The Sharecropper Prodigy by David Lee Malone Page B

what time I’d be there even though he didn‘t know I was coming. I wasn’t even sure if he’d heard yet, though news traveled pretty fast in Jones County, even out to the remote sharecropper shacks.
                  “Well, I guess you’ve heard already,” I said as soon as I got within earshot.
                  “Yeah, I saw the sky lit up last night, so I walked to Collinwood to see what it was. I thought it might be somebody’s house.”
                  “You walked all the way to Collinwood?”
                  “Yeah, what’s the big deal? Me and you walk to Collinwood sometimes. We’re fixin’ to do it right now.”
                  “Yeah, but it ain’t the middle of the night,” I said, as we started walking. “I must have already been gone by the time you got there last night.”
                  “They had the fire almost out by the time I got there,” Ben said. “I got to talk to Manuel, though. He didn’t seem any more concerned about it than somebody who’s cow had got out or something. He was actin’ kind of strange. He told me he’d talked to you and you said we were gonna help him rebuild. He said he didn’t need any help and that he might not rebuild anyway.”
                  As we walked along at a brisk pace, I thought about what Ben had just said. Manuel didn’t act like he was very distraught to me last night, either.
                  “I’ll bet you them rednecks threatened him,” I said. “Most of the town was there last night, but I didn’t see a single Klan asshole anywhere.”
                  It took us a little over an hour to get to Collinwood. It was still early, but the town was already alive and bustling with traffic and people going in and out of stores. It was Saturday, and that was the only day a lot of people who lived out on the farms got a chance to shop, or get haircuts, or just catch up on gossip.
                  We made our way through the crowded downtown area and up the little street where Manuel lived in a little rented house. He had made the little cottage into a showplace. He said he planned on buying it as soon as he came up with the money, and he started treating it like it was his own from the time he moved in. He had built a white picket fence along the front, with an arched gate that had locking hardware he’d made himself. There were flowerbeds along the base of the pecan and oak trees with rock borders in the yard, and rose bushes that climbed up ornate trellises he had built in front of the house. Manuel was as talented a man as I had ever seen. Not only was he educated, he was a master craftsman with his hands, and of course, an incredible chef.
                  Me and Ben walked up to the door and Ben started to knock. I held my hand up to stop him.
                  “They might still be asleep,” I told Ben. “I’m sure they were up late last night, and I don’t hear the kids runnin’ around like they usually are.”
                  We looked through the small opaque glass at the top of the door, but couldn’t see through it well enough to discern anything. Then we walked over to the window at the end of the porch. That was the first time I had noticed that the curtains were gone. The window was in the children’s bedroom. I cupped my hands on each side of my face and pressed my nose up to the glass. The bed and all the other furniture was gone. The room was totally bare. I walked back to the front door and tried the knob. The door opened with a tiny screech as I stuck my head inside. Everything down to the pictures on the wall had disappeared. Me and Ben walked through the door and back into Manuel and Maria’s bedroom. Nothing.
                  “How in the world did he manage to get everything into his truck?” I asked.
                  Ben didn’t answer.