BooksBarbecue
Back The Outside Man
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover Page
  2. EARLY BIRD BOOKS
  3. Praise for the Writing of Richard North Patterson
  4. Title Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-one
  28. Twenty-two
  29. Twenty-three
  30. Twenty-four
  31. Twenty-five
  32. Twenty-six
  33. Twenty-seven
  34. Twenty-eight
  35. Twenty-nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-one
  38. Thirty-two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-four
  41. Thirty-five
  42. About the Author

“She never went out the whole time I’m there and nobody comes except the gray-haired man with the Cadillac. Only time I seen her smile was one time he drove up. Before the car has even stopped she’s opened the door, smiling with her head held up. But not with me. She just keeps staring. She’s looking tired now. But every time I’m there she comes outside to watch, until it’s like being near a flame.

“The time it happened I was digging out the rose bed. It was cool and cloudy and I wasn’t thinking about her for once but about Germany and how the sky was there when it rained, flat and gray and different from anywhere else. I hear the front door open. She’s standing in the doorway. Then she walks out toward the roses until she’s stopped right near me. It’s time, I think, like it’s taken me by surprise. I watch her out the corner of my eye. She starts pruning the roses. I hear the clippers snapping next to me. Then they stop. She gives a little cry. I look over and she’s staring at a fingertip she’s pricked on a thorn. On the end there’s a round drop of blood. She keeps staring at it. Then she looks up at me and her eyes get real big. She don’t say nothing. Just stands there with her mouth half-open. I stare back. Without saying a word she turns and walks back to the house, slow and sort of brokenlike. Don’t even close the door.

“That’s when it came to me. She knew—maybe knew inside the first time she saw me. She hadn’t forgotten.

“I didn’t go through that door. Just stood in the yard, waiting. Nothing happened. I went home and for three days and nights I waited. The police never came. She never did nothing about it.

“Friday I went back and knocked on the door. When she opened it, all I saw was this scared, skinny white woman with dyed hair, holding my money in one hand and not able to talk. I took the money and went to the rose bed without saying a word.

“It was finished. I didn’t want to kill her anymore. It was enough I could decide.

“End of the day I knocked to say I’m quitting. She nods with her head down. ‘Do you want anything?’ she asks. Her voice is shaking. ‘No,’ I says. ‘I don’t want nothing.’ Her face gets real funny. ‘Thank you,’ she says. I just turn my back on her and start walking down the driveway. When I get to the end, the green Cadillac passes me going the other way. I don’t even look back.