Send Down the Rain(54)
He nodded. Still confident.
“And when it’s up and running, we’re gonna need some guys to manage it. Maintain the rides. Pop the popcorn. Fix the go-karts.”
Manuel shook my hand. His eyes were glassy. I’ve seldom seen gratitude like that.
I took them to the bank, opened joint checking accounts for each one, and made cash deposits in the form of a work bonus, bringing their opening balance to $7,500 each. Victor teared up and gave me a hug, then turned to Manuel and spoke in rapid-fire Spanish.
Manuel pointed him back to the teller and then explained to me. “He wants to send money to his wife and children in Mexico.”
I didn’t even know he was married. Peter held up one hand with five fingers extended.
“What?” I asked. “He has five kids?”
Peter shook his head. “No, me. I have five kids.”
I looked at Javier.
He held up three fingers.
I walked away, realizing they had worked without complaint, grateful just to be working, never feeling sorry for themselves. I shook my head. “I need to learn to speak Spanish.”
The following morning, I woke to the sound of a rented bulldozer. Manuel and the three amigos were back at work.
I got out my phone and called my brother. He didn’t answer, so I left him a voicemail. “Bobby, you said if I needed anything . . . Well, I need some help with a citizenship issue. I’ve got some folks down here that aren’t here legally, but if we send them home, they’ll die a painful and violent death, and probably their kids will too. The reason is long and complicated and has a lot to do with me. Just tell me what I need to do to start the process. I’ll pay for it. Point me in the right direction and then cut through all the red tape I’m about to bump into. ”
I STOOD ON THE porch of the restaurant, lured by the enticing smell of fresh coffee. The wafting aroma was akin to Morse code and Allie had tapped out the invitation. Without a word, it whispered, “Come be with me. I want you here with me.” It was as innocent as a love note passed between two kids in grade school and as intentional as a tender hand slid beneath the sheets.
As a girl, Allie had always been beautiful. In our teens, my eyes opened as I’d watched straight lines develop into curves. In my time away, she’d become a woman, knowing hardship, accomplishment, and confidence. But now she was a woman in full bloom. A presence to be reckoned with. And neither high-school Allie nor curved Allie nor powerful Allie could hold a candle to Allie now.
When we walked the beach alone, her arm locked in mine, she continued to ask me questions about my life. I answered as best I could. Sometimes when I didn’t have the words, we walked in the quiet, and she was okay with that.
Despite age and time and whiskey and fights and businesses and success and money and isolation, the touch and smell of Allie brought back images of my early life that I’d tried for years not to see.
One afternoon she wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her chest to mine, her sandy toes on top of mine. “Is this difficult?” she asked.
“Which part?”
“The looking back part.”
“It’s a reminder.”
“Of?”
“When I was over there and we had a break, a few days in the rear, dusk would fall and the only sound was the gentle roll of waves on seashell. I would sit up on the dunes beneath the palm trees with my head in my hands and try to remember what your face looked like. How your hair smelled. The taste of you. Then I would look at my hands and ask myself the simple and unanswerable question, ‘How do I get back to good?’”
Sometimes it was hard for Allie to listen. Sometimes she would sob and cling to me. Often she would just stop me and kiss me. Trying to make up for all the years apart.
Then there were the nights. She’d told Catalina to give up her vigil on the porch and get some sleep, and then she crawled in bed with me. You might think it was sexual. It was not. Sure, I wanted it to be, but when I closed my eyes, sleep fell and my body remembered what my mind had forgotten.
Allie held me night after night, while I sweated and shook and screamed in my sleep. I woke sometimes, surprised to see her face and the fear she was trying to hide. I also saw that those nights convinced her that something I’d encountered had tormented me a long time. Night after night, she clung to me, pulled me to her, wrapped around me like a vine. I began to know sleep like I’d not known in a long, long time.
WITH THE SOFT OPENING less than two weeks away, Allie found me late one afternoon in the restaurant bathroom, painting one of the stalls.
She leaned against the wall, a sneaky smile on her face. “You got a minute?”
I rinsed my brush and met her outside. As we walked to my truck, she held out her hand. “Keys, please.”
I hesitated. “I’m a little picky about who I let drive my truck.”
“Give me the blasted keys, Joseph. You can’t always be in charge.”
I handed her the keys and she drove us the long way to Apalachicola. When we reached town, she wound her way around to a small, dilapidated house for which the only hope was some gasoline and a match. Behind the house stood a small and slightly leaning garage. She parked in front of the garage and said, “It’s not in the best of shape, as I haven’t really had the money to keep it up. I thought about taking out a loan to do the work, but I imagine you’d want to do that yourself.” She rested her hand on the garage door handle. “I’m sorry it’s not in better condition, but that’s the thing about horses frozen in time . . .”