Firefly Island

by Lisa Wingate

  “Thanks, but I’ll have to just call,” I said. “Nick has a summer class in the morning. I usually stay and help.” I wasn’t sure if Mason had heard me or not. His focus shifted, homed in as Jack walked through the gate, stopped, and looked at Nick and Pecos in the sandpile.

  “I wonder what Dad did with your husband?” Mason remarked. “Some of those fields they planted are in the strangest locations. Hope everything’s all right.” Not only was the comment odd, but it was also flinty-cool. I looked up just in time to catch a countenance that matched the words. Just as quickly, it was gone, replaced by a pleasant look that was aimed at Jack.

  “You get your business done?” Mason strode ahead to the gate, and I followed in his wake, acutely aware of the sweltering afternoon sun bearing down.

  “What’s this?” Jack motioned to the sandpile, his face hidden in the shadow of his hat.

  “I got a tw-uck and tw-ailer!” Nick held up his treasures. I felt like I might pass out.

  Mason’s lips curved upward into a smile, his head inclining solicitously. “I took a few things out of the little house. Nick, here, was a bit lost when he woke up, and you’d taken off with his dad.” The sentence ended in a chuckle that didn’t seem to have much humor in it. “I figured you wouldn’t mind if I got a start on cleaning the place out a bit.”

  Jack stood motionless, his shoulders stiffening, the muscles in his neck and jaw taut as if he were trying to restrain some emotion.

  “We can put them back, if that’s better,” I offered hurriedly, stumbling over the words, moving toward Nick and the toys. “I’m sure Nick enjoyed playing with them, but they’re not his.”

  Big blue eyes widening and mouth dropping, Nick clutched the truck and trailer to his chest, then reached back and hid the bulldozer behind his body.

  “Nick …” I admonished, but I could feel a meltdown coming on. This was going to get ugly. In front of everyone.

  Mason gave me a private look with a quick headshake that could have had a myriad of meanings. “Of course not. They’re a gift. It’s better that they’re used rather than going to waste, right, Dad? Just like the cabin on Firefly Island. No sense having things sit idle. Locking them up and letting dust gather doesn’t change the past.”

  I glanced back and forth between Mason and Jack, trying to read the invisible power play between father and son. In those few sentences, Mason had not only confirmed the reason that toys and belongings from twenty-five years ago rested enshrined in the little house, he’d also answered some of my lingering questions about Firefly Island. That place was a shrine, as well, a time capsule shrouded in meanings only Jack understood. What made him preserve the belongings of his wife and stepson, exactly as they had been?

  Guilt? Grief?

  Jack’s shoulders lowered slowly, the line of his jaw softening. Pulling off his cowboy hat, he swiped an arm across his forehead. “No … no, ’course not. Place needs to be cleaned out. Might as well use what can be used. There might be some clothes and things in there about his size …” He nodded at Nick, but the sentence drifted off. I was glad. I didn’t want to think about Nick wearing the dead boy’s clothes.

  “Thank you.” I swallowed a weird soup of reactions. “I know Nick will take good care of the toys, won’t you, Nick?”

  Nick’s face was open and honest, a little shock of blond hair falling over his lashes as he hugged both arms around the truck and trailer. “I wuv these.” He rested his cheek against the truck’s miniature headlights, and if his gratitude could have been sweeter or more genuine, I couldn’t imagine how. He was absolutely, heart-meltingly earnest.

  Bracing a hand on the fence, Jack slowly squatted down, his hulking form seeming to fold into place piece by piece as it cast a shadow over Nick. I stood transfixed, watching Jack reach out a big, brawny hand and lay it on Nick’s head, the two of them connecting gaze to gaze. The moment seemed to slow, the day quieting around us. I wondered at Mason’s reaction. I wanted to check, but I couldn’t tear my focus away from Jack and Nick, from the war of emotions evident on Jack’s face—tenderness, grief, and monumental sadness.

  “You take care of those,” Jack said softly. “A boy loved those very much. A very good boy.”

  Nick nodded solemnly, seeming to understand the seriousness of the moment. “Ho-kay,” he whispered.

  I thought about reminding Nick to say thank you, but no words seemed to fit. My vision of Jack shifted and changed, melting and taking on a new form. The suspicions I’d harbored, the rumors I’d heard … all of it seeped away, disappearing like vapor in the heat of the day. There was no way this man, this broken mountain who could kneel down and look at Nick that way, could have had anything to do with the murder of the little boy who once owned those toys. It simply wasn’t possible.

  “All right, then, that’s that.” Mason interrupted the moment, swinging his arms impatiently, letting his hands clap together. “What say we move on with our agenda for the day?” He stepped back as Jack slowly worked his way to his feet, groaning with the effort.

  “Thank you for the toys,” I told Jack as we walked toward the driveway. I’d just remembered that there was a gallon of milk in the car, along with my vitamins and a few other things I’d picked in Gnadenfeld.

  Jack nodded. “Someone oughta use them.” Clearing his throat, he affected the usual stoic frown. “Your husband drove the tractor to the lab with some samples in the front end loader. He’ll call you for a ride, after a while.”

  “Oh, okay, thanks.” We parted ways at my vehicle, and I grabbed the gallon of milk, along with my sacks from town. From the periphery of my vision, I was aware of Mason getting into the ranch truck, and Jack hovering by the driver’s side door, watching me. Closing the back of the Jeep, I stopped and looked his way.

  “Too many hormones.” Jack pointed to the milk, as if he were voicing the observation and thinking it through at the same time. “Not healthy for babies and kids. Big dairy wants you to believe it’s harmless, but it’s not.”

  “Oh, well, okay.” I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me to dump the milk out in the driveway, or what. The comment was so out of character for Jack, I didn’t know how to respond to it. “I’ll be sure to … buy … organic next time.”

  “Still pasteurized,” he grunted, and then he was gone.

  I stood there with my hormone-laced milk, thinking, I need a drink.

  A really, really big glass of milk. With chocolate.

  Lots of chocolate.

  Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving.

  —Oliver Wendell Holmes

  (Left by Jay, who drove a truck to earn his pay, and learned some things along the way)

  Chapter 19

  The world’s most unusual gift arrived three days later. I was out in the yard with Nick, enjoying another sudden bloom of rain lilies. Overnight, they had popped up and carpeted the grass, and the first thing Nick wanted to do after we came home from summer enrichment was pick bouquets and put them all around the house again.

  On the back porch, the intercom buzzed, indicating that the front gate was closed and someone was out there. I answered, thinking it might be Keren, who’d been working with me on some article ideas about the gardening program. I was hoping that a few human-interest pieces about specific families involved in growing supper gardens might help to generate media interest. So far, I hadn’t had any luck getting major media coverage for the program, although readers of The Frontier Woman were clamoring for updates on the kids in Chinquapin Peaks and their plans for family gardens.

  The voice on the intercom definitely wasn’t Keren’s. The words came in the thickly accented pidgin of Spanish and English that was typical of many of the guys who came up from Mexico to work on ranches around the area. “I gottee dees mee-lk cow for jou, pero este gate es close.”

  “You’ve got my what?”

  “Mee-lk ca-owww.” He slowed the words down. “From de cow sale dis morn-een. Jou buy her. I g
ottee the b-eel of sale. It saying, de-liber her here.”

  It occurred to me that maybe Al was at the gate, and she’d solicited someone’s help to play a joke on me. I’d shared Jack’s comment about the hormones in milk last week, and for once, Al was actually in agreement with Jack. She’d been threatening to bring me my very own milk goat, and I’d been telling her that if she did, I was going to sneak over to her house with the goat and put it in her living room. My one attempt at goat milking was a funny blog and a bad memory. “I think you’re at the wrong place. I didn’t order a milk cow.”

  “I gottee de-liber her here. She for Mal-lo-reee E-ber-soon. Mee-ilk cow. Cow is para ti. Hace mucho calor out here. Bery hot, okay?”

  “I didn’t buy a cow,” I said sweetly, smirking to myself. I was not going to be sucked into this. Al was probably watching through those ever-present binoculars of hers, just waiting for me to open the gate.

  “I gotte de-liber her. I gonna tie her to dees fence, okay?” The man actually sounded perturbed. “She kick-een my trailer.”

  “Okay, okay, wait.” Even if I didn’t open the gate, I’d have to go down there, on the off chance that some poor cow might be tied to the gate in the afternoon sun. Maybe the deliveryman didn’t know this was all just a gag. “Hang on. I’ll buzz you in.”

  I pushed the button and moved to the yard fence, shading my eyes and looking down the driveway. Nick, his fingers clutching a batch of rain lilies, followed me. He had learned some time ago that a cute ranch kid standing at the fence was a magnet for delivery men with packs of gum, bags of suckers, or rolls of stickers to give away. Pecos, who knew that the UPS man carried Beggin’ Strips and Milk-Bones, waited with us, his nub tail wagging hopefully.

  The usual swirl of white caliche dust followed a truck and livestock trailer up the driveway. Apparently, Al had gone all the way this time. There was actually a cow in the trailer. I could see it moving around as the vehicle stopped and the delivery man exited with a clipboard in hand.

  “You gotte escribé.” The deliveryman made a motion for me to sign the delivery ticket.

  A plaintive moo-ooo-ooo traveled through the air.

  I held my hands palm-out, giving the international sign for, No way, dude. That’s not my cow. “I … didn’t order … a cow. I promise. No … uhhh …” I searched my limited Rolodex of college Spanish. I was much better with French and Italian. What was the word? “No … uhhh … comparlo. No.” I thought that should translate to, I didn’t buy it, but the poor man only thrust the sheet at me again.

  “I gotte leeb here.” He made the motion of unloading the cow. “Muy caliente.” Pointing to the trailer, he pantomimed the last words, even though I understood them well enough. It’s hot. No telling what the temperature was inside that trailer. The cow looked miserable.

  Balancing the clipboard atop the gatepost, he hurried toward the trailer. I caught the clipboard as it slid off.

  “No, but … wait …” There was no point in arguing, though. The man was determined. In fact, he couldn’t seem to move fast enough as he secured my new cow in the barn.

  I called Al as soon as the truck and trailer rolled away. “Very funny, sending the cow. You can come get it now, though. The man said it needs to be milked, and not that I know anything about cows, but she looks uncomfortable—like she might explode or something.”

  Al didn’t answer at first. I was waiting for laughter, but instead she said, “Hang on a minute, Mallory,” and brusquely left me dangling on the line while she ordered food at a drive-through.

  Apparently, she wasn’t staked out somewhere on a hilltop, enjoying the drama of the cow delivery. She actually seemed confused. “So, what’s up? What’d the old so-and-so have a cow about now?” She was referring to Jack, of course.

  Nick tugged at the hem of my shirt. He wanted to go back out and see the cow. She was charming, as cows went, I supposed. She had big brown eyes and long eyelashes, and she seemed to like children. “The cow, Al. Really. That was funny and all, but if someone doesn’t do something … well, can cows actually explode? The guy didn’t speak much English, but he used the sign language for She needs to be milked. I know what gorda and mucha leche means. I did take a little Spanish in college. Come pick her up, okay?”

  Nick tugged harder on my shirt. “I wanna see the cow-w-w-w,” he whined. In all the excitement over rain lilies and then the cow, we’d neglected naptime.

  “Nick, shhh,” I snapped. “It’s not our cow, it’s Al’s. It’s going to Al’s house to live.”

  A huge pout lip formed, and Nick’s forehead lowered over his eyes. Releasing my T-shirt, he crossed his arms and staged a sit-in on the kitchen floor.

  “Nick, cut it out. We can’t keep the cow.”

  “It’s not mine,” Al insisted. “I’m a strictly a sheep and goat girl, remember? Shoot, I hardly even know what to do with a cow.”

  Nick uncrossed his legs and pummeled the kitchen floor with his heels, sending a dirty look my way.

  “All right, you know that’s not okay.” I pointed the mommy finger at Nick. I was learning not to cave in to the threat of snotty hum zingers at inopportune times and in public places. “If you’re going to throw a fit, go do it in your room.”

  “Well, I would, but I’m over in Gnadenfeld, getting a sandwich.” Al was laughing on the phone now.

  Nick flopped over on his stomach and started wailing.

  “I told you what to do about that kind of thing,” Al offered. Somehow, she was an expert on parenting techniques, too. “Just tell him to throw the biggest fit he can come up with, and cheer him on while he does it. The minute he thinks you want him to throw the fit, he won’t want to anymore. Reverse psychology. It works. Learned that from Foster Cline and Jim Fay, Parenting With Love and Logic.” One incongruous thing I’d discovered about Al was that she’d read more books than anyone I’d ever met. She had a penchant for self-help and psychology. “I’ll come by and take a look on my way home, but it’s not my cow.”

  “Well … but wait … who …” Then I landed on a completely new thought. “You don’t think that Jack …”

  “Can’t hear ya. Give me an hour or so. I’ll call Keren and see if I can bring her, too. This oughta be fun.” Al hung up, and I was left with the phone and the fit. Nick wore himself out and quieted to a whimper, and I put him down for a nap. Then I called Daniel at the lab.

  “Do you think Jack would have sent us a cow?” I blurted.

  “A what?”

  “A cow, Daniel. A man showed up with a cow, and it had my name on the delivery notice. Please tell me this cow isn’t supposed to be here …”

  “Jack did go to an auction this morning. But I can’t ask him about the cow because he just left with Mason. Something about looking at a site to build a lake house. I guess Mason’s thinking he might spend more time here.” Daniel sounded happy and hopeful, but the more often I rubbed elbows with Mason, the more vaguely uncomfortable I was around him. The day after he’d given Nick the toys, I’d had a phone conversation with him and tried to bring up the bridge in Chinquapin Peaks. The only thing Mason seemed interested in was luring me over to the big house for breakfast. I’d politely declined again.

  I hadn’t said anything to Daniel, but Mason was definitely angling toward something. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “So, do you think that Jack sent me a cow?” I asked.

  I heard metal clinking, and what sounded like one of the centrifuges in the lab whirring. “Anything’s possible. He’s on a buying spree. I just got two four-foot crates of used lab equipment he found on eBay. Looks like it came from some university. I’m trying to figure out if there’s much I can actually use, and the thing is, Jack doesn’t seem to care. When he came by here and saw it this morning, it was like he’d almost forgotten that he’d bought it. He said, whatever I don’t want, just donate it to the school. So I’d say a milk cow is a definite possibility. Jack’s happy, and when Jack’s happy, I guess money flows. No
body knows for sure, because nobody’s ever seen Jack like this. Do you need me to come help you with your new cow?” He was laughing when he said, it.

  “No, Al’s coming.”

  “Well, fine, I’ve been usurped by Al again.” He sighed, trying to give the impression that he was greatly wounded by the fact that I’d called Al first.

  “Do you know anything about milking cows?”

  “Only what I learned off Gunsmoke.” He chuckled, then added, “You’re probably better off with Al, and I should try to get some things done here before the parade of roses ends. I’m going to drive out to the test plot in the Cedar Break pasture and gather some samples. Jack said he and Mason would grab some for me, but there’s no telling where they’re at right now. They might have forgotten all about it. I should be back in the lab in an hour or so, if you need me. I want to run tests while I can.”

  We said good-bye, and I hung up the phone, leaving the undercurrents of Daniel’s last comment unexplored. We both knew that Jack’s recent phase of nirvana, or joy over his family reconciliation, or whatever was happening couldn’t go on forever. Sooner or later, we would all have to find out what the landscape of Jack West was going to look like after Mason’s return.

  The days of new wall-to-wall carpet and free cows were undoubtedly numbered.

  I tried not to ponder that too much as I did some things around the house and waited for Al and Keren to show up. An hour and a half later, when we walked into the barn together, the subject of Jack’s recent outlandish behavior came up. It was bound to, considering that the gift cow was standing right there.

  “The old fart has gone round the bend this time,” Al observed while Keren checked the cow over, then found a crate to sit on and washed out a bucket to use for milking. The cow looked greatly relieved that someone qualified had arrived.

  Nick leaned in to watch, bracing his hands on his knees, fascinated as Keren settled in and began the milking.