Road to Nowhere (36 page)

“Already pretty stale if you ask me.”

“I’m not asking you.”

“You should. And besides, remember what Mr. Coates said. He especially does want that road.”

“Mr. Coates! He just might not get what he wants!” She pushed back a sob and tried to get calm. “But at least that means they aren’t tearing down the factory.”

Then that terrible phone rang, even though it was late, and she picked it up before she had a chance to think maybe she wouldn’t.

“This is Louise.”

“Louise Brown?” Oh, it was that man! “Charlie Ryder. I figured you’d maybe be there. You have your meeting tonight?”

“What do you want?” She didn’t even mind sounding rude.

“Were they there? Did you see the plans? They were supposed to show them off tonight.”

“I saw those plans!”

“Good. Nice place, isn’t it? Okay, so you’re probably voting for it anyway, aren’t you, the road I mean. But I want to make sure. You’ve had a chance to think. What can I offer? Like I said, I can be generous.”

“You!” Now she knew! “Mr. Ryder, don’t ever call me again!”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s your shopping center! You sent those people here!”

“Me? My shopping center? No! I wish it were! It’s not mine. But I’m doing everything I can to help out. So what’s the problem?”

For the first time in her life, Louise hung the telephone up without even saying good-bye.

“I think that did it,” Steve said to Natalie. “You should have seen Louise at the meeting. I don’t think you could even pay her to vote for that road now.”

“When would they build this thing?”

“They could have it open in two years. It just depends on the road getting approved.”

A deep, intense look came into Natalie’s eyes. “I will dig the road myself. I want that store, Steve.”

“I will take that into consideration,” he said. “As a constituent, your views are very important to me.”

“As your wife, they had better be. Maybe you would like peanut butter sandwiches the rest of your life? Or haven’t I described what it is like to make one shopping trip per week? One? Per week?”

“You have described that, yes. I will arrange for you to meet with Randy and Louise. Even Eliza.”

“It’s the Trinkles,” Joe said to Rose. “It’s them behind the road. It’s to make their land worth this Regency company buying it.”

“What does that mean, Joe?”

“I need to make sure. I’ll see if Marty can find out anything with that name.”

“After all these years. It’s like that family won’t ever let go.”

“Hermann Trinkle and my daddy tangled more than once. I remember it.”

“Would you hold a grudge, Joe?”

“No. Hermann’s long gone anyway, and Jacob and Willhelm and Franz. It’s their children now, Hermann’s grandchildren, and I’ve never seen any of them.”

August 10, Thursday

“May I speak with Mr. Robert Jarvis, please?”

Steve waited. There were happy lunchtime sounds coming from the kitchen, and the sun was shining and he was looking out at his grand Gold Valley view. How nice. And he was now going to jump into a swamp.

“Bob Jarvis.”

“Hi, Mr. Jarvis. My name is Steve Carter and I’m on the Jefferson County Board of Supervisors. We met when you were up last month to show us the DOT plans for Gold River Highway.”

“Oh. Yes, sure, I remember you.”

“Great. Maybe you remember I had some questions at the meeting?”

“I do remember.”

“I was waiting for a call. You said you’d have someone in engineering call me.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Carter! I do remember that some questions came up, but I didn’t realize that was an official request.”

“Then let’s make it official. And I’ll even make the call myself if you give me a name.” He knew half the people there, but it would be interesting to see who Jarvis directed him to.

“Well, now, why don’t you remind me exactly what the questions were? So I’ll know who you’d need to talk to.”

“I had questions about the actual construction, just for my own professional interest. I listed some of them at the meeting, remember? But what I want to know now is about the design assumptions. Specifically, where you came up with the traffic projections.”

“That’s a fairly involved process, Mr. Carter. But let me assure you we’ve taken everything into consideration, current and future, in determining those.”

“I’d like to see the process.”

“We don’t always provide that level of detail to the public.”

“Why not?”

“I know it may sound strange, but we actually work with confidential information at times.”

“Right. Well, we just had a big announcement for a retail development in Gold Valley, right off the interstate. If that’s the information you were working with, it’s not confidential anymore.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s a matter of policy—not just in this specific case.”

Be a tough guy. Robert Mitchum in
Cape Fear.
“Okay. Mr. Jarvis, let’s start over. I’m not the public. That road has to get through the Board of Supervisors, which includes me. This isn’t an interstate, as much as it looks like one, or a U.S. route. That means there’s nothing you or Raleigh or Washington, D.C. can do to force us to take it. The Board of Supervisors of Jefferson County has absolute authority over county road improvements. And right now, you’ll be lucky to get two votes out of five. Even one vote—I’m leaning against it myself.”

“I understand, Mr. Carter. And of course, no one here is trying to influence you in your decisions. I will mention, of course, that Raleigh would be paying for this road, and they do provide Jefferson County with quite a bit of transportation funding, some of which is discretionary, depending on how well they feel the money would be used.”

Okay. Humphrey Bogart mode. “So, you’ll get us on the blacklist. Let’s start over again. The whole appropriation and award of this road is more crooked than a snake. I think you’ve been assigned the job of hiding it all from anybody who might ask questions. So, what happens if you don’t deliver? Does Jack Royce in Raleigh come after you, or is he on the firing line, too? Is it Regency Atlantic or the Trinkle family that’s making a deal you can’t refuse? But wait. Don’t answer those. Just this to start. Is the Regency project contingent on Gold River Highway?”

Long wait. Seconds going past.

“Um.”

More seconds.

“Mr. Carter—I do happen to know that, just by chance. I believe it is.”

Bingo. The bluff pays off big time. Now, go for broke.

“Do you have a copy of their agreement?”

“There might be a binder in the files that Regency provided us.”

“I want a copy.”

“Mr. Carter, I can’t do that, of course.”

Switch to Jimmy Stewart. We can be friends! “Here’s why I want it, Mr. Jarvis. If that road has any chance, it needs a strong advocate on the board. It’s mainly in my district. I really do want it built, but I need to know what’s going on with the road and the shopping center. Everything. Or else it’s nothing. Can we work together on this?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

“Joe! How are you doing?”

“Just fine, Marty. There’s just a few things I want to say.”

“Okay. Just a second, that’s the governor calling back.”

Joe waited. Sitting in the kitchen, out of the heat. It was cool when Rose wasn’t cooking.

“I’m back,” Marty said. “And I’m getting my notes. One thing right off. Charlie Ryder. He’s West Carolina Development. I slid up to Jack Royce last week and asked if he knew the name. I don’t think they’re connected.”

“He told you that?”

“It’s all in how you ask. When I said I was interested in working with West Carolina and Charlie Ryder on some deals, Jack smiled and said I could have him, no problem. Jack’s actually a very generous guy.”

“I see,” Joe said. “Here’s two new names. Regency Atlantic Associates in Atlanta, and the other name is Trinkle.”

“Trinkle. I knew a Trinkle. Thad Trinkle. His father was in Asheville, and his grandfather farmed up there somewhere. I knew him in high school. Haven’t seen him since.”

“That’s like to be one of them. It’s them and Regency that just announced a new shopping center in Gold Valley. That’s the farm.”

“The shopping center and the road. Sounds like they were made for each other.”

“I’d say.”

“But which came first, the chicken or the egg? Okay, I’ll send them up the flagpole and see who salutes. What does this do to the vote?”

“It lost them Louise Brown. I don’t see much chance for that road now.”

“I was thinking, Joe. What about you? Are you voting for it?”

“That’s been my plan. But there’s been a lot to persuade otherwise.”

“It sounds like you might be in the crosshairs yourself. Why don’t you just tell people you’re inclined against?”

“It’s crossed my mind. Right now it doesn’t seem necessary.”

“And it could make everyone on the board safer.”

“I understand. But I don’t think I will, at least yet. Marty, there’s been a few more things come up, and I’m not as sure as I was.”

“Sounds like nothing is sure. I just know that anybody on the board who’s for the road had better be real careful.”

August 12, Saturday

“Eliza, dear, here’s a letter,” Annie Kay said.

Eliza sat in the chair beside the stove, now filled with apples.

“It’s from Cornelia Harris,” she said.

“I don’t know her. Do you want anything today?”

“I do. Potatoes and rice, and cornmeal. And molasses.”

The letter was brief and quiet, but rooted in grief.

“Cornelia wants to come visit. She saw what was written in the newspaper and was reminded she had wanted to see me. I’ll write a letter back to her.”

Randy was on the porch swing enjoying the afternoon breezes, which were almost enough to make a person think it wasn’t as hot as it was. The sky he could see was blue, but it had a feel of thunderstorms in it.

“I believe I’ll go for a walk,” he said, leaning around to see in the screen door. “Now Sue Ann, don’t you think you should, too?”

“That would be so nice,” she said from inside. “I’ll be right there.”

She was, too, and in not even two minutes they were strolling down the front walk to the street, and then along the sidewalk, holding hands just like they were in high school.

They ambled the length of Washington Street and said hello to Ed Fiddler trimming his hedge and Emma weeding in the flower garden, and stopped a minute with the Clairmonts playing in their front yard with their little one-year-old just walking, and waved at the Wards on their front porch.

Then they turned the corner and ended up on Hemlock, under the big hemlocks and oaks pushing up the concrete walk, and the high school down the road, where Randy could even see the white jerseys of the football team out practicing.

Back behind the school, and in about every direction, was Ayawisgi. Even with the trees in full leaf along the road and in all the yards, the mountain was visible everywhere. It made a person feel like Mountain View was just a little dot in the middle of something so much bigger. And the big clouds coming over the ridge only added to the drama.

“I think that’s the prettiest view a person could have,” he said.

“I wouldn’t want anything else,” Sue Ann said.

From the immensity of the mountain right down to the snapdragons and hollyhocks just inches long, it was all as perfect as it could be.

“Randy!”

“Well, good evening, Everett.”

The doctor was out in his own yard, just standing, like he’d been on guard duty. He didn’t do his own yard work, of course, especially with Ed Fiddler’s boy Ken just two blocks away, and a fair number of other teenage boys in the neighborhood, and a whole high school of them down the street, and a fair number of those having taken note of Everett’s daughter. And one thing no one would dispute about Everett Colony was that he didn’t scrimp on paying for yard work, as long as the job was done right.

“What do you think about this shopping center?”

As fast as he could, Randy tried to decide what Everett wanted him to think. “Well, it’s a surprise, that’s for sure.”

“It’s a disaster. All that talk about how there won’t be more than a few cars on Hemlock. Now we see the real game going on here.”

“Well, hello, Ed.” Randy had just caught sight of Ed Fiddler coming down the block behind his old beagle, with enough huffing between them to hear a house away.

“Evening, Randy. Everett.”

Waiting for Ed gave them a moment of silence, and Randy even thought about him and Sue Ann slipping away. But Ed and Fortunatus had picked up their pace.

“While I’ve got you here,” Ed said to the two of them, “I think we need to talk about this Trinkle Center.”

“That’s just what we were doing,” Randy said. “Everett was giving me his thoughts on that right as we saw you.”

“Good. Everett, we’ll need a united front on this.”

“The whole town’s against it,” Everett said.

At that moment, Randy had a sudden strange feeling, deep down past his thoughts and even into the pit of his stomach, because of the look on Ed Fiddler’s face.

“I mean the new shopping center,” Ed said.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Everett said.

“I’m not against it.”

“Ed, that’s why they’re trying to build this road.”

“Of course it is. That’s why it finally makes sense.”

“It doesn’t make sense!”

For Randy, observing the conversation was interesting, being for once that
he
was the observer and not the recipient.

“It makes perfect sense. I’d like to pick up more loan business at the bank from Gold Valley. We might put a branch out there in the new shopping center. And it’s about time we’re finally getting someplace modern to go shopping.”

“And they’ll put a big modern road right through here.”

“I don’t think it’ll be that bad.”

“It’s going to be terrible!”

“Not back where I live,” Ed said.

At that point, Randy decided that intervention might be necessary, as painful as it might be, in the interest of saving Gordon Hite a trip up to Mountain View. “Now, of course, it’s still a few months away from the vote on that.”