Fool's Gold (15 page)

“Sure,” Barney said. “Whatever.”

Whatever.
Barney used to say “whatever” a lot when they were discussing what to do with some free time, but it was a word that Rudy hadn't heard much of recently. “Whatever” sounded like the old Barney.

Rudy hung up the phone and leaned against the kitchen sink thinking—and grinning. He didn't realize how hard he was grinning until he caught sight of himself in Natasha's broom closet mirror. Not cool, he thought. Pretty sappy-looking, actually. But he didn't care. Grabbing the flyswatter off the windowsill and waving it like a baton, he did a kind of drum major strut around the kitchen table before he came back to the phone and called Julie Harmon.

Julie sounded pleased when she found out it was Rudy on the phone. “Well, hi, Rudy Drummond,” she said. “It is Rudy, isn't it? Not Windy Dayes. Or Miss Harrington?” Miss Harrington was the principal at Pyramid Hill's Middle School and one of the people Rudy was especially good at imitating.

Putting on his creaky “Miss Harrington” voice, Rudy said, “Well, actually, I'm calling to speak to your parents about your perfectly terrible grades, young lady.” Julie shrieked with laughter. Julie was always an easy audience. But then Rudy got down to business. “No, you were right the first time. It's Rudy. I was just wondering… well, it
is
a very hot day, isn't it?”

“Oh, I get it,” Julie said. “You want to go swimming, right?

“Swimming?” Rudy pretended surprise. “What a great idea, now that you mention it. But now that you mention it, Barney's going to be in town today and maybe he and I—”

“Barney!” Julie shrieked. Then she put her hand over the receiver and shrieked a lot of other stuff that Rudy couldn't quite hear. When she came back on the phone he found out that she'd been talking to Jennie and Stephanie, who were spending the whole day at the Harmons'.

“Some other kids might be coming later too,” Julie said. “So you and Barney come anytime. Come anytime—as soon as Barney gets there.”

It was one of the all-time great afternoons. Stephanie was wearing a killer bikini bathing suit and looking even more sensational than usual. Two more guys and another girl showed up, so they had enough people for a major-effort game of water polo. Barney was the big star, as usual, and made all the goals, and got all kinds of attention, especially from the girls. But Rudy got lots of attention, too, because people kept asking him to do his impersonation of Michael Jackson—the one he'd done for the graduation assembly. Around four o'clock Julie fixed tuna sandwiches and popcorn, and just before the party broke up Stephanie actually spoke to Rudy without his having to start the conversation, which was practically a first. He came up out of the pool near where she was sitting and before he even opened his mouth she said, “Would you mind standing somewhere else? You're dripping on me.” It wasn't much, maybe, but along with everything else it made it a perfect day.

Perfect at least in most respects. The only thing that might have made it better would have been if he and Barney had more time to talk, if he could have found out, for instance, just where the gold-mining scheme stood at the moment and if Tyler's hedge-sitting fiasco had really changed Barney's feelings about the whole picture. But Barney had gone straight downtown from the Harmons' to meet his granddad at the Cattlemen's Association building, and Rudy walked home alone.

Natasha wasn't back yet when Rudy got home, so he fixed himself a peanut butter sandwich and turned on the TV. But nothing very interesting was on. Nothing, at least, as interesting as thinking about what a great day it had been. So he shut off the tube—and it was at that point he hit on the idea of having another session with
Conquering Your Fears.

As he got the book out from under his mattress he was feeling pretty confident that he was certainly going to be much more successful with the phobia treatments than he'd been before. After all, if a person could keep his cool in a situation like the killer-cow episode, he surely wouldn't hit the panic button over imagining something scary, or maybe crawling into a little old closet. Or even, for that matter, a deserted gold mine. Like the book said, some phobias were simply outgrown as a person matured.

But when he tried the “implosion” method he nearly went into shock, and he couldn't get into the hall closet any farther than his ankles. Not without getting a distinct impression that if he pushed it anymore somebody would have to scrape him off the ceiling. The whole thing was a major disappointment, and after being so up all afternoon it was particularly hard to take.

He was still feeling the letdown that evening, and even though he was trying to hide it Natasha must have noticed. Sometimes, when she wasn't too busy or tired, Natasha seemed to have a built-in mood detector. They were cleaning up after dinner when she suddenly said, “Is something wrong, Rudy? I'm getting a feeling that all is not well.”

“Wrong?” He gave her a big “can't imagine what you're talking about” number. “No. Everything's fine as far as I know. Have you checked the evening news? Maybe World War Three has started.”

“Very funny,” Natasha said. “I just meant that you seem a little bit gloomy.”

“I'm fine,” Rudy said. “I had a terrific day, actually. One of the best.” He'd already told Natasha a little about the swimming party at the Harmons'. “It was a blast at Julie's. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you about something. Barney's going to get to go to a couple of rodeos in Montana with Jeb and Angela.”

“Oh, really.” Natasha looked surprised. “I thought they didn't take him with them anymore.”

“Well, they don't very much. Not during school anyway.”

“And not much in the summer either.” Natasha's lip curled up on one side the way it always did when she was talking about something that made her angry. “Not since he's gotten to be so embarrassingly grownup looking.”

Rudy halfway knew what she meant, but he asked anyway. “What do you mean embarrassing?”

“Embarrassing to his glamorous parents. Angela probably hates having a great big teenaged son around. Makes her look too old. And Jeb, too, for that matter. Jeb probably doesn't like being reminded that he's getting pretty old for rodeo competition.”

Rudy knew how Natasha had always felt about Jeb and Angela. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. You think they always go off and leave him too much. But Charlie was always there and Belle, too, until—well, until she died. It's not like his folks just went off and left him alone. And Barney never seemed to mind about their being gone. At least he never said anything about it to me.”

Natasha stopped wiping out the sink and turned to give Rudy a long, slow look. “No,” she said finally. “Barney probably wouldn't have said anything. He's not one to talk about his personal problems very much, is he?”

“Problems?” Rudy said. “What problems?”

Natasha sighed impatiently. “I know you've always thought that Barney is the next thing to superhuman, but he isn't, you know. His grandmother used to worry about him a lot. She used to tell me—” She stopped and stared down at her hands for a minute before she turned toward Rudy again.

Rudy grinned sarcastically, letting his expression say that he found the whole idea of Barney having serious problems pretty funny. “Well, go on. What did Belle tell you?”

“Well, all right.” Natasha was getting angry. “I never said anything to you because Belle wouldn't have wanted me to. But she and I used to talk a lot on the phone and she told me about these terrible anxiety attacks Barney used to have, so bad that sometimes he wouldn't be able to go to sleep at night. He'd be wide awake until morning and then he'd fall asleep at school or even at the table at dinnertime.”

“Yeah,” Rudy said, grinning. “I remember about him going to sleep at school. But it just seemed like, well, you know, like part of his supercool personality. Everybody thought so. People used to think it was great to be so relaxed—about school and everything. Some of the other guys even used to pretend that they were asleep, too, because all the girls seemed to think it was so cute when Barney did it.”

“Well, Belle didn't take it so lightly,” Natasha said. “It really worried her. She thought it was because Jeb and Angela were away so much and never paid a great deal of attention to Barney even when they were home. She said it was usually when Jeb and Angela were away that Barney stayed awake all night—listening for them to come home.”

Rudy found it hard to believe. It just didn't fit, any of it. Barney—supercool, unflappable Barney—lying awake nights worrying? It just didn't seem possible. Rudy was still trying to make some sense of what Natasha had said when he tuned back in to what she was still saying.

“And then there was the way he always pushed himself to do dangerous things,” Natasha said, and Rudy's attention really went on alert.

“Barney? Pushed himself?” he asked.

“Yes. You know how you boys were always doing stunts that usually didn't turn out too well”—she smiled ruefully—“especially for you. And I always thought you were both responsible. You know, kind of egging each other on. But Belle felt it was part of a pattern for Barney. She thought it was because his parents, particularly Jeb, did dangerous things all the time, like riding broncs and bulldogging, and that Barney felt he had to constantly prove he was just as brave and daring as Jeb was in order to earn their approval. Barney kept promising Belle it wouldn't happen again, and you promised, too, remember? And then it would. Not the same stunt, but something just as risky. And I don't suppose Belle and I even heard about a lot of the crazy things you kids did.”

“Yeah, I guess you didn't,” Rudy said, with his mind only halfway on what he was saying—because the other half was too busy thinking. Thinking, yeah, maybe she's right. Maybe Natasha and Belle were right. Maybe that explained a lot of things.

“Wow!” he said finally.

“Wow?”

“Yeah, wow. It's just that I never… I never thought about…” Rudy hung up his dish towel, put away the frying pan, and started out of the room.

“Rudy?” Natasha's voice squeezed into his consciousness, but he just kind of waved his hand back at her and kept on going. He had to get to his room where he could be alone and do some heavy thinking.

Collapsed on his bed with his arms behind his head, Rudy let his mind go over and around and through the middle of all the unbelievable stuff Natasha had said. And the more he thought about it the more believable it all became. There was, for instance, the way Barney used to react to any mention of his sleep sessions in class. Even though he must have realized that no one else took it seriously, except maybe the teachers, Barney had been very sensitive about it. It hadn't paid for anyone to tease him about it.

And then there were the dangerous games. Looking back, Rudy remembered how Barney's whole personality seemed to change when one of his “highly fatal” projects was about to happen. Like when he thought up the swing across Wild Horse Gulch or one of his other daredevil schemes—and the good old “whatever” Barney would disappear and it was no use even to think of arguing with the stranger that was left behind.

So that was what Natasha had meant the other night when she said “poor little Barney.” She meant that lucky old good-looking, popular Barney had a problem too. A serious one. Not a phobia, perhaps, but on second thought it was very like a phobia, because it also had to do with fear. A terrible “excessive and inappropriate” fear that his beautiful, glamorous parents were about to dump him for good.

The concept took a lot of getting used to. Rudy was still getting used to it a lot later when a new and even more mind-boggling idea occurred to him: Maybe looking for gold in the old mine was just one more example of Barney's powerful need to prove that he was as daring and heroic as his rodeo star parents.

Rudy was halfway out of the room on his way to the telephone in the kitchen before he realized that it was much too late to be calling the Crooked Bar Ranch, and that the whole subject was not the sort of thing that one discussed on the telephone. In fact, it was not the sort of subject that one discussed at all without giving the matter a lot of careful thought.

Rudy got back into bed and started on the careful thinking.

R
UDY SPENT A
lot of time that night thinking about what he wanted to say to Barney. But on Wednesday morning when they did talk on the phone, Barney was too busy practicing roping to say much at all.

“Hey, Rudy-dudey.” Barney sounded excited, almost breathless. “I've been working on my roping since seven o'clock and I'm getting a lot better. My dad says I'm better than most of the kids he's seen competing in the junior events. Why don't you come on out and watch?”

But since Rudy had to baby-sit in the afternoon there really wasn't time. Thursday was pretty much the same, a slightly longer phone conversation in the morning, mostly about roping and calf riding, and that was all. And on Friday, Barney left for Montana. But by then Rudy had almost decided not to talk to Barney about the things that Natasha had said, anyway.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized how hard it would be to discuss really personal things with Barney. Things like what bad parents Jeb and Angela had always been, and about how Barney only wanted to do the gold-mining thing, as well as a lot of other dangerous or even illegal stuff, because he needed to feel as brave and daring as his famous parents. It was really hard even to imagine bringing up embarrassing things like that with a person like Barney.

And there was another reason, too, that Rudy was glad to put off mentioning any of it to Barney—it really was beginning to look like it might not be necessary. It just might be that the Pritchard's Hole problem had solved itself. Of course, Rudy hadn't come right out and asked, but Barney hadn't so much as mentioned the gold mining, or Tyler Lewis, when they were together on Tuesday, or later on the phone. Not a word. It was as if he was so excited about going on the rodeo circuit that he'd lost all interest in anything else. Maybe being with his parents in Montana and getting to compete in the rodeo was giving him enough of a chance to prove whatever it was he needed to prove to himself. Enough for one summer anyway. It would be great if that turned out to be true.