The Tale of the Yankee Traveler

By George Wier

When Jimmy Underwood meets Ray Bradbury, an author he has idolized for most of his adult life, he is traumatized by the encounter. The problem is that Ray Bradbury has been dead and gone for seven years, but this guy looks just like Ray, talks like Ray, writes like Ray, and even signs his name like Ray. Thus begins the stalking of a man who both is and isn't Ray Bradbury. But if he isn't, who—or what—could he be? The truth is sometimes a stone best left unturned. It's the worst problem a human being can have—how can Jimmy not get home to the truth? Because one way or the other, the truth always changes you forever.

The Tale of the Yankee Traveler, a bit longer than the average short story, is a tale of mystery, compulsion, and ultimately a lesson in courtesy from the author dubbed by ArtPlanet as "The Titan of Texas Fiction."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flagstone Books
• Release date: May 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393568148

Book preview

Also by George Wier

Published Short Stories

Their Return

Return to the River Lis

The Tale of the Yankee Traveler

The Feast of All Souls

Norbert the Summoner

Dark-Thirty

They No Here

The Woodsman

Death Kiss

Duckweed

In The Radio

The Eternal

Published Novels:

The Bill Travis Mysteries:

The Last Call

Capitol Offense

Longnecks & Twisted Hearts

The Devil To Pay

Death On The Pedernales

Slow Falling

Caddo Cold

Arrowmoon

After The Fire

Ghost Of The Karankawa

Desperate Crimes

Mexico Fever

The Lone Star Express

Trinity Trio

Buffalo Bayou Blues

Reveille In Red

Bexar County Line

The Long Goodnight (forthcoming)

The Bill Travis Omnibus

The Bill Travis Omnibus 2

The Bill Travis Omnibus 3

The Bill Travis Omnibus 4

The Elysium Chronicles:

Murder In Elysium

Sentinel In Elysium

Other mysteries:

Long Fall From Heaven (with Milton T. Burton)

Errant Knight

Neptune’s Forge

Neptune’s Dominion (forthcoming)

Science Fiction/Steampunk/Fantasy:

The Vindicators: Book One—Last Defense (with Robert A. Taylor)

Captains Malicious (with T.R. Harris)

1889: Journey to the Moon (with Billy Kring)

1899: Journey to Mars (with Billy Kring)

Jem of Skye: Book One of the Factions of Skye

Company C: Rebirth of the Rangers

Anthologies:

‘14: A Texanthology

Unto the Night

Lone Star Lawless

Lone Star Noir

THE TALE OF THE YANKEE TRAVELER

To the memory of Ray Bradbury, with love and respect

WHEN YOU GET TO A CERTAIN age, you start to appreciate talk radio, particularly in the morning when you’re on the way to work in rush-hour traffic and it’ll take a minimum of forty-five minutes to get where you’re going, if you’re extremely lucky. The last thing you want to hear in that Almost Hour is some one-hit wonder from the 70s, or perhaps the 80s, and have the damned thing stuck in your head the rest of the day. That’s the way it works for me—the last song I hear is the one that gets itself lodged in the old noodle like ossified cow crap, stuck for days at a time. So it’s easier not to tune to those stations where I’ll hear them, nor to even flick past them on the dial because I know there’s always one waiting there in the ether somewhere between the low AM band and the upper atmospheric FM stratosphere out there on the edge of the Van Allen radiation belt. Waiting like a bandit waiting to rob a train. Waiting to snag me such that I find myself walking around the office at any given time of day humming—or perhaps in the most embarrassingly horrific instances, singing—something like Don’t You Want Me Baby? by The Human League, or worse, any given song by Chicago Transportation Authority. You know you’re getting old when you know who the hell Chicago Transportation Authority is to begin with, and you know for damned sure you’re starting to get up there when your radio stations are all pre-programmed on your dial and you know what the buttons will do—which set of voices they’ll summon forth, AM or FM, depending upon the time of day, like a Swami or maybe a Gypsy at an old-fashioned seance, channeling the voices of those in the Afterlife.

Which was how I met Arch.

About six years back I made a call-in to the Arch and Barch show. The topic was one that, at the time, I had a definite bone stuck in my craw about, the subject of property taxes (another sign that your getting older than the gods of the Greek pantheon). It was my first time to call and talk on any radio show, and I knew that I was supposed to turn my radio off for the call because if there’s