Best Friends

by Samantha Glen

  An awful silence lay over the store. Customers turned away as Faith lifted her chin and stared down each in turn. “I have no more to say to you,” she said, quietly now, her anger spent. She gathered her dignity and walked out of the store. Strangely, she felt no sense of victory, no vindication. Just a numbing sadness that made her wish she could sleep and never wake again.

  Francis was waiting when she got home. “Somebody called, didn’t they?” Faith asked. She sat bent over the steering wheel, suddenly too weary to move.

  Francis opened her door.

  “I lost it, didn’t I? I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Let’s go to your trailer, Faith.”

  Neither spoke while he put on the kettle for tea. Faith idly stirred the spoon around her cup, making no attempt to drink the steaming, sweet liquid he poured.

  Francis broke the impasse. “You can’t go on like this.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”

  “We all have, Faith. Not that I don’t understand. I’m not exactly known for my sweet temperament. But this is no way to present Best Friends.”

  “I know, I know.” She stirred faster.

  “Why don’t you take a sip. It’ll do you good.”

  “I know.”

  “Stop saying ‘I know,’ Faith. You’re better than that. Don’t you think we’ve all seen what’s been going on? Don’t you think we know the pressure you’re under? But you won’t let us help.”

  “I will now.”

  “We can’t go on like this—any of us. John says we’re marching toward bankruptcy and we’re all too exhausted to eat half the time.”

  “I know. Oh—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

  Francis studied the woman who had worked alongside him for so many years. Misery exuded out of every pore. “I think you should just take yourself to bed for the rest of the day, Faith. The sanctuary will still be here when you get up.”

  Faith nodded.

  Francis stayed controlled. “We’re going to make some changes,” he said evenly. “We can’t wait for the ranch to pay off.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t think you’re ready for this right now.”

  “Please, Francis.”

  “All right. No more animal control.”

  Faith looked stricken. “But. . . .”

  “Hear me out. We’ll offer to rebuild something decent at the airport. And we’ll monitor what goes on. We’ll still take in strays and the abused. That won’t change. But we can’t be the dumping ground for the world. Not right now anyway.”

  “I think I know a guy who might like to take over,” Faith said with sudden energy. “There’s a nice elderly gentleman who told me he thought what I was doing was real cool.”

  Francis looked across the table at the director of Best Friends. She was a true warrior. Sometimes down, but never out. “Sounds good. Let’s work on it. Meantime I’ll write an apology from the mad Englishwoman.”

  Faith managed a smile. “I think I should do that, Francis.” A flash of fear crimped her features. “I don’t know what’s going on lately. It’s going to be all right, isn’t it? We’re going make it, aren’t we?”

  Francis rose to leave. “What do you think? Now get some rest.”

  DECEMBER 29, 1990

  A happy life, a fulfilling existence, the complacency of certainty—all shattered in a nanosecond.

  A doctor’s diagnosis, and the day is suddenly dark; a random act of violence steals a loved one; an earthquake in the night kills family and friends; raging floodwaters sweep away a life’s treasures.

  For the men and women of Angel Canyon, it was the phone call on December 29, 1990. The mortgage holder on the Arizona ranch had filed for Chapter 11 protection from bankruptcy. With one penstroke their future was gone.

  BEST FRIENDS WAS BROKE.

  PART THREE

  Reaching Out 1991–1997

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  New Directions

  The blue truck died on April Fools’ Day. Michael wasn’t surprised. He fully expected Paul’s green pickup to follow in short order. Sweet serendipity had deserted Best Friends. Murphy’s Law had not only come but had taken up permanent residence in Angel Canyon. Building had come to an abrupt halt. Activities had dribbled down to eating (lightly), sleeping (fitfully), keeping warm (sometimes), and taking care of the animals (always).

  It was as if a collective inertia had settled over the group—an unspoken decision to hunker down until the full reality of the situation could be absorbed or, as John said, “the dust settles.”

  Perhaps they should have seen it coming when the developer began missing payments. Perhaps they should have convinced Faith to step back from animal control months before. Perhaps they should have realized they were taking on too much too soon. Perhaps. Perhaps. Michael sighed and eased out of the dying warmth of Blue’s interior. Everything was obvious in hindsight.

  It was snowing again, as it had been doing intermittently for the past three months. A most unusual winter, the locals declared. That figured. Thank the gods John had persuaded the power company to keep the electricity flowing. It had been a pleasant relief to find that their word was indeed good in the community. The power company had allowed that Best Friends would honor their debts—albeit a little later than usual.

  The sound of his boots crunched loudly as Michael trudged toward the bunkhouse. Funny how they all gravitated to the comfort of the small and familiar. The Village, their pride and joy, was finished, but still it was the old kitchen with its chipped Formica table where everyone congregated.

  Michael sensed the situation was coming to a head. He and John had waited until the new year to break the depressing news of their financial heart attack to the founders who hadn’t yet moved to the canyon. After the initial dismay, everyone agreed to carry on as before. Surely among them all they could ante up the minimum needed to keep the sanctuary functioning until they figured out what to do next.

  Michael knew what had to be done next. If Best Friends was to survive, the days of being a private endeavor—paying out of pocket, working out of their bedrooms, kitchens, and whatever—were over. Consciously they all knew it. Subconsciously they fought the shifts they recognized would change forever the sheltered informality of their daily routines.

  John and Francis had gotten to the bunkhouse ahead of him. They sat around the comfort of the Formica table like two morose bears awakened prematurely from their winter’s sleep. Neither spoke as Michael added boiling water to the pot that was always on the stove and poured himself a cup of tea with lots of sugar. A very civilized habit, he thought, the afternoon “cuppa,” as they said in the old country. He pulled up a chair, ready to begin.

  John Christopher Fripp didn’t mince words. “It appears the Keating Five and the resultant savings and loan debacle is the reason our developer went belly-up. Worse, Arizona was the hardest hit in the real estate crash. Bottom line? Trying to sell the ranch now is a lost cause. People aren’t touching land with a ten-foot pole.”

  “So forget being bailed out by another buyer,” Francis translated.

  “Has anyone considered that what’s happened might be a blessing in disguise?” Michael ventured.

  John’s eyebrows knitted in concentration. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a blessing, but I’ve got a hunch where you’re going with this. We’ve been thinking along the same lines.”

  Francis’s face hardened into that familiar intensity they knew so well. “Let’s face it, the sanctuary’s grown like Topsy. We’ve all been so busy taking in every needy creature that crossed our path, we haven’t had time to plan. We’ve been running this operation like a private hobby. Talk about indulging ourselves.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call taking care of fifteen hundred animals an indulgence,” John protested.

  “I know what Francis is saying,” Michael soothed. “Best Friends has already grown far bigger th
an we ever dreamed. And there’s no way we can walk away from what we’ve built here. Besides, where would we go?”

  John grimaced. “We hear you, Michael. We’re all in this together, for better or for worse.” He laughed without humor. “Sounds like a marriage. So, tell us your plan.”

  Michael sipped his tea, composing his words. A deep calm had taken over: a certainty that what he was about to propose was right. He spoke slowly, as the concept unfolded in all its surety. “Let’s be clear on one point. Best Friends is not just for those of us living in Angel Canyon anymore. We’ve been entrusted with this incredibly beautiful place, and the only way we can protect it is to share it with the world. We need to create an organization—let others be part of what we’re building.”

  A fleeting sadness crossed the faces of his friends. Francis sighed. “Board of directors. Job descriptions. Hierarchy. Fund-raising. Mailing lists.” He sounded as if the end of the world was staring them in the face.

  “For the animals,” Michael said quietly.

  “I’m just talking,” Francis said.

  Michael continued. “We can’t scatter our energies anymore. All of those who originally committed to this dream need to come to Angel Canyon. We can’t expect Maia, Charity, Anne, and the others to bleed themselves dry keeping us alive. We’ve all got to pull together and raise funds.”

  John’s face registered the resignation they all felt. “We need to go to the cities.”

  Michael’s was the face of a stoic. “Yes. We start over, sit in front of supermarkets, and tell our story.”

  “Tabling,” Francis muttered.

  Michael nodded. “But it’s got to be done right. If somebody cares enough to give us a donation, we ask for a telephone number and address.”

  “So we can follow up with a thank-you call . . .” John was coming alive.

  “Then a letter asking if they’d like to become a member of Best Friends.” Francis, on the same page as Michael, smiled for the first time.

  “And that is how we build an organization,” Michael finished.

  John, ever one to probe the problems they might face, played devil’s advocate. “Why would anyone in, say, Los Angeles or San Francisco, want to support us?”

  “We’re already taking in animals from California. But you’re right; maybe nobody will be interested. I don’t know,” Michael confessed. “It’s worth a shot.”

  Silence.

  “Okay,” Francis said. “Enough talking. We know what we gotta do. Now who’s going to tell Anne, Jana, and the rest of the gang they’ve got to shut up shop and come to Kanab?”

  Michael sighed. “We can tell the Las Vegas contingent when they come up this weekend. I’m pretty sure they’ll be with us. But I think I should go to Phoenix and Denver in person.”

  “I’ll call everyone else,” John offered.

  “Well, now we’re getting somewhere,” Francis said. “At least we’re not sitting around like a bunch of losers.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use that language,” John sounded pained.

  “Would a glass of wine be out of line?” Michael deadpanned.

  Small smiles.

  “I think we can afford half a glass each,” John, the eternal treasurer, answered with his best poker face. “If only we had some.”

  Francis looked at Michael, who glanced at John’s so-serious expression. The smiles were instantaneous, rolling from one to the other, until the relief of laughter echoed around the table.

  “It isn’t Sunday, is it?” Francis said. “Hell, let’s go buy a bottle. Even we can afford the state of Utah’s best red.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  All for One and One for All

  Michael felt a familiar sense of déjà vu on seeing who, when faced with the actuality of leaving their own bailiwicks, would come to the beleaguered Angel Canyon. He likened the situation to people who have a second home: they love to visit, help support the place, but their primary focus is elsewhere.

  Unlike seven years earlier, the commitment being asked for this time around was akin to jumping out of an airplane with a parachute that may not open. Best Friends could lose everything in the months to come. A massive balloon payment was due on the property next year. If they couldn’t pay the bank, then everyone, and the animals, would be out on the street—literally.

  And yet not one person in the canyon had elected to forsake the sanctuary. It was true Cyrus had gone back to Denver, but that was only to comfort his wife—Anne Mejia had been devastated at the turn of events. And Virgil had decamped to Arizona to caretake their white elephant of a ranch until further notice. The founders who still called the cities home, however, were a looming question mark. It remained to be seen which of them would truly be willing to join the first settlers in the rough times ahead.

  John made the initial calls. As they suspected, there were a couple of people whose lives had taken them toward their own dreams, but John had good news when he tracked down Michael and Steven at The Village. “Silva Lorraine is with us,” he announced, beaming. “I wasn’t even halfway into my explanation before she interrupted. ‘I came to the same conclusion, John,’ she said. ‘I’m already winding things down here. I’ll be there in a few weeks.’”

  “That’s Silva,” Steven said fondly. “Makes up her mind and just does it. That’s how she came to Toronto, remember?”

  Michael hadn’t been in Canada when Steven, Anne, and Cyrus were there, but he knew the story. The slender, auburn-haired Englishwoman was an art major who had gotten a job as a gardener at Kensington Palace. Silva was a walking treasure trove of fascinating stories about Princess Margaret.

  “Margaret had an abominable reputation with the English media,” Silva told them. “But I found her very sweet, and she has a wicked sense of humor. I think she liked me because of the tortoises. She loved her pet tortoises; I don’t think anybody knew that about her. She let them have the run of a whole acre behind the palace. Margaret insisted on letting the grass grow wild, but every time she went away the gardeners would manicure the place like it was Versailles.

  “My special assignment was to protect the tortoises and make sure the grass wasn’t mown. She said we had a secret conspiracy to foil the old men.”

  But working for royalty included being on call at all hours. Silva was thinking that this was no life for a twenty-year-old when a friend said she was going to Canada, and why didn’t Silva come along? Two weeks later she was on a plane to Toronto.

  “I used to tease Silva that she was the animals’ Florence Nightingale,” Steven remarked to Michael as they drove south the next day.

  “You really like her?” Silva had been an infrequent visitor to the sanctuary, and Michael was still mulling the fact that she’d not hesitated when push came to shove.

  “I’ve never heard her complain. Ever.”

  “That makes her very special,” Michael agreed.

  The two men broke their journey in Phoenix to see an old buddy of Steven’s with whom he had been in the printing business.

  “So, the grand experiment cleaned you out, huh?” the friend quipped as he showed them through his shop.

  “It isn’t exactly an experiment,” Michael said mildly.

  “Whatever. But you’d better think up a better way to get some dough than sitting in front of tables all day.”

  They had reached the very back of the building, an ill-lit room dusty with disuse. Steven’s friend smiled as if at some private joke and marched over to the darkest corner. He whipped a dustcloth aside to reveal a decrepit-looking piece of machinery. He grinned at Steven. “Remember this?”

  “An AB Dick Three-sixty!” Steven exclaimed, running his hands over the ancient printing press. “We worked on one like this in Toronto.”

  “Back in the Dark Ages of the nineteen-sixties,” his friend wisecracked. “So, you want to do me a favor and haul this monster out of here? I warn you, the thing shakes, rattles, and rolls, and you’d better have a big supply of rubber bands
to hold it together.”

  “You’re kidding!” Steven said, thinking of the newsletter he and Michael had brainstormed on the way. “This would be a godsend.”

  “You might not say that when you fire it up. But if you talk nicely and genuflect every morning, it’ll work well enough.”

  “We’ll take it,” Michael and Steven chorused in unison.

  The two men were feeling pleased with themselves when, later that afternoon, they rang the doorbell of an Adobe-style house in the outlying suburb of Carefree.

  A slight woman in a voluminous caftan flung open the door with all the drama of an Old Vic Repertory star making her grand entrance—which was nothing strange to her visitors. Charity Rennie had trained at London’s Royal Theater and honed her skills as a BBC actress—a talent she never failed to employ at every opportunity.

  “Are we Lady Macbeth or Queen Victoria today?” Michael inquired as she ushered them inside.

  Charity’s pout could have been the envy of any Hollywood diva. “We are not amused,” she rebuked, as haughty as a dowager. “Actually, I’m in my Maggie Smith mode this afternoon,” she informed him, gliding across the cool tile floor of the sun-splashed foyer and sliding open the glass doors to the living room.

  The space was pure Charity. Out of an average white-walled subdivision house she had created a bright, color-filled, animal-friendly retreat to reflect her personality: throw rugs in hues of purple, saffron, and lime disguised the nondescript carpeting; long-fringed shawls streaked in rainbow blues, pinks, and oranges carelessly covered yesterday’s divans and chairs; the tropical fragrance of vanilla lingered from last night’s candles.

  A dozen felines snoozed in wedges of sunlight that bored through uncurtained windows, and on a couch two more lay securely ensconced in Maia Astor’s arms. A third woman, Sharon St. Joan, whom Michael had met in Paris where she was working as a librarian, sat with her legs curled under her on the sofa. He must remember to congratulate Sharon—she was gaining national recognition for her wildlife rehabilitation work in Arizona.