Stars Always Shine (3 page)

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 she 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.

“Well, I’ll be honest with you, Mitch,” Jacqueline revealed, “As far as I’m concerned, you are the top one of the three. Mickey feels the same way too. I just need to interview the others because I’ve already called them back for another interview. I can guarantee you the job’s yours. You can take that as a verbal contract.”

“I’m flattered, Mrs. Kittle. But you know, a verbal contract is as good as the paper it’s written on. We need more assurance than that. I’ll tell you what. Go ahead and interview your other two people and we’ll go interview at Napa and let’s just let nature take its course. How does that sound?”

Mitch could not see the deep shade of red that roiled up on Jacqueline’s face, creating a burgundy blush. She could not see the clasped jaw or the creases in Jacqueline’s forehead that became more pronounced. But she savored the gelid nonchalance that she could only imagine discomfited Jacqueline Kittle.

“That’s fine, Mitch,” Jacqueline answered as she rebounded from frustration. “Can you make it the day after tomorrow? We need to get back to Woodside in a few days, and we’d really like to have things in order. Oh yeah, does Place speak Spanish?”

“Why, yes he does,” Mitch answered curiously.

“I need him to help me with something when you come over,” Jacqueline explained, not offering further details.

Mitch hung up the phone. As she turned, Place loomed behind her as quiet as a wooden Indian. Startling her into taking a quick step back, he grabbed her forcefully, drawing her body snugly into his and kissing her as if it were the last kiss or the first.

“Are you bending somebody’s mind with your barrister’s language?” he asked. “And so early in the morning.”

She leaned her face back as Place continued to hold her close. “They want us to come back for another interview. We’re going to get to move onto that ranch, I know it! I can get a horse again. I can teach you how to ride. And they won’t be around too much.”

They hopped around the living room as they held onto each other, dancing a silly dance and laughing. Rosa watched curiously, the lively movement exciting her to almost the same hopping dance. They bounced over to the couch, falling onto it, and Place pushed his body into Mitch’s as he lay on top of her. His hands roamed down to her waist, pulling at her nightgown as he kissed her hard. His face nuzzled into the nest of flesh just under her jaw and down to her neck.

“Place,” she whispered seductively, “we can’t.”

“Don’t tell me,” he whispered back, “it’s that time of the month, huh?”

“Yes,” she said, “I have to be in court early today.”

R
osa the Airedale stood boldly in the bed of the pickup as it drove onto StarRidge Ranch. She had not seen much more than the tidy neighborhood park with its orderly lawns and trees that had a plastic appearance to them and were planted in clean dirt squarely bound by neatly placed boards. She had spent all except the first two months of her five years in the sterile condominium that provided nothing more in the way of outdoor experience than the walled and cement enclosure of the small patio.