Rainwater by Sandra Brown

Remind me to add a pound of butter to the grocery list.”
    “Mr. Rainwater sure is nice to be taking such notice of our Solly. Why do you reckon that is?”
    “We need mayonnaise, too. And some bologna. If you’re the one who goes, ask Mr. Randall to slice it more thinly this time, please.”
    “He sure be different.”
    Ella knew Margaret wasn’t referring to the grocer. Closing the icebox door, she came around to face her maid. “Different?”
    “Different from Mr. Barron.”
    Ella moved to the sink and washed her hands. “Mr. Rainwater has dark hair. He’s lean. Mr. Barron was shorter, stockier, and had fair hair.” She dried her hands and headed for the door. “I’m going to check on Solly, then I’ll get that squash ready to bake.”
    “Wasn’t talking about his looks.”
    Ella pretended not to hear her maid’s mumbled parting remark and continued on to the parlor. Solly and Mr. Rainwater were seated in adjacent chairs at the card table where the Dunne sisters often played gin rummy.
    When she walked in, Mr. Rainwater looked up at her and smiled. “I think you’re wrong.”
    “About what?”
    “I think Solly does grasp the concept of numbers. Watch.”
    She moved closer. A deck of playing cards had been scattered facedown over the table. The twos of each suit were neatly stacked, so were the threes and fours. As she watched, Solly picked all the fives from the scattered cards, starting with the club, then the spade, the heart, and the diamond last. He lined up the edges evenly and placed the group beside the stack of fours. He did the same with the sixes and sevens, choosing them unseen from the scattered deck, picking them out in the same sequence.
    Ella wasn’t all that encouraged. “He remembers where each card is on the table. It’s a miracle, but he’s not really learning. He’s only matching the pattern of clubs on a card with the pattern of spades on another, and so on. What he’s doing really has nothing to do with the quantities and how they relate.”
    “I’m not so sure. Cards, unlike dominoes, have the numbers printed on them.”
    “Does that make a difference?”
    “I believe so. Keep watching.”
    Solly continued until he had stacked the tens besides the nines. Then he sat back and began to rock.
    Ella looked at Mr. Rainwater, then at the cards still lying facedown on the table. “He didn’t pick face cards or aces.”
    “They don’t have numerals.”
    She sat down in the other chair, adjacent to Solly and across from Mr. Rainwater. Gathering all the stacks Solly had made, along with the cards still on the table, she shuffled the deck, then spread the cards out, first faceup, then turned them over one by one until all fifty-two were facedown.
    Solly watched intently. As soon as all the cards were overturned, he actually pushed her hands aside so he could begin. He collected all the twos and proceeded until his stack of tens was placed neatly beside the stack of nines. He left the face cards and the aces.
    Mr. Rainwater looked across at Ella, his eyebrow cocked. “He knows that the numerals represent the amount of symbols on each card, and he knows the sequence of the numbers. Four is greater than three.”
    Still doubtful, she murmured, “Possibly.”
    “He does.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because before you came in, I removed the fours from the deck. He stopped at three and didn’t proceed until I’d returned the fours to the cards scattered on the table. I did it again with the eights. He stopped at seven, and that time, he reached into my coat pocket and took out the eights, arranged them in his sequence—clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds—and went from there.”
    Almost more miraculous to her than Solly’s grasp of the numerals was that he’d voluntarily touched someone. “He reached into your pocket?”
    Mr. Rainwater smiled. “With no guidance from me.”
    Her gaze shifted back to Solly. Reflexively, she stroked his cheek and said, “Good job, Solly.”