Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [186]
Zocco was in his seventies now and was as brown and gnarled as an old oak tree. His children were grown and had children of their own, but he still worked a long day, supervising the stables and giving the ranch-hands a hard time if they failed to meet his standards of spit and polish. He still rode the perimeters of the ranch, mending fences and sleeping under the stars the way he had when he was a young man, and his arthritic hands still had the feather-light touch on the reins that they had when he taught Francie to ride as a child. His wife, Esmerelda, cooked for the employees who tended the vines as well as for the dozens of migrant Mexican workers who came each October to pick the grapes.
Hattie Jeremiah was big and beautiful, with skin like the smoothest, plumpest black grapes. A bundle of energy, she ran the main house with a glint in her eye that told she would stand for no nonsense, and a reluctant smile that told you, well, maybe she would.
She was waiting on the front porch as they drove down the long, winding blacktop road bordered with Francie’s favorite golden poplars. “There you all are at last,” she said grumpily, her arms folded across her ample chest. “I thought you was never gonna get here.”
Lysandra jumped from the car almost before it had stopped and bounced up the steps into Hattie’s arms for a kiss. “Guess what?” she confided, wriggling away like a slippery eel. “I don’t have to go to school for three whole weeks.”
“Is that so?” Hattie called after her as she leapt back down the steps and headed full speed for the stables. “Well then, young lady, you sure are just in time to help pick the grapes and do a little work for your keep.”
Her eyes met Francie’s as she walked toward her and a look of understanding and affection passed between them. “I’m sorry, Miss Francie,” she said, tears spilling over her round cheeks. “I know it was expected, but knowing somebody’s gonna die don’t make it any easier to bear. I never knew a Chinese before but I had nothing but respect and admiration for the Mandarin.” She sniffed back her tears and added, “And love, too, because he was the kindest, most honorable man I ever knew.” She put her arms around Francie and held her close and then added, “Not that I’ve known any honorable men ’ceptin’ the Mandarin anyways. All the others were just a bunch of bums, in my opinion.”
Francie laughed. “Sometimes I think you might be right, Hattie,” she agreed, remembering when a few years after Hattie had come to work at the ranch, she had suddenly disappeared, returning a year later with an infant in her arms and a disillusioned look in her eyes.
“I done wrong, Miss Francie,” she had said bluntly. “Now I’m like you, with a kid on my hands and no man to be his father. I’d like my old job back if it’s still goin’, and I promise you this child ain’t gonna disturb you none. He’ll just be as quiet as a mouse.”
Lai Tsin had been listening and he had told her that children were not a disturbance, they were a blessing, and he had built her a cottage where she could raise her boy. He had gone to the local elementary school and high school, and now Hattie’s boy, Jefferson—named after Thomas Jefferson, the famous president—was a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in science. He planned to go on to medical school and Hattie said proudly he was the first member of her family even to finish high school, let alone college. She said most of ’em couldn’t even read or write properly, and now she had a son who was gonna be a doctor. And she would have done