He posted the Church bulletin with magnets on the refrigerator to make sure he didn’t forget to take her to all the age appropriate youth events. He watched what the better mothers at Church were doing with their daughters.
It was all he could think of to do.
Hank checked his watch as the horizon glowed deep red. He stood on the fence rails, waving his hat. He watched Karen slow down, so Pepper could keep up. Pepper was wagging his tail, excitedly awaiting her return. Karen was in the third grade when she found the old, one eyed, stray dog, on Fire Mountain. He thought Pepper would have to be put down, the wounded dog was almost dead. But he had caved in when she begged to nurse him back to health. Pepper was the first of his daughter’s many veterinarian patients.
“Fifteen minutes until the school bus gets here,” he said.
“Thanks, Dad.” Karen said as she dismounted and handed him the reins.
“How is the new school?” Hank asked.
“Fine,” she said, in the teenage past perfect tense of no elaboration.
Hank just nodded, searching her face for any nonverbal clues. Karen had just been transferred to a new school beginning her senior year. Hank never told her that Victoria had gone to the ranch’s lawyers to arrange for the “redistricting” of the ranch to the better school, Barley Union High School. The owner called in favors, and got the bus route to her front door. Victoria had become very alarmed by the gang violence at Karen’s previous school.
He took the reins.
“School is fine Dad. Really,” Karen reassured him. Smiling, she quickly rubbed Missy again, petted Pepper, then hurried back to the mobile home to get her backpack and change clothes.
3.
The mobile home Karen Wilson lived in with her Dad was artfully, and completely, concealed from view between two very expensively constructed, air conditioned, wings of brick stables for multimillion dollar thoroughbred race horses.
“Good morning, Sis,” said Gonzalez, as he unloaded bales of organic hay for the thoroughbreds.
Most the ranch hands called her Sis. Some called her Sunrise, in Spanish, because she was naturally upbeat and cheerful, and because they saw her mainly at daybreak.
“The baby horse…had much happy birthday,” Gonzalez continued in Spanglish, as she opened the door to her mobile home.
“Great! Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez,” she replied, smiling, which translated perfectly. Gonzalez had helped the veterinarian deliver a foal for one of the workhorses, who were kept at a separate stable from the expensive thoroughbreds.
“Hurry up Cinderella, your stagecoach is coming,” she laughed, quickly choosing what to clothes to wear.
Karen had three closets, and two dressers of clothes. Dad cleared out all the closets, except for his room, for her. About every three months Victoria brought her very expensive clothes that her friend’s daughters had “outgrown”. Karen suspected, correctly, that the clothes were bought specifically for her. The occasional concealed price tag she found was a big clue.
Hank had no idea what clothes to buy her, he had offered to have a woman from the church go with her. She declined, she always was stubbornly self-reliant. So he just gave her the keys to the truck, the debit card, and sent her to the mall.
But last year Victoria had arranged to have Karen measured and custom fitted for jeans with her tailor. These blue jeans were far more comfortable around her hips and thighs, the only clothes Karen really, truly, valued. They wore better, and were reinforced for tough ranch use. She was beginning to appreciate that they also definitely flattered her already striking appearance. And that was becoming more important to her, although she never wore makeup, and had little interest in any clothes she could not ride in.
“Cinderella is now ready for the ball,” Karen smiled, petting the doll her Dad had given her when she was five. Probably the only Cinderella doll in California with her own horse and gun, she thought. The ranch hands had found a scale size horse and gun for her Cinderella, just like Victoria had.
She put on her trail hiking shoes, and picked up her backpack. She checked herself in the full length mirrors, next to the photographs of Missy and Pepper, and the old one of her Mom and Dad helping her blow out the candles at her three year old birthday party.
Karen liked to look at her Mom’s photograph. She was beautiful, and they all looked happy together. It was their only photograph as a family. Her Mom left when Karen was four, and never returned. After her Mom left, they had moved to California when Dad got this job.
Dad never told her why her Mom never came to see her, apparently the psychologist had asked him not to until she was older. He would just look at his hands, and say it was hard for her. She knew he tried his best to be upbeat and positive about her Mom for her sake. But she realized talking about her caused him visible pain. So Karen just quit asking.
Once, when they riding, looking for a lost calf in the Fire Mountain pasture, Dad told her, “Karen, you have to do better than me.”
“I am fifty one years old, own nothing but my old, beat up, Ford pickup, and tools, and have no wife,” Dad said.
“Even the thoroughbred horses have a better home than I do,” he continued.
But she never forgot how her Dad’s eyes sparkled and lit up.
“But Karen, I felt a strange peace and joy when I realized I love working with the horses. And I could never afford to own, or even feed, these horses. I get to be outside all day in a beautiful ranch,” he said, pausing.
“The horses don’t know, or care, who owns them,” Dad added. It was quiet for a few moments.
“The ranch owner works in an office all day and lives under extreme stress so he can pay me to enjoy and manage the horses,” Dad said.
“Who works for who?” he asked, smiling.
Karen knew she had inherited his indomitable spirit, enthusiasm, and love of horses. She enjoyed getting up early, greeting the horses, and scanning the sky for the weather. The best time of her day was after dawn and before the school bus came.
She heard Pepper bark, as usual, when the school bus came. Karen lifted the curtain and looked out the window. The school bus was now turning off the main highway and would be here soon. She was the only pickup for the school bus on the two lane, paved, private ranch road.
The sky was now a bright red that streamed out unevenly through the jagged mountains surrounding the ranch. Scattered clouds reflected the sunrise, the morning chill lingered, the wind had yet to stir.
The grass was bright green, sprinkled with wildflowers, for acres and acres along the flat basin projecting out from the meandering creek. The land then faded to brush land, then hard rock surfaces near the mountains. Karen loved this ranch, it was breathtakingly beautiful.
Missy and the other horses suddenly raced the school bus through the grass along the fence at full gallop as Karen climbed on the bus.
“Now that’s a special goodbye ,” the bus driver said, smiling at her.
“Yes, sir,” Karen replied. She wondered why Missy had raced the bus, this had never happened before. She moved to the back of the bus to get a better look, and was relieved when she saw the horses turn right, and stop at the stables.
Missy threw her head back and raised her front legs, facing the departing school bus and the red dawn.
Dad and Gonzalez waved their hats to Karen.
4.
“Get your backpacks,” Zeke Brown said to his little brother and sister, pointing to their bedrooms.
He didn’t want them to see their Mom passed out, drunk, hunched over the kitchen table. Light from the broken neon sign of the Two Spot Bar across the street flickered through the grimy windows. The kitchen reeked of warm, stale beer and vomit. He carefully moved closer, as his eyes adjusted to the complete darkness.
“The Lakers lost again,” the television droned. Without turning on the overhead light, he could now see that beer had splattered all over his Mom and the table, leaving a dingy crust of foam.
“For erectile
dysfunction….” Zeke turned the television off. He hurriedly picked up the empty Colt 45 Malt Liquor beer cans, the McDonalds red supersize fries package, a crumpled twenty dollar bill, loose change, her bus pass, half a joint, and a lotto card filled out with her six lucky ticket numbers. He smashed the aluminum beer cans, put them in the recycle bin, threw the garbage away, and dumped everything else back in her overturned purse.
“Can we come in now?” Monique asked.
There was no time to clean up the mess, so he just picked his Mom up, carried her to the couch, then covered her with a blanket. She never stirred. He shut the window curtains, turned on the lights, then hurriedly made sure she had not left the stove on, or the refrigerator cracked open.
“Just a minute,” Zeke replied.
Zeke frantically looked at the clock again. Monday mornings were always the worst. He now had sixteen minutes until the school bus came for LeShawn and Monique. They had to leave quickly as the kid’s bus stop was half a block away.
He unlocked the two deadbolts, then opened the front door. After he walked outside, he quickly turned and locked the door. He waited for his eyes to adjust, and turned carefully to scan both sides of the street.
It was quiet, and he didn’t see anyone moving, or worse, just hanging around. It was still very dark, no predawn light yet. Since most of the streetlights were shot out, the broken, flickering, red neon light at the Two Spot bar created an ominous strobe effect. It was like the flashing red and blue lights on a police car. The hard rain had eased up to a steady drizzle. The red light reflected off the wet asphalt.
Zeke trembled when he looked at the Two Spot bar parking lot. This is where it happened Friday morning.
“Give it up. I don’t play,” the addict had said. He was sweating and trembling. It looked like he was crashing, hard. The addict’s gun swung towards Monique.
“No!” Zeke screamed, as he knocked Monique to the pavement, away from the addict’s gun barrel.
“There!” Zeke heard someone shout. He looked and saw some gang members smoking joints in the Cadillac Escalade parked in the deserted Two Spot parking lot, dividing up bundles of cash. They grabbed their guns and jumped out when Zeke screamed. Probably one of their lookouts had shouted.
Zeke turned, fearing a drive by shooting from another gang when he saw all the piles of money. There were no cop lights, and Zeke knew the police stayed out of this area without backup. The gang members took cover and lit the area up with the red laser lights on their 9mm handguns.
“Gonna put a cap in your punk……,” a gang member laughed . The robber dropped his gun, frantically trying to outrun the red laser lights.
“That’s the speed of light!” they howled hysterically. The scent of high quality marijuana smoke waffled past Zeke.
“I played football with you, Zeke,” one gang member had shouted to Zeke as they fled.
Zeke tried to focus, forget the robbery, and stop trembling. He looked carefully around. He had made a mistake of not doing that on Friday, and that mistake-his mistake-almost cost Monique her life. He unlocked the door and walked back inside.
He hesitated.
Carrying a gun was a hard time jail felony in California. But some of these robbers killed their victims if they didn’t get enough money to buy more crack, and Zeke didn’t have any money to give them.
Calm down, he thought to himself.
“You know you would die for Monique and LeShawn, so you would certainly risk jail to save their lives,” Zeke he spoke to himself, to calm down.
After all, it would only be fair and just that a Judge would indignantly sentence him to prison for carrying a gun to protect his family, Zeke thought sarcastically. A Judge who lived in a gated community, with armed guards. A Judge who, herself, always carried a gun. A Judge who wouldn’t drive by this neighborhood in a Brinks armored truck.
Zeke steadied himself, then reached behind the refrigerator. He took his Mom’s revolver out of the locked metal gun safe. The gun safe was built into the wall, adapted from an electrical fuse box. The Deacons from the Jerusalem Baptist Church down the street had built one for everyone who had a gun and kids.
He checked to be sure the gun was loaded, then jammed it in his pants, above his back pocket. He would drop the gun off at the house after he walked LeShawn and Monique to their bus stop, before he went to high school.
He checked again to be sure his Mom was fully covered by the blanket, then yelled “Come on, LeShawn and Monique!”
The kids silently walked by their Mom sleeping on the couch, heads down, and waited at the front door. Zeke was troubled by the way they looked away from their Mom.
“Here is your breakfast,” Zeke said, as he gave each one half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread, and half an egg and cheese sandwich. He had made the sandwiches every night, ahead of time, in batches, and put them in Ziploc bags. He checked their back packs for their school books, and threw in a banana and an orange he had brought home from football practice. Coach let him have all the extra fruit. He was relieved both had their shoes on, and the laces were tied.
“Good report card,” Zeke said, picking up the kids’ school Kindergarten progress report cards he had left on the counter last night for his Mom. He signed her name, and put them in their backpacks.
He checked to make sure their backpacks were covered by the rain ponchos, then turned out the lights. After they were outside, he double checked to be sure the door was locked. Monique and LeShawn grabbed his hands as they walked down the sidewalk. Empty beer cans in disintegrating small brown paper bags, drug needles, cigarette butts, Kentucky Fried Chicken hot wings boxes, and crumpled McDonald’s paper bags smeared with ketchup littered the sidewalk, and were being washed into the clogged gutters by a swell of rainwater.
He thought it was amazing that no matter how much it rained, the sidewalk always smelled strongly of urine. The gutter and drain were clogged, flooding the sidewalk. He watched the water back up closer to a fat man snoring in a cardboard box covered with plastic shipping wrap. A mangy dog lying near the cardboard box looked at them, but didn’t bother to bark or growl. Both LeShawn and Monique grabbed his hand tighter when they saw the dog. LeShawn and Monique laughed and enjoyed the rain.
“LeShawn, stop splashing puddles on Monique,” Zeke said, as they hurried to their school bus stop.
They squealed with delight as he finally picked both of them up, one under each arm, and started running to the bus with 5 minutes left. They held out their arms like Superman flying.
They were late, but he saw Essie, the bus driver, had waited as they ran up to the bus stop.
5.
Essie always drove the school bus on this route, and she had noticed Zeke walking his brother and sister every day. In her mind, Zeke was just about perfect. A fine young man, clean cut, strong, handsome, he actually used a belt to hold up his pants. But most importantly, she loved the way he guarded these beautiful children. She hoped her grandsons were that responsible.
When Essie heard about his Mother at the hair salon, she told Zeke the next day, “Don’t worry son, I will stop if I see you on the road. But try not to be late. I am not supposed to do this, I could get fired. I need the check.”
Essie had reached the age where she would adopt, or claim credit, for kids she liked, at least in her imagination. There were so many gang members, too many teenage funerals. She liked to think on the positive, true, and noble, like the Preacher said yesterday.
“Preach it,” she said out loud. Zeke was something positive, just like the Preacher said. Essie bragged about Zeke to her husband almost every night.
“Zeke Brown is an All-State running back. Boosters brought him to Barley Union High School to win the division. He is already being recruited by major Colleges,” her husband explained to her at dinner.
Essie didn’t understand football, but she did know that for some reason a school bus to the wealthy school detoured twelve miles just to pick up Zeke. Other
school bus drivers had complained about the trip.
“You go, son!” she said. Her comment was ignored by the other kids on the bus. It was nothing unusual, Essie would periodically talk to herself, sometimes sing.
Zeke watched LeShawn and Monique walk up the steps of the bus, then jump into the front seat Essie saved for them. Zeke nodded at her, she smiled back.
“Thank you Mrs. Essie,” Zeke said.
“Can’t leave my babies,” she replied, smiling.
She looked in her rear mirror, the kids were laughing, splattering their wet hands against the window, and waving goodbye to Zeke.
LeShawn and Monique’s school bus disappeared into the rain.
6.
Ashley Kensington heard the maid knock softly, then hang something on her door knob. The maid’s shoes made a clicking sound on the marble floors as she turned, and walked back to the kitchen.
“Hurry up woman,” Ashley Kensington said, listening, impatiently waiting for the maid to disappear. She jerked her bedroom door open, ripped off the plastic dry-clean wrap, and inspected her new cheerleader uniform.
“Yes!” she said, as she looked in the full length mirror alcove. She pressed the time delay button on her laptop, taking several photos of herself in different positions. She examined each photo carefully. The concealed, integrated padded bra supported, lifted, and supplemented her breasts. The tapered waist with slight, dyed, color differentiation that created an optical illusion to make her look even thinner, was to die for.
“Girl, you look fine!” she said. And just in time for school yearbook photos today. The tailor was very expensive, but worth every dollar her parents would unknowingly pay. And no one would know her uniform was tailored with heavy duty, reinforced elastic, so she would look good during the cheerleading routines.
Ashley quickly dressed and grabbed all her expensive electronic devices, trying to remember which ones were the most prestigious. She rushed down the hall to the sun room, which opened to the beach, hoping her parents were still home. Maybe she could beg for the car.
Nuclear War Club: Seven high school students are in detention when Nuclear War explodes.Game on, they are on their own. Page 2
