Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [87]
“I know who it is,” Francie yelled, racing for the door. The small, wiry nut-brown man hitching his horse to the porch rail turned to look at her in astonishment.
“Zocco,” she cried, leaping down the steps toward him, “don’t you remember me?”
“Francie?” he asked disbelievingly.
She laughed and flung her arms around him. “Oh, Zocco, yes, it’s me, after all these years. I’ve come home again.”
She looked into his face; Zocco was no longer the young man of her memories. He was in his forties now and there were a few more lines around his eyes and his skin was a bit more weatherbeaten. His English was as faulty as ever.
“I tell Esmerelda,” he said quickly, “she help clean up the place. No one is here for so many years, we not do nothin’. But now I fix her up. Right away, Miss Francie. And I’m real glad you are back, Miss Francie, real glad the de Soto Ranch comes alive again.”
Annie watched as he unhitched his horse, leapt agilely into the saddle, and galloped away in a cloud of dust. “Who was that?” she demanded.
“That’s Zocco. He’s been here as long as I can remember. When I was six years old he taught me to ride bareback so I would never fall off. He is my friend,” she added simply.
Zocco was back within half an hour with Esmerelda, his wife, at his side in the pony trap, laden with brooms and buckets, planks of wood, nails, saws, and hammers. And on her lap was a big basket of food.
“Am I glad to see you, Esmerelda,” Annie said, thankfully unpacking fresh tamales, a pot of refried beans, corn-bread, pickled chilies, and an enormous apple pie from the basket. Esmerelda, as brown and smiling as her husband, spoke no English but she nodded, understanding that Annie liked what she had brought. And then Annie sent Francie out for a walk while she and Esmerelda put on their aprons and began sweeping up the dust.
Forbidden to help, Francie strolled lazily down to the pond, laughing as the geese flapped their wings threateningly at her, remembering them skidding and slithering on the frozen pond that final winter of her mother’s life. She found the old deserted chicken coop where she had searched for her mother’s brown Christmas egg, and she promised herself that tomorrow she would buy more hens so they could have fresh eggs for their breakfast. She wandered through the empty stables, breathing in the sweet familiar scent of hay and strolled down the grassy paths remembering how she had pushed her mother’s cumbersome wheelchair. With a sigh, she told herself firmly that this would not be just a house of the past, it was a house for the future, her own and her child’s. There was just one thing missing. There was no dog trotting ai her heels. And she made another promise that the very next day she would find another dog to take the place of her Princess.
After a week the old house sparkled with cleanliness. The wide-planked chestnut wood floors were scrubbed and waxed, there were glistening new panes in the windows, the sagging porch had been fixed and every piece of furniture had been polished until it gleamed in the sunlight. The braided rugs were washed and hung out to dry in the sun, the pine kitchen table was bleached and scrubbed, the old iron range cleaned and fired up. Once more the smell of applewood and Annie’s baking hung in the air. The de Soto Ranch was a home again.
Sammy Morris scarcely noticed the fire-blackened buildings as he hurried, head down, along the narrow streets on the fringes of Chinatown. The wind blowing direct from the Pacific Ocean was damp and chill. It brought tears to his eyes and he shivered, tucking his bearded chin deeper into his woolen muffler. He turned left then right through a maze of streets and finally stopped outside a derelict building. Setting down the basket he was carrying, he turned and looked around him. He waited a few minutes, listening and watching until he was satisfied no one was following him, then he picked up his basket and hurried inside, past the charred wooden stairway leading to a nonexistent second floor, through