New Way to Fly (21 page)

“I see. But, Angel…” he began cautiously.

“Yes?”

“If there truly is no future for this new relationship of yours, wouldn't it be less painful if you were to come back to New York and remove yourself from constant reminders of things, so to speak?”

Amanda considered this. “You could be right,” she said slowly. “Edward, you could be right.”

“Well, you still have a couple of weeks. You know me, Angel. I'm fully capable of separating my
business and personal life. If you want to come to New York, be my head buyer and my platonic friend, I'll be satisfied with that arrangement. You're still the very best person for the job, whether you sleep with me or not.”

“Edward, you're really a good person, you know that? No matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise.”

“Don't let it get around,” Edward said cheerfully. “I'd hate to spoil my reputation. Besides,” he said with a sudden note of pain in his voice that surprised her, “I can't be all that good, or my Angel wouldn't have fallen out of love with me.”

“Oh, Edward…” She choked, almost blinded by hot stinging tears. “Edward, love is such a mystery. Who knows why we fall in or out of love? If I could figure it out,” she added bitterly, “I'd be a lot smarter and a whole lot happier than I am.”

“Wouldn't we all.”

Edward was silent for a long eloquent moment while Amanda clutched the receiver, feeling the beginnings of a new sense of loss. In a second they'd hang up and another person would be gone from her life forever, leaving her more alone than she'd ever been….

“I'll release you from that promise to have breakfast with me,” he said quietly. “It's a cold dreary
morning, my love. Go back to sleep, and sweet dreams. Call me soon.”

“Yes, Edward, I will,” she whispered. “Have a good trip home.”

She hung up and sat gazing at the telephone, then climbed out of bed and wandered across the room to the window. All alone in the bleak stillness, Amanda stood leaning her forehead against the glass, watching the cold rain fall.

O
UT IN THE HALLWAY
,
one of the ceiling fans needed to be oiled. The mechanism wheezed and clattered on each rotation, echoing down the long silent corridor with a steady dismal rhythm that was unspeakably depressing.

Bubba Gibson lay on his cot with his hands behind his head and stared up at the stained ceiling, wishing somebody would come and do something about the damned fan.

That was one of the worst things about this place, he thought gloomily. You were so helpless to fix anything that troubled you. The only solution was to make a humble request, then wait for the problem to be solved by others who were often too busy or too indifferent to bother. The whole situation was incredibly galling to a man who'd always been self-sufficient, running his own life and business without any help or interference from anybody.

Bubba frowned and rolled his head wearily to gaze at the little white alarm clock on the steel shelf next to his cot.

One o'clock. She'd be here at two-thirty. He sighed, thinking of the desert of time that stretched in front of him, needing to be filled.

These were the hardest days of all, the ones when he knew Mary was coming to visit. He always woke with such a feeling of excitement and anticipation that the day seemed a week long, and every passing hour was increased torture.

And then after she'd come and gone he was so miserably empty and depressed, knowing that it would be a week till the next visit, seven more days of this lonely hell.

He thumbed idly through the pages of a book, wondering what the day was like for all the people he knew, the ones who were out living their lives in the sunlight just as if nothing had happened.

Lovingly, smiling at the mental images, Bubba entertained himself by paging through his memories. He pictured J. T. McKinney riding across the big east pasture at the Double C on a high-stepping sorrel quarter horse whose hide gleamed in the sunlight like a new copper penny. Ken Slattery watching him, and Cal and Tyler, and Pauline was there, too, even though she'd been dead now for…how long?

Bubba frowned, not wanting to think about death, and shifted his thoughts over to the Circle T, where his friend Frank Townsend had once lived. But Frank was dead, too, and Vernon Trent lived there now
with Carolyn. Lucky Vern, out on that beautiful ranch with the woman he'd loved all his life, his stocky body full of energy and his brown eyes shining with happiness….

And then there was the Double Bar, Dave Munroe's old tumbledown spread, and young Brock, whom Bubba had known since the boy was wrapped in hospital blankets, as much of a son to him in the early years as anybody had ever been. Brock had never come to visit him in prison, and Bubba knew why. Like any son, Brock was more outraged by Bubba's behavior than most of the community. He remembered the steady measuring look in Brock's dark eyes, the tightness of his jaw the past year when he saw how Mary was being hurt by her husband's behavior.

Bubba moaned softly and again rolled his head restlessly on the hard flat pillow. “I know, Brock,” he murmured. “I know, son. I was wrong, and God knows I'm payin' for it. Don't hate me, son. Sometimes a man learns things the hard way.”

But Brock's face was still cold and expressionless. Slowly the young rancher's image faded, and Bubba's mind crept over to his own place, to the ranch that he loved almost more than life itself. Tears formed in his eyes as he let himself visualize the big gracious old house, the well-kept buildings, the neat corrals and pastures where he remembered every
horse and cow, every corner and knothole and lump of sod.

Nobody would ever know how much Allan Gibson loved his home, how desperately he yearned to hang on to it. What Bubba wanted, with the intense single-minded yearning of a small child, was simply to go home when they let him out of this hell.

But it wasn't possible. The place had to be sold, and Mary was coming today with the papers to be signed. It wasn't even a regular visiting day, but she'd gotten permission from the prison authorities and called him to let him know she was coming. Just yesterday, they'd taken him down the hall to the telephone, the guard standing nearby trying not to seem like he was listening while Mary Gibson told her husband that she had important news about the ranch and was bringing some papers on Thursday for him to sign.

Numbed, Bubba lifted his gnarled hand and gazed at it, flexing the callused fingers that had done so much hard work over the years, that had clutched a young woman's ripe body in a crazy attempt to hold back the advancing years, that had handed over money to have his own beloved horses electrocuted, in another foolish effort to solve financial problems he'd created for himself.

And today, fittingly, those same fingers would hold the pen to sign away his birthright.

Abruptly, Bubba sobbed aloud and jammed his fist against his mouth. He forced his thoughts away from the dreadful present, back into a far-off sunny past when he and Mary were happy, when she loved him and the ranch was prospering and life was good….

Eventually, mercifully, he fell asleep, and didn't wake until he heard the guard's keys jingling cheerfully out in the hallway.

Feeling like a condemned man on the way to the gallows, Bubba trudged behind the guard's bulky uniformed shape, down the hall and into the visiting room that was drearily familiar by now. But this wasn't a regular visiting day. Only two other women were there with Mary, both still waiting for their husbands.

One of the visiting women held a baby in her arms, and Mary stood nearby, smiling as she bent over the blue-wrapped bundle, her face so soft and tender that Bubba felt a swell of emotion almost unbearable in its intensity.

“Hi, Mary,” he said huskily when she looked up, still smiling, and moved across the room to sit at the table opposite him.

“Hi, Al. You should see that baby. He's so pretty, only a few weeks old.”

Bubba was silent, thinking wearily that the baby's entire life was shorter than the time he'd already spent in this place.

“Al?”

“I get out a year earlier,” he said abruptly. “They told me on Monday. I guess my sentence got commuted, something like that, and they're letting me out next July.”

“Al!” Mary's face turned pink with happiness, and tears sparkled in her clear hazel eyes. “Oh, Al, that's just so wonderful! Monday?” she added. “You knew on Monday? Why on earth didn't you tell me when I called?”

He shrugged, his face heavy with sadness. “It don't make much difference, Mary,” he said. “One year, two years, what difference does it make? Everything's gone anyhow. It don't even really matter whether I live or die, come to think of it.”

“Well, if that isn't the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say,” Mary told him indignantly. “Just plain
stupid,
Allan Gibson! Don't you ever let me hear you talk that way. It's wonderful that you're getting out a year early,” she added in a tart voice, “because I can't stand you lying around here being lazy when there's so much work to be done!”

He felt a little better, enjoying the tongue-lashing. It was good to have Mary stand up to him for a change. She'd always been so shy and withdrawn, so easily hurt that she made him feel bluff and clumsy. But this was a new Mary, able to give as good as she got.

A wave of love for her swept over him, so intense that he felt weak. He looked at her humbly, and then something she'd said penetrated his tired mind, making him sit up a little straighter.

“Work?” he asked. “What work needs to be done, Mary?”

“Oh, God, don't even ask.” She shook her head and ran a hand over her freshly styled hair. “I don't know where the work should even start, Al, but it needs to get done, and I guess it will.”

She opened a briefcase that lay on the floor beside her, taking out a bundle of legal papers. Bubba recognized a bill of sale, and his heart began to pound miserably.

He looked at his wife, summoning a smile, trying to look cheerful. “Well, I guess this is it. End of the line, hey kid?” he said. “Where do you want my John Henry?”

“Right here,” Mary said, pointing at a line near the bottom of the form where she'd already signed.

“Who's buyin'?” Bubba asked, trying hard not to disgrace himself by bursting into tears as he signed his name and gave away the place he loved.

“Jim Sawyer,” Mary said, checking the signature. “Here, too, Al,” she added, holding out another form. “And here.”

He nodded obediently, his mind reeling. “Jim Sawyer! He don't have enough money to buy our
ranch, Mary. With all them kids, he can't hardly manage to—”

“Buy our ranch?” Mary gazed at her husband in disbelief. “Jim's not buying our ranch, Al.”

“But…but Mary, all them papers…” Bubba waved a helpless hand at the mass of legal forms.

Mary smiled and touched his cheek with a gentleness that almost brought the tears to his eyes once more. “Jim's just buying that little piece of our land adjoining his home place. Remember you always told him you'd sell it once the oldest boy got married and they needed to set up another house?”

“Well, yeah. But…” Bubba paused, drowning in confusion, his mind trying hard to grasp what she was saying. “But, Mary, that little piece of land ain't worth more'n…twenty, thirty thousand, at the outside.”

“Forty-one,” Mary said smugly. “I drove a hard bargain.”

“Mary…forty thousand, that's just a drop in the bucket. You done good, but we need a hell of a lot more to buy down the bank notes.”

“Well, it's a start,” Mary said calmly. “It's enough to float a small operating loan, and together with that, I've got the money I need to start my business.”

“You're goin' into business?” Bubba asked faintly, staring at the brisk attractive woman opposite
him, wondering how, all these years, he could have overlooked her beauty and intelligence.

“You bet,” Mary said calmly. “I sure am.”

“Where?”

“Right on our ranch,” Mary said in that same matter-of-fact voice. “Cody approves, and he's even given me a whole year to get going and start showing a solid profit. Right now I'm busy mapping out fences and brooder houses, ordering incubators, making up designs for special breeding pens…”

“Mary,” Bubba interrupted, “what are you talkin' about, girl? What the hell is goin' on?”

Mary Gibson smiled at her husband, her face pink with excitement, her eyes shining. “I'm raising ostriches,” she said.

Bubba sank back in his chair and stared.

“It's a wonderful business, Al,” she said earnestly. “Better than you could ever imagine. I've spent so much time researching it, talking with this other ostrich breeder I just met, checking out contacts, putting together a proposal that Cody could take to the board meeting. Al, it's just foolproof.”

“Ostriches,” Bubba whispered, still gazing at his wife with that look of stunned amazement. “Sweet jumpin' catfish, she's raisin' ostriches.”

“If you laugh,” Mary said calmly, “I'll bash this chair over your head. Now, just listen.”

“Ostriches,” Bubba said, choking.

Mary gave him a cold warning glance, sat straighter in her chair and opened the briefcase.

“Look at the literature, Al. I had these papers photocopied at the library, but most of what I know I've learned from talking to other breeders. Now, with the capital I've got plus what Cody's advancing me, I can buy a breeding male and two females, and once the laying season starts in December, that'll likely guarantee me no less than five eggs a week. I need to buy the incubators and pay for the special fencing up front, but the…”

The woman obviously wasn't joking. Bubba leaned back in his chair and gazed at her, stunned, his mind reeling. “Mary…” he began faintly.

“Be quiet and let me finish, Al,” she said. “Now, a full-grown ostrich weighs about four hundred pounds and the hides sell to leather-makers for close to a thousand dollars each, but that's not the area I'm interested in. The real money lies in raising breeding stock for other ranchers, and that's what I'd like to do. Are you with me so far, Al?”

“Breeding stock,” Bubba said obediently. “Not hides.”

“Right. An egg incubates for forty-two days, and the chicks are eight or ten inches high when they hatch. They eat pellets and drink water right away. They have to be registered as purebred breeding stock, and then all you do is keep them warm, give
them some running room and sell them when they're three months old.”

“For how much?” Bubba asked, gathering himself in hand and beginning to feel a stirring of interest.

Mary looked at her husband. “Two and a half thousand dollars,” she said quietly.

“Two an' a…” Bubba gasped and fell silent as the implications of what she was saying dawned on him. “For
each chick
?” he asked in disbelief. “An' you're gettin'…five a week, you say?”

Mary nodded, smiling happily. “Isn't it wonderful? And Al, they're just the sweetest birds. A lot of people don't like them but, I…I've always liked ostriches,” she finished lamely, her cheeks pink. “I really have.”