Chapter 25
SCOWLING PAST THE FORECLOSURE SIGN, ROCKET steered the truck into the salvage yard. But when Winona stepped out of the shop, he hit the brakes. Winona wore her gray-green coveralls, as usual. She also had on a pair of heavy leather gloves and a welding mask tipped back on her head. I grinned. Fedora would’ve appreciated the safety gear.
“That’s not Gus,” Rocket said as he watched Winona remove her gloves, his thumb now tapping a rapid short-long-short, Morse code SOS against the steering wheel. After learning about Bobbi, I understood why Rocket stayed so shy. From things Mom and Uncle Autry had said, I knew Rocket had been brushing off goggling girls for years. Even so, I guessed that Winona was like no girl Rocket had ever met.
“Gus is in Vegas,” I told him as I opened my door. “That’s Winona, Gus’s daughter. Don’t worry, she knows her stuff.”
“What? Ledger, wait!”
But I was already out of the truck.
“Hey, Ledge.” Winona met me with a grimy motor-oil high five. “Decided not to run here today? Got your own chauffer and limo now?” Pulling off her welding mask and tucking it under her arm, she winked at me, then thumped her hand against the Ford’s side panel like she was greeting a giant dog. Still sitting inside the truck, Rocket was slow to join us, pulling on the stubborn door latch several times before it opened. Winona pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow as she watched him climb out of the ancient pickup.
“Ledge says you’re Gus’s daughter?” Rocket gaped and gawped like he’d spent the last eight years in outer space.
“I’m Winona. Winona Neary,” she introduced herself with a crisp nod.
“Nice to . . . er, pleased to . . . uh—” Rocket struggled to choke out a proper how-d’ya-do. Elbowing him in the ribs, I coughed an instruction to him behind my fist: “Your name!”
“Rocket Beaumont!” he blurted, holding out a hand. Then, thinking better of it, he jammed his hand into his pocket. “I’m Ledger’s cousin. I—I didn’t know Gus had any kids.”
Winona tilted her head to one side. “I don’t suppose Pops knows everything there is to know about you either, Mr. Rocket Beaumont. Does he?” Rocket brushed at the front of his shirt with his free hand, trying to mask the way static electricity pulled it into crazy wrinkles. It was a relief to know that when Rocket got embarrassed, his savvy went haywire too.
“The sheriff told us to bring Rocket’s truck here to get it fixed,” I explained. “The emergency brake’s busted.”
“ Rolling away, is she?” Winona smiled.
“She almost rolled right over Rocket,” I answered, smiling back. As Winona turned her back on us to look inside the truck, Rocket tucked in his shirt and tried to smooth his fork-in-socket hair.
Heat rippled the air above the salvage yard, making the place look distorted and unreal. In all my visits, I still hadn’t worked up the nerve to explore the acres beyond the steel building. But after the day I’d been having, sailing through a sea of abandoned clunkers sounded positively relaxing. At least in there, the wreckage wouldn’t be my fault.
“Wanna help me check out the truck, Ledge?” Winona’s voice made me turn. But seeing Rocket’s eyes still stuck to her like glue, I shook my head.
“No, thanks. I think I’ll wander a bit—someplace less crowded.”
“Ready to check out the yard at last? Just remember: You fix it, you buy it!” Winona laughed. The salvage yard “policy” had become a regular joke between us. “You wander, Ledge. Your cousin and I will see if we can fix this old thing.”
“Check the spark plugs too!” I called over my shoulder, heading for the nearest path into the ocean of rusted cars and trucks. “I don’t think Rocket’s engine is firing on all cylinders!”
Grinning, I ignored the single blue spark that missed my right ear by half an inch. Then, taking a deep breath, I joined the rest of the wrecks.
As I moved deeper into the salvage yard I felt my palms warm and my fingertips buzz. Around me, steel and chrome shuddered and shivered. But I kept moving forward; one foot, then the other.
“Come on, Ledge, this isn’t so bad,” I said out loud, my voice echoing across aluminum and glass. “What are you afraid of anyway?”
The path twisted and I followed it around toward the back of the steel building. Stepping into a small clearing, I leaped back as I came face-to-face with an enormous, skeletal creature with eyes like headlamps and claws like pitchforks.
Real pitchforks.
Real headlamps, too.
It was a sculpture. A bear-shaped, seven-foot-tall sculpture built from bits taken from the salvage yard—scrap and car parts and other discards, recycled and reconfigured into something new. Something totally cool.
Looking around, I saw two more sculptures: a tortoise the size of a tank, with a shell of welded hub cabs; and a lion with a radiating mane of wheel spokes, radio antennae, and metal dowels. On close inspection, I found the initials WN engraved onto the foot of each monster.
Winona was right when she said that there was more here than meets the eye. Someone at Neary’s Auto
Salvage Acres was more than she appeared. It made me even more curious what might be under the tarp back inside the repair bay. The shape was big enough to be a woolly mammoth.
I tried moving away from the metal beasts, back into the heart of the salvage yard. But Winona’s creations wouldn’t leave my mind.
“One more look,” I said to myself—three, four, five times—returning to the clearing again and again to admire the way the sculptures had been put together. Thinking of the windmill and the fence posts I’d bent and twisted into less artful shapes, I wondered if I could learn to create instead of destroy.
Wanting to try, I found a spot away from the steel building—away from Winona’s creatures—climbing up onto the bow of a rusted, tilting motor boat to get a better view of the materials around me.
“You can do this, Ledge,” I told myself, then called up every bit of savvy energy I could, recalling the sensation of the ants in their icy soccer cleats, inviting each and every one to come on out to play.
It didn’t take long before the wrecks around me began to shake. Cars and trucks began collapsing into pieces, and the boat rocked to and fro beneath me. I tried to keep my balance—I tried not to freak and run.
“Bricka bracka firecracker!” I called out Fedora’s silly rah-rah cartoon cheer, trying to keep myself pumped up as pistons, carburetors, and hubcaps jumped, and bumpers and nozzles jerked and spun.
“Bricka bracka—yow!” I hollered, ducking a flying transaxle. Then I leaped straight up with a “Bracka . . . bricka—whoa!” avoiding the wheel spinning toward my shins. Sticking my landing on the boat’s wobbling bow, I yelled, “Oh yeah! Sis boom—booyah!” feeling kick-butt, ninja-action awesome.
Marisol and Mesquite had nothing on me. My lessons with them were over. I’d get to go home someday after all.
“Okay, Ledge,” I said, still trying to keep every rocking, spinning thing secure inside my savvy grip. “You’ve got all the pieces. Now what’re you going to do with them?”
A dozen different images rolled through my mind too fast to hold on to. The scrap heap rose in waves just as fast. Churning into a giant glass and metal whirlpool with me at its center. Creating a hullabaloo loud enough to wake the dead. I imagined ol’ Eva Mae Ransom rolling over in her golden grave at the sound—or her spirit standing next to me, cheering her own ghosty, spirited “Sis boooo bah!”
Playing in the salvage yard, I began to understand what Grandpa Bomba must’ve felt back in the days when he was young and spry and could sculpt the land itself. With my confidence building like a house of bricks, I began to fit the pieces inside the whirlpool together into rough but recognizable shapes: faces . . . sharks . . . a pirate ship . . . cheese.
“Yes!” Laughing, I punched the air like Fedora, then launched into a goofball touchdown dance across the top of the boat, going overboard as I moon-walked off the port side and landed on my
back with a heavy thump.
I was still laughing as my fall stopped the whirlpool short and the entire thing collapsed. Snap, snap, snap went my fingers, and metal melded to metal like clay. My creations didn’t have the flair or detail of Winona’s, but I was beginning to get more than a glimpse of that finesse Autry had mentioned on my first night at the ranch.
Scrabbling over the newly remodeled circle of wreckage, I ran back toward the repair bay, pointing at clunkers as I passed them, pulling a roof from one and installing it on another. Uh-oh, I thought to myself with a smile. I fixed it!
“Ledger!” I heard Rocket call. A dragonfly zipped past my cheek, then doubled back, thrumming its wings. “Come on back, Ledge! It’s time to go!” I ran toward Rocket’s voice with an all-new spring in my step—and more than a few bolts and washers in my shoes—wondering if my cousin had seen me in action.
I found him at the end of the path, arms crossed, an amused look on his face. I was grinning like a maniac. Bursting with pride, I practically crowed.
“Did you see it when I—?”
“I did.”
“What about when I—?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How about that time I—?”
“You were extreme, Ledge. Now take a breath!”
I did as I was told and took a breath. Then I took two more, just for show.
“Did ya have fun?” Rocket asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I answered, wiping the sweat from my face with the back of my arm, feeling like I’d just run an entire savvy half marathon on my own. I batted at the dragonfly hovering near me.
“That would be Autry looking for us.” Rocket nodded toward the bug. “He’s probably worried. There are going to be spiderwebs and anthills everywhere when we get back.”
“Did Winona fix the brake?” I asked.
Rocket chuckled. “She fixed the door latches. Didn’t need to do a thing to the brake. She said it had already been repaired. Recently. Like, today maybe?” He grinned. “I see you’re good at putting things together, Ledge, not just tearing them apart.”
“You think I fixed the truck?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? After the show you just put on—who else? Someone stopped the truck from going over in the ditch, and it wasn’t me.” Rocket laughed again. “Your new mechanic friend showed me the Knucklehead you’ve been helping her rebuild. Dude! She thinks you’re some kind of genius!” Rocket grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him, grinding his knuckles into my scalp. “But you’re the knucklehead, Ledge. Seriously. Who would’ve guessed that pulling things apart was only the first piece of your savvy?”
“Not me.” I shook my head and laughed along with Rocket.
“Winnie’s bringing the truck out now.” Rocket released me as he nodded toward the repair bay. “I know you’re stoked, but try to reel yourself in a bit until we’re in the clear, okay? If Winnie hadn’t had the radio on and her head buried in the truck inside the garage, she would’ve seen what a genius you really are.”
“Winnie?” I asked, still too super-charged to settle down. “She’s Winnie now?” I goaded my cousin, directing a mass of lug nuts into the shape of a heart at his feet.
“All right, all right.” Rocket went red as he kicked away the lug nuts. “I know you’re a happy camper now, Ledge. But don’t push your luck.” As soon as Winona brought the truck out, Rocket shoved me into it, giving me one zinger of a zap as I got in.
“So, pick me up at seven?” Winona smiled as she leaned into Rocket’s window.
“Seven?” Rocket repeated, the color draining from his face.
“I thought we had a deal: I check the brake line on your truck, you take me out for dinner in Gillette.” Wiping her hands on the rag from her pocket, Winona winked at me. “Ledge, make sure your cousin’s here by seven.”
“You got it—Winnie.”
Rocket shot me a look. Driving back to the ranch, he gripped the steering wheel like a life preserver, yet he whistled all the way. He was happy. We both were.
But as we neared the towering steel sign of the Flying Cattleheart, Rocket’s whistled tune died on his lips and he cussed, slamming on the brakes. Seeing what stopped him, I cussed too. Just inside the towering gate, a large red-and-white sign stood staked into the ground.
FORECLOSURE
A workman hoisted a post hole digger into the back of a CAD Co. truck, just finishing up his dirty work. Ten feet away, Noble Cabot leaned against the hood of his Lincoln, tapping the earth with his cane. Looking at the sign . . . and smiling.
Chapter 26
I HADN’T TOLD ROCKET ABOUT WRECKING Mr. Cabot’s fence, or about anything else that had happened just before he’d found me outside Sundance. I didn’t say a word to Uncle Autry either. After seeing the foreclosure sign, I didn’t have the nerve to spill my guts—in case my uncle decided to feed them to his carnivorous beetles.
“I don’t understand, Ledge!” Fedora cried as I stood in the middle of the river, scrubbing up before supper, Bitsy splashing in the water nearby. Still caked in dirt from her daily outing with the twins, Fe stood on the riverbank, her face scrunched in confusion.
“Ledge! Tell me what that big sign means.”
“It means Uncle Autry’s going to lose this place!” I hollered over the sound of the river, trying not to aim my anger at my sister. “It means the ranch is going to belong to someone else soon if Autry can’t pay up.” I looked down at Bitsy, who stood, one paw up, balancing easily on two of her three legs as she tried to lick a crayfish. “Then every last one of us defective misfits will be out of luck,” I murmured to the dog.
“Well, that’s not going to happen!” Fedora crowed, her oversized motorcycle helmet making her look like an upside-down exclamation point. “Not if me and Marisol and Mesquite can help it!”
That night, dinner around the campfire was a somber event. The evening sky was overcast, threatening rain. The fire barely crackled and never reached rip-roaring. I kept quiet about my triumphs at the salvage yard, wanting to draw as little attention to myself as possible, even though not telling was like trying to hold burning firecrackers between my teeth. But I knew it wasn’t coincidence that made Cabot put up his foreclosure sign that day. Autry had told me to stay away from Sarah Jane and her father, and I hadn’t listened. I may have fixed Rocket’s truck and been the hotshot of the salvage yard, but my successes were nothing in the face of my breach of Autry’s trust . . . and the consequences.
Compared to the foreclosure, the fact that Cabot had recycled Grandma Dollop’s peanut butter jar should’ve felt trivial. Soon Noble Cabot would have every marvel on the ranch to do with as he pleased. But as I looked at Grandpa, slumped and weary in his chair, my pangs of remorse cut deeper yet. Fedora’s old football helmet full of jar lids rested in their place on his lap, the lids catching and reflecting the dull campfire flames like they still had some magic buried somewhere inside them. But all those lids were now reminders—reminders of what had been lost. Of what had been destroyed. Maybe Gypsy had been right about me. Maybe I was an artist—a con artist.
Everyone moped around the fire. Marisol and Mesquite showed little interest in their lentil burgers, and Gypsy’s gaze was faraway, watching the skies over her brother’s house. The heavy clouds provided the perfect cover for Rocket to let loose; I imagined that the town of Sundance would talk for years about that night’s electrical storm. Even knowing now that things between Rocket and me had changed—that I could sleep soundly in his house for the first time in weeks—the jagged forks of lightning made me flinch.
Twenty minutes after Rocket’s storm finally ended, he joined us by the campfire. Autry looked up with an exclamation of surprise. And despite everything, a smile spread slowly across his face.
Rocket had shaved his beard and tamed his spiky hair as best he could, revealing a smooth face with a strong jaw and the good looks my mom had scolded him for hiding. He’d exchanged his wrinkled T-shirt for a crisp western one. And instead of cologne, my cou
sin reeked of Static Guard—a whole can of it, I guessed.
Gypsy raised a dimpled smile toward her brother. “Now the whole world can see you, Rocket!” Rocket’s newly shaven face bloomed in shades of red. Uncle Autry reset his own expression to neutral to keep from scaring Rocket back into hiding. But he couldn’t keep the corners of his mouth from twitching as he asked:
“What’s with the best bib and tucker, son? We’re not having a funeral for this place yet.”
Rocket crossed, then uncrossed his arms, looking uncomfortable in his stiff shirt. “I’m just going out for a while.”
“Out?”
Rocket cleared his throat, looking sharply at me before answering, “I have a date.”
Crickets chirped.
Embers popped.
Then, “Yes!” Startling us all, Uncle Autry jumped from his stump and cheered, filling the air with a swirl of dusty moths and a frenzy of shimmering, flying things. Autry swept Gypsy off her stump into a spinning jig. “Your brother’s going out, Gypsy. Out on a date!” Autry sang as they hopped and skipped around the fire.
The twins dropped their untouched food and got in on the act, whooping and spinning plates and cups into the air above us, clashing and crashing silverware together to make as much noise they could. Hobbled by guilt, I didn’t join in.
Soon, my uncle sat back down to catch his breath, still smiling. Just then, no one would have guessed that Autry O’Connell was a man walking a plank, moving closer and closer to the edge of losing everything.
“Thanks, man.” Autry held out a hand to Rocket. “We needed something to make us smile.”