Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel (4 page)

“How do you know he’s my grandfather?”

“Because you look just like him.” He pointed at the collapsed wire fence behind me. “Is that y’all’s boundary?”

“It was. We just sold off some of our acreage. Is that a Browning automatic rifle by your leg?”

“Is that what it’s called? I found it in an empty house,” he said. “Tell me, y’all have a phone?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Because we had an accident, and I might need to call a doctor. I thought I saw a line going into your house. That’s your house with the gables, isn’t it?”

“We couldn’t afford the phone bill anymore.”

Raymond was standing by the car now, brushing off his clothes with one hand. In the other, he held a ball-peen hammer. “I straightened out the steering rod, but it’s gonna shimmy. What are you fixing to do with that shotgun, boy?”

“Shoot skunks that come around the house,” I said. “I’m right good at it.”

“You know who we are?” the injured man said.

“Folks who drive fine cars but who’d rather sleep in the woods than a motor court?”

Raymond was grinning. He walked close to me, his shoes crunching in the leaves. He had taken off his dress shirt and hung it on the door mirror and was wearing a strap undershirt outside his trousers. His shoulders were bony and white and stippled with pimples. I could smell the pomade in his hair. “You heard of people shooting their way out of prison, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ever hear of anybody shooting their way
into
prison?”

“That’s a new one,” I said.

“Like you know all about it?” Raymond said.

“You asked me a question.”

“You’re looking at people who made history,” he said. He lifted up his chin, a glint in his eye.

“Raymond is a kidder,” the injured man said. “We’re just reg’lar working folks. I’ve been fixing this car for a man. Like to give it a spin? I bet you would.”

“Y’all broke into a prison?” I asked.

“I was pulling your leg,” Raymond said.

“I read about it in the newspaper,” I said. “It was at Eastham Pen. A guard was killed.”

“Maybe you should mind your own business,” said the woman eating the sandwich.

The only sound was the wind blowing in the trees. I felt like I was in the middle of a black-and-white photograph whose content could change for the worse in a second. I couldn’t have cared less. “Could y’all bust into an asylum?” I asked.

“Why would we want to do that?” Raymond said.

“To get somebody out. Somebody who doesn’t belong there.”

The woman with the strawberry-blond hair took a brush from her purse and stroked the back of her head. “Somebody in your family?”

“My mother.”

“She was committed?”

“I don’t know the term for it. They took her away.”

She began brushing her hair, her head tilted sideways. “You shouldn’t fret about things you cain’t change. Maybe your mama will come home just fine. Don’t be toting a gun around, either, not unless you’re willing to use it.”

“I’d use it to get my mother back. I wouldn’t give it a second thought.”

The injured man laughed. “Keep talking like that, you’ll end up picking state cotton. Can you forget what you saw here? I mean, if I asked you real nice?”

“They’re going to give her electroshock. Maybe they already have,” I said. “You think that’s fair? She’s an innocent person, and she’s getting treated worse than criminals who deserve everything that happens to them.”

Leaves were dropping from the oak tree, spinning like disembodied wings to the ground. They were yellow and spotted with blight, and they made me think of beetles sinking in dark water.

The woman eating the sandwich turned her back and said something to the injured man. It took me a moment to sort out the words, but there was no mistaking what she said:
Don’t let him leave here.

“Mary, can you get me a cold drink from the ice chest?” said the woman with the strawberry-blond hair. “I want to talk to our young friend here.”

“I say what’s on my mind, Bonnie,” Mary said. “You like to be sweet at other people’s expense.”

“Maybe there’s an ice-cold Coca-Cola down in the bottom,” Bonnie said. “I don’t remember when I’ve been so thirsty. I’d be indebted if you’d be so kind.”

She took my arm and began walking with me along the riverbank, back toward the house, never glancing over her shoulder, not waiting for Mary’s response, as though the final word on the subject had been said. She was wearing a white cotton dress with pink and gray flowers printed on it and lace at the hem that swished on her calves. “I want you to listen to me real good,” she said close to my ear. “Pretend we came with the dust and went with the wind. Tomorrow when you get up, you’ll still be you and we’ll be us, and it will be like we never met. Your mama is gonna be all right. I know that because she reared a good son.”

“Who killed the guard, Miss Bonnie? It wasn’t you, was it?”

“Go home, boy. Don’t come back, either,” she replied.

I
RETURNED TO THE
house and replaced Grandfather’s shotgun in the kitchen closet. A few minutes later he came downstairs, walking on his cane. I fixed oatmeal and browned four pieces of bread in the skillet and put a jar of preserves on the table. I filled his oatmeal bowl and set it in front of him, and set his bread next to the bowl. All the while, I could feel him watching me. “Where have you been?” he said.

“I took a walk down by the river.”

“Counting mud turtles?”

“There’s worse company,” I replied.

“I guess it’s to your credit, but you’re the poorest excuse for a liar I’ve ever known. I heard a car out in the woods last night. Did that same bunch come back here after I told them not to?”

“They’re not on our property. The driver was hurt. The fellow named Raymond was fixing a tie rod.”

“Did the driver have a gunshot wound?”

“No, they were in a car accident.”

He had tied a napkin like a bib around his neck; he wiped his mouth with it and set down his oatmeal spoon. “Did those people threaten you?”

“The lady with strawberry-blond hair said my mother was going to come home and be okay. I think she’s a good person. Maybe they’ve already took off. They’re not out to cause us trouble.”

He got up from the table and went to the phone. It was made out of wood and attached to the wall and had a crank on the side of the box. He picked up the earpiece and turned the crank. Then he turned it again. “It’s dead,” he said.

“Maybe a tree fell on the line.”

“I think there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“The driver asked if we had a phone. I told him we didn’t. He said he saw a line going into the house. I told him we couldn’t afford the service anymore.”

“So you knew?”

“Knew what?”

“That these people are dangerous. But you chose to pretend otherwise,” he replied.

My face was burning with shame. “What are you aiming to do?” I asked.

“Let’s clear up something else first. Why were you talking about your mother to a bunch of outlaws?”

“I wondered if they could help me get her out of the asylum.”

I saw a strange phenomenon occur in my grandfather’s face. For the first time in my life, I saw the lights of pity and love in his eyes. “I called the doctor yesterday, Satch,” he said. “I told him not to put your mother through electroshock. I told him I’d made a mistake and I was coming down to Houston to get her.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was waiting on him to call me back, to see if everything was ready to go.”

I got up and went to the sink and looked at the woods. I felt like a Judas, although I didn’t know exactly whom I had betrayed, Grandfather or our visitors down by the river. “The woman’s name is Bonnie. The driver had a Browning. I think he might be Clyde Barrow.”

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” he said.

H
E TOLD ME
to take our Model A down to the store at the crossroads and call Sheriff Benbow.

“Go with me,” I said.

“While they burglarize our house?”

“We don’t have anything they want.”

“It must have been the tramp in the woodpile. That’s the only explanation I have for it,” he said. “Were you hiding behind a cloud when God passed out the brains?”

I drove away and left him standing in front of the porch, his khaki trousers stuffed into the tops of his stovepipe boots, the wilted brim of his Stetson low on his brow, his thoughts known only to him. I turned onto the dirt road that led past the woods where our visitors had camped. Our telephone wire was hanging straight down on the pole. There was no tree limb on the ground. A dust devil spun out of a field and broke apart on the Model A’s radiator, powdering the windshield, almost like an omen. The crossroads store was still two miles away. I did a U-turn and headed back home.

Grandfather owned two horses. The Shetland was named Shorty and was blind in one eye. When Grandfather rode Shorty through a field of tall grass, all you could see were his shoulders and head, as though he had been sawed in half and his upper body mounted on wheels. His other horse was a four-year-old white gelding named Blue who was part Arabian and hot-wired to the eyes. All you had to do was lean forward in the saddle and Blue would be halfway to El Paso. A man Grandfather’s age had no business on that horse. But try to tell him that.

I parked by the barn. Shorty was in the corral. Blue was nowhere in sight. I looked in the kitchen closet, where I had replaced Grandfather’s double-barrel shotgun. It was gone.

I took the holstered Colt from the drawer and walked into the woods and followed Blue’s hoofprints along the riverbank to the end of our property. Through the trees I could see the Chevrolet and four people standing beside it, all of them looking up at Grandfather, who sat atop Blue like a wood clothespin. They were all grinning, and not in a respectful way. None of them looked in my direction, not even Bonnie.

Grandfather had bridled Blue but hadn’t saddled him. Blue was sixteen hands and had the big-footed, barrel-chested conformation of an Arabian, and he rippled with nervous power when he walked. If a blowfly settled on his rump, his skin twitched from his withers to his croup. I could hear Grandfather talking: “Times are bad. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to use my place for a hideout or be a bad influence on my grandson. I know who y’all are. I also know it was y’all cut my phone line.”

“We’re plain country people, not no different from y’all,” Raymond said. “We’re not on your damn property, either.”

“No, there’s nothing ordinary about you, son. You’re a smart-ass. And there’s no cure for your kind,” Grandfather said. “You’re going to end up facedown on a sidewalk or fried by Old Sparky. I’d say good riddance, but somewhere you’ve probably got a mother who cares about you. Why don’t you try to change your life while you got a chance?”

“We’re leaving,” Bonnie said. “But don’t be talking down to us anymore. Your grandson told us what you let happen to your daughter.”

“Enough of this. Let’s go,” the injured man said.

“You’re Clyde Barrow, aren’t you?” Grandfather said.

“I told you, the name is Smith.”

“You were born in Telico. You tortured animals when you were a child. You got your brother killed up in Missouri. You’re a certified mess, boy.”

“Yeah, and you’re a nasty old man who’s going to have tumbleweed bouncing across his grave directly,” said the man who called himself Smith.

They all got in the Chevrolet, slamming the doors. That was when Blue went straight up in the air, his front hooves higher than the Chevrolet’s top. Grandfather crashed to the ground, the shotgun flying from his hands, his face white with shock, his breath wheezing from his throat. I thought I heard bones snap in his back.

Bonnie and her friends drove away with Raymond behind the wheel. One of them spat on Grandfather. In the shadows I couldn’t tell who it was, but I saw the spittle come out of the window like wet string and stick on Grandfather’s shirt. In seconds the Chevrolet was going up a dusty rise between the trees, the sunlight spangling on the windows.

I let the holster and belt slide free of the revolver and pulled back the hammer and aimed with both hands at the back of the automobile.

“Don’t do it, Weldon,” Grandfather said.

I didn’t aim at the gas tank or a tire or the trunk. I aimed ten inches below the roof and squeezed the trigger and felt the heaviness of the frame buck in my palms and heard the .44 round hit home, whanging off metal, breaking glass, maybe striking the dashboard or the headliner. Inside the report, I thought I heard someone scream.

The car wobbled but kept going forward and was soon gone. I shut my eyes and opened them again, unsure of what I had done, my ears ringing.

“Why didn’t you listen to me?” Grandfather asked.

My right ear felt like someone had slapped it with the flat of his hand. I opened and closed my mouth to get my hearing back. “I didn’t think. Was that a woman who screamed?”

“No, it was not. You heard an owl screech. Do you understand me?”

“I heard a woman scream, Grandfather.”

“The mind plays tricks on you in a situation like that. That was a screech owl. They’re blind in the daytime and frighten easy. Get me up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me what you heard.”

“An owl. I heard an owl.”

“From this time on, you don’t look back on what happened here today. It doesn’t mean a hill of beans. Don’t you ever stop being the fine young man that you are.”

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK,
three of Grandfather’s old friends came to our house. They were stolid, thick-bodied men who wore suits and Stetsons and polished boots and had broad, calloused hands. One of them rolled his own cigarettes. One of them was a former Texas Ranger who supposedly killed fifty men. They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee while Grandfather told them everything he knew about our visitors. He made no mention of me. I was in the living room and heard the former Texas Ranger say, “Hack, I’d hate to bust a cap on a woman.” But he smiled when he said it.