Fine Just the Way It Is Read Online Free Page B

‘No.’ I drive off and it never was a problem. We did the same thing when we went to Europe. In Spain we went to the bullfights. We left after two. I wanted to experience that.”
    “But are they wounded?” asked Powder Face.
    Mr. Bollinger, thinking of rental cars, did not reply.
     
    When Berenice told Chad Grills about old Mr. Forkenbrock who used to work for his grandparents, he was interested and said he would talk to them about it next time he went out to the ranch. He said he hoped Berenice liked ranch life because he was in line to inherit the place. He told Berenice to find out all she could about Forkenbrock’s working days. Some of those cagey old boys managed to get themselves situated to put a claim on a ranch through trumped-up charges of unpaid back wages. Whenever Beth came with her tape recorder, Berenice found something to do in the hall outside Ray Forkenbrock’s room, listening, expecting him to tell about the nice ranch he secretly owned. She didn’t know what Chad would do.
     
    Ray said, “I think when she heard about the Dixon Forkenbrocks, Mother had a little feeling that something wasn’t right because she wrote back to the Farson lady thanking her for the nice lunch. I think she wanted to strike up a friendship so she could find out more about the Dixon people, but, far as I know, that didn’t happen. It stuck in my mind that we wasn’t the only Forkenbrock family.” Beth was glad he didn’t pause so often now that he was into the story, letting his life unreel.
    “The last day of school was a trip and a big picnic. The whole outfit usually went on the picnic, since learning academies of the day was small and scattered. When I was twelve the seventh grade had only three kids—me, one of my sisters who skipped a grade and Dutchy Green. We was excited when we found out the trip was to the old Butch Cassidy outlaw cabin down near the Colorado border. Mrs. Ratus, the teacher, got the map of Wyoming hung up and showed us where it was. I seen the word ‘Dixon’ down near the bottom of the map. Dixon! That’s where the mystery Forkenbrocks lived. Dutchy was my best friend and I told him all about it and we tried to figure a way to get the bus to stop in Dixon. Maybe there’d be a sign for the Forkenbrock Ranch,” he said.
    “As it turned out,” he said, “we stopped in Dixon anyways because there was something wrong with the bus.
    “There was a pretty good service station in Dixon that had been an old blacksmith shop. The forge was still there and the big bellows, which us boys took turns working, pretending we had a horse in the stall. I asked the mechanic who was fixing the bus if he knew of any Forkenbrocks in town and he said he heard of them but didn’t know them. He said he had just moved down from Essex. Dutchy and me played blacksmith some more but we never got to Butch Cassidy’s cabin because they couldn’t fix the bus and another one had to come take us back. We ate the picnic on the bus on the way home. After that I kind of forgot about the Dixon Forkenbrocks,” he said. He was beginning to slow down again.
    “I didn’t think about it until Dad died in an automobile accident on old route 30,” he said.
    “He was taking a shortcut, driving on the railroad ties, and a train come along,” he said.
    He said, “I’d been working for the Bledsoes for a year and hadn’t been home.”
    At the mention of the Bledsoes, Berenice, out in the hallway, snapped her head up.
    “Mr. Bledsoe drove me back so I could attend the funeral. They had it in Rawlins and the Pathfinders had took care of everything,” he said.
    Beth looked puzzled. “Pathfinders?”
    “That organization they belonged to. Pathfinders. All we had to do with it was show up. Which we done. Preacher, casket, flowers, Pathfinder flags and mottoes, grave plot, headstone—all fixed up by the Pathfinders.” He coughed and took a sip of whiskey, thinking of cemetery weeds and beyond the headstones the