Road to Nowhere (13 page)

“Would anyone want that bad to stop it?”

Was there evil in the world, and wickedness? “I’d say it could be.” A road wasn’t evil itself, but it pulled evil in. Greed on the one side, in the men who wanted it. Hatred and fear on the other.

“I can’t think of anyone else besides Randy,” Wade said.

“Then call him.” Somehow Cornelia had gotten to liking the idea.

“Yeah.” He still didn’t want to. But there was no one else. “Okay.” Or they could just go by themselves and not use the other two tickets.

He picked up the phone and pushed buttons.

“This is Randy McCoy.”

Oh well. “Randy, Wade Harris.”

“Wade, how are you doing? This is an unexpected pleasure.”

Right. Unexpected, at least.

“Yeah. Hey, Randy, wonder if you could help me out.”

“Help you? Well, sure, if I can. What can I do for you?”

“Have you ever been rafting?”

Long pause. Wade could almost hear the gears trying to shift. “Rafting? I’m not sure I quite follow you.”

“Whitewater rafting. You ever noticed those outfitters on every road in the county? They’ve got big signs that say
Whitewater Rafting
on them.”

“Well, of course I’ve seen them. I just wasn’t sure what you meant.”

Okay, don’t be mean. Take a breath. “I was wondering if you’d ever taken one of their trips.”

“I can’t say I have. Those establishments are usually more for tourists, aren’t they?”

Got to love the way his brain worked. “I think once in a while they make an exception. Anyway. I’ve got four tickets for a week from Monday, and I need two people to use them with Corny and me.”

“Well, now, I can think on that, Wade, but to tell the truth nobody comes to mind right away. I could ask a few people.”

“I meant you, Randy. And your wife. Do you want to go rafting?” This was getting priceless. He should write a book and make Randy the main character, except no one would ever believe a man could be this dense.

“Sue Ann and I? Well, Wade, I don’t know what to say. I’d never thought of such a thing, actually, and I don’t know what to say, and that’s for certain. I don’t believe it had ever even occurred to me. We’ve never done any of those tourist type things.”

“I won’t tell them you’re from around here. If you’re with me, maybe they won’t notice.”

“Goodness sakes. Let me talk this over with Sue Ann. Wade, thank you for thinking of me here. I sure do appreciate it. It’ll take some thought.”

Wade took another deep breath. This is how it would feel to get stuck in quicksand. “You think about it and let me know.”

March 17, Friday

Fool business, complete fool business. Here he was at the police building and he still wasn’t turning around. But he couldn’t. He got out of the truck and went in the front door.

“Go on back,” the girl said. Gordon’s door was open.

“Well, Joe,” he said. “Morning! What’re you doing in town?”

“Passing through.” No reason to waste time. “I’ve got Mort Walker on my mind.”

“Mort Walker? What’s brought him up?”

“It was Minnie that found him, and you went when she called.”

Hite was flustered. Joe waited for him to get his thoughts caught up. “Well, sure, that’s how it was. You’re talking about when he died?”

“And then the doctor came.”

“Everett Colony. He got there a couple minutes after I did. Now I remember. I was in the house with Minnie when he came, and she was carrying on, before I’d even been out to the barn to see for myself, and Everett took a quick look at Mort and then he came and sat with Minnie while I called Roger Gallaudet at the funeral home.”

“You saw him, though?”

“Mort? Sure, I went out. But nothing for me to do.”

“And Dr. Colony said it was a heart attack?”

“Well, he was Mort’s doctor. So I guess he already knew what it was going to be. Joe, what’s on your mind?”

“A bunch of fool things. He was a friend. I want to know what happened to him that day.”

“Well, sure. There wasn’t much to it, to be honest. He was pitching hay down from the loft to his cows and his heart just gave out. Banged his head when he fell. Might have been that as much as his heart.”

Nothing had been said about that. “Hit his head?”

“Up there in the loft and falling into the stalls, sure he’d hit something. He’d have to.”

Or something hit him.

“I suppose he would.”

“Louise, I hope you aren’t busy.” Louise wasn’t. And if she had been, she’d still have fit Grace Gallaudet in somehow.

“What is it, Grace?”

“I’m having my picture taken,” Grace said. “They’re doing a newspaper article on me.”

“Now, what’s that about?” She had Grace sit down, and she was already looking at what had to be done.

“For Founders’ Day.”

“Now, that will be interesting to read about. Is Luke writing it?”

“I’m letting him use my Grandfather Ward’s letters.”

“I can’t wait to read it,” Louise said. “Will it be the whole story?”

“That’s what I told him he should do, from Haggai Ward on through the whole family. At least to my great-grandfather.”

“It’ll be nice to have it all written out. Nobody’s family has more history than yours, Grace. Of course, the Fiddlers have been here a long time, too, and others. The Fowlers, for instance, and even the Goddards.”

“Well, the Fiddlers, yes,” Grace said, and not gracefully. “But those others didn’t leave anything to show. The Wards and the Fiddlers built this town.”

March 27, Monday

Well, here they were. He and Sue Ann standing beside the Gold River, looking at that water pouring by, looking at the little rubber boats, feeling like Noah must have.

It was a crowd, with Wade and Cornelia, and the two of them, and a dozen tourists from Greensboro and Charlotte and other distant points. Randy was feeling real out of place, and it didn’t help a bit that they were all of them jammed into rubber suits and looking like astronauts. Maybe some of the tourists were a bit heavy and didn’t cut much better figures than he did, but Wade looked trim and fit, and his wife Cornelia had a movie star kind of figure. He and Sue Ann didn’t hold too well in comparison.

“You’re sure you’ve never done this before?” Wade asked.

“I’d remember if I had,” Randy said.

“Then come on in.”

There were three rubber boats for the group of them. The guides divided them up, and Randy found himself and Sue Ann in the back seats out on a little practice pond with Wade and Cornelia in front of them, and then a tourist couple from Greensboro in front, and up in the point of the boat a cute little button of a girl bellowing at them like a drill sergeant.

“Right!”

Now, that meant Randy pulled forward on his paddle, as he was on the right, and Sue Ann pushed back on hers, as she was on the left.

“Whoa, stop! Okay, back there, let me explain it again!”

She did, making it all completely clear, and they tried again. “Right!”

Now, that meant Randy pushed back on his paddle, as he was on the right, and Sue Ann pulled forward on hers, as she was on the left. The boat turned right much better than it had the last time.

“Forward!”

The girl’s name was Jeanie and she really was very nice, just a slight bit forceful. She might possibly remind a person of Everett Colony. And of course she had to be that way as captain of the ship, so to speak. She didn’t try to remember the names of the crew, as she was mainly used to calling them out by their positions.

“Back right, pull it!”

He pulled it, just as hard as he could.

Randy could have used even a bit more practice, but Jeanie seemed satisfied after a while and she started going over a few more fine points.

“The water’s high, so a lot of the rocks are submerged. I know most of them anyway. You’ll need to act fast when I call a direction and pull hard. The water’s fast. We just have to be faster.”

“If we hit a rock, it can swing the boat around facing backward. If we can turn back around, I’ll call a hard right, but we might just need to stay backward till we get somewhere calm.” Randy listened while she described situations that were each worse than the one before, and what to do if they got into them. “If the boat gets turned over in some rapids, the first thing is to get out from under it.”

Randy expected that would be some fairly vigorous rapids they’d be wallowing around in, while trying to get a boat off their heads. “If you’re in the water, get a good breath every time your head’s in the air,” Jeanie said, and Randy added breathing to his list of things to remember.

Now she was talking about hydraulics, which Randy had usually associated with the brakes of his car, but this wasn’t the same.

“You can’t fight them. If you get in one, don’t try. It’ll suck you down, but eventually you’ll be out of it. Just wait till you’re out of the grip and then get to the surface. And the most important thing to remember is to not panic.”

If that was the most important rule, then Randy was already on the verge of breaking it. Even with all the instructions and knowing what to do, he was not feeling completely reassured.

“I’m just wondering,” he said, “how likely that is, that a person might fall out of the boat?”

“It doesn’t happen often,” Jeanie said. “As long as everybody does exactly what they’re supposed to when I call a direction.”

Randy was guessing that he looked about as white as Sue Ann.

The lead guide was a wiry young man named Zach, and it must have been his company, as it was called Zach Attack Whitewater.

“Let’s get going,” he said to the whole company, and going they got, carrying the boat like Lewis and Clark right over to the Gold River and then getting in it, leaving the nice solid ground behind.

“Forward!”

They paddled about two strokes and then the river had hold of them, and it was moving them a good deal more vigorously than they could have themselves, or was really even necessary. And if Randy was hoping for a nice easing in, he didn’t quite get that, because right away there was a sort of a drop and a push sideways at the same time and Jeanie hollering, “Right! Forward! Right! Left, hard! PULL IT LEFT!”

About that time Randy finally worked out that he should just do whatever Cornelia was doing in front of him, and that made him feel confident enough that he even leaned over to Sue Ann and said, “I think I’m getting it.” And she nodded, but she had her eyes glued onto Wade’s paddle ahead of her.

After that first place the water settled down, and they both could catch their breath.

“Good job! Good start! Two more short falls after the next turn, then we’ll have a smooth section before we start the real stuff!”

That had seemed very real, but when Randy looked back, it was a shock how little the one fall they’d already done actually looked.

Wade leaned back. “What do you think?”

“I haven’t had a chance to yet,” Randy answered.

“Forward!”

Wade gave him a nice encouraging smile, and then they were off paddling right at a drop that really looked to be better off avoided.

Good day, so far, with the water high and fast. Wade leaned back against a rock and chewed his ham sandwich. He’d been afraid the whole thing would be a bust.

Randy’s face in the last rapids had been worth the price of four tickets all by itself.

“Tell me about this furniture plant,” Wade said. Randy looked like he needed something to take his mind off moving water.

“Oh, well, the factory.” That looked about as upsetting to him. “I don’t even know what to make of that.”

“So this is a big deal, right? Getting bought out?”

“I’d say so, and most everyone would agree. A hundred fifty people working there, and that makes it the biggest employer in the county, except for the schools.”

“But it’s not closing,” Wade said.

“Maybe it isn’t, and I wouldn’t have thought so, but now I’ve heard that they might even just tear it down and build a grocery store.”

Suddenly this was real interesting. “A grocery store?”

“That’s just a rumor, and I’ve only heard it one place so far.”

“Could someone build a grocery back there?”

“Not by the zoning. But we could always change that.”

“It’s not a good place.” Wade was figuring. “It wouldn’t make any sense to put it back there. Uh—not unless the road went through. I was hoping that the Trinkle farm would get developed sometime, but it sounds like that won’t be for years.”

“If it depends on the Trinkles, it won’t be for years.”

“They’re as bad as I’ve heard?”

“You should see the stack of lawsuit letters the county has gotten. It might be the only way the title will ever get clear is if the county condemns it to auction for back taxes.”

“The taxes aren’t paid?”

“Not in years. But lawyers cost so much, there’s hardly anything left for the county if we do take legal action, and it just seems so harsh, so we don’t usually get around to it.”

“Is it that they just can’t agree on selling it?”

“More than that. Hermann Trinkle didn’t leave a will, so that makes it muddier. And even before that—the Trinkles came over with the other Austrian families after the Civil War, and some of them got their land legal and some didn’t, what with courthouses burned and landowners missing and occupation troops and carpetbagger judges. So there’s not much record of who owned that land before, and if the current Trinkles are any indication, the early Trinkles wouldn’t have cared anyway.”

Wade laughed. “Then it’s a mess. If there won’t be any stores in Gold Valley, we need the road, and a new store right there in Mountain View.”

“Everett and them would tar and feather me,” Randy sent a mournful glance down at himself. “Not that I’d look much worse than I do now.”

The guy had a streak of humor. “You’re doing fine, Randy. Whatever anyone says.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time one of my constituents suggests otherwise, which they often do.”

“That’s what constituents do. It’s their job.”

“So what’s our job, Wade?”

“Ignore them. Hey, so why’s Coates selling the factory, anyway?”

“Now, for one thing, it hasn’t happened yet, so there might still be some negotiating to do. But for why, most people could tell you. It’s about Jeremy.”