Skies Like These (9 page)

“Don't you feel bad about that?”

Roy frowned. “Don't forget who the real victims in this situation are. Losing a few days of business won't kill a guy like Farley. It may shake him up and have people in town look at his store differently, but we both know fish heads won't close his doors.” He put the cleaned pipe down and picked up a different piece. “And what's wrong with having fun along the way? You have to admit it
was
funny to watch those people leave the store with their noses pinched shut.”

Jade walked over to two large contraptions that looked like brick and steel tubs, lying on their sides. “What's this stuff?”

“The smaller one is the furnace. It melts the glass rods and is where you do the gathering. And the bigger one is called the glory hole. It's where you maintain the heat of the glass to shape it.” Roy walked over to a stack of long steel poles and picked one up. “Let me walk you through it.”

“Is it safe?” Jade asked.

“Since the furnace isn't running it is. Everything is cold now. Once it gets going though, we can't be in here without my dad. The kiln gets to be about twenty-three hundred degrees Fahrenheit.”

“I didn't know there was a twenty-three hundred degrees.”

Roy walked over to the sideways tub and opened a small door. “The bowl inside this furnace is called a crucible. It holds the melted glass. You start by putting your blowpipe into the liquid glass and twisting a little bit onto the end of the pipe. It's kind of like cotton candy … the way you twist it onto the pipe one layer at a time.”

He walked over to a workbench covered with tools that looked like huge salad tongs and wooden ladles. “Then you shape the glass with these, layering on more glass as you build your piece. Your final step is to put it in the kiln over here for the annealing process.”

“What's that?” Jade said, struggling to keep it all straight.

“Annealing is when you allow the glass to cool slowly. That keeps it from cracking. Got it?”

“Got it.” She ran her hand along the opening of the kiln. “It sure seems lousy to have to get rid of this stuff.”

“I know.” Roy set the wires down. “But once the store gets going again, my dad can replace it. There's always glass equipment for sale online, but the store lease only has until the end of summer.”

Jade began to see how a boy like Joshua Parker could become Roy Parker. How his whole purpose was built around following his grand dreams … and how he expected that same level of devotion in others.

She had to ask. “I understand that you like Butch Cassidy and that you've learned all about him. But what are the real chances of you being related? I mean, Parker is a pretty common last name.”

“Maybe,” Roy said, “but Butch was raised in Beaver and Circleville, Utah. That's just a short ride from here.” He picked up a dish towel and began drying the pipes. “It may be a common last name, but not all of those people are from the exact same area as the original Roy Parker. Besides, I feel a real connection to him. I don't need to prove anything to myself. I only want the paperwork to close the mouths of some kids at school.”

“You use your nickname at school, too?”

“I use it everywhere,” Roy said, defensive. “It's who I am.”

Jade could guess Roy had a hard time with other kids. Cowboys were likely accepted, but not ones who claimed such royal descent. “What's stopping you from sending away for your genealogy today?”

He rubbed his finger and thumb together.
“Dinero.”

“How much will it cost?”

“Three hundred dollars for the complete set of records. I'm going to hire a specialist to track my line all the way back to the 1800s.”

“Well,” Jade said, “I hope you're able to do that real soon.”

“Me, too. Which reminds me”—Roy looked at his watch—“we better get going. Farley's expecting us.”

“Do you honestly think we should take that job? What if Farley's dangerous?”

Roy began piling the furnace pieces back into a cardboard box. “He's a slimeball without a conscience, but I'm not sure he's smart enough to be dangerous. Besides, I can handle myself and I need to get inside that ranch and see how Farley works. You're not going to go along with my bank-robbing plan, so this may be our only chance to find a way to bring him down.”

“Regardless of the consequences?”

Roy shoved the box aside, left the workshop, and started walking. Jade grabbed the flyers and followed. She didn't want to. What she wanted to do was take Roy by the shoulders and shake him and tell him to knock it off. She wanted to remind him he was the one who said Farley was a snake and that they both needed to stay away.

But none of that would change Roy's mind. Kip Farley was offering a job, a shot at possible information, and, even more intriguing, a way for Roy to work on a real ranch.

It was more than the boy could resist.

 

17

Mucking out stalls was not Jade's idea of fun.

“A ranch hand has to start somewhere,” Roy said when she complained.

Jade pointed to a man riding a chestnut mare in the field. He pulled on the reins, dancing the horse behind a cluster of goats. “That,” she said, “is a ranch hand. What you are is a reeking stable boy.” Her face was crumpled up from the stench of sweat and manure baking in the summer heat.

Roy looked right through Jade and out across the acres of grass and tidy rail fences that composed Kip Farley's property. Then he tucked his chin down and got back to work. “No one is forcing you to stay.”

Jade stepped outside the stable. The air was heavy and thick. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand, causing the beads of sweat to form a trickle down her cheek. The brilliant sun hung low and oppressive in the sky—not a single cloud in sight.

A bell clanged out across the stagnant heat.

“Lunchtime,” Roy said, leaning his pitchfork against a post.

“Thank heavens, I'm starving.”

“Right,” Roy said, knocking Jade's shoulder with his as he passed, “all that bellyaching must have worked up quite an appetite.”

“I helped.”

“If pushing around hay and complaining at every turn is helping, then you sure did.”

“What's your problem?”

“Look, I'm here to do a job. Either you're with me or you're not. Decide now because I'm tired of you bringing me down.” He reached his hand out. “For once in your life, take a chance.”

Jade bit her bottom lip. Slowly, she raised her arm and placed her hand over his.

Roy wrapped his fingers around hers and smiled. “Off we go,” he said.

*   *   *

Lunch was taquitos, red rice, and pinto beans with squares of white onion floating in the sauce. All of it steaming hot. Anita, the root beer woman, served the food to a line of workers from behind a wide plank table. She was short and frail with apple-leather skin draping from her pointed cheekbones and scrawny arms.

“Back of the line,” she snapped, smacking a heavily tattooed worker's hand with her bean ladle. He had tried to cut in front of Jade and Roy. Tiny as the woman was, her voice let everyone know who was in charge. “Plate,” she said when Jade stepped up. Jade raised her plate. The woman plopped a ladle of beans and a spoonful of rice into the middle. “Two taquitos,” she said. “No wasting.” When Roy stepped up behind Jade, the woman did the same thing but gave Roy a once-over and said, “Three taquitos.”

Roy stood up tall like he had been awarded the lunch grand prize. He loaded three fat taquitos onto his plate as the woman said “Five taquitos” to the man in line behind him. Roy ran his eyes over the hulking five-taquito man and dropped his shoulders. Jade held back a giggle.

“Let's sit over here.” Roy started for an empty table in the blistering sun.

Jade eyed the crowded tables under the shade of three massive pines but Roy was already sitting down. She kicked her tennis shoe in the dirt and followed. “It's hot over here,” she said once she got to the table.

“True,” Roy said. “But this spot has the best view.”

Jade looked at Farley's main house off to the right. “What's to see?”

“We can scope out
la casa
. Get the lay of the land,” Roy said, shoving a taquito into his mouth.

“Is it necessary to talk like that?”

“Talk like what?” Roy swallowed and leaned over the table. “I saw him put his dog in the pickup and leave when we were stacking hay. I'm pretty sure the house is empty.”

“Pretty sure?”

“Cowboy up, Jade. Farley's gone. His housekeeper is busy serving field hands.” He shoveled down three scoops of beans, pushed his plate aside, stood up, and twisted his belt buckle. “This is our chance to take a quick peek inside.”

Jade grabbed a taquito and followed Roy as he ducked to the side of a barn and around the back of the main house. He walked crouched over, shoulders hunched, as if that would somehow make him invisible. When he got to the back door, he knocked. “Just in case,” he said.

When no one answered, he turned the brass knob, pushed the door open, and stepped into Kip Farley's mudroom. “You take left and I'll take right.”

“Wait,” Jade said. “What are we looking for?”

“Opportunities.” He peeled off to the right and Jade went through the kitchen and down the hallway to the left, which led to the living room.

Oil paintings hung on every square inch of wall.

Every.

Square.

Inch.

They were side by side, top to bottom. Horses and mountains and lakes and buffalo—each frame crowding the next. Above the couch was a bright orange, red, and black painting of round, soft poppy petals.

Jade reached out and touched the bumpy golden frame.

“Psst!” Roy called from behind her. “No touching.”

“I think this is an O'Keeffe.”

“O-who?”

“Georgia O'Keeffe is a famous Western painter. We studied her in art last year.”

Roy looked at the paintings covering the walls. “What a mess.”

“Look at this one.” She pointed to a painting of a purple-and-green buffalo head. “I can't remember who the artist is, but I know it's someone important.”

“So this is what he did with the money he got from grinding our family business into the pavement?”

“Gallery-quality pieces like these don't come cheap.”

“I told you he was a snake.”

“It's not a crime to be successful,” Jade said, walking over to a bronze sculpture of a bucking bronco on an end table.

“How much you figure something like that is worth?”

“Hard to say for sure, but I know it's a lot.”

Roy's eyebrows jumped up. “For that?”

“Farley has good taste.”

“Interesting,” Roy said. “I've seen enough here. Let's scoot.”

“Gladly.”

Just then the back door opened with a clanging of pots and pans. Roy raised his finger to his lips and jerked his head toward the front door. Jade nodded. As the two slid out, she noticed a horseshoe nailed to the wall beside the door frame. It was turned with the ends pointing up to heaven.
That's for good luck,
Jade mouthed.

Roy flipped the horseshoe upside down and whispered, “It's about time your luck ran out, Kip Farley.”

 

18

Apricot-tinted light dissolved into the red dirt of Aunt Elise's yard, making everything look soft and golden. Jade had worked all day at Farley's ranch and then walked across town with Roy, passing out the astronomy-class flyers. Her legs felt like noodles with tennis shoes at the ends.

Aunt Elise was leaning against a post at the corner of her front porch, scratching Astro behind the ears. His tongue dangled out the side of his mouth and his eyes were slit with pleasure. A large black dog sat up by the front door, tail thumping loudly against the planks.

“Long day?” Aunt Elise asked when Jade came up.

“Sure was.” Jade motioned to the new dog. “Is this the Governor?”

Hearing his name sent his tail into overdrive. “The one and only,” Aunt Elise said. “What were you two doing?”

“Roy took me to see some horses.” It was mostly true.

Aunt Elise raised an eyebrow, gave Jade a curious look, and then went back to scratching Astro's ears. “Well, that does sound like Roy. If it has anything to do with being a cowboy, he's all over it like a chicken on a june bug.”

Jade laughed. “He sure is.”

Lobo came loping around from the kennels with Yaz and Genghis Khan bouncing behind. The three dogs nudged one another, fighting for Jade's attention. Emerson, the beagle, saw Jade, sat down, and howled into the copper sunset. It all felt very welcoming, as if they had missed her.

“So…” Aunt Elise drew the word out long and easy. “I followed a recipe today.” She was acting casual, but Jade could see a twinkle in her expression. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished.” Jade followed her aunt into the kitchen, which smelled of thyme, butter, and sage.

“I started digging through some boxes of old books this morning and came across this.” Aunt Elise held a red-and-white-checkered cookbook up high. “Your mother gave it to me as a gift years ago.” She opened the book by tugging on a ribbon marker and placed it in front of Jade. “Behold our dinner!”

“Beef Stew Extraordinaire,” Jade read. She tried to sound positive, but couldn't help thinking about Aunt Elise's last attempt at stew.

“I did exactly as it said with the exception of one teeny tiny substitution.”

Jade froze.

“I have a friend on the other side of town who raises buffalo,” Aunt Elise said. “It makes for good stew meat because it's so lean. Did you know buffalo is one of the leanest meats? Certainly the leanest of any red meat.”