Harvestman Lodge (41 page)

“I’d much rather be behind the camera than in front of it, so I understand,” Melinda replied.

“When will they get the documentary started, sir?” Eli asked.

“Matter of fact, Miss Piebird and me are meeting with one of them folk today,” Buster said. “Why you think I’m wearing my new jeans?” He motioned down at the denim-clad stalks that served him for legs, just like Custer’s.

“Today, huh!” The newsman in Eli was beginning to stir. “Where do you have to go to meet him?”

“Right here where I stand. He said he wanted to talk to me and my lady in our ‘natural surroundings,’ and asked if there was a little local store or caf
é
or some such they could meet us at. And here we are.”

“So you’ll be interviewed right here?”

“I guess so.”

“Is your cousin joining you?”

“Not today. It’s just me and Miss Piebird. There’ll be a whole bunch of interviews done, they’ve told me. They’ll catch Custer on his own later, then they’ll stick us together and talk to both of us. And get a lot of footage of us dancing. We’re scheduled to dance at the Fourth of July parade around the courthouse, anyway, so I’m sure we’ll see the TV folk then.”

“Good luck with it, Buster,” Melinda said, smiling up at the lanky ginger-complexioned man.

“Thank you. You two just out for breakfast this morning?”

“We both have an interest in old historic buildings,” Melinda said, “and we’re looking around at some today. Including the house where Eli’s grandparents lived on Harmony Road.”

“Never knowed nobody who lived on that road,” Buster said. “But it’s a pretty drive. Me and Miss Piebird have drove up and down it a lot in the fall, when the leaves turn. Who was your granddaddy, son?”

“Will Keller.”

“Heard of him, never knowed him.”

A few moments more of chatting and Buster returned to his booth, leaving Eli and Melinda to finish their breakfast without further interruption. After a stop in the restrooms, they returned to the Bronco and headed out to begin their day of exploration. They pulled out of the parking area just as an olive-green Range Rover with Knox County plates and an East Tennessee Public Television bumper sticker entered it and came to a stop.

“There’s your PBS man,” Eli said.

“Obviously,” Melinda replied. “Those PBSers are Range Rover kind of people – those who were clever enough to marry rich, anyway.”

“Exactly. Hey, that prompts a question: are you just running around with me because you think I’m a rich author, Melinda?”

“You’ve figured me out, moneybags.”

“I should have known.”

“Actually, it’s not money. I just like the way you fill out your jeans.”

“Well, if filling out jeans is what you’re looking for in a man, there’s a dude in the
Clarion
mailroom you’d probably want to meet. Thunky Fincher. Yeah, that’s his real name, or at least the only one I’ve ever heard him called: Thunky. That dude fills out his pants like nobody you ever saw.”

“Oh my!”

“Yep.” Eli grinned slyly. “Four hundred pounder. Balloons his clothes all the way around. I bet his belt size is seventy inches.”

“Oh … that guy? I’ve seen him before, standing on the loading dock behind the newspaper office. He’s a big, big old boy.”

“He is. Probably sets off earthquake detectors when he walks to his mailbox. Whole different species than the Crosswaite cousins.”

“Yeah,” Melinda said. “If you stood those twin cousins together on the same scale you’d probably be lucky to register two hundred and fifty combined pounds. Skinny, skinny men.”

“Speaking of the Crosswaites, Melinda, I’ve met each of them only once, but already I can understand what people mean when they talk about how different they are even though they’re also just alike. Buster seemed very quiet compared to Custer. Hey, tell me something: are they really named Buster and Custer, or did they give themselves rhyming names for show-business purposes?”

“It’s their real names. Their mothers were twins and were pregnant at the same time, and I guess they thought close-matching names for close-matching babies seemed to fit the circumstances.”

“What were their fathers named?”

“Their fathers were twins, too, you know. I’ve only heard their fathers’ nicknames, which is what they always went by. Custer’s dad was known as Fire-Pop, and Buster’s was Hotshot.”

“Oh my gosh.”

Silence held a few moments.

“Thunky, huh?” Melinda said.

“Yep. Chunky Thunky.”

They drove on, nearing Harvestman Lodge Road.

“SO TELL ME AGAIN about that ‘rising angel’ thing in the crazy woman’s exhibit hall,” Eli said as Melinda drove them up the same road Lundy had taken during Eli’s introductory tour of Kincheloe County communities. That felt long ago to Eli now.

“Well, she wasn’t exactly clear about it,” Melinda said. “She might call it the ‘Hall of History,’ but there’s more mystery than history to the thing. Maybe some hysteria, too. I did tell you there’s one part about a flying saucer, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“As regards Harvestman Lodge, the only particular I could come away with was that the scandal of the place involved in some way a tragedy involving a child. Erlene’s ‘angel,’ which she represented with a little angel figurine hanging on a thread so it seemed to be flying heavenward above the model of the lodge building.”

“Implying that the child, whomever it was, died in the lodge?”

“It was unclear. And … here we are, Harvestman Lodge Road ahead!”

“Gotta wonder what happened there, and why everybody is so clammed up about it.”

“I doubt we’ll find any answers just looking at the building.”

“Yeah, but I still want to explore it. Don’t you?”

“You know I do. And here we go.” She made a turn onto Harvestman Lodge Road.

BACK IN TYLERVILLE, CURTIS Stokes was leaving town, on foot as usual, and heading toward the county line. Beyond it, a neighboring county, a neighboring town, and a library where Curtis would find the woman he valued above all others, the only one he’d ever felt truly accepted him, without negative judgment, as he was.

Kendra Miller was younger than Curtis, though not by much. He’d known her only a short time before he’d become enraptured by her. It wasn’t her beauty, because what Kendra might have possessed of that had largely faded, worn away by time. They’d talked enough for him to know life had not been easy for her, but details she shared were few.

What Curtis did know about her, though, was what she had grown to be: a wonderful, beloved, warm person who seemed to be interested in him in a way that involved not a trace of condescension or unwanted pity. She treated him as worthy of appreciation and affection. But that affection, he feared, could never be of the sort he might dream of … a woman who could embrace him as her partner in life … a lover or even a spouse. If only it could be … if only. Try as he would, though, he couldn’t see himself as worthy.

Back in the first half of the 1960s, he’d dwelt in the same house as Kendra for a time, though only briefly and merely as a housemate. And not with her alone. She, like Curtis, had been granted refuge by kindly old lawyer-turned-hermit Coleman Caldwell, living in his overgrown house with him, hiding from the world like Caldwell himself did. It would have made Curtis happy if that shared life could have gone on far beyond the brief time it actually had. Caldwell, though, had known that Kendra would need to be able to make her own way in life, and support herself when he was no longer around to do it. So Caldwell had made phone call after phone call, called in favors, pulled strings, explored the extensive personal and professional networks he’d created during his active attorney years. He’d finally found work for Kendra through a younger cousin living one county over, the Head Librarian of Handrick Memorial Library. Kendra would work in the back of the library building, repairing damaged volumes with glue and binder’s tape, and if she demonstrated an ability to do it, reading aloud to children through the library’s “Listening Ears” program. For the first days of her work in the library, Caldwell had driven the seemingly sickly Kendra (she was a frequent victim of nausea and dizziness at that time, Curtis had noticed) to her job and fetched her back to Tylerville again at day’s end … a time-consuming, gasoline-wasting commute. When it became clear that she was taking happily to her work and even discovering new talents through it, Caldwell helped locate an apartment for Kendra with walking distance of the library. With that development, she had moved out of Caldwell’s house and out of Curtis Stokes’s life, except for those times Curtis made the long walk to see her, or talked Caldwell into driving him over.

During one of those visits some weeks after Kendra started her job, Curtis had realized the truth of why she seemed sickly. He found her taping up damaged book spines back in her work area, her midsection thickening and her face broadening and puffy. “I’m going to have a baby, Curtis,” she said. He’d asked her how that could be, since she had no husband, and she’d told him it was just something that happened sometimes. She told him further to be careful what he said in the presence of other library staff; she’d told them that she was married but being divorced by her husband. That way, she said, they were willing to let her go on being the Listening Ears Story Lady, because it was okay to be pregnant if it was a husband who got you that way, but not otherwise.

NOW TWO DECADES past those earlier days, Curtis knew there would be no more hitching rides with his benefactor to go see Kendra. Coleman Caldwell of 1985 was an aging man in fast-declining health, afflicted with diabetes, hypertension, arthritis. His driving days were over, other than short hops to medical appointments. Apart from catching occasional lifts from other helpful folk, Curtis would be afoot from here on out when he went to visit Kendra.

It did not bother him to walk. He’d walked his way across town, county, and region for years, and rather enjoyed it, apart from the pole shadows. And even those, unpleasant as they were, were nothing that actually harmed him. A grip, a spasm and jolt, and he was through, shaken but uninjured. And many times he could avoid the shadows simply by passing by the pole on its sunlit side.

He’d learned how to survive his own peculiar world, Curtis Stokes had, and he took a certain private pride in that. A man had to find something in his life to take pride in, however small it might be.

Before him on this morning was a long stretch of roadside almost completely free of pole shadows. The sky was overcast, freeing him from searing radiant heat, and the day was on the cool side, unseasonably so. It looked like rain might come later. No problem for Curtis. If he found shelter he’d take it until the rain passed. If not he’d just keep walking. It was only water, after all. Nothing to hurt a man.

Walking was fine, dry or wet. Still, a ride was awfully helpful when it came along.

He was just beyond the town limits when a car slowed and a window rolled down.

“Curtis Stokes? Can I give you a lift? Where you headed?”

Thank you, Lord,
Curtis said inside his mind as he nodded brightly and reached toward the latch on the car door.

Once in the seat he looked more closely at the forty-something woman who had just given him a ride. “Oh,
now
I know you!” he said. “You looked familiar, but it took me a minute to remember. How have you been, Mrs. Tate? It’s been a good while since I’ve seen you.”

“It has, hasn’t it? I’m glad I ran across you here. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to see Kendra Miller, my friend who tells stories to children and repairs books at the Handrick Memorial Library across the county line. You going anywhere near there?”

“I am now. I’m just out taking a drive for the sheer joy of it today, and maybe do a little shopping if I run across something, so I’m glad to go pretty much anywhere.”

“I ’preciate the ride a lot, Mrs. Tate.”

“I guess I need to tell you, Curtis, that the Tate name isn’t mine anymore. I’m divorced and back to my maiden name. Losing the Tate name isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t a name held in the highest esteem around Tylerville. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Curtis said, though he wasn’t really sure about what “esteem” meant. In these kinds of situations he usually simply smiled and pretended.

“Nice day for traveling,” he said, just to make conversation.

“I don’t guess you get to ride all that much, do you, Curtis? Usually I see you out walking.”

“Yeah. But it’s okay. I like walking. And a doctor told me once it keeps me healthy and strong. And he told me the pole shadows ain’t actually doing me no harm, even when I hit one, and I ought not worry about them. Just walk and enjoy walking, he said, and forget about pole shadows. But I still worry about them.”

“Walking’s good, Curtis. But riding’s fun and comfortable. Especially when you’ve got air conditioning in your car on a hot day.” She flipped the AC control a notch higher.

Curtis let the chilled air from the vent bathe his face. “Yeah, that’s nice. Thank you for giving me a lift, Mrs. Tate – uh, I mean, Miss Goode. You’re a mighty nice lady.”