Skies Like These (6 page)

Jade looked up, too. She couldn't tell the difference between these clouds and the ones that had nearly fried them with lightning two days before. “How do you know?”

Aunt Elise pulled Lobo onto her lap. “I just do. These clouds will give us some rain, but their bark is worse than their bite, isn't that right, Lobo?” The pug wiggled and blinked his bug eyes. “What are your grand plans for today?”

“Roy asked me to come over when I could.”

“I've never met a better bunch of people than the Parkers.”

“It's too bad about them losing their business.”

Sadie and Lady, the twin collies, came over to Aunt Elise. She pushed her fingers into their long fur and gave them each a good scratch. “Roy told you about that?”

“He's kind of obsessed with it.”

“Well,” Aunt Elise said, “his family is in a tough spot right now.” She rearranged Lobo on her lap. He grunted and snorted and rested his chin on her knee, closing his eyes.

“I know.” Jade considered telling her aunt about Roy's master plan, but let it go. It wasn't like it was ever going to happen, so it seemed pointless to rat him out.

“I try to offer Roy a job or two when I can think of any. It's not enough to reopen the store or pay off their debt, but I hope it helps him have spending money of his own.”

“I'm sure it helps,” Jade said.

Aunt Elise ran a hand along Lobo's back. “Mostly it's to make them feel supported. I think you need friends to rally around you at a time like this.”

“I remember when a girl from my school got sick and had to have an operation. Our neighborhood had a huge yard sale to raise money for her bills.”

“That's an idea.”

Broad haphazard raindrops kept splattering across the yard. Jade sat down on the bench under the living room window. Astro came up and collapsed across her flip-flops, pinning her feet to the floorboards of the porch. The weight was comforting.

Sitting there, Jade began thinking about Wyoming's remarkable kaleidoscope skies and had an idea. “What about teaching astronomy classes on your roof?” she said, her words bouncing with excitement. “You could advertise all around town. It could be a fund-raiser for the Parkers.”

Aunt Elise scoffed, “Folks 'round here see the stars every night. No need to pay me for it.”

“You're the one who showed me how it's not the same view from the ground. You could teach merit-badge classes or host a couples' romantic night or birthday parties. Not everyone has a telescope. Most of the houses I've seen around here don't even have flat roofs.”

Jade could see the idea rolling across her aunt's mind. “I do like the thought of being a teacher, but I wouldn't want to make William feel like a charity project.”

“We won't tell him why we're holding the classes. We can save up the money and give it to him as a gift.”

“It's not a bad idea, actually,” Aunt Elise said. “Maybe I can whip up some snacks to serve, too.” Jade didn't mean to make a face, but she must have because her aunt laughed and said, “All right, we'll appoint you as executive chef.”

“Me?”

“Why not? You said you liked to watch the Food Network and, to be quite honest, anything you make is bound to taste better than my cooking.”

“I guess I can try.” Jade was getting more excited. “How about you print up some flyers and I'll take them around. We could even run an advertisement in the online classifieds for the local paper. How much do you think we should charge? Twenty dollars a ticket?”

“People might pay money like that in Philadelphia, but it seems a tad steep for this area.”

“Fine,” Jade said. “We'll charge fifteen.” The minute those words flew off her tongue, she started doing the math. Fifteen dollars per person meant Aunt Elise would earn fifteen hundred dollars with only a hundred students. She didn't know how much Mr. Parker needed to reopen his store, but those numbers sounded promising.

Aunt Elise stood up and walked out to the edge of the porch, watching the rain spurt and spatter across the dusty earth. From this spot, they could see beyond the houses to the Teton mountain range off at the edge of the horizon. Jade never knew mountains could be so rough.

“You've climbed that big one seventeen times?” Jade asked.

Aunt Elise kept her gaze out to the world before them. “To the top,” she said.

Jade studied the strong, harsh rocks of the mountain range. “It looks like a bunch of skeleton fingers coming up out of the earth and clawing at the sky.”

Aunt Elise turned back to Jade. “It has to be that way.” Her words were sure. “If the mountain was smooth, you wouldn't be able to climb it.”

 

10

Jade bounded over to Roy's house as soon as the rain stopped. She was dying to tell him about her plan to have Aunt Elise teach astronomy classes as a way to help his family. She knew it wouldn't fix the whole problem, but maybe—if they all pitched in—they could help the Parkers get back on their feet.

As she approached the house, she heard jazz music coming from Mr. Parker's workshop. Only it wasn't the perky, light music Mrs. Parker had been dancing to in the kitchen. This jazz riff was entirely different—slow and lingering and dripping with heartache. The door was slightly ajar, so Jade peeked in.

Mr. Parker was sitting on a red vinyl bar stool. He was leaning against a huge metal box, his eyes closed and his fingers grazing against the metal in a drumming pattern. There was a sadness to that beat that vibrated deep in Jade's bones
. Thrum, drum, thrum.
She had never seen a glass kiln before, but she guessed that was what Mr. Parker was leaning against. The one Roy said he should sell.

Jade began to step away from the door just as Mr. Parker stopped thrumming and looked up.

“Jade,” he said, pulling his rectangular glasses from the pocket of his ragged brown bathrobe. “It's nice to see you.” His hair frizzled out from his head like rays from the sun.

“Sorry to interrupt.”

“A friend is never an interruption.” Mr. Parker ran his foot along the bottom rung of the bar stool. “I was out here thinking.” His words were soft and wistful and he kept his head down for a stretched-out minute before looking up with a warm smile. “Roy'll be glad to see you. Feel free to go on inside.”

Jade left the workshop door, shaking off the sad notes of that jazz song and reminding herself of the reason she had come. Of the good news she had to share. She found Roy on their front steps. “He was out there all night,” Roy said, knowing Jade had come from the workshop. “How'd he look?”

“Miserable.” Jade sat down next to Roy.

“It's my fault. I got on his case again about selling his glassblowing equipment so we could reopen County Hardware.” He pulled at tufts of grass pushing up through a crack in the concrete. “I think I went too far this time.”

“Why don't you tell him you were wrong and that you want him to keep it after all?”

Roy sucked in a slow, deep breath and eased it out. “I should,” he said. “I
know
I should. But between the kiln and the annealer—not to mention all of his tools—he's probably got ten thousand dollars worth of stuff in there.”

Jade guessed ten thousand dollars would go pretty far toward helping the family out.

“Part of me wants him to sell it and the other part is afraid if he
does
sell it, I'll feel like pond scum for the rest of my life.” He went back to picking at the grass.

“I have a plan to make some money.”

Roy's head popped up. “Go on.”

Jade spelled out how Aunt Elise was going to teach classes and how she was going to try to bake treats. “At fifteen dollars a person, we'd only need three hundred and thirty-five students to make over five thousand dollars!”

“You did that math in your head?”

“I'm pretty good at numbers.”

“Good,” Roy said, “run these. How many people do you think will fit on top of Elise's roof?”

“Twenty at a time,” Jade said.

“Try ten. It's small and, even though there's a ledge, you still need to be careful. Dead students don't pay their bills.”

“Fine. Ten it is. Aunt Elise is going to print up the flyers and make us a list of where I can drop them off all over Wellington. You can help me take them around.”

“Hold your horses,” Roy said. “Let's figure this out. Say you're able to book one class a week. That's ten students times fifteen dollars times four days a month…”

“That's six hundred dollars a month!”

“You are good at numbers,” Roy said. “Now, how many months does Wyoming have fair weather?”

Jade hadn't considered the weather. “I don't know.”

“I do,” Roy said. “It's five. Five months out of the year when we don't have snow or ice. That's not accounting for the summer storms. They can be pretty bad and, at the start of summer, it rains quite a bit. No one will be standing on the roof looking at the sky if it's pouring outside. Count those in as one weekend a month, for safety's sake. What does that give us?”

Jade worked the math. “One hundred and fifty dollars times three lessons a month times five months out of the year…”

Roy finished her thought. “I count that in the neighborhood of twenty-two hundred dollars. And that's after a whole year! We have until September first before our lease ends and the owner rents the space to some other business. Not even two lousy months!”

Jade knew Roy was right. “But Aunt Elise was so excited about teaching the classes.”

“Have her do it. It'll help some and, along with my plans…”

“I told you, Roy, I am not robbing a bank!”

“Who knows what we'll do,” Roy said. “But either way, I'm full of ideas. You see, I was exploring Farley's ranch just before sunrise this morning.”

“Spying?”

“Let's call it reconnaissance. He had this sign up on his front gate saying he was looking for ranch hands.”

Jade's eyes went wide. “You want to work for Farley? What kind of pay is he offering?”

“It's not about the pay,” Roy said, “though that would be a bonus. It's about getting inside his place and continuing our investigation and maybe even working some Butch Cassidy magic in the process.”

Jade lost her breath. “Are you suggesting we steal from him? That's insane!”

“Did Robin Hood
steal
, Jade?”

“Yes!”

Roy slumped down, put his hands over his face, and let out a frustrated moan. “You don't get it,” he said. “Kip Farley is the thief. He comes into town with his neon signs, double-wide parking spaces, and patio furniture at ridiculously low prices and little by little steals the heart and soul out of the town we love.” Roy tempered his voice, making it steady and strong. “It is exactly like the big cattle barons back in Butch's day that came in and did everything they could to squeeze the lifeblood out of the local ranchers. Farley is like the railroads and cattle companies and crooked politicians. We might as well be living in 1885! And do you know what Butch did to those cattle ranchers? He went to work for them. He learned how they operated, what their secrets were. Then he swiped the cattle right out from under their noses.”

“It's a bad idea, Roy. Kip Farley doesn't have any secrets. He's probably just a regular guy who happened to open a big business in a small town.”

“Don't be so naïve. There must be some way to bring him down, or at least shake up his business enough to give our store another shot.” He stood up. “I'm going in.”

 

11

Kip Farley's house sat behind a tall wooden fence. Jade could see the Spanish-tile roof poking over the top, but everything else was hidden behind those beige pine slats.

“Last chance to change your mind,” Jade said as they stood at the main gate.

Roy shook his head. “We're just going to talk to him, see what kind of work he needs done.”

“No way.” Jade stepped back. “
You're
going to talk to him. I'm only here for moral support.”

Roy walked to the edge of the gate, peered between two slats, stepped back, and then turned and walked to the opposite edge.

He had been doing that for twenty minutes: pacing, peering, pacing.

“Come on,” Jade said, “let's go home.”

“I told you I'm going in.”

“Sure you are.”

Roy went back to pacing. Jade sat on the curb and thought about Philly. How she might have gone to Franklin Square with her friends by now, or had banana milk shakes with her parents at Nifty Fifty's. She looked up at Roy. “We've been sitting here forever. You're not going anywhere near that house and we both know it.”

That did it. Roy clamped down his jaw, reached out, and opened the gate.

There was a curved brick path leading up to the house. At the top of the path was a rottweiler, tied to a porch rail with a rope. As Jade and Roy stepped through the gate, the dog went berserk, pulling at his rope and exploding into a fit of barking teeth.

All of which brought Kip Farley to his front door.

Jade pulled Roy back. “Let's get out of here.”

Roy shook off her grip and walked forward. Jade followed, trying to pretend the dog wasn't even there. The blood was hammering through her veins. Every inch of her skin felt prickly, but she forced her feet to press forward. It took everything she had. As they neared the front porch, Kip Farley looked at the dog and said, “Quiet.” The dog snapped his mouth shut and dropped down on the red-tiled floor of the porch.

Roy extended his hand and said, “Roy Parker. This here is my friend Jade. She's new to Wellington.”

Looking at Kip Farley, Jade decided he was everything she expected from Wyoming. Tall and broad, wearing a wide Stetson hat and a proper bolo tie. His eyes were like blue silk and his smile was smooth as polished marble.