Fortunately, it was a suite, with a separate bedroom and a foldout sofa. Pop took the sofa, and Howard took the floor. Gee started out with Pop, but he's a very squirmy sleeper, which is why he ended up on the floor, too. Mama and Lyddie got the queen-size bed, and I sacked out with some pillows on the recliner.
But before that, we had to order pizza and deprogram after a very packed day: the same day, remember, that began with Pop installing an alternator in the desolate wilderness of the Chalk Pyramids. Between then and now, we'd been shuffled and reshuffled and wrung through the wringer of human emotion, all because of our smallest and youngest person. Who finally talked.
Just like I suspected, he'd stowed away on the Cannonball trailer back at the truck plaza—after running almost smack-dab into it when he turned the corner of the full-service restaurant. Luck was with him, if you want to call it that, because the side door was unlocked. Once he was inside, he was so overwhelmed to be among Cannon-ball Paul's stuff, including that silver suit spread across one of the beds, that he didn't start having second thoughts about the wisdom of this plan until someone locked the door from outside and second thoughts wouldn't have done any good anyway.
Once they were on the highway and rolling like gang-busters, Gee panicked and pounded on the door, to no avail. After he realized how unavailing panic was, he did something unusual: he sat down and thought about his situation. If he turned himself in now, Pop would be furious and not only would Gee never see Cannonball Paul, he might never see Pop again. So he decided to be calm, enjoy the ride, and call home as soon as he had a chance so people could stop worrying.
It wasn't until they reached the campground that he came up with the second part of the plan. After the truck had parked and Gee realized where they were, he hid himself in one of the storage bins. When the brothers came in for lunch, he overheard bits and pieces of the conversation and learned about the exhibition shoot. But didn't catch the part about a dummy being shot, not Paul. So at the first opportunity, Gee slipped out of the trailer and hiked across the field to the fairground, slipping in without much trouble because he's a champion slipper.
That's why the patrolmen didn't find him in Paul's trailer—he wasn't there. He was touring the fair, scrounging bits of food that people had left on their plates (“Oh, Gee,” Mama sighed) and wishing he had enough money for the Scrambler—all with no idea that every gas-station attendant and convenience-store clerk and law-enforcement officer in Kansas was looking for him. He did use the dollar in his pocket to call home—nice thought, but bad timing because Mama had already left with Lyddie.
After scoping out the arena where the shoot was going to be, he decided to get in place well ahead of time—and what better place than the tower Paul would be flying over? He caught the last of a livestock show, then waited through the cleanup. After the maintenance people were gone, he darted out and scurried up the side of the tower, praying nobody would see him, because the place was never entirely empty.
“But, Gee,” I interrupted, “didn't you learn anything from Big Brutus?”
“Uh-huh.” He was bouncing up and down on the sofa. “I knew I'd have a hard time getting down. But if I just stood up and yelled loud enough after the shoot, somebody'd come and get me.”
Not bad, I thought, for Gee. But the thunder and lightning he didn't count on, so all the time Paul was going through his opening spiel, Gee was huddled on top of the tower trying to keep from hollering for help (“Poor baby,” murmured Lyddie). Then he heard a dog bark, and the rest is history.
In the silence that followed his story, I listened to the steady patter of rain outside and thought about what Gee had done. Granted, the whole idea wasn't very smart. But he'd shown a never-before-seen ability to plan and carry out a short-term goal. Pop must have been thinking the same thing, because he finally said, “Don't ever let anybody tell you you're stupid, Gee.”
My brother blinked in surprise. “I don't. I usually pop 'em one.”
It's hard enough living in a house with three people and one bathroom, but imagine the traffic jam the next morning with six. Mama stayed out of it, and Gee slept in, but the rest of us were up and stirring by seven. Pop and Howard were going back to the truck stop to get the RV, and Lyddie decided to go with them—to “keep Jack company on the way back” was the way she put it. Looked like Jack had won another middle-aged lady's heart.
I got up, too, mostly to tell Howard good-bye. “I hope you smooth things over with your parents,” I said as we stood by his pickup, waiting for the adults to come out.
“Not a problem. They can't do without me.” He smiled, and all of a sudden things got awkward. “Think you might come back sometime? Even though you don't like Kansas very much?”
“Who said I didn't like Kansas?” The more I saw, the more I liked: soaring sky, wide plains, the unexpectedness of Big Brutus and the Chalk Pyramids and the World's Largest Hand-Dug Well, which I now wanted to see. The state might look flat and uninteresting, but all kinds of cool things hunkered down waiting to be found. “I love Kansas.”
He looked kind of embarrassed, as if I'd said I loved him. So I decided to embarrass him a little more, and gave him a great big hug. “By the way, thanks for everything. You're my hero.”
“Right.” He might have squeezed me back before breaking away—hard to tell. “You should see Rock City. It's this field full of huge boulders that look like great big balls of twine. And then there's this real ball of twine in Cawker City? Biggest in the world.” He bent down to scratch Leo's ears. “Be good, big guy. And if they decide they can't keep you, come on back.”
Pop offered to drive the pickup, but Howard said he could manage. I guess he couldn't wait to charge onto the interstate again. When he pulled out, with Pop and Lyddie squeezed into the cab, I yelled, “Call me sometime!” then stood on the curb and waved until that blue-and-white pickup was all the way out of sight.
After that, I curled up in bed with Mama and we just talked. It's not often we get to do that, with her work and all the demands of home—not to mention the demands of Gee. But he was still sacked out on the living room floor, and in the stillness of the morning we talked and talked, and I told her everything I could remember about the trip, even the scary parts. She laughed, she cried, she exclaimed, “Oh no!”
Finally, she asked, “So what do you think? Are you glad you went? Did you get what you were hoping for?”
My mixed feelings from yesterday came back to me— when I was furious with Pop and furious with Gee, kind of homesick but at the same time not ready to go back. “Glad I went, for sure,” was my final answer. “Whether I got what I was hoping for …”
What was I hoping for? I'd met my short-term goals, except for organizing better. With Gee around, chaos trumped organization every time. But there seemed to be more to it than just meeting goals. Maybe I'd been wind-prospecting like Pop, chasing something that couldn't be caught. Trying to wrap it up for Mama, all I could say was, “Ask me in a week.”
Lyddie had to go home that day to see her granddaughter's dance recital, and Mama's knee was crying for its old home on the couch. I kind of assumed that when they left for Missouri, Gee and I would be in the back seat of Lyddie's Buick. But later that morning, when the Coachman had returned and Mama told Gee to get his stuff out of it, Pop asked, “What for?”
“Well, to go home,” Mama said, looking puzzled.
“They're not going home until tomorrow. I'll bring them.” Everybody in the room stopped what they were doing to look at him. “Well, Gee hasn't seen Cannonball Paul do his shoot yet. That's not until one, so—”
Gee yelled and threw himself at Pop, which wasn't the way to get on the man's good side, but Gee's a slow learner. Mama hobbled up on her crutches, eyes gleaming. “Oh, Dad.”
He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, which wasn't easy with all that aluminum between them. “Can we see Rock City?” I asked. “It's this field of huge round boulders that look kind of like big ball
s of twine, out in the middle of—”
“Maybe,” he said, and to Mama he added, “I'll bring 'em back sometime tomorrow.”
As she nodded, sniffling, a knock on the door startled us all.
I answered it.
There was a guy in jeans and a T-shirt standing on the sidewalk, looking kind of familiar, and kind of nervous. As he shifted light as a dancer from one foot to the other, I recognized him in a gulp: Cannonball Paul! With his blond hair down in his face instead of combed back, he looked a lot younger. And, frankly, kind of ordinary.
“Hi,” he said, then stepped back and motioned me to follow. “Look, I don't have much time. It took a while to find you, and I've got to get back soon. I just wanted to say, I'm sorry for yesterday. What I said. Thinking it over, I don't blame you for anything.” I just gaped at him. “So. To make it up, I wanted to invite you all to the shoot today.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of those blue passes.
I started making thank-you noises, which he waved away. “One more thing. Tonight, I plan on renting a little Cessna two-seater—airplane, that is—to fly up during the fireworks. Tim doesn't want to go because he signed up for a weight-lifting competition. So I was thinking—if the boy wants to fly, I'll take him.”
My thank-you noises changed to this-is-going-too-fast-for-me noises. “What—when—?”
He took another step back. “You guys talk it over and tell me after the shoot what you decided. One o'clock, in the arena. Catch you then.” With another wave, he bounded off the curb and into his white truck, burning a little rubber when he backed away. It all happened so fast I could barely believe he'd been there, except for the blue passes in my hand.
“Who was that?” Lyddie asked when I went back inside.
My news raised an uproar, with Gee begging and whining, Mom doubting she'd ever let her little boy go up in a tin can with a stranger, and Lyddie saying, “But it's the chance of a lifetime!”
Exactly, I thought. If it was me, I'd be all over it, but nobody asked me. Gee was the squeaky wheel who got the grease in this family. Biting my lip, I glanced at Pop, who looked back but didn't say anything.
Finally, Mama said, “Since I won't be here, I'll leave it to you, Dad. I'm probably better off not knowing till it's over anyway.”
No matter how hard Gee pressed him, Pop wouldn't commit to yes or no, and he still hadn't said when the ladies left at eleven. After hugs all around, like we weren't going to see each other the very next day, Lyddie extended an invitation: “If you get back by dinnertime tomorrow, Jack, come on over. I'll throw some steaks on the grill.” It was an eye-rolling moment, but I restrained myself.
With everything else that had happened, the actual Cannonball shoot—Paul blasting straight as an arrow from the mouth of the big white gun, sailing over the tower, and landing dead center in the net—was almost an anticlimax. Though Gee yelled loud enough to be a whole cheering section by himself.
For myself, I'll admit to feeling a little resentful. Whatever Pop decided about Paul's invitation, it bothered me how much life still revolved around Gee—what he needed, what he did, what he caused. This trip had turned out to be all about him. Don't get me wrong: my brother's appearance on the top of the tower the night before was the biggest relief of my life.
But doesn't that kind of prove my point?
After the crowd in the arena had thinned out, we went down for a demo. Tim showed us the cannon and explained a little of its operation (without giving away the secret, of course) and told us why he had to be inside to pull the trigger that shot Paul. The barrel of the gun didn't look big enough for one man, let alone two.
At the first long pause, Pop said, “About your invitation. I appreciate it, but I don't see any point in rewarding Gee for worrying the daylights out of all of us.”
Gee gulped, as though gearing up for a monster-whine, but he stood down when Pop looked warningly at him.
“However,” my grandfather went on, “if you're still willing to take somebody, I suggest you take Ronnie.”
Believe the unbelievable.
—Me
How did he know? How, in the whirl of our post-Gee-stress disorder, had he noticed that if anybody should go on an evening airplane ride through the fireworks, it was me?
Paul didn't have any problem with it. Gee did, at first, but a couple of rides on the Scrambler made him see reason—funny that scrambling his brain turns out to be the best thing for it, sometimes. The rest of that afternoon was the classic Day Out with Grandpa that Mama had hoped for: cotton candy, corn dogs, and midway rides, with Pop footing the bill and only refusing about half of Gee's requests.
Paul had told us to be at the airport no later than eight, so he could take off by eight-thirty To me it felt like ages since we'd been in the Coachman, Gee nodding in the dinette seat and me in my luxury swivel chair on the passenger side. But of course, it was only a little over twenty-four hours. My head was full of things to say as we drove toward the lowering sun, but they all felt too heavy for the moment. Except for, “Thanks, Pop.”
“Hmmm?” He seemed kind of preoccupied.
“Thanks for speaking up for me about the plane ride. I know it's some trouble, hauling me out here, but—”
“Minor trouble, comparatively.”
He probably meant, compared to everything else he'dbeen through on this trip. “Well, anyway … I'm sorry you lost all this time on the job and—”
“I'll make it up.” Without you kids, he might have added, but didn't.
“Mama seems to think you've made up for a lot. Probably enough to stay away for the next two years.”
I didn't mean to sound sarcastic, but it might have come out that way. After a minute, he sighed. “Ronnie.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I should've been coming around to see y'all more often. Your mother's right—Gee needs a firm hand and I can help with that. And you—” I held my breath, wondering what I needed. “You've got an interesting life ahead. I'd like to be around for more of it.”
Breathing again, I asked, “So you're moving to Partly?”
He just snorted at that. Then he smiled. “If I did, there's a lady in Muleshoe, Texas, who'd really miss me…”
Paul's white truck was in the airport lot when we arrived, and shortly after, Paul came out of the small white building with a clipboard in hand. He waved at us but kept on walking out to the airfield, where a dozen or so small planes were waiting in a row.
He stopped at the smallest, a sporty yellow-and-white job with wings across the top. As we walked up, he was checking the propeller and wheels and a lot of other parts I couldn't name, while consulting the laminated list on his clipboard. Gee yelled, “Hi, Paul!”
Not one to carry a grudge, Paul looked up and smiled. “Hi, guys. I'll be ready in about fifteen minutes.”
There wasn't much to do while he inspected the cockpit. Pop asked a few questions, and kept Gee from asking more questions, but I just stood aside and let the evening kind of soak in. After last night's heavy rain, the day had been steamy, but a fresh breeze was blowing busily out of the west, carrying a scent of cut grass and damp soil. The haze in the air turned gold, smudging the sunset to a deep yellow. Lights twinkled on the plains that stretched out all around us, and I imagined that once in the sky, I could see till Sunday.
Paul stepped down from the cockpit doorway, where he'd been checking the fuel gauge on the wing. “That's it. Climb aboard—what was your name again?”
“Veronica,” I said, before anyone could say different.
“That's pretty. Climb on board, Veronica, and I'll get your grandfather to move the chocks out from under the wheels.”
Inside, the plane seemed no bigger than a tin can, as my mother had said, with very thin walls. I shivered, in spite of myself.
Paul hoisted himself up beside me, and the whole plane rocked with his weight. The cockpit was so small I could have puked in his lap. “Ever flown before?” he asked me.
> “No.”
“Once we get started, it'll be pretty noisy, so speak now if you're having second thoughts.”
“No way!”
“That's the spirit.” He buckled his seat belt and startedthrowing little switches on the dashboard—if that's what you call it on a plane. “My first time was a little scary.”
“Even compared to getting shot out of a cannon?”
“Oh, that? Nothing to it. This is a kick. Expensive, though. Someday I'll get my own plane, close to where I live.” He snapped a pair of headphones over his ears, picked up the microphone by his knee, and told Hays Traffic that he was about to depart.
“Where do you live?” I'd had the idea he was as footloose as Pop, with no address more permanent than a trailer park.
“Just bought a place last year.” Paul opened his window, shouted, “Clear props!” and closed it again. “Nice little acreage, a few miles outside of a little town called Partly, Missouri.”
My jaw dropped, and the propeller roared. We taxied toward the end of the runway. When I found my voice, I yelled, “Don't tell Gee!”
“WHAT?” he yelled back. I just waved a hand, indicating I'd tell him later. Talk about surprises! If Gee knew, we'd never hear the end of it. Come to think of it, if Paul knew, he might be tempted to move. Better it be my own little secret for now.
Heading down the runway, I surprised myself by having second thoughts. The plane rattled like a tray of silverware in an earthquake, and everything in it was rattling right along, including my stomach. Paul tilted the steering-wheel thingy, and like Howard on the interstate ramp, I clenched my teeth and held on as we picked up speed. The plane shook harder and harder, until it suddenlygave a little hop and I felt the wheels leave the ground. The rattling cut by half as we angled into the sky. “Wow!” I shouted.
The Middle of Somewhere Page 16