Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“Would you mind if I go out there and gather up some of your pecans?” he said.

“Not at all.”

That’s what the three of us did. I got a quart of eggnog out of the icebox, and we sat on the porch steps in the sun and cracked the pecans with a pair of pliers and picked the meat out of the shells and ate it, and passed the eggnog back and forth, drinking from the carton, ignoring the fact we were adults and that William Blake’s tiger still prowled the earth and that somewhere on the edges of the park or the neighborhood or the city limits or the country’s borders, thieves waited to break in and steal.

“What do you want me to do with the photos and the note, Weldon?” Linda Gail said.

“Burn them,” I replied.

After they left, I went back to the county psychiatric ward where Rosita was being held and was told she had been transferred to the hospital at Wichita Falls.

When I returned home, I went into Grandfather’s bedroom. “I’ll have to be gone for a few days,” I said.

“Where to?”

I told him.

“They perform lobotomies there?” he said.

“It’s the asylum where my mother probably would have undergone electroshock treatment if we hadn’t gotten her back.” I saw a painful flicker in his eyes.

“What are you doing with that Luger?” he said.

“I haven’t thought it through.”

“Take me up there with you. Maybe they’ll listen to an old man. It’s the only advantage that comes with age. You can yell at people and they cain’t do anything about it.”

We both knew the folly of his words and the level of hopelessness they represented.

I CALLED A RURAL air service in Tomball and hired a pilot to fly me to Wichita Falls. I was almost out the door with my suitcase, one that contained clothes for both me and Rosita, when I saw Roy Wise­heart’s metallic gray Packard coming down the street. I set down the suitcase inside the door so he couldn’t see it, and waited for him under the porch light. The night was cold and black, the stars a snowy shower across the sky.

I was filled with conflict as I watched Roy turn in to the drive. I would be justified if I rebuffed him. I was tired of his rhetoric and his Byronic affectations and his self-manufactured aura of martyrdom. I wondered if he had any idea of the damage he had done to Hershel; if he had any idea how much Hershel loved Linda Gail. I wondered if he had any idea how courageous and humble and decent a man Hershel Pine was. I wondered if Roy ever thought about anyone except Roy.

I stepped down off the porch and met him in the middle of the yard.

“You headed out somewhere?” he said. He was holding a package the size and shape of a cardboard mailer, wrapped with black satin paper and silver ribbon.

“Rosita has been moved to the asylum at Wichita Falls. I think your friends want to physically destroy her brain.”

“These are not my friends, bud.”

“You come out of the same background, you belong to the same clubs, you went to the same schools. You make a religion out of denying any connection with the world that ha

s given you everything you have. The reality is, you’re one of their acolytes.”

“That hurts me deeply.”

“I have a feeling you’ll survive.”

“I came to ask a favor. Please give this to Linda Gail when she’s alone. It’s my way of saying good-bye. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over her.”

“What is it?”

“Bunny Berigan’s recording of ‘I Can’t Get Started with You.’ She loved this song.”

“Your wife told me you gave that record to her.”

“I’m surprised she remembered.”