by Alex Bledsoe
Bliss Overbay looked surprised. In the Tufa hierarchy, Bliss was second only to Mandalay, and functioned as the girl’s advisor, right hand, and messenger, at least until Mandalay reached adulthood. “Really? What did she say?”
“She said some people would be coming soon,” C.C. said.
“Any details?”
“Not a one.”
“Well, I guess we’ll know when they get here. Did Mandalay say where she was going?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“No problem. I’ll see you later. Next time you talk to Matt, tell him I said hi.”
“I will.”
It made C.C. prouder than he liked to admit to hear his friends accept his relationship with Matt. The Tufa, for the most part, were pretty tolerant in general, but C.C. had been, if not precisely closeted, certainly discreet about his queerness for most of his life. Now it, and he, were fully in the open, and it had gone better than he ever expected.
After Bliss departed, several more early-morning regulars came in and took their usual tables. C.C. adored that part of running a cafe, because it meant his establishment had been accepted by the community. That had not been a given; when Mrs. Goins sold the place, many predicted that he wouldn’t be able to make a go of it, or that he’d turn it into an exclusively gay vacation spot for out-of-towners. But he’d tried to run it as Mrs. Goins had for so long, and it appeared to be paying off.
Except for the decor, of course. That had gone, and wouldn’t be back. Mrs. Goins had stocked the place with exaggerated countrified knickknacks, edged with lace and painted with trompe l’oeil flowers. She said it was for the tourists, but given her own penchant for appliqué sweaters, he doubted that.
He looked out at the bright sunlight filtering through the last of the morning’s mist. Visitors were on their way and he was supposed to help; that seemed simple enough. And fairly benign.
But, as he recalled from Matt’s first visit, newcomers could, with very little intent or effort, also turn everything upside down.
6
“Oh, my God,” Veronica said softly, leaning forward over the steering wheel.
They’d driven from Weakleyville to Nashville, spent the night in a nice hotel near the airport, and gotten up at sunrise to travel the rest of the way. Once they left the interstate, with Veronica driving since it was her car, the rolling landscape lulled them into silence, broken only by the plaintive music of Nickel Creek coming from Justin’s iPod.
Veronica grew up in Meridian, Mississippi. From the delta to the Gulf of Mexico, the state rarely produced a real hill, and certainly no mountains. She’d flown over the Rockies a couple of times, but that was looking down; now she gazed up in wonder at the first rolling foothills that marked the Cumberland Plateau, with the Smoky Mountains rising in the distance.
“It’s so beautiful,” she added with a sigh.
“Watch the road, not the sky,” Justin warned.
“I have two eyes.”
“You want me to drive so you can look?”
“No, you think the white lines on the road are just suggestions.” She forced her attention back to the moment. “Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”
“I do. It’s why the Scottish Highlanders chose to settle here. It reminded them of home.”
“I know what you mean,” she said wistfully.
Justin looked at her skeptically. “Your home is in Mississippi, and your people are from Puerto Rico.”
“True, but don’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
She wasn’t sure how to describe it in words that didn’t sound either trite, or lunatic. But looking up at those rounded slopes, she felt as if she drove toward a massive embrace, one that would both comfort and protect her. Howdy, sister, they seemed to say. You may not be from here, but you’re welcome just the same.
“Never mind,” she said.
“No, seriously, I won’t make fun of you. What?”
“Like you’re coming home to a place you’ve never been before.”
He looked up at the mountains, and realized what she meant. “Yeah,” he said. “Sehnsucht.”
“What?”
“Sehnsucht. C. S. Lewis talked about it. It’s nostalgia for a place you’ve never actually been.”
“What language is that?”
“German. The Germans have a word for everything.”
“Yeah,” she agreed softly. “Yeah, it’s exactly that. Sehnsucht.”
* * *
A half hour later, Justin said, “I need to pee.”
“Why didn’t you go at the restaurant?” Veronica asked.
“Because I didn’t need to pee then.”
“It’s from all that iced tea you drank.”
“I like iced tea.”
“Believe me, I know. How long until we get to Needsville?”
He checked the map on his phone. “Not long, but I really can’t wait.”
“All right.” She pulled the car off onto the shoulder and turned on her emergency blinkers. “Hurry up, I don’t want some good ol’ boys to come along and offer to show me their piston rods.”
He opened the door. “Do you even know what a piston rod is?”
“I can change my own oil; can you?”
“Then why don’t you ever do it?”
“Because I am too fucking grand,” she said with a dramatic eye bat.
He went a short distance into the woods and was soon out of sight. Veronica idly tapped on the edge of the window as she waited.
They had a vague plan to ask around for anyone who might know the location of what was left of Sadieville. Old people in small towns, at least according to Justin, tended to remember things at least one or two generations back. If that didn’t work out, they had GPS coordinates and plenty of experience hiking. They’d find what remained and document that.
The one thing they hadn’t discussed was the obvious: a Latina and her black boyfriend would certainly stand out. They’d both had their share of experiences with racism, but this was the first time, as a couple, they’d ventured into what they believed was the heartland of it.
She looked into the rearview mirror. The highway behind them remained empty. The last whispery traces of mist from the night hung low in the shadows; where the sunlight touched, it had burned away. Before long, the sun would be high enough that none would be left.
Then she jumped as Justin shrieked and ran from the trees.
He slammed into the car. “I saw a dinosaur!” he gasped.
“A what?”
“A dinosaur! It looked right at me!”
She wanted to laugh, but he was clearly frightened. She looked past him into the woods, but saw nothing moving. She opened the car door, forcing him to stand back.
“Okay, okay, calm down,” she said as she got out. “Tell me what you saw.”
Between big gulps of air, he said, “I was standing there peeing, and something moved in the trees over to my right. I looked, and there was a dinosaur’s head right there. It had red eyes and a long neck. I zipped up and ran.”
“Show me.”
“Show you?”
“Where you saw it.”
“I’m not going back in there!”
She sighed. “Justin, whatever you saw, it wasn’t a dinosaur.”
“You didn’t see it!”
“Let’s just methodically look for some evidence of what it was. We’re scientists, remember?”
Her reasonable tone calmed him down, and he took out his phone. When she looked at him, he said, “If I see it again, I don’t want to just have my dick in my hand. I want proof.”
They carefully approached the place where he’d seen the animal and surveyed the leafy forest floor. Veronica saw nothing, and was about to give up, when Justin whispered, “Here! Look at this!”
She joined him and peered down at a bare spot where the leaves had been pushed away. The ground, soft and muddy, bore the three-toed print of something that certainly looked like a dinosa
ur foot. It was as big as Justin’s hand.
“See?” he said excitedly. “See?”
“You made that.”
“With what? The spare dinosaur foot I carry in my pocket?”
She took his phone. “Put your hand down beside it for scale.” He did, and she took several photos. “Look around for some more.”
They did, but they found nothing. As they made their way back to the car, both of them watched the woods for strange shapes.
When they were back safe inside, she said, “Okay, I don’t know what you saw. Maybe a giant chicken or something.”
“It was green and had a long neck, just like a velociraptor,” Justin insisted. “Come on, aren’t you supposed to know all about this sort of thing? You’re a parapsychologist!”
“That’s cryptozoology,” she said with narrowed eyes. “Not parapsychology. And whatever it was, it’s gone, and we might as well just file it away as one more weird thing. Unless you want to look for it?”
“No!”
“Yeah, me, neither. Let’s get going, then.” She started the car and pulled it back out on the highway. Justin turned and watched out the back window, but nothing emerged from the trees to chase them.
* * *
“So this is Needsville,” Veronica said as they slowed down and crossed the city limit. She was careful to observe the posted speed, since so many small towns were speed traps. Even though there was no traffic in either direction, she let her car creep down the street.
She looked out at the small, decaying town through her sunglasses. “I didn’t expect anything so…”
“Dead?” Justin offered.
“Yeah.”
“Everything bad in the economy hits Appalachia the worst.” He pronounced it “Apple-ATCHa.”
“I thought it was ‘Apple-LAYcha.’”
“Nope.” He recalled the YouTube video that author Sharyn McCrumb posted about why the pronunciation is important. “Apple-ATCHa means you’re on the side that we trust,” she’d said, and Justin understood that. Getting the trust of the locals was something every folklorist wanted.
“Where’s the library?” Veronica asked. She’d been with Justin long enough to know that was always the first thing he sought.
“There isn’t one. There’s a bank, a school, a post office, a convenience store, a couple of garages, and a motel with a cafe, but no library or newspaper.”
She looked at the many empty, boarded-up buildings along the main street. “Wonder what they used to do when all these places were open? Coal mining?”
“No, as near as I can tell, after the Sadieville mine disaster, there were no more coal mines in Cloud County. The people may have worked at other mines farther away, I guess.” There was actually only slightly more information available on the history of Needsville than there was of Sadieville. An old bluegrass banjo player, Rockhouse Hicks, came from here, and an Iraq War hero, but otherwise there were no notable citizens.
She pulled their car into the row of parking spots in front of the Fast Grab convenience store. A sign on the door read, PREPAY FOR GAS AFTER DARK.
Those words were crossed out, and beneath them was written, ONLY CUSTOMERS THE CASHIER KNOWS DON’T HAVE TO PREPAY.
That, too, was marked out, and the final words were, MANAGER SAYS EVERYONE INCLUDING ELVIS MUST PREPAY.
“Trusting people,” Veronica observed.
Inside, a young woman worked behind the counter. Her name tag said LASSA. She looked up and said, “Can I help you folks?”
“I hope so,” Justin said. “We’re looking for what’s left of a town called Sadieville.”
The girl looked blank. “Never heard of that.”
“It’s a coal town that used to be around here.”
She thought hard, then shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Are you sure?”
“Only town in this whole county is the one you’re standing in right now. Nearest one is Unicorn, across the county line.”
“Are there any old-timers around who might remember it?”
“I suppose you might find some down to the cafe.”
“The one at the motel?”
“Yeah. There’s a bunch that meet there every morning to drink coffee and solve all the world’s problems. Here’s a spoiler: it’s the Democrats’ fault.”
“Thanks,” Justin said.
“Buy something,” Veronica whispered to him.
“Oh! Uh … I’ll take these.” He grabbed a couple of shopper newspapers from the counter.
“Those are free,” Lassa pointed out.
“Here,” Veronica said, putting two boxes of breath mints beside the shoppers.
“Is that a hint?” Justin asked.
“No, a ‘hint’ is when I leave them all over the apartment.”
The girl giggled. Veronica stood on tiptoe and kissed Justin’s cheek while he pretended mock offense. “Y’all come back and see us,” Lassa said as she handed Veronica her change.
Veronica pulled the car back out onto the highway and drove—slowly—to the Catamount Corner motel. She parked at the end of a row of old cars and trucks, many of which sported homemade repairs to the body work.
“Look at that,” Veronica said. “I haven’t seen an El Camino anywhere but in my dad’s old high school pictures.”
“Which one is that?”
“You don’t know what an El Camino is?”
“I’m not a car guy. This can’t be news to you.”
“It’s the one that looks like the bastard child of a car and a truck.”
“Ah. I can see why it didn’t catch on.”
“My dad says one time he walked into a parts store and asked the clerk, ‘Can I get a gas cap for an El Camino?’ The clerk said, ‘Yeah, that sounds like a fair swap.’”
As they got out, Justin’s phone dinged. He looked at the message and said, “Oh, boy. Steve put the movie on the English department’s YouTube channel.”
“Is that bad?”
“Probably not, but still, I wanted it to be something that didn’t get noticed until my thesis got published.”
Unlike the other buildings in town, the motel sported a recent paint job and new signage. On the door hung a neat sign that read, UNDER NEW MANAGEMENTSHIP. As they entered the little cafe, the bell over the door announced them.
The interior was as freshly decorated as the outside. Everything was tasteful and rustic. A pair of ceiling fans slowly turned, casting shadows thanks to the skylights above them.
Justin and Veronica stopped just inside the door. A dozen people sat there around two tables pushed together, and all twenty-four eyes turned to stare at them.
“Oh, that’s right,” Justin said through his fixed smile. “It’s all white people here.”
“They’re not white, they’re Tufa,” Veronica murmured. “Remember what Dr. Tully said?” She stepped forward and said brightly, “Hi, y’all.”
A chorus of “good mornings” responded.
She smiled, waved a little, and turned back to Justin. “See? That’s how it’s done. All you have to do is be friendly.”
Over her shoulder, Justin saw every man in the room watching her ass as she walked. “Uh-huh,” he said. “That’s got to be it.”
While they waited to be seated, Veronica noticed the framed pictures lining the wall. The nearest one showed a newspaper clipping featuring a young woman in an army uniform, and a headline that read, BRONWYN HYATT, NEEDSVILLE HERO, RETURNS HOME.
But the next one really held her attention. It appeared to be from a musical, and showed a handsome young man dancing. Something about it was extremely familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.
A big man emerged from the kitchen doors holding two menus. “Good morning,” he said cheerfully. He wore a nice pressed shirt with the initials C.C. stitched over the pocket. “Welcome to the Catamount Corner. Just the two of you?”
“Yes,” Justin said.
“Sit anywhere you’d like.”
“Excuse
me,” Veronica said, indicating the dancer’s photo. “Who is this?”
“That’s my fiancé,” C.C. said proudly. “Matt Johannsen. He’s on Broadway in the show Chapel of Ease.”
Veronica’s eyes opened wide. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?” Justin asked.
“I saw the touring version my freshman year, at the Orpheum in Memphis.”
“Yep.” The big man practically beamed. “I’ll tell you something else: the show was about us. Well, not ‘us’ as in me and him, but ‘us’ as in our community.”
“Really?” Veronica said, pretending surprise. “I had no idea.”
“Congratulations on your engagement,” Justin said. Now that gay marriage was legal, it popped up in the most surprising, for straight people at least, places.
“Thanks. We’re holding off until Matt’s run in the show is over.”
“Will he move here,” Veronica asked, “or will you move there?”
“We haven’t decided yet. But we’ll work it out.”
Justin picked the table farthest from the locals. He held Veronica’s chair for her, then sat himself.
“I’m Justin, by the way,” he said. “This is Veronica.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Cyrus Crow, but everyone calls me C.C.”
“Oh, I thought that stood for the name of the place. The Catamount Corner.”
“Nope. Just a coincidence.”
“So it’s not for Cloud County, either?” Veronica asked.
He laughed. “Dang, I never even thought about that one.”
One of the many things Justin had learned from Doc was to personalize encounters; a researcher seeking data didn’t make it very far, but a friendly guy talking to another person could often get exactly what he needed. Doc boiled this down to, Be polite, be honest, and be respectful. And be sincere about it.
“Tell me,” Justin asked, “have you by any chance ever heard of a place called Sadieville?”
“No,” C.C. said. “Is it around here?”
“It was. It was a coal-mining town back at the turn of the last century.”
“Needsville’s the only town in the county. We don’t even have any of those little unincorporated places.”
“Sadieville supposedly disappeared a hundred years ago in a mining disaster,” Veronica said.