Wrapped in Rain(66)

Jase pointed to his right hand gripped tightly in a fist. "Why do you have that rock in your hand?"

Mutt opened his hand and studied the black, polished granite. "It helps me remember my name."

"You forget your own name?"

Mutt nodded. "Sometimes. But reading it here helps me remember."

"Can I see it?"

Mutt looked at the rock, then back at Jase, and extended his palm. Jase leaned over the top of the ladder and looked. "Can you make me one?"

Mutt pulled it back to his chest, hiding it behind the blanket, and nodded.

Jase took one step down the ladder and then climbed back up. "Mister Mutt, I don't know how to spell my name. Do you know how to spell my name?"

Mutt nodded.



"Oh, okay. 'Cause if you don't, you could ask my mom or Unca Tuck."

Mutt nodded again.

Jase climbed two steps down, reversed course, and then two steps back up. "Are you hungry?"

Mutt nodded as if the previous four nods had never occurred. "Unca Tuck and my mom are gonna cook eggs, toast, bacon, and biscuits. And something else, but I can't remember." Jase counted all five fingertips, but the answer didn't come.

Mutt lifted his head off the pillow and his eyebrows lifted. "Grits?"

"What's a grit?"

Mutt looked around, threw off the blanket, stuffed the rock in his pocket, grabbed his fanny pack, and climbed down the side of the loft, opposite Jase and me.

Mutt led the way to the cottage and pushed open the back door. Katie was whipping grated cheese into the eggs. He walked over to the stove, smelled the grits, and spread his chess set on the kitchen table where he promptly dispatched of me in seven moves.

Quiet through breakfast, Mutt forked an empty plate, turned to me, and said, "I want to go to church."

"Okay, which one?"

Mutt shrugged. "The one on the corner." I understood what he meant, even though it made little sense.

"I think it'd be a good idea if you took a bath first."

Mutt smelled his underarms and his hands. "Do we have any money?"

"Yes."

"Can I have some?"

"Yes."

"Can I have the keys to your truck?"

I pointed to the hook by the back door. Mutt stood up, grabbed the keys, and opened the door. Halfway out of the house, he turned around and said, "Money." I pointed to my wallet on the counter. "Visa card. The one that says `Rain LLC' at the bottom."



Mutt extracted the card and slid it in his pocket, opposite the rock. Thirty seconds later, the truck started and disappeared down the drive, pulling a small trailer. I don't know how long it'd been since he had driven, but when I looked out the front window, he was driving down the center of the drive.

Mutt returned at noon and began unloading the back of the truck and trailer, both of which were packed full with what looked like a hundred gallons of bleach and several large boxes of cleaning supplies. He handed me three receipts and disappeared into the barn. When I counted the receipts, one from Wal-Mart, one from a hardware store, and the last from a pool cleaning supply store, they totaled over two thousand eight hundred dollars.

Katie looked over my shoulder, read the receipts, and whispered, "Good Lord."

I stuffed them in my pocket and said, "It's cheaper than Spiraling Oaks."

I spent the next hour grooming Glue, but he didn't really need grooming. I wanted to know what Mutt intended to do with all that bleach and what was in those boxes. With the tack room stuffed with bleach, the smell of which was filling the barn, I let Glue out the back door into the pasture and watched Mutt climb the water tower with his belt looped through four one-gallon jugs of bleach. He reached the top of the ladder, tossed the jugs into the tank, and then disappeared into the tack room. He returned wearing knee-high rubber boots, a white face mask filter tied around his neck and mouth, and carrying two stiff brushes and an industrial-sized mop. He stuffed the brush handles into his back pockets like paintbrushes and slung the mop over his shoulder. He repositioned the mouth filter and climbed the ladder.



For the next several hours, all I heard from up above was scratching, brushing, grunting, and someone sloshing about in several inches of liquid. Every few minutes, layers of scum or algae sparkling with tadpoles would fly out of the top of the tank. At a quarter to four, Mutt appeared at the top of the ladder, covered head to foot in black and green algae, his clothes splattered with spots of white. He descended the ladder, leaned on the large wheel that turned on the water from the quarry, and waited for the two-inch pipe to carry the water up. The pump hadn't worked in years, but Mutt's mind hadn't yet centered on this dilemma.

When no water appeared, his thoughts turned to the pump that sat rusted and long-since dead outside the barn beneath a rotten and brittle blue tarp. He took one look at it, hung up his breathing apparatus, slipped off his boots, climbed into the truck, and disappeared. An hour later, he reappeared carrying a new one-horsepower pump and a dozen or so pipe pieces and fittings. He exchanged the pumps, primed the line with a hose from the house, and turned on the pump. After a few seconds of sputtering and blowing out the air, the two-inch line gurgled and then resonated with the sound of flowing water. Mutt slipped back into his boots, donned his face mask, and ascended the ladder, carrying an extension cord connected to a spotlight. At 10:30 p.m., I couldn't prop my eyes open with toothpicks, so I left Mutt to himself and walked into the house.