Promise (3 page)
Authors: Judy Young
Kaden had not had time to read the rest.
Now, four days after reading part of his father's letter, Kaden stood in the fire tower, binoculars hanging around his neck. He stared absently toward the spot where he saw the white truck turn left. So much was going through his mind, one thought kept interrupting another.
“It wasn't Dad,” he told Kubla. “Dad would know to turn right.”
Even though he said the words aloud, he didn't believe them. Deep in his gut, he knew the man was his father, and the thought made him both excited and apprehensive.
“Why would he turn left?” he said aloud again. He frequently talked to the bird and Kubla always tilted his head
like an attentive listener. “Maybe he already went home. Maybe Gram told him where I was and he came looking for me and now he's heading back to town. What do you think, Kubla? Do you think I should have called down to him?”
Kaden sat down heavily. There was no doubt in his mind. It was what he had waited for for years and worried about for years. His dad was out of prison.
For more than an hour Kaden sat on the floor of the fire tower. Kubla jumped on his shoulder, pulled at his hair, hopped to the floor, untied Kaden's shoes. The bird went through his entire repertoire of attention-getting antics but Kaden didn't seem to notice. Finally determining Kaden was in no mood to play, Kubla settled in Kaden's lap. Kaden absently smoothed the bird's black feathers. The rhythm of cicadas chirping in the heat was hypnotizing. The crow gurgled softly. A fly buzzed in the corner. Kaden's eyes became heavy and his head drooped to his chest.
Kubla heard it first. As he sprang from Kaden's lap, cawing raucously, Kaden startled awake. The bird darted through the window as the sound of a vehicle reached Kaden's ears.
“Dad's back!” Kaden said as he grabbed the binoculars,
his heart racing. Holding his breath, he once again kept his eyes glued to the spot where the trees parted. When he saw a truck through the gap, he lowered the glasses, let out a long breath, and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
Kaden opened the trapdoor on the floor, climbed down a flight of metal stairs, and stopped on the top landing. Standing in full view, he looked toward the log barricade just as the truck pulled up. A blue truck. Emmett's truck.
“Hi, Emmett!” Kaden yelled down as Emmett walked up the path. “What's up?”
“You're up,” Emmett hollered. Kaden grinned. The two always said the same thing whenever Emmett came to the fire tower. “But you need to come down,” Emmett continued. “Gram sent me.”
There was only one time Kaden didn't get home from the tower by suppertime. A furious Gram had walked to Emmett's and sent him to collect Kaden. Kaden had been grounded from the tower for a month, and during that time, Kubla almost forgot who he was.
Kaden turned and hurried back up into the tower cabin, reprimanding himself for falling asleep and wondering how late it was. He opened the lid to a metal chest bolted to the wall and put the binoculars inside. Then he grabbed a coil of rope that hung from a peg. A baseball-size rock with a hole
all the way through it hung from the end. Kaden clattered down the nine flights of stairs to the last landing, twenty feet above the ground. He sat down on the landing, feet dangling over the edge, and wrapped the rope once around the horizontal crossbeam. Then he laced the end of the rope through the loop where the rock was tied and pulled the rope tight around the crossbeam. Keeping a strong grasp on the rope, he wrapped his legs around it and inched down the rope to the ground. Once down, he stepped back and let go of the rope. The rock dropped, its weight pulling the rope off the crossbeam. Kaden coiled the rope, then hid it and the rock in some nearby bushes.
Emmett started the truck as Kaden hopped in and glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It wasn't even four yet. He wasn't late.
“I'm down, but what's up?” Kaden asked. He tried to sound like nothing was on his mind, but his heart was racing; he expected to hear Emmett say your dad's home.
But Emmett didn't say that. All he said was Gram sent me. Kaden suspected it meant the same thing. Neither of them said another word until they got halfway down the dirt road.
“Stop,” Kaden said suddenly. They had just passed the muddy spot where a seep spring always kept a patch of road wet.
“Why?” Emmett asked. “You gotta take a leak?”
Kaden didn't answer. He jumped out of the truck, found a long stick, and stuck it upright in the center of the road where four sets of tire tracks indented the mud.
“What's that for?” Emmett asked as Kaden got back in the truck.
Kaden ignored him. If Emmett wasn't going to talk about what was going on, then he wasn't going to talk either. When they reached the main road, he expected Emmett to turn right, but instead, Emmett turned toward Promise.
“Where are we going?” Kaden asked.
“To the Purple Cow,” Emmett answered. “I thought we'd get an ice cream.”
“Now?” Kaden looked at Emmett. Emmett kept his eyes on the road. The strained silence said more than words. But when they pulled up to the diner with a life-size purple cow standing by the door, Kaden couldn't hold back anymore.
“I already know,” he said.
“Already know what?” Emmett asked, the truck still running.
“About Dad.”
“You do? But Gram asked me . . .” Emmett sounded confused. “How do you know?”
“I read part of the letter that came last Monday,” Kaden
confessed. “And I saw him.”
“You saw him?” Emmett repeated. He turned off the truck but neither of them opened a door.
“At the fire tower. He came there this afternoon. I saw him but he didn't see me. And I wasn't sure it was really him until you came. Then it was obvious.”
“Obvious?” Emmett asked.
“You're usually a motormouth,” Kaden explained, “but today you only said three words.”
“Three words?” Emmett repeated.
“Three words. âGram sent me.' I knew right then.”
“Well, I'll be.” Emmett seemed genuinely surprised. “I guess we might as well go on in, then.” He opened his truck door but Kaden didn't budge.
“I don't want to talk about Dad in there.” Kaden nodded toward the Purple Cow.
“No way,” Emmett said. “You might as well put your business on the six o'clock news if you even whisper a word in there.”
“Then why did we come here? Shouldn't we be going home?”
“I'm supposed to keep you busy,” Emmett said. “Your dad is at the cabins.”
“Right now?” It was Kaden's turn to be surprised.
Dad
must have turned around and gone back up the hill
, he thought.
“Yeah, he's there now,” Emmett answered. “Gram was afraid you'd come back and she wanted to have a chance to talk with your dad first. So she called me and asked me toâ”
“She called you?” Kaden interrupted.
“Oops.” Emmett looked sheepish. “Well, now I've gone and let the cat out of the bag. When Gram got the letter, I made her get a cell phone the next day. She put up a good fight but I won out in the end. She made me promise not to tell you, though, so don't you go and squeal on me.”
“Okay,” Kaden said.
“Now that you know she's got one, you ought to know the number, too. Just in case.”
“Yeah, just in case,” Kaden repeated. He guessed nobody was quite sure about Dad. Not himself, not Emmett, not even Gram.
“The number is 555-862-2165,” Emmett said. “I picked out the easiest number for her. First, all those fives. Then eight equals six plus two, and then, times two equals sixteen and then there is one more five.”
Kaden laughed. “I bet they really loved you in school.”
“Actually, I had a lot of teachers baffled.” Emmett grinned. “Don't know why; but let's go get some ice cream.”
“Okay, but first I want to knowâ”
Emmett interrupted him. “I'm not supposed to tell you anything. I'm just suppose to keep you busy.”
“But what's he like?” Kaden asked. “Will I like him?” He also wondered if his dad would like him, but he didn't say that out loud.
“That will be up to you to figure out,” Emmett said.
Kaden and Emmett walked past the purple cow. A white board hung from its neck with the daily special written on it in purple marker. As they opened the door, the sound of a cow mooing announced their entry.
Inside, the walls were covered with photos of fiberglass cows. There was a Cow-boy with a Stetson hat, a bandana around its neck and spurs on its hooves. There was a Moss-Cow, a Cow-ch Potato, and a Cow-culator. Emmett slid into a booth by a Cow-lendar, a bright yellow Cow-ard, and a Cow-lifornia Cow on a beach towel wearing big sunglasses and a yellow polka-dot bikini. Kaden sat across from him, looking toward a mural of the inside of a dairy barn with
three cows, their backsides facing into the restaurant. As part of the decorations, a real pitchfork leaned against the wall in the corner next to the mural's painted haystack.