Bill McAlister said, “Amen.” Then he proceeded to cut into his steak. “Well done,” he assessed with a satisfied nod. “How’s yours?”
Somewhere midprayer, the churning in Elise’s stomach had been replaced with an out-of-place peaceful feeling that she couldn’t justify. As requested, she cut into her steak. “Medium rare,” she informed him.
“That left burner’s going out,” her father grumbled. “Want me to put it back on?”
“No, really, it’s fine. I don’t like it charred.” She wished he’d get on with whatever it was he was going to talk about. Popping a bite in her mouth, she chewed slowly in hopes he wouldn’t expect her to talk as long as she had food in her mouth.
As though he’d picked up on her impatience, Bill McAlister cleared his throat. “Did anyone ever tell you why the McCutcheons and the McAlisters hate each other so much?”
Elise blinked and continued chewing, “I know the feud goes back a long time,” she said once she’d swallowed her bite of meat. “Didn’t the McCutcheons sabotage grandpa’s crop duster? But they were already rivals long before that.”
“Well, yes and no,” her father qualified. “It’s true that eighty years ago, the McCutcheons and McAlisters ran rival airstrips. After World War II, when crop dusting was the new thing, there was a lot of competition between the two families, but I don’t think you’d ever say we hated one another.
“To tell the truth, I felt sorry for the McCutcheons. They say Old Cutch’s dad was never the same after he came back from the war. I was too young to know the difference, but I do recall that he was a bum for years before he died when Cutch was a young teenager. He left their family at a terrible disadvantage. The man just didn’t seem to have his head on straight.”
Elise nodded as her father recounted what had happened so many years before. His version of the story fit with what Cutch had told her about his grandfather being addicted to meth, but it didn’t explain how the feud got started. The families sounded like friendly rivals—a far cry from the hatred that ran between them for her whole life.
Bill continued with his story. “When your grandfather’s crop duster crashed and killed him, the McCutcheons were the first to offer to help. Now, I suppose it was just human nature when some people jumped to the conclusion that the McCutcheons had something to do with your grandfather’s plane going down, what with our two families being rivals and all. But your grandpa had a bad cold that day. He shouldn’t have been flying, but you don’t tell a stubborn man like that what to do. He took a bunch of cold medicine and went out. I imagine…” Her father’s voice faded, full of emotion.
Elise didn’t need her father to finish. She knew how alert a pilot needed to be to successfully maneuver the often-narrow confines above a field. A single error could bring a plane down.
Bill McAlister swallowed another bite of steak before continuing.
“Uncle Leroy was in the Air Force, and I’d been planning to join up, too, but after your grandpa died, I didn’t see how I could do it. Old Cutch, he offered to watch over the business while we were gone. I thought Old Cutch was a good enough man, and he was one of the few people around who knew anything about flying, so I entrusted him with everything when I left.”
Her dad stopped and sawed into his steak, and Elise watched him eat with a growing sense of foreboding. If her father had trusted the McCutcheons so much and didn’t blame them for the accident that had killed her grandfather, then what had happened to cause him to turn against them so completely?
Bill McAlister took a long drink of his tea before continuing. His voice sounded a little uneven when he began again.
“When I went off to war, I left a ring on the finger of Anita Scarth. We were engaged to be married. She said she’d wait for me.” His mouth twitched, and he worked his face into a grimace. He looked down and fiddled with a napkin, clearing his throat before continuing on.
“When I came home two years later, thinking I was going to get married, Anita was already a McCutcheon. Even in her letters, she never let on. But there she was, married a full year and pregnant with Young Cutch.” His strong hands flexed emptily. “I’ve never spoken a kind word to a McCutcheon since. That’s when I stopped denying those rumors about the McCutcheons sabotaging your grandpa’s plane. That’s when the feud really began.”
Bill McAlister turned his attention back to his lunch, and Elise tried to process everything her dad had confessed. He’d loved Anita long ago? But Cutch was less than two years older than she was, and if her father had come home expecting to marry Anita, how had her father fallen in love with her mother so quickly?
She asked her father about the one point she couldn’t work past. “How does my mother fit into all of this?”
Bill McAlister’s eyes dropped, and he looked shamefully at his hands. “I was angry. I felt betrayed. I ran off to Missouri and got a job, figured I’d make Anita jealous or something. I met this pretty girl, and she was mad at her boyfriend, too. We thought we had so much in common with all our anger and feeling jilted that we couldn’t see we were all wrong for each other. Sometimes I don’t think your mother ever really loved me. And I suppose, truth be told, I didn’t love her the way she deserved to be loved, either.”
Elise could barely speak. “Is that—” she took a leveling breath, her lunch forgotten “—the guy she was mad at?”
Bill nodded. “He’s her husband now. They patched things up when you were about a year old. They wanted to start a new life together. She tried to take you, too. She begged me to let you go. But Elise—” her father looked her in the eyes for the first time the whole meal “—you were all I had left. You were my little copilot. You were a true McAlister who loved planes and flying. ‘Plane’ was the second word you learned to say, right after ‘Da-da.’ I couldn’t let her take you. We tried to make things work on your account, but finally she agreed to let you stay with me as long as I’d grant her a divorce.”
While Elise struggled to come to grips with what her father had revealed, he pushed his plate back with a sigh.
“So that’s it, then.” Bill McAlister sighed. “I thought I could spare you from ever experiencing what I went through. I thought if I could just keep you away from Cutch, you’d be okay.” He shook his head, regret simmering in the unshed tears in his eyes. “I’ve done wrong by maligning Cutch all these years. But how can I begin to make it up to you?”
For a few long minutes, Elise sat in stunned silence, at a loss for what to tell her father. All that hatred between their families all those years, and look where it had gotten them. Cutch was in jail, and she might be there soon if she wasn’t careful. Something sparked in the back of her mind, and she snapped her head up.
“How much cash do you have?” she asked breathlessly.
“How much do you need?”
“Over four thousand dollars.”
Her father gave a low whistle. “I don’t have that kind of cash on hand, but we could go to the bank.”
“They’re closed for Labor Day,” Elise reminded him.
“Well—” Bill McAlister took their empty plates and carried them to the sink “—then we’ll see what we can do.”
Elise explained as much as she could to her father on the way to the ATM, including their suspicions about the Bromleys and the involvement of Donnie and Darrel. From the disparaging looks her father gave her, she could tell he wasn’t pleased about the whole getting-shot-out-of-the-sky-twice thing. But he withdrew as much cash as he could and handed it over, apologizing that he hadn’t been able to withdraw more than three thousand dollars.
“Don’t apologize, Dad. You’ve done a lot,” Elise thanked him. “I just don’t know where we’re going to come up with another thousand bucks.”
“You know what I think?” her father asked as she finished stuffing the cash into her wallet and pulled away from the ATM. “I think if it’s the McCutcheon’s son in jail, they should contribute to the fund that bails him out.”
Elise
stopped at the outlet of the parking lot and stared at her father. “You want us to go to the McCutcheons for money?” she asked incredulously. If Cutch had only had one booking call, it was likely his parents didn’t even know he was in jail.
Her father mulled the question until a horn beeped impatiently behind them. Elise pulled forward, heading out of town in the direction of the McCutcheon farm.
“I think,” her father said slowly, “it’s time we all talk.”
“Okay,” Elise agreed shakily, hardly able to believe that for the second time in one day—and for the second time in her life—she was about to visit the McCutcheon farm. Only this time it was to tell them their son was in jail and to ask them for a thousand dollars to free him.
She didn’t envision that conversation going well.
TWELVE
“Did you want to wait in the car?” Elise offered as she pulled to a stop where Cutch’s truck had been parked that morning.
“I’m not afraid.” Bill McAlister’s words were betrayed by the slight tremble in his voice.
Elise didn’t blame him. This was almost as bad as getting shot out of the sky—in some ways worse. She rang the front bell and was relieved when Anita answered the door; since no one in town was aware of Old Cutch’s condition, Elise feared her father would be shocked to see him. As long as he stayed out of sight, she figured they could get through their visit, although she immediately caught the look that passed between her father and Cutch’s mom. Those two had been engaged once, years ago. Now Anita McCutcheon eyed Bill McAlister warily.
“Can I help you?”
Knowing Cutch had used his lone call to phone her, Elise realized Anita probably had no idea what kind of trouble Cutch was in. “I’m sorry to bother you, but Cutch is in trouble,” Elise began.
A worried look crossed Anita’s face. “Does this have anything to do with the law?” she asked. “Sheriff Bromley came by looking for him just after you two left this morning.”
“That’s just it,” Elise started but quickly choked up on the words.
Her father patted her back. “Young Cutch is in jail,” he explained. “We need a little more than a thousand dollars in cash to bail him out.”
“Oh.” Anita looked stunned but opened the door wider for them to pass through. “Come in. I—I guess I’ll need to talk to my husband.”
As she led them through to the parlor, Elise’s father caught her eye. “It’ll be okay,” he mouthed to her.
Elise offered him back a weak smile. As far as coming up with the money went, she knew her father was probably right. Even if they didn’t have the cash on hand, she didn’t doubt the McCutcheons would come up with the rest of what they needed to free their son.
No, bailing Cutch out of jail no longer worried her so much. She just wasn’t sure how she could keep her feelings a secret now that she’d realized she didn’t hate him after all.
Elise drove as fast as the law would allow and arrived at the jail after having dropped her father off at home on her way back to town. She hurried inside the building hauling a purse full of cash. Ten thousand dollars right on the nose. She and Anita had counted it twice with trembling hands.
The release process took just over a half hour. At first Elise felt surprised that Sheriff Bromley let Cutch go so easily. Then she felt suspicious.
When she and Cutch were finally alone together in her car and he’d thanked her for what must have been the twentieth time and promised to pay back every penny he owed her plus interest, instead of saying, “You’re welcome,” she put the car in reverse and said, “They’re up to something. I don’t have a good feeling about this. Do you think we should get out of town?”
“Jump bail?” Cutch shook his head. “I’d lose my farm and get in a whole lot of trouble.”
“You’re in a whole lot of trouble now.” Elise steered the car more or less on autopilot and found herself headed toward home. “Unless you can prove what the Bromleys are up to.”
“If we could find where they’d moved their production operation, then we’d have something. My guess is Bruce wasn’t expecting to have to move it until you flew over and messed up his plans. He may not have had an alternate location.”
“Maybe he took it to his place. We could head out there and see if we could spot anything.”
“And get shot at again? I was just out assessing his property a few months ago. He’s got an eight-foot privacy fence all around his farm. The place is locked up like a fort, and I can’t tell you how many Doberman pinschers he has guarding it. They didn’t look friendly, either.”
“Then what can we do?” Elise felt desperate.
“We need to get in touch with the federal authorities,” Cutch reasoned aloud, “but we need something more for them to look at than some ruts in the ground. Right now it’s my word against the Bromleys, and you can guess who everybody’s going to believe. You’re the only person who thinks I’m innocent.”
“And your parents,” Elise corrected him but still felt her conscience twist at his statement. True, she mostly believed he was innocent. There was no way she would have put up her own money to bail him out if she hadn’t believed that. And she’d asked God to help her trust him, though there was still one question that irked her. She cleared her throat, “Say Cutch?”
“Yes?”
“Where’d you get the money?” Though her words had come out of nowhere and she wasn’t able to muster a very clear question, Cutch seemed to understand what she was getting at.
“To buy Grandpa’s land?”
She nodded and kept her eyes glued to the road, though she’d driven the route thousands of times and the most dangerous hazard she had to watch for were the pesky grasshoppers that crunched under her tires as she drove.
“I saved up my money—”
Elise interrupted him. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars?”
“For part of it,” Cutch added quickly. “But a lot of the money came from my little sister, Ginny. She wanted me to put it in something where she’d earn a return, and land is a good investment.”
“Where did Ginny get that kind of cash?” Elise found it hard to believe a woman younger than she was could amass that kind of fortune. Ginny had been gone for years, out East somewhere, though Elise didn’t listen to gossip about Cutch’s little sister any more than she listened to gossip about his father’s health. Now she wished she’d paid more attention.
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but I’m tired of keeping secrets. She’s an aviatrix out East—she’s made a lot of money in her barnstorming flight shows.”
Elise turned past the windbreak into the driveway of the McAlister farm. Though she was amazed at Ginny’s colorful occupation, as the farm fell into view, she saw a sight that distracted her from her questions.
Her father and Uncle Leroy were waiting for them, sitting in the rocking chairs on the front porch with their shotguns on their laps.
“Uh, maybe I shouldn’t be here,” Cutch’s strong voice wavered.
But Elise’s conversation with her father was still fresh on her mind, and she couldn’t believe her dad would change his mind about Cutch again. “Just a second,” she whispered to Cutch, parking the car and hopping out. She called out to her father, “What’s up with the guns, Dad?”
Her father looked down at his weapon while Uncle Leroy answered aggressively, “We’re hunting Bromleys.”
Elise ducked her head back into the car. “It’s okay,” she assured Cutch. “They’re on our side.”
Though he looked less-than-certain, Cutch climbed out of the car and hurried after her up the path to the porch.
As they approached, Elise’s father explained, “I went to the airfield to tell Leroy what you’d said, including the part about Donnie Clark and Darrel Stillwater working for Bruce Bromley.”
Uncle Leroy cut in. “Rodney was in the office while your dad explained things to me. He knows where they took that tank. See, he about ran into Donnie and Darrel on his way ho
me Saturday. They were pulling onto the highway in a red truck pulling an anhydrous ammonia tank.”
Elise gasped. The men could have moved the tank right after they’d slashed Cutch’s tires. With a half mile of tree-filled hills between them, Cutch and Elise would have never heard them.
Cutch filled in, “My land is up by Rodney’s place.”
“Isn’t that your grandpa’s old pecan grove?” Bill McAlister clarified.
For a moment, Cutch faltered, as though reluctant to admit he owned the failed property. But his hesitation lasted only a couple of seconds. “Yes. That’s where Elise’s glider went down on Saturday. It’s where we first spotted the tank.”
“That sounds like the spot,” Leroy confirmed, as Rodney stepped out of the house with a can of cola. “You tell the rest,” Leroy prompted Rodney.
“About following Donnie and Darrel?” Rodney clarified. When everyone nodded, the older man jumped into the story. “I was bored anyway and itching for something to do. When I saw those two try to pull out right in front of me hauling that tank, I knew they must be in an awful hurry for something. And anyway, everybody knows Donnie Clark’s a meth addict. He’s jumpy all the time, and his teeth are gone. You don’t have to know much to know a meth addict pulling a tank of anhydrous ain’t a good combination, especially when Donnie doesn’t do any farming. So I waited for them to get a couple hills in front of me, then I followed them.” Rodney took a long drink of his cola.
“Where did they end up?” Cutch asked.
“Bruce Bromley’s place. They were let in through that big gateway he’s got there. I just drove on past like I was headed someplace else. Thought about maybe calling the sheriff, but then, what did I know? Two guys moved a tank? Nothing illegal about that.” Rodney finished with his characteristic nervous laugh.
Elise looked back and forth between her father and her uncle, who were both gripping their guns awfully tightly. “So now what? You two want to head down there for some vigilante justice?”
Out on a Limb Page 14