Last Light in Paradise: Chapter 9 Part 2

Editor’s note:

Every now and then, a story comes along that refuses to stay put. It lingers on your nightstand. It sneaks into conversation. For us, Last Light in Paradise is one of those stories, and we’re delighted to let it loose, one chapter at a time, in the pages of the Montecito Journal. You can also purchase the book at one of our local beloved bookstores: Chaucer’s, Tecolote, and Godmothers.

This book marks a first for us… Last Light in Paradise is the inaugural book published by MJ Media Group. Yes, we’re dipping a toe – perhaps a barefoot run – into the world of book publishing, guided entirely by our belief in a novel that is as cinematic as it is soulful, as local as it is timeless.

Set against the luminous backdrop of 1930s Santa Barbara, this is a tale of love and loss, mystery and reckoning, populated by unforgettable characters and infused with the kind of atmosphere that feels both dreamlike and deeply true. We invite you to settle in, turn the page, and join us at the edge of paradise… just as the light begins to change.

Chapter Nine: Part 2

The next morning, he had Spinnaker saddled and warmed and ready to head down to the cliffs. He wanted to ride up to the bluffs to watch the farm pickers who leased his fields, maybe get himself invited for a taco, maybe let some of the children pet the big stallion.

The phone call had come early, from Billy. They had found the boat, he said, drug it off the rocks on the far side of Padaro and trailered it to the harbor. Billy had seen it and said it looked pretty torn up. Said, too, there was frayed wire off the mast rigging.

So, there it was. A foolhardy Indian with a game leg and a poor sense of sea found a boat and got himself dragged to the same grave his parents found. Creek said he’d come and look at it later. Feeling a little mixed about his own motives, he apologized to Billy for getting him tangled in false thinking and rang off before the boy could protest.

Ought to be thankful, he told himself, instead of angry it wasn’t murder. He was still pissed about the shooter out at the sales lot; about the three hopheaded boys, two of ’em wounded, and the fat goons in the back seat. He hated his own vindictive streak, hated the deep satisfaction of being angry, and resolved to get on horseback and shake it off.

Mounted, and feeling better, he was about to head off but sensed – and then saw – the roadster coming over the hill. It was cream-colored, and the big magnolia trees reflected across its curves. He watched it go by the outbuildings and continue down his road. He knew it was her long before she circled the big palm tree and came to a stop. The door opened slowly, and Creek felt a click in his chest as she stepped out and waved.

He thought Ranny Starbuck looked as newly minted as Eden. And far too pretty to be standing on his windswept cowboy plantation with his dark thoughts and ill-mannered temper. He suspected a scolding of some sort. Still, try as he did, he could not dial back his smile to anything less obvious, so he pulled up his horse and just sat grinning at her.

“Well, I found it. Your place,” she said.

He stared at her, trying to believe it might be a social visit.

“Ranny Starbuck, what’re you doing so far from your home?”

“I just drove up the coast. A long time since I came this way.” She was not grinning back.

“Figured we left off at the cold end of things. With my bad manners. And, well, your somewhat polite dismissal.”

“I have been sitting with it. Our conversation. It did feel like a browbeating. A little. But I do see the gravity of your job.”

They just stared at each other, until the silence turned awkward.

He stood in the stirrups and swung down from the saddle. “Did you come to scold me?” he asked.

“Have you been expecting that?”

“Well, kind of. I mean, the one thing did become another thing. A simple lift home became a suspect. It is my job, Ranny, and I’m not always as well-mannered as I’d like to be.”

“Am I not wanted here? I know how to drive back now.”

He immediately felt stupid and unconsciously palmed the soft nose of his horse, gentling them both. 

“Ranny Starbuck. I been waiting my whole life for you to set foot on this ranch.”

She swung the door shut and came to him. She wore a white dress, a blue sweater, and soft blue-and-white high heels, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“You are an earnest man. I understand. But you don’t need to charm me.”

“No. I meant it. About that poster of you. Had a doughboy take it down and put it up every time we moved barracks. Didn’t even do that with the flag. Hiding my surprise the night before – that
took effort.”

She smiled, did a mock curtsy, and said, “And that was, what – sixteen, seventeen years back? After that browbeating yesterday, this sounds like a boy with a very outdated crush.”

“Oh man, you got me right. We found the boat a few miles south. Charlie Russell’s. Kind of looks like an accident. So, I do apologize. I get a little feisty when the hounds take the scent.”

“I am sorry for him.”

She grinned finally and studied his horse. “He’s beautiful,” she said. “He looks familiar.”

“Called Spinnaker. Trying to give him some manners after being a ruffian out on the flat track.”

“Ah. Yes. A racer. You were going someplace.”

“Well, I was going to ride out to the fields and say hello to the people leasing ten acres. Snag a taco or two, if the kids are with them. We could drive out, if you wanted to join me. Unless, you came for some other reason.”

“No. I came to see you. To see all this.” She looked over at the corrals. “Got another Spinnaker?”

“Can you stay aboard?”

She looked at him and smiled. “That track was my daddy’s racetrack. Put there when I was four. Not to pull rank.”

“I feel schooled.”

“It’s a small town,” she said.

He looked at her dress and shoes and said, “How’s this going to go, clothes-wise?”

“Why, you got an etiquette board out here?”

“You want to sit up there dressed like that, you be my guest.”

“He likes the hoity-toity.” She held his smile.

“Queen’s linen might scare some of the livestock. But they’ll get used to it.”

“In that case, I have a spare in the boot.” She was grinning widely, and he saw the animation in her step as she continued, saying, “I kind of thought a shitkicker like you might keep a spare pair of britches for all the girls who come calling.”

She held his eyes.

“Actually, you are my very first. Since I bought it.” He could tell by the way she caught her hair up into a ponytail that she liked this answer. She turned and walked to her trunk and dug out an outfit.

He hooked the stirrup, swung back on his horse, and pointed to the house.

“Go on in and change. I’ll get your pony saddled.”

But he could see her behind the coupe, putting on the denim
underneath the dress.

“I’m good here. Turn around, knight,” she said, laughing.

Creek had not been a pedestrian soldier or a Parisian sophisticate. He had most of his life been flirted with but felt comfortable leaving things be until the compass dial flew toward some true north. That had happened only a few times. Sandrine, some years back. Now Ranny Starbuck. She’d pinned the needle on the first try. As he saddled her horse, Creek felt the great paradox many men feel in the presence of unusual beauty – engorged with bravado and dumbfounded by clumsiness.

After he had saddled the mare, he watched how Ranny slid the bridle over the head, sunk the bit, and fastened it off, both gentle and expert in every move.

“What’s her name?” she asked.

“Psycho.” He laughed a little. “For no other reason than she loves to sit down every once in a while. She’s quarter-horse roper to the bone until she’s bored. Just parks that big derrière on the ground. Very odd.”

“She sits?”

“Not often. But enough. Don’t let her stand around too long.”

“Dear Psycho. Now he’s got two of us.” Ranny whispered to the horse.

Stirrups adjusted, she stepped into the saddle. They rode out of the yard and down the long, sloping fields toward the big eucalyptus grove by sea.

At the cliff’s edge they took a farm road east along the banks and into the big magnolias. They rode in easy silence until he asked if she would like to ride down to the beach and she nodded yes.

They took the small trail down through the cliffs, came out on the beach, and headed across the soft sand toward the surf’s harder edge. Spinnaker danced against the bit, wanting to run, and Psycho did the same. Creek looked at Ranny, and she smiled.

“This horse has thoroughbred in her,” she said. “You mind wet tack?”

“Hell no.” Creek was dancing sideways, and when Ranny whooped and put a bubble in her reins, Spinnaker planted his hind legs, and both horses bolted.

She rode her horse along the shiny, hard sand, nearly floating in the saddle. Creek tried to keep Spinnaker back but relented and let him fly. In seconds the thoroughbred pounded the gap to nothing. Just as Creek drew close, as if she could feel them and still at a gallop, Ranny veered away. She rode toward the sea and into the shallows. Creek followed and then caught her, and they both rode in the big spray. Creek saw the smile on her face, and intuitively they both came off the speed and rode side by side at an easy canter. He looked over at her and smiled. And then he saw the sparkle of mischief, something passed between them, and he rode his hands up the horse’s neck and flicked air in the reins. Again, he felt the great stroke of hooves and the burst of acceleration, and they veered off for the flats. A moment later, Ranny was running beside him. He let her partner, and then he told Spinnaker to do what he was bred to do. Creek felt the stretching and the leg muscles and knew the tears in his eyes were all speed.

When he finally reined his horse, reversed, and rode to her, they rode side by side at a good lope. They looked at each other and added speed. When he looked over at her again, she grinned. He grinned, and the two horses raised it to a true gallop, the ride transmitting every muscle and bone to a wildness within their own bodies. Then, in a wordless compact, horse and rider simmered and slowed and began walking beside each other, as if they had always ridden like this.

“Nobody ever rode Psycho like that,” he said. “Had no idea she had that in her.”

“She’s been ponied with racers. She asked to catch up.”

“You should be riding this guy. You know your horse.”

She laughed easily as they moved back into the water to cool down. Then, Creek pointed to the high cliffs, across the sand. She could see a pickup, a shed, and some farmers silhouetted above the bluffs, and she and Creek rode toward them.

They heard it together, the deep growl of an engine. They turned and saw the yellow plane coming up the coast, not fifty feet off the ground, barely a mile distant. It seemed to be coming right at them.

“They might not be playing,” Creek said.

“Do they see us?” The plane dropped to a dozen feet from above the sand.

“They see us.” It continued toward them, and Creek said, “Ride for the cliffs!” He strapped the mare, and she bolted like a true quarter horse. They both raced for the cliffs, but the plane came on fast, the engine loud and menacing. Fifty yards into the soft sand, Creek knew they wouldn’t make it. As the chrome nose swept toward them, Creek dug down on the saddle, and Spinnaker ploughed into the deep sand. Creek pulled his rifle and released into the sand.

The aircraft was closing in, and Creek saw the pilot and somebody who might have been Diamond, grinning. Creek pulled the trigger. He felt the crack of the gun at his shoulder then saw the puncture of wing and the pilot yank backward as the plane soared upward, banked, and flashed past overhead. It was gone in seconds. Creek tracked with it, gun still shouldered, and merely watched it as it faded out over the ocean. A mile out, the pilot waved his wings in taunt, banked, and continued down coast.

Ranny stood beside her horse in the sand. Spinnaker stood a half mile down the shore, looking back at his new girlfriend as if he had no clue how he’d gotten there.

Men arrived on the bluffs above them. They cupped their hands and shouted down, but Creek couldn’t hear them. Creek pointed up at them in salute, and they waved their hats. They pointed to Ranny and signaled for them to come up.

He walked to her. He wasn’t sure what to say.

“I gotta hike to get Spinnaker,” he said.

She looked at Psycho. “We have the goods. Just walk with me.”

They did, and Spinnaker flailed his head and raced toward them.

“You do know your horses,” Creek said.

She smiled a slight smile, but he could see she was shaken.

“I’m really sorry about that,” he said.

“What exactly was ‘that’?”

“I’d only be guessing.”

“That looked deliberate.”

“It was.”

He turned as Spinnaker overshot them, wheeled, and pulled up with a big show of nonchalance. Ranny held Psycho with one hand and held out her other to the stallion, who came to her. Creek shook his head in admiration and walked over. They both mounted, riding toward the trail that climbed the cliffs.

“Never been so shown up by a girl before,” he said.

She smiled a little. “Was that boys being assholes? Or was that someone wanting to hurt you?”

“That was showboating. People giving me heads up.”

“I hope they weren’t trying to land.”

“They weren’t.”

“You shot at somebody.”

He looked at her and felt ashamed.

“Maybe with a woman present, maybe I overreacted. I’ll ride you back.”

She continued to stare at him. Not harshly, but close to it.

“Were you aiming for him?”

“No. Put them on notice.”

“You have a temper problem.”

“I thought he was trying to hurt us. Situations like that, I’m doing things before I know I’m doing them. Let me take you back.”

“You thought he was trying to kill you.”

“If it’s who I think it was, he might have been.”

She studied him and then softened, and they mounted and rode in silence for a long time. They went across the sand and up into the narrow ravine. He didn’t know how to make it right or how to apologize. What he felt was his anger, compounding, thinking maybe the badge made it easier to indulge or justify it. Their taunting and their arrogance enraged him.

“Was it about … your Indian friend, somehow?” she asked.

“Well, that has poked up a hornet’s nest. Nobody wants bad press over this movie thing, not with so much riding on investors. A lot of money coming into the county. And no one wants an Indian without a head on a beach in Santa Barbara anywhere in their newspapers.”

They came onto the bluffs and took the trail through the eucalyptus and palms. The fields had not been leveled but were under cultivation as the land lay – green things grew between hills and swales, up banks, and deep along the sides of sinkholes and gullies, even beneath groves of oak and sycamore.

“Nobody likes to remember how they got here. Or where they came from,” Creek said. “We all come off a boat. One way or another. All running from something or to something. Not one of us is purebred anything. Apologies, if that is offensive. I don’t know your people.”

“My daddy stole and cheated his way into a famous iron fortune in Chicago, then he bought a seat in the senate from Montana. I’m as mutt as the next American.”

He smiled at her and said “mutt” just loud and disbelieving enough to make her laugh, and then they rode on in silence.

“Smell that freesia?” He said it suddenly.

She looked over at him and nodded, her eyes smiling. “Freesia.” She said it as if to herself. “He knows flowers. You rent this land to those farmers?”

“They’re lucky to make a living. The man that wanted my land wanted them gone. Wanted it for some movie mogul to add to his theme park, land that feeds twenty-six families and two groceries in town.”

“Johnny Diamond?”

“Tell me you don’t know him.”

“He wants to buy The Kells.”

“The Kells?”

“My house. He sends a dozen flowers every day and calls twice daily. Robert has said “no” for six weeks. No to movie people is like red meat to a lion.”

“He ever seen it?”

“Nope. But he will shortly. I’ve agreed to meet him to get rid of him.” Creek looked at her, trying to hide what he was thinking.

She saw it and said, “I learned how to stand up to the old ones, the rich ones, in Europe. You can’t believe what they offer young dancers.”

They came out onto open fields in the slanting light of five o’clock. They rode at a lope for a mile, then rounded to the barn. He watched her carry her own tack to the stalls, brush her horse, hose off the saltwater, and return the mare to pasture. When he came up beside Ranny, she smiled.

“You could come tomorrow,” she said. “To meet the mogul. I’m sure he wishes to buy my villa. And I’m sure he’s going to bring Tom Horn.” When Creek failed to respond, she added, “The movie star.”

“Bring me? You looking for more fireworks?”

She saw what he meant. “No. Of course not. Violence, men barking at each other, I abhor that. What happened on the beach today, that was a little past my limit. Though, your presence would make my refusal to sell more final. I would simply love the company was all I meant. I think that is all I meant.”

“I go out to the island tomorrow, to bury Pony. The Indian. But thank you,” he said.

“The island?”

“Santa Rosa”

“Ah. Where he lived. I’ve never been.”

He thought about all the shut-in comments.

“To Santa Rosa, or any of them?”

“No. No islands.” Her expression saddened.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“Well, my father was very old. He was seventy when I was born. Then, after the bone spurs, about the time Mother died, I kind of …” She looked at him, and he could tell she was curious what he might know or want to know. “Things started unraveling. And kind of haven’t stopped.”

“That’s a big shake-up, all at once.”

“I don’t know where it all came from. It just came. This,” she indicated the ranch then him, “you, me driving up here by myself – all extremely out of character. So was the other night.”

“We’re on a roll,” he said, feeling lucky.

Nobody said anything for a while.

“Come with me to the island. Penbrook’s ferry leaves at noon, from the dock down there.” He pointed to the sea. “It’s eighty-four square miles of stunning.”

“The night you gave me a lift, that’s the first time I stepped off my property, alone, in a year. And the fucking battery died.”

Creek laughed. “Did you just say fucking?”

“Yes. Sorry. It made me so angry.”

“Just a battery.”

“No. It was so much more than a battery. But I see it as fate, now.”

“I never heard a woman say that word. It’s refreshing.”

She looked at him, then laughed.

“God. Words. For so long my life was nothing but dance and music.”

She stopped and looked out at the horses, grazing freely, then continued.

“Nutcracker by ten. Auditions by thirteen. A company by sixteen. The good ones can turn professional at seventeen. I hit Europe at sixteen. It was both harsh and beautiful but not the real world. The bad words were part of our armor. We don’t know how to order ham and eggs, pay a bill, open a bank account, or get a job. Nothing, really, beyond dance. But words made it seem like we did. The rougher the words, the better. Sorry to offend your delicate ears. Didn’t take you for such a choir boy.”

“I like it when you’re frank. I trust it.”

“What’s there to trust?”

He thought a long time about this, watching the horses.

“It’s just …”

“Yes, I know. The loony heiress held prisoner in the layer cake. Flirting with the cowboy gumshoe. But there it is. A Grimms’ fairy tale. With a nice twist, thanks to the handsome cowboy.”

She moved away from the fence. When she spoke again, she looked right at him.

“Can I say this? It’s you. You’ve pulled me from out of a deep… hole.”

“Lucky me.”

“Oh God, you’re right. It’s not much of a bargain.”

“No. I meant it. Look, I drove an ambulance in that war. I looked into the eyes of a lot of wounded souls, heard some hard stories. Failed to fix as many as I lost. We all got our tangles. I want to know you. I want you to come with me to the island. We’ll take the ferry. You can swear ’n’ cuss the whole crossing.”

“Will anyone shoot at us?”

He hung his head. “I won’t let that happen again.”

“An island …” She said it wistfully.

“I’ll pick you up – ”

“No. If I come, I’ll drive myself to you. I’ll have to cancel the big moviemaker.”

“Good.”

“It’s only an ‘if.’”

Their eyes met then and held and then both turned shy and looked away. Later, he watched her drive out of his yard. It was a long driveway, and he could see the white roadster for a long while, but when it vanished into the big magnolias, he knew she wouldn’t come. Whatever made her hide from life would make her turn against this bright new possibility.

She would not show tomorrow. That’s not how you get to be with the pretty eccentric with her apple blossom smile and smart lines that made him remember what it meant to really want something from this world. He liked how nothing she did fit a pattern, and none of it seemed false.

Too bad, he thought. She’d have been a good way to get Psycho some exercise. A nice girl to sit next to at the picture show. A perfect woman to propose to, have children with, get fat and old with.  

Click Here for Chapter Nine: Part 3 of Last Light in Paradise.