"I had your car towed this morning to John's Garage in Abbeville." I stretched both arms beneath the saddle and carried it across the barn to hang it over Glue's stall. `John is the closest thing you'll find around here to a mechanic who would, or can, work on a Volvo, but I think you're looking at two weeks before he can have it running again." I paused, because I didn't want to hit her with too much bad news at once. "I hope your insurance is good."
"That bad?" she asked.
"That bad."
She nodded again and then walked to the coffeepot. Blowing the heat off the top of her mug, she looked at me out of the corner of her eyes and said, "Thank you."
"Well, Mose actually bought and made the coffee. I just poured some water over the used grounds."
She looked down and shuffled her feet close together. "That's not what I meant."
"Oh, then you mean thanks for not shooting back?"
She shook her head and found my eyes with hers.
I dropped the sarcastic tone. "You're welcome."
She grabbed a brush and began stroking Glue's mane. He took to her quickly, even nudging her with his nose.
During middle school, local coaches and players were starting to notice me due to baseball. People had identified me as a "player" and kept telling my coach, "That boy's got talent," "There's your star player," and "I haven't seen bat speed like that in a long time." I admit it; my head was swelling with the new identity. I also liked it because it was the first time I ever remember doing something right in other people's eyes. And it was an identity separate from "That's Rex Mason's boy."
I came home one afternoon, all full of myself, and Miss Ella yelled at me not to track mud inside the house. I ignored her. Quick as a minute, she reached me, jerked my head around, and said, "Child, you listen to me, and you look me straight in the eyes when I'm talking to you. I may be just old hired help, and a country woman to boot, but I'm a human. And you know what? God thought of me. He actually took the time to dream me up. I may not be much to look at, but what you see first started in the mind of God, so don't stand there and ignore me like I don't exist. You remember that." Miss Ella only had to say that one time to get my attention. And yes, I took my cleats off at the door from then on.
Later that night, while she was putting me to bed, I looked up and she gently poked me in the chest with her cracked and arthritic fingers. "You got something special in here. You may have the greenest eyes and best bat in Little League, but you're more than good looks, home runs, and triples. You got something inside that few else got. God gave you a people place big enough for more than just yourself. You start believing all this stuff other people say and pretty soon you'll only have room for you. Remember, there's an inverse relationship between your head and your heart. If your head swells, your heart shrinks. Tucker, you are not the sum of your bat speed and batting averages. And when you find that thing that you do-maybe it's baseball, and maybe it's not, but whatever it is-don't let it go to your head. You stay down here with the rest of us. I don't care if you find yourself on the front cover of Time magazine; you be Tucker Mason."
"But, Miss Ella, I don't want to be Tucker Mason."
"Well, child," she said with a disbelieving smile and resting her hand on my chest, `just who do you want to be?"
"I want to be Tucker Rain."
Her face softened with an "Ohhh" expression. She pushed sweaty hair out of my eyes and her breath washed across my face. "You can't choose your parents, child. The only thing you can control in this life is what you say and what you do."
The day she died, I assumed the name Tucker Rain.
Katie leaned against the workbench and watched my hands work the leather. "I used to look for your name at the bottom of all the photos of the top-shelf magazines. Then one day"-she turned and looked out across the pasture-"I was walking by the magazine rack and saw the Time cover. I didn't even have to look for your name. I just knew."
Two years ago, Doc sent me to Sierra Leone to cover the diamond trade and resulting rebel war. Two weeks into my stay, I shot a photo of three double-amputees standing shoulder to shoulder, smiling, with silver begging cups hung around their necks. A painful paradox. Healthy as horses, their whole lives before them, and yet they couldn't eat, dress, or go to the bathroom without a helping hand. Six weeks later, Doc called me with tears dripping off his face and using one cigarette to light another, saying, "Tucker ... Tuck ... you got the cover ... Time just gave you the cover."
Katie looked up at me. "Tucker, I think Miss Ella would have been proud of you." She kicked at the dirt and looked into the blackness of her coffee. "I was."
I finished the saddle and then emptied my camera bag, lens by lens, on the bench around me. I hadn't done that in a while and needed to check my lenses. I grabbed a camel-hair brush and started dusting. Katie watched quietly, her mouth nervously chewing on whatever it was she wanted to say. Finally, she got her nerve up. "I owe you some sort of explanation."
"The thought had crossed my mind."
"You want the long or short version?"
"I want the version that doesn't make me an accessory to anything."
She smiled again and nodded. "I suppose I had that coming."
"You did."
"That revolver is in the top of the closet. Unloaded and laying in a shoe box filled with old pictures. Most are of you. I even found one or two of me in there. Anyway, it's up there where Jase can't get his hands on it. Not that he would, but you're welcome to do whatever you want with it. It's pretty obvious that I don't know how to handle it."
For the first time I looked closely at the bags surrounding her eyes. They weren't bags. "You get those black marks from the same guy you stole that revolver from?"
She leaned back, cupped her hands inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt, hiding her fingers, and I had a feeling I was about to hear twenty years of history.
"Dad took us to Atlanta but had a real funny feeling about working with your father, so he quit after only three days. He went to work with some guys who had warned him to steer clear of Rex Mason. Anyway, Dad found his niche and so did I. They enrolled me at a private school with a good music program not far from the house called Pace Academy. The teachers there taught me a lot, but more than anything, they taught me how much Mom really knew. One thing led to another ... Julliard heard me play and awarded me a scholarship. I spent four years in New York going to school, playing the piano, and freezing my tail off from November to March."
Katie had changed; her voice, her figure, her facial expressions-every part of her-had grown and now had mileage, but the sound of Katie making fun of herself told me that she hadn't fallen that far from the tree. Inside that scared woman, I heard a familiar sound.
"To make money, I'd play weekends in basement bars and second-story jazz clubs through Upper and Lower Manhattan. By my senior year, the managers were calling me, and I started playing over candlelight and white tablecloths."
"Meaning the tips were better and fewer people spit beer at you?"
"Exactly. One night, I was digging through my tip jar after the restaurant had closed and I found a thousanddollar bill. A thousand-dollar bill! I thought it was a mistake. I had never seen one. Anyway, I graduated, decided I liked Central Park in the springtime, and started putting money in the bank."
"You really liked New York?" I interrupted, picking up another lens.
She shrugged. "Not at first, but it grew on me. It's not a bad place." She smiled. "It did get a little crazy, and for a country girl from Alabama, a bit too fast-paced. At twenty-five, a jazz restaurant off Fifth Avenue called The Ivory Brass booked me four nights a week. Most of Wall Street filtered through there during the course of a week. I felt like the female version of Billy Joel's Piano Man."
Katie sipped, looked through her coffee, and I could tell her mind was walking down Fifth Avenue. She had come a long way from the little girl who waved through her dad's back window.
"A friend of a friend introduced me to
Trevor. A successful broker, partner in his own firm gaining credibility, and a bulldog's reputation up and down Wall Street. He seemed sensitive, connected, cultured, and"-she shook her head-"had an affinity for thousand-dollar bills." She looked out across the pasture, and the seconds passed. "Listen to me. I sound so ... so New York." She rubbed her eyes and drew in the dirt with her toe.
She continued. "He became a regular. Pretty soon, he was taking me home, and I suppose I began looking forward to seeing his face in the crowd. After several months, and saying no several times, I finally said maybe and he moved me uptown. A trial run, you might call it. I still don't really know why. No other options, I suppose."
I couldn't believe that. Katie always had options. A woman like that, beautiful and able to play the piano like a bird sings, always had options. Katie sounded lost. Homesick. Adrift.
"He's older and wanted kids right away, so I relented and played until Jase came along."
I walked to the percolator, refilled our cups, and returned to my camera. She sipped and continued. "Looking forward to Jase's birth kept us happy for a while ... We warmed up to the idea of marriage. When Jase arrived a month early, we married at the courthouse with no real celebration. A formality. Maybe we felt ... or maybe I felt, getting married justified Jase. I'm not sure I ever loved Trevor. No. . ." She shook her head. "Even then I knew. In the back of my mind, it was there."
"Katie, I'm sure-"
"No," she interrupted, holding up her hand. "I tried to love him, but for lots of reasons, I don't think I ever did. As bad as it sounds, I liked what he offered. That is, until I got to know him. Despite his appearances to the contrary, Trevor's not exactly lovable. That sensitive, cultured, and connected man turned into Jekyll and Hyde. Plus, Jase was a preemie and seemed like the underdog from the beginning. From day one, we encountered problems. He was physically little, his lungs needed time and development, and for about six months, he slept during the day and cried all night." She waved her hand across her chest as if mocking a display. "Never endowed with much, I had a difficult time nursing him. Trevor made good money, and he couldn't have his wife seem somehow less than the rest of the glitter and gold that populated his social circle. I had to measure up. Literally."
I kept my eyes on my work and smiled. "I can understand that."
"What?"
"Yeah, last time I saw you with your shirt off, you were flat as me. Bird-chested too."
She slapped me on the arm. "Tucker!" The bantering felt good. So did the laughter.
"I'm kidding." I held out my hand and backed up. "Uncle. I yield." We let the dust settle, and my curiosity got the better of me. "How'd you know?"
"Trevor's a camera buff himself. He's no good, but he likes to think he is. Our mailbox is full of his photography subscriptions. It would've been hard for me to miss Tucker Rain's career." She looked at me out the side of her eyes. "I like the name."
I nodded without looking up from my work. "It's a good name."
"I also like your work." She paused, looking for the words. "Especially when it comes to faces. Somehow, you can capture emotion and the moment all in the space of someone's face."
I nodded, thinking back through seven years of furiously chasing one picture after another. "Sometimes. But most times, I'm just wasting film."
"I doubt it." She stepped closer, eyeing the camera again in my hands and obviously growing more comfortable with me. "Anyway, after two years, too many working dinners and late nights he wouldn't explain, he began losing his clients' money and his waistline and turned into someone I didn't like or want to live with. There were three other womenthat I know of." She shrugged her shoulders. "For Jase's sake, I bit my lip, hung around, and hoped." She turned and walked to the barn door. "I was wrong. He became more open with his affairs, and when I inquired, physically abusive. I lived with it, covered it up, hoped he would change, and then ..."
"Then?"
"Then he hit Jase. Once. I walked out, filed, and when Trevor came to the hearing wasted and unable to speak in complete sentences, the judge threw him in jail for drunk and disorderly conduct and awarded me sole custody. Trevor sobered up and discovered he couldn't have exactly what he wanted. That did not, and does not, sit well with him.
"For the last two years, we've attended counseling. It was my idea. I thought if we could learn to be friends, maybe we'd be better parents. My thought was Jase. He needed ... needs ... a dad. And Trevor may not be much, but he's all Jase has got."
"Things got better?"
"Trevor improved, even quit drinking for a time, but I'm pretty sure he never quit"-she shrugged her shoul- ders-"the other stuff. Anyway, our counselor suggested a family vacation, so five weeks ago, we flew to Vail. Trevor boarded the plane and called it a `much-needed vacation.' I thought maybe the change would do us all good. Maybe a snowball fight would cool him off a little. And"she started digging in the dirt again with her toe-"I guess I was hoping that maybe I'd find a reason to start over. To try again. We had been there a week when he got a call from the office saying he had lost his biggest account. That night, I came back from the grocery store and found him with a ski instructor." She shrugged again. "She wasn't teaching him how to ski. I confronted him, and he hit me." She pointed to her eye. "Then he went in search of Jase, who was hiding outside. I found him first and we started running, but not before I introduced Trevor's head to a fire poker."
That sounded like the Katie I knew. The Katie I knew would have taken a fire poker to his head back in New York, but adults are harder to wake up than kids.
Her eyes scanned the drive again, searching for whatever wasn't there. lase and I returned to New York, packed, and I filed a restraining order-which wasn't difficult given our history, the fact that Trevor was laid up in a Colorado hospital, and that the ski instructor took my side once she discovered who I was. We've been running ever since."
She walked around the barn and breathed deeply, letting the aroma of Glue, leather, manure, horse feed, and cobwebs fill her lungs and fingertips. "Trevor is no dummy, and chances are real good that, sooner or later, he'll find us. He doesn't like being told he can't do ... or have something." She shrugged her shoulders and looked straight at me. "I couldn't stay in New York and I couldn't go to Atlanta because he'd find me there. With no place left, I drove this way because I knew I could think here. That I'd find space and, maybe, peace."
She looked around the barn, waving her hand in an arc across the back of Waverly and the pasture. Both she and they were dripping with soft morning sunshine. The dew rising off the pasture looked like golden honey that had seeped through the cracks on the front porch of heaven. "When we were kids," she said, "I was happy here. Really happy. I remember never wanting the days to end and always wanting to play your father's piano while Miss Ella smiled and soaked in every note."
She nodded, almost to herself. "Nobody's eyes ever lit up for me like Miss Ella's. Sometimes, late at night, when the crowds dwindled, I'd close my eyes and think of her sitting next to me on the bench, letting me play your father's grand, whispering in my ear and telling me to imagine myself in front of a sold-out show at the Sydney Opera House." Katie shook her head. "She was my cheerleader. The best. Every time I play, I think she's sitting beside me. Nodding, smiling, closing her eyes, and waving with the melody. Sometimes, I can almost hear her voice and smell the Cornhuskers."
I smiled but said nothing. Katie needed to talk, not listen to me. I picked up another lens and realized how much I had missed the sound of her voice. "Got any plans?"
"Yeah." She laughed. "Start over. Put down some roots. Teach my son how to play baseball." She wiped her face on both shirtsleeves, smearing her mascara. I pointed to the bike leaning against the corner of the barn. "We got that in Macon," she said. "Something to occupy his time while I thought of where to go and what to do. I wanted to go where Trevor wouldn't find me." She looked around and attempted a smile. "Looks like I found it."
"How do you know he's not tracking you
r every credit card transaction now?"
"I had a good lawyer in our divorce, so I have money, but this trip, well ... years ago, I put a little cash in an account in Atlanta. My rainy day fund."
"Looks like it's raining."
She nodded and looked out the back of the barn. "You might say." She leaned back against the door and shut her eyes, letting the breeze fill her lungs. Somewhere, a hint of ripe peaches and burning leaves wafted in and settled throughout the barn.
A few minutes later, Mose walked in with his hands hanging on the corners of his overalls-his best farmer pose.
"Well, hello, little Miss Katie." Mose had never lost his bedside manner. He took off his hat, wiped his forehead with a white handkerchief, and placed his hat across his heart.
Katie stepped out of the stall and stared for a moment before breaking into a big smile. "Mose?"
"Miss Katie, this is not my house, but because I helped raise this boy, I can extend to you a warm Waverly welcome. You stay as long as you need, and longer if you want."
She threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek.
About that time, a little cowboy wearing a plaid shirt, shorts, boots up to his knees, a two-holster belt, and a star pinned on his chest jumped off the front porch. He ran into the barn with a six-shooter in one hand and it cowboy hat in the other. "Mama, Mama, Mama, look!" He pointed at Glue. "That's a horse!"
Mose was the closest. He knelt onto one knee, took off his hat, stuck out his hand, and said, "Pleasure to meet you, Sheriff." Jase drew both guns and pointed them at Mose, who dropped his hat and stuck his hands in the air.
`lase"-Katie knelt next to Jason-"this is Dr. Moses. And that," she said, pointing to our horse, "is Glue."
"Mose," I said, pointing atJase's guns, "be careful. It's not his guns that should scare you. It's hers that ought to put the fear of God in you."
Katie looked at Mose. "He's talking about last night. We were-"
"I know." Mose waved her off with his right hand. "Tuck told me. He's just carrying on because he's never been shot at before. Me, on the other hand, I spent four years in Europe where I got shot at most every day. You take all the aim you want at me."
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