack of a house. It would be a new life, a new beginning, building permits notwithstanding, and to bring life to something that was dying was rewarding.

  Mickey assigned specific hammers and tape measures to both Place and Salvador and told them to keep them. Occasionally he would gift them with various things like a nail bag or utility belt to hold various tools. Each morning, Place and Salvador cinched their tool belts with deliberate confidence. They liked the feel of the weight that hugged their waists—holstered tools that they knew how to use or were learning about, and from that knowledge a strange sense of assured power. They each earned a personal saw, and Place and Salvador laughed as they joked about the superior dientes or teeth of their respective new tools.

  One day after many hours of wrenching clinging, screaming nails from their once secure strongholds and rebuilding walls and window joists, Mickey approached the deck of the ranch house where Place and Salvador sat. Casually, he rewarded each man with a level. Place stood and inspected the instrument and thanked Mickey. Oddly, Place liked Mickey. He admired him. He relented to the ensnaring force of knowledge as he had in college when professors offered their regal, doubtless intelligence and persuasive suggestions. Salvador placed the level on the picnic table and looked carefully as one would look through a microscope or telescope. A bubble of fluid leaned dramatically to the leftmost end of the little glass cylinder. He nodded his head approvingly as Place caressed his new tool and found an appropriate home for it in his utility belt. He loved his tools, especially because they came from Mickey, the maestro who could master angles, see designs where none existed, and bring life to empty spaces. Tools from Mickey were merit badges, and in his enthusiasm and new learning, Place wanted more.

  Inside the help house, Place and Salvador banged in nails as the walls were converted to an unpainted yet brighter and less blemished complexion. They measured and cut rectangles of plywood to fit flush with other sheets of wood that gave the walls new skin. They hardly spoke as music from a dilapidated radio groaned out sad songs in Spanish. Steadily, they raced the sun to see if they could finish the living room walls and move on to another room of the house the next day, each day measuring their success and each day bringing more learning.

  Mickey, who grew confident in Place and Salvador’s ability to follow instructions and bored with his own knowledge and expertise, concentrated on Bunny, training him more and more every day as he prepared him to pull things from a collar, yoke, and special harness. It was a queer and contrasting sight to watch Mickey, his body thin but not lanky, order and command Bunny to perform various tasks like backing up to a waiting plow or moving forward at a certain pace. Mickey stroked his working horse and praised him, and he was pleased.

  For the first time, StarRidge Ranch was satisfying. Jacqueline and Mitch began to strip down much of the inside of the ranch house in preparation for the next phase of remodeling. The help house waited patiently for yellows and light blues and bordered windows of white to bring it to respectability. Place and Salvador inspected the bristles of their new paint brushes and squeezed the plushness of thick paint rollers, and as soon as Mickey had finished up the house by delicately tapping in the molding and fitting in the new doors, they would be let loose with brushes, rollers, buckets, pans, and paint.

  Mickey sat regally atop Bunny, having discovered a special saddle that was big enough and girth extenders that were long enough to cover the table top of the horse’s back and circumnavigate the hull of his body. He rode like Hannibal on his elephantine horse and inspected the land—his land—StarRidge Ranch. The other animals of the ranch watched carefully, grateful that the fences held them in and huge Bunny out. His size was unintentionally ominous, and his thunderous hooves pounded announcements of his and Mickey’s arrival. The now neglected horses, who had originally come to the ranch as the jewels of Jacqueline and Mickey, watched him stride by, and they kept their distance, usually remaining in the middle of a pasture rather than curiously hugging the fences and reaching over sociably. The burros paced nervously, careful to mind their ways, and the growing calves chewed blankly as they watched master and animal glide by as if in a processional.

  Only Joker brayed mockingly every time man and horse rode by, and Bunny would shake his head in annoyance, pick up his tempo to trot away, and slowly settle down to the soothing therapy of Mickey’s voice and calming caresses. Mickey, equally vexed by Joker’s taunting and harsh hollers, reprimanded the burro from eighteen hands high and assuaged Bunny’s rattled nerves that Joker agitated into electric jumpiness.

  On a dusky, dying evening, Mickey approached Joker, halter in hand, and prepared to move him to a corral that was closer to the stall barn yet out of the path of his daily rides with Bunny. He reached out slowly, murmuring “Whoa, Joker. Whoa, boy.” As he raised the halter to capture the burro’s head, Joker reared back and snorted a warning. Mickey, impatient and cursing Jacqueline for keeping her useless burros, stepped closer, crouching as if to make himself smaller and therefore less visible. Joker snorted menacingly; he warned Mickey as he had warned him each day he rode by, and he stepped backwards with each of Mickey’s forward steps—an odd dance between two unwilling partners. Standing frozen, like the still lives that waited in Miwok Creek for the night to release them, Joker eyed Mickey as he continued to approach.

  Mickey snapped the halter over the unmoving burro and in a lightning movement Joker swung his head fiercely, crashing flatly into Mickey’s face and knocking him to
the ground. Taking the proud prances of a bull that has confused a matador, Joker circled wide as Mickey cupped his nose and attempted to stop the flow that colored his face like the crimson streak left by the departing sun. Joker snorted long, slow expulsions of air; his head dipped but his eyes watched Mickey.

  “You guys did a good job,” Jacqueline marveled as she inspected the inside of the remodeled house while Place and Salvador scrapped out material and tools and prepared to wash up. “We can start putting the wallpaper and curtains up tomorrow.”

  The slow groan and clicking rattles of the pipes released frustrated air as Place slowly turned the spigot behind the help house. Salvador carefully poured turpentine into Place’s cupped hands as he rinsed paint from them. In the distance, the cows from Sweet Milk Dairy mooed softly, calling to calves that had never suckled from their mothers’ nourishment. In the ranch house, Mitch turned on the dance music as she prepared dinner, and moving backwards, she two-stepped into the kitchen.

  In the farthest corral, the one closest to Miwok Creek, a river of angry red blood poured a tributary under the fence and toward the deadening silence that shrouded the still waterway. Joker lay dying, his mouth forming a silent, shocked rictus, the decibels of past brays now floating to heaven. His empty eyes dulled like setting winter suns, while swirls of dusty dirt sputtered as his nostrils flared in weakening gasps.

  Place wavered, and he felt as if he would faint when Mickey approached him and Salvador and offhandedly told them to bury Joker.

  “He’s dead,” Mickey said simply as he walked away, his face cracked and creased with dry blood. He held his hunting rifle firmly, the blue veins in his arm rigid and pumping life into a solid grip. Taking pounding steps that mimicked Bunny’s, he retreated to his milk barn apartment.

  The can of turpentine emptied into the ground, slowly oozing and mixing with the spigot that remained on, but now alone.

  Place breathed hard, trying to catch his breath after running to Joker’s corral. His face was contorted with a bizarre expression, the muscles in his cheeks twisting a corner of his mouth upward, and his forehead squeezed into disbelieving ridges. Salvador, accustomed to witnessing various forms of death, inured now to what life could mean, rushed to the ranch house to notify Mitch before they both ran out to the reddening corral.

  Uselessly, Place stroked the dead burro as he knelt close to him. He choked out words that now meant nothing. He unconsciously traced the God-given cross, running his hand up and across the animal’s back.

  Salvador walked away quietly, only inspecting the burro momentarily, seemingly paying no attention nor tribute to what was now becoming a carcass.

  Mitch knelt beside her sobbing husband. She slowly wavered back and forth, mourning silently but tearlessly. With one hand, she worked Place’s neck with a soothing massage. With the other, she closed the lids over eyes that had seen more than they had ever revealed.

  Salvador slid through the gate, leaned two shovels against the fence, and with his new saw began to cut through the side of the corral that bordered Miwok Creek. He breathed evenly with each stroke of his saw, and he continued unfazed as the saw jerked and cut through wire, downward, diligently downward, until he cut into the earth of StarRidge Ranch. Without looking back or cleaning the dirt and metal shavings from his saw, he measured out a panel wide enough to drag the burro through, and again cut downward into the fence until the ground signaled for him to stop.

  “Plácido,” he whispered like a mother gently waking her son, “tenemos que enterrar este pobre animal. Ayúdame, hombre, por favor.” His voice was distant and detached; it was in another country. Looking around as if surprised to find himself where he was, Place looked at Salvador questioningly. His eyes showed that he didn’t understand; life made him ignorant, but death made him dumb. Salvador tore away the section of sawed fencing as Mitch slowly walked back to the ranch house.

  In the dark density of Miwok Creek, Salvador worked steadily. Each time the blade of the shovel dug into the soft earth it emerged with a full load of rich, black dirt—healthy and alive dirt—and it smelled sweet to Salvador. He first marked a rectangular perimeter of a grave and then started to hollow out the ground until he was satisfied that he had a proper burial site for Joker.

  Without uttering a sound, and now deadly alive from the shock, Place began digging catatonically alongside his friend. Their eyes adjusted to the nightscape that consumed them as their bodies sank into the growing hole. Those animals that would be hunting for their food stayed hidden or hunted elsewhere. In the quiet and respectful silence, the earth announced echoes of clomping hoof steps.

  Chains muffled a rattled sound as if they were being dragged by vengeful ghosts. The gate to Joker’s corral squeaked open, and Mitch whispered clicking sounds as she led Bunny inside. The harness and yoke were affixed in the same manner in which he had dragged logs, and a large tarp straddled his back. Mitch continued to calm Bunny as he reacted nervously to the smell of blood, his lips flapping momentarily as he expelled a restive purr. She snapped a lead rope to his halter and tied him to a solid fence post. She watched for a few moments to see if he would accept his new position. Uncannily, Bunny seemed to sense the urgency of the moment; he cooperated by standing in the still darkness that hushed all movement.

  Looking up, Salvador nodded approvingly and continued to dig. The two men emerged from the dark hole and clairvoyantly, Salvador took the tarp from Bunny’s back. He unfolded it and tucked an edge of it carefully along and as close to Joker’s body as he could. He whispered sharply to Place, almost scolding him, and urged him to help. Mitch walked quickly to Joker’s shoulders and straddling them as Salvador pushed on the front portion of his body, she grabbed his front legs, pointing them toward the night sky and twirling stars. From her back pocket, she pulled a piggin string, one normally used in calf roping, and as if she was being timed she wrapped the string securely around the lower portion of his legs. She walked to the other end of the supple animal as Salvador pivoted on his knees and pushed against the side of the burro’s rear, and again she secured another string to bind his rear legs. Mitch and Salvador struggled to slide the tarp under Joker’s warm form. They swung his bound legs to one side and they strained as they pulled hard on the tarp. In his frustration, Salvador wanted to yell at Place, who pulled unnoticeably, lifelessly, and was really only in the way. They were ancient Egyptians building a dead pyramid. Blood mixed with the dirt and formed a sodden quagmire of slippery pools. Finally securing the tarp from the withers to the flank, they swathed Joker tightly.

  Mitch untied Bunny from the post and walked him through the section of cut-out fence and just outside it. Salvador stretched the chains straight toward Joker’s body. With fluttering fingers, he motioned toward Mitch to back the workhorse up and occasionally looked toward Place, who stood mute, seemingly retarded. Blood and dirt caked Salvador’s hands as he dug into the ground under Joker’s backside. When he tucked both chains as far under as he could, he hissed urgently to Place to grab the burro’s front legs while he grabbed the back ones. Together, they swung the animal toward the chains. With hands like desperate gophers, Salvador dug under the barrel of Joker’s body and groped blindly for the hard coolness of the chains. He grunted in measured thrusts as he pulled on one chain and then the other. The tarp crumpled as Salvador secured the bolts to links of the chains, and standing straight with his boots, pants, T-shirt and arms plastered with bloody mud, he shook his head slowly as his desperate eyes met Mitch’s. He panted heavily, his shoulders shrugging upward and his body reacting to regain the oxygen he had lost from working, wondering, and wanting to be somewhere else. Flicking his hands toward Mitch, he signaled for her to put Bunny’s horsepower in motion.

  Slowly, in the dark desperation of Miwok Creek, Mitch coaxed the willing horse on. She started out straight for the deep grave, and as she neared the berm of dirt that bordered it, she pushed the huge horse from the hole, angling it away. Mitch clicked gently with her tongue. S
alvador watched as Joker’s body twisted and turned from the initial movement, and slowly, slowly his body inched closer to his final home.

  The thud of his dead weight and the crunch of bones broke the sweet, musty silence as Mitch and Salvador pushed Joker into the grave. Place stood staring at the hole with its eternal occupant. Grabbing the shovels, Salvador handed one to Place, looking closely into his eyes, measuring responsiveness, looking for life, and finding little of either. After a shovelful of dirt, Mitch walked close to the grave, squatted toward it and tossed in a carrot. The two men covered the hole while Mitch quietly returned Bunny to his pasture.

  Walking toward the ranch house, Place, Salvador, and Mitch did not speak. The ranch road dipped slightly and because of gravity they all picked up the pace. But Place walked more defiantly, more vengefully with each step and each thought, urged onward now by more than just the declivity of the road, and grasping the shovel like a man holding on to a club, his walk broke into a clipping trot.

  He was quick, and when Mitch and Salvador reacted they dropped the saw and shovel and ran after Place. Salvador reached for the shovel rather than for the man who intended to use it for an unintended purpose, and Mitch tried to wrap her arms around Place’s body. They scuffled for moments as the three of them tumbled to the hard dirt road. Salvador grabbed at Place’s legs and Mitch put all of her weight on him, pinning him to the ground.

  “Honey! Place! Wait—” she started as she struggled to communicate some common sense to him. “Place, no! Place, wait!”

  Crying brokenly and hating the cruelty that God allowed, Place squirmed and twisted and sputtered, “I want revenge!” And then as if needing to make it clear to Salvador, “¡Yo quiero mi venganza!” He crawled along the ground scratching at the dirt to break free from both his wife and his best friend. All of the defeats in his life flashed before him, fanning the hot lights of bitterness and the acidulous anger that he could never quite extinguish.