West of Nowhere (10 page)

“Please don’t—”

“—countertops,” he said, smirking. “Speaking of that, any chance I could get some lunch? Anything edible will do.”

Joy noticed Amber had been keeping her distance, clearly intimidated by her father’s surly disposition. “Amber, maybe you and Pop could practice moving him from his wheelchair to the recliner and back. If you drop him a couple of times, that’ll be okay. That’s why we call it practice.”

She watched the first two attempts and was glad to hear her father had dialed back his attitude for Amber’s sake. He was quite easy to manage when he wasn’t acting like a two-year-old. The funny thing about him—and the reason he was behaving himself right now—was that he wasn’t a jerk at all, just a joker who sometimes went too far. It wasn’t in his nature to be genuinely cruel.

Coming up with an edible lunch proved harder than she thought, since she’d thrown out most of the contents of the refrigerator last night. There was bacon but no eggs, and hot dogs but no buns. Peering through the canned goods, she remembered one of her mother’s recipes. Twenty minutes later, she called the others to lunch.

“Hawaiian stew!” her father proclaimed as Amber rolled him to the head of the table. “Now that’s what I call edible.”

“It looks like beanie weenies to me,” Amber said.

“But it has pineapple and bacon,” Joy explained. “This was my favorite meal as a kid. I never outgrew it.”

Her mother’s Hawaiian stew always made her nostalgic for her childhood. It wasn’t just the memory of her mom in the kitchen. It was realizing as she grew up how her mother always dressed up such a simple meal to make it seem like a feast. Such was life on her mother’s factory salary and her father’s disability pension, but Joy had learned to get by with less, a habit that had served her well in the navy.

In typical fashion, her father wolfed down his meal, but then sat patiently while she and Amber finished. Amber pushed the food around on her plate, eating a few of the hot dogs, some bacon and finally the pineapple, but not the beans.

Joy couldn’t be bothered with a picky eater. If Amber wanted to turn her nose up at dinner, she could do without.

“Joy tells me you’re from Nashville,” her father said, his voice pleasantly polite for the first time all day. “I had a machinist’s mate from there…Wally something or other. He ate beans like it was caviar.”

Amber fidgeted and glumly ate a forkful of beans, looking very much like Madison when she was encouraged to eat vegetables.

“You play backgammon?”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

He rubbed his hands together and grinned. “Don’t worry, kiddo. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”

“And then he’ll take your money,” Joy added.

“We’ll play for Goobers. Grab me some, will you? There’s a whole box in the door of the refrigerator.”

“He’s addicted to Goobers,” Joy explained as she got up from the table.

“It’s all I could think about for the last two weeks. If I closed my eyes I could almost taste them.”

“Where did you say they were?”

“Right there in the door.”

“Goobers…you don’t mean those chocolate covered peanuts?” Amber asked, her eyes growing wide.

He was practically smacking his lips. “Damn things are worse than potato chips. You eat one, you have to eat the whole box.”

Joy got a sinking feeling when she heard Amber’s questioning tone, and she casually lifted the lid on the trash can. Sure enough, there was the empty Goober box. No wonder Amber hadn’t been hungry.

“You know, Pop…I think I might’ve tossed those out accidentally last night. I’ll get some more at the grocery store. Why don’t I go now and let Amber clean up?”

Leaving the pair alone together would force them to get to know each other. More important, it would give Joy a break from both of them.

* * *

Amber had vague childhood memories of being left with a babysitter who scared her half to death. Miss Hodges was from the neighborhood, the kind of woman who yelled when kids walked across her lawn, or when anyone parked in front of her house. She was old, her house was old and all the trinkets inside it were old. Amber had been terrified to move, afraid she would break something and be subjected to her wrath.

Fifteen merciful years had passed since she last thought of Miss Hodges. If the old hag had ever raised a son, he would have grown into someone like Shep Shepard.

She was sure he knew she’d eaten his Goobers, even though he hadn’t come out and said so. It was in his eyes, the way he stared at her from his recliner while pretending to watch a baseball game.

A teensy, tiny part of her actually wished she’d gotten out of the truck in Limon. By now she would have been on her way back to Nashville with—

“Skippy!” She bolted from the couch for her bedroom, where she had closed him up hours ago so he’d be out of the way when Shep’s wheelchair rolled in. So much excitement would have set him off on a barking frenzy and he might even have gotten caught under one of the wheels.

“Who’s Skippy?” Shep called after her.

She was too late. The foul odor of his accident hit her the second she opened the door, and instantly spread throughout the small house.

“Jesus, you got an elephant in there?”

No, but there was dog diarrhea in several places, including the rug in front of the bed.

Skippy was curled up on the bed, quivering in obvious fear, his ears flat as though he knew he’d done something wrong.

“It’s okay, boy.” She probably shouldn’t have fed him those Goobers. Corey had told her once that chocolate was like poison for dogs, but he was always exaggerating. At least she had given him only three or four.

She shuttled back and forth between her bedroom and the bathroom cleaning up the mess, noticing Shep’s interest. With the worst of it cleaned up, she finally emerged with Skippy in her arms.

“This is Skippy. I shut him up in the room so he wouldn’t make a fuss when you got here, but then I forgot.”

“I don’t much like dogs.”

“He won’t be any trouble. I promise.”

“Yeah, I can tell…no trouble at all. Good thing I don’t have any plants or they’d have keeled over by now.”

Most people got one look at Skippy and melted. He was small, fluffy and cute. There was nothing not to love.

And yet Shep didn’t love him. But then Shep didn’t seem to love anything except his precious Goobers. He was turning out to be every bit the jerk she’d feared.

She dropped Skippy back on the bed, but before she even got to the door, he’d run past her back into the living room. His toenails clicked on the hardwood floor as he sprang back and forth in front of Shep, barking sharply as if demanding attention.

“What the hell?” Shep grabbed his long-handled grippers, the pinchers he used to pick up things on the floor. “You want a piece of me?”

“Skippy, no!” She scrambled to catch him, stopping to give Shep a threatening look. “You son of a bitch…don’t you dare hurt my dog.”

Amber was in the bedroom with the door closed before she realized what she’d done. She’d be fired the moment Joy got home. Back to Nashville with nothing, not even a place to stay for a few nights.

Her mouth had gotten her in trouble again. Every time something like this happened, she always made sure to get the last word before storming out, even just a parting shot she yelled over her shoulder after being fired. Her last words to Shep were to call him a son of a bitch.

At least she and Skippy would be safe, and she wouldn’t have to deal with that asshole anymore. It bothered her, though, how much this would disappoint Joy, who was just about the only person who’d ever shown any faith in her—based on practically nothing.

What bothered her more—now that it was too late to take back what she said—was that this gig was her only shot at making it on her own. No matter how she felt about Shep Shepard, she had to go out there and apologize, and hope to hell he accepted.

“Wish me luck, boy.”

Careful this time to keep Skippy closed up in the bedroom, she returned to the living room, her head hanging with shame. “I’m sorry I called you a name.”

“I’ve been called worse,” Shep said, without his usual trace of sardonic humor. “I wouldn’t have hurt your dog, you know. It’s just that dogs never liked me, not since I was a kid. And now with this chair, I feel kind of…I don’t know, helpless. I figure if I scare them off, they’ll leave me alone.”

“Skippy isn’t like that. He’d never hurt anybody.”

“People always say that about their dog…right before it eats the baby.”

“Does Skippy look like he’d eat a baby?”

“I guess not. At least I don’t have any ankles to bite.” His morbid sense of humor had returned. “Go get him. Let’s see if we can be friends.”

* * *

If Joy hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she’d never have believed her father would be sharing his recliner with a dog. Skippy was stretched out alongside him, his head tucked under her father’s hand.

Less surprising was the fact that the lunch dishes were still unwashed, stacked in the sink. For a moment, she toyed with the idea of washing them, but the errands of the day—on the heels of a long drive yesterday—had worn her out. As much as she hated leaving a mess, dealing with it was as simple as walking out the back door to her camper, climbing up into her loft and closing her eyes.

Maintenance crews at Oakland International Airport conducted regular sweeps of the gate areas, tarmac and runways for articles and debris that might puncture tires or get swept up in a plane’s engine. Foreign Object Damage, it was called. Joy did her own FOD walk several times a day over the four-gate area she supervised, and expected the same from her crew. She’d seen how easily small objects like zipper pulls from luggage and plastics from food service trucks could fall onto the tarmac, and knew that even the tiniest scrap could cripple a plane.

She was excited to be back at work—until she found an incident report, the first by a StarWest ground crew in Oakland since she’d joined the airline three years ago. One of the airline’s recent hires, a baggage handler named Thomas Epley, had turned a train of carts too close to an aircraft, clipping its engine. Mechanics eventually cleared the aircraft for departure, but not before ruining the travel plans of 132 passengers.

Thomas, a twenty-year-old aviation technology student at Alameda College, had seemed a natural for the job. Like all the others on her crew, he was strong, hardworking and dependable, but there was something else she’d liked about him—he always wore his uniform polo shirt tucked in. It was a minor detail to others, one she never bothered to mention in evaluations because even the other crew chiefs wore their shirttails out most of the time. To her, one’s appearance was a point of personal pride and she liked that Thomas cared how he looked when he came to work.

Too bad he hadn’t taken as much care in how he drove. Clipping an engine was a big deal, and he’d have thirty days of unpaid suspension to improve his concentration. She hoped he wouldn’t use that time to find a new job. Persevering when the job got tough showed character and dedication.

Joy was taking a rare breather, a small window before the midday rush that happened only on days when all their flights were running on schedule. All four StarWest gates were clear but ST 413 was on approach from Chicago, while ST 644 from San Diego was in range. That would kick off a flurry that would last until her shift ended at one thirty.

Angie Low, an Asian-American ramp agent who also served in the National Guard, climbed up on the tug beside her, licking her fingers from the sticky bun she’d just finished. “I’m so glad you’re back, Joy. Punch had everybody ready to quit last week after that dustup with Thomas. He ran out to supervise all the belts, the baggage carts, the tugs…everything. He treated all of us like it was our first day on the job.”

“I probably would have done the same thing,” Joy said. She liked to think the incident wouldn’t have happened on her watch, but she couldn’t be everywhere all at once. Whatever lapse Thomas had suffered likely would have occurred with her on the clock as crew chief. “I’m just glad I wasn’t here when it happened.”

“How was your trip?”

“Madison was a blast.” She related the highlights of their cross-country adventure, but offered nothing about the return trip, nor her father’s accident. Bringing Amber Halliday home was probably one of the stupidest, most impulsive things she’d ever done, and she didn’t want anyone else to know about it.

“I bet that ride back by yourself was a long one,” Angie replied.

The radio on Joy’s belt crackled and she took her position atop the tug to signal the aircraft into the gate. “Show’s on, people! Four-One-Three is on the ground.”

* * *

Amber closed her eyes and luxuriated in the feel of the morning sun on her skin. Northern California was plenty hot in August, but without the humidity it wasn’t nearly as oppressive as Nashville.

She loved that Joy and Shep’s backyard was fenced in with a gate on the side. That meant Skippy could run free in the grass and she didn’t have to keep an eye on him. Not that she would have had to, anyway. Shep, whose wheelchair was parked beneath an umbrella on the deck, nibbled on Goobers and watched his every move.

“I suppose I should go in and do my exercises again,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to lose all the muscle control in my pinky. How would I drink my tea?”

Amber had led him through an early-morning regimen using the notes from the physical therapist. The whole drill seemed like a silly waste of time, since Shep could do all the exercises easily and without pain. The only reason she bothered at all was because Joy had pretty much ordered her to make sure he did them three times a day, whether he wanted to or not.

She wheeled him back to the dining table and spread out the towel he was supposed to roll up with one hand. “Ten times, and then the neck twists.” There wasn’t much to supervise, but she felt she ought to sit with him while he did the repetitions.

“Any ideas about lunch?” he asked. “Grilled cheese would taste pretty good about now.”