Kansas Troubles Read Free Page A

Barbara, withdrew all his savings, and took off with a friend for Hawaii, searching for the perfect wave. Gabe just about burst a blood vessel after getting Sam’s postcard from Kaunakakai. That uneasy meeting still lurked on the horizon.
    “If I can do it, you can do it,” he said, with what I felt was not a great deal of sympathy.
    “Thanks loads.” I didn’t voice the apprehension I felt about Dove meeting my new, apparently steel-spined mother-in-law. I would have preferred to face the Kansas clan on my own, but Dove insisted that unlike some people, she was going to meet Gabe’s family even if she had to hitchhike. That was a direct barb at my dad, who had not traveled further than seventy-five miles from the ranch since I was a teenager. Dove had been nagging him to take a vacation for years, and she’d finally seen her opportunity. And she wasn’t kidding about hitchhiking. As she so picturesquely put it, she’d trust a snaggletoothed redneck in a flatbed Ford before she’d bet her life on a dope-sniffing yuppie flying one of those steel coffins. Leaving the ranch in the care of his trusted foreman, Daddy and Dove and Arnie were driving to Kansas in Daddy’s new Ford pickup, stopping along the way to assuage Dove’s wanderlust by visiting some of America’s finer tourist attractions. They would meet us in Derby in two weeks for the Saturday afternoon wedding reception Becky and Angel had planned.
    An hour later Gabe and I were standing at the ticket counter of the tiny San Celina airport, checking our bags for the American Eagle connection to Los Angeles International Airport.
    “Have a good flight, Ms. Harper, Mr. Ortiz,” the clerk said cheerfully.
    Gabe growled deep in his throat and picked up my leather backpack.
    “Are you going to do that every time someone says my name?” I asked, walking toward our assigned gate.
    “Do what?”
    “Make that noise in your throat. Sounds a lot like a big old bull choking on a hunk of cud.”
    He made the noise again and kept walking. He had taken my decision to keep the Harper name, and not become an official Ortiz, as an insult on three levels—as a man, as a traditional Latino man, and as a conservative Midwestern man. I sort of guessed it was one of those man things. But I was determined to keep my identity. Changing your name at nineteen when your vision is blinded by stars and an overload of hormones is one thing. Though at thirty-five I still had the hormone overload, I didn’t want a new name, not even a hyphenated one. I loved Gabe and didn’t want to put any more obstacles on the rocky road of our marriage, but something in me wouldn’t give in on this no matter how much grumbling and pouting he did.
    By the time we reached LAX, I’d teased him out of his irritable mood. “Tell me about your friends again,” I said when our flight to Kansas was over the Mojave Desert. I unwrapped the snack sandwich that came with a container of yogurt, a cellophane-wrapped brownie, and an apple.
    Pressing his head against the narrow plane seat, Gabe’s face relaxed with memory. “We were inseparable from kindergarten to the summer I turned sixteen and went to California. We had some wild times, those guys and me.”
    “Just how wild?” I took a tentative bite of my dry sandwich, then abandoned it for the brownie.
    “As wild as four teenage guys can get with an old’56 Chevy and three dollars worth of gas. We spent most of our time kicking up gravel outside of town, racing whoever could get their dad’s new car.”
    Shoving my brownie aside, I dug through the side pocket of my backpack and pulled out the last picture Gabe and his three friends had taken together, seven years ago, right after Gabe was divorced. They were leaning against an old barn somewhere. Gabe, wearing a Dodger baseball cap and a white T-shirt, didn’t look a lot different from the way he did now. He smiled at the camera, but his eyes seemed sad.
    “I’ll never keep them all