Chapter 21: Return to the Mount
And now, several months after Tobie’s internment, Bobby feared his father was falsely secure in the eye of Tobie’s hurricane.
“Jeremy, you’ve just got to keep Tobie on a tight leash.”
“Shit, Bobby, deep down we both know he’s got a good heart. But I’m beginning to wonder if the umbrella I provide for him here doesn’t do more harm than good.”
“Don’t you think you’re hurting him more by just letting him run wild? Are you too weak to stand up to him? Tell him no for once? Daniel’s never going to come back and do it,” Bobby said, looking away from Jeremy; he couldn’t bear to see the pain his words brought to his father’s face.
“You’re right, son. Ever since The Old Man died I’ve been scared to death of responsibility. I’ve hated it. Daniel – he was so much stronger than me. Hell, even when he was a boy he gave me the strength to go on. He had what your grandpa had. I’ve always felt I was the weak link in the Barnes chain.”
Bobby couldn’t handle hearing his father say such things.
“How in the world can you say that? Look what you’ve done with this place. What did it take to make this?”
“Fear. I’ve been driven by fear. The fear of failing. And when Daniel came along I was driven by hope – the false hope that he’d take over.”
“Jeremy, he’s dead. He’s been dead. Now what?”
“I look at you, Bobby, and I don’t see Daniel and I don’t see The Old Man. I see me.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’ve got to hang in there until another Daniel comes along.”
“You mean we’ve got to hang in there.”
“You. Bobby, I’m not going to be around much longer. My pump’s out of warranty. I once read about a famous psychoanalyst who never overcame his own feelings of inadequacy in the eyes of his father. That doctor died young – within a week of the same age as his father. I’ve always identified with what that man said, what he wrote, what he did.”
Bobby was gazing at his father’s profile trying to sort out what he said as the shadow passed slowly over Jeremy’s face. It was a dark, ominous shadow of what must have been a large-winged predator soaring overhead. Bobby watched his father’s expression become quizzical as the shadow passed. Then he heard the motor and turned and looked behind him toward the sky. A motorized kite or hang glider – he’d heard them called ultralights – was circling the ranch.
Jeremy rose and walked past Bobby to the edge of their small bluff. He stood between Bobby and the late afternoon sun, his long shadow racing back and covering his son. In a sudden terror, Jeremy pointed wildly at the western sky.
“Goddamn it! That’s Tobie up there! Shit, he never got his pilot’s license. What the hell’s he doing in that thing?”
Bobby stepped to his father’s side and gazed up at Jeremy’s Icarus.
“Your son, the condor. Definitely an endangered species.”
The two watched as Tobie made a long graceful dive at their house. From their high vantage point, they were looking down on both the home and the winged stroller. A cloud of dust rose from behind the home, and Bobby saw The Insect whip around the house in the three-wheeler that they used to check the irrigation system. The Insect was trying to follow Tobie on his wild flight, and, in a feeble attempt to keep up, Holly was hopping behind The Insect – another three-wheeler pursuing the craft.
The Insect was so distracted by the joy of watching his mentor in flight that he failed to see the tongue of a grape gondola in his path. The balloon tire hit the metal bar and catapulted The Insect in one direction and his cycle in the other. He landed in the dried grass in a crumpled, unconscious heap. Holly limped to her savior and began to bark incessantly. Jeremy and Bobby, distant witnesses to the accident, began scurrying down the hill toward the scene. They froze as they looked up at the descending plane; they realized that Tobie was playing life-flight pilot and attempting to land the airborne go-cart on the drive leading up to their home.
The craft swung around for its final approach. The plane swooped down over a stand of Eucalyptus trees and precariously hovered over the shrinking drive. A half-dozen pickers, emerging from the fields after a day of weeding, scattered like ground squirrels in the shadow of death. In their paranoia they thought Tobie was a part of the new aerial arsenal of the Border Patrol. Finally the small bicycle wheels touched the asphalt and the ultralight sprung up a few feet off the drive, then met the earth again.
“The plum trees!” Jeremy cried.
Bobby and Jeremy watched as the plane lopped off two dozen of Janie’s plum saplings flanking the drive. They had only been in the ground for two weeks. Bobby could see bits of metallic cloth clinging to the splintered trunks of the young trees. The plane came to a stop fifty feet from the front porch. Tobie unstrapped himself and leapt from the craft. The Insect was sitting up in the grass, laughing and clapping and whooping at the safe landing of his birdman, and at his side the old collie paused in the midst of her barking seizure. Bobby took his eyes from the scene and looked to his father. Jeremy slowly shook his head and spoke.
“At least he didn’t kill anybody.”
end of Part One
