Best Friends (15 page)

For the men and women of Angel Canyon, it was the phone call on December 29, 1990. The mortgage holder on the Arizona ranch had filed for Chapter 11 protection from bankruptcy. With one penstroke their future was gone.

BEST FRIENDS WAS BROKE.

T
he blue truck died on April Fools' Day. Michael wasn't surprised. He fully expected Paul's green pickup to follow in short order. Sweet serendipity had deserted Best Friends. Murphy's Law had not only come but had taken up permanent residence in Angel Canyon. Building had come to an abrupt halt. Activities had dribbled down to eating (lightly), sleeping (fitfully), keeping warm (sometimes), and taking care of the animals (always).

It was as if a collective inertia had settled over the group—an unspoken decision to hunker down until the full reality of the situation could be absorbed or, as John said, “the dust settles.”

Perhaps they should have seen it coming when the developer began missing payments. Perhaps they should have convinced Faith to step back from animal control months before. Perhaps they should have realized they were taking on too much too soon. Perhaps. Perhaps. Michael sighed and eased out of the dying warmth of Blue's interior. Everything was obvious in hindsight.

It was snowing again, as it had been doing intermittently for the past three months. A most unusual winter, the locals declared. That figured. Thank the gods John had persuaded the power company to keep the electricity flowing. It had been a pleasant relief to find that their word was indeed good in the community. The power company had allowed that Best Friends would honor their debts—albeit a little later than usual.

The sound of his boots crunched loudly as Michael trudged toward the bunkhouse. Funny how they all gravitated to the comfort of the small and familiar. The Village, their pride and joy, was finished, but still it was the old kitchen with its chipped Formica table where everyone congregated.

Michael sensed the situation was coming to a head. He and John had waited until the new year to break the depressing news of their financial heart attack to the founders who hadn't yet moved to the canyon. After the initial dismay, everyone agreed to carry on as before. Surely among them all they could ante up the minimum needed to keep the sanctuary functioning until they figured out what to do next.

Michael knew what had to be done next. If Best Friends was to survive, the days of being a private endeavor—paying out of pocket, working out of their bedrooms, kitchens, and whatever—were over. Consciously they all knew it. Subconsciously they fought the shifts they recognized would change forever the sheltered informality of their daily routines.

John and Francis had gotten to the bunkhouse ahead of him. They sat around the comfort of the Formica table like two morose bears awakened prematurely from their winter's sleep. Neither spoke as Michael added boiling water to the pot that was always on the stove and poured himself a cup of tea with lots of sugar. A very civilized habit, he thought, the afternoon “cuppa,” as they said in the old country. He pulled up a chair, ready to begin.

John Christopher Fripp didn't mince words. “It appears the Keating Five and the resultant savings and loan debacle is the reason our developer went belly-up. Worse, Arizona was the hardest hit in the real estate crash. Bottom line? Trying to sell the ranch now is a lost cause. People aren't touching land with a ten-foot pole.”

“So forget being bailed out by another buyer,” Francis translated.

“Has anyone considered that what's happened might be a blessing in disguise?” Michael ventured.

John's eyebrows knitted in concentration. “I wouldn't exactly call it a blessing, but I've got a hunch where you're going with this. We've been thinking along the same lines.”

Francis's face hardened into that familiar intensity they knew so well. “Let's face it, the sanctuary's grown like Topsy. We've all been so busy taking in every needy creature that crossed our path, we haven't had time to plan. We've been running this operation like a private hobby. Talk about indulging ourselves.”

“I wouldn't exactly call taking care of fifteen hundred animals an indulgence,” John protested.

“I know what Francis is saying,” Michael soothed. “Best Friends has already grown far bigger than we ever dreamed. And there's no way we can walk away from what we've built here. Besides, where would we go?”

John grimaced. “We hear you, Michael. We're all in this together, for better or for worse.” He laughed without humor. “Sounds like a marriage. So, tell us your plan.”

Michael sipped his tea, composing his words. A deep calm had taken over: a certainty that what he was about to propose was right. He spoke slowly, as the concept unfolded in all its surety. “Let's be clear on one point. Best Friends is not just for those of us living in Angel Canyon anymore. We've been entrusted with this incredibly beautiful place, and the only way we can protect it is to share it with the world. We need to create an organization—let others be part of what we're building.”

A fleeting sadness crossed the faces of his friends. Francis sighed. “Board of directors. Job descriptions. Hierarchy. Fund-raising. Mailing lists.” He sounded as if the end of the world was staring them in the face.

“For the animals,” Michael said quietly.

“I'm just talking,” Francis said.

Michael continued. “We can't scatter our energies anymore. All of those who originally committed to this dream need to come to Angel Canyon. We can't expect Maia, Charity, Anne, and the others to bleed themselves dry keeping us alive. We've all got to pull together and raise funds.”

John's face registered the resignation they all felt. “We need to go to the cities.”

Michael's was the face of a stoic. “Yes. We start over, sit in front of supermarkets, and tell our story.”

“Tabling,” Francis muttered.

Michael nodded. “But it's got to be done right. If somebody cares enough to give us a donation, we ask for a telephone number and address.”

“So we can follow up with a thank-you call . . .” John was coming alive.

“Then a letter asking if they'd like to become a member of Best Friends.” Francis, on the same page as Michael, smiled for the first time.

“And that is how we build an organization,” Michael finished.

John, ever one to probe the problems they might face, played devil's advocate. “Why would anyone in, say, Los Angeles or San Francisco, want to support us?”

“We're already taking in animals from California. But you're right; maybe nobody will be interested. I don't know,” Michael confessed. “It's worth a shot.”

Silence.

“Okay,” Francis said. “Enough talking. We know what we gotta do. Now who's going to tell Anne, Jana, and the rest of the gang they've got to shut up shop and come to Kanab?”

Michael sighed. “We can tell the Las Vegas contingent when they come up this weekend. I'm pretty sure they'll be with us. But I think I should go to Phoenix and Denver in person.”

“I'll call everyone else,” John offered.

“Well, now we're getting somewhere,” Francis said. “At least we're not sitting around like a bunch of losers.”

“I wish you wouldn't use that language,” John sounded pained.

“Would a glass of wine be out of line?” Michael deadpanned.

Small smiles.

“I think we can afford half a glass each,” John, the eternal treasurer, answered with his best poker face. “If only we had some.”

Francis looked at Michael, who glanced at John's so-serious expression. The smiles were instantaneous, rolling from one to the other, until the relief of laughter echoed around the table.

“It isn't Sunday, is it?” Francis said. “Hell, let's go buy a bottle. Even we can afford the state of Utah's best red.”

M
ichael felt a familiar sense of
déjà vu
on seeing who, when faced with the actuality of leaving their own bailiwicks, would come to the beleaguered Angel Canyon. He likened the situation to people who have a second home: they love to visit, help support the place, but their primary focus is elsewhere.

Unlike seven years earlier, the commitment being asked for this time around was akin to jumping out of an airplane with a parachute that may not open. Best Friends could lose everything in the months to come. A massive balloon payment was due on the property next year. If they couldn't pay the bank, then everyone, and the animals, would be out on the street—literally.

And yet not one person in the canyon had elected to forsake the sanctuary. It was true Cyrus had gone back to Denver, but that was only to comfort his wife—Anne Mejia had been devastated at the turn of events. And Virgil had decamped to Arizona to caretake their white elephant of a ranch until further notice. The founders who still called the cities home, however, were a looming question mark. It remained to be seen which of them would truly be willing to join the first settlers in the rough times ahead.

John made the initial calls. As they suspected, there were a couple of people whose lives had taken them toward their own dreams, but John had good news when he tracked down Michael and Steven at The Village. “Silva Lorraine is with us,” he announced, beaming. “I wasn't even halfway into my explanation before she interrupted. ‘I came to the same conclusion, John,' she said. ‘I'm already winding things down here. I'll be there in a few weeks.'”

“That's Silva,” Steven said fondly. “Makes up her mind and just does it. That's how she came to Toronto, remember?”

Michael hadn't been in Canada when Steven, Anne, and Cyrus were there, but he knew the story. The slender, auburn-haired Englishwoman was an art major who had gotten a job as a gardener at Kensington Palace. Silva was a walking treasure trove of fascinating stories about Princess Margaret.

“Margaret had an abominable reputation with the English media,” Silva told them. “But I found her very sweet, and she has a wicked sense of humor. I think she liked me because of the tortoises. She loved her pet tortoises; I don't think anybody knew that about her. She let them have the run of a whole acre behind the palace. Margaret insisted on letting the grass grow wild, but every time she went away the gardeners would manicure the place like it was Versailles.

“My special assignment was to protect the tortoises and make sure the grass wasn't mown. She said we had a secret conspiracy to foil the old men.”

But working for royalty included being on call at all hours. Silva was thinking that this was no life for a twenty-year-old when a friend said she was going to Canada, and why didn't Silva come along? Two weeks later she was on a plane to Toronto.

“I used to tease Silva that she was the animals' Florence Nightingale,” Steven remarked to Michael as they drove south the next day.

“You really like her?” Silva had been an infrequent visitor to the sanctuary, and Michael was still mulling the fact that she'd not hesitated when push came to shove.

“I've never heard her complain. Ever.”

“That makes her very special,” Michael agreed.

 

The two men broke their journey in Phoenix to see an old buddy of Steven's with whom he had been in the printing business.

“So, the grand experiment cleaned you out, huh?” the friend quipped as he showed them through his shop.

“It isn't exactly an experiment,” Michael said mildly.

“Whatever. But you'd better think up a better way to get some dough than sitting in front of tables all day.”

They had reached the very back of the building, an ill-lit room dusty with disuse. Steven's friend smiled as if at some private joke and marched over to the darkest corner. He whipped a dustcloth aside to reveal a decrepit-looking piece of machinery. He grinned at Steven. “Remember this?”

“An AB Dick Three-sixty!” Steven exclaimed, running his hands over the ancient printing press. “We worked on one like this in Toronto.”

“Back in the Dark Ages of the nineteen-sixties,” his friend wisecracked. “So, you want to do me a favor and haul this monster out of here? I warn you, the thing shakes, rattles, and rolls, and you'd better have a big supply of rubber bands to hold it together.”

“You're kidding!” Steven said, thinking of the newsletter he and Michael had brainstormed on the way. “This would be a godsend.”

“You might not say that when you fire it up. But if you talk nicely and genuflect every morning, it'll work well enough.”

“We'll take it,” Michael and Steven chorused in unison.

 

The two men were feeling pleased with themselves when, later that afternoon, they rang the doorbell of an Adobe-style house in the outlying suburb of Carefree.

A slight woman in a voluminous caftan flung open the door with all the drama of an Old Vic Repertory star making her grand entrance—which was nothing strange to her visitors. Charity Rennie had trained at London's Royal Theater and honed her skills as a BBC actress—a talent she never failed to employ at every opportunity.

“Are we Lady Macbeth or Queen Victoria today?” Michael inquired as she ushered them inside.

Charity's pout could have been the envy of any Hollywood diva.
“We
are not amused,” she rebuked, as haughty as a dowager. “Actually, I'm in my Maggie Smith mode this afternoon,” she informed him, gliding across the cool tile floor of the sun-splashed foyer and sliding open the glass doors to the living room.

The space was pure Charity. Out of an average white-walled subdivision house she had created a bright, color-filled, animal-friendly retreat to reflect her personality: throw rugs in hues of purple, saffron, and lime disguised the nondescript carpeting; long-fringed shawls streaked in rainbow blues, pinks, and oranges carelessly covered yesterday's divans and chairs; the tropical fragrance of vanilla lingered from last night's candles.

A dozen felines snoozed in wedges of sunlight that bored through uncurtained windows, and on a couch two more lay securely ensconced in Maia Astor's arms. A third woman, Sharon St. Joan, whom Michael had met in Paris where she was working as a librarian, sat with her legs curled under her on the sofa. He must remember to congratulate Sharon—she was gaining national recognition for her wildlife rehabilitation work in Arizona.

Michael and Steven made themselves comfortable as Charity poured iced tea for everyone. “Glad you're here, Sharon, and you Maia,” Michael said.

An awkward pause settled among them as they sipped the mint-freshened cooler. Charity studied Michael's face. “So,” she drawled in the silence, “what have the powers that be decided?”

Michael stretched his legs and steepled his long fingers. “First thing is, we're incorporating Best Friends under its own charter,” he began.

He talked steadily for a half-hour. As she listened, Maia alternately stroked her cats and peeked in the numerology book she carried everywhere. Sharon fixed Michael with the unblinking stare of the owls she so loved. Charity was a picture of languid curiosity as she closed her eyes and rested wheat blond hair against the tasseled cushion behind her head. Michael finished and waited for the women's reactions.

“Let me see if I've got this right,” Charity Rennie said with a smile that would disarm Attila the Hun. “You're suggesting we give up our comfortable abodes and our own rescue operations—which are going quite nicely, I might add—to live in a Spartan cell at The Village, in between sitting at a table outside a supermarket in some godforsaken, polluted city, asking people who, for the most part, don't want to be bothered, to support an endeavor they've never heard of, in a place of which they have only the vaguest notion, and let us not forget,” Charity paused for breath, “all for which we don't get a brass nickel. Am I correct?”

“Spartan, yes,” Michael said, thinking of the spare, clean rooms at The Village. “But then, Charity dear, you could make Alcatraz cozy, and you're absolutely correct on every point.”

Charity sighed deeply. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“August fifth is a very auspicious day to incorporate,” Maia Astor interjected with mock seriousness. “You did say you thought John would do Best Friends' charter on August fifth, didn't you?”

“That's the date we're shooting for, why?”

Maia slid a thumb under a paragraph in her numerology book. “You add the numbers for August five, 1991, and they come out to five—a very good omen for this year.”

Michael did the math in his head. “I make it six.”

Maia frowned, then giggled. “Then you'll just have to incorporate a day earlier.”

Sharon was thoughtful. “Would it be possible to have a bird sanctuary?”

“Would you come then?”

With the fluidity of a dancer, Charity rose out of her chair. She took center stage, wringing her hands with practiced remorse. “My dear, dear friends,” she began with funereal solemnity, “I know you've traveled far. Still, I regret to tell you it was a wasted journey.”

Michael closed his eyes, waiting for the verbal blow.

“Maia, Sharon, and I discussed the situation and decided that the idea of being heroines on a sinking ship was rather appealing.”

Michael re-ran her last words. Slowly it dawned on him what the actress had said. “You mean . . . ?”

Charity lifted her chin and gazed out of the window. “It is a far, far better thing we do this day than we have ever done. . . .”

Steven snorted with laughter. Michael grinned. “You are too much, lady. By the way, you're mixing your characters.”

“I am?” Charity murmured innocently.

“Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth wrings her hands; Dickens's Sidney Carton makes the speech from
A Tale of Two Cities,
and it's captains on a sinking ship.”

Charity bestowed her famous Cheshire cat smile. “I rather prefer heroines myself. But you got the message?
We
didn't even
consider
bailing, Michael. Besides it's getting too damn hot down here. We'll hit Utah, with cats—ASAP.”

“If you'd already made up your minds . . . ?” Michael asked.

“Why did we have you make the trip?” Charity pirouetted prettily. “Hadn't seen your nutty face for a while, silly. Why do you think?”

 

In a less dramatic fashion, Anne and Cyrus Mejia affirmed their commitment. “It's on the road again, I guess,” was how Anne summed it up.

Steven and Michael had arrived at the red brick house in Denver, tired, yet heartened from their meetings in Phoenix. Michael was even more cheered when he saw Estelle Munro's sweet face. Michael always felt uplifted when he saw Estelle. She seemed to be surrounded by a pure light of goodness. He was not unaware that men, women, and children also seemed to recognize her clarity of spirit and responded in kind. For some reason Michael felt humbled before Estelle.

She eased awkwardly out of her armchair to greet him when he came into the room. “Don't get up, Estelle,” Michael pleaded, closing the gap between them. A smile illuminated the angelic face as she sank back down and shifted her leg restraints into a more comfortable position.

Estelle had spent most of her youth in an iron lung since being stricken with polio at the age of two. How paradoxical that the young woman had the power to heal with her presence!

Michael hugged her close. “Are you with us?”

“I've been wanting to come to Angel Canyon for so long,” she murmured. “But you needed people who were capable of hard, physical work. That wasn't me, Michael.” She smiled. “But you're going to need someone to run an office, and that's what I'd like to do someday. Meanwhile I can table. I can tell our story. It will really make me feel part of everything.”

“You've always been part of everything,” Michael assured.

Over dinner, John Christopher's son, Matthias, couldn't stop talking about the secondhand IBM 386 computer he had gotten from a college mate. The dark-haired young man had the reasoned intelligence of his father, and the same piercing blue eyes that saw right through you.

Michael remembered John telling once how nine-year-old Matthias had scrambled up onto a stage in San Antonio and earnestly delivered a lecture on the future of technology. “And he's totally self-taught,” John related in awe.

Michael and Steven listened to the student. Each knew what the other was thinking. Matthias Fripp would be absolutely invaluable in setting up a membership data base and organizing their records—and he was one of the family to boot. Steven nodded imperceptibly. Michael fired the first salvo. “Instead of spending a year in India, we could really use you at Best Friends.”

Steven proffered the carrot of buddies the same age. “Judah Nasr and David Maloney are in the canyon helping with the animals.”

“Cool,” Matthias responded.

As simply as that the deal was done, and the next morning Michael and Steven were on their way back home.

One by one the wagons were closing the circle. Now all that was left was to make their forays into an indifferent world.