Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel Read Free Page A

headlights. There was a long bright-silver scratch on the left fender. After they were gone, I could feel Grandfather’s eyes on me, like he was about to give me a quiz to see how dumb I was at that particular moment. “What are you studying on, Satch?” he said.
    “The car and the way they treat it don’t fit. You think they’re bank robbers?”
    “If you haven’t heard, there’s no money in the bank to rob. Or in the general store. Or in the bubblegum machine at the filling station. Where in the name of suffering Jesus have you been, boy?”
    I picked up a rock and threw it in a high arc and heard it clatter through the trees. “Why do you have to make light of everything I say?”
    “Because you take the world too seriously. Let’s go see what your mother is doing. I bought some peach ice cream this afternoon. That’s always her favorite.”
    “I heard you talking on the phone to the doctor,” I said. Suddenly you could hear the crickets in the dark, the whistle of the Katy beyond the horizon. The dust clogged my nostrils and throat. “You’re fixing to send her for electroshock treatments, aren’t you.”
    “The doctor raised that possibility.”
    “They use electroshock when they don’t know what else to do. I think the doctor is an ignorant man. In addition, he’s stupid and thinks meanness and intelligence are the same thing.”
    “He says electroshock is the most modern treatment for what ails her. It’s done in a hospital. She’ll have the best of care there. It could be worse. Sometimes they push a steel probe into the brain.”
    “On the subject of care, I wonder why nobody gave her any when she was a little girl and had to fend for herself.”
    “You’re developing a hard edge, Weldon. It’s not in your nature. It’ll eat up your youth and rob you of the wisdom that should come with manhood.”
    I hate you, I thought.
    “Tell me something,” he said.
    “What?” I said.
    “Do you ever think about forgiveness?”
    “For you, Grandfather? No, I don’t. If you’ve ever sought forgiveness for anything, I’ve yet to see the instance.”
    “I’m talking about forgiveness for all of us.”
    “Are you going to call the sheriff about the people in the car?”
    “They’re not our business. If they come back, that’s another matter.”
    “The woman in the front seat caught your eye,” I said.
    “All women do. That’s the way things work. That’s why preachers are always railing about sex. It’s here for the long haul.”
    I could not take my grandfather’s proselytizing. “A stranger with a sweet smile is the light of the world, but your own daughter doesn’t mean diddly squat on a rock.”
    I instantly regretted the harshness of my words. He walked ahead of me, the holstered revolver swinging back and forth under his arm, the windmill blades rattling in the wind. When we entered the house, my mother was eating from the carton of ice cream Grandfather had bought, and cleaning the spoon with her hair.
     
    W HEN MY MOTHER’S spells first began, she told us she had dreams she could not remember, but she was convinced they contained information of vast importance. Behind her eyes, you could see her drawing a rake through her thoughts, as though on the verge of discovering the source of all her unhappiness. Her early hours seemed to be neither good nor bad; she said morning was a yellow room that sometimes had a sunny window in it. But after three P.M. , when the sun began to move irrevocably toward the horizon, a chemical transformation seemed to take place inside her head. Her eyes would become haunted, darting at the row of poplars on the side lawn, as though a specter were beckoning to her from the shade.
    “What’s wrong, Emma Jean?” my father said the first time it happened.
    “You don’t hear them?” she replied.
    “Hear who?”
    “The whisperers. They’re over there, by the garden wall.”
    “Look at me. I’m your husband, the man who loves you. There is no