"I'm driving," Barbara said by way of explaining why she couldn't stay.
"Another time, then," Knowland said off-handedly, as if it was Christmas, but no tinsel off his tree.
"See you tomorrow mornin'," George Jackson said to Barbara.
"I'll have plenty of cold water in a pitcher in the ice box," she promised him upon departing.
Driving the Gendas home to their ranch, she asked if they knew Ken Knowland.
"Just to hear about him," Edna said. "He runs a very successful airport. Probably rich, by our standards, or most people's. And he's either a bachelor or divorced. No wife, anyway. No woman at all living regularly in his big house, though one or another sometimes spends the night with him."
"People know such things, even about someone living two towns away?"
Edna laughed. "Hell, what else is there for women around here to talk about, but men?"
"Mother's milk," Buck repeated in a mumble. Barbara had thought he was asleep, again.
A neighbor's rooster awakened Barbara at sun-up the next morning. Eager to get back to work cleaning up at the airport, and not sure when her mechanic would arrive, she got there early.
George Jackson was already there, waiting for her in his battered old panel truck. A tall, slender, very attractive but tired-looking young woman in a Navy shirt hanging loosely out of bluejeans followed him out to greet her.
"This here's my wife, Leila," Jackson said.
"I'm Barbara. Really pleased to meet you. And thank you both for coming over so early."
"I'll give George or you a hand, whichever you want," Leila offered. "Don't worry about pay. I know the arrangement."
"I'll be busy checking out the planes," George told his wife. "How 'bout you help Miss Markey."
"Please, both of you. Call me Barbara."
The phone rang in the office, just before eight o'clock.
It hadn't rung for days, so Barbara wondered who was calling.
"It's Edna. I wanted to help you clean up this morning, but Buck's not himself. Or maybe he is himself, the way he is most of the time now."
"I'll be right over," Barbara said anxiously.
"No, don't. Thanks, but no need to. It's nothing that he needs a doctor or hospital. Just some rest. But I need to be here to see he's all right."
"Everything needs a good scrubbing," Leila said after looking the office over. "I'm good at that. I scrub floors at the hospital in Bakersfield, and anything else that's needed. I'd rather scrub floors than empty and clean bed pans, but do that, too. Cleaning up this office will almost be a vacation."