Free Nathaniel by John Saul

us. Maybe Daddy was smart never to tell us about the farm.”
    If only, she thought to herself, I could believe that. But I don’t. Not a word of it.
    Michael, however, seemed to accept her words at face value. “Where is it?” he asked.
    Janet stared at her son, then burst into laughter for the first time since Mark had died. Michael looked at her oddly, then glanced uneasily away. “What’s so funny?”
    “You know what?” Janet gasped. “I don’t even
know
where it is! Here I’ve made up my mind to move us onto a farm, and I never even asked where it was, let alone what it looked like. Let’s get your grandparents and go see it.”
    But the Halls refused to take them.
    “Tomorrow,” Anna insisted. “We’ll show it to you tomorrow.”
    “But why not today?” Janet asked.
    Amos grinned at her. “If you saw it today, you’d never move in. By tomorrow, it’ll be cleaned up and at least habitable.”
    “But I don’t care if it’s a mess,” Janet protested. “You don’t have to hire someone to clean it up. Michael and I can do that.”
    “Hire someone?” Anna asked. “Why would we do that?” Then suddenly she understood what Janet meant. “This isn’t like New York,” she said. “Out here, everybody knows everybody else and helps them out. It’s just like having one huge family. We’ll take care of you. That’s what we’re for.”
    Janet’s eyes flooded with tears, and she leaned down to hug the elderly woman. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You’ve no idea what all this means to me. Ever since Mark died, I’ve been so … so frightened.”
    Anna gently patted her back. “I know, dear. I know just how you feel. But everything’s going to be fine. Just fine,” she said, as her eyes met Amos’s beyond Janet’s shoulder.
    “Do you know Mr. Findley?”
    The sun was high, and Michael and Ryan, yesterday’s fight forgotten, had taken shelter from the heat under the enormous cottonwood in the Shieldses’ front yard. Ryan, to Michael’s disappointment, hadn’t been at all surprised by Michael’s news. In fact, when he’d told his cousin that he and his mother had decided to stay in Prairie Bend, Ryan had only grinned and said that if he thought that was news, he was wrong—there probably wasn’t anyone in Prairie Bend who
didn’t
know they were staying. Now, however, he looked at Michael curiously.
    “He’s crazy,” he said at last. “How’d you hear about him?”
    Michael ignored the question. “Who is he?”
    “He’s an old guy who lives all by himself. Everybody says he’s crazy and ought to be locked up, but nobody ever does anything about it.”
    “Crazy how?”
    “Just crazy. You know. He talks to himself all the time, and never lets anybody near the place, except Dr. Potter. I heard the only reason Dr. Potter ever goes out there is to see if old man Findley’s still alive or not.”
    “Do the kids ever go out there?”
    “What for?”
    “Just to see what’s going on.”
    Ryan glanced at his cousin with suspicion. “Nothin’s going on. And if you go out there, he shoots at you.”
    “Bullshit,” Michael challenged.
    “Bullshit, nothin’. Eric Simpson lives out that way, and he
saw
old man Findley shoot at someone.”
    “Then how come they didn’t arrest him?” Michael demanded.
    Ryan frowned. “I don’t know,” he reluctantly admitted.
    “ ’Cause he didn’t do anything, that’s why,” Michael told him with a certainty he didn’t really feel. “I bet he was just shooting at an animal or something. If he’d done anything, they would have arrested him.”
    “That’s not what Eric says, and he saw it.”
    “What did he see?”
    “Why don’t you ask him?”
    “I don’t know him.”
    “Well, let’s go out there,” Ryan suggested. “Then you’ll know him.”
    Ten minutes later they were riding out of Prairie Bend and east along the river road, Michael on an old Schwinn that Ryan had dragged up from the Shieldses’ basement. He