Ms. Got Rocks

by Jacqueline Colt

  “Antonio, there is no making nice with the Russians, they want their money, I want them to have their money. Don’t let Julio screw us over, I’m ready to come home.” Jasmine's long athletic frame was only slightly less agitated then before the conversation.

  “You can handle the Russian end on the next buy, I’m going on a nice normal vacation somewhere warm.”

  “Feel better?” Antonio asked.

  “Fuck you, no, I don’t feel any better, this isn’t about feelings. This is about money, get it fucking done, today, or none of us will have any fucking feelings,” Jazz slammed the cell phone down on the elegant gold leaf edged table.

  * * *

  It did not take long at all after Rocky waved goodbye to Canada. Past the Columbia River Gorge and at Kennewick Washington in over two hours and Rocky was not stopping for a break here.

  She revised the goal to Bend Oregon for the night. That would be a four-hour last leg, but she thought they could do it, with one pit stop along the way.

  The large rugged mountain range was behind them and they were flying above the rolling hills. The brown dry grass hills of the high desert areas of the West. It had a beauty of its own. This part of eastern Washington and Oregon was very much like where Rocky grew up in California. She was feeling that she was flying in home airspace.

  There would be plenty of air traffic to keep her on her toes, but nothing like a major metro area until she came into the Sacramento area.

  Rocky could barely see Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood off to her right as they flew south down the interior valleys.

  They were still going strong,making good time. Rocky decided to put down at a small strip, get some gas, a soda pop and take a walk. She clipped the dogs onto the bulkhead and the plane made a stunning landing on the tar and gravel strip. Rocky awarded herself a nine point one out of the possible ten for the landing.

  Opening the cockpit door was not stunning. Oh God, it was like being slugged in the chest with a fire ball. The temperature was at 95F and that was like being at the gates of Hell when you are used to the high temperature of coastal Anchorage of 70F.

  Once Rocky caught her breath, she lifted the dogs down onto the hot parking apron and they ran to the weeds for relief.

  Aviation fuel was outrageously expensive here, she got fifteen gallons, two sodas and bottled water for the dogs and they were back in the air again to cool off. As Rocky waited for the fueling to be done, she called her sister in law and brother, Margie and Dev. The phone rang and finally it rolled into voice mail. Rocky advised them to expect her between eight thirty and nine thirty that night.

  Thunder clouds were beginning to form as the heat from the land forced itself up, and they would definitely be getting thunderstorms in the afternoon. Rocky was going as far as she could, but she was not fooling around with thunderstorms even with two engines on her plane.

  “When I get back in the air I’ll give a try calling Jen in Anchorage,” Rocky told the dogs as she snapped their safety belts together.

  Everything was moving like silk, Rocky connected with Jen on the phone at her shop. Rocky filled her in on the trip and her plan for pushing on for home. It was good to hear Jen’s voice.

  Below them was the airport at Bend. Rocky received clearance and they are down in no time at all. The price of av gas was more reasonable for a fill up than the last stop.

  Parking in a temporary spot on the ramp and after paying the landing and parking fees, they went off the ramp and played Frisbee on the airport lawn. It was so hot that the sweat evaporated off of them before they knew they sweated.

  The city of Bend had grown since Rocky last flew through there, the river looked good and the fishing was probably still wonderful. Rocky filled the dog’s water bowls under the outside faucet and she tanked up from the mineral water bottle. She was not feeling very hungry probably because of the heat. The dogs were not at all hungry and Rocky tied them out in the shade of the plane, and walked quickly to the airport cafe. Even though she was not hungry she ordered eggs, toast and hash browns, which was all that sounded tempting. Rocky took the toast with her when she left. The dogs enjoyed it. Back in the air, Rocky advised ATC that she was up and moving.

  Turning to a new heading, Rocky flew toward the Interstate Five corridor. She was going to fly parallel to the highway down the Central Valley to dodge a couple of old volcanoes and some afternoon thunderstorms in the mountains.

  The sun was almost to the horizon to her right as she advised ATC that she was turning east, away from the sun. She requested a change in altitude for the last run into Auburn. The travelers should be home in less than an hour.

  “What the heck is that?” Rocky asked the air. Her cell phone was ringing.

  “Hello?” Rocky had to clear her throat; it had been awhile since she said anything.

  “Welcome to California, Little Sis,” it was her brother Devlin talking. “Where are you?”

  “I’m ready to start the final leg into Auburn, I’m still over Sacto, but I won’t be long,” Rocky replied.

  “Okay, we are leaving for the airport to meet you right now,” he said.

  Rocky could hear the excitement in his voice.

  “Dev, I’ve got to go, it is busy right now, lots of traffic and I need to get us down,” her eyes were sweeping the instruments and the general area around the plane.

  “Okay, see you shortly,” bang, he was gone from the connection.

  Rocky flipped through her Jeppesen flight manual and found the air to ground call frequency for the base operator at Auburn and dialed it in and told them she was arriving.

  The next few minutes were busy as Rocky hooked up the dogs. Receiving permission to land she started the short final into the airport where she learned to fly.

  Chapter 4

  “Girls, we are here, you can wake up now,” Rocky said as she unhooked them. The plane taxied onto their assigned position on the ramp, and Rocky started the shut down checklist, she called ATC and closed the flight plan from Anchorage Alaska.

  Devlin and Margie ran across the parking lot and through the gate of the chain link fence. Her long, lean, freckled sandy haired brother flung open the cockpit door, gave her a huge sideways squeeze as he pulled her out of the seat. Devlin twirled her around the ramp to the embarrassment of neither of them.

  The sun finally slipped behind the Coast Range Mountains into the Pacific Ocean, and Rocky was home again.

  * * *

  “Dad, it’s Rocky, I’m here,” she was attempting to keep her voice happy and positive. That was hard when she looked at the wasted discolored person who was her vibrant, fun loving, good-looking Father.

  “You look like my daughter, Rocky. She lives in Alaska,” her Dad said to her through barely opened eyelids. “She is coming to see me.”

  “Dad, it is me, Rocky. I flew my plane down to see you and get you out of here,” she was trying not to cry.

  “Rocky it is you, pay the bail darlin‘, we will go dredging.” Her Dad still had the heart of the brave ones.

  “Sounds good to me Daddy, I will be here all summer,” Rocky said holding the hand that used to be hard and rough from work. It was now soft under the calluses that would never go away.

  Dad lightly squeezed her hand as he drifted off to sleep. Rocky sat in that little room, desolate, holding his hand remembering all the good things that this man had done with his life.

  There was never anything too goofy for him to make, or do to ensure his children had fun. He was an endless resource of the correct spelling of big words and could French braid a little girl’s hair better than anyone in Whiskey Gap.

  He instilled resourcefulness, compassion and a sense of worthiness in each of his kids, not by what he said, but by example. He believed in hard work, marriage, fatherhood and apple pie, lots of pie.

  The hospital room was dark; Rocky opened the draperies and returned to her knitting. She had started a pair of socks for Dad. They were bright green, like Marly made for her Da
d, Rich Richland. Rocky hoped that she could remember her sock class when she reached the heel part. It seemed as though she took that class a hundred years ago.

  “Why are the drapes open?” A nurse came into Dad’s room.

  “I opened them, Dad is an outdoorsman, and he would like to see outside, check the weather, and watch the clouds,” Rocky answered.

  “Our critically ill patients like the drapes closed.” With finality the nurse closed the drapes, checked all the tubes running to and fro Rocky’s Dad and left without another word.

  “Well Dad, I figure she won't be back for another hour,” Rocky opened the drapes again and smiled at her sleeping Father. Rocky knew if he could give her a conspiratorial chuckle he could.

  Devlin, Margie and Rocky went on for three more days, each of them taking a four-hour shift. Rocky was there the remaining hours when her brother and his wife had to work.

  Most of that time, Rocky sat and held her Dad’s hand. Occasionally he would gently press her hand in return. Rocky knew he was there and he knew that she was there with him.

  During one of the hours Rocky was not there, she got a call from Margie and went immediately to the hospital. Her Dad was much worse and the young doctor advised the family to say their goodbyes. Devlin called Dad’s priest and they held hands and prayed.

  The three of them joined hands with Dad and they were like that when he slipped away from them. They stayed together until his hands were cold.

  There were no words to express how alone Rocky felt. She could not go on. She went to bed with the dogs. She sobbed for the wonderful man who she was lucky enough to have as a parent. Rocky felt she would have been lucky to even know him, but she was in his special place, his family.

  After the services, several people told her that the church was overflowing with their Father’s friends who came to pay their respects and say goodbye. Rocky remembered none of it. The family made decisions about the funeral arrangements, but none of them could remember what they were. Rocky did not know how Devlin and Margie went back to work the next week. She was glad for once that she was not employed. She spent each day on the back deck of her brother’s house or walking the dogs at the park like a big lovely zombie.

  The family attorney read the will. It had never occurred to Rocky that her father did not always struggle financially. She remembered things being tough after he bought the cabin and the claim, but neither of his children had any idea the extent of his finances. No one did. Devlin and Margie were renting their house from Dad and he left that house to them and several other rental properties in Auburn. Other than his attorney, no one knew he owned them.

  The Animal Rescue Shelter received a gift of an air conditioning and heating system for the shelter, Dad always worried about the animals getting cold or hot. The money in his bank accounts went directly to the hospital and doctors for their final bills. Dad left Rocky five acres in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with a three bedroom cabin on it and the American River running through it. The river had his working gold claim on it. All the equipment for dredging gold and his old truck went with it.

  Dad granted Rocky’s wish for a place of her own and a way to earn a living.

  “It’s pretty much of a wreak of a little cabin,” her brother said to Margie and Rocky. They were having coffee at the house in Auburn after the reading of the will.

  “I remember that it was pretty nice on the inside,” Rocky said reaching out to ten-year-old memories.

  “Rocky, Dad didn’t really keep the place up after you went up North. He kept all the paperwork on the claim current and the dredging equipment working, but that was all he seemed to have the energy to do,” Devlin was explaining.

  Margie expanded on Devlin's information, turning to face Rocky, she poured more coffee for them.

  “What he is trying to say, Rocky, is the place is a mess. The roof is leaking and some of the window glass has blown out and the plumbing still isn‘t connected, all that is working is the electricity, but maybe...,” she trailed off.

  “Sis, we don’t think the cabin is habitable. Dad’s truck works, but it is twenty-five years old,” her brother said.

  “He really thought he was leaving you a lot with the brand new dredge and the claim. But, realistically everything is practically worthless, except the dredge and the land and it is covered with junk cars and scrap metal. Without city sewer and water, even the acreage will be tough to sell,” Devlin advised his sister.

  Devlin was sad, and a bit embarrassed, tears were welling up in his eyes.

  “What Dad left us is worth much more than what you have.”

  “Oh come on Devlin, the cabin can’t be that bad. Dad was living there up until he went to the hospital,” Rocky attempted to cheer him up. “I’m handy with tools. I can fix it up, and anyway, I really just need a place for the next few months until an airline job comes through. I don’t want to get involved in apartment leases and stuff right now. The dogs and I can rough it,” Rocky told them.

  “Rocky, roughing it is putting a silk tutu on a pig.” Margie had a sympathetic look for her sister in law.

  “Nevertheless, it is there and I’m going to use it,” Rocky stubbornly insisted as she folded the napkin again and again.“I can put in a veggie patch, and the price of gold is going up, if I can make it through until fall or the majors call, I’ll be fine.”

  Devlin closed the conversation, “Take our tent.”

  Chapter 5

  “This building is bloody spooky at night,” Callaghan said as the men walked down the anonymous corridor of the huge office building in Washington, D.C.

  “Can’t be spooky with about a thousand people all around,” the lanky man looked at his closest team member of six years and thought that if anything in the building was spooky it was Callaghan himself.

  “Just smells wrong, creeps me out,” Callahan complained as he swiped his ID badge through the door lock reader.

  When the door was closed to the shared office space, they filled in the data they had retrieved since the last report.

  “The dude in Mozambique almost got a visit from the Black Widow,” Clark reported, booting the computer.

  “That would not have been fun for him, what did Julio do that would entice Miss Jazz from her vacation in Moscow?” Callaghan was becoming more alert with this good news.

  “Little brother Antonio was supposed to ensure that shipment got to Mozambique. Otherwise, Jazz was having to indemnify the Russians out of family money,” Clark said grinning from ear to ear.

  “And La Femme Harris is not going to take kindly to that, nor will Daddy."

  "The shipment miraculously appeared after Harris had the Lear jet warming up in Moscow?”

  “Something close to that. She should be in the air for home right now.” Callaghan said. “God, I’m sick to death of this case, I want to get out home this weekend and get the peach trees planted.”

  “Hate to tell you buddy, but if you haven’t got those trees in the ground by now they probably aren’t going to grow, and worse yet, Harris will be back on home base, so we will get more of her than ever.”

  “Thanks, I needed that,” Callaghan said as each of the agents worked their keyboards with their reports.

  * * *

  The road to the cabin was longer and rougher than Rocky remembered. The old battered red truck was bouncing all over the road. The dogs and Rocky were slamming back and forth up the steep slope to the meadow overlooking the American River where the cabin was situated. She was excited to finally see the cabin again. Happy memories of spending the summers out here with Dad and Devlin were reeling through her imagination. Pitching rocks and fishing,learning to cook on the wood stove, but mainly outdoors playing and being a kid.

  This was the last portion of the road into the cabin. Rocky could see the face of the black and gray speckled granite monolith on the opposite side of the meadow. The grass in the meadow around it was already turning golden brown.

  The tools that Devli
n packed into the truck bed were rattling to distraction with the driveway so rough and pitted. Rocky and the dogs felt as if they have been on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride for miles.

  “Note to self, get gravel to repair the biggest potholes,” Rocky said aloud. “Further note to self, make that next year to get the gravel,” she replied to herself over the noise.

  Rocky was laughing, she was happy to be home.

  The old truck was loud and with the tools rattling around in back she could not hear the river roaring over the rapids east of the historic stone bridge.

  This was going to be great, her own place with quiet and time to heal herself to get ready to cope with the city and a flying job with a major company.

  Rocky’s mind was off daydreaming somewhere when the rattletrap truck pulled them over the rise onto the flat meadow and there sat the cabin, the garage and the shed.

  It looked the same as when she was last there. The metal junk Dad collected was everywhere in the yard. The shallow, narrow, river was still sparkling and merrily gurgling fifty feet from the cabin, the willows on the riverbank were a lot taller. The cabin looked much shabbier; it was in desperate need of coat of paint.

  The dogs barreled out of the truck and started the canine investigation of the place. Rocky got out of the truck and looked at her home.

  The cabin was actually the size of a small house. Built from Cedar logs in the era after World War II, the logs had weathered to a pretty gray. There were three windows in the front with trim coated with peeling Forestry Service green paint.

  A porch swept around from side to side of the front shading the windows from the western sun. There was another smaller porch at the back door facing the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The roof was a mansard style covered with green grit tar paper which in spots flapped in the slight breeze coming off the river. The stovepipe from the kitchen stood well anchored with guide wires. The windows cut into the mansard roof were missing glass; the window trim on that level also needed painting.