Run Wild With Me

A fine spring rain began to fall somewhere outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Sam had been lucky to hitch a ride as far as he had. Now he was walking down a country road in the fading light of a late May afternoon.

His worn Stetson channeled rainwater down his collar, and the pack on his back, already sodden from the heavy drizzle, dug uncomfortably into his shoulders. Soon he’d be forced to find some kind of shelter for the night. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept in a barn or under a tree.

For more than ten years Sam had been on the road, pausing a month here, two months there, depending on the job. There had been times when he’d thought about settling down, times that had come more and more often as the years passed. The problem was that he didn’t belong anywhere. He wasn’t sure that he ever had. And he had no
idea what he’d hoped to accomplish by coming to the small Georgia town.

Meredith County, the road sign said, Arcadia—ten miles. Arcadia. The name jolted his mind, reached out and caused an ache inside him. It wasn’t for himself that he’d come—he’d come for her.

Sam had never been to Arcadia. He hadn’t been sure it was real. Now he admitted to an unexpected longing to see it for himself.

The sound of a car engine behind him caught his attention, and he glanced around as a battered pickup truck slowed down.

“Where you headed, boy?” The grizzled old farmer leaned his head out the window, letting a stream of brown tobacco juice fly through the air.

“Arcadia,” Sam answered. It had been a long time since anybody had called him boy. Not since he was a green recruit in training camp on Parris Island had he allowed anyone to use the term. Except for his mother. For her the word
boy
had always been preceded by “my darling” or “my precious” and followed more often than not with “I love you.”

“Arcadia,” the farmer said matter of factly. “So’m I. Climb in.”

The ride was settled with no conversation, and the well-soaked traveler loosened his pack, dropped it into the back of the truck, and climbed in, folding his long legs into the space beneath the dash. “Thanks.”

“Not a’tall. Got business in Arcadia, have you?”

“Maybe.”

“Family there?”

“I don’t think so. Not anymore.”

“You talk kinda funny.”

“So do you.”

There was a long silence while the farmer pulled off the sweat-stained baseball cap he was wearing and scratched his head. “Don’t say much, do you?”

“Nope.” Sam wasn’t trying to be mysterious. He found it hard to talk to the old man. Too many peculiar emotions were assaulting his senses. He’d never been to Arcadia. But there was a sense of expectation slowly curling over him, the same kind of feeling he got when he held a piece of fine new wood in his hand and visualized the finished product.

“Name’s Otis, Otis Parker,” the farmer went on. “Got a tractor broke down. Been over to Cottonboro for a part.”

The wipers screeched across the windshield as the rain temporarily tapered off. In the distance house lights began to flick on, making bright smears in the darkness.

Otis pumped the brakes and let the truck roll to a stop. “Here’s where I turn off, boy. Never did get your name, but if you’re aiming to find one of them motel rooms, there ain’t one in Arcadia, and the hotel ain’t likely to take in anybody they don’t know.”

“Sam Farley, Mr. Parker, and thanks for the lift. Would you by any chance know where Mrs. Mamie Hines lives?”

The farmer spit out the window once more and turned to look at Sam with a puzzled expression on his face. “Mamie Hines’s place? That where you’re heading?”

“Something wrong with that?” Sam was beginning to shiver under the wet denim jacket he was wearing. Tired, and more than a little light-headed, he was ready to reach the end of his journey before the rain began in earnest.

“Well …” The farmer hesitated. “No. Just go straight on into town. When you get to the inter-section, go to your right. Last house on the road, but it’s boarded up tight as a tick now. It may be hard to find in the dark, but anyone you ask will be glad to help you out if you get lost.”

“Then it’s real,” Sam half whispered under his breath. He’d carried the promise of that house around in his mind for most of his life. It had been his security blanket through some pretty bad times. He hadn’t been really sure it existed. “And my … Mrs. Hines?”

“Old Mamie’s been dead and gone for more’n two years now, buried over in the Methodist cemetery. Who are you, Sam Farley?”

“Mamie Hines was my grandmother.” Sam lifted his pack from the back of the truck and slid his arms wearily into the straps. He hadn’t expected Mamie to be there. The tax notice said plainly that the house was being auctioned off. There was nothing he could do about that. Three years of back taxes, even for a house in the south end of nowhere, was more money than he had left. He didn’t know why he’d come.

He’d just stay the night. At least the house would provide a roof over his head, and, technically, it was his, at least until the auction. Yeah, just once he’d sit on that front porch, even without the lemonade and cookies his mother had reminisced
about. Then he’d be on the road again. The truth was, he didn’t belong in Arcadia anymore than he belonged anywhere else.

Above him in the night sky a bird called mourn-fully, dipped silently through the darkness, and flew away into the distance.

Arcadia. What kind of name for a town was that anyway? he wondered as he walked off.

Flashes of lightning turned the night sky lemon-yellow behind the lacy black branches of the crab-apple trees that lined the drive to the old farmhouse.

Andrea Fleming stood beside her police car in the dark, trying to ignore the steady trickle of water that rolled off her rain-slicker hood and down her nose. She didn’t even have her flashlight with her. It was standing upright on the desk back at the station, along with the bullets she’d removed from her gun. Leaving the car lights on at the base of the hill wouldn’t help her at the top, and she’d only run down the battery.

For a moment she considered and rejected the idea of going back into town and calling her father. Five years before, when she’d returned to Arcadia, she’d sworn that she’d take care of herself. So far she’d managed just fine. Besides, Buck was in no condition to get up that drive on crutches, and he’d be fool enough to try.

No, the Arcadia City Council thought their city clerk was competent to serve as chief of police while Buck was laid up with a broken leg, and she wasn’t about to let them down. And the truth was she didn’t know for certain that there was an intruder. If she happened to encounter one, he wouldn’t know she didn’t have any bullets.

A “wild-looking cowboy” was how Louise Roberts had described the man when she reported that an outsider had stopped at her house looking for the Hines place.

“Just come along about dark, soaked to the skin. Been walking awhile, from the look of him.”

“Who is he, did he say?” Andrea had asked, trying to make her voice sound official.

“Nope. Craziest thing I ever heard. Said he’d come to sit on Mamie’s porch and drink lemonade, for his mother. Called me darling, he did. Got a way of frowning when he talks, like he’s trying to pretend he don’t care what you think. But he does.”

A knifing sheet of rain slapped Andrea across her face, reminding her that the stranger, whoever he was, was trespassing and it was her job to check him out—now. Gritting her teeth, Andrea swallowed hard and plunged uphill through the brush.

She’d wasted too much time already. She hadn’t been able to get away from Louise Roberts. “Just a little something, for Buck,” Louise had insisted at the last minute, pressing a plate of homemade cookies and a thermos of coffee into Andrea’s hands.

Mamie’s driveway was both a jungle and a quagmire. More than once Andrea slipped in the stream of water flooding the sloping road. A flailing tree limb snagged the drawstring on her yellow slicker, untying it and ripping the hood from her head with a jerk. By the time she reached the porch, her dark hair was soaked.

Andrea looked up warily. The shadow of the house loomed over her like the body of some big bird huddled beneath ruffled black wings. She shivered.

Assuring Buck that she could handle herself as his temporary replacement was one thing, but being the police chief was a far cry from her job as city clerk, which involved collecting water bills and managing city business. The truth was, everybody had expected Andrea simply to be Buck’s legs while he couldn’t walk. Arcadia didn’t have any crime, and they didn’t have intruders either. At least they never had—up until now.

Andrea forced herself to climb the steps leading to the porch. Someone was definitely inside. Through a crack between the planks of plywood covering the parlor windows, she could see a faint glow, a candle perhaps. She lifted the heavy brass knocker in the center of the door and let it fall, lifted it, and dropped it once more.

“Hello in the house!”

The rain chattering on the tin roof of the porch closed out all sound like a muffling curtain. He wasn’t going to come to the door. She wished she could leave him in there and come back tomorrow, but Louise lived alone in the next house
down the road. She was a citizen who needed reassurance.

This man, whoever he was, was an outsider, and outsiders didn’t march brazenly into Arcadia, Georgia, on foot. Outsiders could make a person hurt inside where nobody could see—she knew firsthand. Still, Buck would never turn away from doing his duty. Neither would she.

Andrea chewed uneasily on her lower lip. She retraced her steps in the darkness and worked her way around to the back of the house. She found the stranger’s entry point. The boards covering the door had been ripped away, and the wire screen just above the handle was gaping open. Andrea nervously unfastened her holster and drew her gun. She knocked again. No answer.

“Is there somebody there?”

No answer.

As the only officer of the law in the city of Arcadia, she told herself sternly, it was her duty to investigate. Shoring up her courage, she pushed open the screen door to the porch. There was a loud creak as she stepped inside. Andrea froze, expecting to hear the footsteps of the man inside. All she heard was the pounding of her heart and the sharp patter of rain overhead.