They came up from the highway which led from Rankin and brought with them a mess of East Texas dirt. There were three of them: two girls in faded overalls—young things, really—and the fella behind the wheel of the rusty old pickup truck, himself not a lick older than twenty. When they shuddered to a stop in the Shell station lot just off the main road, they waited a bit for all the dust to settle before clambering out the doors.

The kid’s name was Donnie Williams and he’d come through a bit over the past couple months, each time with a different combination of girls. All of them dressed in a pair of overalls and a powder blue shirt. Each time, they’d stick their noses into the wicker bin of handmade burlap dolls near the cash register, then furrow their brows.

The only thing different about that afternoon was the weather, which had turned unreasonably cold.

“It appears you’ve sold one,” Donnie called to the fat man behind the register. He pointed into the basket. “This is great news.”

The fat man said, “Actually, I used one to clean a spill after a drunkard made a mess from yonder beer cooler.”

Donnie’s face fell. “You can’t be serious. After three weeks, all we have to show for our hard work is a measly ten dollars?”

“Five, actually.” The fat man spit into a Styrofoam cup he’d lined with a paper towel. “I used my vendor discount, as agreed upon, and signed on the line which was dotted.”

Donnie could not be consoled. His face wore the weight of a man who’d put all his eggs into one basket. He looked at anything and everything in the store, so long as it wasn’t the two girls standing before him with arms outstretched.

“Perhaps you should slash the price,” said the fat man. “A dollar or two might make all the difference in the world.”

Donnie’s shoulders slumped too low to shrug. He peeled two dollar bills from a skinny wad he kept in the back pocket of his dress slacks. He gave one each to the two young girls, who scampered toward the soda cooler. “The Miracle Dolls will take off like a rocket any day now. They’re a ship bound to come in. Mark my word, the day will come when you won’t be able to keep them in stock.”

Said the fat man, “I’ve sat at this register going on fourteen years and still it boggles my mind what folks will buy and what they’re willing to pay for it.”

“All we need is a lucky break.”

The fat man bothered no more with it once the girls returned to the counter. One had with her a carton of chocolate milk, and the other, a cherry soda. As he took their money and scooped out their change, they swapped glances with each other. They fell into a fit of the giggles.

“I do something funny?” asked the fat man.

Neither answered. They struggled to maintain composure.

“I asked you what’s so dern funny?”

When still neither would explain what delivered them to laughter, the man’s face turned red as a Coke can and he rapped his stubby knuckles to the counter.

“Listen now, I won’t stand for no such—”

Donnie stepped between them.

“Rylah, Marva…” He pointed to the door. “The two of you are to wait for me in the truck, you hear?”

The two girls covered their mouths with their free hands and scurried for the door. No sooner had it closed then their girlish titters again erupted, which could be heard long after they’d climbed into the front seat of the pickup.

“Listen here,” said the fat man, “I don’t give a rat’s ass what y’all are doing up at the old Lucas place. Some folks don’t want to deal none with you because they were friends with the old man before he passed on. Me, I know his boy’s an idiot and he lost the land to the bank fair and square. Some folks say y’all is swingers, or maybe a cult, or—even worse—a bunch of feminists. I don’t care about none of that. All I care about is flipping that sign from the word open to the word closed at the end of the day. But one thing I won’t tolerate is a lack of manners. You might want to straighten out your women, or rethink dragging them into town with you while transacting business.”

“We’re not a bunch of feminists,” Donnie said, his voice rising an octave. “I’ve told both you and your brother, time and again, that Miracle Ranch is dedicated to delivering young women from the clutches of drug and alcohol abuse, and committed to the restoration of self-esteem—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. A sober camp.” The fat man plucked a smoldering cigar from an ashtray behind the Lotto tickets and gummed his lips a bit at the soggy end. “I appreciate you. My sister, she had her a little girl, years back. Pretty thing, but she took up with the Oxy. Could neither stay in school, nor keep a job. She washed up one morning on the shores of Lake Bardwell, naked as a jay. She’d been missing a shade over a week.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Donnie. “That’s horrible.”

“That’s the only reason I let you peddle those things in my store.” The fat man pointed his cigar hand toward the bin marked Miracle Dolls. “I reckon my niece could have used a sober camp, even if it meant turning her into a feminist.”

Rather than further dicker details, Donnie quit the filling station. He pulled hard on the driver’s side door handle, only to find it locked. Inside the cab, Marva and Rylah fell into hysterics.

“Girls, I’m not in the mood,” he called to them.

“Girls, I’m not in the mood,” they called back.

The sound of their laughter drowned out any further protest.

 

DRIVE SOUTH into Rankin and take the last left before town and soon the pavement gives way to gravel. The dusty roads bisect fields of cotton, alfalfa, maybe a little soy. All the roads are named Lucas, after a man who’d once farmed there. Lucas #2, Lucas #3, and so on. Cross two rickety bridges over skinny creeks of mud and soon enough the fields turn fallow, then hang a left before the dogleg curve. There, at the end of a crooked road, sits a farm.

Not a farm, per se, but the remnants of one. Pasture land, as far as the eye could imagine, on both sides of a white-rocked road. Not more than three years had passed since Old Man Lucas’s son had lost the property to the bank, but time had taken its toll. The barn was falling apart. A work shed had seen better days. Paint peeled and wood rotted on a single, grand, ramshackle farmhouse. The lot between all such buildings was strewn with rusty junk—tractors, plows, an old trailer with hitch—as well as a handful of busted old RVs and campers.

Beneath the shade of a crooked willow tree, Rylah and Marva joined another pair of young women, also dressed in dirty overalls and a tattered blue shirt. Cassie and Suzie quit their singing long enough to receive whispers from their friends, then the lot of them fell into girlish hysterics, their breaths turning to mist before their faces. They continued as such until Donnie approached, whence they suppressed themselves to silence.

“Isn’t this your work hour?” Donnie asked of the four girls. When none of them answered, he said, “Aren’t you all supposed to be stitching the Miracle Dolls?”

“What’s the use?” cracked Rylah Kincaid. “Nobody ever buys them.”

“Yeah,” wised Suzie Grauwyler, “every time you drive into town you come back with more dolls than you left with.”

Said Marva Bottoms, “Barney says it’s better to work with our spirit than it is to work with our hands.”

“I think you misinterpret a number of Barney’s teachings,” said Donnie. His intentions were to carry on further with dressing them down for laziness, procrastination, or any number of trespasses they most likely committed, but for his eye catching a flash of flesh from young Rylah. Donnie considered himself principled for a man of his tender, young age, but found every one of those principles tested in the presence of girls as playful and fetching as Rylah Kincaid and her fellow Miracles. He closed tight his eyes and did his level best to think of anything besides the freckles on Cassie’s arm or how plush Marva’s lips were or what kinds of sins he might explore inside a girl as lissom as Cassie Proffitt. He forced instead images of tractors or contrails or anything, anything at all, save the electricity which hummed inside him like yellow jackets.

Donnie held tight as he could to his resolve, but held onto it by his fingernails. In a fit of wanted distraction, he searched high and low, near and far, until finally he found what he needed. As if summoned from heaven above or hell below, on distant horizon he caught sight of an approaching cloud of chalky dust and the Cadillac it followed. So excited was he, he’d forgotten the degree by which his pants had tightened.

“Where is the old man?” he asked the girls.

They tee-heed a bit more before finally Marva asked, “Beg pardon?”

“Barney Malone.” Donnie did not pull his eyes from the approaching vehicle. “Where is he?”

“He’s in a Spirit Study with Beth Ann,” said Cassie. “He’s asked not to be disturbed.”

Donnie barely heard the girl. From a great distance, he could still make out the white-walled tires. The fresh wash job and the dealer plates. A scent cast upon the crisp, winter air and that scent was money. Donnie smelled it like carrion.

“I don’t care what he said,” grumbled Donnie. “Run fetch him.”

“Run fetch him yourself,” Rylah snapped. “Barney said you’re not to push us around like slaves.”

“I don’t—” Donnie caught himself. He’d no time to fuss with little girls, not when something so fortuitous as the Cadillac drew near. Donnie reckoned he could hoot and holler at those girls until the day drew long, and still move them not an inch, so he hopped to it on his own, same as he always had.

They did not wait until he was out of earshot before they commenced again with their tittered whisperings. It bothered Donnie not in the slightest. He had plenty cause to know what all those girls said amongst each other.

“You ought to see the way he looks at me…I think it’s creepy.”

“I got no idea why Barney Malone lets him on, do you?”

“I hear it’s because he’s good with numbers.”

“He actually believes those stupid dolls are going to sell.”

“Did you hear he wants us to farm crops this spring?”

“It’s like all he wants to be is Barney’s mini-me.”

He reckoned it best not to let it get to his head. Over and over he told himself he had a higher calling, and the murmurs of teenaged girls ought not distract him. Girls of that age thought they knew everything under the sun, and nothing chaffed them more than to be told differently. So be it; Donnie would chaff them.

They didn’t know shit.

 

DONNIE AT first tapped lightly at the Big House door, then beat soundly at it with the meat of his fist until finally it opened and standing before him was young Beth Ann Henderson. Of all the Miracle girls at the Ranch, no one could draw Donnie’s breath tighter than Beth Ann. Once slinky and slight, she’d filled her overalls since kicking a meth habit, but filled them out the right way. Her skin showed signs of past transgressions, while her smile offered a hint of those still to come. If she couldn’t stop traffic, she’d certainly bring it to a crawl.

Donnie swallowed something which may or may not have been stuck in his throat. He toed the door jamb before him with his boot.

“I need to talk to Barney,” he stammered. “It’s urgent.”

“We’re doing a Spirit Study,” said Beth Ann. “It’s not polite to interrupt a Spirit Study.”

“I know…I know…” Donnie wondered if he’d ever find a moment without his motives questioned by a teenager. “Like I said, this is very important. I would never—”

Beth Ann held the door wider and stepped aside. He cursed the look in her eye and, were matters not so pressing, he reckoned he’d have a word with her about it. However, time was of the essence, so he bustled through the tiny kitchen, the cramped hallway, and made his way into the living room where he found at least a dozen candles burning and Barney Malone throwing another log into the fireplace.

The two men could not have been more different from each other. Where Donnie kept his hair trimmed high and tight, Barney kept his tied back in a ponytail. Barney had knuckles cracked and worn, while Donnie’s were smooth. Donnie dressed himself in khakis to set himself apart from everyone, to which his denim-clad elder often remarked how much he looked like a bookkeeper. And where the younger man spoke with a breathless urgency, his counterpart spoke in calm, soothing cadences.

“Donnie, my boy,” said the old man, “what have I said time and again about disturbing a Spirit Study? I’m trying to break through generations of inherited psychological trauma and it requires intense concentration. We can’t afford to have the process—”

“I wouldn’t have interrupted if it weren’t important.” Donnie felt Beth Ann’s breath at his neck and took another step and a half into the room. “Can I talk to you alone?”

Barney sighed. He looked to Beth Ann, then to Donnie, then back to the girl. “My child,” he said to her in a tone ten times softer, “I beg your forgiveness.”

“You are forgiven,” Beth Ann said with a toothy smile. That smile fell as she turned to face Donnie, then spirited away in a snit from the Big House. No sooner had she let the screen door swing shut behind her than Barney huffed about the room, making a big deal to blow out each candle.

“It’s taken me weeks to crack that one,” Barney grumbled. “I don’t quite understand the root of her fear, but I’m sure it stems from a chronic lack of self-worth and low self-esteem, something we certainly aren’t attending to by constantly interrupting time set aside for spiritual exploration.”

“I’m sorry. Really, but I—”

“Sometimes I wonder if it will ever sink in with you.”

Donnie felt the air quit his lungs. “I would never have come if it weren’t—”

“I made a promise that no one will ever slip through the cracks here at Miracle Ranch.” Barney stepped to within an inch of Donnie. He placed both hands on the boy’s shoulders. “I wonder sometimes if I’m going to be able to keep that promise.”

Donnie nearly doubled over, were it not for the old man holding him erect.

“It’s not your fault,” Barney said in a low voice. “I blame your mother.”

Suddenly, Donnie’s knees didn’t work so well. He teetered, dizzy, until he backed himself to the sofa at the wall behind him. He collapsed into the cushions and practiced his breathing.

“You got a lot more of her in you than you have me, boy.” Barney shook his head as he snuffed the last of the candles. “I saw it the first time you turned up at my door, back in Dallas, and I see it in you now. She was an angry woman, never quick to let anything go. I think I’ve told you, when first you kept hanging around, I thought maybe she’d sent you to kill me. Twenty years is a long time to hold a grudge, but if anybody could do it, it’d be your mother. Believe me.”

Donnie never liked it when Barney spoke of his mother. The old man hadn’t been there the day Donnie was born, nor had he been at her side on the night she died. He reckoned it both unfit and unfair for the man to present himself as some sort of expert on the inner machinations of a woman he’d had so little to do with, save for a couple months an entire lifetime ago. Still, Donnie kept his hands in his lap and his mouth shut, for if she taught him anything in life, it was to respect his elders.

Even if the elder was his two-timing, no-account, piece-of-shit, deadbeat dad.

Barney continued. “You do a lot around here, son. You work hard and you’ve got plenty of great ideas. There are plenty of stinkers, sure, but for every two or three bad ideas there’s usually a good one. Those dolls keep the girls busy, but let’s face it…” If Barney had more to that thought, he kept it to himself. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders. “The focus at Miracle Ranch is not simply to get these girls off drugs. The goal is to fix what got them started on them in the first place. That’s not going to happen with constant interruptions when I’m—”

Behind him came Rylah Kincaid, lithesome and limber. She leaned against the doorway and tapped her fingertips against the wood.

“Somebody just pulled into the lot out front.” She said it like it happened every day, which it didn’t. “They’re driving a pretty nice car.”

“Oh?”

“A Cadillac, it appears.”

Barney looked to Donnie, still breathless on the couch.

“That’s what I came to tell you,” said Donnie.

 

THEIR NAME was Halifax, and Donnie made them coffee on the stove while they descended to bickering before Barney.

Said the mother, “She’s always been a follower. Perhaps she’s fallen in with the wrong sort.”

“That daughter of yours is no follower, Diane. She’s always been a handful. If there’s a band of no-counts headed straight for hell, she’d be found at the front of them.”

“She’s our daughter, Larry. When you married me, she became your daughter too.”

“If she was my daughter, she’d have a different outlook on life.”

“We’ve sent her to the best boarding schools and we were lucky to see her graduate.”

“Lucky nothing.” Mr. Halifax showed his teeth. “I paid good money for that diploma.”

Mrs. Halifax blew her nose into a silk hanky proffered by her husband.

“For her to have felt unloved would have been an unfair accusation. We’ve given her everything.”

“Not that she appreciates it.” To Barney, Mr. Halifax said, “We’d be fools to think she can change. To be honest, I think perhaps it’s time to discuss an institution.”

“She’d never survive an institution,” whispered his wife. “You heard what that nurse said. Our sweet Christy nearly died.”

Donnie entered and delivered them each a steaming cup of coffee. Mr. Halifax drained his in nearly one gulp. His wife used her cup to warm her hands.

“She needs something unorthodox,” she said. “She needs to be somewhere she can fit in. Somewhere she can belong.”

“She could belong just fine to any one of the colleges we sent her to.” Mr. Halifax struggled to keep his volume even. “You’ve no idea what it took for me to keep our name out of the papers after what she pulled in Atlanta. Or what about when we sent her to Europe? You thought a couple weeks away from her friends is what it would take to get her back on track, but how did she thank us? She nearly caused an international incident, is what she did. After that, you’d think there’d be an end to her little stunts, but I see no end in sight.”

Mrs. Halifax grabbed hold of Barney’s wrist and looked him in the eye. “This is why we need your help,” she said. “We’ve tried nearly everything.”

“I don’t know what you think I can do for you and your daughter,” Barney said.

“The ad in the paper said you could free our daughter from drugs,” said the woman. “It said you could bring my little girl back to me.”

“The ad in the paper?” Barney jerked his hand from her as if it were hot as coals. “What do you mean? We don’t have—”

Mrs. Halifax pulled a wrinkled piece of newsprint from her fancy leather handbag. Sure enough, it featured an advertisement for Miracle Ranch, which promised in bold, eighteen-point type to GET YOUR CHILD OFF DRUGS. Barney blinked no fewer than a dozen times while reading it.

Donnie, on the other hand, didn’t need to see it to know what it said. For not only had he already read the ad, but he’d also designed it, and hand delivered it to the newspaper in Ennis for weekend distribution. The mystery was not how the Halifax family received the news, but rather why it took them so long and where were the rest of the families?

Rather than bother himself with the metrics of his marketing, he worried his father would tip their hand by pleading ignorance of the ad. To further prevent this, he snatched away the newsprint from the woman and held it behind his back.

“How you got here is not important,” Donnie said, quick as spit. “What matters is what happens next. Especially since your daughter’s life hangs in the balance.”

However, Donnie knew he’d tipped his hand with his father. The old man’s eyes creased at the corners as he stared into the boy and did the math. The look on his face said this would not be forgotten, but first they had to deal with the Halifaxes.

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience,” Barney said to them both, “but there’s been some kind of mistake. Miracle Ranch is not open to the public. We’re very focused and—”

“We’ll pay,” said Mr. Halifax. “If money is the issue, then I assure you we’ll—”

“I’m afraid this has nothing to do with money.” Barney side-eyed his son. “Despite what some people believe.”

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Mr. Halifax whipped out his checkbook. “What’s your fee? We’ll double it.”

“Mr. Halifax, I’m afraid—”

“We’ll pay you anything,” Mrs. Halifax sobbed. “Just…just…”

Again, Donnie stepped between them. He led Barney away from the couple and said in as low a whisper as he could, “You said the universe has a way of providing, correct?”

“I did,” Barney whispered back. “Which is why we don’t have to take orders from guys with big checkbooks. I told you Miracle Ranch will not become some counselor-for-hire program run by interests beyond those which are pure. We will sustain ourselves. The universe will provide.”

Donnie nodded his head toward the old man’s checkbook.

“Looks to me like the universe has provided something pretty substantial,” he said.

If Barney had a comeback, he kept it to himself.

“Think of how long that money will stretch us,” Donnie said. “Think of all the good we could do with that check. All we’ve got to do is save one extra child from her own demons.”

Barney’s neck muscles slackened some. “What we’re doing here is important work,” he said beneath his breath. “I won’t jeopardize it for capitalist gains. I won’t be corrupted by a system which created so much hate and distrust in the world, nor will I let it infect my little Miracles.”

“Just this one,” said Donnie.

“And no more advertisements?”

Donnie held up his hand, as if swearing an oath. “Cross my heart,” he said.

Far from convinced, the old man returned to the Halifaxes with his trademark grin. Barney Malone could tame a tornado with his smile. He placed one hand on the wife, and the other on the step-father. He drew them both close, like family at Thanksgiving.

“First things first,” he said, “I’ll have to have a chat with your daughter. We’re extremely selective. The only girls I can help are those who want to be helped. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” said them both.

“One thing I can’t tolerate,” said the mother, “is the spark gone from her eye. I can’t stand it one bit.”

Said Mr. Halifax, “Personally, I give it a week before we’re back on a plane to come fetch her, but I wish you all the best.”

Barney shook his head. Again he shot the dirtiest of looks toward his son, then asked of the parents, “What does she liked to be called?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Your daughter.” Barney removed the hair from his ponytail and smoothed it with his fingers. As he re-tied it, he said, “Earlier, you called her Christy. Is that what she likes to be called, or does she prefer Christine? Chris?”

“When she was younger,” answered Mrs. Halifax, “we would call her Chrissy. She grew out of that in a hurry. When she started making friends in high school, she insisted we call her Tina. All of her new friends did.”

“Tina.”

“But she doesn’t go by that anymore.”

Barney arched his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“No. The doctors and nurses from the hospital where she’d been treated for…” Mrs. Halifax could not say the word, so she skipped it. “They all said she’d given them a different name. A nickname, it turns out.”

“It’s the only name she’ll answer to,” said Mr. Halifax.

“What is it?” asked Barney.

“She likes to be called Summer,” said her mother. “After her favorite of all the seasons.”