Love Mercy Page 5

  In her memories Morro Bay was a magical place, where her father said he’d one day buy them a little house with seashell wind chimes, and they’d live forever next to the ocean. He’d win custody of her, he told her. Her mother didn’t really want her, didn’t she know that? He put into words what she’d always suspected, that her mother didn’t love her but loved the child support. But that didn’t matter, because Mel and her dad were going to leave Las Vegas and live in Morro Bay. He would buy her a dog. A big, shaggy one named Ralph or Henry who would follow her everywhere and save her life if she fell into the ocean just like in the movies.

  On the third day, they drove back to Las Vegas, and he dropped her off in front of the pink apartment where she lived with her mother, two blocks from downtown. It was late, and Mom was out as usual, probably dating the man who would eventually become her second of five husbands.

  “Au revoir, Melina Jane LeBlanc,” her father said, flashing his devastating smile. He pulled a shiny silver dollar from behind her ear, bowed and presented it to her with a flourish. Las Vegas’s only Cajun magician was how he billed himself. “Be a good fille for your old papa.” He blew her a kiss and drove away. She never saw Varise Alphonse LeBlanc again.

  “Best get over it,” her mother said when Mel moped around the phone for weeks, waiting for his call. “He’s a magician, little girl. Disappearing is what he does best.”

  Her vague plan the morning after she quit the force and drove to Morro Bay was to go to the beach near Morro Rock, hopefully deserted that early, and use her .45 one last time. She’d make sure she was close enough to the water that the tide would take her body out to sea, where it would be picked clean by crabs. Even as she mentally planned this on the dark eight-hour drive across Nevada and California toward the ocean, she knew it was a fantasy. Bodies left for any amount of time in a lake or an ocean weren’t clean white bones. They were bloated and smelled like rotten fish mixed in a cesspool and were gnawed at and partially consumed by any number of hungry life-forms. But it wouldn’t matter, because she would no longer inhabit that body.

  It all changed because of a chicken, a Silver Spangled Hamburg, she would later discover. She drove into town when the sun was still a rosy whisper on the horizon. She carefully maneuvered the foggy back streets, trying to find the beach, while her stomach twisted and heaved with the mixture of coffee and alcohol.

  Out of the misty gray fog, what looked like a polka-dotted chicken with blue gray legs flew up on her truck’s damp hood and performed a clicky-clack, cartoon tap dance. Mel slammed on her brakes. The bird slid off, hit the ground and started running. Another chicken darted in front of the truck. It squawked so loud Mel could hear the agitated sound inside the cab. Another followed, its mouth open in a comical silent chicken scream.

  Following them, cursing to beat the band, came a man, six two or three, about two hundred pounds. He was big-chested, had a bushy head of unruly chestnut hair and a full beard. He held up the flat of his hand to Mel, even though she was already stopped, and ran in front of her truck, slapping his wide palm on the right front fender.

  “Need some help here!” he called.

  Instinctively, she pulled the emergency brake, grabbed her keys and opened the door. It was her duty as a police officer to render assistance, even though she’d officially become a civilian as of noon the day before. She realized in that moment that turning off that part of her wasn’t just a matter of saying, “I quit.”

  Despite the alcohol still in her system, Mel finally caught one of the escaped chickens. She held it under her arm like a football, a flapping, screeching, pecking football.

  “What do I do with it?” she yelled to the man who’d managed to capture two and was holding a flapping bird in each of his hands.

  “Pen’s inside!” He nodded toward the little red tongue-and-groove feed store that she hadn’t even noticed was there.

  Inside, she managed to drop the hysterical chicken into the pen, whose open gate the man closed and latched. For the next hour she helped the man, who introduced himself as Cy, and his teenage employee, Josh, chase chickens. They were joined by a few locals, retired farmers out for their early morning constitutionals and familiar with the unpredictable ways of poultry. By eight a.m., two hours after Mel’s truck had been attacked by the Silver Spangled Hamburg, the frantic fowl were all captured.

  The chicken posse was enjoying hot coffee and homemade donuts brought over by one of the neighbors when a bleary-eyed newspaper reporter from the Morro Bay Post-Gazette walked up and said someone had called him about a breaking news story on Harbor Street. The story, complete with color photograph, was the next day’s front-page news. The caption read, “Harbor Hens Run Amok.” The photo showed Cy, Mel and Josh, each holding a chicken, standing in front of the feed store. Love had been in Kentucky visiting her cousin Tally and never got over the fact that she missed the whole incredible sight.

  “Say, Chicky,” Cy had said when Mel downed her third chocolate-iced French donut, the best food she’d tasted in months. “You’re quite the poultry wrangler. You looking for a job?”

  Mel put down the wood-handled brush, remembering that moment like it was yesterday. She scratched Redeye on the spot near his withers that always made his eyes roll with pleasure. She never had a pet growing up, so she wasn’t naturally comfortable with animals. In the last few months, as she’d taken the baby steps in learning to ride, Redeye’s easygoing personality had wormed its way into her heart. She looked forward to the old horse’s nuzzling, amazed that an animal this large and capable of inflicting hurt on a human being could be so gentle. She’d slowly grown to love Redeye, the same way she’d grown to love Morro Bay, August and Polly, the feed store and the Buttercream, Love and Cy.

  Yes, that moment with Cy almost three years ago was imprinted on her heart, like an orphaned gosling attaching to the first breathing thing it laid eyes on. That question whose answer would forever change her life. The answer that would save her life.

  “You looking for a job?” His face had been hopeful.

  She remembered taking a few seconds to contemplate what he asked. Then she took a long drag of that strong, hot coffee and replied, to her utter surprise, “Actually, I think I am.”

  FOUR

  Rett

  Brother Dwaine’s trucker friends took Rett the rest of the way to Morro Bay. Though she would never admit to anyone that she was scared, it was a big relief that she didn’t actually have to hitchhike across the country.

  Jim, a truck driver from Spokane who had three daughters of his own, dropped her off at a McDonald’s in Santa Maria, about an hour or so from Morro Bay. He made a couple of quick cell phone calls and found another of Brother Dwaine’s friends who happened to be in Santa Maria visiting someone in the hospital. Rocky Sanchez agreed to drive her to Morro Bay, where he also lived. Though Rett’s trust in God’s people had gotten a little shaky in the last few years—the small-town county fair and gospel circuit could do that to a person—she had to admit that Brother Dwaine and his friends seemed pretty cool.

  Rocky Sanchez told her he was a minister right off, so she gave him points for not trying to fake her out. He could have, because he sure didn’t look like any preacher she’d ever met. In the churches where she and her sisters had regularly sung before the the Son Sisters fell apart, thanks to her freakazoid older sister, Patsy, the ministers tended to wear baggy gray or navy blue suits with lapel pins of little gold crosses or American flags. Rocky had a shaved head, a tattoo on his right forearm of a bleeding red heart surrounding a greenish black crown of thorns, and a gooselike laugh that reminded Rett of Brother Dwaine’s truck horn. It made her smile, something her mom always complained she didn’t do enough.

  On the drive to Morro Bay in an old Chevy pickup sun-faded to a pale pink, he talked nonstop, which she kind of liked, because it meant she only had to nod her head. She found out he was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where he once sold drugs and served time in prison for vari
ous drug-related crimes. In prison, he found Jesus after seeing him in a dream and used the time inside to get his bachelor’s degree in pastoral care. He also worked in the prison barbershop. Two weeks after he got out, he met his wife, Magnolia Rosalina Fabrizio, at a casino in Las Vegas.

  “I was passing out tracts at the old Aladdin,” he said. “Magnolia was the freebie headliner in the bar that night. Man, she could sing the hair off a dead man’s chest.” His laugh filled the truck’s warm cab. He swatted at the wooden cross hanging from the rearview mirror. “I fell for her like a lodge pine to a chain saw. Asked her out that night. We ate pancakes and sausage at Denny’s on the Strip. Been together ever since.” He smiled to himself, keeping his eyes on the road. “Thirty-one incredible years. We have two girls. Jade is twenty-nine, and Cheyenne is thirty.” Rocky looked over at Rett; his dark brown skin seemed to glow when he spoke of his wife. “She doesn’t sing in bars anymore, except on the third Wednesday of the month at the Rowdy Pelican saloon.”

  “Why there?” Rett asked.

  “For four hours, from six to ten p.m., they agree not to serve liquor. Then she sings all the songs that made me want to marry her the first moment I heard her. She won’t sing anymore while people are drinking, and her fans love her enough to honor her beliefs. That’s her picture there.” He gestured at a photo paper clipped to Rett’s sunshade. It showed a woman with curly, dark hair and a gleaming smile holding a red pancake spatula across her heart. Somehow the photograph made her look like she had a halo, which Rett thought looked kind of cool.

  “Her best friend took that photo,” he said. “Really caught her personality.”

  “Oh,” Rett said.

  True to his profession, he did try to find out if she was in any kind of physical or spiritual trouble. But at least he wasn’t sneaky. He just flat-out asked if she needed any advice, then left her alone when she made it clear she was fine and didn’t want to discuss why she was coming to Morro Bay.

  “Say,” he said, glancing at her banjo case. “Do you know ‘On the Rock Where Moses Stood?’ ”

  “Sure.” His request impressed her. The old guy really knew his bluegrass gospel. Normally when people saw a banjo, they always asked her to play “Dueling Banjos,” like that was the be all and end all of banjo music. “Can’t play it alone,” she always lied. People were so lame sometimes.

  She pulled out Dale’s . . . her . . . banjo and started tuning it by ear.

  “Beautiful instrument,” Rocky said, glancing over.

  “It’s a 1933 prewar Gibson Granada,” she said, pretending it was actually hers. “Who knows how many people have played it? It has all its original parts. And the rim has never been cut.”

  “I don’t know what all that means, but I do know old fiddles often play the sweetest,” Rocky said, smiling.

  She played the old gospel song, giving it a bluesy sound by throwing in some sharps and flats. After that, she played song after song, losing herself in the notes like she always did when she was scared. She did every fancy slide, hammer-down and pull-off that she knew, just because this old banjo, with all its history, felt so solid and wise. It seemed like only a few minutes went by when he pulled off the exit marked Morro Bay.

  “Where to now?” he asked, as he slowed down on the off-ramp curve.

  “The Buttercream Café?” It was a place her grandma mentioned in the letter Rett found at the bottom of her mom’s closet last month when she was looking for spare change. She carefully put the banjo back into the lined case.

  “What a coincidence! My wife and her best friend own the Buttercream.” A few minutes later, he pulled up in front of a white stucco building set between a bead shop and a store that sold office supplies. A sign in the shape of an old-fashioned butter churn swung in the morning breeze. Yellow gingham curtains framed the large front window. “Good luck,” Rocky said. “You’ll be in my prayers tonight.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I guess I should say God bless you,” he said, when she stepped out of the truck. “But that has always sounded kind of strange to me. He’ll bless you whether I request it or not.” He smiled and handed her a church bulletin. A round coffee stain haloed the name: Baytown Christian Fellowship. “Drop by if you have a chance. We’re a pretty nice group, if not a little long in the tooth, but we do have a few people around your age.”

  She took the bulletin, planning on ditching it later. “Thanks for the ride, Mr. Sanchez.”

  “Call me Rocky.”

  Once inside the café, Rett obeyed the sign and seated herself, choosing a table next to the back wall. While she pretended to scan the menu, she peeked at Rocky’s wife, Magnolia, who looked just like her photograph. She was a good-sized woman, not fat, but definitely substantial. Unlike Rett’s mom, who always freaked when she got bigger than a size six, this woman looked like she couldn’t give a flying flip about what size jeans she wore. She seemed to be in a dozen places at once, firing off orders, talking to the people sitting at the counter, filling people’s coffee cups and greeting new customers by name when they came through the door.

  Rett glanced around at the café. On the tables were every kind of weird coffee creamer you could imagine, many of them different types of animals, one an ear of corn. Whoever owned this place—Mrs. Rocky and her best friend—must have bought most of the crazy creamers off eBay. On the wall next to her table, the farm and animal theme was carried out in framed photographs of butter churns, cows and creamers. The photos at first looked normal, until you really studied them. Then you saw that the photographer had a kind of weird sense of humor; the butter churns had odd things hanging off them like frilly wedding garters and spiked dog collars. The creamers, in the shapes of scowling pigs and wild-eyed collie dogs, were posed next to empty whiskey bottles and one-armed Barbie dolls with cornrowed hair wearing tattered wedding dresses and cowboy hats. One photo showed a bunch of plastic cows crowded into a bright red pie pan sitting in the middle of a red-checked table. Rett thought about it for a moment, then smiled. Cow pie. They were funny in a lame kind of way.

  Today all the framed photos were decorated with red and green garlands for Christmas. A manger scene carved from some kind of light brown wood held a special spot in the big, round communal table in the middle of the café filled with laughing men and women who looked and talked as if they were eating in their own dining room. They all looked really old, like in their sixties.

  Mrs. Rocky walked up, pulling a pencil from her thick, curly black hair, fashioned in a loose bun. Her plastic name tag said Magnolia.

  “What can I get you, sugar?” Magnolia poised her pencil over a half-used order pad.

  Alabama, Rett thought. Down near Mobile. Definitely not Montgomery or the hilly northern part. Rett had a kind of knack for accents, especially Southern ones. Probably because she’d spent so much of her childhood traveling around the South singing at church reunions and revival meetings.

  Rett thought quickly, remembering that she needed to be careful with her money in case her grandma was a total whack job and Rett needed to get out of town fast. “Uh, water. And a donut.” She felt her face turn warm. That sounded stupid, like what a kid would order. “No, make it coffee. Just coffee.”

  Magnolia stared at her a moment, her blue eyes thoughtful. “You just getting into town?”

  Rett stared back at her and nodded.

  “Where in the South you from?”

  Rett hesitated a moment. Her first instinct was to lie, though one didn’t automatically present itself. Then again, she had nothing to hide. She was here to find her grandma. Maybe this woman could help. Morro Bay wasn’t a big town. It was likely her grandma ate here. The letter she found in her mom’s closet had no envelope, so no return address. And Rett couldn’t find any free information on the Internet about Love Mercy Johnson except a Morro Bay post office box. She didn’t have the money to pay for more information. Luckily, her grandma mentioned the name of this café in the letter.

  “Tennesse
e,” Rett said.

  Magnolia’s full bottom lip tightened slightly. “Long ways for a young girl to be traveling all by herself.”

  Rett felt the flush start on her neck and work its way slowly up to her cheeks. “I’m eighteen. That’s a legal adult.”

  “So they say,” Magnolia said, lifting one eyebrow.

  “It is.” Rett heard the stubborn, childlike whine in her voice and cringed. It would have been better if she’d kept her mouth shut. Leave it to her to be in a place only two minutes and already be arguing with some adult.

  “So, Miss Legal Adult. How’d you get to Morro Bay from Tennessee?” Magnolia asked.

  Rett felt her own lower lip stiffen. “Hitchhiked.” Take that, you nosy old bat.

  Magnolia shook her head, obviously disapproving. “You come to Morro Bay for any particular reason?”

  Mind your own darn business, Rett wanted to say. The woman’s nosiness was probably the Alabama part of her personality. According to Rocky, his wife was half Southern (that’s the Magnolia part, he’d said), half Italian and all business.

  “She keeps me and most of the town on the straight and narrow path,” he said, obviously proud of his strong-willed wife.

  Though Rett knew how to fend off a curious Southerner—heaven knows she’d done it often enough—she was less inclined to deliberately antagonize an Italian lady. She’d known one once when they moved to Pensacola with Mom’s second husband, Pete. The woman’s name was Mrs. Coscarelli. She lived next door to them and made these awesome lacy cookies that tasted like Good and Plenty candy. The neighborhood kids learned fast that you didn’t want to make her mad. Once, the boy across the street, Johnny Dillard, picked her pink roses and threw them all over the street just because he was a jerk who was all over messing up things for no reason. Mrs. Coscarelli went totally postal and turned from a nice, cookie-baking old lady to a freaking maniac. She chased him down the street with a rolling pin dusty with flour, which was funny when you thought about it, kind of like those back-in-the-day cartoons: Heckle and Jeckle or Tom and Jerry.