Free Coast to Coast by Betsy Byars Page B

didn’t tell me about being named for a tree right off, so maybe …”
    Birch recrossed her legs, brushed some gravel off the sides, and looked again at her watch. “We’ve been here an hour.
    “The other thing—and this really bothers me—the other thing is that the baby that died was—” She couldn’t say the word. She backed up. “Everyone is always telling me how big and healthy I was. I weighed nine pounds! And so you have to figure that if I weighed nine pounds, I pretty much used up all the vitamins and all the minerals and whatever else there was. And if there was another baby there—a twin.” It was a word she could not keep avoiding. “If there was a twin, there wouldn’t be any nourishment for him, or her, because I was hogging it all. It’s like I was a murderer almost. I just hate the thought of myself taking and taking and—”
    She heard the sound of a truck and got to her feet. Moving into the sunlight, she shaded her eyes and saw Pop climbing out of a pickup truck. He reached back inside for two bags of red gas.
    “Meet me at the fence,” he called.
    “I hope he thought to get me something to drink, Ace.”
    Pop was lifting the first bag over the fence when she got there. “It’s heavy,” he warned. She set it down and reached for the second.
    He said, “You gas up the plane while I take the truck back.”
    “Pop, I don’t know how to …”
    He was already in the truck, backing up. He drove away in a column of dust.
    Birch lugged the bags of gas to the plane. “Did you hear that, Ace? He goes, ‘Gas up the plane.’ I’d like to know who he’d have ordered around if I hadn’t come.”
    She reached to the top of the cowl and unscrewed the gas cap. She lifted it off, being careful with the cork-tipped stick. With an, “Oof,” she heaved the gas bag onto the cowling.
    She turned the cap on the gas bag, and gas began to flow into the airplane. “Next he’ll go, ‘Change the oil. Fix the flat. Do this. Do that. Fly the airplane. Do a triple loop …’”
    The gas was almost out of the first bag when her grandfather arrived on foot. Birch watched as he climbed the fence. “Pop, you better get out of the sun. Your face is red.”
    “It’s always red.”
    “Not this red, Pop.”
    “Well, I have been all over the county,” he said cheerfully. “I walked till I found the caretaker. He lives in a mobile home about a mile down the road. He wanted to help—Texans like to be of help—but he didn’t have a car. His aunt’s car was up on blocks, so he cut a section out of his garden hose and we tried to siphon out some gas. It was too low. I’ll take that.”
    Birch folded up the empty gas bag while he talked.
    “So then I kept going and found somebody with a pickup and got directions to the nearest gas station which was five miles down the road.” He emptied the second bag and folded it up. “It took all ten gallons and is still a gallon from full. That figures to be about four gallons an hour for the previous flight—and we had at least a gallon left, so we could have made the seven miles across town.”
    “Now you tell me.”
    “Okay, let’s go.”
    “Pop, didn’t you even bring me a cold drink?”
    “We’ll get drinks later.”
    “That’s what you always say. When later? All I’ve had is a cup of stale water!”
    “Be thankful.”
    Pop pulled the chocks out from the wheels. He took the wing and slowly swung the plane around.
    “Get in.”
    “Pop—”
    “If you’re going with me, get in.”
    Birch took her time putting Ace on the luggage rack and getting into the front seat. She buckled her belt, put her heels on the brakes.
    “Brakes and contact.”
    “Brakes. Contact!” He swung the prop and the plane came to life. Birch watched through the whirling blur of the prop as they taxied the way they had come. “Watch the wings,” Pop said as they went through the gate.
    “I’m watching.”
    When they were lined up facing the wind, Pop said, “At