The Orange Blossom Express

by Marlena Evangeline

  “Let’s.” They got up and headed down to the ranch.

  “I would,” Lucy said. “If things were different I’d just move in.”

  Lucy stared off, absorbed in her own world. “I’m gonna leave,” Lucy said. “Go down to Costa Rica with Jackson.”

  “What’s in Costa Rica?” Maggie asked.

  They turned onto the trail leading back to the ranch and two horned-toads crossed the path, side by side, their tough little lizard legs scurrying. The girls watched the spiny creatures pick their way across the earth and disappear under a purple-wooded manzanita, traveling side by side for no apparent reason.

  “Jackson wants me to bring back something for him.”

  “Like?”

  “A little coke.”

  “Just what’s a little coke?”

  “Not much. Not at all. Just a few ounces.”

  “It sounds stupid. That stuff is bad news.”

  “I’ve already said yes.”

  “Don’t, Lucy. I don’t like him.”

  “I need the money. I’m pregnant.”

  “Shit. Have you told Gary? Is that why he’s upset?”

  “Yeah, I’ve told him everything. That I don’t know who the father is. I mean it could be Jackson’s baby.”

  “What a mess. I don’t believe this, Lucy. What did Gary say?”

  “What could he say. He’s gonna leave. He went to Santa Cruz for the weekend. I think he’s going to work for this friend of his in a health food store. You know Gary. He’s way into food. So I’m leaving next week. I’ll be there a few months, I guess, till Jackson pulls it all together. His partners are down there now. I just carry the cocaine through customs in a stuffed animal. Just like that.”

  “What if you get caught?”

  “I don’t get caught. I just hang out on the beach, fat and pregnant.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “It’s a piece of cake.”

  “It’s a piece of coke. The guys are getting the cake.”

  “I’ll make three grand. That’s good money.”

  “Sure. And if you’re caught, Jackson whatever is history.”

  “I don’t get caught.” She stared straight ahead and laughed. “Not ever.”

  “Right, remind me when I say those four little words.”

  “What words?”

  “The I-told-you-so words. What about the baby?”

  “I’m barely pregnant. I’ll be back by then. The coke’s no big deal.”

  “It’s different than the grass and you know it. Bad vibes. Bad Karma.” Lucy shrugged her shoulders. “Monday. God, Lucy. Stay for dinner so I can talk you out of it. I can’t believe you’d even consider it. Let’s go on back to the house.”

  The trail was harder to negotiate going down, the sandy shale slid easily, and the rocks seemed more treacherous. The landscape was still sparse, but there were a few scaly-barked eucalyptus trees growing in the canyon. The air smelled pungent and fresh. The ranch and wide valley spread below them as they slipped down the hillside. The spread next to the ranch was established, and the two side by side looked like a contradiction from that elevation. Like they weren’t ranches in the same neighborhood. The Rough Rider’s Club was much the same as it had been six months before. Even though she’d planted a large garden, it was uncultivated next to the exotic ranch next door. A feisty Spanish woman in her eighties ran the Spanish style hacienda. Rosemary Hernandez had been widowed years ago; her husband had died in an automobile accident. He’d moved her to Devore, years earlier, away from her family in the hills of Spain. But she’d held a passion for the adventure. She’d been greedy for the newness of California, and started her life at the ranch with as much passion as she still showed each day in the steady spring of her walk, and the decided attention she paid to her daily chores. The immigrants were the first residents in Devore; they had built an impressive ranch over the years. They had been lucky. They had a good well, so the water set their acreage off from the dryness of the surrounding ranchettes. Rosemary and her husband had sensed the water in the land by the health of the black oaks growing on the sloping hillside. They were large, deep-rooted trees, good indication of water anywhere, but especially in these dry hills. They had both agreed on the land’s possibilities and bought the twenty-five acres for five hundred dollars. It left them exactly one hundred dollars. They’d cried at their good fortune. They had a start.

  Rosemary was in the corral working a mare in figure eights, signaling the mare to a flying change of lead in the middle of the eight; sitting astride, leaning into the horse, then pushing the mare around the next circle with her outside leg, changing leads again, and then repeating the exercise. Maggie was working Lucy’s pregnancy around her own figure eights and flying changes. And wondering about Jackson. Maggie held the puppy to her chest.

  Rosemary raised and trained Lipizzaners; the mare she was riding was a yearling, a mottled gray. Not the dark black of the younger colts, nor the clear white of the mature horses. Something in between.

  “What have you got there?” Rosemary yelled. She pushed the mare into a circle with her outside leg and moved her quietly towards the fence at a slow controlled trot. She held the mare’s mouth softly, revealing a light action in the tightly held rein. Otherwise there was no discernable movement. Rosemary had dark vigorous eyes that flashed when she spoke. She was thick boned and her black hair was pulled back off her face, but moved against her neck and shoulders, as if she was the head of the horse itself, and her hair its mane. Lucy walked on to the ranch and Maggie was glad. She wanted to think.

  Rosemary and the mare were next to the fence now, the two winded, wet with sweat. Maggie showed her the pup.

  “Hell, that’s one white pup. A little sammer is it?” Maggie handed her the puppy. He looked even whiter in the dark, grizzled hands. Rosemary felt him all over and looked in his eyes. Maggie let the mare nuzzle her shoulder, and patted her neck.

  Rosemary spent most of her days training and tending the horses. They were all trained in classical dressage. Each morning she worked two or three of the yearlings. Maggie liked watching the horses’ tight clean moves, the way Rosemary moved them around the ring, the fine attention to nuance and detail that revealed itself between horse and rider. Rosemary was firm with the animals and held a tight rein, yet they seemed to respect her for it. The Lipizzaners were not squirrely and erratic like hot-blooded thoroughbreds.

  “Cute as a bug,” she laughed. “Isn’t he?” She held the puppy in front of her dark, weathered face. “What’s its name?”

  “Ullr.”

  “What the hell kind of name is that?”

  “Ullr’s the Norse snow god.”

  “Sam would’ve been good enough.” Rosemary frowned. She handed Maggie the puppy and got down off the horse. “I’ve had enough of this anyway. Mare’s coming along, though. Coming along.”

  “Well, have fun with that puppy,” she turned towards the ranch as she walked the mare up hill towards the barn past the three black oaks, the only rooted trees in the landscape.

  When Maggie got back to the house, Lucy was reading an old copy of the Realist Nun so Maggie put the pup down on Lucy’s lap and cleaned up the dishes from the living room, filled the sink with iron-stained water, added soap, and let the dishes soak. After she cut a hole in a small cardboard box so the pup could crawl in and out, and spread a whole edition of The Sun Telegram on the floor, she took off her flannel shirt and put it in the box, too. She went and got the pup from Lucy’s lap and put him down on top of the shirt. He sank into it and fell asleep as if exhausted from the newness of the day and the great change he had been moved into. She watched him for a second and rearranged the papers around the box.

  There was a comb on the windowsill; she picked it up, ran it through her wind-tangled hair and watched a tumbleweed skitter across the yard, put the comb back down on the sill and went back to the kitchen.

  She heard Lucy laugh. The Realist Nun was one of Hank’s pass
ions. Anything left was right for him.

  “This is sick,” Lucy said.

  “Yeah. It is.” Maggie put some spring water from the dispenser in the teapot and placed it on the stove. “I don’t understand why you want to do this.”

  Lucy got up, put the magazine on the counter on the living room side, and sat down. “I told you, I’m pregnant,” she fiddled with her earring.

  “I’ve told Gary. I mean, I’ve told him everything. That I’m pregnant, and I don’t know who the father is. Gads. Damn. I’m gonna have the baby. That much I’ve decided.”

  “What did Gary say exactly?”

  “I don’t think he knew what to say. I probably should have just said that he was the father. But, oh no, not me. I just blurted it out. He didn’t say much, but I could tell he was pretty uptight. I mean. I’m pretty sure it’s Jackson’s baby. Oh, shit.”

  “How do you feel about this?”

  “I just wish I knew whose it was.”

  “It’s yours. It’s your baby,” Maggie said unconvincingly.

  That night, after Patrick and Hank came home, Maggie fixed enchiladas and they ate in the front room on the redwood coffee table. The candle shone in the resiny surface urging a dim reflection in the room. After dinner they celebrated the baby. Patrick seemed pensive, but both Hank and Lucy were laughing. As Hank toasted the new baby’s birth, a squishy feeling turned over-easy in Maggie’s stomach.

  Hank and Patrick left early the next morning, but Lucy and Maggie slept in late. Then Lucy left, saying she would call before leaving the country.

  There were ants crawling over the dirty plates from the night’s dinner, so Maggie wiped the counter; the dying ants smelled like turpentine. She slipped the washcloth under the water and watched the black bodies swirl down the drain in the stained-iron-red water.

  She wandered with the puppy out to the patio. The terse earth was familiar to her now, a part of her. A meadowlark sang from a barbed-wire fence; the fence surrounding the ranch, defining the territory, the boundaries of the landscape, the landscape that had no boundaries. The barbed-wire fence could not close off the horizon beyond; the hills rose to a high crest and rolled to a peak higher still. The familiar territory was not terminal or absolute. The lark-song echoed across the sage, sounding as if the melody were random and accidental. She’ll be okay, Maggie thought. Maybe nothing will happen. Jackson has a big mouth. The whole thing is probably a lie. Then she went to the kitchen where she’d left a pot of marinara sauce simmering on the stove.

  Later that evening Maggie stirred the marinara again, while Patrick put some newspapers in the Ashley stove. He placed some dry kindling around it and lit a match. The fire crackled. She added a little more oregano to the sauce, then wiped dust off the table, put the dishes on, and went back to the kitchen. She stirred the sauce and a large bubble popped and splattered sauce with too much oregano onto her clean blouse.

  “Shit. Hank, would you grab this pot of spaghetti. I’ll finish the bread,” she said. Hank was reading the Sunday paper.

  “Sure, no problem.” He picked the cast-iron pot off the stove with a pot holder; a thick strand of steel cradled the pot and it swung slightly as he took it to the table.

  Maggie wiped off the blouse with a washcloth and followed Hank with salad and bread. They sat down to the first roll of thunder, while the rain dropped in large splashes.

  “Have you told her, Hank?” asked Patrick.

  “Told who what?” Maggie checked the red stain on her blouse and reached for the salad.

  “Told you,” said Patrick.

  “We’ve got a load coming,” Hank said.

  “A load of what?”

  “Grass. Almost a ton of it.”

  “What are you going to do with a ton of grass?” Maggie took a bite of spaghetti and chewed.

  “Sell it.”

  “You’re gonna sell a ton?” she asked. It was outrageous. It would be profitable. “Who to?”

  “We’ve got it set up. Half to the people in Santa Cruz and the rest to San Francisco.”

  “Just how are you getting a ton of grass?”

  “We’re gonna be the ground crew on the load. We met these guys at Jerry’s: pilot and copilot ready to go. They need us to off the load, so we’ll meet the plane, haul the pot down here, send some to Jerry. Anyway, Jerry can’t handle this, but we can. We’ve got the trucks, I’ve got the recon experience from the army, I know radios, I know how to do it. We can get real rich here.”

  Maggie got up and went to the kitchen for some more garlic bread and brought the plate back. She was uptight and uptight about feeling uptight. Her mind raced, looking for hints of this. She’d been gone a lot collecting old things, squirreling little bits of ancient glass, old toys, porcelain dolls, into the ranch to fill the emptiness that had started to grow there. It had gotten so she could finish the bread, pick up the house and tend the garden before ten or eleven. Then she would get bored. When she first moved to the ranch, she’d linger with the chores for hours, but after learning how to run the house, she’d have the work done in no time even when the house was a mess, and then the guys would be gone and sometime’s she’d read, but then she was just too bored and she’d leave.

  She came back to the table and slammed down the garlic bread.

  “You can’t sell that much, can you?” she said slumping angrily in her chair and leaning back.

  “You bet I can sell that much,” said Hank. “Buyers will crawl right out of the woodwork. Remember, product, product, product. It’s the bible of this business. Who do you know that wouldn’t drive across the fucking state to get high? None, right? They don’t exist. When the pot’s here, we’ll have people begging for it. Mark my words. Begging. People want to get high, they need to get high. They need us. All of us.”

  “I wouldn’t drive across the state.” She tore a piece of bread apart.

  “That’s you, Maggie. That’s just you,” Hank said. He dipped a heel of bread into the marina sauce on his plate, smeared it with sauce, and pointing it at her as he talked.

  “A ton is too much.” A bright anger flushed inside her and she tore another piece of bread off the loaf and threw it on the table.

  “You bet it is. Our first real break.” He grabbed the salad bowl, tipped it over and scooped some salad on his plate.

  “It’s okay, Maggie. It is,” said Patrick. “Why are you mad?”

  “You should’ve told me.” She picked at the crusts of bread she’d scattered on the table. It was only part of the truth. Surely since she lived there, she should be included in the plans, but there was more going on and they all knew it. Hank was gone more and more. They all occupied the same house but not the same space. She and Hank had drifted apart and Patrick and Hank were spending a lot more time together. She was lonely, and she spent her loneliness spending the money Hank and Patrick brought home. The puppy was a bribe. Something to soften her to this. Sure she wanted the puppy, but the timing sucked. “Just what do you know about these guys?”

  “Pete Bailey flew in Nam. A hot-shot that grew up in Alaska. Fuck, the man grew up on a runway, was a bush pilot at 16. Can’t get a better pilot.”

  “It’s not actually Pete’s load,” said Patrick. “I mean, there’s someone else working the money, but he’s the best pilot and we get paid for being the ground crew, plus we do the load.”

  “How much? How much to crew it?” she asked.

  “Five grand.”

  “Each?”

  “No. Five grand total. But, shit we’ll make three or four times that offing the load.”

  “Right, and I get to baby-sit the shit,” she said angrily. “That’s what you expect, isn’t it?”

  “Well, sure,” Hank said matter-of-factly. “You’ve got the puppy to keep you company.”

  “Where’s my cut?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Your cut? Your cut’s my cut, sweetie,” Hank said, laughing.

  Maggie was not amused; she felt her cheeks and neck redde
n to an even brighter flush. Who was this guy, she wondered? Why am I here? Do I still love him? Did I ever? What is this love shit? Aren’t you supposed to share something? Aside from sex, that they didn’t share as much anymore? Her heart wrote a check that her brain couldn’t cash. Or was her brain writing the check, and her heart couldn’t honor it? What was happening here, what it is was ain’t exactly clear. Sometimes she’d slink into her solitary world and spend long hours alone buried in the pages of some novel with an idea that wasn’t hers. She could fritter away an afternoon at any pricey antique store, or sometimes she’d haunt the local nurseries for plants to fill up the long hot days and so her heart would fret and she’d spend more money, and Hank would barely say anything at all about the nice things she brought home to fill the empty house that was becoming crowded with things, things that pleased her, made her comfortable outside, but there was something missing inside and she couldn’t figure this inside thing out. This inside thing that kept letting her know it was empty there, this space inside she could not fill no matter how many things she bought, no matter how many things she collected, no matter how much money she spent. Her brain and her heart were locked in mortal combat, and she kept hoping that pretty soon, in the next second, they’ll start pumping the same blood, but things kept going on and on and on, like her heart and her head were fueled by different fuels, premium and diesel, and then everything was still a half a second off, like her entire life, and this just exacerbated the underneath problem between Hank and Maggie, and she felt the heat of her flushing face, and her heart fast beating, the rush, and here she was with these guys wondering why, and why won’t things settle down once and for finally all.

  “You guys really piss me off sometimes,” she said and took some plates to the kitchen and slammed them in the sink, but she didn’t think about leaving. She didn’t think about going out on her own; she was locked into the ranch life and it hadn’t occurred to her that she could drive out just like she had driven in. Or perhaps it had occurred to her, in fact, it had. She just didn’t know which direction she’d take. She didn’t have a plan and it seemed safer to stay than go, but was it?