Road to Nowhere (12 page)

They sat there together while he ate his lunch, even if she should have been getting back to the salon, and Byron took a few minutes extra. Then a couple of men were standing up. There was a loud whine and a saw was starting. The crane thudded and whacked and started lifting a big pallet of lumber.

“Time to go,” Byron said.

“Me too,” Louise said, and gave Byron a little peck on the cheek. The front office was empty.

Randy would have just gone on down to the office, but when he stopped in at the house, Sue Ann was taking a nice big ham out of the oven, and he just couldn’t let that get past without a little taste, and that led to a sandwich, and that led to sitting down at the table and enjoying Sue Ann’s company.

Of course the telephone rang, which a person could count on if they were having a quiet moment, even though it was only Patsy at the courthouse.

“Randy, Luke Goddard is here and he’s looking for you. He says he was at your office and it was locked.”

“Patsy, tell him I locked it because I saw him coming. But I’ll be there in a little while.”

“He says he’s in a hurry.”

“Then tell him I’m not.”

And just to be sure he wasn’t, he gave Sue Ann a hug and a kiss, and walked slowly out to his car and started for downtown.

When he got to Hemlock, he paid the price for not being in a hurry. A line of trucks was headed out from the factory—six big, lumbering elephants—and the first one was just passing in front of him. So he waited for them to get by, one by one, and then he’d be behind them all the way to the office. At least it wasn’t far, as nothing in Wardsville really was.

And when the last truck roared past, going too fast, really, for that street, it must have kicked up a bit of gravel or something on the road. Instead of two birds getting hit by one stone, it was Randy’s windshield.

It was just an instant of time but lots of different impressions. There was a fairly loud crack, a sharp sound like a hammer on a nail, but the first thing he really realized was the glass in front of him suddenly turning white. And it wasn’t white but filled with cracks, and all splitting and popping and splintering and not clear to look through. He saw how the whole right side of the window looked like circles on a pond coming out from a center spot where the rock must have hit, and even for a moment the nice round hole, and then the whole sheet of a thousand pieces collapsed into his lap and onto the seat beside him and onto the floorboards. And even with all that going on, he still had enough of his senses left to barely feel the seat next to him shudder a little.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” he said. “Look at that!”

He was in shock at how sudden it was. One second everything was normal and the next a mess of shattered glass and shattered nerves. “Of all things! Oh, for goodness’ sake!”

The earth was breathing, deeply, ending winter, receiving spring. No leaves had budded, but the thought of them was alive and stirring the trees. Already the ground was awakening, and patient seeds and slow beating hearts were feeling the quickening warmth.

It was time to prepare for her own planting. Eliza had thought of what that would be, how her garden should be. She had her list.

“Here you go, Eliza. And a couple letters.”

“Thank you, Annie Kay.”

A few small bags, mostly seed. The laden shelves here were always a temptation to her. But she had what she needed and she always chose to never take more. And the letters were the kind she didn’t understand, the kind that Zach called junk and had told her she could always throw away.

“And I’ll put it on the account,” Annie Kay said.

“What has that come to?” she asked. The whole winter had passed without a request for payment.

“Just today’s. That’s all there is on it.”

“But surely there would be more.”

“Jeanie’s paid it off. It wasn’t much, anyway.”

“Jeanie?” Oh, that Jeanie!

“A few days ago, what was left. But Eliza, it wasn’t much at all. I almost hate to keep track of it.”

“Did someone ask her to?”

“No, of course not. She worked here all winter—she could look at the accounts anytime.”

“Will she be in soon?”

“No, she’s working with Zach at the outfitters all the time, now that it’s warm enough. But she’s still in once or twice a week.”

“I’ll see her soon. She comes to check on me. But please thank her for me! As soon as you see her again.”

“I will.”

Eliza took her bags and left the store. The sun and the wind both tugged at her coat, but she chose to keep it on, and she began her walk home.

“Somebody shooting at you, Randy?”

“No, Gabe, nothing like that.” He’d driven straight over to Gabe’s garage. “Just some gravel from one of the furniture trucks.”

“Well, I never seen gravel knock out a whole windshield like that. You sure it wasn’t somebody shooting?”

“Why would anybody shoot my windshield? It was just a rock. Now give me the bad news. What’s it going to cost to get a new window in there?”

“I’ll look it up. You got insurance, Randy?”

Gabe thought that was pretty funny, and he was still laughing and looking in his parts books while Randy called Patsy at the courthouse and asked her to run across the street and tell Humphrey King that he’d be a little late for his appointment, and maybe they should just try again later.

“Randy, Luke is still here waiting for you.”

“Good gravy, I forgot. I’m down here at Gabe’s if he wants me.”

And when he did get the bad news, which was worse than it really should have been, Luke Goddard was standing next to the car with his camera.

“Hey, Randy. What happened to you?”

“A big truck and a little pebble, and my windshield was in the wrong place at the wrong time. ”

Luke was still staring at the car. “There might be a picture for the front page here. ‘Insurance Salesman in Car Accident.’ ”

“Not much of an accident, although it still costs plenty.”

“Not much of a picture, either,” Luke said. “Say, Randy, I’ll tell you what I was talking to Patsy about, and why I was looking for you. I’m doing a story about Roland Coates selling the furniture factory. I was up there talking to him, and I was wondering: If someone bought the place and wanted to do anything to it—what would they be able to do? With the zoning and all, I mean.”

“Did he tell you what they’d want to do?”

“Tell me? Roland Coates wouldn’t tell me the time of day. I don’t know why. But I did get to watch a first-rate head-butting between him and Jeremy.”

“I was just up there.”

“I might even have heard your name mentioned,” Luke said, grinning like a jackal. “Although I wasn’t able to witness the entire conversation.”

“Why did you even get to witness any of it?”

“Guess I was just in the right place at the right time. I was there to ask Roland about selling the factory and Jeremy interrupted us. Very interesting.”

With Luke,
interesting
meant
troublesome,
and for Randy,
troublesome
meant
not interesting.
“But did he tell you anything specific about doing something to the factory?”

“Maybe not exactly. Just Jeremy saying Roland would never get his plan approved, and Roland saying he’d have you approve anything he wanted approved.”

“Me?”

“And then I was suddenly unable to continue listening.”

“Which of them kicked you out?” Randy said.

“There are at least a few things on which the two of them are still able to cooperate. But that was fine, as I was more interested in locating you than remaining with them. So now, that’s my question. If they wanted to do anything to that place, what would they be able to do?”

“It depends on what kind of anything you mean.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Luke said. “Say Roland wanted to tear it down and build a grocery store.”

“Tear it down? You don’t mean they really are closing the factory?”

Luke was shaking his head. “No, no, I’m just making up examples. What could someone do with that land the way it’s zoned?”

“Well.” That thought had been so unexpected that Randy had to get over his sudden panic, and he wasn’t going to all the way, with that new idea in his head. “About anything would need some special use permit. The furniture factory was there a long time before the county got around to zoning, so they just gave it a special use permit for light industrial, and I don’t think much of anything can be changed.”

“What’s ‘light’?”

“I don’t know. Light. Not that it’s very likely we’d get any heavy industry around here. There might be a list back at the courthouse. Where are you getting these ideas, anyway? Are you sure you’re just making that up?”

“I’m just stirring you up, Randy. Wouldn’t Humphrey King have a fit if someone wanted to build some new grocery right up from King Food?”

“Well, he would. Don’t you go give him a stroke.”

“There’d be lots of strokes. It’d be good business for Everett Colony. But not for you and your insurance. Anyway, I’m just asking. And don’t you give it a second thought.”

March 14, Tuesday

“Well, Lyle!” Louise was stopping in at the courthouse. “How are you doing?”

The poor man spun around and almost tipped his chair right over. “Oh. Hello, Louise.”

“I was just going to say hello to Patsy.”

“Patsy isn’t here.” Lyle started hunting through Patsy’s desk, and he looked more likely to knock anything off of it as to find anything on it.

“That’s all right. I can come by tomorrow.”

“She has the papers for next month’s meeting. I saw her copying them.” The hunt continued, and Patsy’s telephone hit the floor, and Lyle almost hit the ceiling.

“That’s really just all right,” Louise said, but Lyle looked up with a big smile.

“Here they are!” Five folded sets of paper. He grabbed the top one and held it out.

She almost had her fingers on it when it got yanked back.

“There’s envelopes they’re supposed to be in,” Lyle said, and knocked those on the floor next to the telephone. He picked them up and found the envelope with Louise’s name, and put the papers in it.

Louise carefully took it out of his hand before anything else happened.

“Thank you, Lyle. That’s a big help.”

Lyle was putting the other papers into the other envelopes. “We try to do our best.”

Louise got herself out of the courthouse and then she had to take a breath. Lyle’s flustering was contagious! Then she took her papers out of the envelope, and there on the first page was written in big letters,
For
Joe Esterhouse.
It was just Lyle doing his best.

The papers were all the same, so it wouldn’t matter that everyone got each other’s. And she wasn’t about to go back in there and try to straighten it out.

March 16, Thursday

“You have a letter,” Annie Kay said. Eliza took it carefully from her. It was weighty, both in her hand and in her mind.

“This is from the council,” she said. “It’s for our next meeting.”

She opened the envelope with reluctance. She didn’t like these papers and their hardness, but it was the council’s tradition to send them. The first paper had written on it,
For Randy McCoy
.

“I don’t know what that means,” she said. There was always something new and strange. Then another paper fell out from among the others.

“Very strange.”

In large printed letters it said,

The windshield was your warning
No road
OR ELSE

“What does that mean?” Annie Kay asked.

“There is so much that I don’t understand,” Eliza said.

Nice clear night. Lot of stars for once, and that was good. There’d be no rain for a few days. The fields needed to dry some and not wash out. Roads were already worse than usual.

“Joe? It’s the telephone for you.” Rose was in the kitchen door. “It’s Marty Brannin.”

No moon. The stars alone were bright enough to see Mount Ayawisgi up northeast.

“I’ll be right there.”

Just barely see the one gap where Gold River Highway would go through. The mountain had been there a long time without being bothered. Now that was likely over.

“This is Joe,” he said.

“Marty Brannin.”

“Evening, Marty.”

“You, too. I hope it’s not too late to call.”

“It’s not.”

“It’s about your road, of course, and I’ll keep it short. I’m not to the bottom of it yet, Joe. But I can tell you what I know. The appropriation was down in the fine print of the Clean Air Act we passed last summer. I voted for it, and I sure didn’t notice this one paragraph.”

“Is that an usual place to put a road?”

“It is not usual.”

“I suppose you can find out how it got there?”

“I’m going to. It can be tricky, but I know how this game is played. I’ve played it myself.”

“Then I’ll be curious to know what you find.”

“I’ll let you know. It might be a while. The legislature’s in session and everyone’s busy.”

“Don’t put yourself out. Just when you get to it.”

“Well, I’m curious now, too. There’s definitely something going on here. And besides, somebody’s pulled a trick that I’ve never seen before, and that’s saying a lot. It would be worth figuring out how it was done.” Marty laughed. “I might be able to use the same stunt if I ever want a road built myself. Talk to you later, Joe.”

Then back out again under the stars. Cold, black night. Same as what was inside some men.

Every word said about this road made his own insides feel black and cold. Of all the words said, not a one gave him rest from thinking about Mort dying when he did.

“Was he a help?” Rose asked, beside him in the cold.

“Just making it worse.”

“What would have happened if Mort Walker had died earlier?”

“Just a few days earlier and someone else would have had time to put their name out for write-in votes. A few days later and the election would have been over and the board would have filled the empty seat. But just that day, and with Eliza Gulotsky running, was the one sure time to swing a vote to be against the road.”

What was it about a road? They were plain things, for getting from one place to another. It came down to where people were, and where they wanted to go, and how bad they wanted to get there. And what they’d do if something was in their way.