Word Gets Around Part 4

Flattery. Go figure. "I don't know why you bring me along on these things. You know I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear." I leaned back and closed my eyes.

"You're my family, man ... " I wasn't sure if Justin actually said it or if I just knew the line by heart.

The pilot told us we were in for some weather delays. No problem for me, since I didn't care if we ever left the ground. Relaxing in my seat, I got that floaty, drifty feeling. I gave in to it as we sat on the runway, waiting for the storm to pa.s.s. Sometime later, I was dimly aware of the plane careening toward takeoff.

When I woke again, we were on the ground in what looked like a livestock pasture. I could hear cattle mooing in the darkness beyond a runway that was probably just big enough to land a Gulfstream G550. A black and white cow walked by as we taxied toward a group of old hangars at the end of the field-the only buildings in sight. Leaning close to the window, I watched a man in coveralls chase the cow away with a stick.

I wondered if I was still asleep, having a weird dream we'd laugh about in the morning. Hey, guess what-I dreamed we landed the plane, and outside the window, there was a cow, and a man in coveralls was chasing it ...

The plane stopped and the copilot came out of the c.o.c.kpit looking a little pale, like he hoped he was having a weird dream, too. Wandering livestock and landing planes couldn't be a good combination.

The steps came down, and the coverall-clad man climbed into the cabin, his voice booming ahead of him. "How-dee! Welcome to Daily. Sorry about the livestock. Someone must've left the gate open." He grabbed the copilot's arm and shook him like an overstuffed rag doll. "That was just a joke about watch out for the cows, son. They can't git out on the runway on account'a the cattle guard."

The copilot backed out of the way, slipped into the c.o.c.kpit, and sank into his chair.

In the back, Amber woke up with a squeal that was way too high-pitched and enthusiastic for two in the morning. "Mr. Ed!" she cheered, startling Frederico from a sound sleep. Fred rocketed from his chair, collided loudly with an air vent, then moaned and sat back down again, rubbing the goose egg that was sure to form and blinking as Amber wiggled past Justin and gave the airport man an enthusiastic hug. "How'r ye-ew?"

"Well just fine as frog hair, I reckon," Mr. Ed replied. "I didn't know you was comin' along with ol' Justin this time, Amber." The airport man reached around Amber and slapped Justin on the shoulder.

I glanced at The Shay. Ol' Justin? I'd never heard anyone, anywhere call The Shay Ol' Justin. The Shay had a reputation for getting petulant and having service personnel fired from their jobs.

"We just finished the American Megastar tour yesterday, Mr. Ed," Amber answered. "Justin and me couldn't wait to get on out here and see how the ranch was comin' along."

"Hear it's goin' real good. Dump trucks and lumber trucks and all kindsa stuff head out that way, and I know lots of Daily folk have been out there helpin' with the work. The churches take lunch to the workers every day. Ty Baldridge was gonna get on out there and mow the hayfield. He thinks y'all might git eight hundred rounds or more." He nodded at Justin like that should mean something, then stroked his chest hairs through the open zipper of his coveralls. Clearly, our arrival had gotten him out of bed.

"Awesome," Justin said. "That's a pretty good crop. At thirty-five dollars a bale, it'll make ... " Justin never was very good at math. He only pa.s.sed high-school algebra because the teacher was sick of us, so she pretended not to notice him copying off my tests. Who knew he'd one day need that information to calculate hay profits?

"Twenty-eight thousand dollars!" Amber deduced. "Justin, that'll help pay for the new horse barn and the chicken house."

Justin winked at her. "We get this deal worked out for The Horseman, babe, and you can build three horse barns and ten chicken houses."

Amber giggled. "That'd be too many horses and too many eggs."

I had that feeling again like none of this was actually happening. Any minute now I'd wake up back in Malibu, or better yet in Mammoth Lakes, having never heard from Justin at all. I wouldn't even bother to write down this dream for possible future material. This was one of those cases where truth was too strange to be useful for fiction. n.o.body would believe this.

I wanted to stay asleep and see what happened next. This was fun.

Behind me, Fred staggered to his feet, then stood blinking and rubbing his head. He leaned toward me and inquired, "Where have we come to?"

"Oz, I think ... or maybe Texas. They're right next door to each other." I grabbed my duffle bag, which was heavy with the weight of Justin's lousy script. When this was all over, it would somehow be my fault that the foster children couldn't have a chicken house. Justin would wash his hands of the responsibility and say I should have told him this was a stupid idea.

Ahead, Amber and The Shay happily disembarked the plane with Mr. Ed. I followed, trailed by Fred. In the c.o.c.kpit, the pilots were talking amongst themselves.

"I hate this place. One of these days, we're going to slide off the end of this cowpath and end up on our backs. I told him it's too short for a G550."

The pilot kicked up his feet. "Hey, no sweat. The cows'll break our fall."

"Where do you want to layover this time?"

"Let's grab a little sleep, then fly on up to Dallas and catch a Rangers game. The Yanks are in town. We'll keep her fueled. If he calls, we can be here in less than an hour."

"Works for me. Can we get breakfast at the cafe first? I like their waffles."

"Sure. Why not."

"How long's he plan to be here?"

"No idea ... "

I moved out of earshot as we descended the stairs. On the tarmac, the air smelled strangely bovine as Mr. Ed ushered us away.

"The guy delivered yer new truck, there ... uhhh ... Justin." Mr. Ed motioned vaguely toward a metal building where a dim spotlight lit half of the word OFFICE, so that right now, the sign just read OFF, which seemed to fit. "She's ga.s.sed up and waitin' in the shed. I sent Julio around to get 'er. She's a dandy."

"You bought another new truck?" Amber gasped. "You just bought a truck when you were here last spring." Apparently, the realities of superstar life hadn't settled on Amber yet. Justin went through vehicles like most people went through shoes. Faster, actually. People don't wreck their shoes and leave them on the side of the road.

Justin shrugged off the question. "I gave the other one to the construction crew at the ranch."

"You gave the construction crew a Cadillac SUV?" Amber's hands fluttered emphatically in the dim light.

Frederico's eyes widened. No doubt he was hoping a discarded Cadillac SUV would roll his way, too.

Behind the office building, an engine roared to life. Justin turned an ear toward it, listening with satisfaction. "I wanted something closer to character ... you know, for the horseman. The SUV wasn't right." His attention wavered as the engine noise grew louder, reverberating through the empty s.p.a.ce between the office building and an arc-shaped hangar that looked like a holdover from World War II. Tires squealed, headlights appeared, and we were momentarily blinded.

"Mama mia," Frederico muttered.

We stepped back as a shiny new pickup rolled in on tires three times the normal size. The chrome, neon-lit running boards glittered at roughly chest level, illuminating a wild airbrush job that depicted a herd of running cloud-horses. Not bad artwork, if you were into tricking a ride.

"Whoa," Justin muttered. "It's better than the picture. How's that for the horseman?"

Amber started to giggle. To her credit, she didn't point out to Justin that, in the script, the horseman drove an '82 Ford flatbed pickup with peeling paint. Even I, who knew nothing about ranching, knew that this rig was a man toy, not a farm truck.

"Like it?" Justin asked Amber.

Amber just nodded. Sweet girl. "It's real pretty. It'd be a little hard to hook up a stock trailer, though."

Frowning, Justin checked out the back of the truck, then returned to stand beside us as Mr. Ed's a.s.sistant opened the pickup door and descended from on high. He handed the keys to Mr. Ed, who pa.s.sed them on to Justin. "Reckon you folks are ready to git to the hotel."

"Awesome." Justin tossed up the keys and caught them in an enthusiastic sweeping motion. Whatever meds he'd procured from Marla had him bouncing off the walls, even though it was two in the morning. "Throw the bags in back."

As we loaded the luggage and Fred helped Amber in, it occurred to me that the truck was a three-seater, and already full.

"I'll ride in the back," I said, then climbed into the pickup bed. Threading my hands behind my head, I sacked out against the bags, listened to the rumble beneath me, and drifted back to a memory that was so deeply buried I hadn't known it was there. In the farthest reaches of my mind, before life in Joplin, before Mama Louise's, before foster care, before my grandparents got old and my mother married Doug, who didn't like kids-especially me-there was a sound like this. I was lying in the bed of a truck, floating over a gravel road. There were stars like these. A million stars, undimmed by the glow of city lights, fresh and clear, and close enough to touch.

Someone was beside me in the truck. My dad. He smelled of wheat and axle grease, sweat and soil. I couldn't see him anymore. All the pictures of him had long since been lost in a series of moves to my mother's boyfriends' houses, and then to foster care.

I couldn't imagine my father's face or his form, other than that, in my mind, he was a big man. A good man, who put his hand on my hair, pointed to a sprinkled sky and said, "Look up there, Nate. If you ever doubt there's a G.o.d, all you've got to do is look up on a clear night." For my father, it was that simple. The awesome complexity of the night sky, the way grain sprouted from seed, the coming of the rains, and the changing of the seasons were concrete proof of G.o.d's existence. He'd inherited his views from my grandparents, from a simple life in a simple community. He believed easily, which might have been the reason he believed in my mother. When he saw her, brand-new in town, sweeping up hair in the barber shop, he fell like a tall tree on a windy day. I guess it never occurred to him that eventually she'd get tired of living on a dairy farm and being married to a man twelve years older than she was, and she'd move on to other things.

They say you can't die of a broken heart, but my grandmother described my father's death that way. The doctors said he was a big man born with a small heart. For the most part, I was just mad at him for leaving me stuck with my mom and an off-and-on string of guys. Eventually, we got a house in Joplin. Unfortunately, it was Doug's house, and he was still living in it.

Over the years, my dad and my grandparents and the farm faded until they were just a story I no longer bothered to repeat to people.

But now, lying in the back of Justin's pickup as the tires sang against the pavement and night slipped by overhead, they became real again.

By the time we reached civilization, I'd examined the memory of my father like a lost photo discovered behind a piece of furniture. I'd picked it up and looked at it from every angle, then tucked it away as streetlights dimmed the stars, the truck slowed, and we rumbled into town. The noise of the truck reverberated against buildings, seeming to rattle the gla.s.s and cause the neon sign on the darkened Daily Cafe to flicker as I took in the town-Justin's new home away from home, where we were going to make cowboy films, bale hay, and build chicken houses for foster kids.

It wasn't quite what I'd expected. Not much of a town, really- just rows of decaying brick and limestone buildings on either side of Main Street, a jail around the corner (I'd have to go by there and pay homage to Marla's culvert), a feed mill with tall concrete grain silos, a little park in front of the town hall at the end of the business district, and an old granite bank building with some interesting architecture and nifty gargoyles that had probably once been gilded and would have fetched a nice price in one of the antique auctions in southern Cal.

I checked out the gargoyles up close as we circled the block, turned the corner, and drove into the alley. The empty bank building would be good in a slasher movie-something in which an unsuspecting group of out-of-towners arrives in the middle of the night, thinking they've come to film a cowboy flick, but in reality, the town is empty, and the only real residents are bloodthirsty, man-eating zombies. ...

One of them rounded the corner behind us in a police cruiser. He pulled up as Justin parked behind the hotel and turned off the engine.

"Well, hey there, Mr. Shay!" he said when Justin opened his door and descended to street level. "I didn't know who that was comin' around back of the hotel. Bein' as I'm the deputy on duty, I thought I better check up on it. Did ya git a new truck?"

Justin smoothed a hand along the doorframe of the Horsemanmobile. "Just picked it up at the airport."

The deputy whistled his admiration, then greeted Amber as she slid over and climbed down. "Well, hey, Amber! How's the singin' tour?"

"Just finished for a little while." Amber yawned, swaying on her feet. "Buddy Ray, would you mind drivin' me out to my peepaw's house? I don't want Justin to have to do it. Everyone's tired, and Frederico's sound asleep in the truck. I'm ready to be home in my own bed."

"Sure, Amber."

I handed Amber's suitcases down to Buddy Ray, who obligingly loaded them in the cruiser. Amber hugged everyone good-bye, then disappeared down the alley with her police escort.

I attempted to wake Frederico while Justin took a ring of keys from his suitcase and headed for the back door of the hotel. Fred didn't wish to be awakened, and he informed me of such. He wasn't moving again tonight and would be sleeping right where he lay. Since he was too big to carry, I left him there, snoring in the front seat.

"Hey, Nater, come see this place." Justin opened the hotel door like he owned the joint.

"Let's just take the stuff in and crash," I suggested. "It's two-thirty in the morning."

"In a minute." The Shay gave a peeved look over his shoulder. He was hours from being ready to crash. Right now, he was just ramping into party mode. He wanted to show me his new favorite place. "C'mon, Grandpa," he taunted, then disappeared inside.

I followed along and ended up in a darkened hallway that looked anything but welcoming.

Justin grinned at me as the door closed behind us. "Isn't it great?"

Following him past a storage room full of wigs and white foam heads, I reserved the right to remain silent. I looked around for the hotel desk, a night clerk, a caretaker, but the building seemed to be empty. The air was soundless, dimly lit by a lamp on a dresser beside a wooden staircase. "Are we about to get arrested for this?" It wouldn't be the first time.

"No, dude. It's cool. They know I come and go. Look, there it is! There's the cookie stash!" As giddy as a kid at Christmas, he lifted a white kitchen towel from a basket on the buffet and grabbed a cookie. He stuffed it into his mouth, holding the basket out to me, saying, "Hab one, 'ere goob."

"That's all right. I just want a bed right now," I muttered.

"You're so lame." Justin grabbed a key off the buffet and handed it to me. "Upstairs, to the left, last door on the right. I got you the Elvis room. I'm gonna go grab a Dr. Pepper." He headed back down the hall and turned into the room with the foam heads.

I looked up the stairs. The hanging chandelier was burned out, which was probably for the best. The place was old, with decaying plaster walls, high, wavy tin ceilings, and cloudy transoms over the doors. It smelled musty and ancient, like some of the apartment buildings my mother and I ended up in. Not exactly Justin's usual five-star accommodations.

Justin came back with a Dr. Pepper in one hand, a bag of chips in the other, and a case of sodas under his arm. "Hey, Nater, just bring my stuff up to my room." Setting down the chips, he grabbed a couple more cookies and tried to figure out how to carry everything at once.

"Bring your own stuff up to your room," I said, then headed for the back door. Sometimes he forgot I wasn't one of his little sycophants.

"Sorry. Geez," he muttered. Setting his stuff on the stairs, he followed me to the truck.

Back in the alley, I tried to wake Fred one more time, then gave up, climbed into the truck bed, and began tossing the bags down to Justin. As I was reaching for the last one, a flutter of movement drew my eye to the Dodge Durango parked next to Justin's new hot rod. There was something ... someone inside. Leaning over the bed rails, I looked down into the partially-opened driver's side window. "Hey, Shay-man, check this out. We're not alone. There's something in there, and it looks like it's ... either a dead body or ... a girl ... sleeping?"

Chapter 5.

Lauren Eldridge In my dream, the furniture store had sent over a red velvet sofa with matching pillows and a loveseat. I hadn't ordered a sofa. I didn't want the men to take away my old sofa and put the ugly red one in its place. As I protested, they began pulling sofas from their delivery truck and setting them all over the parking lot. The sun glinted against their truck, so bright it hurt my eyes.

"I didn't order anything!" I hollered, running down the sidewalk. "Go away. Get out of here!"

When I turned around, two more men had sneaked behind me and were moving the red sofa up my condo steps. "No!" I screamed. "No! No! No sofas!" I tried to make a dash for the door, but my legs wouldn't work.

On my porch, the men studied a clipboard, scratching their heads. Fragments of conversation drifted my way as I crawled toward the condo.

" ... think she's sleeping."

"That's better than dead."

" ... supposed to be here?"

"No one said anything. I called before we left. They told me there wouldn't be anyone here."

"You sure you talked to the right person?"

"Yeah. Donetta. She's the one I always talk to ... "

"Maybe she left a note inside or something."

I blocked out the voices and tried to concentrate. This was Aunt Donetta's doing. For some reason, she had sent me a new sofa. Why would Aunt Donetta send me a sofa?

Rolling to one side, I squeezed my elbows over my ears. "Uddduhhh-ppp!" My voice reverberated strangely, as if I were inside a barrel rather than in my living room. The sound needled me as I attempted to sink back into sleep.

The delivery men kept talking. Couldn't they see someone was trying to sleep here? If they didn't hush, I was going to jump to my feet, grab the first dangerous object I could find, and start swinging until finally there was silence enough for sleeping. Dragging one eye open, I blinked through a dark, fuzzy curtain of bed hair, pointed at the two blurry figures that were ... behind a partially opened car window? What happened to my living room? Was I in the delivery van now? "I don't wanna urrr-red sofffa!" The protest came out sleep-laden and slurred. I was dimly aware that my lips were glued to my teeth.

The figures froze, the hair fell out of my face, and my eyes adjusted to the dim neon light outside the car. The sofas, the delivery van, the condo vanished, but the men in the window remained. My mind whirled like a hard drive caught in a loop, trying to make sense of something that wouldn't compute.

"h.e.l.lo?" One of the men leaned closer, as if he were peering into a fishbowl, investigating some strange and potentially dangerous species. He looked familiar, like someone I should know. ...

"I said-" my mouth was pasty and uncooperative-"I don't want a ... red ... sofa?" Okay, that didn't make sense, exactly.

He craned close to the opening, studying me with one eyebrow c.o.c.ked. "Are you a ... fan?"