Page 102

"Do you need any money too?" Harley asked her.

'No, this is fine,' she said.. "I'll be right back." She went out. "Let me look at that again tomorrow," Doctor Richards told me.

Harley and I thanked him. When Anna returned, she gave me a paper to sip and then nave me back my card.

"Use that crutch," Doctor Richards advised as we started out. Harley held onto me. We went back to the motorcycle and Harley worked the crutch over the bars and told me to keep the rest of it under my arm.

"I"ll go very slowly and we don't have far to go," he said.

"What a sight I'll make, What a way to greet your father for the first time." I moaned, full of a thousand anxieties now that we were moments away. "What do you suppose the doctor's wife meant about that woman using magic?" I asked.

"Who knows, but we could use a little magic about now," Harley muttered.

How could I disagree with that?

11

Face-to-Face

.

When we turned down the street his real father

lived on. I could feel how nervous Harley was. His body stiffened to stone. We pulled up in front of the odd-looking house and for a few moments just idled there, gazing at it.

The house was located at the end of the street on a cul-de-sac it didn't share with any other home. A tall chain-link fence marked the boundaries on either side. The fence didn't look like it belonged a thousand yards near such a home, much less a few hundred. It was the sort of fence found in an industrial area, not a residential one.

The grass desperately needed to be mowed. Dandelions and weeds were everywhere. The front of the house, although also in need of pruning, wasn't as unkempt. There was a row of rhododendron bushes on both sides of the front porch. A narrow sidewalk constructed from fieldstone was bordered with bushes about knee high, but unevenly trimmed. On the right was a grand, sprawling oak tree, but on the left were the remains of another oak that looked like it had been hit by lightning years and years ago. The top was clipped off and the branches were all dead and knuckled. The bark was a sickly gray. Why anyone would keep it there was a mystery. Perhaps it served as some sort of reminder and warning about the power of nature.

Once, the unique house had a dark brown wood cladding with what must have been nearly milk white trim, porch railings and shutters. It looked like it hadn't been repainted since it had been built. Most of it was chipped and faded, and one of the windows on the second floor had been broken and covered with a sheet of plywood.

"Did you say your father told you he was a house painter?" I asked.

"Yeah," Harley said.

"I guess this is a case of the shoemaker without shoes."

"I guess."

He took a deep breath and drove us up the driveway. There was no garage. We saw a truck parked in the rear that probably belonged to his father. It was a battered panel truck with a rear bumper that had been tied with rope and some wire to keep it from falling off. I noticed a doghouse, but no signs of any dog. We could see that the grass was even higher behind the house. Off to the left there was a vegetable garden with some homemade scarecrows comprised of aluminum tins, cans and old rusted strips of metal. I recognized tomato plants and zucchini. There were stalks of corn and what looked like pea vines as well. It was a rather ambitious home garden.

The house itself looked dark. Curtains were closed on all the windows. When Harley turned off the engine, we sat there, listening and looking at the front door, over which was hung some chimes. Their musical clang and the occasional distant sound of a car horn was all we heard.

"Maybe nobody's home," Harley muttered.

"He knew you would be here today, right?"

Harley nodded, but still didn't move.

"What should we do?" I asked.

"I guess we should just go up and knock and see," he said. He dismounted and helped me.

"Careful," he said as we headed down the narrow walk. I tried keeping the tip of the crutch on the rocks.

We walked up the steps and to the front door. Our footsteps rattled the loose slats on the porch floor. Looking through the window on the right. I could see a dimly lit lamp on a side table in what was surely the living room. There was no buzzer on the door and no knocker. Harley shrugged and then tapped the door with his knuckles gently. He waited a moment and rapped it harder.

A good thirty or forty seconds went by before we heard a latch undone. As the door opened, a tall, very dark-skinned woman-- with her hair pulled up in a twist so tightly it stretched the skin on her temples and forehead-- looked out at us. She wore a dark purple dress with sleeves that came to her elbows. Even though her skin had only barely discernible wrinkles, her hair was streaked with gray. I had never seen such piercing ebony eyes. They were set above very high cheekbones. Her jawbone was sharp, giving her a narrow, harsh chin, but her lips were full, soft and when they lifted, they revealed bone white perfect teeth.