Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

said.
    “When you woke up this morning, your name was still Holland, wasn’t it? If people stick together, they can always make do.”
    “It’s not the same now, Grandfather.”
    His eyes went away from mine. “I sold off thirty acres this afternoon. That’s part of your inheritance, so I thought you had a right to know.”
    “Who did you sell it to?”
    “A man from Dallas. He tried to get it for five dollars an acre. I got him up to six-fifty.”
    I already knew the mathematics of predatory land acquisition, and I was aware that my grandfather was notorious for his poor handling of money and lack of judgment when it came to bargaining. I also knew he wasn’t telling me the whole story. “You gave him the mineral rights, didn’t you.”
    “There’s nothing down there except more dirt.”
    “Then why does a man from Dallas want it?”
    “Maybe he’s going to build a golf course. How would I know? He’p me up.”
    I lifted him by one arm and fitted the handle of his walking cane into his right hand. He hadn’t bathed that day, and a smell like sour milk rose from his shirt. “I’ll walk you upstairs,” I said.
    “Get me my revolver.”
    “What for?”
    “Somebody tried to rob the bank in San Angelo today. There was at least one woman in the getaway car. Maybe our visitors didn’t head for Lubbock after all.”
    “Maybe it was Ma Barker,” I said.
    “I think that gal with the beret woke up the man in you,” he said. “I don’t blame you. If there’s any greater gift than a beautiful woman in the morning, I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”
     
    T HAT NIGHT I heard an automobile in the woods. I went downstairs and unlocked the back door and went out on the porch. The air was cold, the moon showing behind the edge of a cloud, the sky free of dust. Through the tree trunks, I could see a white glow, but it disappeared as quickly as someone blowing out a candle. At daybreak I started a fire in the woodstove and set a pot of water on the lid, then removed Grandfather’s double-barrel shotgun from the closet and walked through the woods to the riverbank. The river was almost dry, the bank dropping six feet straight down, the sandy bottom stenciled with the tracks of small animals and threaded with rivulets of water that were red in the sunrise. I must have walked a half mile before I saw a four-door Chevrolet parked under a live oak. It was a 1932 model, one called a Confederate, with wire-spoked whitewall tires and a maroon paint job and a black top and black fenders and red leather upholstery. The spare tire was mounted on the running board. It was the most elegant car I had ever seen.
    The backseat had been torn out and propped against the trunk of the tree. A man with his arm in a sling was leaning against the seat, while another man worked under the car, banging on something metal, his legs sticking out in the leaves.
    The woman with the strawberry-blond hair was tending to the injured man, but she wasn’t wearing her beret. The second woman was eating a Vienna sausage sandwich. “Raymond, we’ve got a boy with a gun,” she said.
    The injured man, the one I’d thought might be Pretty Boy Floyd, winked at me. “He’s all right,” he said, looking at me but talking to Raymond, who was crawling out from under the car. “He’s just protecting his property. Where’s your grandfather, kid?”
    “How do you know he’s my grandfather?”
    “Because you look just like him.” He pointed at the collapsed wire fence behind me. “Is that y’all’s boundary?”
    “It was. We just sold off some of our acreage. Is that a Browning automatic rifle by your leg?”
    “Is that what it’s called? I found it in an empty house,” he said. “Tell me, y’all have a phone?”
    “No, sir,” I said.
    “Because we had an accident, and I might need to call a doctor. I thought I saw a line going into your house. That’s your house with the gables, isn’t it?”
    “We couldn’t afford the phone