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.The telephone rang and rang.His folks had gone out.But both of them at once? That wasn't like them.Usually, either Josey was outshopping and Nate was at home in his Archie Bunker recliner, or else Nate was sipping coffee in sometwo-bit café and Josey was filling up the house with Camel smoke.The last time they'd gone to a movietogether may have been the year that Julie Andrews copped her Oscar.Until six o'clock, Bo dialed every thirty minutes -- with the same negative result.He was dressed now and feeling more chipper, but neither Libby nor Sam had come home.What to do?Read? Get dinner? Gawk at Little Ben, where Albert Einstein might be barbecuing spare ribs, or NancyReagan and Raisa Gorbachev mud-wrestling, or Curt Gowdy long-bowing two-headed dragons overHokkaido? (In fact, the set's only viewable channel was spewing soap operas and reruns of old sitcoms.)Bo felt paralyzed.If he stayed in this limbo too long, he would simply give up trying to.phone home.At six thirty, though, he finally got an answer."Nate? Is that you?""This is Theodore Gavin, his son.Who's calling, please?""Beaumont Gavin, his other son.The first one."Ned made no reply.Bo could almost see him, the quintessential yuppie, staring at the handset as if it hadburped."Where's Dad? Where's Mama? What're they doing?"Said Ned preemptively, "You're at the Tipsy Q, aren't you?"Bo, surprised, admitted as much, and their conversation went on from there.Bo learned that Papa Natehad just had multiple-bypass heart surgery in Pueblo.Mama Josey was in a waiting room near the ICUsuites.She would not come home until she had seen Papa during the day's last visiting hour.Ned,meanwhile, had driven on to the house to see if she had laid in any groceries."Same old Mama.Same old Ned.Is Dad okay?""He's going to make it.""I'm coming down.I've got to talk to him."Visiting hours, Ned said, would be over soon and Bo would never make it if he tried to come tonight."Tomorrow then," Bo rejoined, but Ned said their mother blamed Papa's condition on the anxietyattendant upon finding out that Bo had acquired AIDS by buggering, or being buggered by, male lovers.So if Bo came to the hospital tomorrow, Mama would scream at him as if she were a death-campsurvivor and he a Nazi prison guard only recently dragged in by the Israeli secret police."That bad? Truly that bad?""In Mama's eyes, you're a kind of mini-Mengele.""Damn her.I'm driving down there.""Why? To traumatize Mama? To hurl a monkey wrench into Papa's recovery?"He's right, Bo realized.If I scramble down there against her will and upset Dad and her both, I'll onlymake things worse."What am I going to do, Ned?""Stay there.After I get Mama home from the hospital tonight, I'll drive up to the Tipsy Q to see you."Ned could not possibly arrive before ten, but Bo surrendered to his suggestion.What else could he do?Get Lib's dinner? Yeah.As soon as Ned had rung off, Bo headed for the kitchen.* * *Libby wasn't ready for company.Sam had helped her haul hay to Abbot's Saddle and cut out three moreheavy springers, but the work had gone slowly because a brand-new kar'tajan sighting had rendered theUte altogether spacey.Irritatingly, though, Sam would say only that a new batch of the critters had arrived on the Tipsy Q andthat he had seen them above Naismith's Cabin last night after digging a grave for.well, theabomination."Where above Naismith's Cabin?""The mine.""What were you doing up there so late, Sam?""Walking off the blues from that monster birth and your cousin Bo's finger-flipping meanness.""Where did they go? The kar'tajans."Sam had shrugged, and Libby wondered if some lingering pique over her scolding him in front of Boabout that unicorn volume had made him so close-mouthed.She told him -- to see what effect it wouldhave -- that she thought Bo, even though he still hadn't seen one himself, was beginning to believe in thekar'tajans."Such faith," Sam had disinterestedly replied, and she had felt rebuffed.So why tell Sam about Little Ben's astonishing performance last night? He would think the old set's anticsirrelevant to both the running of the ranch and the return of the kar'tajans.Now, outright mundanity having reasserted itself, Lib was in no mood for a visitor.A glass of milk and apeanut butter and jelly sandwich -- her dinner -- had made her torpid.Midnight was only three hours off.Bo had slept most of the day, but if she didn't get some shuteye herself, she'd be absolutely worthless forranch work tomorrow.Have some compassion, she rebuked herself.Alfie has just been buried, Bo's AIDS isn't quite inremission, and Nate's recovering from bypass surgery.You ought to be glad Bo's semi-estranged babybrother thinks enough of him to warn him of his mama's wrath and to toddle all the way up here at nightto talk to him.I ought to be, Libby thought.But I'm not.All I want to do is sleep.Forever.* * *Ned Gavin drove a wide-bodied American car with a stereo radio, a tape deck, and electric windows.He got his mother back to the elder Gavins' tiny stucco house in northwest Pueblo well before eight, toldher that a company client in Huerfano needed to see him "post haste," and went cruising down I-25 atbetter than eighty miles per hour.However, only the tachometer needle and the other vehicles driftingback toward Pueblo as he passed them clued Ned to his car's high speed, so smoothly did it glide.Well, well, well, he thought.Our prodigal has made contact.And I.I should've sought him out longbefore now.Ned pondered.Mama might believe that Papa's heart condition stemmed directly from his discovery thatBo was both a queer and an AIDS victim, but Ned knew that years of sedentary smoking, coffeedrinking, and careless boozing, along with a cargo of suppressed guilt for rejecting Beaumont in his timeof need, were more likely culprits.As for Mama Josey, she lived for, and through, her clever sons' accomplishments -- so long as thoseaccomplishments had the cachet of Eisenhower Era innocuousness -- and she would probably neverforgive Bo for arranging to die in a way that not only called those values into question but flouted the veryprinciples on which they were based.Bo was a "sinner." Ostensibly against God (whom Ned knew to bemore forgiving than his folks), but actually against the idol of material success to whom they had bothbowed down when it became obvious that Nathaniel was never going to make them wealthy and thatonly if their sons became "successes" would the elder Gavins ever spit in Mammon's fickle eye.Stroking the Continental's plush seat, Ned smiled.That fickle deity had done okay by him.He wasreaping not only its fortuitous bounty but also the love and approval of his parents for falling in the way ofits largesse.At twenty-four, Ned Gavin was the chief marketing executive for Zubrecht Products, Inc.This was aDenver-based firm specializing in various health-care items.It had been founded only nine years ago byhis roommate's uncle, Everett Zubrecht, a connection that had allowed Ned to take a managerial positionright out of business school.A promotion every six months had lifted him to his present evidence in thefirm's hierarchy, and this catlike Lincoln bespoke the rapidity of his rise.Luck may have arranged my first job with Zubrecht, Ned thought, but, once on the ladder, I made it toeach higher rung by savvy and butt-busting work [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]