The Girl Who Could Fly (20 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

R
OW UPON row of freshly ploughed soil had been painstakingly planted already that day and it pleased Joe that all signs were pointing to a good crop. When the snows fell that year, he and Betty would have more than enough to last the winter. At the house, Betty stepped onto the porch and rang the old bell. Joe then obediently put down his tools and led the old mare back to the barn for lunch. Pausing in the yard to wipe the dust from his homespun shirt, something unusual in the distance caught Joe’s eye, so much so that he stood there for a while, watching it grow larger and larger.
    In the kitchen, Joe’s transfixed form became a source of irritation to Betty, who had a ladies’ auxiliary meeting that afternoon and a schedule that didn’t allow for any dilly-dallying. In short order she bustled to the door. “Mr. McCloud, lunch is on.”
    Still Joe didn’t move and Betty followed his gaze and saw what he saw. Using her hand to shield the sun from her eyes, Betty shuffled next to Joe and watched with the same mute anticipation.
    At first it appeared to be nothing but a black dot, and then it grew to what could possibly be a bird, and then it grew further until there was no mistaking the fact that their girl was returning home to them.
    From up high in the sky, the sight of familiar trees, rivers, and farmlands was a welcome sight to Piper, filling her with gladness and peace. At last, she was back where she belonged. Everything was exactly as it had been before she left it, indeed as it always had been since her birth. It was as if no time at all had passed since Dr. Hellion had taken her away in the helicopter, and even her ma and pa were in exactly the same positions that she’d last seen them in.
    Gently descending, Piper set her feet down in the dirt at the edge of the yard and suddenly felt nervous. Were her ma and pa going to be sore at her for flying? Was she going to get into trouble and sent to her room? Maybe they hadn’t missed her and didn’t want her back at all? The fact that Betty and Joe stood stock-still with expressionless faces did nothing to settle her ever-increasing nervousness.
    “I’m home,” Piper spoke finally, kicking her toe into the dirt.
     Betty nodded. “I expect we can see that well enough.”
    It had been a very long journey back, and for most of it Piper had practiced what she was going to say next. Taking a deep breath for courage, she began quickly.
    “You see, thing is that I fly and I like it and I’m not gonna stop. And I’m real sorry that it’s not to your liking. Trouble is that there isn’t anything else that makes sense to me like flying does.” Piper paused before she got to the hard part and took another deep breath. “So I don’t wanna hide it anymore and I don’t wanna sneak off to the back field. Even if you won’t like it, I’m not gonna lie about it anymore and I’m not gonna do it on the sly. And, well . . . that’s all I have to say.”
    Betty sniffed. “Well, me and your pa ain’t gonna lie to you none neither, we don’t take to this flying much. It just ain’t the way of things for youngens to be gadding about in the sky like that.” Betty looked like she was on the verge of launching into another lecture on the evils of flying, and with only the greatest effort did she managed to rein herself in. Like Piper, she took a deep breath before continuing. “But we had a good spell to think things over and we figure as long as you do your chores and act as the good Lord would want, we’ll just have to take you as you was made.”
    For Betty’s and Joe’s entire lives, and the lives of their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, and so on and so on for as long as anyone in Lowland County could remember, on those twenty acres of land, things had always been the same. Yet today Betty and Joe had taken their very first tentative step toward something different. It was nothing short of earth-shattering and no one could appreciate the incredible sacrifice more than Piper.
    Rushing forward, Piper threw herself into her ma’s and pa’s arms. “Ma, I missed you so much. Pa, I still got my bird, look.” Betty and Joe held their daughter tight.
    “It weren’t the same without you, child.” Joe held Piper tightly. “We’re powerful happy to have you back.”
    Betty didn’t attend the ladies’ auxiliary meeting that day, and after lunch Joe did not return to the fields. Instead Betty and Joe sat down, and Piper talked and told them all about her adventures. She told them almost everything and they listened with wonder and with fear, glad to have their girl back safe and sound. Not once did Betty reprimand Piper for talking too much, so grateful were they to have her lively voice fill the house once more. Piper talked into the night and Betty made her fried chicken and her prized apple pie for dinner, even though it wasn’t Sunday.
    “I always knew it. Them McClouds is flighty and unreliable,” Millie Mae Miller declared at the ladies’ auxiliary that afternoon when Betty’s absence was duly noted. It marked the only time in the thirty years since she first joined that Betty had failed to show up. “Can’t say I didn’t see it coming.”
    A week after Piper’s return, a new member quietly arrived to join the community of Lowland County. It had always been Betty and Joe’s plan to have a house full of youngens, not to mention the fact that a man can’t help but long for a son, so they welcomed Conrad into their home with open arms. Conrad wasn’t quite what Joe might have expected a son to be. However, both Joe and Betty had started to develop a taste for things not being as they had always been on the farm.
    It had been at Piper’s insistence that Conrad come and stay, and he had been extremely reticent. When he finally did arrive, Piper showed him around the place, overjoyed.
    “This is your room.” Piper pulled Conrad into a small, plain room next to the one she slept in. “See here, look.” She threw open an old window overlooking green fields. “You’ve got a great view of the sunrise. And Ma put the new quilt on your bed and Pa made this desk for you ’cause I told him you like to sit and think up stuff.”
    The room was simple and humble, which was why Conrad found himself surprised by feelings of extreme gratitude and thankfulness. His parents had given him the best of everything and yet it had always struck him as meaningless junk. Betty and Joe had given him next to nothing but each item was bestowed with such care and consideration that it was almost painful for him to accept their generosity. From the moment he set foot on the farm, they opened their house and their arms to him, a virtual stranger, with full hearts. Until Piper, Conrad had never met people who gave with such simple kindness, expecting absolutely nothing in return. In contrast, it was only with threats of a public scandal that Conrad had been able to get his father on the phone at all. Even then, Senator Harrington had not been pleased.
    “What is it, Conrad? I don’t have time for this,” he’d snapped when Conrad had called from Letitia Hellion’s office.
    “This call is a courtesy, Father. I’m happy to go to the press first,” Conrad fired back.
    Senator Harrington simmered down and found courtesy for his tone. “I’m listening.”
    “We’ve taken over the facility. Dr. Hellion is no longer in charge. I’m going to expose what is going on here, and I have documentation that proves that you were not only aware of it, but supported it. By my calculation, a conservative estimate of the laws being broken by Dr. Hellion numbers close to twenty. Including murder.”
    “Murder?” The senator’s full attention was now focused on his son.
     “And you have aided and abetted Dr. Hellion, which makes you an accessory to the crime.” Conrad knew that this could easily take down his entire family. His father’s icy silence on the other end of the line only confirmed the weight of his threats.
    “What do you want?”
    “You’ll use your connections and influence to get approval today for the facility to be under your authority. As soon as you have the authority, you’ll turn it over to me. We’ll be running it from now on and you’ll see to it that no one interferes with us or gets in our way.”
    “Connie, that’s impossible. I’d need to get approval from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I’ll need—”
    “Then do it. I’ll expect confirmation by the end of the day.” When his father had called back, Conrad didn’t take his first call, or his second or third or even fourth. He waited until the messages became increasingly more urgent before finally picking up the phone.
    “It’s done.” Senator Harrington had used every favor, every influence, every means available to him by dint of his family, his position, and his wealth to pull off the impossible, just as Conrad knew he would. Unfortunately, there was a caveat, and one Conrad had not been expecting. “But—” The Senator let the word hang in the air.
    “But what?” Conrad prompted.
     “The deal comes off the table unless you agree to one condition.”
    “You’re in no position to negotiate with me, Father.”
    “This is nonnegotiable. You get everything you want on the condition that you never contact me or your mother again. We never want to hear from you or see you and you can no longer use the Harrington name. You are no longer our son.”
    “I see.” Conrad’s face crumpled and he bit his lip to keep from making a sound. This hurt, hurt so much. “Father . . . ?” Conrad stopped himself, taking a deep breath. How was he to beg his father to be his father? How was he to say all of the things he wanted to say before he no longer had a father and effectively became an orphan? In the end there were no words.
    “I agree.”
    The minute the words were out of Conrad’s mouth, the line went dead. The man who used to be his father had hung up and Conrad entered a new life where he was just plain Conrad and no longer Conrad Harrington III.
    Tucked up in a tiny room in Lowland County, day by day, Conrad established himself in his new life, where he was expected to do chores every day and was served up three square meals of good country fare. He grew to like it.
    It was a good thing that Joe and Betty had taken their first tentative steps in accepting change, because Conrad pushed them to their limits and beyond.
    “You don’t say.” Joe shook his head, his brow furrowed.
    Conrad pointed to a detailed diagram of the twenty acres of land the McClouds owned. It included charts and graphs. “By planting an early wheat crop and then alternating with corn and barley you can get three crops in one season per field. In addition, I have engineered this hybrid seed that produces three times the bounty and twice the weight. You’ll be able to harvest the same crops as a two-hundred-acre farm with no additional man power.”
    Joe shook his head in amazement. Holding up the seed that Conrad presented to him, he turned it over in his hand. “McClouds ain’t never done that before.” He considered Conrad’s words, looking out over his fields, and shrugged. “Ain’t no harm in trying it out, though, I guess.”
    Conrad smiled and Joe put his arm around him. Betty rang the bell for dinner and they walked together through the field and across the farmyard to the house. Since Conrad had the house wired for high-speed Internet and built a supercomputer in the kitchen, mealtimes had become an adventure. Conrad and Joe entered the kitchen to find that Betty had been busy downloading recipes, and Moroccan food was on the menu for the evening. Couscous and spiced lamb waited on the table, and Piper excitedly sipped mint tea.
    “Wash your hands, Conrad. Sit yourself down, Joe, or the kebabs will get cold.” Betty busily passed around a plate of exotically spiced carrots and lentils. “Wouldn’t you know it but Piper’s got some news to tell and I made her hold off so that we could all enjoy it.”
    “You’ll never guess,” Piper burst forth, unable to contain herself any longer. “Smitty cracked that big case. He caught the guys with the virus bomb holed up in an old bank vault in Times Square, so that virus can’t hurt anyone now. They’re making him a first-class detective, youngest one ever. Isn’t that something?”
    Betty sniffed and shook her head. “Don’t know what the world is coming to when folks is running around with a bit of virus in a bottle and threatening to make folks sick with it. I’m sure glad we don’t got any of ’em here in Lowland County.”
    “Smitty said that in New York, they got more criminals than anywhere else and he couldn’t be happier about it. He says that there just aren’t enough hours in the day for all he has to do.” Like many of the kids, Smitty had the difficult task of balancing his schoolwork with his exciting new job. It wasn’t easy, but he couldn’t have been more fulfilled. Smitty was also one of the lucky ones whose parents welcomed him back with open arms.
     “Smitty says that just the other night he went to Cirque du Soleil to see Kimber’s show and it was sold out,” Piper continued. “Folks can’t get enough of her new act and he says she’s got more voltage in her fingertips than ever.”
    “Did Smitty apologize?” Conrad asked between mouthfuls. As per usual, Smitty and Kimber were in the middle of one of their fights. This one started when Kimber caught Smitty, yet again, looking at her underwear, and she’d pumped thirty thousand volts into his left leg. Smitty, of course, pleaded his innocence, but Kimber didn’t believe a word of it.
    “Well, Kimber says that she won’t forget but she’ll forgive. Ahmed and Nalen got rid of that tropical storm that was turning into a hurricane off of Cape Canaveral too. They say that now they have the hang of it, there’s nothing to it, and they can’t wait to try their hands at a tsunami. Anyway, Lily landed easy as pie. She told me that after the third or fourth time up to the moon, it’s no different than going to the corner store. She took more pictures for me just the same. Oh, and Myrtle and Daisy faxed that report you wanted, Conrad.” Piper pointed to a stack of papers on the counter.
    Conrad immediately rose from his seat, but Betty fixed a stern finger on him. “Not ’til you finished up your supper, young man. You knows better than that by now.”
     Smiling, Conrad sat down. He might be a supergenius, but he knew better than to cross Betty McCloud when she got that look in her eye.
    “Daisy says that new alligator, the one Violet brought back from that tomb in Egypt, got stuck when he was metamorphizing between a snake and an alligator. He had the head of an alligator and the body of a snake, but was as mad as a hornet. Myrtle fetched Jasper at the Moscow Zoo, where he was healing a sick polar bear, and Jasper came right back and cured him. He said it was just a bad case of indigestion.”