“I dunno. Travis, he know a fis’ful more ’bout de ‘impractical amplications’ of t’ings dan I can do, oh yes.” He tapped his head, shrugged fatalistically. “Maybe getting’ dere fust, maybe dat ain’t important. But dem Ares Seven folks, dey gonna be in a heap a trouble. An dat means de mother a his two sweet little girls, yes. We gotta go out dere, Manny. We be de onliest one’s what can be dere to help out, de time comes.”
[154] “I’m convinced, Jubal.” All of us? When do we start?
“But not Travis! Manny, I…” he trailed off, muttering to himself.
“Go ahead, Jubal. Say it. We’re friends, you can ask me anything.”
He studied me. Jubal had never completely trusted anyone but Travis, which was why he was finding it so hard to go against him.
“Travis, he ain’t talkin’ to me, Manny.”
I thought it was Jubal who wasn’t talking to… Well, I knew the same story often looked entirely different to two different people.
And I knew that was exactly the sort of problem you didn’t want to get in the middle of. Never in a million years. No way, Jose! Include me out.
“Would you go talk to Travis, Manny?”
“Sure, Jubal. Sure I will.”
SURE I WILL. Jubal. Sure.
I got as far as the tennis court and stopped. I looked back. I looked forward. I was about halfway between Travis’s house and Jubal’s barn and I had no idea where to go from here.
I’d parked the Triumph on the tennis court. I got the cell phone out of the sidecar and dialed Kelly’s work number.
“Strickland Mercedes-Porsche-Ferrari. How may I direct your call?” At least it wasn’t a mechanized phone menu. But it was supposed to be Kelly’s direct line.
“I’ll take two Boxsters and a Testarossa, to go.”
“You want fries with that?”
“Put me through to Kelly, please, Lisa.”
“Manny, I was told-”
“Lisa, you know how pissed she’s going to be if you don’t put me through. And you know we won’t tell on you.”
There was a silence. I didn’t envy her, stuck between the boss and the boss’s daughter, neither of them being the type of person you wanted to mess with. She sighed, and I heard Kelly’s phone ring.
“Jubal?” she answered, sounding worried.
[155] “Me, Kelly. My call didn’t go through.”
She sighed.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Just my dad being an asshole again.”
“Yeah, but your caller ID thought this was Jubal calling. It’s his phone. The one in the sidecar that he never uses. So he’s blocking calls from Jubal, too.” Not that Jubal would ever call, but Mr. Strickland probably didn’t know that.
I could almost hear her simmer.
“Yeah, when I get home I’m gonna rip him a new… Can you believe that? He must have his spies working again, and now he’s messing with the computers. My computers. Oh, Manny, he’s going to be one sorry, racist mother-”
“I’m out at the ranch,” I said. Don’t want to let Kelly get started on her father, she could damage the phone.
“Some problem?”
“Yeah… you could say I’ve got a problem. I don’t know what to do.”
“Start at the beginning.”
I did, and I didn’t get very far before she cut me off.
“Don’t do anything. I’ll be right over.”
I FIGURED NOT doing anything didn’t apply to fishing. If you’re seriously doing something when you’re fishing, you’re missing the whole point.
I walked down the dock. The boathouse door wasn’t locked. I found a rod and reel in there, and borrowed a trowel. At a likely looking spot of ground, I turned over a few scoops of soil and immediately had half a dozen red wigglers.
That’s where I was an hour later when I heard footsteps. I turned and saw Kelly, dressed in a smart blue suit and blouse that looked uncomfortable out here in the blinding sunshine. She kicked off her medium-heeled shiny black shoes, then hiked up her skirt and quickly peeled down her pink panties and taupe pantyhose. It was over almost [156] before I knew she was doing it. She stuffed the frillies in her purse and sat beside me on the end of the pier and dangled her feet in the cool water, just like I was doing.
“Catching anything, Huck?”
“Could I have an instant slo-mo replay of that? I think I missed some of the finer points.” I lifted the stringer almost out of the water. Two big bass flopped on the end of it. I grabbed the other end of the string and unthreaded it from their gills. They floated there a moment, not quite sure they were free, then swam off. I never would have kept them at all except that, the one time me and Kelly went fishing together, I couldn’t even land a scrawny little perch. I had to show her I could catch fish. Manny, the mighty hunter, bringing the mammoth meat home to the cave.
“So, start at the beginning, okay?” she said.
“Well, Travis called me and… and he… you have no idea how distracting it is, you sitting there and me knowing you’re not wearing any panties.”
She looked at me dubiously, and snorted.
“Boys. Can’t educate ’em, can’t understand ’em, can’t do without ’em. Or so I’ve been told. I can’t dangle my feet in the water wearing pantyhose, Huckleberry. It wasn’t about you at all.” But I could tell by the glint in her eyes that it had been, at least partly. And I knew she was filing the fact that it turned me on, and one day soon I’d be treated to some little scenario she had worked out involving not wearing any underwear.
Life is so tough sometimes, ain’t it?
AS IT TURNED out, I didn’t tell my story then. Kelly had called Alicia, who had called Dak, and they were due out at the ranch soon. They arrived a few minutes later, and both kicked off their shoes and rolled up their pants legs and sat beside us. Not nearly as interesting to watch as Kelly.
When I finished telling them what I’d heard in the last couple hours [157] they were all quiet for a while. Then Dak turned to me with a dubious but hopeful expression.
“It’s that ‘all of us’ interests me the most,” he said. “You’re sure that’s what he said? All of us? You and me? Not America, not NASA?”
“All of us.” Kelly pressed down hard on the first word. “As in me, you, Manny, Alicia, Jubal, and Travis. Okay?”
“What would you want to go to Mars for, Kelly?” Dak looked honestly puzzled. I was, too, but I knew better than to show it. “Sell BMWs to the Martians?”
“I’d want to go because it’s an adventure,” Kelly responded quietly, not taking offense. “You don’t get a shot like this twice in one lifetime. Plus, I have to watch over Manny.” She smiled at me, making me feel great, and a bit worried at the same time.
“Me, too,” Alicia chimed in. “Hell… heck, I rode every ride at Disney World, Universal, and Florida Adventure. This couldn’t be any scarier than that.”
Dak looked us over one at a time, then nodded. “This is what I was looking for from Travis from day one, only I was thinking more along the lines of a foot in the door at a good school.”
“It’s going to take some careful pushing and shoving,” Kelly said. I could already see the gears turning in the fabulous head. This was the sort of thing Kelly thrived on. “If it works out right, he won’t know what hit him, just one day he’ll wake up and realize he’s agreed to fly us all to Mars.”
“Don’t worry, hon,” Alicia said with a sniff. “The day I can’t push a coon-ass peckerwood in the direction I want him to go… that’ll be a cold day in heck!”
“I don’t think Jubal-” I began.
“Not Jubal, Huckleberry,” Alicia said. Did I really look like that much of a hayseed with my pants cuffs rolled up? “I’m talking about Travis, the Big Coon-Ass Peckerwood himself. Pardon my pejorative.”
“No problem, hon,” Dak said. “Ain’t nobody here but us darkies, the spic, and the white chick.”
“White chick? White chick?” Kelly said. “Yo momma.”
[158] “ ‘My mamma?’ Gal, yo momma so dumb she tripped over a cordless phone.”