Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

Hershel scraped his thumbnail on the label of his beer bottle. “We’ll be going there directly. You’ll see,” he said.

She lifted her gaze toward the ceiling, as though barely able to suppress her exasperation. She looked at Rosita. “Do they have bullfights where you come from?”

“Yes, in Spain there are many bullfights. But I’ve never seen one,” Rosita said.

“Why not?”

“I guess I never had the opportunity.”

“You think they’re cruel?” Linda Gail said. Without waiting for a reply, she said, “If I was a bull, I’d rather die that way than be ground into hamburger. Well, Mexico City awaits us, if we can get out of this mud hole. I thought Bogalusa was bad.”

Hershel drained his beer glass. “Let’s hit the road. I’m going to officially burn the first stringer-bead rod at 0800. Watch out, Standard Oil. Here comes the Dixie Belle Pipeline Company.”

I saw the man in the fedora approaching our table. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing the tattoos on his forearms. We had made a serious mistake in granting Linda Gail’s request for one more whiskey sour. “Howdy,” he said.

I looked up into his face. It was furrowed and grainy and as brown as a tobacco leaf, his eyes playful. Hershel’s back faced him. “How you doin’?” I said.

“Are y’all visiting?” he asked.

“No, we’re not,” I replied.

One of the buttons on his shirt was missing, and I could see the flatness of his stomach and a black swatch of his chest hair. There was a soapy yellow cast in his shirt, as though it had been washed in a lavatory.

“Let me know if you need anything,” he said.

“We will,” I said.

“I’m from here’bouts,” he said.

“I had that sense,” I said.

Hershel turned his head and looked up at the tall man, then back at me, his gaze locked on mine.

“Well, let’s get on it,” I said. I stood up and pulled back Rosita’s chair. I could feel the tall man’s eyes peeling off the side of my face.

“You don’t have to run,” he said. “The band is gonna be playing three more hours. You ought to have some more of those taters cooked in chicken fat. They oil you up.”

“You know how it is when everything is early to bed and early to rise,” Linda Gail said, fixing her dress.

I wasn’t sure if she was mocking him or us.

“I hope you’re not rushing off because of me,” he said. “I just wanted to say howdy. People say howdy to visitors where y’all come from, don’t they?”

“Yeah, we do. Then we say adios,” I said.

We went outside into the coolness of the night, under a canopy of stars. Out in the darkness were piney woods, and dirt roads lined with live oak trees and thousands of acres of green sugarcane, and a gigantic swampland that smelled of spawning fish and drilling rigs that leaked natural gas like soda bubbles.

“I know that guy,” Hershel whispered as we walked toward the car.

I started to look over my shoulder.

“Don’t turn around,” Hershel said. “He and his friends are behind us. He was the guy on the bus when you picked me up in Kerrville.”

“Are you sure?”

“I remember his tattoos. He’s got a naked woman on his left forearm.”

“Hold up there!” the tall man said.