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Description
***MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE*** and overlook the crappy two minute doodle. XD

The Mana Farms story line frequently contains mature language, topics, and situations. The characters within are fictional beings with weaknesses and faults, and I cannot promise you that you will like them for what they believe, say and do.

The first book in the MANA series will be published with a tentative release date of May 1 2012. Join the community of MANA readers! Start from the beginning. (New readers, it is strongly recommended you begin this series from the very first story...which can be found here: [link] ) Thanks!

PREVIOUSLY ON:

A year ago, not long after he’d left, Santa had buried her fingers into the rich black soil beneath each of the dozen rose bushes he’d planted. Slipped them small and slender, ten short chestnut roots, down into the earth hoping to connect to whatever life of his might still be there, buried in the warm California hills with the rose bushes. She was still on her knees now, fingertips below the surface, seeking out the roots of every weed and yanking them out; barely aware of Eddie Ne perched like a kindergarten prince in the well of a bright red radio flyer wagon. Santa stood up, grabbed the handle of the wagon, and pulled him a foot or two with her to the next section of the garden.

They’d already gotten beyond giggling over the notion of wagon. Eddie didn’t like the idea of being in Santa’s glorious backyard, with the flowers blooming and the grapes ripening along the high walls that surrounded it, in a wheelchair. With the sun as ripe as a plump tomato in the sky and the bees humming, the cold metal frame of his disability seemed as out of place as a thistle in a bed of baby-faced petunias. So she’d lifted him into the wagon and they’d laughed when she plopped a straw hat onto his head and pulled him to the first bed of flowers. Now they were quiet. They’d come to the rose bushes. Eddie took a deep breath and could almost smell the smoke in the air and hear the rounded jubilant tones of his trombone skipping over them as though he was the child, and their hearts the stones in the stream.

Only here, among the dozen roses and their petals scattered around the base of an unusually large orange tree, could you hear Maxwell Turner, his deep trained voice rambling on about horses and BB King in between puffs of smoke. Eddie had liked Max even though he had barely known him, and more importantly Santa had liked him. He had had that awkward self deprecating nature of an Englishman who knows his nose is too big and his penis too small, the kind that always have a sparkle in their eye tied like a ribbon around their otherwise modest-looking face. Tall and thin, he had taken to walking around slightly hunched over as if he’d hit too many low doors and was now perpetually paranoid that his height might be his undoing. Good humoured, harmlessly eccentric; a collector of musty old books, watercolour paintings of dogs and jazz players and sometimes with both in the same painting, ivory chess pieces, and brass instruments. Post race beers would often have him parading around the wood floors of his house with his trombone dancing in his hands and a beret on his head improvising a jazz tune like a comedian until Santa dissolved into blushing giggles. They were still there in the closet. A well-loved trombone with dents here and there, two festive trumpets, and a shiny cornet. Even a silver french horn remained in its crushed indigo blue velvet inside a leather case. The whole of the racing world knew or should have known about him, but when he was diagnosed, they all went quiet. For Santa’s sake.

And they were still quiet. Eddie reached over the sides of the wagon and picked up the limp weeds strewn beside the wagon wheels and tucked them into the black trash bag on his lap. The sun was already turning from a plump red radish to a withering yellow yolk dribbling onto a white line of ocean which soaked it up like toast. Eddie wanted to reach out and pluck it from the sky and place it into his mouth. The air around them was settling to sleep, thick with the smells of turned earth, the milky tartness of dandelion, and the fragrant tea of rose petals steeping in the late afternoon air of the Pacific Coast. Eddie watched her as she worked, wordless and restless. Her long untamed mass of brown hair had been pulled into a haphazard ponytail revealing her face in a way not often seen. In her eyes there was an old familiar conversation taking place. Santa had once told Eddie that not long after he left she’d dreamt of the phone ringing and when she picked it up Max had been there, asking her how her day had gone and he had said, “That’s good, love. I miss you,” and she had woken up to a pillow wet and cold with tears. That was when she had gone online and discovered a thin miserable looking retired greyhound named “Habitual Sinner” in the rescue center, a tall dog with that same long nose and self-deprecating look that had been Maxwell’s. And Santa did what she always does with losers, Eddie thought to himself. She brought him home. With a body in the bed again, albeit a dog, Santa remembered how to sleep.

Eddie glanced at the still fresh mound of earth in the opposite end of the garden where Laurence Leclerc had buried her dog. Santa was leaning back, looking over her rose bushes, free of every possible weed. She wiped the sweat from her brow and made an audible sigh.

“Well,” Eddie announced, stuffing the last dandelion into the bag, taking her cue that it was okay to speak again. “You made it a year.”

Santa’s face pinched. “Worst year of my life,” she mumbled, following his gaze to Habs’ grave and the dozen or so marigolds that surrounded it.

Santa’s father. Santa’s lover. Santa’s dog and Santa’s career (off and on) had all died. And then there was himself...Mr. Eddie Ne, quite possibly the only person who knew all this shit, who had also nearly died. He rubbed absently at his side. Man, it had been a horrible year. “I don’t know,” Ed shrugged, “You got the Frenchie out of it.”

“What?” Santa’s face fell. Her eyes shot back to the rose bushes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She snapped so suddenly it almost didn’t register with Eddie.

“Huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I have Laurence. Like I’m supposed to wait longer than a year. Because surely the whole time Maxwell was going, I wasn’t already in mourning, wasn’t already facing my own personal hell.”

Eddie blinked at her from the wagon. He opened his mouth, but he could already sense there was absolutely nothing he could say now to take back whatever she thought he had implied in the sort of leap hot tempered women, or basically all women, are uniquely capable of making. He ran his hands through his hair instead. That, also, was a bad idea. She smacked him in the arm with an impromptu switch.

“Ed, don’t pretend you didn’t mean something by that.”

“I didn’t-ow!”

“As if I haven’t heard all those little birds on the rail.”

“Santa,” Eddie announced, pushing the straw hat further back on his head so he could look up into her face fully, “so Rex Leroi and June Jonassen talk.” He tied a large knot in the black trash bag on his knees and tossed it towards the open garbage can by the back gate. “You stole Leclerc and you hit Rex Leroi in the face with your whip years ago. Don’t make enemies and lovers all in the same thrust and then act surprised when they raid your toilet to show the whole world that, yes, the great Saint of Santa Anita shits like the rest of us.”

Santa dropped her eyes. “I’m not surprised,” she mumbled.

It was Eddie’s turn to ignore her. “You fucked Maxwell Turner, a journalist. You say you didn’t, but who isn’t going to at least give him a sympathy fuck? And this is his fucking house you live in. Men don’t bequeath houses to girls they aren’t married to unless they’ve fucked them. Don’t give me that look, woman, you think June Jonassen, also a journalist, would ignore the infamous Saint making the googoo eyes at Laurence Leclerc, the latest hotshot out of Brazen Fields, not three months after they pulled the plug on Turner? You think she’s not going to walk around your territory and scoop up shit to prove to everyone it exists?”

“I said I’m not surprised. I’m not. Not about Rex or June. But I am about you,” Santa clarified.

“And you ignored me when I said I didn’t mean it that way. Fuck, Santa, who else knows you better?”

They both went quiet for several minutes. A bee buzzed past both of their noses and danced around the rose bushes. Santa broke the silence. “Laurence hasn’t said anything.”

“Of course he hasn’t. Laurence forgives you because you have nice tits.”

 Santa sighed and plopped down into the warm fragrant grass of her lawn. It was soft and downy and she buried her fingers in it, pulling up a few strands and making a small makeshift birds nest in front of her, like a child. Eddie watched her the way best friends who haven’t fucked and should have by now do. Except now it was too late. “So what is the moose, Santa? A rebound? A bandaid? A forget-everything pill?”

Santa sat still and calmly in her grass. “I don’t know.”

“He’s nothing like Max.”

“Nope,” she sighed, “You’re right.”

“Is that the point? Out with the English tea, in with the French cafe?”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“Sorry.”

Santa reached up and tugged lightly on one of the nearby roses. It was bright crimson and wilted slightly at the edges. Santa plucked a petal from the rose.

“Ellie told me he’s been moving things around his place in New York.”

“Laurence’s very french family is coming for the Travers.”

Eddie shrugged at that, but his look was serious. “Huh. Well, dudes don’t clean just so mom doesn’t have to see a jockstrap hanging from the fan. Dudes clean when they want things to make sense. Like what tomorrow is going to be like, where his jeans are, what breakfast will be. When he wants to know his way around the same woman in the dark instead of always having to guess all the time how to get her off.”

“Nice, Eds.”

“Would I lie? I didn’t give a shit about those sorts of things till it got hard to do it myself. Everything is made for people with legs, Santa.”

“Are you looking for a wife or a maid?”

“Same thing, baby. Right?”

Santa flicked a pebble at him, smiling briefly. She sighed. “Maxwell knew I’d never be either. Ironic, isn’t it? That the one man who never asked me to care for him was the one who needed it most?”

“And you cared for him.”

“I cared for him.”

“Cancer is funny like that.”

“Cancer is hell like that.”

Santa was quiet again. Thinking. Finally, she shrugged. “He does know. I think.”

“Mooseballs?”

“Yeah, but I think maybe he’d rather put it aside too.” Santa reached up and pulled her hair down from her ponytail. It dropped to either side of her face like a dark walnut frame. “You know? The one person who might have been competition is sitting in a jar next to a bunch of books. I’ve shoved him aside so well that not even Laurence mentioned the urn when he looked through the library.”

“Sucks for Max,” Eddie mumbled, “And Frenchie can’t talk because he’s fucked half of the backside.”

“He has to know though, you know?”

Ed shrugged.

“I mean. It was Maxwell Turner.”

“Santa,” Ed replied, fanning himself with her straw hat, “I think you forget that Laurence Leclerc probably doesn’t read.”

“Oh shut up.”

NEXT ON:

Description
***MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE*** and overlook the crappy two minute doodle. XD

The Mana Farms story line frequently contains mature language, topics, and situations. The characters within are fictional beings with weaknesses and faults, and I cannot promise you that you will like them for what they believe, say and do.

The first book in the MANA series will be published with a tentative release date of May 1 2012. Join the community of MANA readers! Start from the beginning. (New readers, it is strongly recommended you begin this series from the very first story...which can be found here: [link] ) Thanks!

PREVIOUSLY ON:

A year ago, not long after he’d left, Santa had buried her fingers into the rich black soil beneath each of the dozen rose bushes he’d planted. Slipped them small and slender, ten short chestnut roots, down into the earth hoping to connect to whatever life of his might still be there, buried in the warm California hills with the rose bushes. She was still on her knees now, fingertips below the surface, seeking out the roots of every weed and yanking them out; barely aware of Eddie Ne perched like a kindergarten prince in the well of a bright red radio flyer wagon. Santa stood up, grabbed the handle of the wagon, and pulled him a foot or two with her to the next section of the garden.

They’d already gotten beyond giggling over the notion of wagon. Eddie didn’t like the idea of being in Santa’s glorious backyard, with the flowers blooming and the grapes ripening along the high walls that surrounded it, in a wheelchair. With the sun as ripe as a plump tomato in the sky and the bees humming, the cold metal frame of his disability seemed as out of place as a thistle in a bed of baby-faced petunias. So she’d lifted him into the wagon and they’d laughed when she plopped a straw hat onto his head and pulled him to the first bed of flowers. Now they were quiet. They’d come to the rose bushes. Eddie took a deep breath and could almost smell the smoke in the air and hear the rounded jubilant tones of his trombone skipping over them as though he was the child, and their hearts the stones in the stream.

Only here, among the dozen roses and their petals scattered around the base of an unusually large orange tree, could you hear Maxwell Turner, his deep trained voice rambling on about horses and BB King in between puffs of smoke. Eddie had liked Max even though he had barely known him, and more importantly Santa had liked him. He had had that awkward self deprecating nature of an Englishman who knows his nose is too big and his penis too small, the kind that always have a sparkle in their eye tied like a ribbon around their otherwise modest-looking face. Tall and thin, he had taken to walking around slightly hunched over as if he’d hit too many low doors and was now perpetually paranoid that his height might be his undoing. Good humoured, harmlessly eccentric; a collector of musty old books, watercolour paintings of dogs and jazz players and sometimes with both in the same painting, ivory chess pieces, and brass instruments. Post race beers would often have him parading around the wood floors of his house with his trombone dancing in his hands and a beret on his head improvising a jazz tune like a comedian until Santa dissolved into blushing giggles. They were still there in the closet. A well-loved trombone with dents here and there, two festive trumpets, and a shiny cornet. Even a silver french horn remained in its crushed indigo blue velvet inside a leather case. The whole of the racing world knew or should have known about him, but when he was diagnosed, they all went quiet. For Santa’s sake.

And they were still quiet. Eddie reached over the sides of the wagon and picked up the limp weeds strewn beside the wagon wheels and tucked them into the black trash bag on his lap. The sun was already turning from a plump red radish to a withering yellow yolk dribbling onto a white line of ocean which soaked it up like toast. Eddie wanted to reach out and pluck it from the sky and place it into his mouth. The air around them was settling to sleep, thick with the smells of turned earth, the milky tartness of dandelion, and the fragrant tea of rose petals steeping in the late afternoon air of the Pacific Coast. Eddie watched her as she worked, wordless and restless. Her long untamed mass of brown hair had been pulled into a haphazard ponytail revealing her face in a way not often seen. In her eyes there was an old familiar conversation taking place. Santa had once told Eddie that not long after he left she’d dreamt of the phone ringing and when she picked it up Max had been there, asking her how her day had gone and he had said, “That’s good, love. I miss you,” and she had woken up to a pillow wet and cold with tears. That was when she had gone online and discovered a thin miserable looking retired greyhound named “Habitual Sinner” in the rescue center, a tall dog with that same long nose and self-deprecating look that had been Maxwell’s. And Santa did what she always does with losers, Eddie thought to himself. She brought him home. With a body in the bed again, albeit a dog, Santa remembered how to sleep.

Eddie glanced at the still fresh mound of earth in the opposite end of the garden where Laurence Leclerc had buried her dog. Santa was leaning back, looking over her rose bushes, free of every possible weed. She wiped the sweat from her brow and made an audible sigh.

“Well,” Eddie announced, stuffing the last dandelion into the bag, taking her cue that it was okay to speak again. “You made it a year.”

Santa’s face pinched. “Worst year of my life,” she mumbled, following his gaze to Habs’ grave and the dozen or so marigolds that surrounded it.

Santa’s father. Santa’s lover. Santa’s dog and Santa’s career (off and on) had all died. And then there was himself...Mr. Eddie Ne, quite possibly the only person who knew all this shit, who had also nearly died. He rubbed absently at his side. Man, it had been a horrible year. “I don’t know,” Ed shrugged, “You got the Frenchie out of it.”

“What?” Santa’s face fell. Her eyes shot back to the rose bushes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She snapped so suddenly it almost didn’t register with Eddie.

“Huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I have Laurence. Like I’m supposed to wait longer than a year. Because surely the whole time Maxwell was going, I wasn’t already in mourning, wasn’t already facing my own personal hell.”

Eddie blinked at her from the wagon. He opened his mouth, but he could already sense there was absolutely nothing he could say now to take back whatever she thought he had implied in the sort of leap hot tempered women, or basically all women, are uniquely capable of making. He ran his hands through his hair instead. That, also, was a bad idea. She smacked him in the arm with an impromptu switch.

“Ed, don’t pretend you didn’t mean something by that.”

“I didn’t-ow!”

“As if I haven’t heard all those little birds on the rail.”

“Santa,” Eddie announced, pushing the straw hat further back on his head so he could look up into her face fully, “so Rex Leroi and June Jonassen talk.” He tied a large knot in the black trash bag on his knees and tossed it towards the open garbage can by the back gate. “You stole Leclerc and you hit Rex Leroi in the face with your whip years ago. Don’t make enemies and lovers all in the same thrust and then act surprised when they raid your toilet to show the whole world that, yes, the great Saint of Santa Anita shits like the rest of us.”

Santa dropped her eyes. “I’m not surprised,” she mumbled.

It was Eddie’s turn to ignore her. “You fucked Maxwell Turner, a journalist. You say you didn’t, but who isn’t going to at least give him a sympathy fuck? And this is his fucking house you live in. Men don’t bequeath houses to girls they aren’t married to unless they’ve fucked them. Don’t give me that look, woman, you think June Jonassen, also a journalist, would ignore the infamous Saint making the googoo eyes at Laurence Leclerc, the latest hotshot out of Brazen Fields, not three months after they pulled the plug on Turner? You think she’s not going to walk around your territory and scoop up shit to prove to everyone it exists?”

“I said I’m not surprised. I’m not. Not about Rex or June. But I am about you,” Santa clarified.

“And you ignored me when I said I didn’t mean it that way. Fuck, Santa, who else knows you better?”

They both went quiet for several minutes. A bee buzzed past both of their noses and danced around the rose bushes. Santa broke the silence. “Laurence hasn’t said anything.”

“Of course he hasn’t. Laurence forgives you because you have nice tits.”

 Santa sighed and plopped down into the warm fragrant grass of her lawn. It was soft and downy and she buried her fingers in it, pulling up a few strands and making a small makeshift birds nest in front of her, like a child. Eddie watched her the way best friends who haven’t fucked and should have by now do. Except now it was too late. “So what is the moose, Santa? A rebound? A bandaid? A forget-everything pill?”

Santa sat still and calmly in her grass. “I don’t know.”

“He’s nothing like Max.”

“Nope,” she sighed, “You’re right.”

“Is that the point? Out with the English tea, in with the French cafe?”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“Sorry.”

Santa reached up and tugged lightly on one of the nearby roses. It was bright crimson and wilted slightly at the edges. Santa plucked a petal from the rose.

“Ellie told me he’s been moving things around his place in New York.”

“Laurence’s very french family is coming for the Travers.”

Eddie shrugged at that, but his look was serious. “Huh. Well, dudes don’t clean just so mom doesn’t have to see a jockstrap hanging from the fan. Dudes clean when they want things to make sense. Like what tomorrow is going to be like, where his jeans are, what breakfast will be. When he wants to know his way around the same woman in the dark instead of always having to guess all the time how to get her off.”

“Nice, Eds.”

“Would I lie? I didn’t give a shit about those sorts of things till it got hard to do it myself. Everything is made for people with legs, Santa.”

“Are you looking for a wife or a maid?”

“Same thing, baby. Right?”

Santa flicked a pebble at him, smiling briefly. She sighed. “Maxwell knew I’d never be either. Ironic, isn’t it? That the one man who never asked me to care for him was the one who needed it most?”

“And you cared for him.”

“I cared for him.”

“Cancer is funny like that.”

“Cancer is hell like that.”

Santa was quiet again. Thinking. Finally, she shrugged. “He does know. I think.”

“Mooseballs?”

“Yeah, but I think maybe he’d rather put it aside too.” Santa reached up and pulled her hair down from her ponytail. It dropped to either side of her face like a dark walnut frame. “You know? The one person who might have been competition is sitting in a jar next to a bunch of books. I’ve shoved him aside so well that not even Laurence mentioned the urn when he looked through the library.”

“Sucks for Max,” Eddie mumbled, “And Frenchie can’t talk because he’s fucked half of the backside.”

“He has to know though, you know?”

Ed shrugged.

“I mean. It was Maxwell Turner.”

“Santa,” Ed replied, fanning himself with her straw hat, “I think you forget that Laurence Leclerc probably doesn’t read.”

“Oh shut up.”

NEXT ON: