Phoenix Fire Read online

  Although he was shielded by his grandmother, Jason remembered the details of his father’s and mother’s deaths. His parents died in an ill-fated traffic accident. A tractor-trailer semi, its driver asleep at the wheel, crossed a center line on Carefree Highway near Cave Creek, Arizona, and plowed head-on into his parents’ car. The truck was going seventy-five miles per hour at the time of the crash, so death for his parents was reported as instantaneous. His father and mother, weary and anxious to be home, were returning from a dinner party in Oak Creek Canyon.

  Grandma Myrena Wimsley was home with Jason and his older brother, Carlton, when the call came from the authorities. There were tears and there was anguish, but Grandma Wimsley was not one to dwell too long in emotional crises. Her strong will prevailed as she sheltered the boys as much as possible from the devastating news.

  Carlton Prince was the difficult son to soothe. He somehow internalized his parents’ deaths as his own personal tragedy, intermingling his tears of loss with aberrant fits of selfish tirade. Grandma Wimsley found it necessary at times to forcibly control Carlton’s behavior.

  For Jason, the death of his parents brought a period of dull apathy. He seemed for some time lost in a foggy nether world, unable to accept the tragic event yet powerless to deny it. He moved in awkward limbo and was ultimately sustained by his grandmother’s stoic acceptance and patient nudging which brought him to a final certainty and reluctant peace. Grandmother Wimsley became for Jason an anchor and a symbol of stability and safe harbor. In a very real sense Jason adopted his grandmother’s calm and unflinching personality, an alluring stoicism with a slight edge of inner doubt. His tinge of humility and resolve was not an unpleasant anomaly.

  It was Carlton who could not resolve his seemingly vindictive grief. He vented anger and hostility. His mood shifts were uncomfortable and unreasonable. Grandmother Wimsley came to an uneasy and wary acceptance of Carlton’s moods, hoping that eventually he would grow out of the negative self-absorption. It was Carlton who inevitably and unknowingly brought a tight bond of love between Grandmother Wimsley and Jason. There was also a decidedly open favoritism shown to Jason by his grandmother. Grandfather Wimsley stayed lovingly neutral in the background, busy in his work, leaving the rigors of child nurturing to his capable wife.

  So fate and serendipity were accepted and important acknowledgments for Jason Prince, and his unusual encounter with Jenny Mason aroused a dormant emotion. He found her image kept superimposing itself in his thoughts. He knew that this woman was somehow meant to be a part of his life. His acceptance of fate negated the fleeting feeling of impetuousness.

  Jason Prince thought about the one prolonged relationship in his life. It ended some ten months ago when the corrosive rust of convenience and dubious security had finally cracked away. Oh, there was passion and caring during the ten years of their ‘couple’ time together, even moments of love. Certainly, in the beginning there were some wonderfully warm moments. Their passage, however, into a subtle maturity never came. Their growing propensity for professional achievement extinguished whatever flame of feeling existed. That past relationship certainly had not begun with the earth shaking drama, literally, that brought him face to face, body to body, with Jennifer Anne Mason.

  Yes, he would accept fate and serendipity. He would trust the stirrings within him. He never quite felt this way about anyone.

  As Tuesday dawned Jason felt an almost teenage nervousness, an awkward anticipation. He went about his daily business with an odd sense of urgency. He seriously considered canceling his last important meeting of the day, an appointment with a very high profile developer regarding a multimillion dollar commercial venture on a sizable piece of real estate he owned. Good sense prevailed and he kept the appointment.

  It was not only Jason’s elevated excitement about his evening date with Jenny, it was the incredibly beautiful Arizona weather. His plush offices were located on the nineteenth floor of the Bank One Building in downtown Phoenix. Outside his full-wall plate glass window he saw the distant peaks of the rugged McDowell Mountains. The smog seemed temporarily checked by the recent winds and rains. Farther east he saw a sun dappled outline of the Superstitions, almost surreal in its gauzy splendor. The tall palms along Central Avenue swayed and the vast blue sky stretched forever. A warm and pleasing lethargy came upon him, nestling nicely with his thoughts about the evening ahead.

  The intercom interrupted his reverie, and he reluctantly pressed a button. “Yes, Nora?”

  “Phil Langley is here, Jason.” After so many years with Jason, Nora was comfortable using the first name.

  “Right. See if he wants coffee and send him in. Bring me a fresh cup, please.”

  Jason stood and stretched, taking in a long gulp of refrigerated air, trying to shake his somnolent mood. He took a final look out the window toward the McDowell Mountains, sighed, and prepared the papers on his desk for reference in his discussion with Phil Langley.

  The dark paneled door opened and a smiling Phil Langley came in with his hand extended. He was a tall, sturdy man with a bronze face framed in a pure white coiffured elegance. His presence in the luxurious suite further brightened the atmosphere.

  “Hi, Jason, good to see you.” Langley looked out the broad window and added, “We should be having this meeting outside, my man. The weather is awesome.”

  The two men sat and easily traded pleasant chatter. They were long standing acquaintances who had not taken time from their busy lives to form a friendship. They were comfortable with each other and never suffered any negative setbacks in their enduring relationship. Though it would have been a natural extension of their business bond, they simply never socialized, other than a working lunch here and there. The essential elements were there, mutual respect, trust, and an inherent fondness.

  “Are we ready to crunch some numbers on ‘Apple Brown Betty?’” Jason finally asked, using the project name upon which each had previously agreed. The project name was Jason’s idea, so called because it was a dessert menu item at one of his favorite downtown restaurants.

  “We’re close. Just need to factor in the landscaping, and I’m still waiting on figures from Antigua, Ltd. Some of those old Spanish décor items you want are not only scarce but they’re going to be expensive as hell. But I know you want them, and we’re going to get them.”

  “How about the water treatment? Will we be able to modify those washes?”

  “That won’t be a problem. We do have a small citizens’ group fighting us about some land use issues.”

  “What can they want? We’re not harming the environment. Hell, I want to use the land as it is, without ripping out cacti and native trees. All we’re doing is trimming back some of the Palo Verde trees, the ironwoods, thinning out some of the wild brush. Nobody is more conscious that I am about the desert and its preservation. We’re building around the natural environment and we’re supplying a great need out there. It figures someone would start some sort of bullshit. Some people just can’t be happy unless they’re bitching about something. Problems of ecology and environment were never to come up in this project. We planned it all too carefully for there to be any problems. Who are these people? Do we know?”

  “Sure, we know who they are. I’ve talked to a few of them.”

  “You going to be able to satisfy them?”

  “They’re just pest factors. We already have the council votes, so these people will soon fade away. They’ll get a little press time. As you know, the newspapers play up to this kind of crapola. But I do know how you feel. You want everyone to see the beauty of this project. It just doesn’t work out that way. But, look, we’re fine. Not to worry.”

  “So when do we crunch numbers? The bank is waiting.”

  “For the exact figures we’re probably looking at Friday. You want me to talk to Ewing at the bank?”

  “No, I’ll handle it. Are those the final elevations you have with you?”

  “Yes. They came out really neat.” Langley
removed the heavy rubber band from the thick roll of architectural drawings and began spreading them across the round conference table.

  The two men spent another hour going over the drawings, comparing, sorting among the various stacks of papers on the table.

  ‘Apple Brown Betty’ was an enormous undertaking that occupied Jason’s business mind for years. The idea actually came from his grandmother Wimsley, to develop a quaint, small Mexican-style village, complete with shops, office buildings, restaurants, houses, school, church, park, all on a large plot of family owned land between Phoenix and Casa Grande.

  The grand plan evolved through the years, undergoing many changes and revisions. Many influential and financially healed people were drawn into a consortium of sorts until the project was now very close to becoming a reality. Most of the tedious planning details were overseen by Jason and he looked upon ‘Apple Brown Betty’ as his life’s work. All of his real estate holdings accumulated over the years made him a very wealthy man, but this project would become his personal denouement, his swan song, his ultimate gift to a grandmother who gave him so very much.

  It would take a projected five years to complete ‘Apple Brown Betty’ once ground was initially broken. Jason would be approaching age forty-five. He wanted so very much to see it completed while his grandmother was still alive. He saw this strong lady as indomitable and ageless. He seldom thought of her dying. In his mind she would live forever. The ‘Apple Brown Betty’ project would make it so.

  When Phil Langley left his office a little before 5:00 PM, Jason began immediately to think about his date with Jenny. This was in itself unusual because, normally, after a meeting on ‘Apple Brown Betty,’ he dwelled lovingly on thoughts of the project, envisioned its completion, saw children playing in the park, diners in the restaurants. These thoughts did not linger this day.

  What was the significance of this woman? He knew many women in his life, before and after his prolonged ten-year affair. Some he liked and they were remembered fondly. Others, not so much. He always pulled away from a relationship when it became too sticky, when he felt the woman getting too close to him. The long ten-year affair was punctuated with breaks along the way because there was a tacit agreement there would be no marriage. It was a pleasant enough arrangement where either one of them could live basically his or her own life. The arrangement had simply uncomplicated their social activities, until, or course, it, too, ran its course.

  He never confronted himself about his retreats from women. Even in his one long affair he retreated time and again. He had an incipient thought that he might have to confront himself with Jenny Mason.

  Was it the dramatic way in which they met that had him thinking differently about Jenny? Was there something that was conveyed to him on that rain-soaked day while he kept pressing his mouth over hers? Was it the first look into those beautiful and frightened blue eyes?

  Jason shrugged, stood from his desk, and looked again out his office window. The distant mountains had lost their hazy shrouds. They now had a coppery clarity and dimensional depth.

  He did not know the reasons for his intense and lofty feelings for Jenny Mason. He only knew he had the feelings and he accepted them. Whether fate, serendipity, or some newly born need within him, he was hungrily anticipating his evening.

  Even the compelling hold which ‘Apple Brown Betty’ normally had on him was diminished. Perhaps some of that lightning struck him as well.

  Nora was surprised to see Jason leaving the office before she left, and there was something different about his eyes. They seemed glittery with expectation. His smile was almost a guilty glee. “Hmm,” she thought after he said goodbye and closed the door behind him, “he’s met a woman, and he could be in a whole lot of trouble.”

  Nora Hadley, a handsome lady, fiftyish, stylish, in Jason Prince’s employ for ten years, and wise beyond her time, knew more about the man than he knew about himself. The eyes and the set of the mouth could be the signs of love.

  Nora smiled and spoke aloud to the empty reception area: “I hope it’s love. He deserves it.”

  At 5:30 PM she turned off the machines, the lights, locked the offices, and went home. She was still smiling her warm thoughts as she rode down in the crowded elevator. The people around her smiled in spite of themselves.

  Chapter Four

  Myrena Wimsley inspected her flower world. It was a magnificent bright blur of color from its wide curving top rim down some one hundred terraced yards to the bottom edge that followed briefly the winding private road up to her estate.

  Myrena Wimsley’s estate stood alone on its own small mountain in northeast Phoenix. The three hundred sixty-degree vista was unparalleled in the entire ‘Valley of the Sun,’ though the Wrigley Mansion could claim that distinction as well. The house itself was a rambling two-story edifice of stone and wood, some ten thousand square feet of elegance, so much of it now not used. The house spilled over in spots off the mountaintop and down gentle slopes, the manicured land, including the flower field, reinforced along its sides with complicated girding of the earth.

  Myrena had walked the meandering path down and back among her flowers, inspecting for rain damage. She stood now on the large flagstone terrace just above the resplendent rows of color, taking in the sweep of it all, a wistful smile upon her lovely time-chiseled face. The view was always new to her no matter how many times she saw it. Some random fleeting thoughts from the past came to her as she stood staring over her beautiful acres … mostly of a daughter lost to her years ago. The sun made her squint, gave her matriarchal countenance an even greater pose of power. There was no damage to the flowers from the recent rain storms, just as her gardener, Pancho, said.

  Myrena was a small woman and her all-gray hair was bundled on top of her head in a tightly wound ball. Her eyes were a keen brown, and her lips were thin with age wrinkles. Her nose, a short upward pointing stub, had a peculiar flair, a near constant twitching. The angular and wrinkled character was there in her face, beguiling and impenetrable. At her age she was still a very striking lady. In her younger years her face would have held captive many anxious males.

  She sighed and sat on an elaborate chaise lounge next to the rounded slab of colored stone that was the terrace table. She sat sipping straight from a small carafe of iced tea. The sun lulled her, and she sank into thought. She looked out across the hazy valley below her, watching cars moving like ants in all directions along busy freeways and artery roads. The cars were going to destinations, each vehicle conveying a story of someone's life. She thought of her own life, and a sad nostalgia momentarily rose within her.

  “Oh, John,” she muttered softly, “it's been such a long trip in mortal terms, yet a speck we are in the total scheme of things.” Her words were taken by a gentle zephyr to the valley below. “It cannot be too long, my dearest, before I join you … Oh, I pray to be with you again in eternity.”

  She soon stopped her whispered thoughts and succumbed to a lazy, silent musing.

  How long did she have? she wondered. The doctor was candid but vague about her cancer. The exploratory surgery revealed a slow spread within her body. The doctor was concerned because of its proximity to her stomach. He did not recommend further surgery and he precluded chemo because of its terrible side effects. The doctor felt that she might possibly live for years, or, more likely, about twelve months. He prescribed medication that would have some minimal control on the cancer's spreading and pills which would fight the pain. He told her that the pain would be an on and off thing in her remaining time, increasing in its intensity toward the end. The pills would eventually have to be replaced with injections. The doctor was straightforward in answering her questions as he knew she would want him to be.

  Myrena was strangely unaffected by the doctor's announcement, but, then, this was the essence of her character. From some spot in her marvelous genetic networking Myrena all of her life was able to keep perspective in the direst of situations. It would be in keeping and
appropriate that she face her own mortality with prosaic calm. Whatever joy could possibly come from the news of her own death lay in the promise of her reunion with John. This thought would sustain her throughout the ensuing days and months.

  Her thoughts went to the boys, Carlton and Jason. For most of their lives Myrena was more mother than grandmother. She spent, since the death of their parents, most of her time caring for the boys, consciously nudging and directing them toward manhood with high principles and purpose.

  Myrena smiled, pursed her lips, and sipped her iced tea. She looked off into the distant horizon and whispered aloud once more. “Did a pretty good job, too, especially with Jason.”

  Then a frown replaced her smile. She was not able to reach Carlton in the same way she reached Jason. There was something within Carlton akin to acute selfishness. He was now a man but he still acted so much like a small boy, somehow cheated and deprived.

  What could she have done differently? She treated them both equally, certainly in the beginning, careful not to over dote on them or to push them farther than they could comfortably go. From the start, Jason had shown the will, the tenacity, the precocious cerebration that could thrill her so. Carlton, on the other hand, two years older than Jason, had shown early on a hard resentment and a callous disregard for anyone but himself. He was to become obsessive, constantly negative, dwelling on the tragedy of his parents' untimely deaths as though their demise was a premeditated event. In short, he was a spoiled brat, this in spite of the fact that she worked so hard to preclude such behavior.