The Town Read Online Free Page B

But the braids, you cannot even undo them. Jedushka Di Muvedushka help Father by feeding the horses and just want to show us that he . . . that he’s watching us, taking care of us. But Jedushka Di Muvedushka not scary. He’s the Owner of the House. He don’t do nothing bad.”
    Gregory remained silent, waiting for the subject to go away. Teo was already frightened, and being in a new house after hearing this story, she was bound to have nightmares. Adam wasn’t entirely immune either. Moving was tough enough without having to put up with scary folktales, and he hoped his mother knew how upset he was, how angry he was with her. They were going to have a long talk later, and he was going to have to set down some rules of the house, rules she would have to follow if she lived with them.
    He glared at her, but she looked neither embarrassed nor apologetic. Her face was set and grim, and when he met her gaze in the rearview mirror, it held his own, reproachfully.
    “I should have invite him myself.”

2
    Julia stared out the window as they drove. The scenery was amazing, like something out of a movie. Endless vistas, blue sky, clouds that appeared to be the size of continents. They could see hundreds of miles worth of weather patterns: a rainstorm far off to their right, gathering thunderheads to their left, clear skies straight ahead. A series of dark mesas and jagged blue mountains on the horizon before them seemed to remain perpetually the same size, serving only to reinforce the vastness of this land and the awe it inspired.
    She looked out at the late-summer wildflowers that lined both sides of the highway. Blooming ocotillo, deep-green saguaros and lighter-green paloverde trees filled in the landscape and belied the common conception of the desert as a dead, arid place devoid of life. Indeed, she’d been surprised herself by the beauty and lushness of the land when they’d first driven out here to look for a house. She’d been hesitant at first about Gregory’s sudden brainstorm, his plan to just pull up stakes and move. As she’d told him, she had always lived in Southern California, and despite her chronic complaints, she had never really been able to imagine herself living anywhere else.
    But traveling through the open country, Liz Story on the stereo, she’d actually been able to see herself living in a small town, a town where everybody knew everybody else, where neighbors helped each other and cared about each other and were willing to work together for the good of the community. It was a comforting thought, a welcome thought, and her belief and conviction in Gregory’s plan had grown stronger the further they traveled from California.
    Even the kids were quiet as the road dipped through dry washes, wound around low hills, and finally began snaking through the canyons of a rugged desert mountain range. McGuane was in these mountains, and once again Julia found herself captivated by the rough beauty of this wild countryside. To their right, cliffs with the same multicolored striations as the Grand Canyon towered above them. Huge cottonwoods grew on the canyon floor, the trees providing umbrellas of shade to barely visible corrals and occasional ranch houses.
    “Almost there,” Gregory said. He pointed ahead. The road passed through a tunnel carved through the rock, the zigzagging remnants of an old dirt trail still visible on the cliff above. “McGuane’s just on the other side.”
    “Cool!” Teo said.
    And then they were there.
    According to Gregory, the town was almost exactly the way it had been when he’d left. There were no chain stores, no corporate gas stations, not even one of the name-brand fast-food joints that had taken over most of small-town America. There was no Wal-Mart or The Store, no Texaco or Shell, no McDonald’s, Burger King, or Jack-in-the-Box. McGuane had retained its local individual character rather than succumbing to the increased homogenization that was sweeping through