The Night Visitor Read Free Page A

mouth.
    What’d this yahoo want… something to eat? A cigarette?
    Daisy noticed something on the side of his neck. Looked like a smear of dried blood. “You hurt or something?”
    The visitor passed his hand over his head… barely touching filthy, matted hair. He muttered something under his breath… showed her his hand. It was no longer empty. On his grimy palm was something smooth and white. And spotlessly clean.
    â€œA hen’s egg,” Daisy muttered. So the naked tramp could turn his hand to a trick or two. “What else you got up your sleeve? You gonna pull a jackrabbit outta your hat?” But, she reminded herself, this pitiful magician had neither sleeve nor hat. Nor britches.
    He stretched out his hand.
    Did this dirty fellow want to give her the egg? She waved the offer away. “No thanks, Houdini. I buy mine in town. By the dozen.”
    The Magician gave no indication that he understood. Nor did he offer a word to explain his presence.
    But Daisy Perika felt no need for an explanation from this naked, mud-caked half-wit who was blessed with a small conjuring talent. What had happened was clear enough. This white man had wandered onto tribal lands without permission. Probably a college student on a hiking trip. He was either drunk or pumped up on some kind of drug—only a boozer or a dopehead would shed his clothes on such a chilly night. And from the look of him, he’d stumbled into one of them black-mud bogs over in Snake Canyon.
    It was a record for Daisy Perika. Never in such a short space of time had the old woman made so many errors.
    But just how he’d gotten himself into this fix was of no great interest to her. If this bug-brain didn’t get some help, he’d freeze stiff as a board before morning. And she was the only help within a mile. So she had to do something. Daisy Perika—who was a long way from being a fool—was not about to let a crazy naked white man into her home. She pointed to indicate an easterly direction. “Go that way.”
    The Magician seemed perplexed by this simple instruction.
    She shook her head in annoyance. Must be a foreigner. Having the innate good sense to know that if a person couldn’t understand English, you had to speak louder, she yelled. “Head east—down the dirt road. Toward the highway.” Eventually, a passing motorist would spot this lunatic. And use their cell phone to call the tribal police. Let Charlie Moon and his bunch sort this out.
    The stranger stood like he was planted in her yard, rooted to his tracks. His hand
remained outstretched
, displaying the object that looked like a egg. He stared at her. Expectantly.
    She sighed. This jaybird wasn’t going away. He seemed determined to test her sense of duty. “What is it? You want some clothes to wear?”
    The Magician cocked his head inquisitively, like a puppy trying very hard to understand.
    She raised her voice another decibel. “You wait right there. I’ll go and get you some of my last husband’s old clothes.”
He won’t
mind, seein’ as he’s been dead for twenty years.
    Daisy opened the closet door and pushed aside wire hangers holding print dresses, woolen shawls, a man’s wool overcoat. A faded pair of bib overalls was hanging on a hook above the shotgun. Just the thing for a tramp. She found a scuffed pair of horsehide boots; a heavy pair of woolen socks was stuffed inside. The old woman muttered to herself: “I’ll warn him to stay where he is, then pitch this stuff out on the porch. If the knucklehead has enough sense left to put these clothes on, then I’ll make him a cheese-and-baloney sandwich and put that on the porch too. And send him on his way. Then I can go to bed with a clear conscience.”
    When the somewhat reluctant Good Samaritan returned to the window—ready to shout her instructions—the naked stranger was gone.
Well, thank God and all His