Free A Gentle Rain by Deborah F. Smith Page A

"We'll all get back on schedule in a month or two, okay?"
    I nodded, defeated. "Better hope the gray mare doesn't bite anything below my belt buckle." I held up my finger. If you think this was hard to bandage . . . "
    She laughed and got up to find her clothes. I sat there looking out at the moonlit lake again, wishing I could sink under the shine.
     

Chapter 5
    Kara
    I thought of my parents constantly-both pairs-during those two days on the highway to Florida. I touched the gold locket on my chest; I talked out loud to Mother and Dad, hoping they heard me. I asked them questions. Did you secretly want me to know? And I asked them for help. Show me what I'm supposed to learn.
    Driving alone on unlulmvnl roads opens the mind like meditation. My mind became a kaleidoscope, capturing images. I turned into the scenery.
    I was cotton fields, pine forests, pecan groves, endless pastures, acres of peanuts and other crops. I became tall deer fences and the giant, metal spiders of mobile irrigation systems towering over the land. My skin blossomed into a strangely beautiful carnival of gas stations, truck stops, diners, discount outlet malls, trinket shops, and the occasional massage parlor and nudie bar. I was amazed. The Bible belt openly advertised sin?
    I stopped at sunset not far from President Jimmy Carter's hometown-1, Plains. I set up my tent in a public campground on the edge of avast peanut field. The cool spring earth smelled of eternity to me. "There is something profoundly ancient in the scent of dirt and all that it symbolizes," Dad always said.
    The land seemed to go on forever, reaching a scarlet and gold sky hemmed at the bottom in the majestic silhouettes of huge oaks and the regimented hardiness of tall, straight pres. I lit a lantern next to my small campfire and read Cross Creek in the soft spring dusk.
    Mr. Darcy huddled on my shoulder, tented in a light baby's blanket against the chill. He dozed, his head tucked, making soft chuckling sounds against my ear. I believe macaws talk to the God of Birds in their dreams. I wondered if he had memories of his longlost parents.
    Before bedtime that night I took one of my spiral notebooks-I loved to catalogue minute details of people and places-and I wrote my birth parents' names on a page in large script.
    Lily Akens. Mac Tolbert.
    I balled the notepaper in my hand, laid it at the edge of my campfire, and watched the orange flames consume it. To the native tribes in the Amazon, smoke communicates with the spirit world. I watched my birth parents' names rise in the starry, blue-black Georgia sky. Mother, Dad? Meet my mother and father.
    I looked at a satellite map on my laptop computer, amazed that I could connect wirelessly at the edge of a Georgia peanut field. I zoomed in on northern Florida, halfway between the Gulf beaches and their Atlantic counterparts. Forest, forest, forest, forest. Creeks, springs. Rivers. The tiniest roads. Zoom in. A splotch of open pasture surrounded by wilderness. The Thocco Ranch.
    A tiny river ran through the heart of it. The Little Hatchawatchee. Much of what's old and venerable in Florida has a Seminole Indian name. The river was surrounded by buildings, barns and work sheds. A cattle ranch in a part of the world most people associate with beaches and oceans. Florida has a long history of ranches and cowboys. Fascinating.
    I sat back, gazing at the satellite image. Thocco Ranch. Thocco. Another name of Seminole Indian origins. Interesting. From the Amazon River to the Little Hatchawatchee. From one native culture to another.
    Ben Thocco, I hope you are a kind and decent man.
    I burned his name on a piece of notepaper, too. Asking the spirits to let me lulow.
    Ben
    It started out just like any other morning at the ranch, with everybody complaining about my greasy scrambled eggs and a two-foot king snake curled up behind a sack of potatoes in the store room.
    "Snake's back," Lula grunted as she went past me with a platter of biscuits I'd