The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (8 page)

“That’s probably it.  But are you sure you saw somebody?”

“Don’t treat me like I’m blind.”

“Awright, Sue-Ann.  You don’t need to get upset.  But it was probably just a couple of backpackers out for a Sunday hike.”

“How did you know they were wearing backpacks, Clarence?” I asked.

“What else would backpackers wear?” he asked innocently.

It was almost like the log had knocked some sense into me, because I was thinking more clearly than I had in months.  “Clarence,” I asked, “are you trying to tell me that you carried me for over an hour through the woods, and managed to bring my bow, my arrows, and a seven-foot rattlesnake at the same time?”

Clarence stiffened and I knew that something was going on.  “Now, Sue-Ann,” he stammered, “you just had a hard knock on your—”

Before he could finish, a woman dressed in white came into my peripheral vision.  Nurse or no nurse, I glared at Clarence, waiting for his “explanation.”  The woman spoke first.

“Sue-Ann!”  The voice made me forget about Clarence altogether.  I made the mistake of turning  my head too fast and the pain almost made me cry out. 

“Gina.”

“Mah gosh, Sue-Ann,” Gina said, out of breath.  She was dressed more simply that I had ever seen her: white jeans, white blouse, sandals.  Her hair was straight and tied back with an elastic band.  “Ah came as soon as ah heard.  Are you all raht?  Clarence, is she all raht?  Where’s the damn doctor?”  Gina took my hand and squeezed it gently.

“She’ll be fine, um, Ginette,” said Clarence, who looked totally surprised to see her.  “Just busted her head open a little.  The doctor had an emergency; said he’d be here in a few minutes.”

“How did you know I was here?” I asked her.

“Dilly Dollar called Cal at home,” she said.  “Told him you’d been in a serious accident.”

“But how did Dilly—” I began.

“He was at the hospital when I drove up,” Clarence said.  “He was writing up a report on some kind of abuse.  He helped the nurses get you on the gurney.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“Just that you’d had an accident.  Guess he thought I meant you’d crashed your truck.” 

“You didn’t?” asked Gina.

“No.  I just fell and bumped my head on a log.  It’s not that serious.  I’ll be—”

“It’s serious enough,” came an unfamiliar voice in the doorway.  I looked over to see a young man in a blue smock with a stethoscope around his neck.  He held a clipboard that he looked at as he spoke.  “You had a concussion and a laceration to your scalp that took ten stitches to close.  Plus various minor abrasions to your hands and face.  Aside from that you’re undernourished and probably anemic.”  He put down the clipboard, looked up, ran a hand through his already mussy hair, and smiled.  “But I’m glad you’re awake.  Are these friends of yours?”

“Yes, sure.  In fact, Clarence was just about to tell me—”

“We’ll have to talk about that another time, Sue-Ann,” Clarence said.  “I need to be gettin back to the market.”

“But you didn’t—” But Clarence had walked quickly from the room.  I looked at Gina.  “I’ve a bone to pick with that man,” I told her. 

“He may have saved your life,” said the man with the clipboard, who was now feeling my pulse, now listening to my chest, now looking into my pupils.  He looked at me quizzically.  “You seem to be feeling a lot better than you should be,” he said.

“I’m great,” I told him.  “Just a little headache.”

“You need rest,” he said.

“I’m resting,” I said.

“Without visitors,” he replied.

“Gina can stay,” I told him.

“Only a few minutes,” he said, looking at Gina, who nodded.  “Call if you need anything.”

“Right.  And hey,” I called after him. “Bring some more drugs when you come back.”  I looked back at Gina.  “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Now there’s somethin ah never thought ah’d hear you say,” she said.

“Me neither,” I admitted.

“Tell me what happened.”

For the next twenty minutes, I related everything I knew about what I had started to call the goat story.  From the phone call on Saturday night, my talk with Clarence, my visit to the bookstore, the pirate radio station, and so on.

“But I shot at the rattlesnake just when I thought it was getting ready to strike, so I jumped out of the way.  I remember tripping over something and evidently hit my head hard on a log.  Seems like I came to for a few seconds and . . . and, oh Gina,” I breathed, “there was a horse!  A magnificent gray horse!”

“A horse?” Gina asked.  “Where?”

“Standing over me. 
Watching
over me.  I only saw it for a second and everything was bleary, but it was a horse!  I think I tried to get up then, but I must have passed out again.”  I looked at Gina thoughtfully.  “You know, Clarence thinks I’m bonkers, or at least he pretends to think so, but he may be right.  I mean, I saw a horse, but there couldn’t be a horse out there.  There just couldn’t.”

“If you saw one, Sue-Ann, then there
was
one,” Gina said calmly.

“I’ve never seen you without makeup before,” I told her.

“I was in a hurry, darlin.”

“I like it, though.  You look, I don’t know.  You look pure.  Were you, um, at Cal’s when Dilly called?

“Ah was, yes.  Ah’m not now.”

“He asked you to come over and see if I was still breathing?”

“Course not; what do you think.  He wanted to come himself, but ah told him to let me come instead.  He’s workin on somethin, so he was glad enough to let me.  He
was
concerned, though. Told me to let him know if there was anythin he could do.”

“Call him and tell him to let me write my story.”  I smiled.  “Just kidding.  I don’t have half the information I need yet.”

“Tell me what happened after you saw the horse.”

“I don’t know.  I passed out and didn’t wake up until about half an hour ago.  Clarence saw my truck out back of his place and he came in the woods and found me.  But get this: he said he didn’t see the two people I saw when I was hiding.  He was lying, Gina.  He knew that they were wearing backpacks without my telling him.”

“But if he saw em, why wouldn’t he tell you?” Gina asked.

“I don’t know, but I’ma find out,” I said.  “Here’s another thing.  He told me that he carried me out of the woods.  That’s over a mile of heavy walking.  Maybe two miles.  Now Clarence is strong and he could probably do it, but he also brought out my archery stuff and a dead rattlesnake that must have weighed thirty pounds.”

“He told you that?”

“He sure did.  You want to know what I think,” I asked.

“What?” asked Gina.

“I think that those two people I saw helped him get me out.  It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Ah think you’re raht as raisin bran and not nearly as flaky.  But ah ask again: whah would Clarence lah about it?”

“Because he knows something he doesn’t want
me
to know.”

“Doesn’t want
us
to know,” said Gina.

“You want to help?”

“We’re friends, ain’t we?”

“I guess.  Alright, then.”

“So what do we do?” she asked.

“I’ve got a few ideas.  First of all, someone needs to go to the county courthouse and find out who owns all that property behind Meekins Market.  I’d say we have to go out at least ten, twenty square miles.”

“That’d be fun,” said Gina.

“Second, we need to check out certain hangouts.  Clubs, bars, things like that.”

“There’s not much of that in Pine Oak.”

“We’ll have to spread out over the whole county.  Maybe the next few counties as well.”

“What are we lookin for?”

“That’s where our third task comes in.  We need to find out whether or not there are any punkers in Pine Oak.”

“How do we do that?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.  Maybe ask around the high school.  We can can do it together.”

“When you’re better,” said Gina.

“Shit, speaking of better, my head is starting to fall off.  Where’s that doctor with those drugs?”

“I’ll get him on my way out.”

I felt my face falling.  “You’re leaving?”

“Ah need to get back. The paper’ll be goin to press to-naht.”

“Oh, right.”

She was silent for a few seconds, then looked me in the eye. “Maybe sometahm,” she began, “when you’re better, you and me can git together and have a girl’s naht out.”  She reached out and gently pushed a lock of hair out of my eyes and tucked it behind my ear.

I blinked.  “Are you hitting on me, Gina?”

“Mebbe yes, mebbe no.”

Without really thinking about what I was doing, I gave her hand a brief squeeze.  “Talk to me when I’m better,” I told her.

Chapter 6

I met Crookneck Smith for the first time just before the end of my second semester at University of North Carolina.  Crookneck ran a seedy hunting supply store outside Huckleberry Spring, but he was the only Martin Archery dealer I could find anywhere near my area.  I was driving a Jeep Cherokee that my parents had purchased used and given me as a high school graduation present, but the directions he had given me were squirrelly and it was almost dusk when I finally pulled up to the address.

The “store” was really one of those rectangular metal buildings that can be put up by a small crew in a day or two.  Although it had about the same square footage as Benny’s bookstore, it was both higher and wider and looked more like a long garage.  In fact it had electronic garage doors on each side.  Over the front was a sign older than I was with faded lettering that read “Crookneck’s Archery and Hunting Supplies.”  I looked closer and saw that the left side of the building had its own door, over which hung a new-looking sign that said “Tom’s Taxidermy,” so I assumed that there were two separate businesses in the same building.

A series of uneven paving stones connected the front of the building with a mobile home in the next lot.  There were no other businesses within miles; in fact, although I had passed several houses in the area, none were visible through the trees.  It seemed a lonely spot for a business.  There were no lights on in the building when I got out of my car and I hesitated whether or not to go in until I saw a gaunt figure limping down the sidewalk toward me.

“You Sue-Ann?” he asked.

“Mr. Smith?”

“Call me Crookneck,” he chuckled.  “We’ve talked on the phone so often I feel like we’re old friends.  Ye’ll have to ‘scuse my slowness but I had some surgery on my back a week or so ago.”

“I could have waited until next week . . .” I began.  Crookneck didn’t have a crooked neck, exactly, more of a buzzard’s neck, long and with a prominent Adam’s apple.  He looked to be in his mid sixties and his chin and cheeks were grizzled with stubble.  He was wearing a clean pair of jeans, ironed white shirt, and serviceable work shoes.

“Oh, I’m fit as a frying pan,” he said, reaching out to flip a switch that turned on a bank of overhead fluorescent tubes.  It took a few seconds of flickering, but soon the room was flooded in light.  If the place looked like a garage outside, it looked more like one inside.  The floor was concrete, unswept for months or years.  The walls were pegged with hunting paraphernalia—both for guns and archery—sights, grips, cases, straps, and the like.  A long and rough wooden bench held containers of arrowheads, nocks, inserts, vanes and feathers, and a heavy metal bowstringing stand was positioned within easy reach of the bench.   “I know ye’ve been anxious to get yer bow,” he continued.  “So I called as soon as it came in this morning.  Sorry ye couldn’t find a dealer a little closer to where ye live.”

“I talked to two or three others on the phone,” I told him.  “But you were the only one that wasn’t rude to me when I mentioned wanting a recurve.”

“Yeah, waal, traditional archery isn’t what it was when Fred Bear was alive,” he lamented, taking a long white box from a corner and placing it on the bench.  He took the top off and reached in for the bow.  “Ye know, I remember when ye could find a selection of these in any good archery store.  Now all ye find is compounds.  Here ye go,” he said.  “She’s a beauty.”

What he handed me was a new Martin Mamba recurve, sleek and dark with exotic African woods and a thirty-five-pound pull weight.  I almost gasped, although I’m not sure that people do that.  It was the most beautiful bow I had ever seen, although, to tell the truth, it was probably the first recurve I had ever seen up close.  I ran my hands up and down the smooth finish, looked at the gleaming tips, fitted the grip in my hand.

“How long ye been hunting?” Crookneck asked.

“Oh, I don’t hunt,” I told him.  “I’m just a target shooter.  I took an archery class last semester.  That was the first time I ever held a bow, but we had to use these old compound bows.  I loved the shooting part, but when I decided to buy my own bow, I wanted a nice wooden one.”

“Oh, ye’ll come back around to compounds eventually,” he said.  “And ye’ll get into hunting, too.”

“You think?” I asked.

“Here, let me show ye something.”  He took the bow from me and replaced it carefully in the box.  Then he led me to the back wall, where there were half a dozen new compound bows hanging on pegs.  “I’ll bet these don’t look like the ones ye were shooting in yer class,” he said, and he was right.  These were more colorful, more technologically advanced, like something out of the movie
Alien
.  I couldn’t help but admire their impossible twists and turns, their almost bizarre beauty.  Crookneck took one off the wall that was so black it could have been a stand-in for night, so black I expected to see his fingers disappear into its finish.  It had all kinds of things growing from it—a quiver, a sight that looked like eyestalks on an insect, a cigar-shaped stabilizer.  “Try this one,” he said.  “Don’t worry, ye can pull it okay.  I fixed this one up for my granddaughter and it has my special sight.”

“Special . . . ?”

“I’ve been tinkering with sights for years.  This one is exactly the same as I use on my own bow.”  He pointed out the back door toward a small shed about twenty or twenty-five yards away.  “That’s my target,” he told me, “that bale of cotton in the shed.  Ye see the black circle in the middle?”  I did; it was just smaller than a saucer.  He handed me an arrow.  “Go ahead and try to hit it.”

I nocked the arrow, but ran into some trouble because the bow was fitted with a wrist release aid and I had never used one—you didn’t touch the string with your fingers, just pulled back on a mechanical device attached to the string and pulled a trigger. To make things even more confusing, Crookneck’s special sight moved upwards as I pulled back the string, like it was on a small escalator.  But once I was able to fit the tiny red light to the pinhole of the sight, I pulled the trigger and it was almost like nothing had happened.  The string was back in place and the arrow was gone, although it had traveled so fast I hadn’t even seen it leave.

“Did I miss the whole shed?” I asked.

“Sure hope not,” he said.  “That’s swampland back there and those arrows are expensive.”  We walked to the shed and, to my surprise, the arrow had caught a good inch of the black spot.  Crookneck withdrew the arrow and chuckled. “Ye see, ye’ll come back to compounds by and by,” he said.  “And ye’ll feel the lure of the hunt.”  His faraway gaze seemed to take in the mounted deer heads on the wall.

I didn’t reply, but that moment was the one in which I decided that nothing would ever induce me to shoot a compound bow again.  What was the point?  With that kind of power and technological accuracy, there was literally no way to miss.  I wanted to do something hard; I wanted to be able to use my own senses to determine whether or not my arrow was aimed in the right direction.  And although, years later—when I was shooting in national competitions—I again began to forsake craft for technology, I never picked up a compound bow again.  And you were there when I killed the rattlesnake in the woods—the only animal I ever shot.  But Crookneck did influence my archery: you might remember that my own target—which I set up in the judge’s box outside my mother’s dressage ring—was patterned after Crookneck’s, cotton bale and all.

I no longer have that first bow, but I remember it with pleasure for all the practice I got in on it over the next year.  As I gained strength, I soon wanted a heavier bow and the more I shot, the more accurate I became.  And if I hadn’t been accurate in the woods, I probably wouldn’t have had to be taken to the hospital.  It would have been the morgue.

~  ~  ~

They kept me in the hospital overnight and, to tell the truth, I was glad they did.  The young man with the blue smock had given me a sedative and I went out pretty fast.

When I woke up it was morning and the man in blue was standing over me with a pencil in his teeth and a clipboard in his hand.

“Huh ah yuh eelin is ornin?” he asked.

“Take the pencil out of your mouth,” I told him, struggling to a sitting position, and propping a pillow behind my bandaged head.

“Sorry.  How are you feeling this morning?”

“Better.  Head still hurts, though.  Are you a doctor?”

“I am this week,” he smiled.  “Actually, I’m an intern.  You’re my first case.”

“Why does that make me uncomfortable?” I asked.

“No need to worry,” he told me.  “A
real
doctor was standing over me while I sewed up your scalp and prescribed your medication.”

“Has Gina been here this morning?”

“That your friend from yesterday?  The blonde?”

I nodded, which made my head hurt only a little more.

“I haven’t seen her.  She married?”

“She’s old enough to be your mother,” I said.  It was stretching the truth, but she did have almost ten years on him.  I looked at him more closely and realized that he was a good-looking kid.  Five-ten maybe, built kind of slight but well proportioned.  Sandy, wavy hair, neatly trimmed mustache. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Will Morris.”

“Well, Dr. Morris,” I said.  “If I see Gina I’ll give her your regards.  When can I get out of here?”

“Whenever you’d like, as long as you take it easy.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know, like go home and stay in bed for a few days.  Pop a few pills.”

“My kind of intern,” I smiled.

“One thing, though.”  I saw the seriousness in his eyes.  “I’d like to do a couple of tests before you leave.”

“What kind of tests?”

“Your friend—Gina—told me you were having some problems before you banged yourself up.”

“Well, maybe a few,” I admitted.

“I noticed a couple of things myself when you were brought in—mostly under your eyes and in your clothes.”

“My clothes?”

“They’re too big,” he explained.  I have a few ideas. Or, at least, I have
an
idea.  I just need to get a couple of blood samples.”

“What’s your idea?” I asked.

“Ah-ah, Holmes never divulges half-baked theories.  Wait until I get it out of the oven.”

“Is it cancer?” I asked.

He laughed. “No, not cancer.  I mean, you may have cancer too, but that’s not what’s causing your hair to fall out.”

“Why does that
still
not make me feel comfortable?” I said with asperity.

“Sorry.  I mean well.”  He thrust a hand through his hair and grinned.  “I have a few more patients to see, but I’ll send in a nurse practitioner to get blood samples.  Then you’re out of here.  But really, you’ll have to miss soccer practice for a few days.”

It was hard not to like Dr. Will Morris.  Even though I was old enough to be his mother.  Almost.  And he was as good as his word.  Inside of an hour I was tested, dressed, and being wheeled out the door.

But when I got out to the parking lot I realized that I didn’t have my truck.  It was still in back of Meekins’ Market.  And it wasn’t like I could walk home—the hospital is in Forester, twenty miles from Pine Oak.

I retraced my steps and went back inside to ask the receptionist to call me a taxi.  I didn’t really have anyone else to call; or maybe I just didn’t want to impose on them.  It was a good half hour before the taxi came and another half to get to Meekins’ Market, where I planned to confront Clarence again about the discrepancies in his story.  I paid the driver with a credit card I keep in the truck and walked into the market.  No sale there, though.  Gladys told me that Clarence had gone out, she didn’t know where, Tifton, maybe.  Watermelons.

When I got in my truck, I noticed that Clarence had put my bow on the back seat and covered it with an old blanket I sometimes used to keep my legs warm on long drives.  The snake was nowhere to be seen.

It occurred to me that I still had unfinished business in the woods—the rattlesnake had stopped me before I had finished following the trail.  My scalp told me that it would have to be another day, so I started the truck and drove the few miles home.

But the goat story stayed with me and when I walked through my front door I half expected to find the floor covered with voodoo symbols and bloody fingerprints.  Instead, I found my phone light blinking and I recognized Jack Stafford’s number on the ID.  With everything that had been going on, I had forgotten about Jack’s first call.  But deep down I had been hoping he would give up trying to contact me.  He had been one of the reasons I left Richmond, but at that time I had been so muddled in my own mind that I wasn’t sure why I had to get away.  No wonder Jack was confused.  He was a patient man and had waited almost a year before trying to contact me.  Still, I wished he hadn’t; I still didn’t feel rational enough to deal with him.  I pushed the play button.

“Sue-Ann.  I haven’t heard from you so I got a map to your place from Google.” 

There was a click as he broke the connection.  That was it.  Jack was coming to Pine Oak.  But he hadn’t said when.  I suppose I could have called him back and told him to stay away, but I didn’t have the energy; in fact, I turned off the ringer and went into the kitchen.  I opened a can of Pepsi and took one of the pills I had gotten from Doctor Will.  I turned the radio on, but the pirate station was off the air.  I was restless, needed something to do with my hands and my mind so, gathering up some courage, I went into my mother’s room and began the long, slow process of putting her things in order.