Borderlines Read Online Free PDF Page A

continued: “If Mr. Wingate broke in here uninvited, these people had a perfect right to throw him out, although maybe not through the window. Is that Mr. Fox, or Fox something?” “Just Fox. Are you a lawyer?” A woman with three small children stood behind him, all dressed identically in their quilted suits. The disheveled room, even with the window permanently open, was quite warm.
    I smiled at his question, and at the kids, who looked very small and scared. The oldest couldn’t have been more than five. “No, I’m a Brattleboro policeman, up here visiting. Can you tell us what happened?” “Oh, this is going to be good,” Greta muttered.
    “We were returning from Evening Gathering when this man approached us, demanding to see his daughter, someone named Julie. I told him I knew of no such person, and would he please leave us alone, but he followed us home. I tried to keep him out when we got here, but he forced his way in, locked the door behind him, and began pushing me around, screaming and yelling. He grabbed that chair and tried to hit me with it. I had to think of the children, so I stopped him. He slipped and went out the window.” “The people in your party are all here now, in this room? No one’s missing?” “That’s right.” I nodded toward the woman. “What’s your name, ma’am?” Fox answered for her.
    “Dandelion.” Greta almost choked. “Dandelion?” “Give it a rest, Greta.” I walked over to the window and called to Wingate. “Did you break in here uninvited looking for your daughter?” He froze for a moment, his eyes narrow and angry. “Did you start the fight?” He looked up at me furiously. “He wouldn’t let me see her, said she wasn’t in there and that he didn’t even know who I was talking about. I saw her with my own goddamned eyes. We followed her here, for Christ sake. Why do you think I came to this house in the first place?
    e lied to my face. He’s lying right now.” I sensed violence surging within him, but for the moment at least the man in the Robert Hall clothes maintained his self-control.
    I told Fox, “You can press charges if you want.” “What?” Greta asked, visibly surprised.
    Rennie answered for me. “It’s the law-Wingate was trespassing.”
    Greta looked at me. I just nodded.
    “We don’t wish to press charges,” Fox said in a quiet voice. “You want him to pay damages?” Again Fox shook his head.
    “We may have a kidnapping here,” Greta’s voice was a notch higher.
    “I demand that we be allowed to search the building.” It was good line of bluster, but, knowing Greta, I could sense her sails beginning to flap.
    “That’s way out of line,” Rennie said behind her. She whirled on him. “Since when the hell did you become such a gal hotshot?” “We don’t mind.” Fox’s calm, resonant voice spread between em like oil on water.
    We could’nt search so much as amble from room to room, like tourists visiting a museum. And the analogy held, for in many wayS, the tour revealed a life style of long ago. There were no lamps or electric lights-the only illumination came from homemade candles; the floors, apart from an occasional small wool or braided rug, were bare; dried foods hung from hooks in the kitchen; the beds upstairs were nothing more than wood frames strung with rope supporting straw-stuffed mattresses. Everything was neat, clean, and frugal to the point of being bare.
    At the foot of the stairs, there was a jury-rigged wood stove made from an upended fifty-five-gallon drum. It was supported on bricks and had wire supports running from the wall and ceiling to the stovepipe.
    Rennie passed his hand near the hot surface. “This ain’t the safest stove I’ve ever seen. I got no bone to pick with you about how you live, but you better fix this: new stovepipe, new supports, some kind of firewall behind it. We don’t really have a fire code around here, but this is dangerous. I’ll get you a pamphlet on what you