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Andy’s Guest
Chapter 8


After hearing Opie’s prayers and kissing him goodnight, Andy went down the hall to his own bedroom, where their sick guest had been tucked up by him and Aunt Bee over his protests yesterday morning. He peered in quietly, trying not to wake him, but he was already awake.
“Howdy, Jarod. How you feeling this evening?”
“Like an imposition,” Jarod said hoarsely.
“Wa’al, you can just stop it, ‘cause you’re not. After everything you’ve done for us, it’s nice to be able to do something for you, and you’d still be welcome even if you hadn’t done a lick of work.”
“But I’m putting you all in danger! Your son—he talked to Sydney and Broots today—”
“Did Opie come in here bothering you?” Andy frowned. “After his eavesdropping yesterday, I should oughta have grounded him to his room for a week.”
“No—he was no bother at all. I like to hear him talk. But I’m putting him in danger—all of you—”
“Oh, Jarod, you stop your worrying. No one knows you’re still here except Aunt Bee, Barney, Opie, and me. You scared Barney so good with your Centre talk that he’s afraid to open his mouth around Miss Parker, Aunt Bee has a mother’s heart even if she’s never been a mother, and Ope’s ready to march to Delaware and kick down the doors of your Centre himself. Plus that boy can keep a secret, and don’t I know it! Nobody’s ever going to know you’re here. Anyway, I’m the sheriff. I can arrest anybody I like, and Barney knows the rulebooks so well nobody can trip over a sidewalk without him giving them a ticket for some durned thing. Now, that’s the end of it. I’m glad to hear you were able to keep some food down today.”
“So was I. The flu has been a completely new experience,” Jarod said dryly. “Usually I like new experiences, but not this one.”
“No one does,” Andy answered with a grin. “I know just how to cheer you up.”
He reached outside the door and picked up the guitar he had leaned against the wall. As he pulled up a chair, sat down, and began to play, Jarod smiled and leaned his head against his pillow. Andy played the cheerful country and folk songs he liked to sing with Opie and guests who came over, pleased when the smile stayed on Jarod’s face. That man needed to be given more opportunities to smile, Andy was convinced. There were too many instances when his face had looked just like the face of a boy he had known when he was a teenager. The boy had come to live in Mayberry after his whole family had died at the hands of a gunman in Chicago, and his face had stayed with Andy for a long time. Maybe that was one of the reasons he had become a lawman. He couldn’t clean up Chicago, but he could keep Mayberry clean. He had almost failed recently, would have failed, if not for Jarod. He really should have turned him in when he found out he was impersonating a policeman, but he couldn’t do it, not after what Jarod had done for Mayberry. Not after finding out why his face looked so much like the face of the boy who had lost everything.
Jarod had set out to walk to Mount Pilot early yesterday morning. Later in the morning Andy and Barney had been driving in the squad car on their way to investigate some small ruckus on a chicken farm (coyote eating the chickens, it later came out) when they noticed what appeared to be a body in the bushes and discovered with alarm Jarod collapsed there on the ground. It was a particularly nasty and fast-acting virus that had completely wiped him out. (A few other people in town got it, but thank the good Lord it didn’t become an epidemic.) They thought he was off his head when he frantically told them to leave him and refused to let them take him to the doctor. He was halfway off his head as he raved about Centres and Miss Parkers and breadcrumbs, but they gleaned enough straight sense out of him that they took him straight to Andy’s house and smuggled him inside without anyone seeing. To anyone in Mayberry, Jarod was long gone. Aunt Bee had to be told, of course, and she cared for him as if he were Andy or Opie. Opie was just told to keep his mouth shut, but when Jarod explained some of the real story later that evening, Opie was eavesdropping outside the door. Maybe in the long run it was a good thing. He’d find it easier to keep quiet if he knew why and his sympathies were engaged than if he were just told to.
Andy could hardly believe the story, though he knew Jarod wasn’t lying to him. That children in his blessed United States of America should be kidnapped, held captive, and chased down like fugitives from justice when they escaped was beyond his comprehension. He had wanted to go straight to Raleigh, tell the story to any official who would listen, and get something done about it. He’d practically had to sit on Barney to keep him from doing so while Jarod explained why they couldn’t. In the end, he had made Jarod agree that when he was finally ready to bring the Centre to justice, he would let Andy up.
“See, I’m a father,” he said. “I know what it must be like for your father. And then I’m a policeman—and a justice of the peace. Justice, Jarod, and peace. That’s what I’m after, and not just in Mayberry.”
They hatched the plot together to keep Miss Parker locked up and off balance until safely out of town, but Jarod had made him promise not to judge her too harshly. “She’s a prisoner of the Centre, too. They succeeded in brainwashing her where they didn’t with me. You see, I had Sydney to raise me. She only had her father. Between the two, I’d take Sydney. I think she would, too, though she’ll never admit it.”
And having seen her, Andy knew what he meant. There was a whole lot more going on in that young lady than her hard, angry surface revealed. She had something of the look, too, of the boy who had lost everything. Maybe that was why he had played his guitar for her, too, because he knew he had a special touch with a guitar. It had an effect on people. It had had an effect on her, though just what he wasn’t sure.
When Andy stopped playing and pondering, he found he’d played Jarod to sleep. Not everybody could go to sleep to “Oh, Susanna” and “You Get A Line, and I’ll Get A Pole,” but Jarod wasn’t like most people. Maybe it was soothing to go to sleep to something lively and cheering. The boy Andy had known had liked to hear him play that kind of music, too. Andy wondered what had become of him, as he walked back to the jail. Maybe he should look him up.









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