A Morning Like This (26 page)

“Of course he’ll come back,” Sophie said in a pinched voice. “That’s all he ever thinks about these days. Come back. Come
back. Come back. And I just wish…I just wish…”

Abby touched her arm. “If you want the police, I’ve got my cell phone in my purse.”

“No, don’t do that to him. I don’t want anything to happen to him. Please.”

Here he came, lugging a heavy wooden crate with wheatgrass sticking out of the corners, his hands jammed through two holes
for handles. Every few yards or so across the grass, someone would stop him and peer at the box with a stupefied expression,
a glance of inquiry, and a careful hand reached inside. He approached the Community Safety Network booth with long, easy strides,
and plopped the box on the ground with obvious pride. Sophie stood on tiptoe to look over.

“Uh-uh-uh.” He stooped and reached inside where she couldn’t see. “You let me be the one to present you with this little fellow.
Hold out your arms.”

“No. I’m not taking any live thing. You just want me to come home and take care of it.”

“Well, I figure since the roses didn’t do any good—” When he stood up, he’d lashed his arms around a big ring-necked pheasant.
It craned its neck and flapped its wings in Mike Henderson’s big hands, the most beautiful wild bird Abby had ever seen. Its
tawny plumage glinted chestnut and purple and green, a corona of colors, in the daylight. Its eyes were round with surprise
and wet with shine.

“How about this for a present? We were out with Ramey’s Retriever, just giving it a run. Dog flushed this thing and we couldn’t
believe what we were seeing.”

“Mike, that’s a pheasant. A wild bird. Something people hunt.”

Mike Henderson moved on impulse and not on logic. “Not until the fall, people don’t hunt it. Serves all those hunters right
who go out mid-week, when I can’t afford to hunt until Saturday. Now I’ve got my own private stock.”

“Mike, you’re not thinking. You don’t get it. I need a pheasant like I need a hole in the head.”

The pheasant let out one double-noted crow,
kur-rik
.

“Looks like this one got his tail bobbed off. Looks like a coyote taught him a lesson. Bet he won’t get in the way of a coyote
again.”

Abby moved in closer behind Sophie and pulled her cell phone out of her purse like a weapon. “Sophie has come to us for protection
from you. If you don’t leave her alone, I’m going to make a domestic disturbance call to the police.”

“Mike,” Sophie said. “I don’t want that bird.”

“I’m trying to make you listen, Sophie. I’m trying to make you see how much I love you.”

“There’s love that wins battles and there’s love that loses them. I’m trying to figure out which one we’ve got.”

“I said I wouldn’t do it again, if you’d come home. I said I’d go see somebody.”

“You keep getting it gnarled up like that. You can’t make me do something that hinges on you. You can only figure out what
two people’s love is together when you know what two people’s love is, separate.”

“Sophie, you just need to get back home.”

The crowd began to push in. “I want to pet that thing, mister. That’s the weirdest bird I’ve ever seen.” “Can I see it?” “Let
me!”

The pheasant, which wasn’t built much for flying anyway, flapped again, hard. With an airy whoosh against Mike’s chest, it
burst out of his arms and landed, wings threshing, on the bake-sale table. Dollar bills flew. Chocolate cupcakes with pastel
sprinkles scattered in the grass. The bird’s feet made tiny chocolate W’s, evenly spaced, where it dashed for escape across
the tablecloth. It took off tottering across the grass, its bare behind tucked under and waddling, its scarlet wattle seesawing
back and forth with every step.

Every child in the town square sprinted in hot pursuit. In the corner of the square, the Teton Twirlers had broken into a
fast rendition of “Oh Johnny, Oh!” One fellow, in the midst of a swing with his partner, had to wrench his cowboy boot sideways
to keep from stepping on the pheasant and three kids. The pheasant took another flight and Mike jumped in to catch it. It
fluttered up and forward like a hovercraft, escaping straight into the peril of a woman’s square-dance costume, snagging itself
in her bandana-and-tulle gathered skirt. There it floundered and no one dared disentangle it while it struggled to find the
solid ground or sky, either one.

“Get it out! Get it out!” The woman stamped her Mary Jane shoes, desperately fearful, while an alien living thing rousted
among her petticoats. As she tried to flatten it out of her skirt with her hands, the Bar J Wranglers on the flat-bed trailer
broke into a rousing fiddle rendition of “Birds of a Feather.”

“Hey, Henderson,” somebody bellowed from the crowd. “Is that your new dancing partner?”

The pheasant scurried down the street, rounded a corner into an alleyway, and was gone.

In frustration, Mike slapped his big hand against his hipbone. When he wheeled back to face everybody, a vein protruded like
a scar from his forehead. “Nobody makes a fool out of me.”

“Mike—”

“You made a fool out of me, Sophie. Right when I was trying to do something good.”

Abby wrapped her arm around Sophie’s shoulders and tried to draw her away. “You don’t have to do it,” she said. “Sophie, you
don’t have to let him pull you like this.”

“This is not what I wanted, Mike,” Sophie said, her arms fastened against her chest again while Abby stood beside her. “No
matter what parts of that bird are missing, it still needs to be set free.”

“But that bird is a
gift
,” he insisted.

“You can’t give something as a gift if people don’t want it,” she said. “I want you to leave me alone, Mike. I want you to
just go away.”

B
raden Treasure’s favorite part of July Fourth was the dunking tank that stood on the southeast corner of the square. All sorts
of town dignitaries volunteered to take turns taunting customers and getting wet, all the way from the owner of the Mangy
Moose restaurant to Mrs. Roehrkasse, a fifth-grade teacher who always traveled with her students to the dinosaur dig near
Thermopolis.

Whenever Braden made his way to the front of the line, the hapless victim in the chair would moan. Being one of the Little
League players, even though not its most accurate pitcher, had its distinct advantages. He’d been training all summer long
to throw hard and fast and with newfound precision. If only he could hit the target this time, the unfortunate person perched
atop the tank would plunge into the icy water below.

Today Braden would take aim at Ken Hubner, his own baseball coach. “You’d better not hit that, young man!” Ken bellowed, swinging
his legs and waving while everyone jeered at him from below. “You just try to douse me! You just
try
.”

Braden paid his dollar and was handed three baseballs. He wound up to throw while Wheezer and Jake and Chase cheered him on.
But things didn’t feel right. He lowered the ball, lowered his chin, and readjusted the bill of his Elk’s Club cap.

That girl might come here. That girl who’s my sister
.

Braden reared his elbow back and let fly the first ball. He stepped off to the left on his follow-through, just the way Coach
Hubner had taught him not to do. He missed the bull’s-eye target by at least six inches.

“Ha!” Ken shouted. “You missed me, you missed me, now you gotta kiss me—”

“Hey, coach,” Braden hollered up at him, teasing. “You’re going down!” He started a wind-up on the second ball.

That’s why Dad wanted me to put all those posters up. So he could find her
.

The second ball missed, too. It smashed against the backboard and bounced out of sight.

“Come on, Braden!” Hubner bellowed again. “Throw that last ball like you mean it. I dare you!” The coach grinned and raised
his fists high into the air. “Hey, I’m your coach. I know what you can do.”

Braden adjusted his hat again. He hitched up his elbow, cocked his knee.

What if Dad finds my sister and he forgets about me?

The baseball smashed into the bull’s-eye target full bore as spectators cheered. With a clatter, the wooden platform burst
open.
Splash
. Ken Hubner came up blubbering, with his clothes and what was left of his hair plastered to his skin. He spit water. “That’s
the way to pitch it in there, Treasure. Right down the pike!”

But Braden didn’t stay for his coach’s accolades. He was too busy thinking about Samantha Roche.

Calvin Baxter kept glancing into his rearview mirror, which extended like an arthropod feeler from the side of his truck cab.

“What is it with all these tourists?” he said. “You’d think somebody would let me into the lane I need.”

“Honey,” his wife pleaded with him. “Watch the road in front of you. If we can’t get into the turn lane, you’ll go straight
ahead and double back. Your pride isn’t worth risking our lives.”

“I’ve been signaling for two miles.”

Ahead of them, in the only lane where they could continue, three sawhorses loomed.

Calvin smacked the steering wheel with an open palm. “Oh, great. Look’s like they’re having a parade or something. No wonder
everybody and their brothers are here.”

“Well, sweetie. It
is
the Fourth of July.”

“I’ve got to get over in that other lane.”

From the minuscule backseat where she’d ridden for five hundred miles, one little girl propped her chin on her father’s shoulder
and said, “Daddy?” with the lilt in her voice she always used when she wanted to get her own way. “Aren’t we going to stop
someplace in town?”

“With all these people? You’ve got to be crazy. Our plan was to visit the wilderness, not the corner of Hollywood and Vine.”

Before Tess Baxter could persuade further, Calvin threw on the brakes to keep from hitting sawhorses. Streams of bumper-to-bumper
traffic on either side didn’t allow him to turn either way. Because he couldn’t think of any other avenue to communicate his
frustration, he pounded on his horn. A police officer on horseback gestured wildly at them with his hands.

Calvin said, “That’s it, kids. Enjoy this trip. When we get home to Oregon, we’re going to sell this Jayco. I’m never going
to drive like this again.”

“Well thank heavens for small favors, Calvin. That’s a relief to every one of us.”

“Daddy, let us get out somewhere. Please!”

With the officer’s rather reluctant assistance, Calvin Baxter managed to maneuver the huge camper into the left lane. He lumbered
them along Cache Street for two blocks or so, following the green road signs to Yellowstone, while everyone with him begged
to be let out. At last he gave up and turned into a gas station, jostling the huge rig over a dip in the driveway.

“Fifteen minutes, that’s all. That’s it; everybody out. I can’t stand it anymore.”

Out of the fifteen minutes allotted, Tess needed approximately three. She begged the key from her father, saying she’d forgotten
her copy of
Amber Brown Is Not a Crayon
in her bunk.

“Hey,”
she whispered once she got inside. “Sam. Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“You’d better do it quick.”

“Okay.”

Sam slithered out from her hiding place inside the bunk. Their faces met for the first time in five hundred miles. They gripped
each other’s arms, still children, with a child’s plan, but with full-grown hope in their hearts. “I don’t want you to leave,”
Tess said. “I want you to stay with us.”

“If I stay with you, I’ll never find
you know who
.”

“I want you to be careful, Sam. Really.”

For one frightening moment, footsteps crunched on the asphalt beside the door. Tess slammed her friend out of sight behind
the thin trailer door. They waited one long excruciating minute, while Sam counted the
kerthumps
inside her chest.

“It’s okay.” A hushed whisper. “Nobody’s coming in here.” They gripped each other’s arms again. Tess whispered, “Be careful.”
Up front, the truck door slammed. Tess could see her own father checking the road map.
“Go,”
Tess said. “Get out of here. If you don’t do it now, they’ll see you.”