All Fall Down Read Online Free PDF Page A

up my trailer when no one answered him. Since I figured
he'd have no problem with the idea of blowing up a mine entrance
just for fun, that pretty much made my mind up for me how I was
gonna play it.
    "Ain't no one named Maxine here," I yelled
back. "You got yourself the wrong corner of the desert."
    The other one laughed. "See, I told you I
seen tracks back there, didn't I?"
    "Yeah, you're a real tracker, that's what
you are," Harley's daddy said to his buddy, then he turned his
attention back to me. "You come on out of there, old man. I know
Maxine's your kid. She used to tell me about this place, that
little trailer you had out in the middle of nowhere. Took me a long
time to find it, but here I am. I figured this would be where she'd
run off to."
    The last thing I wanted was to leave the
dark of the mine. They didn't have guns, at least none that I could
tell, but there were two of them and only one of me, and they were
half my age. But they'd already blown up my trailer. It wouldn't
take much to bring down the entrance to the mine.
    "Okay, okay, I'm coming," I said.
    I turned around, ready to signal Harley to
stay put, and about jumped out of my skin when I realized she was
right behind me. I'd never heard her. She'd learned what I taught
her real well.
    "Don't go," she whispered. "They'll hurt
you."
    I smiled at her, trying to show her more
confidence than I felt. "They're just looking for your momma and
that hog she rode home on. That's all. They might want to look in
here for themselves, so if they do, you hide where I told you."
    I'd built in a safe room of sorts into the
mine, a little side tunnel that I'd covered over with cinderblocks.
Shove a couple of them out of the way, and someone small like
Harley could squeeze inside and pull the blocks back in behind
herself.
    "They'll go away when they figure out what
they're looking for's not here."
    Harley looked at me with those big eyes of
hers. I hoped it wasn't the last time I'd see them.
    I walked out into the open, stopping just a
couple of feet in front of the mine. Even early morning desert
sunlight made me squint. I hadn't been outside in the daytime in
longer than I could remember.
    "Yeah, you're her daddy," Maxine's ex said.
"I can see the family resemblance." He stopped bouncing the grenade
in his hand. "So where is she?"
    "She's dead," I said. "More than ten years
now."
    I couldn't see his eyes, but he got the kind
of stillness a man gets when he's surprised by something he don't
expect to hear.
    "How?" he asked.
    "Got sick," I said. "Couldn't do nothing for
her, not out here, but I tried."
    I wasn't about to tell Harley's daddy about
her. Maxine told me she left before he knew he was going to be a
daddy.
    My eyes were adjusting to the daylight, and
I made out little things I couldn't see before. Like the Army
patches sewn on the arm of his leather jacket. Like the scar across
the side of his face. Those patches reminded me of something I'd
read about in the histories I'd studied as a part of the program
that had sent me back here. Those patches were the same thing as
notches in a gun barrel.
    Harley's daddy hadn't found his grenade in
the desert. He'd taken them off grunts he'd killed.
    If he'd killed Army grunts, he wasn't the
kind of man who'd leave me and mine alone just because Maxine had
been my daughter.
    "Where's the bike?" he asked.
    "The bike?"
    "Yeah, the motorcycle Maxine rode here on.
She did still have it when she got here, right? That ride was mine,
old man, and I want it back."
    I shook my head. "I'm sorry, son. I sold it
after she died. She never told me it wasn't hers."
    "Sold it." The muscles in his jaw worked
like he was chewing over the words and didn't much like the taste
of 'em.
    I suppose I was lucky he didn't have a gun,
he'd probably have shot me right then. Instead, he charged me.
    I was too surprised and too old to get out
of his way. I used to be better at reading folks, but I suppose I'd
been alone with only Harley for too long.