The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck

my grandfather but leaner and quite
     a bit shorter. His eyes looked like they belonged to a much younger man, but his face
     was nearly caked with dirt, and his full, speckled beard sprang from his face as if
     trying to escape. If I hadn’t been standing outside his farm, I’d have thought he
     was homeless.
    “Hello,” I answered, stopping a few feet away from him.
    “On your way from your pal’s house, are ya?”
    “Yes, sir,” I answered, uncomfortable that he knew where I was coming from.
    “I’ll bet you feel at home there,” he said with understanding.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Well, we’ve both got things to do and people to see. You have a nice evening.”
    “You, too,” I answered. I took a few cautious steps, then turned to see if he was
     watching me.
    He was.
    “Sorry to hear about your mother,” he said in a voice that had changed so drastically
     from what I’d just heard that it could have come from a different person. His eyes
     were fixed on mine, but his face appeared completely relaxed. “But all is well, son.
     All is well.”
    Those words, my grandfather’s words, instantly brought me back to Mom’s funeral. I
     couldn’t move or even look away; the man’s gentle face and deep blue eyes had transformed
     into something else. My mother’s face came to me so intensely that I could no longer
     see the stranger—I could only see the last few days of her life running backward in
     front of me.
    She was painted and peaceful in a cheap casket.
    She was tired and hurt in the car headed home from the farm.
    She was disappointed and humiliated standing over a sweater on my floor.
    She was forcing down a bitter square of Baker’s chocolate.
    Grief exploded within me, forcing out sobs and streams of tears, which poured down
     my cheeks. I sank to the ground and sat in the rough grass, cross-legged, with my
     face in my hands. I cried for the first time since my mother died.
    After my shoulders heaved for the last time, I looked through bleary eyes toward the
     fence and the stranger.
    I couldn’t believe it—he was smiling. He began walking back toward the farmhouse.
     Then he stopped and turned around, his eyes meeting mine. “Until we meet again, Eddie.”
     
    “Grandpa, who lives in that run-down farm next door?” I asked that night at dinner,
     still a little shaken from my earlier encounter.
    “Nobody, Eddie. It’s been vacant for six or seven years. The Johnsons still own it,
     but they moved back East.”
    “Well, somebody’s over there. A man was at the fence, and he talked to me.”
    My grandfather stopped chasing peas around his plate and narrowed his gaze. His bushy
     white eyebrows almost met above his nose. “What did he say?”
    I wasn’t sure whether or not to answer. “He was trying to be nice, I think. He knew
     I was coming from Taylor’s house, and he just wanted to say hello.”
    “What else?” Grandpa asked, noticing my hesitation.
    “He knew about Mom and said he was real sorry but that everything would be okay.”
    Grandpa looked over at my grandmother and then back to me. “Everybody knows everybody’s
     business on this road, Eddie, and I guess it’s possible some neighbor was checking
     up on the place.”
    “He kind of looked like he belonged there.”
    Grandma tried to hide it, but I caught her flash a worried expression to Grandpa.
     I knew the look well, because I’d seen it about a year earlier. We were sitting around
     thetable having dinner when the phone rang. Grandma answered and, without saying a word,
     gave Grandpa the same look that I’d just seen.
    A neighbor who lived at the end of the street was away and someone had broken into
     his house. As word spread, guys from the neighborhood ran toward the home—rifles in
     hand. They reached the Bauer farm just in time to catch the guy as he ran out the
     side door. They pinned him down and held him at gunpoint—actually, at eight gunpoints—until
     the police arrived.
    The cop could