LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I didn’t want to risk it.”

      Tammy sat back and assumed an upbeat tone once more. “Well, it doesn’t matter how you got married. The point is, it took. Not many couples can say that these days.”

      She nodded. The fact that she and Tom had stayed together all these years was pretty amazing, considering they’d known each other all of three months when they decided to tie the knot. She had been only eighteen, trying to decide what to do with her future. She’d liked Tom well enough, but when he’d told her he planned to move to Austin at the end of the summer—over two hundred miles away from Tipton—she’d decided to throw in her lot with him.

      She’d latched on to him as her ticket out of town, but stuck with him because he’d showed her a kind of love she’d never known before. Now he was the rock who supported her.

      “So how is the birdman?” Tammy asked, using the name the townspeople had given Karen’s father long ago.

      “Cantankerous as ever.” Karen sipped her iced tea, then cradled the glass between her palms, letting the cold seep into her skin. “That’s good, I guess. He’s a fighter. He’ll fight his way back from this, too.”

      “They did an article on him in the paper last year. Said he was one of the top ten bird-watchers in the whole world.”

      Her mother had sent her a copy of the article. “He’s getting close to eight thousand birds on his list now.”

      “Goodness. I can’t imagine seeing that many different birds.”

      “It’s taken a long time.” More to the point, listing birds had taken all his time, to the exclusion of almost everything else.

      The doorbell sounded and both women jumped up. “That’s probably the nurse’s aide,” Karen said. “The county is sending one every day to help with bathing and things like that.”

      “That’s good. That’ll help you.” Tammy sighed and stood. “I’d better go. Jamie has a Little League game tonight, and April has piano practice. Somewhere in there I’ve got to figure out what to fix for supper.”

      “Thanks for the cake. And thanks for stopping by. It was good to see you.”

      They hugged, then walked arm-in-arm to the door. “If you need anything, you just holler,” Tammy said. “And when you can get someone else to sit with Mr. Martin for a while, you come out and have dinner with us. Brady and the kids would love to see you.”

      “I’ll do that.” Karen let Tammy out and the aide in, then returned to her grocery list. Maybe staying here wasn’t going to be such a hard thing, after all. She did have friends here, and this was a chance for her to get to know her father better, while he was forced to sit still.

      It was a second chance for them, and how many people got second chances these days?

      CHAPTER 3

      Even the little sparrow, which flits about by the

       roadside, can laugh at us with his impudent little chirp, as he flies up out of reach to the topmost branch of a tree.

      —Arabella B. Buckley, The Fairy-Land of Science

      Casey had never ridden a Greyhound bus before, but it was pretty much the way he’d imagined: tall-backed, plastic-covered seats filled with people who all looked a little down on their luck. They wore old clothes and carried shopping bags stuffed with packages and groceries and more old clothes. They were brown and black and white, mostly young, but some old. The woman in front of him had three little brown-haired, brown-eyed boys who kept turning around in their seats to look at him. Their mother would scold them in Spanish and they would face forward again, only to look back in a few minutes, unable to keep from staring at the white kid all alone on the bus.

      At first he’d only intended to see how much it would cost to get from Denver to Tipton, Texas. But when he saw it was only a hundred and thirty dollars and there was a bus leaving in thirty minutes, he’d decided to buy the ticket and go. Mom had sounded so sad and worried on the phone. She was down there all alone with her sick father and nobody to help her, really. He could cheer her up and help, too.

      The main thing about traveling on a bus was that it was boring. He spent a lot of time listening to CDs on his portable player and staring out the window. Not that there was much to see—the bus stayed on the interstate, mainly, cruising past fields and billboards and the occasional junkyard or strip of cheap houses. He made faces at the little boys in front of him, until their mother turned around and said something to him in Spanish. He didn’t understand it, but from her tone it sounded as if she was cussing him out or something.

      After that, he slept for a while. When he woke up, it was dark, and the bus was stopped at a station. “Where are we?” he asked the man in the seat behind him.

      “Salina, Kansas,” he said. “Dinner break.”

      At the mention of dinner, Casey’s stomach rumbled. The driver wasn’t anywhere in sight, so he figured that meant they were stopped for a while. He pulled himself up out of his seat and ambled down the aisle, in search of a diner or McDonald’s or someplace to get something to eat.

      The bus station was next to a Taco Bell. Casey bought three burritos and a large Coke and ate at a little table outside. He thought he recognized a couple of other people from his bus, but they didn’t say anything. They all looked tired or worried. He decided people who traveled by bus weren’t doing it because they wanted adventure or a vacation, but because it was the cheapest way to get to where they needed to be.

      When he got back on the bus, the seat he’d been sitting in was occupied by a thin guy with a shaved head. He had red-rimmed brown eyes that moved constantly. He looked at Casey, then away, then back again. Casey tried to ignore him, and searched for another seat, but the bus was full.

      So he gingerly lowered himself into the seat next to the young man. “Hey,” he said by way of greeting.

      The guy didn’t say anything. He just stared. He was skinny—so skinny his bones stuck out at his wrists and elbows and knees, like knobs on a tree limb. His plaid shirt and khaki pants still had creases in them from where they’d been folded in the package, and he wore tennis shoes without laces, the kind skateboarders used to wear five or six years ago.

      The bus jerked forward and Casey folded his arms across his chest and slumped in his seat. It was going to be harder to sleep without the window to lean against, but he guessed he could manage it. Sleeping made the time pass faster, and he had the whole rest of the night and another day before they reached Tipton.

      “What’s your name?”

      His seatmate’s question startled him from a sound sleep. He opened his eyes and blinked in the darkness. The only light was the faint green glow from the dashboard far ahead, and the headlights of passing cars. He looked at the man next to him. “My name’s Casey. What’s yours?”

      “My name’s Denton. Denton Carver.”

      “Casey MacBride.” Casey offered his hand and the man took it. His grip was hard, his palm heavily calloused. For someone so skinny, he was really strong.

      “Where you goin’?” Denton asked.

      “To Tipton, Texas. My mom’s there, looking after my Grandpa, who’s sick.”

      “That’s too bad.” Denton didn’t look all that sorry, though.

      “Where are you going?” Casey asked.

      “Not sure, yet. Thought I’d get off in Houston and look around. I used to know some people there.”

      “So you’re just, like, taking a vacation?” Maybe he’d been wrong about the people on the bus.

      “You might say that.” Denton grinned, showing yellow teeth. “I just got out of prison.”

      Casey went still. He told himself not to freak

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