Cloudmaker. Malcolm Brooks

if that’s possible. That God-given fire, you know. Lord, I wish I had half of it.

      “That may be Sister’s greatest gift, actually. You can smother a lot, even the plain truth now and again, but a fire like that? That can’t be damped down. Not by any slandering panel of men, anyway.” Annelise could feel her aunt’s eyes upon her. “Although plenty enough have tried.”

      Annelise finally made eye contact, for the briefest moment only, but long enough to catch a clear challenge in Aunt Gloria’s gaze. She shifted her eyes back to the window, watched the daylight sparkle and flash on the bright plumage of another pheasant pecking at the edge of the trees. A handful of much plainer birds pecked in the same fashion, all mottled dun feathering, no white ringneck and no brilliant red comb around the eye. Hens, she realized. She said, “I remember. I live there.”

      “Oldest trick there is, with men. Especially the sanctimonious ones. Fastest way to kill a woman is by tarnishing her reputation. Throw judgment at her, bring judgment on her. That’s a thing you need to remember.”

      “Well,” said Annelise finally, “that’s no doubt true. But in my experience, some of the worst judges of women tend to be other women.”

      Now Aunt Gloria said nothing, and Annelise waited in the rising tick of the stove. She looked back from the window and the pheasants and saw that her aunt no longer glared at her, was not in fact watching her at all.

      Aunt Gloria had her head bowed. She pressed hard at her eyes with a finger and thumb.

      “We need to get chores done,” she said. “I’ve got a headache coming.”

      6

      “Cy’s hard to read, always has been. Cotter pin.”

      Huck shook the hubcap like a gold pan, watched the nuts and washers roll around and reshuffle until the pin revealed itself. He plucked it out.

      Pop leaned in under the hood.

      Afternoon was nearly gone, the body hauled in from the river and a Billings newsman already back to the city with his scoop. Huck and Raleigh stood to get their names and pictures in the paper, but the sheriff had seemed downright sour about the whole business.

      Pop had returned from the ranch and barely determined that neither Huck nor old Mr. Neuman’s rattletrap was anywhere to be found before Cy Gleason roared in waving his arms about a gunshot cadaver, and why in the hell weren’t those damn kids in school in the first place, and so on.

      “You’ll have to log some time in the classroom now, I’ll tell you what,” Pop told him. He’d pulled the linkage apart, rethreaded a stripped keeper, and about had it all together again.

      “We thought we were getting on his good side,” said Huck. The REO sat half in and half out of the shop, and it was colder inside at the moment than in the lean yellow sunlight beyond the bay door. He could feel the watch in his pocket, and all he wanted to do was put a fire in the stove and build wing ribs. “Maybe should’ve just left the thing to wash down the dern river. Saved ourselves the trouble.”

      “No, you did the right thing, and Cy knows it. He’s a classical hard-ass, but put yourself in his position. Charged with the public safety when he’s got all you kids running around like wild hellions, not to mention a bunch of guys who spend all day in a coal seam and half the night in the tavern. Not to mention every crackpot farm wife in the Musselshell. At the end of the day he appreciates what you boys done, but that don’t mean he’s about to gush about it—give you a medal or something. All right, get her fired.”

      Ten minutes later he had the linkage adjusted and idle mixture tuned and the choke working again. He dropped the hood and disappeared for the washroom. When he returned, Huck had the truck backed into the sunlight.

      Pop slid the bay door closed and walked to the driver’s door. “Slide over. No sense pushing it with Cyrus.”

      They drove to the café and sat in a booth by the window. Huck had to recount the tale of the body and its discovery three times in fifteen minutes, once to Hannah, the waitress, and twice again to other diners, and he prayed to God that wherever Raleigh happened to be at the moment, he was sticking to a more or less compatible version of the same abridged sequence. Trouble was, Raleigh had a knack for embellishment even under ordinary circumstances.

      “Reckon we’d better get out to the place for the next couple of nights.”

      He’d seen this coming. “I was sort of hoping to get a little further on the wing.”

      Pop stirred his coffee, pointlessly because he never put a thing in it. “Yeah, I guessed that. I don’t like having women out there alone, though, with that waterlogged rascal’s friends still around. No telling where they show up next. Anyways, I got the parts for the tractor and we need to get it back in business, on the off chance we get some water this season. And you ought to see your mother. And meet your cousin.”

      That other source of dread.

      Pop evidently sensed it. “You’ll like her, she’s a firecracker. And get this, she’s had flying lessons. So already you’ve got something in common.”

      Now this did beat all. “You didn’t tell her about the dern airplane, did you?”

      “No, but she’ll be starting school next week, which means she’ll be living here in town with us some, so she’s bound to find out. May as well get that in your head right now.”

      “She will spill the dern beans.”

      Pop looked at him. “Did you just hear what I said? Girl’s had flying lessons, Houston. That’s a big stroke of luck, seems to me.”

      Huck stared at the bubbles climbing through his Coke bottle. He could feel the watch in his pocket. “You sure they’ll even let her into school?”

      “Why wouldn’t they?”

      “Ain’t she . . . you know.”

      Pop looked at him. “Ain’t she what?”

      He thought of Raleigh, standing in the dusk with his dead fish. “Ain’t she ‘studying abroad’?”

      Pop cracked a grin. He pulled the spoon out of his coffee and set it on the saucer. “No, sonny, she ain’t. Although I can see why you’d jump to the conclusion.”

      “What on earth is she doing here, then? Isn’t that why girls get sent off?”

      “Yeah, I guess so, most times. But this ain’t one of them times.”

      He took an idle swallow and something else struck him. “I’m on at the Rialto tomorrow night.”

      Pop looked at him. “Now who’s the rascal.”

      “I just remembered. Honest.”

      He stirred his coffee again. “Just remembered something myself. Probably is better for one of us to stick it here. I hired a new fella down in Billings the other day, and he’s due to show up sometime over the weekend.”

      “He had flying lessons too?”

      “Didn’t say. But he’s a hell of a smith. Welder and machinist. Young guy, but kind of a character. Name’s McKee.”

      “How young?”

      “Well, not real young. Twenty-two? From Utah. Worked at the Browning gun forge down there, actually. Didn’t seem Mormon, though.”

      Huck forked succotash to the side of his plate. “Studying abroad, is he?”

      Roy grinned. “You’re going to like her, Huck. She’s a pistol.”

      7

      Fig. 5-A shows the wing curve I use. I don’t know what to call it. I made it up myself after building a lot of wings . . .

      When I had found out where the centers of lift were I could place them ahead or behind a little at a time until I had a flyin’ sweetheart.

      —B.