"The Stranger"
by Chris Van Allsburg
Farmer Bailey was driving his truck on a beautiful fall day. Suddenly he
heard a noise. He thought he had hit a deer. He jumped out of the truck. It wasn't
a deer. It was a man! The man looked at him with terror. He seemed shocked
but not hurt. Farmer Bailey took the man home with him.
He and Mrs. Bailey sat the man on the parlor sofa. They asked him
questions. It seemed that the man just did not know how to talk. And he was
dressed in very strange clothing. Mrs. Bailey asked a doctor to check the man.
The doctor said the man was fine, but he did have a bump on his head, so he
might have lost his memory. Then the doctor handed Mrs. Bailey his
thermometer. "Please throw this away," he said. "It won't go above zero. It must
not work."
Mr. Bailey gave the man some of his own clean clothes. The man seemed
to have difficulty with the buttons. At dinner, he seemed fascinated by the steam
rising from the hot soup. He watched the Bailey's little girl, Katy, blow on the soup
in her spoon to cool it. The man copied her. At the same time, Mrs. Bailey felt a
cold draft!
The stranger stayed for weeks. He worked in the fields. He worked hard
but never got tired. Over time he became less timid with the family.
Mr. Bailey began to notice that the weather was odd. It had felt like fall
before the man came. But now trees stayed green. And it was as warm as
summer.
One day the stranger noticed that the trees to the north were colored
orange and red. The green trees around the Bailey farm seemed drab to him. He
thought something was wrong. He idly picked a green leaf and blew on it. It
turned red.
The next day he dressed in his old clothes. He had tears in his eyes. The
Baileys realized that he was leaving them. He hugged them all. They went
outside to wave to him. But he had disappeared. It was suddenly cold out. And
the trees had changed color.
The man did not return. But every fall after that, the Baileys' trees stay
green longer than their neighbors' do, and then they change color overnight. And
the Baileys know they'll find a note etched in frost on the window. It always
says, "See you next year."
From The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg. Copyright © 1986 by Chris Van Allsburg. Reprinted by permission of
Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Pearson Education.