Homing by John Saul Read Free Book Online Page A

hill to Russell's front porch with dark stains spreading under her arms. Just the thought of it made her skin go clammy. But what else was there to wear? She was just about to make a quick inventory of the clothes she'd brought with her when a car horn startled her. She looked out the window to see a gray Jeep Cherokee pulling into the yard. As it rolled to a stop, Karen gazed at the man behind the wheel. Though he looked vaguely familiar, she couldn't quite place him.
    And what was he doing here so early? The guests weren't supposed to start arriving for another half hour.
    Her nerves getting edgier by the second, Karen abandoned the idea of searching for another dress, and hurried toward the door to take up her duties as hostess. But even before she got Otto's front door open, she heard the voice of the old man himself And, as usual, he sounded mad.
    pushing the screen door open, Karen stepped out onto the front porch just as the man, heavyset, and a few years older than herself, was climbing out of the Cherokee. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. He wore jeans and a western shirt, and as he stepped out into the heat of the sun, he reached back into the car for a stained and battered cowboy hat with which to protect his balding head from the sun. Then, with an amused grin playing at the corners of his mouth, he leaned Against the Jeep as the angry Otto Owen bore down on him.
    "What the hell are you doing' here?" the old man demanded as he strode across the yard. Stopping before he was close enough for the visitor to offer his hand, the old man folded his arms belligerently across his chest.
    The younger man's grin broadened into a smile in the face of Otto's hostility, but to Karen the pleasant expression looked forced. "The wedding, Otto," he said. "Russell did invite me, you know. I just came out early to -see if I could lend a hand with anything."
    "He don't need nothin' from you," Otto growled.
    The man nodded in apparent resignation, as if he'd heard all this before. Finally he shrugged, almost sadly. "I don't get it, Otto," he said. "What is it you've got Against making this place pay off?"
    "Pay?" Otto Owen repeated, the color in his face rising along with his voice. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about, Henderson!"
    And suddenly Karen realized who the man was, and why he looked familiar. Although he was older and had put on some weight, she remembered Carl Henderson perfectly clearly, from her childhood. He was four or five years older than she was, and he used to help her and her friends catch butterflies in the fields. In fact, hadn't he gone to Cal Poly to study entomology? The two or three times she'd thought of him over the years, she'd assumed he'd wound up in a museum somewhere. But apparently he was still here, where he'd grown up.
    "This farm paid pretty damned good for a lot longer'n you'd know about!" she heard Otto Owen sputtering as she turned back to the scene before her eyes. "First for my pa, then for me. And if it wasn't for you bastards, it'd do just fine for my son and my grandson, too!"
    "Come off it, Otto," Henderson replied, his eyes narrowing as they fixed on the angry old man. "You know damned well these fields weren't producing like they used to. And it's not like anyone meant for that fertilizer to sterilize the hives! What the hell do you want from us? We've paid more damages than the crops were worth, and we're still paying. Besides, if you and your precious pa hadn't fanned the fields out, you wouldn't have needed that fertilizer in the first place! Left to yourself, you'd have gone broke in another five years."
    "The hell I would!" Otto roared. "And I don't need no more of your kind of help! Buncha damned chemicals polluting the place! No wonder you hafta have all them fancy hybrid bees. Regular ones couldn't stand the pollution!
    Why don't you just stay the hell away from here?"
    "Oh, for Christ's sake, Otto," Henderson said. "The fields still have to be fertilized,