Peggy Nicholson - Kelton's Rules

“Huh! This truck could yank that oak out by the roots, if I asked it to—” He jerked a thumb at the swing tree. “Now, where’d you like your bus?”

JACK JOINED ABBY and the children to watch Whitey maneuver the bus farther into the backyard, working it around so that it was finally parked, hood toward the street, tail-lights a few feet from the listing toolshed that stood near the back fence. The bus was nicely shaded by trees, with a strong limb overhanging the engine, in case Whitey needed to set up a block and tackle.

Jack nodded approval, then glanced down at his daughter and flinched. “Katharine Kelton, what am I going to do with you?” To look at her, you’d never guess that her mother had been—was—a beauty. As feminine as a pink powder puff or a feather-trimmed, high-heeled mule.

Kat stuck out her stubborn chin. “I like ’em better this way.”

“Glad to hear it, ’cause if that’s my pen you used, it’s permanent ink.” He sent Abby a rueful look, meant to show he had no hard feelings. You watched the Kat every minute of the day, which, of course, was impossible, or you learned to live with the consequences.

“Oh, I’m sure we can get it off, whenever she likes,” Abby murmured, laying a slim hand on Kat’s shoulder.

The lightest of touches, but it seemed to align woman with girl, consigning Jack to the outside of an invisible circle. Leave her to me, said that gesture.

Fine; so he would. He hadn’t a clue what to do with Kat and it got worse every year. He turned to Sky for some masculine support—and groaned out loud. The kid gave him an embarrassed smirk from under an inked-on mustache, à la Adolf Hitler. “Whatever.” Too much to hope for that Abby would bring a note of sanity to the neighborhood. She was just a new kind of craziness.

He pulled her aside, noting as he did that her ankle was still swollen but apparently functional. “Whitey says the gears are stripped. That means a new transmission, plus the new exhaust. And he thinks your radiator is shot—rusted through at the bottom.”

She’d crossed her forearms under her breasts, as if to hold herself together. “Yes, I knew about the radiator.”

It took real effort to keep his eyes focused on her face. “He can work on it for fifteen dollars an hour plus parts, if you like. That’s less than half of what you’d pay a city mechanic. But he thinks maybe you should junk her. Sell her for whatever you can get.”

“Darn…” Abby tried for a smile. “What a sucker I was. If she hadn’t been such a wonderful color…”

Jack frowned. “Come again?”

“I fell in love with that crimson. It’s why I bought her. I could just picture her parked in front of those red-orange cliffs you see in Arizona Highways with that blue desert sky. I even brought along some green-and-purple striped canvas to make an awning for her.”

“That would’ve been…bright,” he allowed. You’re losing me here, Abby. You make life decisions based on color? Still, he felt himself leaning toward her, she looked so little and lost. “But maybe it’s time to let her go. Buy something a little more practical.” Like a car. “You could rent a truck to get you and your belongings to wherever you’re going, then—”

“Sedona. That’s where we were headed.”

Sedona. He should’ve guessed. Sedona, Arizona, where all the hippies and mystics and misfits and tofu-eaters and New Age scam artists congregated, drawn by power vortexes and drumming circles and too many juice bars. Well, that explains a lot.

“I have a friend out there, a Feng Shui consultant, who owns some land. She was going to let us park our bus on her property. We were going to live in it for the summer while we built something permanent. An adobe, I was thinking.”

Ah, yes, he’d seen this so many times before. A clear case of the Divorce Crazies. “Have you, um, ever built a house before?”

“Well, no, but how hard can it be?”

Jack turned with relief to Whitey, who’d been unhitching the bus and now stumped over to join them, his moth-eaten Pekinese waddling at his worn-down boot heels. “You tell her what I said?” He leaned aside to spit a stream of brown tobacco juice, then pulled out a yellow bandanna to dab primly at his mouth. “Gettin’ the parts is gonna be the hardest thing. Might take some fancy scrounging. There’s a yard over on the reservation. Seems t’me they had an ol’ bus or two.”

“Do you…have any idea how many hours it would take…to fix her?” Abby asked.

How much it would cost, she meant. Jack wondered what kind of settlement she’d gotten. Whether she’d had a competent lawyer. Dithering soft women like this one always seemed to hire kindly bumblers, while their husbands hired sharks.

“There’s no telling. I’d put one foot in front of t’other till she’s done or till you say ‘whoa.’”

She stood, arms clasped tightly around her middle. “Could you tell what caused the brake to fail in the first place?” she said at last. “Or how it popped out of first gear?”

Whitey and Jack exchanged a quick, wry glance, then the old man shrugged. “Driver error.”

“But I wasn’t—” Her eyes widened. “You mean, Skyler? Sky did this? I know he tried to stop it, but you think he—”

“He’s a boy, ain’t he? When I was his age, anything on wheels was fair game. How else is he s’posed t’learn?”

“Driver’s Ed when he’s of legal age!”

“Pshaw! Most ranch kids’re driving by the time they can see over the steerin’ wheel.”

“But he’s not—” Abby swiped a lock of hair behind her ear and blew out her breath. “Okay. What’s done is done. About fixing it, though. Whitey, you really can’t give me an estimate?”

“None that I’d care to stand by.” Whitey shifted from his good leg to his bad and back again. “You know, you might want t’chew it over, Miz Lake. I’m in no hurry. Can’t work on her anyways, ’cept Saturdays and Sundays. We’re pretty hard-pressed out at the Circle C, since Kaley dropped her twins this spring, smack in the middle of calving season. Been up to our ears in puke and diapers ever since, ain’t we, Chang?” He looked down at his feet, then quickly around when he didn’t see the dog.

A feline screech and a flurry of barks dragged everyone’s eyes across the yard. DC shot out from under the truck with the Pekinese snapping toothlessly at his heels, bellowing blue murder.

“Dadblast you, Chang!” Whitey yelled, “Get on back here!”

The tomcat swarmed up the swing oak and disappeared beyond the leaves. Chang hopped twice, scrabbling frantically at the bark—then collapsed in a wheezing heap at the base of the tree.

“Gonna give yourself a stroke someday,” Whitey scolded, though Jack could tell this was for Abby’s benefit. The old man’s face was pink with pride. “I’m mighty sorry, ma’am. If a cat looks at him sideways, he can’t control himself.”

The kids had hopped out of the bus at the first sound of mayhem. Sky leaned against the trunk, staring upward. “DC? DC! What if he falls, Mom?”

“He’s not an outside cat,” Abby explained to Jack. “I don’t think he’s ever been up a tree before. Certainly not a high one.”

He was an hour late for work already and his ladder was across town at the building site. Jack clamped a lid on his instinct to ride to the rescue. For Abby, anytime, but not for a cowardly hairball. “Not bad for a beginner.” And what goes up must eventually come down. No use breaking his own neck speeding the process along. “Once Chang goes away…”

“He’s leavin’ now. We gotta get a move on.” Whitey whisked his snarling companion into the truck, clambered up, then poked his head out the window. “You sleep on it, Miz Lake, and give me a call, okay?” With a wave to the children, he rolled off toward the street.