Free With by Donald Harington Page A

shave-and-a-haircut-six-bits.
    “You didn’t knock wight,” she called to him, sorry that the return of her speech impediment robbed her voice of authority.
    “I didn’t? Well, drat my hide.” He sure sounded like Grandpa. “How’s this?” And he knocked a sort of knock knockedy-knock knock that sounded like the code. But it wasn’t quite it. Robin fled to the living room window and peered out. Grandpa’s car was not out there. It was just an old pickup truck.
    She returned to the door. “What’s your name?” she called.
    “Grandpa.”
    “What do people call you?”
    There was a silence, too long, on the other side, and she was convinced that this man, whoever he was, was a stranger, and therefore a danger. “Please open the door,” he said.
    “Go away,” she said. “You’re not my grandpa and if you don’t go away I’ll call the police.”
    “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down,” he said.
    She couldn’t help giggling. “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!” she said.
    She could hear him making some exaggerated breathing and blowing on the other side of the door, huffing and puffing. Then he said, “Piggy-wiggy, that didn’t work. Your house won’t blow down. I don’t rightly recollect how the rest of it goes. Does the big bad wolf climb down your chimney next?”
    He sure sounded like Grandpa, and she wondered if Grandpa was just playing with her. “No,” she corrected him, “you’re supposed to say you’ll take me at six o’clock in the morning to Farmer Smith’s turnip patch.”
    “Okay. Will you meet me at six o’clock in the morning?”
    “I’ll be there at five o’clock but with a bunch of police.”
    “Piggy-wiggy, I aint the big bad wolf, no foolin. I’m your lover boy. Me and you are fated to spend the rest of our lifes together, so we might as well get started right here and now.”
    She thought, Something may be wrong with me, but I will never be in love. I will never have a lover boy. I love Paddington so much, but he’s not really a boy. She said, “I’m going to count to ten and if you’re not gone I’m calling the police.”
    “Don’t you even want to see my face? For all you know, I could be your Prince Charming. Open the door and have a look.”
    “You sure don’t sound like anybody’s Prince Charming,” she said. “Now get! One…two…three….”
    “Awright, I’m a-going, but you’ll be sorry you turned me away. I’m fated to have ye, and I’ll have ye one way or t’other, wait and see.”
    She waited, not commenting on that, and she waited, and finally she heard the truck start up. She ran to the window and looked out and got just a glimpse of him in profile driving away. He was just some old guy. Not a Prince Charming at all. More like the frog before he turned into the prince.
    She returned to Robinsville and tried to resume her supervision of the lives of its citizens or at least of their wardrobes, but she was breathing hard and could feel her insides were all out of whack. She thought of calling the police anyway. Or calling her mother. Yes, she had better call her mother at the store. She went to the phone and started dialing but was stopped by the realization that if she reported this visitor to her mother there was no way on God’s earth that she would be allowed to attend Kelly’s birthday slumber party. It was bad enough already that Robin had refrained from telling her mother that Kelly’s parents planned to take all the girls to the roller rink for the earlier part of the birthday party. Robin loved the roller rink more than any other place in Harrison, but her mother would never, ever let her go there, and if she knew that Kelly’s parents were planning to include it as part of the party she wouldn’t let Robin go. Robin sighed, and put the phone down.
    There came another knock at the door! She actually jumped. But wasn’t it the code knock? She went to the door and called, “Who is it?”
    And