A Valley to Die For (3 page)

So she said, “If that’s an invitation, may I call you about 3:30? I’ll know by then how my work’s going. I would enjoy eating out.” She bit off saying “thank you,” hearing JoAnne’s voice warning her that thanking a man for something you wouldn’t thank a woman for was subservient.

Instead, she finished, “See you at the meeting,” put the phone down, and went to sit in her chair again. Henry didn’t know JoAnne well enough to understand her odd ways, but Carrie sure understood why he was interested in what the State Environmental Commission in Little Rock had to say on Thursday.

She frowned as her thoughts went back to the quarry. Though everyone on the committee but Roger and Shirley Booth lived in the hills around Walden Valley, they had all come to feel the entire area—hills, bluffs, the Booths’ pastures and carefully tended dairy herd, even Walden Creek itself—belonged to each of them. It had been quiet countryside for so long.

Too bad none of them had paid attention to the abandoned farm next to Roger and Shirley. Even that was picturesque, with its collapsing barn and the pink brick chimney that stood tall, years after the home it had once warmed burned to the ground. No one had wondered what might happen to that old farm. Now they knew too well. Quarry operators had bought it.

Well, all right. Her lip went out again. They would win this fight! Surely there were other places less valuable that a quarry could go if, indeed, the county really needed another quarry.

The blue and white clock reminded her it was time to get ready for the meeting, and she went to set out plates and cups. One of these days she’d better buy some kind of coffee maker. Guests probably thought instant coffee was pretty tacky. Well, they probably thought any ready-prepared food was tacky. Who cared? Hospitality was about feelings, not food.

She opened the refrigerator, took out three pop-open packages of breakfast rolls, got her cookie sheets, then turned on the oven. Maybe she’d heat some of those cute little frozen sausages too. It was chilly, folks would be hungry.

As she worked, Carrie began humming a song she’d invented for Rob’s bath time when he was a toddler. He’d reminded her of it last summer, saying he still couldn’t keep from chanting it to himself in the shower, though its original purpose had been to make a game out of cleaning his ears—as well as under arms and between toes, where he was ticklish.

“Down in the valleys, under arms and toes.

Make the valleys clean where the washcloth goes.

Valleys are (whish and sw-o-o-p) CLEAN!”

Another rifle shot cracked. It sounded very close, and she flinched, imagining a bullet whistling by her house.

She wondered if JoAnne had heard the shots, wherever she was. JoAnne didn’t like hunters on her land. JoAnne didn’t like hunters, period.

Well, nothing she could do about it now.

Carrie looked around her kitchen, then nodded to herself. It would be all right. This was her sanctuary, her home. No one would intrude on that.

She was singing Rob’s valley song loudly enough to drown out any whistling bullets when she left the kitchen and went to finish getting dressed for the meeting.

CHAPTER II

Roger and Shirley arrived first. When Carrie opened the door, Roger pointed to his truck, which he’d squeezed in a space between two trees that was only inches wider than the truck’s fenders. “Okay to leave ’er there?”

“Sure.” Carrie looked around the clearing, suddenly seeing it through Roger’s pale, grey-blue eyes and supposing he wondered why on earth she didn’t make more space.

“I know I should cut some trees,” she said, thinking he could never understand how she felt about the trees. “I’m sorry for drivers of delivery trucks, but I can’t decide what to cut, so I just don’t, and the trees keep growing.”

“Well, trees’re better fer your health than trucks,” said Roger, punctuating his words with eye twinkles and adding a grin when he noticed Carrie’s surprise.

Both Roger and Shirley Booth were lean Ozarks natives who towered over her. She had once been sure no Ozarks native was concerned about protecting the environment, especially if doing so involved some kind of regulation. Roger and Shirley, however, were proving her wrong.

In fact, Roger had been the first one to warn people along Walden Road about the quarry. He’d begun contacting his neighbors after he heard a few rumors and decided to go over to the county seat to “see ’bout an abandoned farm I just might think of makin’ an offer fer,” as he said he’d told the nice clerk at the court house in Bonny.

“Happens,” he explained to Carrie when he called her, “that some fella from over the border has spoke fer that land. I asked my cousin who lives that-a-way to check up the name fer me. He says the fella runs an old used-up quarry near Martinville. Hank also says the place is a mess. Some heifers got sick when they drank the crick water last year.”

Carrie had translated to herself while Roger talked. The quarry in question must be in Missouri, and it must have somehow polluted the creek near Martinville. Roger was concerned about his own herd of Holsteins. Those cows were so carefully babied Carrie was sure Roger and Shirley would buy bottled water for the stock tank if they had to, but none the less, there it was—a call to action by the most laid-back hillbilly on Walden Road.

And as far as the Martinville cousin was concerned, Carrie was enough of an Ozarker now to know that “cousin” could mean any degree of relationship at all, but also might really be a cousin. She was beyond surprise when learning about intertwined family relationships throughout these hills and hollows. In fact, Roger had once told her, “Only reason we’re glad Yankees come here is ‘cause now we don’t always have to marry our cousins!”

Roger and Shirley accepted cups of instant coffee without commenting about the method of making them and eased down on the big couch in the cabin’s main room. They had never been inside her home before, and their eyes roamed over the walls covered with bookshelves. “Just like a library,” Shirley said finally. “You like to read!”

“Many of the books are about Arkansas and the Ozarks,” Carrie replied as she enjoyed the warmth of the smile on Shirley’s thin face. She returned the smile with real pleasure and a sudden feeling of companionship and shared... what? She had thought she had little in common with this woman, though they must be about the same age. “I do quite a bit of research in my work for the Department of Parks and Tourism. But, yes, I like to read.”

Shirley set her coffee cup aside carefully and got up to inspect the books, touching a few with her fingertips as she walked along the shelves. “I didn’t learn to read much ‘til after the kids went to school,” she said. “Just hadn’t been interested. Figured I didn’t need to read books to them when they were little—I could think up plenty of stories in my head, and I knew Bible stories by heart. Then the oldest started school, and I was ’shamed when she brought stuff home and saw I didn’t know what it said. So I studied with the literacy folks in town. Now I’m pretty good at reading.” She looked over her shoulder at Carrie, and the wrinkles around her eyes deepened in another smile. “I read my own Bible now, and other books too.”

Carrie started to reply, thinking that there must be books on her shelves that Shirley would enjoy borrowing. Just as she was puzzling about what to offer, the knocker interrupted, and she went to open the door for Jason Stack and Mag Bruner.

Jason’s Buick was parked in front of Carrie’s garage, but Mag had walked from her house at the head of the road. She liked being outdoors as much as Carrie did and never minded walking a few miles if the weather wasn’t too bad and the roads were passable.

“Road’s in good shape,” she said as she handed over her jacket. “No dust, no mud, can’t get better than that.”

Carrie knew all too well that road mud could stick to boots until they weighed twice as much as they ought to, and if it was dry, dust raised by passing vehicles choked walkers.

Today Mag’s feet were clean, though she wiped them carefully on the entry mat. In the country that gesture was automatic.

Jason, who was keeping records for the committee, carried a notebook with papers sticking out at odd angles. Everything about his appearance—from grey hair frizzing at the edges of his tweed cap to rumpled slacks—proclaimed a disorganized person, but Jason Stack didn’t fit that mold. He was very businesslike, something his appearance denied now and had probably denied when he was head of a large manufacturing plant back in Ohio.

“I’ll bet he’s caught a lot of people off guard,” Carrie had once said to JoAnne, “because he’s about the most organized person I know.”

The fact that Jason’s wife Eleanor was back in Ohio with a daughter who had just produced her second child wouldn’t have disrupted his always orderly thinking.

Jason drank de-caf black when Eleanor was present, but today he accepted regular coffee with sugar and milk, then asked if JoAnne had learned much at her meeting with the Environmental Commission.

“I talked with her last night, and she seemed quite excited and pleased about something,” Carrie said, “but the cat knocked over a jar on the kitchen counter just as she started to tell me about it, so she said she’d save the news for the meeting today and hung up.”

Mag’s thin mouth twisted in disgust. “I went to lunch at JoAnne’s once and that cat was sitting on the table. Could barely manage my meal after that. FatCat is a stupid name for such a skinny thing anyway. She told me some crazy story about the cat coming from a rich family—whatever that’s got to do with it. You’d think she’d have a dog, living alone and all.”

Carrie said nothing. Mag seemed to have forgotten that she, like JoAnne, had no dog and that the Booths had several cats. Carrie hadn’t the foggiest idea where the Booths’ cats ate.

Mag started to say something more, and Carrie was afraid she was going to continue making a fuss about FatCat, but Shirley spoke up first. “Our cats wouldn’t get away with jumping on the table. Roger’d swat them.”

Roger’s lop-sided grin told Carrie he probably wouldn’t swat them at all. Funny, Roger didn’t need anything or any action to help him feel masculine, and he was really one of the gentlest people she’d ever met. She doubted that he and Amos would have gotten along, but then, Roger could probably good-old-boy anyone into friendship, even Amos, who hadn’t had many close friends besides Evan Walters.

“Time to start the meeting,” Jason said. “I’m not surprised JoAnne’s late, but where’s Henry?” He turned his round face toward Carrie and winked. “I thought surely he’d be here before anyone else.”

Carrie, who’d never blushed in her life, supposed Jason expected her to do so now. Instead, she stared at him, trying to show no emotion—then swivelled to stare at the front door instead as Henry opened it and walked in.

She hadn’t locked the door after the early arrivals but was still surprised when Henry came in without knocking. It wasn’t like him, and his assured action startled her. This was her private home—her own space. She didn’t get up to greet him, held in her chair by a tongue-tied confusion she didn’t know how to settle. He acted like he owned the house. What he’d done reinforced Jason’s typically masculine insinuation, which she realized would get sparks out of JoAnne if she heard about it.

Of course, it was possible she and Henry had been seen by someone from here the few times they’d gone to dinner together, even though they always chose restaurants in Bonny or Rough Creek. In her experience, if one person in the area knew anything, then everyone did.

Well, who cared if they’d been seen? She was a mature adult. She did hope no one mentioned it to JoAnne, though. JoAnne would be quick to tell her what to do, and Carrie was far from eager to have any more discussions about Henry with her.

Henry glanced around the room, then looked at Carrie. “JoAnne?” he asked and continued without listening for the obvious answer. “I went by her house, and there was no sign she’d come back. Do you think someone should check? You have a key to her house, don’t you, Carrie?”

“Is she off wandering again?” Jason asked, sparing Carrie from the need to reply. “Let’s just get started. She’ll probably be here soon. Roger, you first. How did you and your cousin get along?”

Roger leaned forward on the couch, rested his arms on his knees, and looked slowly around at all of them with his familiar grin.

He’s enjoying this, Carrie realized with surprise, glad to turn away from worrying thoughts about Henry. Roger Booth, bless his heart, had an audience of move-ins. He knew quite well they were going to be entertained by how he told his story, and, far from being embarrassed, he was enjoying it!

“Well, Herb and me,” Roger began in an exaggerated drawl, “we decided he needed a load of stone fer somethin’ ’er other, so we took his old truck and went to the Martinville quarry. They’ve about blasted away all the bluffs along Spider Crick. It had rained the night before and, let me tell you, that crick was milky with rock dust.

“Fella there wasn’t the owner. Said the boss wasn’t around much. That was better fer us since this fella, he enjoyed talkin’. He’n Herb had seen one another at the café in town so they was like old friends, and we got along fine.

“I asked if they might be lookin’ fer help, said I had a boy needed a job, and the fella said he was going to need a job soon hisself ’cause they was fixin’ to shut that quarry down. Said they’d about come to the end of that property and couldn’t buy more around there, which was no surprise, seein’ the mess they made of what they had.

“So I said, was there any plans fer more quarryin’ someplace else? Maybe my boy could travel. He said he’d heard they planned a new quarry over th’line in Arkansas, but he didn’t want to travel that far from home if he could get work closer by.

“Then Herb acted real interested in how they did the quarryin’ and asked the fella to show us how it all worked, said it seemed pretty dangerous to him what with the blastin’ and heavy rock. Since the fella was there by hisself and it was an off day fer customers, with them runnin’ out of stone and all, he was real proud to show us the works.