I asked, “Are you Miss Kew?”
“I am. What is the meaning of this invasion?”
“I got to talk to you, Miss Kew.”
“Don’t say ‘got to.’ Stand up straight and speak out.”
The maid said, “I’ll get the police.”
Miss Kew turned on her. “There’s time enough for that, Miriam. Now, you dirty little boy, what do you want?”
“I got to speak to you by yourself,” I told her.
“Don’t you let him do it, Miss Kew,” cried the maid.
“Be quiet, Miriam. Little boy, I told you not to say ‘got to.’ You may say whatever you have to say in front of Miriam.”
“Like hell.” They both gasped. I said, “Lone told me not to.”
“Miss Kew, are you goin’ to let him—”
“Be quiet, Miriam! Young man, you will keep a civil—” Then her eyes popped up real round. “Who did you say…”
“Lone said so.”
“Lone.” She stood there on the stairs looking at her hands. Then she said, “Miriam, that will be all.” And you wouldn’t know it was the same woman, the way she said it.
The maid opened her mouth, but Miss Kew stuck out a finger that might as well of had a riflesight on the end of it. The maid beat it.
“Hey,” I said, “here’s your broom.” I was just going to throw it, but Miss Kew got to me and took it out of my hand.
“In there,” she said.
She made me go ahead of her into a room as big as our swimming hole. It had books all over and leather on top of the tables, with gold flowers drawn into the corners.
She pointed to a chair. “Sit there. No, wait a moment.” She went to the fireplace and got a newspaper out of a box and brought it over and unfolded it on the seat of the chair. “Now sit down.”
I sat on the paper and she dragged up another chair, but didn’t put no paper on it. “What is it? Where is Lone?”
“He died,” I said.
She pulled in her breath and went white. She stared at me until her eyes started to water.
“You sick?” I asked her. “Go ahead, throw up. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Dead? Lone is dead?”
“Yeah. There was a flash flood last week and when he went out the next night in that big wind, he walked under a old oak tree that got gullied under by the flood. The tree come down on him.”
“Came down on him,” she whispered. “Oh, no…it’s not true.”
“It’s true, all right. We planted him this morning. We couldn’t keep him around no more. He was beginning to st—”
“Stop!” She covered her face with her hands.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ll be all right in a moment,” she said in a low voice. She went and stood in front of the fireplace with her back to me. I took off one of my shoes while I was waiting for her to come back. But instead she talked from where she was. “Are you Lone’s little boy?”
“Yeah. He told me to come to you.”
“Oh, my dear child!” She came running back and I thought for a second she was going to pick me up or something, but she stopped short and wrinkled up her nose a little bit. “Wh-what’s your name?”
“Gerry,” I told her.
“Well, Gerry, how would you like to live with me in this nice big house and—and have new clean clothes—and everything?”
“Well, that’s the whole idea. Lone told me to come to you. He said you got more dough than you know what to do with, and he said you owed him a favor.”
“A favor?” That seemed to bother her.
“Well,” I tried to tell her, “he said he done something for you once and you said some day you’d pay him back for it if you ever could. This is it.”
“What did he tell you about that?” She’d got her honk back by then.
“Not a damn thing.”
“Please don’t use that word,” she said, with her eyes closed. Then she opened them and nodded her head, “I promised and I’ll do it. You can live here from now on. If—if you want to.”
