The Valiant Wayfarer

By L.M. Stockton

After her mother abandons her for a third time, soft-spoken Janey Preston, who just started third grade two weeks before, decides she will not wait around to be taken to the awful Children’s Home again.

She loads up a grocery cart with canned food, water, and her loyal Raggedy-Andy and heads for Highway 25 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, her destination: Trinidad, Colorado, 250 miles north, where her beloved second-grade teacher, Miss Butler, lives and can hopefully give Janey what she’s been yearning for her entire life.

With an impressive blend of Cormac McCarthy’s direst settings and the childhood innocence of Don Robertson, L.M. Stockton captures youthful hope, courage, and determination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.L. Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370600748

Book preview

The Valiant Wayfarer

L.L. Press

Texas

L.M. Stockton

Copyright © 2018 L.L. Press

All rights reserved. Published by L.L. Press

liampublisher.com

liamauthor.com

Cover design by Liam Llewellyn

ISBN: 1979788537

ISBN-13: 978-1979788533

Chapter I

Janey dropped off the school bus behind four other children, and to their shouts of Bye, Janey, she replied with a hesitant smile.

Then she hurried up the dusty, weed-bordered path toward her home, breaking into a few running steps from time to time. Her eyes, wide and blue, were fixed on the fence corner ahead where she’d catch her first glimpse of the house.

She wore faded, shabby jeans and a pink blouse, and her long, creamy-colored hair was tied behind her head with a blue ribbon. Her thin face and arms were tawny from Albuquerque’s unfailing sunshine. Janey was eight years old and had just started third grade two weeks before.

A wooden fence, gray with age, sagged beside her, cutting off her view of the landlady’s home with its peeling white paint and of the tiny adobe house that Janey’s mom rented for them on the same lot.

Anxiety overcame her, and Janey ran the last few steps to the corner. Her mother’s car was gone.

Maybe Mom had only gone to the grocery store, Janey hoped as her shoulders slumped and her eyes dropped to the ground in front of her. She walked on slowly, putting off the moment when her fears would become real.

Her mom hadn’t gone to the grocery store, of course. She had bought lots of groceries just last Friday when she got her paycheck.

Still staring at the ground in front of her, Janey hoped that Mom and Monty had only gone to get another case of beer, and would come driving up in front of the house at any minute.

Fishing her house key out of the front of her pink shirt where it hung on a string around her neck, Janey unlocked the door that led onto the glassed-in front porch. Everything looked the same there, with Janey’s bed, an old sofa, in one corner and her clothes tree next to it. Raggedy-Andy smiled lop-sidedly at her from the sofa, and Janey picked him up and clutched him against her as she stepped into the living room.

Where is Mom? whispered Janey to Andy.

He couldn’t tell her, but the empty corner where the TV had stood on a kitchen chair was all the answer Janey needed.

Mom and Monty were gone.

She opened the living-room closet and found it empty. Both of Mom’s coats were gone, and so was Monty’s jacket.

Brushing aside the first tears, Janey went to stand in the bedroom door. Through the half-open window across the room, a sudden gust of wind blew the curtains out over the bare mattress on the bedframe and stirred the empty hangers in the closet until they jangled against each other.

In the kitchen, the electric percolator that belonged to Mom was gone. Everything that remained belonged to the landlady except the groceries that Mom had bought with her paycheck the week before. There were cans of vegetables and sandwich spread in the cupboard and milk, pizza, cokes and TV dinners in the refrigerator.

Unwashed dishes littered the table and county, and there were empty beer cans everywhere. Mom and Monty always sat at the kitchen table to drink beer until late into the night, laughing and talking and, at the end, quarrelling angrily.

They had forgotten to clean the bathroom. Mom’s toothbrush and towel hung beside Janey’s. Drying her tears on Andy’s coat, Janey went back to the front porch to lie on her sofa, holding Andy up close under her chin. Her throat choked up, and sobs overwhelmed her.

Janey had known ever since Monty had come to the house late Friday night that he would persuade Mom to leave with him. She hadn’t worried about it much over the weekend because if they’d gone while she was at home, they’d have taken her with them, just because it was easier than not taking her.

Janey had even put all her things into a box so that she need not keep them waiting when they were ready to leave, for she’d overheard Monty telling Mom that he might be able to get a job at the mines in Globe, Arizona.

Mom had tried to persuade him to find a job in Albuquerque, but Janey had wished Monty had just stayed in jail. She and her mom got along just fine when Monty wasn’t around.

They’d left her twice before, the first time when Janey was four years old. The police had stopped them to arrest Monty before they’d gone far, though, and Mom had come home the next day before anyone had discovered Janey all alone.

Then just last year, soon after they’d moved from Trinidad to Albuquerque, Mom and Monty had left her again. The neighbors had found her alone and taken her to the Children’s Home. When Mom came back weeks later, she’d been taken to court for Child Abandonment, and had had to promise to take good care of Janey or else be sent to jail.

Now if the police found out Mom had left her again, they would send Mom to jail and Janey would have to stay in the Children’s Home a long time, maybe forever.

Janey had been miserable at the Children’s Home. The grown-ups there had tried to be nice, but Janey didn’t like living with so many strange people. Besides, everyone had been cross with her for whispering instead of talking out loud, and they’d even tried to take Andy away from her and give her a different doll with silver hair.

Janey had cried so hard and held Andy so tightly that one of the ladies had decided to clean him up and let her keep him She had mended the holes in his clothes and sewed new hair on his bald spots so that he looked funny to Janey for a while.

One of the worst things that had happened at the Children’s Home was that she’d had such a terrible time trying to protect Andy from some of the other kids when they teased her by stealing him.

She had spent most of her time hiding in corners behind furniture with Andy in her arms, and that had made the grown-ups cross with her too.

When her mother had come back to get her at last, Monty had been with her, but that was better than not having her mom at all, and lots better than living in the Children’s Home.

Janey lay on her sofa on the porch for a long time, holding Andy. The landlady was in Santa Fe staying with her daughter to help with a new baby. She was coming back next Sunday, but that was almost a week away. The house on the other side of Janey’s was empty because it was about to fall down. The other neighbors were all quite far away.

We’ll stay here together, Andy, she said, and maybe Mom will come back before Sunday.

Janey sat up and rubbed the wetness off her face on the bottom of her shirt.

Maybe Monty will get put in jail again, and Mom will come back by herself.

There was plenty of food in the kitchen, enough to last at least a week even if her mother had been there too. Andy didn’t eat, of course.

I’ll have to go to school, Janey told him, but you can wait here for me the way you always do. I can have lunch at school.

Somehow Janey didn’t know just how her mom had arranged for free lunches for Janey at school.

I’ll have to go to school, you know. If I don’t the teacher or the principal might come to check up on me. If I go, and act just the same as always, then they’ll never find out we’re here all by ourselves, okay?

The landlady had told Mom she would come over next Sunday to collect the two months’ back rent, and when she did that, she’d find Janey and Andy all alone, of course. Then she’d call the sheriff or somebody like that who’d take them off to the Children’s Home again.

Maybe Mom will come before then, Janey whispered to Andy.

For supper, Janey heated up a big frozen pizza and drank a coke. When she’d finished only two pieces of the pizza, she put the rest in the refrigerator.

I can heat it up for supper tomorrow night, she told Andy.

There was no TV to watch since Mom and Monty had taken it, and Janey and Andy wandered around the house until Janey remembered that she’d had no plate from which to eat her pizza, and decided to wash the dishes. It took a long time, and when it was done, Janey was tired.

Let’s go to sleep, Andy, she said. Remember, I have to go to school tomorrow, and maybe Mom will come back too.

She changed to her pajamas and lay down on her sofa on the porch with her blanket over her and Andy safely in her arms.

I wish we still lived in Trinidad, said Janey. Then we could get Miss Butler to help us. You don’t remember her, do you, Andy? She was my second-grade teacher for just a little while before we moved here.

Just thinking of Miss Butler made Janey cry.

She was the best teacher I’ve ever had. She wouldn’t send us to the Children’s Home.

There was no use asking her third-grade teacher here in Albuquerque for help.

She’s nice, but she’d tell the principal and he’d send us to the Children’s Home for sure.

Janey squirmed around, getting herself and Andy more comfortable and rubbing her face against the blanket to dry her tears. Then she imagined walking up to Miss Butler’s house with Andy.

Why, Janey Preston! My dear child, how did you get here? I’m so glad to see you again.

That was the way Miss Butler always talked.

If only Janey knew a way to get to Trinidad, she’d have no trouble finding Miss Butler.

I told you about the field trip we took with Miss Butler, Andy. Do you remember? We went to see the coke ovens up past the coal mines where Monty worked. We rode on a bus and had a picnic, and Miss Butler showed us where she was going to live when she retired.

Miss Butler would be living in her pretty house now, up a lovely canyon on her brother’s ranch. Janey remembered a little stone building with a rusty iron door right beside the turning place up the canyon.

Janey fell asleep still dreaming of finding Miss Butler, who would see that she and Andy were never left alone again.

From Tuesday through Friday, Janey went to school each day, leaving Andy hidden in a little wire cart behind her sofa on the porch, just in case anyone came to the house while she was gone and wanted to take him away. Each day when she came home, he was still there, all alone.

Every day before she left, Janey put a note on a large sheet of paper right in the middle of the living room floor where her mother couldn’t help seeing it if she came home. The note said, Dear Mom, I am at school, Please wait for me. Love, Janey.

The

Reviews for The Valiant Wayfarer

[amywaters · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Simple and lovely. A great read , very refreshing. Loved the little girl Janey