One She Saw a Blind Man

by Betty Johnson

  “After all the time and money I’ve put into those two?” Jaimeson’s face grew redder than ever. “That damn Ellen even left me without any food in the refrigerator just because I disciplined that mouthy kid of hers a little bit. Before I even married Ellen, I spent more than I could afford getting rid of that damn Irene after she mouthed off about my putting a boat factory on my own property,” he continued angrily. “Now, you get Ellen and that kid back here. I don’t care what happens to Liam; he stopped being my problem years ago.”

  “So that’s your final answer.” Staples stood up. He was silently willing Jaimeson to give him some excuse to report the problem to his uncle.

  “Of course it is!” Mike Jaimeson was almost spitting. “Now get out of here and do your job.”

  Staples went back to his squad car and did his duty for the rest of his shift. Then he clocked out, got into his own vehicle, and went to see his uncle.

  ***

  Sergeant Staples’ uncle was Jacob Long, who served as mayor for the small town of Brandywine, in which Jaimeson’s saw mill was located. Since it was now after 5:00 PM, Staples drove around to the back yard of his uncle’s home and knocked on Jake Long’s private study door.

  Long let his nephew in. “Thought I might see you today,” he greeted Staples. “What have you found out about the Jaimeson situation?”

  Staples sank down comfortably in one of the old easy chairs that dominated this informal room. He was one of the many informants Big Jake used to keep his finger on the pulse of the county. “Mike Jaimeson’s going to be a problem, and I don’t know that we can control him,” Staples replied.

  “Figured as much when I heard he’d torn Ellen’s dress half off of her right there in the mill,” Big Jake opined. “I know he married Ellen just to get Liam’s disability check for himself, but he could have modified the way he treats women.” Big Jake shook his head. “I thought the boy would have learned something when Irene’s lawyers virtually blackmailed him over that misbegotten fiberglass boat factory he wanted.”

  After all the cost and the nasty publicity about Liam’s accident, Mike Jaimeson had decided to pull in a little extra cash by renting his old warehouse to a group of locals who had incorporated themselves to build fiberglass boats. Unfortunately for Mike, his bookkeeper wife, Irene, had known how to use a computer. She had quickly learned that the one thing you did not want within 100 yards of a saw mill is a fiberglass boat plant, where often heedless employees use flammable fiberglass resins.

  Taking her camera to her job as Jaimeson’s bookkeeper, Irene had easily gotten enough evidence of federal safety violations in the saw mill itself to get the kind of divorce settlement she had always wanted. Then, to make doubly sure of the matter, she had given her lawyers the proposed lease agreement, along with a map of the property. (Big Jake had quietly advised the fiberglass boat partners to unincorporate themselves.)

  “What really put the little tin lid on things,” Tom Staples continued, “is that Ellen and Emily wound up in Nashville looking for Liam. The really freaky thing is that Liam is now a blind beggar who calls himself Bill, and Ellen stole the change right out of his hat in front of a witness.”

  “I see some karma coming up.” Big Jake cut off the end of a cigar and lit it. He had discovered the concept of karma a few years before, and he liked the sound of it.

  “More karma than anybody in Rutherford County is looking for,” Staples responded sourly. “My counterpart in Nashville tells me this witness is a well-known local do-gooder. She helps run a battered women’s shelter for her church, but, worse yet, she’s a retired insurance agent.”

  “Oh, lordy – just what we all needed,” Big Jake groaned. “So now we’ve got an old biddy who can put two and two together. Never let an insurance person get on a civil damages jury, Tom; there ain’t no way you can predict what they’ll do.”

  “I know,” Staples replied sourly, “and this morning this lady was quoting chapter and verse about Liam’s accident to the local police sergeant in Nashville. This Araminta Ferguson, as she calls herself, isn’t going to let the case go, and she knows where to find the evidence. Meanwhile, poor Ellen and her kid are still lost somewhere in the wilds of Nashville with virtually no money. It makes me wonder where Liam’s disability payments really went.”

  “Well, then.” Big Jake blew a contemplative smoke ring. He was always quick to figure a solution to every problem. “I guess that means it’s about time for us to be co-operating with the state and federal governments, much as they give me the bellyache. We’ll get Jaimeson out of the way somehow – he practically invites arrest every time he gets into that fancy sports car. One of my nieces can look over the bookkeeping at the saw mill and figure out what old Mike is up to; I’ll send the county auditor out there with her. You make me up a list of all the drunk driving warnings Mike’s had so far.” Big Jake thought some more. “I think I’ll buy me that saw mill when it comes up on the block.”

  Staples sighed and sat back in his chair. “What makes you think Jaimeson’s going to have to sell?”

  Now Big Jake grinned like a shark. “Mike Jaimeson wouldn’t go to all that trouble to marry Liam’s money if he wasn’t planning to help himself to some of it. He’ll be looking to sell, all right. Here’s what I’ve got in mind.”

  Jake waved the cigar at his nephew. “There’s this big argument going on – mostly in retail circles – about whether you can pay employees a living wage and workers’ compensation and still make money on your business. I want to try it out – safety equipment and everything. I’m betting I can make employees so loyal they’ll do any damn thing I ask for.”

  Before Staples could argue the point, the phone in his pocket rang. He got up and went to the other side of the room for a little privacy. “What’s up?” he asked.

  Sergeant Hansen Pierce in Melrose sounded nearly ready to explode. He had dutifully made several calls, as Miss Araminta had suggested, and had gotten some answers he hadn’t really wanted. “I’ve gotten some information I hadn’t expected to get on the blind beggar case,” he told Staples. “Meanwhile, Miss Araminta and our blind friend have gone haring off to Eagleville. Two parties who’ve contacted me on her behalf want to go down with me, and I want you to pick up the other person who needs to be there.”

  After a couple of questions, Staples hung up, fuming, and turned back to his uncle. For some reason, Uncle Jake was smiling at him. “I hear we’re about to get us a little action,” he remarked almost casually. “Mind if I ride along?”

  ***

  Earlier that day, back at the condo, Bill and Araminta had been furiously brainstorming, trying to determine where poor Ellen might have gone when she had almost no money.

  Shortly before noon, Bill, who had been running his hands distractedly through his newly barbered hair, looked up in Miss Araminta’s direction. “I did inherit my grandpa’s old home, a little cabin in the woods way out beyond Eagleville. If the government hasn’t taken it for back taxes or some other damn thing, the place is still there. Just three little rooms, with an indoor john. Dad and I put in a septic tank and gravity toilet, plus an old-fashioned wood stove in the kitchen. We never did manage electricity; Grandpa was way off the grid. He always made do with oil lamps, and so did we when we went out there after I inherited the place. Ellen always liked it because it was so quiet out there; that’s where we conceived little Emily. I reckon they could have gone back there.”

  “Give me a road name,” Araminta commanded. She was seated at her computer, ready to follow up on any lead they could think of. “I’ll find some driving directions and look up to see if any new development is going up in that area. If that cabin was in Metropolitan Nashville, the place would have been snatched up for condos or two family homes years ago,” she added sourly. “But Eagleville is practically in the middle of nowhere.”

  A long three-quarters of an hour ensued, during which Araminta searched the internet and Bill tried to work out his anxieties by rubbing Fid
o’s shoulders. Finally, Miss Araminta turned around to face her guest.

  “It doesn’t look like anything in that general area has been taken for taxes or eminent domain,” she told him. “I’m printing out some general directions, and we’ll get into Little Betsy, gas her up, and go out there. I’ll be depending on your memory to guide me once we get to Eagleville; it’s just a tiny bump in the road, and I don’t know that I’ve ever been there before. These blasted Google maps aren’t precisely perfect.”

  “Just tell me what you see when you’ve gotten as far as you can get,” Bill told her. “Since I got blinded, I’ve been playing old scenes over and over in the back of my head, behind my eyes. I’ll probably be able to tell you where we are.”

  “We’ll just pray about that before we go, and then you can pray some more while I’m driving,” Miss Araminta responded determinedly. Then her guilty conscience kicked her. “I should tell you that Ellen’s gotten hold of your big old pistol, and she’s taken to waving it around. I’ll bring along my walking stick-shotgun that’s only loaded with bird shot. That ought to protect us until you can call to her and reassure her.

  “Miss Araminta, what in the world are you doing with something like that?” Bill demanded, suddenly sounding like the man he had once been. Then he smiled. “You’d think you had been born a hillbilly.”

  Miss Araminta smiled back. “I read about walking stick air guns years ago, when I was reading the Sherlock Holmes stories. After I got to be 60, I figured maybe there might an advantage to being old. I can carry a ‘loaded’ cane without anybody suspecting a thing, and I can fire without doing any real harm.”

  “Mercy!” Bill exclaimed, levering himself up. “Well, go get your protection, city girl. If my Ellen has found my old gun, she’ll remember how I taught her to use it. The poor girl must be really scared of that damned Jaimeson,” he added thoughtfully. “I always thought he was just a blowhard, myself.”

  Remembering Ellen’s carefully mended dress, Araminta shuddered. “Apparently he doesn’t act that way around women.”

  Chapter 5

  Once Bill and Fido were settled into the car and Miss Araminta had turned on the engine, Bill spoke again. “Fill me in a little more before we get out into the boonies, okay?” he begged. “I’m still a little confused. How the heck did Mike Jaimeson manage to marry my Ellen, anyway? He had a perfectly good wife when I knew him – Irene was her name, and she did the bookkeeping for the saw mill.”

  “Irene divorced Jaimeson in 2005,” Araminta replied. “It made the social section in the local paper. There were hints that the divorce trigger was Mike Jaimeson’s plan to rent out his extra warehouse to a fiberglass boat manufacturer.”

  “Yea, Mike and some of the boys were talking about that even before my accident,” Bill replied. “I didn’t much like the idea, because a couple of boat plants had recently burned down here in Tennessee – apparently from spontaneous combustion.”

  Araminta snorted. “It was poor housekeeping that caused those fires, Bill. The agency I was working for back then got several warning circulars about that problem. Apparently those fiberglass resins are highly flammable, and the people who used them were incurably sloppy and left some of the cans open.”

  “Lord, then that’s the last thing anybody would want near a saw mill,” Bill responded. “That old warehouse Mike’s dad had built was less than a football field away from the main plant. Irene must have figured out that the boat plant idea would be a problem. I always thought she was smarter than her husband, but then she didn’t pickle her brains every day.”

  “Apparently your old boss started casting around for a new wife and bookkeeper once Irene left him,” Araminta continued. “Your wife kept on doing the bookkeeping at the legal aid society once the baby was born, even with the disability check she must have been getting.”

  “Oh, Ellen was never one to sit at home and knit,” Bill assured her, “not even with a new baby. She was already lining up child care before Emily was even born. I encouraged her,” Bill added quickly. “My Ellen had spirit and needed a mental challenge, and a saw mill foreman out in the sticks doesn’t earn all that much.” After a few minutes of fidgety silence, he continued, “Ellen was our high school valedictorian, you know, though I always thought she was too honest to go along with some of the accounting dodges I realized Irene was using. Still, Ellen must have been mighty scared for her future to marry Mike at all. She probably just went along keeping the books the way Irene had always kept them. The poor girl wouldn’t have known the difference, with just a country high school education.” He snorted in self-derision. “Me, I thought I was big stuff when I graduated. I had been captain of the football team. You wouldn’t think that to look at me now, would you?”

  “Bill, I’m learning more about you every minute.” Araminta had finally negotiated her right turn onto the highway that would lead them to Eagleville. “I think you just literally shut yourself down after the shock of that accident. That’s what I’ve been hearing in all these social work training sessions, but I’ve never really seen the phenomenon in the flesh before. You’re a mighty smart man, you know. Just from what you’ve told me already, I’d trust your judgment.” She looked around at him briefly before returning her attention to the road.

  “Not much use in having judgment if you’re blind,” Bill replied, nevertheless feeling immensely flattered. Then he added quickly, “Once we get to a little quick mart or something, I’d better walk Fido so he can do his business. We’ve got a good long drive ahead of us.”

  Realizing that Bill was near tears from all the things he was remembering, Araminta used her time in the quick market to good effect. She set her grocery bag on the floor of the back seat next to Fido, pulling out a small packet while Bill was getting seated and fastening his seat belt by touch. “I bought a bunch of extra handkerchiefs while I was in the store,” she told him once she was seated, passing him a handkerchief. “This trip is going to be kind of traumatic for all of us.” Buckling her own seat belt, she continued, “I do hope Ellen and Emily have actually gone where we think they have.”

  Bill was enjoying the luxury of having a soft handkerchief to blow his nose. “I’m sure that’s where she’s headed. It’s the only place I know of that Mike doesn’t know about.” He buried his face in the handkerchief. “If only I had been there for her – but, honestly, what could I have done? There ain’t no programs for the blind out our way. Once I got out of the hospital, they even put me in the County Home, way away from everybody I knew. It was quite a drive for even the lawyers to come out and see me.”

  “I understand.” Miss Araminta felt grit in her own throat and under her eyes. “We haven’t got anything like nearly enough services for the blind and disabled here in Tennessee. I’m only hoping we can get you and your little family into some of those services in Nashville. You didn’t think I’d quit trying on you, did you?” she added, suddenly anxious about her passenger.

  “So many people have tried,” Bill murmured hopelessly, apparently staring at his lap, “and where has it gotten any of us?”

  “Well, I’m getting into Eagleville now.” Araminta spoke firmly to brace him up. “I’m going to start describing the scenery, and you sing out when you recognize something.”

  They had to make two extra stops in Eagleville to get the little Ford headed in the right direction. Despite Bill’s blindness, the owner of the grocery store and filling station recognized him. “Lordy, I never thought I’d see you again!” The owner, who looked to be at least 65 himself, leaned in through the rolled down window to talk to Bill and shake his hand. “I’m glad somebody got you one of those seeing-eye dogs. Your grandpa always did hate to think you had to get work so far away from the old home place.” Hearing Bill’s request, he replied, “Sure, I’ll be glad to draw the lady a picture of how to get you there. Ain’t nobody tried to take the place to build on, thank goodness. I reckon them venture capitalists are running out of money, or else being awful
cagey about how they spend it.”

  Soon, the old man had spread out a big order tablet on the trunk of the car and was drawing pictures and explaining to Miss Araminta where to turn on unmarked, unpaved roads. “Well,” she remarked whimsically when he had finished, “we’ll see how my city-bred tires hold up.”

  Araminta fervently hoped the tires would hold up – and the vehicle undercarriage as well. Cell phone coverage out here in the boonies was chancy indeed.

  ***

  Finally, the car wound up at the end of a set of tire tracks on a dirt road. “I can see a house in the distance,” Miss Araminta reported, putting her gear shift into park and turning off the engine. “It’s a little cabin with a corrugated tin roof and bricks propping up the front porch. If this is it, I’d better not park too close. We don’t want to scare our people away.”

  “This is the place,” Bill assured her, sniffing the air. He had opened his own car door as soon as Araminta shut the engine off, and Fido now jumped across the back seat to join him. “Fido and I had better lead the way.” The man spoke now like the property owner he was. “I’ll start calling out as soon as I get within hearing distance, and Ellen should be able to recognize me. Mack did a real good job of barbering,” he remarked thoughtfully, stroking his chin. “I was surprised at the care that boy took with Fido and me; you must have really laid down the law to him.”

  “Oh, I doubt that.” Miss Araminta replied easily. She had gotten out of her own side of the car and grabbed her walking cane shotgun, plus the groceries and her crochet bag. “I bet we’ll get a new country music song out of your experience; Mack always thinks in music.” She was happy to walk behind Bill, and Fido was sniffing the country air as though he couldn’t get enough of it.

  There was a challenge before they had gotten ten feet from the car. “Alright,” called an assertive female voice, “whoever you are, you stop right there. I’ve got the drop on you, and I know how to use this thing.”