Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

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