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?a??f&*Here at the Resort by Joanne Johnston Francis 40 Where we live it's nice enough that strangers don't always leave when it's time to go on back where they come from. And some of these strangers just settle in, and we don't always find out why they're here-it isn't our business. But one of them, our strangest stranger, tells only her name-Juanita, and where she's from-Texas. Period. It's all the more she'll say about herself those first times she comes out to the house with me. For a good little while Juanita won't sit anywhere either, just perch like a bird on the next-to-top step where the brick is always dropping off in the flowers. She's bright as a bird too, in her greens and blues and reds and yellows, and her thin little pecan-colored legs laced up in African-looking barefoot snoes, and her dark black eyes and dark black hair. And Granny took right to her, you can tell it, and ditto our stranger to Granny. Now, our neighbor woman, for reasons unknown, has the idea a girl that don't say a whole lot must be a hungry girl. She's wanting her to take food all the time, and Juanita always has to say no to Pearlie offering a thus and so to eat. Pearlie does her about like you would a stray dog even knowing Juanita stays in number fifteen at the tourist lodge where I am the dishwasher woman. It's my idea going on the fishing expedition -finding out about her by asking simple little questions she can answer with a headshake. For instance, I ask is she from Dallas. She answers no. So, I ask her has she been to Dallas-I am thinking in my head of that South Fork place on the TV. She still answers no. So, I ask her would she like to go to Dallas one day, and she answers a kindly peevish no, plus a headshake, which causes me to back off on Dallas. Then Pearlie commences with her list. Does Juanita like mountains? She say oh, yes to that one, and it's a good thing she does for it's where she's at-in the mountains. Did she come by car or on the bus, Pearlie goes on. She gets two more nos. On a motorcycle? No, again. I am about to ask did she fly here-we have an airstrip mostly for flying dope here lately, but Granny's taking her turn. Are all of the Texas girls as pretty and sweet as her she asks when she knows for dadgum sure they're not. We wouldn't ever of met her in the first place either had I quit cigarettes like Granny would have me do. On the day I met her I'm smoking on the stoop behind the restaurant, generally minding my business, and here Juanita comes through the bushes. She goes quiet as bark on a tree when she sees me, but I explain how it's just old burns I got when the cookstove went through the floor and the water in the kettle came down a boiling rain on me. She is wanting to feed the ducks on the pond, she says. Each word she says is like they slide off of her tongue someway, and lots I don't get what they are. But I slip inside and get some bread ends for the ducks and give her. The next day, on the off-chance she will want to, I go by number fifteen after work and ask would she like to go walking . At first I don't think she will go or even remembers the funny girl with the duck food. But then she decides to come along with me. And after that we go walking most every night, rainy or fair. Sometimes we'll follow the lodge road to its end and the empty old house down there, its tire gardens still blooming peonies and running with sand ants. Or we may slip through...

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