The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (21 page)

It is an irony that Planktown, which supplied great northern cities with materials for building hundreds of plank roads,  had only one of its own, a five-mile stretch  connecting the old Torrington homestead with the new railroad line.  There is no record telling what the road’s purpose was, although it can be assumed that it was used to haul timber over difficult terrain.  The road, as well as the homestead, have been lost to the mysteries of time.

What did that mean?  That the location was lost?  That the old homestead had burned down or was reclaimed by the forest?  Well guess what, folks, I had found it, and I obviously wasn’t the first.

Was Krista the descendent of Cecil Torrington?  And could the compound be the original Torrington homesite?  Who owned it now, I wondered; then I remembered the maps Gina had brought over.They, too, were the jackpot; Gina had done great.

When Jack came back in about seven-thirty, I was hunched over the dining room table with the maps and a magic marker.  He dropped off some groceries in the kitchen, then took his camera bag into his—into Cindy’s—bedroom, where I heard him moving around for a few minutes.  When he came back he started unpacking the grocery bags.

“Watcha got there?” he asked.

“I’m trying to get an idea of who owns the woods in back of the pasture here.”

“Thinking of buying?” he asked.

“Who, me?  No.  Sorry, I’m a little distracted.  You want me to talk you have to give me coffee.”

Jack went to the coffeemaker and complied with my request, and in a few minutes he was sitting next to me at the table.  Although I had vowed not to involve Jack in what I was doing, I began telling him the goat story.  The truth is, I needed someone to talk to just then, and he was there.  When I finished telling him about trips into the woods and what I had seen there, I began explaining what I was doing with the maps.

“The first map starts right here at the location of Meekins’ Market.  What I’ve been interested in is who owns the property in back of it—in other words who owns The Clearing; who owns the place where I shot the rattlesnake, and, more important, who owns what’s further out?  Those two people I saw walking out of the woods—where were they coming from?”  I stopped and sipped from the cup of hot coffee and nodded toward the map.  “As you can see, most of the parcels are pretty big: fifty acres at least.  As I find out who owns each one, I’m outlining it with this marker and writing the owner’s name on the map.”

“Have you found anything interesting yet?” Jack asked.

“Lots.  Look, Gina got
two
maps from the Property Appraiser’s Office.  One for in back of Meekins’ Market and one for the neighborhood around my house.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, the two intersect.  See how one map fits right over the left side of the other?”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“With the winding dirt roads and squirrelly trails, I didn’t realize that I could walk out that path behind Meekins’ Market and eventually get to my back door through the woods.  It might take a lot of hours, and I’d have to take some twists and turns, but it could be done.”

“So who owns all that land in back of you there?”

“I do.”

“Not all of it?”

“Not all of it, no, but at least 400 acres, including 50 acres of pines.  A lot more than I thought I owned.  Well, actually, I didn’t know I owned any—my mother bought most of it when she and my dad moved out here and she put the land in my name.  But look here.  Look back at this other part of the map.  Clarence Meekins told me that he owned a few acres in back of the market.  That was the first thing I found that was weird.”

“Why was that weird?” Jack asked.

“He actually owns a thousand and six, so Clarence lied to me.  And he lied to me again when he told me that the paper company owned some of the land out there.  They don’t.  He also told me that a woman named Mae Barnes owned some property out that way.  She doesn’t; know why?  Because Clarence Meekins bought it from her seven years ago.”

“How do you know all this?” Jack asked.

“Gina got me a website for the Property Appraiser’s Office.  I call up a map of the county, pinpoint a certain area, then zoom in.  Every single parcel of land in Jasper County is on that map, along with who owns it and who that person bought it from.”

“Holy wow.”

“Here’s something else that’s weird,” I went on.  See these next five or six parcels in back of the one Clarence owns?  From the dates I found on line, the parcels have been bought up slowly over the last hundred years by the same family. 

“What family?”

“The same family that founded Pine Oak back in 1830.  I mean, I never knew there were even any Torringtons left until I met Krista the other day.”

“The girl with the gray horse?”

“Right.  I think she’s part of the original family.”

“Why?”

“Because I saw her earlier today.”  I pointed to a place on the map that I had outlined with a large red rectangle.  “Right here.”

“You walked out in the woods today?” he asked.

“Alikki got out and I had to go find her.”  I summarized my trip, describing the compound, the plank road, the gunshots, Krista, and her scarred companion.

“So how does all this connect to the goat?” Jack asked.

“I have no idea in the world.” I told him.  “But, somehow, it does.”

I had been working nonstop, with breaks only to feed and check on Alikki, whose teats were very distended and beginning to drip, so when Jack produced a glass of merlot while he cooked a spaghetti dinner, I was well content.

“Where have
you
been all day,” I asked him, moving my maps to the side and getting some dishes from the cupboard.

“Photo shoot,” he replied.  He was working with tomato sauce, sautéed chicken bites, green peppers, onions, and a few spices—all of which he must have bought when he was out.

“Photos of what?” I asked, amazed at his ability to take his work wherever he went, at his ability to
be
his work.

“I’ll show you in a minute.  Watch the sauce; it’ll still take fifteen minutes or so.  I have something cooking in the bathroom.  I mean, the darkroom.”  He disappeared into his bedroom. 

When he had been gone ten minutes, I went to the stove and finished the cooking.  I had just put the food on plates when he came back in.  He sat down and handed me a still-wet contact sheet with photographs of what looked to be a dozen teenage girls.  Different hair styles, different outfits, different expressions, doing different things.  “Who are . . .” I began, and then stopped.  Different degrees of makeup.  Different . . . One of the photos showed a girl dressed in a fashionable black gown, with black hair, dark black eyebrows, and bright red lipstick, in fact, the lipstick was the only color in the photo.  It was Becky Colley as she had never seen herself before.  “Jack, this is extraordinary!”  I said.  I looked closer.  Different outfits, different hair styles, different locations, different everything but subject. 
All
the pictures were of Becky Colley.  And every one of them showed a different side of the confused girl.

“She called my cell,” he explained.

“Where did you take these?” I asked.

“Either in her house or on the grounds outside.  Some of the outfits she had in her closet, some were her mother’s, some we went out and bought.”

“You were alone with a sixteen year old in an empty house?”

“Nah, her mother was with us most of the time.  Rebecca talked her into letting me do the shoot.  Is she sixteen?”

“I don’t know how old she is.  I don’t see any nudes here, though, so I guess it’s all right.”

“You know I don’t do those kinds of pictures,” he said.  “I saw her naked, though, because she changed clothes in front of me when her mother was on the phone in the kitchen.”

“You let her?” I exclaimed.  “Jack, don’t you know what kind of trouble—”

“Don’t worry about it, Sue-Ann,” he interrupted.  “I think it meant a lot to her to have me see her naked.  I told her she looked great naked, but between you and me I thought she was a little on the skinny side.”

The rest of the dinner was peaceful; I mean, if things can be peaceful on the outside while my mind was humming like a gyroscope.  We ate, drank wine, and puzzled together over the maps.  We did the dishes, and when they were put away, Jack was content to go back to his Zane Grey book while I went back to work.

As soon as I sat back down at my desk, I found an email from Panhandle Slim.  The petite cowboy sent me not only a brief bio on the eventual winners of the cowboy- mounted shooting event, but the entire list of the competitors, presumably so that I could see how many classes there were and how many competitors  were in each.  Or maybe he was expecting
The Courier
to print the whole list.  Dream on.  I pulled up the background piece I had written earlier, and spent a half hour plugging in details about the winners.  I saved the file and emailed a copy to Cal at
The Courier. 
I was printing out a copy of the finished story for my records, when Jack walked into the room in his boxer shorts and t-shirt holding another photo. 

This was a finished color glossy that showed Krista riding bust-ass for leather at the mounted shooting event.  She was racing toward the camera, pigtails flying, leaning toward the row of balloons with an expression of delicious freedom.  It was a photo that captured not only her delight, but showed the exact moment her pistol went off, a shower of hot powder grains spewing from the barrel toward an exploding balloon a few feet away.  “I printed this up for that girl we met,” he said.  “Maybe her boyfriend can give it to her.”

It was a wonderful photo and I considered asking Jack to make a copy for me.   Problem was, if I had copies of every one of Jack’s photos that I wanted, I’d have to empty my archery stuff out of the barn to make room for them.

“I’ll give it to her myself,” I told him.

“You’re planning on seeing her again?”

“Oh, yes.”

Jack seemed satisfied with that answer and went off to bed.  It had been a long day and I was tired, but before I could shut the computer down I heard another ding telling me I had email.  I clicked on it and was surprised to see what looked like a moving valentine—a throbbing heart—in the middle of the screen.  No words, just the heart.  I looked at the sender window.

It said ginette
@thecourier.com
.

I smiled.

Chapter 14

One of my favorite books is
Traditional Archery,
written by a stickbow lover named Sam Fadala.  I took a copy with me to the hospital on Monday morning in case I had to wait a few minutes before getting my stitches taken out.  Although it is a beginning book for recurve or longbow shooters, I enjoy going back through it every year or so to confirm some of my ideas or habits.  It contains a little history, a bit of practical lore, and many enjoyable suggestions.  This is the book that introduced me to stump-shooting, for instance.  What it avoids are the technologically advanced target bows that are used in the Olympics and most national championships.  And for good reason.  Olympic bows, with their long adjustable carbon stabilizers, counter balancers with weights for precision tuning, clickers, doinkers, plunger buttons, mechanical arrow rests, double-click target sights, and unbreakable carbon limbs, are to recurves what robots are to humans.  Whenever I shot one, I felt like a cyborg—and looked like one.

But shot them I did, spurred on by my old mentor Crookneck Smith.  When Crookneck had won the world championship back in the 1970s, they didn’t have all this folderol, but he had kept up with the newest innovations and encouraged me to upgrade.

“If you weren’t good enough,” he told me, “I wouldn’t say anything.”

And that was kind of nice.  Crookneck had long ago had to hock his championship bows for food and booze, but the archery store—which just managed to pay its own way—let him keep his hand in.  As I mentioned earlier, he once shamed me by mentioning that my equipment was not of the highest quality.  I suppose that’s one of the reasons I sold my Martin Mamba and bought a Hoyt Axis with its machined and forged metal riser.

But the higher the technology the closer we come to perfection, and when I shot my first perfect end at 30 meters and later broke 600 in a 72-arrow final at 70 meters, I felt like I had when I had shot Crookneck Smith’s souped-up compound half a dozen years before in his ratty little archery shop outside Huckleberry Spring, North Carolina.  I began to feel less human and more robotic and, after my sojourn in Sydney for the 2000 Olympics, I sold my target monstrosities and began relearning how to shoot naturally.  With my wooden bows I could strive to get better throughout my life knowing that whatever I achieved, I did it with steady hands, keen eyesight, and firm instinct.

“Doctor Morris will see you now.”

I looked up from my book with a start, then got up and followed the nurse into a small examining room.  Dr. Morris, brown hair disheveled as much in the morning as in the evening, stood waiting, holding his ever-present clipboard in both hands and his well-chewed pencil in his mouth.

“Mmm, mmmmph,” I said, as I entered.

He took the pencil from his mouth, grinned at me, and asked me to have a seat.

It was a fun visit.  He took out the stitches from my scalp, made some silly comment about my gorgeous, silky, long, dark tresses, and proceeded to ask me about how my medication was working out.  I was feeling better, getting stronger, and had decided to go with the radioactive iodine treatment option.  I told him I’d have to wait at least a month because of Alikki’s foal, which was going to be born any day and who I wanted to imprint without fear of giving it radiation poisoning.  This was all cool with Dr. Morris; in fact, it would give him more time to study the effects of the initial drugs.  Then, when he had replaced the small patch on my scalp, he looked at his watch.

“I’ve been here since five a.m.,” he told me, “and I haven’t had anything to eat.  Come on down to the cafeteria and I’ll buy you a coffee.” 

“Coffee?” I answered.  “How could I say no to that?”

The cafeteria had only a few tables and was kind of dingy, but I got a coffee, a yogurt, and a banana.  Dr. Morris had a breakfast that looked like it came out of a frozen package, but he seemed satisfied.  He looked at the book I had put on the table on top of my purse. 

“What’s traditional archery?” he asked.

“Shooting with wooden bows,” I answered.

“Aren’t all bows wooden?”

“They should be.”

“You shoot?”

“Some,” I said.  I really didn’t want to be long winded so I deflected the question by asking, “Did you know that archery is the national sport of Bhutan?”

“Where’s Bhutan?” he asked.

“Near Nepal,” I told him.

“Ah,” he nodded.  “Well, everyone should have a sport, but why did I get the impression that you were a soccer player?”

“Through an over-vivid imagination,” I smiled.  “Although I did eat at the same table with Mia Hamm once.”

“Really?” he asked.  “Where was that?”

“Long story that I don’t really want to get into right now.  But, I mean, we weren’t friends or anything.”

Dr. Morris concentrated on the last of his food, then looked up.  “Ever play golf?” he asked.

“Nope.  That’s a sport I missed out on.  Isn’t it kind of boring, though?”

“I guess it is for people who don’t play,” he admitted.  “But hey, look whose talking.”

I laughed.  “Point for you,” I told him.  “But if you think archery is boring, you should watch my other sport.”

“Other sport?”

“Dressage.”  It wasn’t an outright lie; after all, I
had
taken dressage lessons, although only a handful.  What was slightly disconcerting was the thought that I had subconsciously made the decision to start riding again—to actually start getting serious about dressage.

“You’ve got me there,” he said.  “Is it the national sport of Nepal?”

“It’s kind of like horse ballet,” I told him.  “My mother used to say that watching dressage was about as exciting as watching hair grow.  I won’t be riding for a while, though.  Why are you smiling?  Do I have banana on my face?”

“No.  You’re a careful eater.  I was thinking of something that happened at the golf course on Sunday.  Something not so boring.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Okay, you know what a driving range is?”

I nodded.  “It’s a practice area, right?  It’s got yardage markers.”

“Exactly.  At the Jasper County Country Club, the practice range is right near the second tee.  On Sunday morning I was carrying a bucket of balls out to the range.  There was a foursome on the tee and eight or nine players hitting balls at the driving range.  The guy next to me was an incredible golfer—beautiful swing, great follow through, and he was hitting a one iron, something that most people don’t even own.  He was hitting long, low line drives.  One of the guys on the second tee was just addressing his ball when this guy next to me smacks one right into the center of the 150-yard marker, and all of a sudden,
bong
!  It sounded like the Chinese army was being called into battle.  The guy on the second tee must have jumped three feet in the air and missed his tee shot completely.”

“Bong?” I said.  Something about Dr. Morris’ story sounded familiar.

He started laughing.  “The country club had just replaced the old wooden markers with Chinese gongs.  What a sound.”

“Gongs,” I repeated.

“Boy, was that guy on the tee pissed off.  But the number of people using the driving range has quadrupled in the last week.  They even have a new slogan: ‘Are you good enough to ring the gong.’”

I was amazed.  Benny had told me about those gongs; they were his invention.   Benny had actually sold one of his inventions, or more likely, he had told someone about it and
they
had sold it.  I had a lot more respect for the little guy.  I was going to mention this to Dr. Morris when his beeper went off.  He glanced at it, then told me, “Gotta go.  Ambulance just came in with an emergency.”

“Thanks for breakfast,” I shouted at his retreating figure.  “Or lunch.”

“My pleasure,” he shouted back.

I gathered up my purse and book and made for the exit, where I almost got knocked down by a red-headed man about twice my size. As I looked after him, thinking of telling him about himself, a man that could have been his twin sent me spinning in the opposite direction.

“I’m not a dreidel!” I shouted after him.

“Surprisingly, the second man stopped, turned, and asked in a puzzled voice, “What’s a dreidel?  Oh, hey there Sue-Ann.”

I suddenly recognized the man as one of Donny’s half brothers.  “Chad?  What’s going on?  Is someone hurt?  Has something happened to Donny?”

“Naw, Donny’s okay.  It’s Pop.  Tractor tire blew while he was trying to drive it out of a ditch and it fell over sideways, pinned him down.  It was all Tad and I could do to lift it up and get him out.  Broke his arm, maybe some ribs, too.”  He looked around and saw that his brother was talking to someone at the main desk.  “I want to help, but I guess there’s nothin I can do.”

“Just let the doctor do his work,” I told him.  “Come over here and sit down.”

Reluctantly, the big man trundled over to a bank of maroon chairs and couches set in a rough rectangle, and parked his bulk on one of the couches.  I sat nearby in a matching chair.  “I’m sure your father’s going to be all right,” I told him.  “He’s too tough an old bird to be hurt bad.”

Chad smiled wanly, then said, “You didn’t have to pull him out from under that tractor.  And darn it, I told him those tires were shot and not fit to drive on.”

At that point, Tad Brassfield joined his brother on the couch, and even though they sat at the ends, they filled it.  Both stand over six feet but look bigger because they each weigh over 300 pounds.  Because of their weight, both wear overalls most of the time.  Their tee shirts bulged in front and showed the dirt and sweat of having to dig their father out from under his machine.  Tad is older and slightly taller; Chad weighs more and has a beard to go with his unruly red hair.

Tad nodded at me.  “What are you doin here, Sue-Ann?” he asked.

“Fell and hit my head a while back,” I told him.  “Got the stitches out today.  Did you get your dad checked in okay?”

“I guess.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“I guess.”  Tad sat for a while, then looked up at me.  “You probably know that none of us have any reason to like the old man much.”  I kept silent and let him continue.  “But seein him lyin there, tryin to breathe, lookin up at me to help . . .”  He shook his head.  “And at the end of it, if he gets well and comes home, it’ll be the same all over again.  He’ll probably even blame us for not gettin him out soon enough.”  He stopped, gathering his words together in his head.  “Sue-Ann, Chad and I, we don’t think much, don’t have the time, but I’ve been wonderin the whole time we were drivin over here, what if he dies?  What are we goin to do if he dies?”

“You’re grown men, Tad,” I told him.  “You know the farm like the back of your hand.  You’ll both be fine.  Anyway, Ed’s not going to die.”

From his corner, Chad spoke up for the first time since Tad had sat down.  “We can’t let it be the same,” he said simply.

“What are you sayin?” his brother asked.

“I don’t know.  We need to get Donny.”

“Need to get him for what?” asked Tad.

“We need to get him,” Chad insisted.

“I’ll call him,” I said.

“That’s not what I mean,” said Chad.  “But yeah, I guess we should call him.”

Donny was working a wreck on the other side of the county, but he said he’d get to the hospital when he got free.  I sat with the brothers for another hour.  We didn’t talk much, but I got the idea that this was a changing point—that they dimly realized that from that day forward, their lives were to be different in some way.  It scared them and excited them at the same time.  They reminded me of draft horses—used to pulling plows and wagons—who were suddenly faced with being saddled.  When Donny came in, looking both pissed and worried, I got up and went to him.  I nodded my head toward Chad and Tad, “They need you,” I told him.  “I’ll call you later.”  Then I got in my truck and drove toward Pine Oak.  I had my maps on the front seat and I was on my way to
The Courier
offices to show Gina what I had found.

I felt no sympathy for Ed Brassfield, but couldn’t help feeling sorry for Tad and Chad, who were both suffering.  Well, if their father would die, they would be free.  That’s pretty blunt, pretty harsh, but true, and, although I tried to keep it deep in the back of my mind where it belonged, I wondered if my father had felt the same way when Cindy died.

To get my mind off the situation, I turned on the truck’s radio, set as always to the pirate station.  I heard a few songs without paying much attention.  Then my back went up as I heard the scratchy, whiny voice of The Creeper waffle up out of the speakers, sounding like fingernails on a saw.  I turned up the volume.

“Lot of people think they find supernatural beings in a church; or maybe they think they conjure up demons with black cats and bones.  One or two think they have angels on their shoulders, yas, but all these people are wiggy like mice.  You ask me where there are demons and I say they are in the swamps and the forests.  You ask me where there are spirits and I tell you that there are spirits in the trees. 

“Don’t you fools go near the old dead oaks in the woods.  They are the darkest; they hold the fiercest and oldest spirits of highwaymen and thieves; their bare branches are weapons.  Some of them got hung in those branches.  No, the dark trees you don’t want to mess with.  The trees don’t got eyes, but they see you just the same.