Harvestman Lodge

by Cameron Judd

  “Hadley Bartholomew King,” said the older man, accepting Eli’s hand and shaking it gently. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Scudder.”

  “Likewise, sir. Just call me Eli.” Eli maintained his smile and waited for King to move out of the way. Interesting, Eli thought, that he should happen to run into the very town historian whose name had come up at the diner. He started to mention to King that he’d read his book of local history, but bit his tongue because he didn’t have time for the kind of extended conversation that comment might provoke.

  King proved talkative enough anyway. “Intriguing and rare name, Eli is,” he said. “Quite classic, even biblical. I’ve never personally known an Eli, I don’t think. Though I had an ancestor on my mother’s side named Eli Kincheloe. Part of the same Kincheloe family whose name graces our county.” King frowned thoughtfully. “Eli Scudder. Why does that name seem familiar?”

  Eli wasn’t about to mention his little paperback historical novel to a man who viewed himself as a historian. He’d learned that historians often hold a jaundiced view of those who mix make-believe with historical fact. “At any rate, pleased to meet you, Mr. Scudder, and again, my apologies for nearly running you over.”

  Eli hardly heard him; he was distracted by the violet hair. Despite his best efforts, his eyes kept flicking upward to study the spectacle.

  King stepped aside and headed out of the building. Eli went into the lobby.

  The woman seated behind the reception desk was in spitting distance of forty, edging toward chunky but not quite there yet, and had a face whose leathery quality spoke of far too many hours of sunbathing in years gone by. Her bushy hair was bottle blonde rooted in natural black. She smiled pleasantly at Eli as he came in and it crossed his mind that she had probably been quite pretty twenty years back.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning. My name is Eli Scudder. I have an appointment with Mr. David Brecht at 10.”

  She tapped the calendar on her desk. “Yes! He told me you’d be coming in. Welcome to the Clarion! My name is Ruby Wheeler.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Wheeler.”

  Ruby put out her hand and he reached across to shake it. “It’s ‘miss,’ not ‘missus,’and you can just call me Ruby. So you’re the one who’s going to help put out our magazine?’

  “I hope so, ma’am. If everything works out.”

  “Please, no ‘ma’am.’ It makes me feel old. Just plain Ruby.”

  “Call me Eli.”

  “That’s a nice name.”

  “Thank you. I had one professor at UT who never could get it right. Called me Elliot constantly.”

  “You were fortunate to get a university education. Me, I didn’t go farther than Kincheloe County High. My parents didn’t have much money and I wasn’t one of those scholarship-winning types. I got this job right after I graduated high school and been hanging in with it ever since. I thought about enrolling in beauty school a time or two, but never did. I guess I like this job too much. I get to meet a lot of people.”

  “Persistence and loyalty are good qualities,” Eli said, keeping things positive. “If you’ve been at this for that long, you must be good at your job.”

  “’That long,’ you say. Just how old do you think I am, Eli?”

  “I’m not going to bite on that hook, Ruby. I’m a smarter fish than that. Suffice it to say, whatever meager age you’ve got on you, you’re hiding it well.” He managed to smile his way through the falsehood.

  “You’re a man who knows just what to say, Eli. Thank you. You can have a seat and David will come out to get you in just a minute.” She picked up the phone. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  Eli seated himself in an imitation-leather chair beneath a large hand-colorized photograph ornately framed on the lobby wall. It showed a distinguished-looking older woman posed on an overstuffed chair before a shelf of books.

  Ruby saw him looking. “That’s Mrs. Arelia Finchum Sadler, grandmother to the man you’ll interview with in just a few minutes. Miz Arelia’s daddy, name of Alexander Finchum, founded this newspaper, along with a man named Joseph Surry, who sold out his part to Alexander after just a year. When Alexander died young, Miz Arelia took over in his place. Miz Arelia married one of the local Sadlers, a lawyer. Mr. Carl married Arelia’s daughter, Deborah – Miz Deb, we call her – which is how he got into the newspaper business. Mr. Carl’s in his early seventies now, Miz Deb too. Both of them sharp and active and in fine health. Mr. Carl leaves a lot of the day-to-day newspaper stuff to his boys Davy Carl and Keith, but he keeps his hand in the hopper, always. Every now and then he writes up a few thoughts about something that’s on his mind, and Davy Carl touches it up and runs it as a column called ‘Point of View’ on the editorial page. He puts it on editorial because Mr. Carl throws his opinions into his columns, so you can’t run them as straight news.”

  Eli was impressed. Ruby had obviously devoted time to learning the history of the family and their newspaper so she could rattle it off easily to newcomers such as he. Further, she had a grasp of the distinction between news and opinion pieces. Not bad for a non-journalist with only a high school education.

  Ruby continued her narrative. “Miz Deb still has a little office of her own up front, but I’ve not seen her in here for several weeks now. She depends a lot on Jimbo Bailey to drive her around, Jimbo being a black fellow who has worked for the Brechts for years and years. Jimbo had some troubles with the law in his younger days – he’s about Mr. Carl’s age – and the Brechts took him under wing and helped him out. A lot of loyalty there now.”

  “Remarkable people,” said Eli, eye on the portrait. “Starting with the lady in the picture frame there. It was no common thing in earlier days for a woman to be a newspaper publisher.”

  “That’s the truth. That picture was taken the year before she died, by the way. It was a sad passing, from what they tell me … blood poisoning. She loved her flower garden and cut her hand on a rusty trowel in her tool shed, and the infection did her in because she kind of hid it and ignored it. She always despised going to doctors, they say. Miz Arelia wrote a society column for the women’s pages up till she died. Miz Deb, Davy Carl’s mother, writes it now.” Ruby leaned forward a little, glanced around, and assumed the manner of someone about to share a secret. “I’ll let you know something: Miz Deb worships Davy Carl, thinks he’s the finest thing walking, and he gives the same right back to her. When Miz Deb tells Davy Carl to jump … you know the rest.”

  “’Davy Carl’? Are you talking about …”

  “David Carl Brecht Jr., the editor. The man you’ll interview with here in a minute. His daddy is David Carl Sr., the publisher. Mr. Carl – that’s what everybody calls the old man. By the way, be sure not to call David by the name of Davy Carl. He don’t like being called that at all, thinks it sounds hillbilly, and he’s an educated man. Washington and Lee. And since they called him Davy when he was little, he thinks of that as a boy’s name, not a man’s. So he likes just being David.” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “Of course, we all call him Davy Carl amongst ourselves, when he ain’t listening. Mr. Carl calls him Davy quite a bit. And Jake Lundy, who does most of our human interest stories and columns, he calls him Davy Carl right to his face. Jake don’t care what nobody thinks, y’see, and Davy Carl don’t seem to mind it much from Jake. Jake can get away with about anything.”

  “I met Jake Lundy’s uncle down at Harley’s just now.”

  “Bufe?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Bufe and Jake are a lot alike. Not so much in looks as in how they behave.”

  “That’s what Bufe told me.”

  “That Bufe’s a mess. So’s Jake.” Ruby chuckled and shook her head and chuckled. “I remember one time when …” The phone rang, cutting her off. “Well, I’ll tell you some other time.”

  The phone call occupied Ruby’s attention for a minute, and when it was done another immediately followed. E
li used the interruption to thumb through his portfolio, making sure all was in order, and wondered whether David Brecht would be more interested today in his graphic or editorial skills.

  Ruby spoke again. “Did you notice the purple hair on Mr. King when you come in?”

  “I did. I’m not sure it was full-out purple, though, or just kind of violet or lavender.”

  Ruby chuckled. “I’ve seen it way worse than that.”

  “How’s it get that way?”

  “He dyes it. I don’t think the dye is supposed to come out the color it does, but on him, it does, at least half the time. One time, and I swear on the Bible that this is true, he came in and his hair was straight-out turquoise. No lie. I don’t think he notices it himself. Funny. You’d think that somebody who dyes their hair would keep a watch on what it looked like.”

  Eli glanced at Ruby’s dark roots. “You’d think so.”

  “Mr. King is a nice man. I like him. Most do. There’s a few hereabouts, though, who can’t get past the fact he never married, never has had a girlfriend anybody can remember, and has always been interesting in what a lot think of as sissy things. He raises the prettiest rose garden in Upper East Tennessee. People assume he’s … well, you know.”

  “Okay.” The relevance of that information was lost on Eli, so he let just it pass.

  The door dividing the lobby from the rest of the building rattled and opened. A dark-haired man, just a dash of gray mixed in, peered out and saw Eli. “Eli Scudder? David Brecht. Come on back! Ruby, if you would, take messages on any calls I may get for the next half hour or so. This gentleman and I have some talking to do.”

  “CALL ME DAVID,” BRECHT SAID as Eli sat down on a contoured vinyl-bottomed chair inside the editor’s glass-walled office. Brecht adjusted the blinds to provide some interview privacy, cutting off Eli’s view of a typical small newsroom – notebook-cluttered desks, word processor terminals atop them.

  On the bookshelf built into the wall behind Brecht’s desk, Eli noticed something else that pleased him: a copy of his novel, Farlow’s Trail. Eli had not sent it as a writing sample to Brecht, so either this was a publisher-provided review copy or Brecht had taken the trouble to buy it himself.

  Brecht’s shirt was creased in a blocky pattern that indicated he had put it on straight out of the store package, un-ironed. Brecht wore no wedding ring and had not shaved in a couple of days. Obviously an established bachelor. There was a framed photograph of a poised and attractive woman on one corner of his messy desk, however.

  Brecht sat behind his desk and leaned forward on his elbows. He had an intent, slightly on-edge manner, and brown eyes that pierced like augers. “Eli, I was very impressed with your resume and work samples. And I’d already read and thoroughly enjoyed your novel even before I received your application. When I heard there was a new book out set in our own area here, I had to read it. We carried a review in the paper. I reviewed it myself. A very positive review. Book’s on the shelf behind me.”

  “I noticed. Thank you. Writing that novel was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life, even though its release was a mostly invisible blip on the screen of publishing. Paperback originals don’t gain attention. I’m hopeful of advancing as a published author over time, expanding my range and moving up into hardcover.”

  “Well, whatever kind of cover is on it, Farlow’s Trail is an excellent read, revealing a talented author. It certainly lent strength to your job application when I noticed your name and made the connection. Well, forging on: I’ve spoken to two of your references already and feel no need to call the third. Now what do you have there? More samples?”

  “Yes, sir. These are mostly graphic work … what you had through the mail were primarily editorial samples, you’ll recall.”

  “Absolutely! And impressive ones! I’m taken with your writing style, Eli. Much more deft and articulate than most of what I get from my reporting staff. But I’d have little right to expect better from them. A paper our size tends to hire mostly entry-level types, typically not from the top of their graduating classes and certainly not seasoned as writers. Young people still writing by memorized j-school rules rather than experience and instinct. When they turn the corner, as you obviously already have done, and move to the next skill level, that’s when I usually lose them to a bigger paper somewhere. I had two go to the Knoxville News-Sentinel just last year, and one to Chattanooga. The best writer our staff has ever had, though, Sally Ogle, a young woman from Sevier County, left us a few years back to go work for a little rag of a shopper put out by a local ne’er-do-well. Please don’t repeat that I said that. I’m simply being candid with you. She was fed a lot of promises about how successful the thing would be, how her pay would increase rapidly, how a shopper was a sure-fire prospect in Tylerville. And I think she might have been wooed by some more, uh, personal considerations in addition to the professional ones. She and the man running the thing found one another mutually intriguing on an interpersonal level, shall we say.”

  “Let me guess,” Eli said. “The shopper is already out of business.”

  Brecht aimed his index finger at Eli. “Bingo. It was a mistake in judgment on Sally’s part to make that move. I could have told her what would happen, but naturally she wasn’t talking to me about being on the prowl for a different job. So we lost her, to my regret. I still hold some hope she might come back, and if she does, I’ll take her, despite the fact she left before. She’s that good a reporter. She works at the Silver Dollar City theme park over in Pigeon Forge since the shopper went south and the scoundrel who ran it broke up with her.”

  “Theme park PR office?”

  Brecht shook his head and grinned very slightly. “Selling sandwiches served on cheap plastic plates shaped like a prospector’s mining pan, as I hear it. Total waste of journalistic talent, her doing a job like that. Unfortunately for us, she can probably make almost as much money doing that as she could working for us. And living at home again, she pays no rent. So we have little chance to lure her back, though I wish we could.”

  “I’m sure staff turnover is a problem at every small paper,” Eli said.

  “Definitely. A paper our size simply can’t pay what we wish we could, even for our best people. And as an afternoon daily, we’re bucking a national trend toward morning papers. But we have no intention for this newspaper to go away. Not in my lifetime, anyway. But let’s put that aside and talk about what we hope to have you do for us. By the way, no need for ‘sir’ or ‘mister.’ Just David.”

  “Whatever you say, David.” Eli mischievously wondered what the reaction would have been if he’d called him Davy Carl.

  “Well, Eli, down to brass tacks, to coin a phrase. You already know the basics: Tylerville and Kincheloe County celebrate their common bicentennial next year, with the celebration culminating in a parade and downtown festival and local holiday on October 12, the actual bicentennial date. A month before that the Clarion will release a large one-time magazine titled Tylerville at 200 as our contribution to the bicentennial observance. It will be provided free of charge to all subscribers, given for special distribution to the various historical societies across the state, and used in other ways we will no doubt think of over the next several months. Of course we’ll enter it in the appropriate Tennessee Press Association contests, and I have no doubt we’ll win big in that arena. This is going to be a quality item, no tossed-off tabloid on newsprint. It will be a heavy-duty, slick magazine, perfect-bound, full size, comparable in physical quality to anything you’d buy at the magazine rack in a high-end bookstore. Down the road we may even reprint the thing in book format, if the response is as strong as I hope it will be. We’re outsourcing the print job because our press isn’t made for this kind of work. My intention for your involvement is to ensure that the quality of content is equal to or even better than the packaging. Which is why we have created the special projects editor position you’re applying for today. Any questions so far?”

  �
��Will this be a strictly history-focused publication? Stories about the founding of the community and so on? I focused a lot of my proposal in that direction. By the way, I should probably go ahead and give that to you.” He pulled the document from his bag and passed it across the desk into Brecht’s hand.

  Brecht continued: “A lot of history, yes. But not exclusively, and not all from the founding days. Certainly not dry, formal, academic history in any case. Nor will it be tea-parlor, provincial, ancestor-worship history that communities such as ours tend to drift into. You know how local history, and historians, can be.”

  “Oh yes,” Eli said. “I grew up near Knoxville, and there were always plenty of local ‘historians’ around who were ready to lynch anyone who dared see their favorite forebears as anything less than minor deities, free of all transgression. They are glad to make idols of them, but not to concede that those idols were in reality as human as any of us. Occasionally it must be the role of an honest historian to take the air out of a few balloons.”

  Brecht frowned, causing Eli to shut up abruptly and wonder if he’d just said something he shouldn’t. “Let me clarify,” Brecht said. “It is my intention that we publish a look at local history and heritage that is accurate and truthful … but not that we be self-consciously and purposefully iconoclastic while we do it. We’re not – I repeat, not – charging out like knights to destroy beloved perceptions for the sheer delight of doing so. That simply is not our goal.”

  Brecht’s harping tone aroused Eli’s first moment of doubt. He had no intention to suggest the magazine be “self-consciously iconoclastic,” but he also had no wish to ignore the best practices of research to promote local legends that might have no solid foundations. His name would be on the masthead of the magazine, after all, and probably be seen at some point by those university professors for whom he’d worked as a researcher. He wanted it to be something he could be proud of.

  So he decided to ask a question that might be risky. He had to know what he was getting into here, even at peril of rudeness.