Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [111]
Patrick seemed to welcome the activity and pitched in as best he could. Once all was in order, Kerney spread out Patrick’s sleeping bag on the bare living-room floor and gave him his stuffed pony.
“You need to take your nap, son.”
Patrick looked around the empty room. “Everything’s gone.”
“To our Santa Fe home,” Kerney said. “That where we’re all going to live from now on.”
“Will Mommy be there?”
“Yes, but not right away. I’m going to need your help with the horses.”
The thought of the horses cheered Patrick slightly, but he still looked unhappy as Kerney tucked him in. After he fell asleep, Kerney sat on the front stoop and called his old and best friend Dale Jennings, who’d been hired as a wrangler for the movie. He gave him a heads-up about Sara’s deployment to Iraq and his delayed arrival in Playas.
“Damn, if that isn’t bad news,” Dale said with a heavy sigh, concern flooding his voice. “Seems we both have wives who are in a fix.”
“What’s up with Barbara?”
“She had an emergency appendectomy three nights ago, and I had to bow out on the movie job. We’re not going to Playas.”
“Is she all right?” Kerney asked.
“She’s healing up nicely but sore and cranky,” Dale replied. “The girls went down to Las Cruces this morning to enroll late in their fall classes at the university, so I’m chief cook, bottle washer, and nurse until Barbara gets back on her feet.”
“Give her my best,” Kerney said, trying to sound upbeat, although the thought of missing out on Dale’s company in the Bootheel wasn’t a happy one.
“I sure will. Tell Sara we’ll be praying for her and thinking about her.”
“Thanks.” Kerney hung up, feeling a bit depressed. With Sara in Iraq, Kerney’s enthusiasm about the movie had waned, and now that Dale wouldn’t be there, the whole idea was even less appealing. But he’d promised Sara he’d take Patrick and go, so he would do it.
On Sunday morning, after spending the night in a hotel near the airport, Kerney and Patrick flew home to New Mexico. Usually a good traveler, Patrick was hyperactive and irritable during the flight. Not even Pablito the Pony or any of his favorite toys held his attention for long.
At the ranch Kerney decided the best medicine for his son would be to wear him out. They spent the remainder of the day cleaning out stalls, laying down fresh straw and sawdust, rearranging the tack room, and clearing manure from the paddocks. It was slow going, with Patrick taking frequent breaks to give biscuits to the horses and getting brief rides around the paddock on Hondo’s back while Kerney led the horse by the halter.
“I want to go see Mommy,” Patrick said as Kerney plucked him off Hondo and carried him to the house.
“Mommy has to work in a place where children can’t go,” Kerney said. “She can’t be with us until the army sends her home.”
“Fourteen days.”
“Is that what Mommy said?”
Patrick nodded. “The last time she went away.”
“That’s a long time.”
Patrick pouted unhappily.
“She’ll be gone a little longer than that.”
“No,” Patrick said emphatically, as if to make it so.
After dinner Kerry saddled up Hondo and took Patrick for a ride to the railroad tracks. They got there just in time to watch the excursion train that ran from Santa Fe to the village of Lamy pass by. The tourists riding in the old carriages waved, smiled, and pointed at the cowboy and his son on horseback. The engineer tooted his horn as the train rumbled by at ten miles an hour over the spur line.
Patrick loved trains. He waved back at the passengers until it passed out of sight and, on the ride back to the ranch, didn’t ask once about Sara. It gave Kerney hope that Patrick would adjust to living with him.
That night, long after Patrick was asleep, Kerney turned on the television news and listened with growing interest as a local weekend anchor reported a breaking story out of Dublin. George Spalding, a U.S. Army deserter and international fugitive now in custody, had named Thomas Carrier, a retired colonel with close