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.
HE 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 brim of his Stetson low on his brow, his thoughts known only to him. I turned onto the dirt road that led past the woods where our visitors had camped. Our telephone wire was hanging straight down on the pole. There was no tree limb on the ground. A dust devil spun out of a field and broke apart on the Model A’s radiator, powdering the windshield, almost like an omen. The crossroads store was still two miles away. I did a U-turn and headed back home.
Grandfather owned two horses. The Shetland was named Shorty and was blind in one eye. When Grandfather rode Shorty through a field of tall grass, all you could see were his shoulders and head, as though he had been sawed in half and his upper body mounted on wheels. His other horse was a four-year-old white gelding named Blue who was part Arabian and hot-wired to the eyes. All you had to do was lean forward in the saddle and Blue would be halfway to El Paso. A man Grandfather’s age had no business on that horse. But try to tell him that.
I parked by the barn. Shorty was in the corral. Blue was nowhere in sight. I looked in the kitchen closet, where I had replaced Grandfather’s double-barrel shotgun. It was gone.
I took the holstered Colt from the drawer and walked into the woods and followed Blue’s hoofprints along the riverbank to the end of our property. Through the trees I could see the Chevrolet and four people standing beside it, all of them looking up at Grandfather, who sat atop Blue like a wood clothespin. They were all grinning, and not in a respectful way. None of them looked in my direction, not even Bonnie.
Grandfather had bridled Blue but hadn’t saddled him. Blue was sixteen hands and had the big-footed, barrel-chested conformation of an Arabian, and he rippled with nervous power when he walked. If a blowfly settled on his rump, his skin twitched from his withers to his croup. I could hear Grandfather talking: “Times are bad. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to use my place for a hideout or be a bad influence on my grandson. I know who y’all are. I also know it was y’all cut my phone line.”
“We’re plain country people, not no different from y’all,” Raymond said. “We’re not on your damn property, either.”
“No, there’s nothing ordinary about you, son. You’re a smart-ass. And there’s no cure for your kind,” Grandfather said. “You’re going to end up facedown on a sidewalk or fried by Old Sparky. I’d say good riddance, but somewhere you’ve probably got a mother who cares about you. Why don’t you try to change your life while you got a chance?”
“We’re leaving,” Bonnie said. “But don’t be talking down to us anymore. Your grandson tol
d us what you let happen to your daughter.”
“Enough of this. Let’s go,” the injured man said.