Sliding On The Edge Read online

  The phone booth smells like pee, and I’m glad to escape into the bus terminal where Lysol rules.

  “That went well, don’t you think?” I say to no one, just to reassure myself.

  A scruffy guy sleeping on a bench opens his eyes to slits and peers up at me.

  “I’m not talking to you.”

  “Then put an egg in your shoe and beat it,” he slurs through yellow teeth.

  I have an hour before the bus leaves and I’m hungry, so I grab a hot dog and smear it with mustard and ketchup. It’s a long trip to Sacramento, and I need more in my stomach than French fries before I get on the bus. I stash a handful of ketchup packets in my paper bag too. Mom and I lived on ketchup soup for a week once, before she came up with our lost kid act. Call me crazy, but once in a while I crave some good old homemade ketchup soup.

  As I stuff the last of the hot dog into my mouth, it occurs to me that I should have asked Kay Stone one question. Was she Jackie’s mother or my father’s?

  Chapter 3

  Kay

  Kay dropped the phone onto the cradle and stared out the kitchen window. Everything outside looked just as it had a few minutes ago. The horses grazed on the hillside. Kenny leaned into the gray mare and held her hoof in his knobby hand while he scraped thrush from under her shoe. Buster was doing canine yoga, rooting out the burrs from his bushy tail and scratching behind his ears for the fleas that even sheep dip couldn’t kill.

  But now nothing was the same.

  As Kay sank onto the chair, she grasped the corner of the kitchen table. Once settled, she cradled her head in her hands.

  Sixteen years. Such a long time, and no time at all.

  The voice on the phone sounded so young—and so... hard. Could she believe what the girl had said? There were scams all the time to dupe the unsuspecting out of their money. She’d worked too hard to lose everything to some con artist. By the end of the year, she figured, she’d be out of debt—if none of the boarders left, if none of her horses got colicky, if, if, if....

  By now her coffee was cold. She walked to the sink and poured it out. By tomorrow she had to decide what to do. That wasn’t very much time. She needed to talk to Kenny.

  She pushed open the screen door, walked down the porch steps, and strode toward the barn. How many times had she traveled this distance, calling to Kenny Fargo? More than she cared to count. He’d always been there—in a stall, gentling a horse under his hands; in the tack room, putting things to order; or in his trailer. He’d been the one constant in her life, and kept her going when everyone else vanished.

  So once again she was trudging out to talk to the man who knew horses and good whisky, and so very much more. As Kenny led her gray mare into the barn, she caught up and stroked her favorite horse’s neck. The gray turned to nuzzle her hair. Even as upside-down as she felt following that phone call, the warm animal breath made her feel calm.

  “Something’s happened,” she said.

  Kenny closed the mare’s stall door and faced her. “From your look this is going to take some time.” He pulled a plug of tobacco from his shirt pocket and sat on the bench alongside the wall. He heard her out, as usual staying quiet while she spoke.

  “She sounded... scared. Why is she calling me now, after so many years, after I’d finally stopped trying to find her? What’s Jackie up to this time?” Kay shook her head. “I don’t know if I can believe she’s who she says she is. She is the right age, if she’s telling the truth about that. But what if it’s a scam? What if she got my name from a... a mailing label in the garbage or—” Kay didn’t know where con artists stole information about their victims, but this could be what was going on. But if that were it, then how would she know Jackie’s name?” Kay turned on her heels in sudden anger. “Then again, why wouldn’t she know her own father’s name?”

  “Seems you’re asking a lot of questions,” Kenny said, biting off a chunk of tobacco. He chewed slowly and let silence hang between them. The horses shuffled in their stalls, and Buster circled until he found just the right spot that fit his body, then he curled head to fluffy tail. “Also seems like you’re bent on finding the answers.”

  He was right. She already knew she had to meet the bus in the morning. She had to see this girl. Talk to her. Why had she doubted that she would? She’d had no choice from the minute she’d heard the words, “You’re my grandmother.”

  Chapter 4

  Kay

  A little before ten the next morning, Kay pulled to the curb across the street from the bus depot. She climbed from the cab and leaned against her truck, a veteran horse ranch vehicle. Its dents and scrapes screamed, “Look out! Uninsured vehicle coming through.” She liked it that way. This nothing-left-to-lose truck summed her up well, and always got her the right of way.

  The ten o’clock bus rolled to a stop, then the door wheezed open.

  Kay chewed her bottom lip. She felt dampness under her arms and wiped her palms on her jeans. She hadn’t had the jitters for so long that the signals her body was sending felt foreign, yet they called back other times she’d been on edge. Like, the day she and Peter were married, and her dress took a bath in sweat. She was not the sweet scented bride of her dreams by the time she’d wobbled down the aisle on those white satin pumps. So many other things went wrong that day, she’d blocked out the rest of her memories. From when she’d started to sneeze after “I do,” to the end of the reception, it was all pretty much forgotten.

  Why was she thinking about her wedding, anyway? What had that memory to do with today? She closed her eyes and willed her heart to stop hurling itself against her ribs.

  Simmer down. You’re not stepping into a minefield, she thought. You’re meeting a young girl who might be your granddaughter.

  Minefield.

  She regretted that metaphor as soon as it flitted into her mind. It set off the slide show she couldn’t stop: Click. Herself, gripping the letter. Click. The two men standing at the door, jaws squared, faces set. Click. Peter leaning forward in his armchair, his head cradled in his hands.

  Kay pressed her palms against her closed eyes, pushing back the sudden sting of old tears.

  She glanced up at the sound of the bus pulling away. A lone girl stood looking around, like a visitor from another planet.

  Well, Kay thought, Sacramento and Las Vegas are different planets. Those bus depots with slot machines at every door look alien to me.

  Kay took a moment to see the downtown from a stranger’s point of view. The clatter of cars and busses filled the air, their exhausts belching fumes. Several blocks away, the gold ball atop the state capitol building poked up from behind the jagged ridge of office roofs. This part of the city was built sometime in the nineteen-forties or fifties. Many of the storefronts were a faded turquoise or imitation stone that Peter had called “Late Tacky.” Handwritten signs promising the best for less looked like super-sized Band-Aids on the grimy windows.

  Kay studied the dark-haired girl across the street. Dressed in a T-shirt and low-cut jeans, she clutched a brown paper bag. Like most of the girls these days, she looked a little sloppy and a lot sassy. Kay tried to read her expression. Some apprehension, she thought. That’s normal. She’s in a strange place about to meet someone for the first time. But what else is there?

  The girl leaned against the wall of the depot. She looked up then down the street, as if deciding which way to go if that grandmother didn’t arrive.

  What are her options? Kay wondered. What if I don’t cross the street, tell her who I am? Where will she go? What will happen to her? She ran down the list of strays she’d taken in over the years: Buster, who’d limped in on three legs with a deep cut in his front paw. Kenny, with a suffering man’s eyes. The uncountable cats. Two donkeys. All unwanted or abused, until they landed on her back porch.

  She looked again at the girl with the brown paper bag. Under the tight jeans and tough expression was another stray needing a safe place to stay.

  Kay stepped into
the street and walked toward Shawna.

  Chapter 5

  Shawna

  How come nobody ever told me Northern California could be cold in August?

  When I changed buses in Stockton, I shivered so much that people around me must have thought I had malaria. It turned out good though, because nobody sat next to me on the bus. I stretched out and dozed off, wondering if I left Monster in Vegas, wondering if Monster can travel. If he can’t he’ll have to find somebody else to push around. But what will I do if he doesn’t show up anymore? Is that pathetic or what? You get one secret bud and his name is Monster.

  What a relief to step off in Sacramento, where at ten in the morning, it’s already in the nineties—almost like back home. But this sure isn’t Vegas, and I’m feeling all jumpy inside. All I got is three twenties, two tens, and some change. What if Kay Stone decides she doesn’t want to meet me? There’s no way I can get back to Vegas. And even if there was, what would I do when I got there? Damn.

  I lean against the wall by the front doors of the bus depot and count backwards from one hundred, an old habit from waiting on Mom.

  “Shawna?”

  I look up at the woman coming toward me. I try to find something familiar about her. Maybe her eyes or her hair look like Mom’s. She’s tall, but otherwise there’s nothing of my mother there.

  “You’re not what I expected, either,” she says like she’s reading my mind. “Where are your suitcases?”

  I hold up my paper bag.

  “We can get you some clothes later.” She turns and walks back across the street.

  So, is she taking me home with her?

  She looks over her shoulder. “Coming?”

  I shrug. Guess that means yes. I step off the curb into the street. She walks with wide swinging steps in mud-caked boots. Every step or so, clumps of dirt come free and scatter across the sidewalk. Her jeans fit snugly over her long legs, and I’m having trouble imagining her as anyone’s grandmother.

  She stops at a black pickup that looks like it runs into everything it gets near.

  “Door’s open,” she says. “Climb in.”

  The battered door screeches when I open it, like it doesn’t want me inside.

  She starts the engine and releases the brake. “Seat belt.”

  And that is the last she speaks for the hour we drive together. I’m used to Mom’s chatter, so sitting beside Kay Stone, who is living up to her last name, makes me chew my thumbnail to a stub. I wonder if she’s ever going to talk to me again.

  The sign for Sweet River comes and goes before I blink. Is it a ghost town? We wind around up a mountain, cross a couple of bridges, and turn onto a dirt road that looks like a dry creek bed. That’s when the truck turns ugly and slams my head on the roof. I grab the seat and hold on.

  On either side of us, horses stretch their long necks through wood fence rails and yank up grass almost out of reach. I count three scruffy critters standing near the road, all taking a siesta. Could those things be donkeys?

  Kay stops at a row of mailboxes and grabs a handful of letters.

  “Mostly bills,” she says, tossing them on the seat between us.

  I jump at the sudden sound of her voice, but she doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve practically left my skin.

  She pulls to a stop in time to save my teeth from coming loose and falling into my lap. We’re in front of a dark red house with white trim that looks like a squat version of the barn a hundred yards or so behind it. A cluster of trees shades the truck and I look up, wondering what happens when one of those suckers falls. I’m not used to trees that big. They look like they might reach down to nab me by the back of the neck when I walk underneath. In Vegas big trees are edged in blinking neon. Guys hose the dust off and change the bulbs. I’d like to see anyone try to dust one of these giant mutants. There’s a fenced area in front of the house with three naked sheep nosing the grass while a white, ragged-looking dog roams behind their bare backsides. The dog, tongue out in a summer pant, turns to look at us, then trots over and thumps his tail against Kay’s leg when she steps out of the truck.

  Kay strokes his head and he wags his tail so hard, his whole body sways side to side. “This is Buster. Buster, Shawna.”

  A man sitting on the front porch waves, sets aside his newspaper, and comes down the steps. His knees point in opposite directions, and his legs form an arch big enough for a Volkswagen to drive through.

  “That’s Kenny. He works for me.” Kay slams the cab door.

  “This her?” The old man spits to the side and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Yep,” she says.

  “You got suitcases to carry inside?” he asks.

  “No. She travels light. Come on inside, Shawna. Are you hungry?”

  I shrug.

  Her lips pull up tight in a bundle and she gives me a look.

  What did I do? What didn’t I do?

  “Well, let’s go see what we’ve got anyway,” she says.

  Inside, the house is cool, but I can tell by the way it feels that she doesn’t have air conditioning. By two, the furniture is going to melt in this place. Even Tuan’s dump had air, well, it did most of the time. But this house is way bigger than anything I’ve lived in besides the Casino Royale, which I kind of consider mine because I eat there a lot and use the restrooms—those marble columns and gold faucets are the best.

  “You want a ham sandwich?” Kay stands in front of the open fridge.

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “Milk?”

  I shrug.

  She turns and, uh-oh, she’s bunched her lips again.

  “Do me a favor. Don’t shrug all the time, like nothing matters.”

  “Sure,” I say, before I realize my shoulders are heading north to my ears.

  Man, having a grandmother is way different than I’d imagined. Come to think of it, I never did imagine a grandmother. I’d thought about having a dog once, but Tuan told me he’d eat it if I brought one into his apartments. That’s something else I never imagined, eating a dog. Gag.

  But now that I study her face, I’m thinking maybe that would be easier than getting used to living with a grandmother like this one. It’s kind of like getting a computer or software without a manual, you know?

  Chapter 6

  Shawna

  I’m concentrating on keeping my shoulders still. When I shrug it makes Granny go sour, and I don’t want her pissed from the get-go. Since she hasn’t handed me a user’s manual, I’ve decided to make one up. Entry #1 under Getting Started: No Shrugging.

  Kay gives me a quick tour of her place and lets me wash up. I’m not used to so many rooms. I’m thinking I need a map, but I find my way back to the kitchen and sit at the table. I know I’m in a way different world already because the legs on this table are even. I don’t have to stick a matchbook under one to keep the milk from sloshing over.

  I chew on a ham sandwich while Kay and Kenny talk about things I’ve never heard of before, like tacks and soapy saddles.

  I can tell the two of them are close. Every once in a while, when Kay is going on about some horse, the old man’s eyes go kind of soft. He loves my grandmother, I’m pretty sure. But I can tell it’s a one-way street. Everything about Kay is business—no mushy center in ’ole Grandma.

  She’s not an easy mark for a con, either. Mom would have waited for someone else to come along before giving me the signal to go into my lost kid act. Mom was the expert at sizing up chumps, but even I can tell Grandma isn’t one of them. She’s got a sharp look about her. And I’m going to have to be very careful about what I do and say around her. That should go in the manual, Entry #2: Do Not Try to Con.

  “I best get back to work,” Kenny says. “I’ve gotta check on your mare.”

  “Is her temp up again?” Kay asks quickly, and her voice is tight.

  “A little, but I’m keeping an eye on her.” He walks out the back door and spits over the railing.

  “I
’ve got chores, too.” Kay clears the table and sets the dishes in the sink. “Get some rest or do whatever you want. You know where the food is, so help yourself. There are books in there.” She points toward her office at the end of the hall that she’d showed me when she gave me the tour.

  “You got a TV?” I ask.

  She doesn’t look at me. She grabs a wide-brimmed straw hat off a hook by the kitchen door and walks out.

  “Guess that means no.” No MTV, no shopping channels? What does she expect me to do for the rest of my life? Watch Kenny spit brown juice all day? “Arrrg!”

  I roam through the house again, like I did when I followed Kay. She showed me where I’d bunk. All of her rooms look about the same—big, with dark beams like square bones holding up the ceilings, and cowhides stretched across the walls. She’s got her own style, that’s for sure. And glitzy is not a word in her decorating vocabulary. I poke my head into her office, a room bigger than our whole apartment in Vegas. Kay’s super-sized desk is piled with stacks of folders and sits in the middle of the room—Command Central. I step inside. Walls covered with bookshelves rise up around me like a canyon. For a minute I feel like I’ve taken a wrong turn and wound up at a bookstore or a library. It feels weird to see so many books in a room down the hall from the kitchen or the bathroom—not like where I’ve ever lived before.

  I walk past the shelves and run my finger across the spines, something I can usually only do at the library. There’s everything about horses, presidents, history, and poetry. And that’s just what’s at eye level. I can’t see what’s overhead.

  Mom only reads the jokes on bar napkins. Entry #3: Granny’s Not Dumb. Living with her is going to take some getting used to.

  Down the hall is my room. I step inside and close the door.

  I’ve never had a room with a door. Mom always took the bedroom and I got the sofa or the cot. Or, like at Tuan’s, the roll-away. I open the door and close it again—just because I can. The closet is empty. The dresser drawers are too. But there’s a smell... leather and spice, and not girly. Some guy must have lived in here once. On each side of the big bed are nightstands stacked with... more books and tall brass lamps. I feel like I’ve landed in heaven. There are books everywhere I look. A picture of a wild-haired man with deep-set eyes and bushy brows as thick as his mustache stares up from a book cover. I recognize Mark Twain’s face from the English class I was in for a few weeks last year. My teacher read a lot of his stuff out loud.