A Rich Man for Dry Creek / a Hero for Dry Creek Read Free Page B

sound of it. It was friendly in a way Robert could never be.
    Robert had intended to spend a week alone in the desert at some flea-bitten motel along the highway so that he could return to his parties with more enthusiasm. He certainly didn’t intend to be stuck as Bob. He was merely cleansing his palate, not giving up the rich life he enjoyed.
    But that first day he discovered Bob was the kind of guy people talked to. Robert was amazed. He’d never realized until then that people didn’t talk to him; they mostly just told amusing stories and agreed with everything he said.
    They were, he concluded in astonishment, handling him. How could he have not noticed?
    He didn’t have friends, he realized. He had groupies.
    An old man in a beat-up truck had given Robert a ride south out of Tucson and invited him to share supper. Supper had been spicy beans and warm rice with a toaster pastry for dessert. The plate he used had been an old pie tin and the glass had been a jelly jar. The fork he ate with had a tine missing.
    But the whole meal had been given in kindness and it tasted very good. When it was finished, the old man offered him a job earning twenty-five dollars a day chopping wood for his winter’s supply.
    Robert had been about to refuse. He had enough money in his pocket for meals and a cheap hotel. He didn’t need a charity job. But something in the man’s eyes tipped him off and instead he looked at the woodpile and saw it was empty except for a few scrub branches.
    The old man couldn’t chop anymore. He needed help. Robert offered to chop some wood to repay the man for supper.
    One meal led to the next and the woodpile grew. Robert’s days found a rhythm. He slept in a camper shell by one of the old sheds on the man’s property. The nights were a deep quiet and he slept more peacefully than he ever remembered.
    Each morning he woke up to the disgruntled crowing of a red rooster he’d nicknamed Charlie. Charlie had no trouble making his opinions known; he had never learned to bow down to the opinions of the rich. He didn’t even respect the opinions of nature. He seemed to be particularly unhappy with the sun each morning.
    Robert didn’t want to chop wood in the chill of the early morning—and especially not with Charlie strutting around. Robert had never seen anything as cranky as that red bird in the morning. You’d think the morning had come up as a personal insult to the rooster. At least Charlie took it that way.
    So, instead of listening to Charlie, Robert would jog down the hard-packed dirt road for several miles. He aimed himself in the general direction of the mountains even though they were so far away he’d never get there by running. But he liked to look at them anyway.
    His morning run took him past two run-down houses with an astonishing assortment of children spilling out of each. Toddlers. Teens. Boys. Girls. One morning some of the children started to follow him on his run. Before the end of the week, a dozen kids were trailing after him and he was carrying the smallest in a backpack he made from a blanket.
    It took a full week for them all to tell him their names.
    It was the second week before Robert noticed most of them were running in thin sandals and slippers.
    Robert almost scolded them for not dressing right for running, when he realized they were wearing the only shoes they had. The next morning he brought some old newspaper with him and had the kids each make a drawing of their right foot for him.
    Later that day he hitchhiked to the nearest post office and sent an overnight package to his secretary ordering fourteen pairs of designer tennis shoes just like his.
    The shoes arrived on a Monday.
    It was Thursday before Robert saw the children were all limping and he realized he had forgotten socks. How blind could he be? He’d realized then just how removed he’d always been from the needs of others.
    He gave money, but it was