Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“Yes, sir, she’s right here.”

“You don’t look anything like a dandelion, Emma Jean,” he said. “I just cain’t keep my mouth shut sometimes. You cut a fine figure. You always did.”

He came back from the hospital the next day with a diagnosis of a concussion and three broken ribs. We made a bed for him on the front porch so he could be outside during the day and visit with friends who dropped by; we also brought the mail and newspaper and his encyclopedias to him. I went to town and bought six Mexican dinners to go, although there were only four of us. That’s because Grandfather could eat more Mexican food than any man I knew. I sat on the porch with him and watched him eat a tamale soaked in frijoles wrapped with two flour tortillas, and chase it with a glass of buttermilk. “Where are the pralines?” he asked.

“The doctor says no sugar. He says if he catches you on your horse again, he’s going to shoot the horse, then you.”

“Telling a ninety-year-old not to eat sugar is like telling a death-row inmate to beware of uncooked pork.”

“Some people are trying to bushwhack me, Grandfather,” I said.

“What kind of people?”

“The kind you warned me about.”

“Those big oilmen?”

“That’s the bunch. I think Dalton Wiseheart might be involved.”

He looked at the dirt road that led into our property and the crows perched on our fences and the trees in the woods that were becoming more skeletal with each sunset. “I don’t think you could pick a worse enemy. How in God’s name did you get mixed up with a bucket of pig shit like that?”

“I think somebody is trying to break up my business partner’s marriage. And I think somebody has turned the feds loose on Rosita.”

“Can you prove any of this?”

“No, sir.”

He put his empty plate on a chair and sat up on his pillows. He was wearing his beat-up Stetson, his shirt unbuttoned on his hairless chest. “Draw a line in the sand. But don’t tell anybody where it is. Don’t let your feelings show. Don’t let others know you’ve been hurt. No matter what they do, don’t react until they come over the line. Then you drop them in their tracks.”

“It’s 1947, Grandfather.”

“It certainly is,” he said.

I waited for him to go on. But he didn’t. A few minutes later, he closed his eyes and went to sleep. After sunset I turned on the porch light and covered him with a blanket. At ten P.M. I woke him and took him inside and helped him into his bedroom. As he sat on the side of his bed, he looked dazed and unsure where he was. I got his pajamas out of the dresser drawer.

“I dreamed we were at the county fair,” he said. “You and me and Emma Jean and your father. It was 1925. You were seven years old. You were afraid when I put you on the carousel. So I got on it with you.”

“I remember that,” I said.

“We rode it together, didn’t we?” he said.

“Yes, sir, we surely did,” I replied.

“I’m proud of you, Satch,” he said.

I TRIED TO GET information from the Houston Police Department about the hit-and-run death of Harlan McFey. The detective I spoke with wore a vest without a coat and polished needle-nosed boots and a delicate silver chain that held his necktie in place. He had Indian-black hair that was neatly clipped and shiny with oil. He had put aside a magazine when I entered his office. The windows were open, a hot wind blowing from the street, a fan rattling on the wall. He looked from me to his magazine and back to me. He poked his tongue into his cheek. “I haven’t figured out why you’re here,” he said. “You were an acquaintance of the deceased, not a member of the family?”

“No, I’m not a member of McFey’s family. No, I would not call myself an acquaintance.”

“So what would you call yourself?”

“Someone he wanted to blackmail or extort.”

“Blackmail about what?”

“Any lie he could think up.”

“Please explain to me why you’re concerned over the manner of his death.”