Send Down the Rain

by Charles Martin

  We pulled into Cape San Blas well after midnight. Manuel had slept most of the way, which was good, but he’d stiffened up more, so moving him was not fun. We got him inside Allie’s cottage and into bed. Most every square inch of his body was bruised and swollen.

  Allie called a doctor, then she helped Catalina get Gabby and Diego cleaned up and tucked in alongside each other in the small second bedroom. They were asleep before she pulled the covers up.

  When the doctor, a woman in her forties, arrived, she examined Manuel and started IV fluids that included a broad spectrum antibiotic and enough pain medicine to knock out a horse. Within minutes he was sleeping soundly. Breathing better. She left us with two prescriptions. One if the pain was bad. The other if the pain was real bad.

  “I can only do so much here,” she told us. “It’s been over twelve hours since the beating. If he had any substantial internal bleeding, he’d be dead by now. I can’t guarantee you that he’s out of the woods, but he’s strong and the bruise pattern suggests his ribs did what they were intended to do. The next twenty-four hours will tell you a lot.”

  DAYLIGHT BROUGHT THE SMELL of coffee and somebody cooking breakfast. I walked inside to find Catalina teaching Allie how to make tortillas. Evidently they’d already been to the store. Allie poured me a cup of coffee, and I sat as Catalina produced a breakfast fit for a king.

  “She really knows her way around a kitchen,” Allie said.

  I crammed scrambled eggs into a tortilla and smothered it in Catalina’s homemade salsa. I spoke around a smile. “Wait till you taste her fajitas.”

  We spent the day lying low and tending to Manuel, who slept peacefully. The doctor returned late in the afternoon and was not displeased with his condition. She also examined the three amigos—Javier, Peter, and Victor. Despite their silence, they had not escaped the bullets and the bat. She put ten stitches in Peter’s shoulder, where she’d extracted a piece of bullet shrapnel he’d not told us about. She also put seven stitches in the back of Victor’s head, while confirming there was a good chance he had suffered a concussion.

  Feeling helpless on the second day, I disappeared for a few hours and drove to Port St. Joe and the main branch of Florida First Bank. I sat down with the branch manager, explained what I wanted to do, and he got on the phone with the regional manager. When I returned, Allie asked, “Where you been?”

  A strange emotion surfaced. I had been missed, and I liked it. “Trying to help.”

  She slid her hand in mine. She’d gotten more touchy-feely in the last few days, and I liked that too.

  Manuel continued to improve. On the third day he sat up, and Catalina fed him some soup she’d made. Allie and I had introduced the kids to the addictive practice of looking for sharks’ teeth, and they had already half filled a Mason jar.

  The two of us took a tour of the restaurant, making a list of what needed doing. And a lot needed doing. Walking through the dining room, where a roof leak had left a puddle on the floor, Allie tucked her arm inside mine. “More than you bargained for?”

  “She’s in pretty bad shape.”

  The three amigos were used to working sunup to sundown, and they needed an activity. Their English was not as good as Catalina’s, but they could communicate. They followed us, watching. Listening. At one point I discovered Victor looking at the electrical panel. “Can you do electrical work?” I asked.

  He nodded matter-of-factly.

  “What else can you do?”

  He shrugged. “What you need done?”

  Allie and I walked him through and around the restaurant. He asked, “You have tools?”

  “No.”

  This did not seem to faze him. He spoke rapidly in Spanish to Javier and Peter. The three nodded. “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?” I asked.

  He waved his hand across the restaurant. “We fix.”

  “The whole thing?”

  He nodded. Again, matter-of-factly. Catalina pushed open the kitchen door of the restaurant then and found us standing in the dining room talking about roofs and plumbing and all things electrical. She explained, “All three have worked construction. Peter has built houses. Victor can wire most anything. Javier is good with wood and plumbing.”

  Allie tugged on my shirtsleeve. “We’d better check with the bank before we start work. What if we can’t work out a deal?”

  I turned to the men. “If I drive you to a store, a big one with lots of tools and lumber, do you know what you need in order to get started?”

  They nodded and Peter spoke for them. “Sí, señor.”

  Allie and I drove them to the Home Depot outside of Tallahassee. Each of us grabbed a cart. You can learn a lot about a man by how he values his tools and why he buys the equipment he buys. You can also learn whether or not he knows how to use them. Three hours later we had filled eight carts, placed an order for several thousand board feet of pressure-treated wood, and spent almost eight thousand dollars. Allie looked like a ghost. The store manager was beaming. Knowing we’d never fit all this in my truck, I struck a deal with him on a high-wall, dual-axle trailer. I also set up an account that would allow the men to buy what they needed without my being present.

  When we returned, Manuel was sitting at the kitchen table looking at the kids’ beach pickings for the day, which included twenty-seven sharks’ teeth. As the moon rose above us, Peter and Victor and Javier worked into the night, setting up a staging area for equipment in the open space below the restaurant, where guys working in the kitchen used to wash the fryers.

  Allie pulled me aside. “You really think they can do what they’ve said they can do?”

  I smiled. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  28

  The sound of demolition woke us the next morning. Hammers, reciprocating saws, sledgehammers—it didn’t take them long to make a giant mess. Manuel leaned on me and we walked slowly to the restaurant. Knowing they needed a dry place to work, his three cousins started on the roof.

  Over the course of the week, hiring the three of them proved to be one of the wiser choices I’d ever made. By Friday they had gutted every piece of rotten wood and repaired the roof with new sheets of zinc. They worked from daylight to sundown, only stopping a few minutes for lunch. And they played music from their stereo that made everyone want to smile and dance. Including me.

  By the end of the week, against our petitions, Manuel was slowly swinging a hammer alongside them. Catalina and Allie made a hundred trips to the Dumpster, and I paid cash for a used three-quarter-ton long-bed Chevrolet that allowed the three amigos to get what they needed when they needed it. We were in full-blown construction mode.

  THE FAMILY, AS I’D begun calling Catalina, Gabriella, Diego, Peter, Victor, Javier, and Manuel, fixed us dinner on the porch. The place was swept and clean, but walls were missing. Wiring exposed. Pipes disconnected. They spread out a feast unlike anything I’d seen. It gave a whole new meaning to the word fajitas. Some of the best food I’d ever had. And then Catalina fried sopapillas. I forced myself to stop at eight.

  Two weeks in, the three mess-makers, as Catalina referred to them, had finished the kitchen renovation. They’d rewired, replumbed, and were ready for inspection, proving that they obviously knew more about commercial construction than I did. I called the city inspector, and he made us correct a few things and then gave his approval and told me what licenses I’d failed to apply for. He left me with some pretty clear instructions about how to function as my own general contractor. Turns out he grew up eating at the Blue Tornado and was eager to see her reopen. I made a mental note to buy dinner for him and his family when we reopened.

  Manuel recovered enough to travel with me to Clopton to start bringing back pieces of kitchen equipment, using both trucks and the trailer. Allie worked tirelessly alongside us. The first day we loaded the kitchen appliances, cookware, benches, and tables. Over the next couple days as the others worked to retrofit the new kitchen, Manuel and I made two more trips.
On the second trip, as we were packing up, he pointed to the carnival rides.

  “What do you plan to do with all this?” he asked.

  “No idea.”

  “You want to bring it to the island?”

  “That’s a little bit bigger project than just renovating a restaurant. Can you do that?”

  He nodded. “But do you have a place to put it?”

  “I don’t, but Allie does.”

  Allie watched the transformation with wide eyes and old tears. We would walk the beach, and each day, with each fallen tear, more of the hardship of her life washed away.

  Rosco had taken to island life just fine. He was always at my heels except come time to walk the beach. As Allie and I started walking through the dunes, he’d tear off through the sand and head north up the coastline. Well after dark, when it came time to go to bed, he’d reappear and hop up on Gabby’s bed.

  I’d return to my cottage alone and sit on the porch, listen to Suzy, where I’d stare out at the stars until after midnight. And sometimes sunup.

  29

  By the beginning of April, the men had returned the Blue Tornado to her prior glory. Better even. Either repaired or replaced, every square inch of the restaurant had been touched by their fingers. Rather than paint, they’d put a high-gloss finish on much of the wood. It not only protected it, but gave every room a warm, golden glow. The inspector approved of their work and even applauded it—asking if he could recommend them elsewhere on the island.

  We turned on all the breakers and every light came alive. The guys had installed a new LED spotlight above the actual Blue Tornado vacuum, still protected in its glass case. When she saw it, Allie cried.

  A week later she began accepting deliveries from local fishermen vying to become her primary seafood supplier. In the meantime, she and Catalina worked in the kitchen, cooking up new and old recipes.

  One day about lunchtime I followed my nose to the kitchen, where the two of them were in full-on food-production mode. Julia Child would have been proud. The kitchen was a sea of bright lights, loud Spanish flamenco music, stainless steel, and brilliant color. Fryers. Grills. Flank stank. Beans. Peppers. Handmade tortillas. Rice. Guacamole. Onions. Then there was the seafood. Shrimp. Prawns. White fish. Scallops. Blackened. Fried. I ate three plates.

  To put me completely out of my misery, Catalina prepared sopapillas and covered them with honey and powdered sugar. I pushed back from the plate on the precipice of a sugar-carb crash. I needed a nap.

  The two of them watched me literally scrape the last flake of doughnut off my plate and spin it in honey residue. Allie asked, “Good?”

  I shook my head.

  Catalina put her hands on her hips. “No?”

  “Not even in the same ballpark.”

  She pointed. Angry. “Get out of my kitchen.”

  “Good is a greasy diner cheeseburger. Maybe a milk shake with whipped cream. A hot dog at a ball game. This . . .” I waved my hand across the table. “This is what God eats for dinner.”

  She smiled and used the apron to wipe the sweat and flour off her forehead. “Okay, you can stay.”

  She started clearing the table and I stood. “I got this. Dishes are my specialty. Ask Allie.”

  I rolled up my sleeves and pushed past the two women to reach the sink of sudsy water, but Catalina tried to bump me out of the way. “In Mexico, men do not work in the kitchen.”

  I smiled and took hold of the sprayer. “News flash. I am not Mexican.” And then I soaked both of them with the sprayer.

  DIEGO AND GABRIELLA WERE starting to find a rhythm of their own. Like two other kids I once knew, they were seldom far from the beach. We spent a lot of time searching the shoreline for sharks’ teeth. For the first time in our short relationship, Catalina grew tight-lipped and tense. She had given me a few looks, something she wanted to say but didn’t, and I wondered if I’d offended her. I asked Allie, “I do something?”

  We watched the kids run up and down the shoreline chasing Rosco, splashing in and out of the waves. Catalina didn’t take her eyes off them.

  “Can they swim?” Allie asked me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, if you were their father, and they were in the water and couldn’t swim, would you be worried?”

  Sometimes it’s the little things.

  “Catalina?” I hollered.

  She spoke without turning. “Sí?”

  Whenever she was lost in thought, she’d unknowingly answer in Spanish.

  “Okay with you if I teach the kids to swim?”

  She looked worried. “What about the sharks?”

  In the short time we’d been at the Cape, we had nearly filled a quart-size Mason jar with sharks’ teeth. I laughed. “You know the teeth that we find on the beach are very old.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When the shark first loses a tooth, it’s white in color. It only turns black after it’s been in the water a long time.”

  She looked doubtful. “How long a time?”

  “About ten thousand years.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So the sharks are . . . ?”

  “Dead. Some folks believe those teeth we find are a million years old.”

  Her face relaxed. “Dead sharks are better than live sharks.”

  “So can I teach them to swim?”

  She took off her apron. “Only if you teach me too.”

  While Diego took to the water like a fish, swimming within minutes, Gabriella took some coaxing. Allie and I stood waist deep, ten yards apart. The cool thing about teaching somebody to swim in the ocean is that they can always put their feet down—provided you don’t venture too far from shore. Gabby walked between Allie and me, moving her arms as if she were swimming, but we could not get her to launch her feet off the ground. She was making her way from Allie to me, swim-walking, when a wave rolled over her head. When the wave cleared, she screamed, and Rosco came running. He crashed into the waves and swam straight toward her. He circled her twice, let her pet his head, and, when he heard her giggling, returned to the beach. Apparently inspired by Rosco, Gabby picked her feet up and swam toward me, reaching me in a few strokes and then treading water without touching bottom. It was clear to me that the bond between the kids—especially Gabby—and the dog had grown close.

  That night I realized just how close. The four honeymoon cottages along the beach had become our homes. Allie lived in the first. Manuel, Javier, Peter, and Victor in the second. Catalina and the kids in the third. And I lived in the fourth. And while most would say that Rosco was my dog, I didn’t command where he spent the night. He came and went as he wished. For the last several weeks he had been staying with the hands that rubbed his tummy the most and fed him scraps from every meal.

  At night, before I went to sleep, I’d walk by Catalina’s cottage and check on the kids. I’d find Rosco curled up between them, Gabby’s arm draped across his stomach. His tail would slap the bed as he’d look up at me, making no effort whatsoever to get up. I would whisper, “Stay,” and he’d lay his head back down.

  PROGRESS ON THE TORNADO continued apace, and the kids and Catalina were happy as clams, but something seemed to be troubling Allie. I had a feeling I’d done something wrong, but I didn’t know what. Some of the touchy-feely tenderness was missing. At night after work, dinner, and a walk on the beach, I’d walk Catalina and the kids to their cottage, then I’d meet Allie at her cottage. She called it our porch time. Or knee time. Where we sat close enough for our knees to touch. She’d drink wine, I’d drink tea or Sprite, and we’d prop our feet on the railing and listen to the ocean and watch the moon shimmer on the water.

  The attire was casual. I’d show up in jeans or shorts or whatever I’d been working in that day, and she’d meet me after a shower, smelling great, wearing a nightgown or a pair of pajamas. Legs freshly shaven. And while I can be a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to all things feminine, I did notice that the gowns and pajamas were getting
shorter. Looser. Revealing more. I began to grow a little nervous.

  One morning at daylight, I woke to find Allie sitting next to my bed. She was staring at me, and her coffee cup was empty. Her lips were pursed and one eyebrow hung lower than the other. My mother used to give me that same look when I was in trouble. I sat up. “What’d I do?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “About the dreams.”

  “What dreams?”

  “Your dreams.”

  “I don’t have dreams.”

  “I’ve been watching you sleep the last few nights, and, yes . . . you do.”

  “Why’ve you been doing that?”

  “To give Catalina a rest. She’s been sleeping on your front porch the last month or so.”

  “Those aren’t dreams.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dreams are made up. Mine are memories.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Not if you’re me.”

  “Catalina told me about a dream you had in Manuel’s trailer.”

  “Yeah . . .” I scratched my head. “I’m still sorry about that.”

  “What can we do about them?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that question a long time.”

  “Catalina says that night at her place, Rosco hopped on the bed, started licking your face and whining. He woke you up. Stopped the dream. Or memory. And you went back to sleep. She said he did that a couple times throughout the night.”

  I nodded. “That’s how we met.”

  She waited.

  “I was up on the mountain and had dug out a hole beneath the trees. A place to sleep. Rosco found me. He’d wake me up during the nights. Stop the memories.”

  “Based on what I’ve seen the last couple of nights, you need something or someone next to you.” She pointed at me, my clothes on the floor, and the fact that while I started out sleeping in clothes, I always ended up naked and in a wrestling match with my sheets.