Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“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.”

THAT 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 bill anymore.”

Raymond was standing by the car now, brushing off his clothes with one hand. In the other, he held a ball-peen hammer. “I straightened out the steering rod, but it’s gonna shimmy. What are you fixing to do with that shotgun, boy?”

“Shoot skunks that come around the house,” I said. “I’m right good at it.”

“You know who we are?” the injured man said.

“Folks who drive fine cars but who’d rather sleep in the woods than a motor court?”

Raymond was grinning. He walked close to me, his shoes crunching in the leaves. He had taken off his dress shirt and hung it on the door mirror and was wearing a strap undershirt outside his trousers. His shoulders were bony and white and stippled with pimples.

I could smell the pomade in his hair. “You heard of people shooting their way out of prison, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ever hear of anybody shooting their way into prison?”

“That’s a new one,” I said.

“Like you know all about it?” Raymond said.

“You asked me a question.”

“You’re looking at people who made history,” he said. He lifted up his chin, a glint in his eye.

“Raymond is a kidder,” the injured man said. “We’re just reg’lar working folks. I’ve been fixing this car for a man. Like to give it a spin? I bet you would.”

“Y’all broke into a prison?” I asked.

“I was pulling your leg,” Raymond said.

“I read about it in the newspaper,” I said. “It was at Eastham Pen. A guard was killed.”