‘Thank you.’
Smiling Jack laughed. ‘Hell’s bells, you deserve it, sweetheart. Don’t feel obliged.’
Smiling Jack’s Kenworth was too much for the narrow rutted road, so they walked the last mile to the ranch, taking turns carrying Daniel. Four spread deuces were nailed to the cabin door, the cards so sun-bleached they appeared blank. The cabin was festooned with spider webs and littered with woodrat droppings, but nothing a broom and scrub brush couldn’t fix. The woodshed roof sagged under the weight of a thick limb a storm had torn from a nearby apple tree, but the shed itself contained three cords of seasoned oak. Smiling Jack showed her where the kerosene was stored and how to fill and trim the lamps, instructed her on using the woodstove and propane refrigerator, produced bedding from an old seaman’s chest, and generally squared her away. Out on the back porch, in the warm sunlight, they shared a lunch of sourdough bread and cheese they’d purchased the previous evening in San Francisco. After lunch, Smiling Jack waved farewell and headed up the road toward his truck.
Daniel started to cry. Annalee unbuttoned her blouse and offered a breast. Daniel pushed it away and cried louder. Annalee was sixteen; Daniel, barely two weeks. It was April Fools’ Day. She was somewhere in California, in a drafty, shake-roof cabin built by some shepherd in 1911, with nothing to eat but some bread, cheese, and a few rusty cans of pork and beans in the cupboard. She had sixty-seven dollars in her pocket. ‘You’re right,’ she blurted to the bawling Daniel, and started crying, too. Then she got to work.
The cabin caulked and spotless, water hooked up, Annalee hitched to San Francisco with Daniel in her arms ten days later. It took them three rides and twelve hours. They spent the night in a Haight Street crash pad where a woman in her early twenties, who called herself Isis Parker, offered her a joint and the use of her father’s American Express Card.
The next morning Annalee checked the Chronicle Want Ads under baby-sitters, made a few calls, settled on a woman with a sweet voice, caught the bus and delivered Daniel, then headed downtown to abuse Isis’s father’s credit card. She bought Daniel a whole shopping bag full of clothes. For herself, she chose a stylish tweed suit, matching bag and shoes, three pairs of hose, and a gray silk blouse.
That afternoon a middle-aged broker coming out of Bullock & Jones was stopped by a tall, lovely young woman – a girl, really – wearing an impeccably tailored suit. The young woman was clearly distraught. ‘Ex-excuse me,’ she stammered, ‘but … but my purse was just stolen and …,’ she faltered, blushing, then continued bravely, ‘I have to buy some sanitary napkins.’
Bam. A hundred dollars an afternoon. She generally worked the financial district, taking care to choose well-dressed men in their fifties because they tended to cover their embarrassment with generosity. A few declined, usually just walking away without a word. One fainted. She never tried it on other women. They were too smart.
In all, it was the perfect nick, so good that even its clearest failure proved its greatest success. One crisp October afternoon she approached a tall, dapper man with graying hair as he left the Clift Hotel. He listened attentively to her plight, immediately reached for his wallet, and handed her a hundred-dollar bill. Annalee had never seen one before. She counted the zeros twice. ‘I’ll bring you the change,’ she managed to say, thinking somehow she would.
‘Nonsense.’ The man grinned. ‘You keep what’s left after the Kotex – which I imagine will be a hundred dollars. It’s an excellent hustle. Talent’s rare these days, and deserves encouragement. Besides, I just won eight grand in a poker game and I like to keep the money moving.’
‘Well, go get ’em, cowboy,’ Annalee laughed. She was still laughing when she picked up Daniel.
She usually worked the city once a month. At first she just worked an afternoon, but after Daniel was weaned she’d leave him with a sitter for two or three days while she hit Montgomery Street and spent the evenings and nights with the young artists and revolutionaries in the Haight, smoking weed and drinking wine. She was attracted to poets and saxophone players, but hardly confined herself to their company. She never took any of them home.
Annalee and Daniel spent the rest of each month at the ranch. She’d bought a single-shot .22 with her earnings, and she occasionally killed a deer or wild pig, freezing what she could cram in the refrigerator’s tiny box, drying or canning the rest. There was a large garden and a dozen chickens and ducks. The old orchard still produced, and nearby Cray Creek held small trout year-round, with salmon and steelhead arriving in the fall. She worked hard, but they lived well, buying the few things the land didn’t provide.
Annalee spent the evenings reading library books her poet friends had recommended or playing the old guitar she’d found under the bed, making up songs for Daniel’s amusement. Song, in fact, was his first word. But he was talking well enough to rush in excitedly and announce, ‘Mom, someone’s coming,’ when Smiling Jack, three years late, finally returned.
Annalee and Jack greeted each other with whoops and hugs on the front porch. Smiling Jack had hardly changed – a touch more gray in his hair, the smile-wrinkles around his eyes perhaps more pronounced. But Annalee had changed immeasurably: At nineteen she looked strong, solid, and wild. Her movements carried a sense of ease and grace, and her eyes looked right at you. Smiling Jack was impressed. He held her at arm’s length, declaring, ‘Sweet Lord o’ God, girl, but if you ain’t lookin’ about nine hundred forty-seven percent better than the last time I seen you. You must take to this country living.’
Annalee laughed, tossing her hair. She said to Daniel, who was standing in the doorway, ‘This is Smiling Jack Ebbetts, the man who let us stay here.’
‘Hi,’ Daniel said.
‘It’s a pleasure, Daniel.’ Smiling Jack offered his hand, which Daniel eyed hesitantly before shaking. ‘Doubt if you remember this crazy ol’ double-clutcher,’ cause you hadn’t made a month o’ life when I swept you and your momma off the cold shoulder of I-80 right outside Des Moines and hauled you on out here to look after the Four Deuces, but I sure remember you and our long, sweet ride to the coast.’
‘I don’t remember you,’ Daniel said.
‘Not many folks remember very much from when they were babies.’
‘Yeah,’ Annalee said, ‘but when most people say they’ll be back in a few months, they aren’t three years late.’
‘Had to see if you were serious about making a go of it here.’
Annalee folded her arms across her breasts. ‘We’re still here.’
‘Naw,’ Smiling Jack waved dismissively, ‘I was joshing on that – never had a doubt. What happened was I got involved in all sorts of family stuff back in Florida, and then on my way back out here, I found a monster three-card monte game in Waco. Lost my truck seven times.’