Read Online 14 The Chocolate Clown Corpse by JoAnna Carl - Free Book Online

serves as our driveway is kept in plain view. I like to see who’s coming.
    So on that autumn morning a knock on the front door caught me by surprise. I hadn’t seen anybody walking up the road, and I hadn’t heard a car drive up. Also, people who know us usually come to the back door. Who could it be?
    The storm door was in place and locked, but I still opened the inside door only six or eight inches to look out.
    Immediately, a loud, cheerful noise broke forth. Someone started playing a harmonica.
    I opened the door a bit wider and began to laugh.
    The man on the porch was not only playing, he was also performing a shuffling sort of dance. I call his motions a “sort of dance” because what his feet were doing didn’t seem to have any pattern to it. Neither did the sounds from the harmonica. He was just moving around and making noises with a mouth organ.
    He was an old guy; I’d have guessed his age at seventy-something. He wore raggedy clothes and had a raggedy beard and a torn ball cap. His gray hair was nearly to his shoulders, but it was neatly combed.
    Despite his age, he was kicking up his heels like a lively young man. Lively, if not musically talented.
    After about two minutes of this, he stopped playing. Then he took two steps back and said something so peculiar that it made his dancing and singing act seem close to normal.
    “Hi, there,” he said. “I’m not homicidal.”
    I’m afraid I laughed again. Not because I found his greeting funny. I didn’t. I think I laughed because I was nervous.
    So he went on talking. “I’m looking for some work,” he said. “I could rake leaves—you can pay me what you want to. See, I need twenty dollars real bad.”
    I didn’t speak, mainly because I didn’t know what to say, andhe went on talking. “Now, I’m not homicidal,” he said again. “And ten dollars—or even five—that would help me a bunch.”
    “I’m sorry.” I started to answer no, but he was still talking.
    “I need a bus ticket, see? I came here looking for a job, but there don’t seem to be any. So if I could buy me a bus ticket, I’d be on my way.”
    My impulse, of course, was to refuse. In this day and age we don’t hire people we know nothing about to work around our homes. One of my Texas great-grandmothers, according to the family lore, had a steady stream of “tramps” calling at her back door and offering to chop wood in exchange for a meal. But today we call these wandering people “homeless,” and we have agencies to house them in shelters. We tell ourselves they aren’t truly needy. We shrink from personal contact with them—even with homeless people who promise not to kill us.
    As if reading my mind, the man spoke again, repeating what seemed to be his motto: “I’m not homicidal.” And he put his harmonica to his lips and played again. This time I could recognize the tune. It was “Home! Sweet Home!”
    How could I resist? I had a home. Whatever his problem was, he didn’t. And at least he was trying to be friendly and entertaining.
    As soon as the tune ended, I spoke. “The garage is open and there’s a leaf rake out there. If you’ll rake for an hour, I’ll contribute toward your bus ticket, but it won’t be much because we don’t keep money in the house. And I’ll throw in a sandwich.”
    He gave me a grin. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll do a lot for a sandwich. And I’m not homicidal.”
    So the non-homicidal drifter raked for an hour, and I made him two ham sandwiches, putting them in a sack and adding an apple and a dozen store-bought cookies. I dawdled about givingthem to him, frankly, hoping Joe would show up before I had to come out from behind my locked doors and approach the old man. I even called Joe at his boat shop to ask him to come home, but he wasn’t at the shop, and he had his cell phone turned off. I’d gotten myself into this situation, and I had to deal with it on my own.
    The old man worked spryly, raking the leaves into piles and