Harvestman Lodge (57 page)

“Huh? How do you mean?”

“Remember where we were the first time you saw Curtis? Coming back into town after our trip out to Reunion Church. And we had gone past your grandparents’ old place? We came across the city limits and Curtis was walking there.”

“I remember.”

“Curtis was there again today, walking again. Just as many pole shadows as that other time. And he was marching right through them without so much as a wiggle. Just like you or me or anybody else would. I nigh drove into a telephone pole when I saw it. I had to stop and ask him about it. Lord have mercy, you wouldn’t believe it!”

“What did he say to you?”

“He says he’s cured himself of it. Pretty much all at once. He just talked himself out of it, apparently. But he gives most of the credit to his girlfriend. Yep, Curtis Stokes has a girlfriend.”

“Who is she?”

“I’ve heard her on the radio some, reading children’s stories like she does at one of the libraries hereabouts. She’s the Listening Ears Story Lady. Name of Kendra somethin-or-other, I believe. I don’t know her.”

“How did Curtis, of all people, hook up with her?”

“We didn’t get that far. But he says she’s an angel, and that he hopes he’ll marry her someday. He says they’ve even talked about it.”

Eli laughed, not mockingly. He was authentically happy to hear Curtis was moving beyond his prior limitations, particularly in regard to his mental illness. Amazing!

“And here’s the thing,” Lundy went on. “That ain’t the only surprises Curtis had to share. He’s getting a job.”

“Like a real one? Not just selling pencils?”

“A real job. He says that Amber Goode over at Spears-Hinkle has worked it out to get him work there. Work on the line. He starts next week. Apparently now that he’s not afraid of pole shadows anymore, he thinks of himself as a normal fellow. One who can work a real job and have a girlfriend and all that.”

“Well, good for Amber Goode, whoever she is.”

“I’ll tell you who she is.” Lundy spoke a little more softly. “She’s a downright tramp slut is who she is, especially when she was young. She was for a time the night clerk at the Winona – yep, right here – and folks said she’d get with anything that walked in wearing pants they were willing to lose for half an hour. She ran with a gaggle of girls who were as loose as she was. Most of them grew out of it, bringing along a few illegitimate kids as souvenirs, but from what I hear of her, Amber’s still just as trashy as ever. She married into the Tate family, which is not much different than taking a bath in a septic tank, but that marriage I don’t think lasted. Last story I heard was that she got free of her husband, went back to her maiden name, and is still working at Spears-Hinkle. But I don’t know anything about her first-hand … she’s nobody I’ve ever had any dealings with. If I saw her on the other side of the street I’d know who she is, and she’d likely recognize me, but we’d probably not so much as wave or nod, ’cause we don’t really know each other.”

“With her kind of reputation, that might be a good thing.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I can tell you this: there’s one man in town here who probably hopes he never runs into her in a public place, with people watching.”

“What do you mean?”

Lundy looked around and softened his voice even further. “It’s pretty widely known that she and the future governor wore out a mattress or two together a few years back.”

“Future governor … you mean – “

“Benton Sadler. Yeah.”

“Wow. Not too good a political advertisement for Mr. Family Values, huh?”

“Right. And he’s smart enough to know it. He broke it off with her, and my wife’s sources tell her it just about killed the gal. She really counted on him leaving his wife and marrying her. She probably figured she’d be living in the governor’s mansion one day as the first lady of the state.” Lundy pictured that a moment and chuckled. “Benton might make a decent governor, but Amber Goode as first lady … Lord! God help Tennessee if that ever happened!”

“YOU’RE KIDDING ME, RIGHT?”

Melinda was speaking in the hallway of Hodgepodge, near the vending machine that had facilitated her first meeting with Eli. Eli had just shared with her news she could scarcely believe.

“No. Lundy swears it’s true. He saw it with his own eyes, and talked to Curtis personally. You wouldn’t think a lifetime of dodging shadows like that could be just thrown off so easily … but then, maybe it wasn’t easy. Maybe it just took his lifetime so far to get past whatever caused him to go, well, Curtis-crazy to start with.”

“Whatever, I’m glad to hear it, if it’s true. And especially glad to hear about the job, and the girlfriend. I wonder how old she is?”

“That I don’t know. I think Curtis is in his early forties, maybe. She’d probably be about his age, or maybe some younger.”

“Or older.”

“Well … yeah. I guess we just don’t know.” He paused. “I can tell you one thing I do know, though.”

“What’s that?”

“What we’re doing for one of our next Saturday journey adventures.”

“Oh? What’s that, then?”

“We’re going to Pigeon Forge. Silver Dollar City.”

“You got more royalties in the mail, I take it?”

“I did not. But I’ve got some left from the first round. And I learned something from Mary Helen Truxton at the paper. I found out that Silver Dollar City gives free admission to anyone with a valid Tennessee Press Association press card. Plus one guest. All you have to do is go to a particular window at the entrance. Hello, Saturday!”

“And the guest, I presume will be me?”

“Actually, I was thinking of taking Chunky Thunky from the mailroom.”

“Of course.”

“But come to think of it, I think Saturday is buffet day at Tylerville Pizza Express. Thunky won’t want to miss that. I guess I’ll settle for you.”

“I feel so honored. What’s the weather forecast for Saturday?”

“Inaccurate, typically. So who cares?”

“Right answer. I accept the invitation. Sounds like fun.”

“Thunky’s loss, then.”

“Poor Thunky.”

MELINDA WAS CALLED TO make a quick run to a Kincheloe County elementary school late in the morning. The lieutenant governor was visiting the school and planned to read stories to third graders as a symbolic gesture in support of a new state education initiative designed to promote storytelling. The whole thing had come together almost spontaneously, which accounted for the lack of advance notice.

Melinda was on her way out the door when Feely made an unexpected appearance, parking beside her Bronco. “What? You’re leaving? Is this not when Mr. Hawes is coming to talk about his old investigation of Harvestman Lodge?”

“Sudden assignment,” Melinda explained. “I was going to sit in and hear what he said, but you’ll have to take my place.”

“Will do. Good luck with your assignment.”

“SO WHAT HAVE YOU HEARD about my investigation of the Harvestman Lodge matter?” Hawes asked, sitting dead center in Eli’s office. Feely was in a chair near the door.

“Not much,” Eli said. “Only what David Brecht told me, and he’d picked that up from his father and what little bit the
Clarion
carried of your statement about it.”

“If I recall, my statement was one of those that didn’t say much but tried hard to sound like it did.”

“Uh, as David quoted it, yeah.”

“Well, I thought that was the thing to do. There was so much Harvestman talk at that time, just about all of it speculative garbage. I was under pressure to say something, but we hadn’t been able to pin anything down. It’s hard for a man of the law to go public admitting he’s got nothing. That’s when the jargon sets in … when there’s nothing real to say.”

“Did you really have nothing? Or just nothing you felt you could go public with?”

Hawes frowned. “Have you been talking to Carl?”

"Carl Brecht? No sir. Not about this. The one time the subject came up in his presence, he was quick to shut down the conversation. But I have heard David say he believes Mr. Carl might know more than he's said, and implied he would have gotten that information from you."

"That would be true. In my sheriff days I found Carl to be a trustworthy man, and one willing to listen to reason. The default mode of journalists is to find a fact, or a supposed fact, and reveal it on the grounds of some perceived 'right to know.' As a citizen I understand and agree with that. As a man of the law, I had to temper that sometimes with other public rights: the right of citizens not to live in a state of fear. Tell people too often that they are surrounded by danger, or especially that their children are in danger, and a state of panic sets in. Then that becomes a danger all on its own, people scared and overreacting and misreading the world around them … sometimes a man of the law knows that the best to be done, when the facts are unclear or too limited, is to let the public's right to a peaceful existence override, if only for the moment, their right to know this or that set of facts. Carl is one of those rare newspaperman who understands that, and is willing to apply that principal when such times come up. The panic over Harvestman Lodge was one of those times."

"So why are you talking to me now?" Eli said.

"You are not questioning me for journalistic reasons, right?"

"That's correct. My interest is to understand the situation for possible fictionalization in a future novel."

"False names, false locations, all that?"

"Yes sir. All that."

"Well, there's my reason. Just because it was best to keep some facts under wraps back when the Harvestman rumors were flying high does not mean everything should be kept under wraps forever. But sometimes truths are best presented one step removed from the real world. It allows people to wrap their minds around the a situation without that panic factor. Do you get what I'm saying?"

"I think so, but I'm not sure."

The aging former lawman coughed, expressed a need for a soft drink, and rose to go into the hall and get one from the machine down by Melinda's office. Eli and Feely, from the vantage point of Eli's office doorway, watched Hawes buy his cola, open it, and sip from the can. Hawes moved down from Melinda's office a short distance and stared intently at the always-closed door to the room that had never been turned into office space, the empty room that Jimbo Bailey had declared would be empty forever. Hawes shook his head as if thinking something unpleasant, then came back up toward Eli's office. Eli and Feely scurried back to their former places.

“Pardon the interruption, gentlemen,” Hawes said as he settled into his chair again, happier now that he had a soft drink to sip. “Every now and again I have to keep my whistle wet or I take to coughing. Now, where were we?”

“You were about to explain about truths sometimes being best presented ‘one step removed’ from the real world.”

“Yes, yes. Before I explain that statement, let me give you a little more biography of myself. You are not the first published novelist to live and work in Tylerville, Mr. Scudder. Are you aware of that?”

“I’ve been told that Coleman Caldwell, the retired lawyer, had some success as a novelist quite a few years back.”

“Indeed he did, and that was what I was coming around to. Coleman had a penchant for writing detective and police procedural fiction, and felt the need for someone he could consult, when needed, for details.”

“Was it you he turned to?”

“It was. We were friends, he and I. I was pleased to serve as consultant for Coleman when he needed my help. Providing support for a work of literature, however popular or even lurid it might be, appealed to me. It may be surprising, but I am a reasonably educated man. I hold a master’s degree in criminal justice, and made significant progress toward a doctorate of jurisprudence, though financial difficulties and the intervention of marriage cut that process short.”

Feely spoke for the first time. “Rudy, I’m not surprised to hear this. Your education actually does show, in your vocabulary and speech patterns, not to mention the obvious fact that you think at a much more philosophical level than most.”

“I agree with Rev,” Eli said. “You’re a long way from the stereotype of the ‘Yo in a heapa trouble, boy’, pot-bellied Southern sheriff.”

“Which is probably why I was elected to only one term. I’d have been better off to be a bit more stereotypical. Some voters thought I was ‘uppity’ or ‘snooty,’ even though I grew up on a local farm. They thought I was a college boy type who’d gotten above his raising. All I was, really, was someone who was privileged to take advantage of some of the opportunities life brought my way, thanks to the hard work of my parents. Those opportunities included being a beneficiary of the academic world, where I learned an appreciation for creativity, imagination, art and literature. So even though my friend Coleman Caldwell’s novels were generally perceived as category fiction, I was able to appreciate the craftsmanship they reflected. It seems to me that only a few writers achieve the status of artist, but many more reach the state of being skilled craftsmen. And craftsmanship, in itself, is an achievement worthy of respect.”