Ten
The Next Morning
Morning was well along by the time Beck came in from the barn, having done his own chores and most of Lonnie’s besides. He stepped through the back door of his parents’ house with dust on his boots and the smell of hay and horses still clinging to him. He headed straight to the sink.
After scrubbing up, Beck went into the kitchen, fragrant with the aromas of fried bacon, scrambled eggs, fresh-baked bran muffins, and percolated coffee.
His father already sat at the table with his empty plate pushed aside and his fingers curled around a coffee cup.
Timmy sat in his highchair with Beck’s mother hovering over him, a partial muffin in her hand and the rest of it strewn on the highchair’s tray.
“Take one more bite, honey. Then you can get down and play, okay?” she coaxed.
“No.” Timmy’s voice declared stubbornness. “Want Mama.”
Ruthie straightened, carrying the look of a grandmother who’d given up the fight. “I know you do, but Mama’s coming home as soon as she can.” She turned to Beck with a sigh. “Try to get him to eat something, will you?”
With fatigue showing around her eyes, she looked as though the night had demanded more of her than she was used to.
Lonnie had called hours before dawn, saying it was Mary Sue’s time to have the baby.
Of course, Ruthie had run right over in her bathrobe to stay with Timmy while he slept.
Beck hadn’t fared much better on sleep himself, not with thoughts of Jackie swirling in his mind, and seeing his mother worn thin, well, Beck could relate.
“What’s the matter, little man?” Beck asked, squatting down to his nephew’s level.
“Want Mama!”
“Hey, she wants you, too. But she wants you to eat your breakfast even more. How about one bite? Can you do that for Uncle Beck?”
He picked up a piece of muffin and skimmed over the highchair’s tray with it, dipping and climbing and mimicking a low droning sound appropriate for a make-believe airplane, and Timmy fell for the ploy.
A little laugh bubbled out of him, and he tracked the muffin, right up to the moment Beck plopped the bite into his mouth.
Beck ruffled the little boy’s curly head. “Good job, little man!”
Amused, his mother handed Beck a full cup of coffee. “You’ve always had a way with him, you know.”
Beck shrugged and joined his father at the table. He didn’t mention he longed for a son of his own someday. As many as God would give him.
“Any word from Lonnie?” he asked instead.
“Not since he called after you headed out for chores.” Ruthie turned from the stove with a plate in her hand, sliding it in front of Beck. “Said the doctor was with her. That’s all we know.”
Joe grunted. “That baby boy ought to be here by now.”
“Girl, you mean,” Ruthie said, flippant. “You know as well as anyone these things take time. Those babies come when they’ve got a good mind to and not a minute sooner.”
She turned her attention to washing Timmy’s face, then removed the chair’s tray, and set him on the floor. She handed him his favorite toy tractor. “Now, you play for a spell while I finish these dishes, okay?”
Timmy stood there in his overalls and red-and-white striped t-shirt, clutching the toy in one hand and looking sad again. “Mama come home?”
“Soon, honey.” Ruthie smoothed his hair.
Joe winked at Timmy over the rim of his coffee cup. “How about we find some books to read when you’re done with that tractor? Your daddy has a whole shelf full of them from when he was your age. As soon as I finish this coffee, we’ll grab a bunch.”
Timmy didn’t smile, just shuffled toward the living room like he’d lost his best friend.
Sympathy coursed through Beck. “Poor kid. It’s no fun missing someone who means the world to you.”
The words came out of their own accord, landing deep and heavy in his gut. Reminding him he hadn’t yet made things right with Jackie. There was much between them yet, and being away from her had left a hollow place in him that needed filling.
Tomorrow’s soon enough to start showing her what you’re made of.
Beck couldn’t go over to her place soon enough. As if he’d heard the words inside Beck’s head, Joe’s shrewd gaze lifted to him over his cup, clearly knowing where Beck meant to go. What he needed to do.
After dropping his empty plate into soapy dishwater, Beck headed out of the kitchen.
“I’m going up to change,” he said.
The urgency which had been building up all morning compelled him to take the stairs two at a time.
A clean shirt lay folded across the foot of the bed he’d had growing up.
He pulled off the one he’d worn to chores and shrugged into the fresh one, deftly working the buttons closed.
Across the hall, in the bathroom, he dragged a comb through his hair, splashed some cool water on his face and neck, and tugged his collar until it lay just so.
But he only scowled at his reflection. Time to quit circling the thing and get it done.
His boot soles pounded the stairs downward in his haste, and he re-entered the kitchen. His mother was finishing up the dishes, and his father was refilling his cup at the percolator. The man would drink the whole pot if his mother let him.
“He hasn’t made a peep since he finished his breakfast. Reckon he’s feeling better about his folks being gone,” Joe said.
Beck debated telling Timmy good-bye. Another absence might make the little guy cry, but then, slipping away without a word could be worse. Timmy already missed his parents. He didn’t need one more person leaving without knowing when he’d see him again.
“I’ll just pop in and tell him I’ll be back soon,” Beck said.
But after taking a sweep of the living room—along the furniture, corners, and floor—there was no sign of Timmy.
“Where is he, Mom?” he asked, returning to the kitchen.
Ruthie, still holding a wet plate, glanced up. “In the living room.”
“Just looked there. He’s not.”
Joe set down his cup. “Porch, maybe.”
Beck headed that way, alarm building that the front door wasn’t shut all the way. He pulled it wide open and leaned outward to search along the porch, the steps, and all around the yard.
“Timmy?” he called. “Hey, Tim. Where are you?”
No little-boy voice answered him back, and his chest tightened. Timmy had to be close. Maybe he did answer Beck’s calls, and Beck just couldn’t hear him. He moved outside and called again.
His mother rushed outside toward him. “He’s not out there?”
Joe joined her. “Probably got to chasing one of the barn cats or something.”
“He knows better than to leave the house,” his mother fretted.
“He may know it, but that doesn’t mean he remembered it,” Joe said, worry sharpening his voice.
Since Timmy had been whining for Mary Sue all morning, there was no telling what notion might have taken hold in that curly-haired head.
He could have decided to go find her, all on his own, and if Beck had been alarmed not finding him in the house or in the yard, he was doubly so not finding him anywhere outside.
He descended the steps in brisk leaps, his search already cutting toward the road leading to Lonnie’s place. Made sense Timmy would go home to see if his mother were back there, but the lane was empty.
“Timmy!” he shouted yet again. Beck fought to keep alarm from his voice for his mother’s sake, but he didn’t spare the volume. If Timmy was outside, the boy needed to hear him. “Timmy! Answer us, little man!”
But no voice responded. Nothing moved but the breeze through the grass.
“Those legs of his aren’t long enough to take him very far very fast,” Joe said. “Got to be around here somewhere.”
Beck’s gaze shifted then, sharp and sudden, toward Jackie’s place.
The hangar doors stood wide open, and the yellow Piper Cub showed up plain as day inside.
Timmy had been spellbound by her plane from the first moment she let him near it, even more so when she treated him to some time in the cockpit.
“Maybe he’s at Jackie’s,” Beck said.
“Yes!” his mother exclaimed, clutching to fresh hope. “To see the airplane. Check with her, will you?”
Beck sprinted across the yard and cleared the wooden fence at a full run, never breaking stride until he reached the east pasture.
Jackie stood at the clothesline with a damp white sheet billowing between her hands, pinning it to the line he’d strung for her, while a pair of towels flapped and swirled in the morning breeze next to it.
His boots pounding ground gave fair warning of his approach, and she whirled toward him. For one brief second, surprise lit her face. Until the color drained from her cheeks.
“Beck, you startled me!” she said, one unpinned part of the sheet clutched in her fingers. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
Breathing hard, he halted in front of her. “We can’t find Timmy. Thought he might’ve come over here to visit you or your plane.”
Her eyes widened. “I haven’t seen him. I’ve been inside doing laundry—oh, let’s check the hangar. Maybe he’s in there, and I just didn’t see him.”
She unpinned what she’d just pinned and dropped the entire sheet into the wicker laundry basket at her feet.
“I washed the cockpit window this morning and left the doors open,” she said, hurrying to keep pace with Beck. “It’d be easy for him to go inside.”
A galvanized bucket with a wet rag hanging limp over the rim sat at the entrance.
Beck reached the hangar first and ducked inside, Jackie on his heels.
Cool shadows wrapped around them, carrying the musty scent of Roy Kincaid’s neglect and the faint mix of gasoline and oil.
The Cub sat regally in the midst like a queen in her throne room.
Sunlight slanted through the open doors and bounced off the freshly washed cockpit window, as if to show she was Jackie's pride and joy.
Beck’s search darted beneath the wings, behind the tail, under the fuselage, but no small striped shirt. No toy tractor. No Timmy.
“Are you in here, Timmy?” Jackie called. “Timmy!”