Читать книгу Finally a Hero - Pamela Tracy - Страница 12
ОглавлениеHe must have quite a story, but Eva didn’t want to know what happened in the next chapter. She liked her days to run smoothly. She’d spent her whole life, it seemed, trying to make sure the people around her were happy and that everything was in its place.
Sometimes she succeeded.
The past hour left her feeling worried and disgruntled. She exited the restaurant and climbed into the royal-blue Ford F-250 pickup decorated with the logo and phone number for the Lost Dutchman Ranch.
Driving out of Apache Creek township and into the rural area where the ranch waited, Eva remembered every detail from the restaurant. The man had obviously just had a son dropped in his lap by a mother who wasn’t much of a mother—or grandmother, apparently. Eva couldn’t even fathom the type of woman who’d sneak out of a restaurant leaving family behind not knowing.
She wondered how the man would get Timmy out from under the table. She had never been around reticent children. Her sisters had never been afraid to show their feelings.
She didn’t remember fear being part of her childhood—not fear of people, anyway. Fear of horses was a whole different story. The worst thing, the thing that made the Hubrecht clan dysfunctional, was her dad’s habit of thinking he always knew best, and that his word was law, to be followed without question. But he’d never made them feel like they should be afraid. He’d never raised a hand to them. His punishment was “You’re grounded. No television or horse privileges for a week.” And under all the bluster was a heart made of gold. Eva saw it even if her sisters didn’t.
But Timmy was afraid.
Eva could only wonder what would happen to the boy now that the man had been left in possession of his son. And she couldn’t quite shake the connection she’d felt with the man the first time his gaze had caught hers. There was something about him that made her want to get involved. But no, she’d held the enabler card before, and it never played well for her.
And this time, she hadn’t even gotten the name of the man who caused her such angst.
Pulling into the Lost Dutchman Ranch, she finally relaxed. She felt like she’d already put in a full day, though it was just past lunchtime. No way could she be a social worker like her sister Elise. Her small involvement with the people at the restaurant had totally drained her.
“We have nothing to complain about,” she announced to Patti de la Rosa, Jane’s mom, as she entered the lobby and headed for the front desk.
“I told you that a long time ago. Jane just called and told me all about what happened at the restaurant. Poor man. Jane says he’s still there trying to get his son to come out from under the table. I’m going to add him to the prayer list at church.”
Eva sat down behind the front desk and checked the answering machine and their website.
“You don’t want to do that,” Patti advised her. “It’ll just depress you.” As office assistant and head of housekeeping, Patti knew everything there was to know about the workings of the Lost Dutchman. “I already put up the cancellation specials. Not even ten minutes passed before a family called in, canceled their original reservation and hung up. Then, five minutes later, they called and re-reserved under the special price, this time using the husband’s name and card.”
Eva closed her eyes. When a block of rooms suddenly opened up, it was good policy to offer last-minute price breaks to potential guests who might be looking for spur-of-the-moment deals.
Today it hadn’t worked in the ranch’s favor.
“We did get two bookings for October,” Patti said helpfully.
October filled no matter what. Snowbirds flocked to Arizona for its perfect weather.
“I was really hoping for a good summer season,” Eva said. “I need to go find Dad and tell him we can’t afford this new hire. We can’t.” She checked the dining hall, the kitchen and her dad’s office. He wasn’t in their living areas. Standing on the back porch, she looked down the desert landscaping and toward the barn. That’s where he’d be.
She had a love/hate relationship with the barn. On one hand, she hated the way it made her feel: scared, trapped, inadequate. On the other, she came from a long line of horsemen and very much wanted to join their ranks.
She wanted to ride with her dad, her sisters, her someday children.
Go down there, she told herself. You’re a grown woman, strong, and you manage the Lost Dutchman. All of it.
Her feet obeyed, and one step at a time, she walked the half mile to the barn. She could have hopped on one of the ranch’s all terrain vehicles, but that would have gotten her there sooner. She’d face the barn when she got there, but she wasn’t exactly in a rush to make that happen.
She found her father in the saddle room, mending a hobble strap. Chris LeDoux played on the radio.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on, Dad? Do we really need another hand?”
Jacob Hubrecht still had a full head of hair, light brown and brushed to the side. His eyebrows were bushy, his mouth wide. Age had given him wrinkles, very defined, but he still looked strong, and had certainly held on to all his stubbornness through the years. He didn’t pause in his task. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve got the good of the ranch in mind. Leave it be.”
Her two younger sisters had rebelled against his unyielding authority. Eva, however, usually understood where her father was coming from and agreed. Not this time, though.
She didn’t move, just stared at him.
“I’m not getting any younger,” he finally said. “It’s time to put some new, young, strong employees into place—” his hands, always so capable, formed into fists “—so that when I need to work less, I can know all is being cared for.”
He had to be talking about the horses because Eva could do everything else.
She wanted to do everything. Then he wouldn’t be hiring a hand they couldn’t afford.
Behind her, a horse snorted as if reading her mind and knowing she couldn’t possibly care for the mares and geldings like her father did.
“So, this new guy is permanent?”
“Probably not. Mike Hamm called and asked for a favor.”
Mike Hamm was the prison minister. Yes, this was an example of her father not being able to say no to another hard-luck case.
And deep down, she knew he was thinking, “I have three beautiful daughters, but I needed to have me a boy.”
Well, Eva could shoot as well as any boy. Her younger sister Elise could ride like a boy. And the baby of the family, Emily, was a master with a hammer and nails. Half the fences on the ranch were still standing because of Emily. As a matter of fact, Emily had helped Dad draw the plans for most of the Lost Dutchman’s lodgings.
Eva shifted nervously on her feet, all too aware of the two ailing horses in the barn who restlessly watched her. One had stepped on a muck rake and suffered a gash near her eye. Dad was keeping her under observation for a day or two. The other had a dislocated ankle. His future looked grim.
Eva was no help at all. The sight of blood made her woozy, and the thought of trying to help hold a horse while a vet or some of the hands examined it made her...yup, just as woozy.
She’d owned fifty plastic horses as a preteen. She’d had posters of horses on her wall. She’d read Black Beauty and all the Walter Farley books twenty times. Yet the real McCoy, an actual horse, scared her to death.
Daisy, the horse with the gash, snorted again.
Her dad continued. “I know he needs a job. I know he moved a lot and was in foster care. He needs a place to set down roots. Mike says he worked at horse camps during a few summers and remembers the time as the best in his life.”
Great, she was being replaced by a city slicker who only had to muck stalls for two and a half months a few summers.
“I don’t like this change—” Eva had more to say, but Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson’s “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” started playing. Her father pulled his cell from his back pocket and answered, “Hubrecht.”
As she walked away, she could hear him saying, “Yeah, I’ve been expecting your call.”
And wasn’t that typical. With a stranger, some shiftless criminal he’d never even met, her father was all expectation. But he had no expectations for her.
Just disappointment.
* * *
Jesse gathered up every crumb left over from lunch and loaded the food into a doggy bag. The monotonous task gave him time to think about what on earth he was going to do now that he had his son in his care.
He’d spent about twenty minutes on the waitress’s cell phone, calling his parole officer and Mike Hamm to update them on his situation. The parole officer gave him an emergency appointment for tomorrow. Mike Hamm’s voice mail promised only that Mike considered the call important and would return it as soon as possible.
Jesse knew no other people’s phone numbers, except for the man offering him a job. Taking the keys from the table, Jesse paid the check—twenty dollars gone. Then he tried to get Timmy out from under the table for the second time.
Timmy was happy under the table.
It took another thirty minutes and a dish of ice cream, but finally he hustled Timmy out the door and toward the old Chevy. At least his mother, or really Matilda, had left something substantial behind. Maybe he could sell it.
Good thing his mother hadn’t thought of that.
A quick search through the backseat showed that the suitcases and dirty laundry were all Timmy’s. The half-full boxes contained old games and toys. Not one item in the car belonged to Susan.
Timothy Leroy Scott’s birth certificate was in an envelope in the glove box. Matilda’s name was in the box labeled Mother, but no name was listed for Father. Jesse did the math. Timmy would be five and yes, he’d been with Matilda during the time she’d conceived Timmy.
He reminded himself to be glad his mother had gotten more organized. When she’d dumped Jesse with relatives, sometimes school wasn’t an option because he never arrived with a birth certificate.
Maybe that’s why he’d never finished high school—too far behind and too busy trying to survive.
“This car belong to your mother?” Jesse asked.
Timmy stared at the ground.
“What am I going to do with you?” Jesse asked.
Timmy didn’t move, not an inch.
“Has Matilda—has your mother—left you before?”
Finally a vague response, a slight shake of the head. At least, Jesse thought it was a shake. It could have been the kid simply needed to get his hair out of his eyes.
“Well, get in.”
Timmy started to climb in back, but Jesse said, “No, the front’s okay.”
The Chevy started on the third try. The radio refused to turn on. Come to find out, the air conditioner didn’t work. Jesse had no sooner pulled onto the street than the rearview mirror fell off.
“Great,” Jesse said, tossing it in the backseat with the rest of the junk.
The prison minister would be proud. Since leaving jail this morning, Jesse’d been maneuvering around unexpected roadblocks one right after another, and there’d been not a curse word uttered. His tongue was bleeding a little from where he’d bitten it too hard, but still...progress.
Timmy didn’t say anything, just looked from the space where the rearview mirror should have been to Jesse as if expecting to get blamed.
“It will be all right,” Jesse assured the boy. “My mother did the same thing to me many times, and believe me, many a day I felt as conflicted as you probably do right now.”
Timmy gave the barest of shrugs and concentrated on whatever he could see from the window. There wasn’t much. Apache Creek was one long street of businesses, most looking fairly deserted. There were homes to the north and the freeway and hotels to the south. East and west were desert and a smattering of homes.
The main color was brown.
Checking his watch, Jesse groaned. It was now almost two. He needed to call the man offering him a job.
A job.
Right. Could be that opportunity was a thing of the past, given his new circumstances. Jesse was supposed to be a single man intent on getting his life back together. Instead—for the next few days, anyway—he’d be a man who had no clue what to do, especially not with a kid.
And no money.
Maybe he could get on the internet and find some of those long-lost relatives who’d taken him in when Susan disappeared on some misguided quest for happiness.
No, the best had merely tolerated him.
The worst had...
No way could Jesse turn over to them a five-year-old who flinched after spilling a glass of water and who hid under tables.
He had to get this job.
The first convenience store didn’t have a pay phone. The second one didn’t either, but the girl behind the counter handed over her cell and said, “Go ahead, man. Just don’t leave the store.”
Jesse motioned Timmy toward the candy aisle. Good, something sparked the kid’s interest. Then, Jesse pulled out the folded, wrinkled paper from his back pocket. For the past week, he’d stared at the name penciled on the paper every day, thinking about opportunities and fresh starts.
And freedom.
He punched in the number and after just one ring heard, “Hubrecht.”
“Yes, hello, sir...” Jesse cleared his throat and started again because gravelly wasn’t the tone he was going for. “Yes, hello, my name is Jesse Campbell and—”
“Yeah, I’ve been expecting your call. Where are you?”
Glancing at the sign outside, Jesse said, “A Circle K next to a Burger King right on what looks to be the main street.”
“I’ll come get you.”
“I have a vehicle. I can meet you if that’s easier.”
“Good. There’s a restaurant just down the way, the Miner’s Lamp Café and—”
“I just ate lunch there.” No way did Jesse want to return. “Look, there’s a park across the street. I can see some picnic tables.”
“It will take me about twenty minutes,” Jacob said.
“Thank you.” Jesse handed the phone back to the girl, grabbed two bottled waters from the case, and then paid for them and a candy bar for Timmy.
Jesse noticed that Timmy waited until he thought Jesse wasn’t looking and put the candy bar in one of his pockets.
Jesse’d done that a time or two also, saving food for later in case mealtimes became sporadic or nonexistent.
“It will melt,” Jesse told him. Then he handed Timmy a dollar. “Go ahead and enjoy your candy bar. If you find you need another one later, you can buy one. Never steal.”
Never steal, never steal, never steal.
Timmy took the money and put it in the pocket with the candy bar, which he still made no move to eat.
Wherever Susan and Timmy had been, it must not have been Arizona in July. Well, based all on the things that had gone wrong today, a little melted chocolate would be the easiest to fix.
There were two boys already at the park, both older than Timmy. They didn’t really play on the equipment. They were more interested in chasing, pushing each other to the ground and roughhousing. Timmy didn’t even look at them. Instead, he sat in the sand, found an old plastic spoon and began digging.
Jesse watched him, wondering what on earth he was going to do with a kid. At this moment, he wasn’t sure if he even remembered how to take care of himself. One thing about prison—you were told what to do and when to do it, and knew the consequences if you got caught not complying.
Tomorrow Jesse needed to drive into Phoenix and meet his parole officer. Now that would be fun. Good old Child Protective Services would get involved, and one more government organization would be breathing down Jesse’s neck.
If they didn’t take Timmy away entirely. He already dreaded the thought of each and every hoop he’d need to jump through.
July in Arizona was unrelenting. The heat pressed down, and Jesse felt sweat trickling over his shoulder blades. Timmy didn’t seem to notice or care. The plastic spoon broke. Timmy left it where it was and dug with his hands instead. He looked like he was on a mission.
Maybe he wanted to escape.
Jesse could sympathize with the sentiment, but after five years of confinement, Jesse found that finally being in a wide-open space was so overwhelming, he couldn’t breathe.
Everything he’d dreamed for the past few months was shattering around him. He’d left prison with a set of goals cemented in his mind, and already those goals were being either erased or challenged.
He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to make new ones or even battle for the old ones.
No, he couldn’t think that way. He’d come too far.
But, really, Jesse couldn’t think of a worse day to gain a son, especially a son who didn’t talk.
“You thirsty?” Jesse asked.
Timmy ignored him.
Jesse thought back to the past three months. He’d kept waiting for someone to say, “There’s been a mistake. You won’t be paroled.” When he’d asked Mike Hamm for a scripture, Mike had turned to Joshua: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Amazing how a few words from God could help.
Amazing how they’d helped more during incarceration than now.
The street remained empty. Everyone was at work or at home in the air conditioning. Even the little boys who were wrestling had reached their limit and were trudging across the parking lot.
He thought about the woman from the restaurant, the one who’d watched the latest chapter in his life unfold, and wondered what kind of life she had. She didn’t seem the kind who needed a hand up. No, she’d been driving a huge truck. And her build had been strong, sturdy—not frail and wispy like Matilda or Susan.
She was probably heading to some nice, comfortable home, where family waited and the biggest conflict was whether the television was turned to a do-it-yourself show or a Hallmark movie. Jesse could barely even picture what that sort of life would be like.
A dark blue truck pulled into the dirt lot by the park. This town was hopping with trucks—his little Chevy definitely said “tourist.” Jesse started to stand, hoping it was Jacob, but then the two little boys, who’d been all the way to the street turned and ran to the pickup.
Sitting back down, Jesse watched as they attacked the man, who looked a little old to be their father, grabbing him around the legs as he stepped down from his truck and yelling, “Howdy, Mr. Jacob!”
Jesse again stood.
The man wore jeans, a tucked-in, long-sleeve shirt and an old brown hat. He reached in his pocket and pulled out two pieces of what had to be candy as he asked, “How’s your mother?”
“Sleeping. She told us to get out of the house cuz we kept waking her up.”
Jacob said, “I’ll see about having you come out to the ranch one day next week. You can do some riding and help out a bit.”
“Yeah!”
The two boys ran off, possibly to tell their mother, possibly to keep Jacob from changing his mind.
Grabbing a folder from somewhere on the front seat, Jacob closed his truck’s door and ambled over to where Jesse waited.
“Park’s a mighty strange place for a meeting. The restaurant would have been nicer, cooler. We could have had tea.” He stuck out his hand.
Jesse awkwardly took it. Handshaking wasn’t something he’d done much of lately. “Yes, well, we’d already eaten and—”
Jacob looked at Timmy and then back at Jesse. “You never said anything about a kid.”
“This is my son. When my mother picked me up this morning, she introduced me to him. Before then, I didn’t know he existed, and...” Jesse’s voice trailed off as he tried to think of the best way to phrase the rest of it.
“And?” Jacob prompted him. He wasn’t exactly frowning. He had more of a here-we-go-again look on his face.
“When she dropped me off at the restaurant, she left Timmy.”
One of Jacob’s eyebrows raised. “For good?”
“Apparently.”
“Are you saying that the single ranch hand I hired really isn’t single?” Jacob started shaking his head. “The position’s not meant for a family man.”
Jesse swallowed, and thought back to the Bible verse: Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
In a voice stronger than he felt, Jesse said, “Sir, it looks like I’m a family man for a while, but that won’t keep me from doing exactly what you expect me to do. I’m a hard worker. Timmy doesn’t take up much room, he’s quiet, and we’d both appreciate a chance. I promise you there’ll be no problems.”
Jacob still shook his head and stood. “Your quarters would be a room, one room, in the sleeping quarters with the other two hands. That’s no place for a kid.”
“It’s better than the car where we’ll be sleeping tonight. It’s better than a shelter in town amidst a bunch of strangers.”
Jacob didn’t even blink. “I wish I had better news for you, son, but taking on the two of you is more than I’m prepared to do. I had misgivings about taking on just you.”
He started for his truck, interview over. Jesse tried to think of something that would change the man’s mind. Minutes ago, Jacob had offered a day of play and work to two little boys with a sick mother. That was the kind of boss Jesse needed in his life right now.
And Timmy probably needed it even more.
“Sir.”
Jacob didn’t turn around.
“Sir, I’ll work for free the first week. You need to provide only a place for us to sleep and food.”
Jacob opened the truck’s door.
Before he could climb in, Jesse said a word he hadn’t said in a long time. Not when they’d sentenced him, not when he’d faced his first adversary while incarcerated and not when he prayed.
“Please.”
