by Cameron Judd
“Hop in the truck. Let’s go out to Will Keller’s old farm. I know exactly where it is.”
Chapter Seven
“I CAN GUESS WHAT YOU’RE THINKING,” Lundy said. “It looks a lot smaller than you remember.”
“You’re right,” Eli said, studying his grandparents’ crumbling and abandoned old home from the perspective of Lundy’s truck, pulled off for the moment to one side of Harmony Road. “When I was a kid the place seemed huge. But it’s not. It’s just a farmhouse.”
“It’s that way for everybody, my friend. When you’re little, everything is big. Then you get big yourself and everything else shrinks. You want to turn in the driveway and go up to the house? It’s empty, right?”
“Yeah, it’s empty … but no. I’ll come out here sometime and walk around the yard, maybe. Not today.”
Lundy sighed. “I always hate to see these old places go down, especially when you think about all the living that’s been done in them. How many skillets of cornbread you reckon your granny baked in that house, son? How many Christmas trees did old Will drag in from them fields out beyond there? It’ll make you sad to dwell too much about such things, but I do it anyway, just by nature. Am I the only one who does that, you reckon?”
Eli, who was mentally seeing his late grandfather rocking in his old chair on the porch as he had so many years before, shook his head. “No, you’re not the only one. It makes me sentimental to see this old place again.”
“Sure you don’t want to get out and walk around the yard a bit?”
“No. Somebody might see and wonder what business we had there.”
“Who owns it now?”
Eli shrugged. “Somebody outside of the family bought the house and property years ago. The history after that I don’t even know.”
“C’mon. Let’s walk around. If somebody asks, we’ll say we run a lawn service and were out scouting for business to see if somebody might hire us to trim up the grounds.”
“Not today, Jake. I’m thinking supper. I’m ready to get back to town and find a bite to eat.”
“I’m a little hungry myself, now that you mention it,” Lundy said. “Back home, then! We’ll be roaming like this the rest of the week … maybe we can come back a different day, if you want to.”
“Maybe.”
Lundy clicked on the radio and scanned through the dial until an old country song blasted through the speaker. “Porter Wagoner!” Lundy declared. “Remember that TV show of his?”
“I remember,” Eli said. “Flashy suits, sequins …”
“And good music,” Lundy said. “That’s the kind of country I can relate to … not the garbage on the radio these days. It’s getting so you can’t tell country from that pop crap. Give me the old stuff. This is about the only station I’m willing to listen to anymore.”
Eli listened as Wagoner sang about a condemned prisoner dreaming, on the last night of his life, of the green grass of home. “That’s too maudlin for me, Jake. But I like old stuff too. In my case, bluegrass and traditional mountain music like my dad used to sing around the house. He played mandolin in an amateur bluegrass band back in Strawberry Plains. He taught me to play, too.”
“You’re a bluegrasser? That’s good. You’ll enjoy tomorrow, then.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, just wait. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Said too much already.”
Eli pressed the question, but Lundy was unyielding. They were pulling into the outskirts of Tylerville when Lundy said, “Hey … good timing on our part. You were asking what it meant to say somebody is ‘Curtis crazy?’ There’s your answer … that’s old Curtis himself there. You see him out around this area quite a bit this time of day, so I ain’t surprised he’s here.”
Eli saw a poorly dressed man on foot at the roadside, near a telephone pole whose shadow stretched eastward across the sidewalk and street. With an unshaven face, unkempt hair shagged down over his ears, and tattered jacket, the pedestrian looked like a typical homeless man. But there was an unusually wild desperation in his expression as he stared at the shadow of the telephone pole stretching across his path.
Lundy quietly pulled his truck off into a nearby parking lot. “Just watch him … old Curtis is famous around here for what you’re about to see.”
“That’s Curtis?” Eli asked.
“The man himself, Curtis Stokes … now watch … see him backing up?”
The ragged man was backstepping with his gaze fixed on the shadow of the pole. Going backward about ten feet, he stopped and crouched slightly, as if about to run … then run he did.
Curtis Stokes lunged forward, closing his eyes as he ran headlong toward the shadow of the telephone pole. He leaped as he reached it, hurtling himself across and through the eastward-stretching shadow, his entire body spasming as he passed through it as if he’d been grabbed and shaken in midair by a great and invisible fist. He landed on his feet on the other side of the shadow, and dropped to his knees for a few moments, panting and shaking.
Lundy rolled down his truck window. “You okay, Curtis?”
The man looked up, squinting in their direction, then smiled falteringly and nodded. “I’m fine, Jake. But that was an extra bad one.”
“I could tell! You be careful, Curtis!” Jake called back.
“Always am, Jake!”
They drove on.
“THAT’S ABOUT THE SADDEST thing I’ve seen,” Eli said. “Has nobody given help to that man? He’s obviously mentally ill.”
“He’s Curtis-crazy is what we call it around here. He defines the term. He’s the original.” Lundy drove a few moments chuckling softly, then noticed the way Eli was looking at him. “What? You didn’t think that was funny? Did you see the way he jerked when he went through that shadow? I laugh every time I see it. I can’t help it. Everybody around here laughs at Curtis and his pole shadows.”
“It was pitiful. Can you imagine going through life that way, afraid of every telephone pole or street light in your path? It has to be a hard life for him.”
“Baloney!” Lundy replied. “There’s nothing hard about Curtis Stokes’ life. He’s as cheerful a soul as you’ll find in this town. And yes, there’s been folks, Erma Campbell over at the Senior Adult Center, for one, who’ve tried to get him help of the head-shrinker variety. Curtis just never goes along. And he’s harmless and doesn’t drink, so he never gets arrested and forced into treatment. He just goes along his merry way, dodging telephone pole shadows and being friendly to everybody. He walks everywhere, one end of this county to the next, and even beyond. Folks have seen him walking along in Johnson City and even Kingsport, miles and miles from here. I know what you mean about it being kind of pitiful, him being like he is, but there ain’t a soul in this town who wouldn’t give old Curtis a hand if he really needed it. He ain’t got much, but he’s got friends.”
“Friends who laugh at him and think he’s a joke. I was raised to feel sympathy for folks like Curtis, not mock them,” Eli said. “I’m not trying to sound preachy. It’s just the way I was taught.”
“Tell you what … let’s go back and get him, and buy him some supper down at Harley’s. I’ll pay for it. My penance for laughing at the old boy.”
“Has he always been like that?”
“All the time I’ve known him, yes. How he got that way nobody seems to know for sure. There’s stories that his mother treated him bad when he was little. Maybe did something that injured his brain. But I don’t really know. I’m not sure anybody does. Here’s the thing about him you might not expect: he doesn’t take drugs and he doesn’t drink, and don’t you believe anybody who says he does. His problem isn’t something he puts into his veins or pours down his throat. It’s something that got messed up in his brain somewhere along the way.”
“That’s a tough life to live. Is he mentally retarded?”
“Uh-uh. He can have a conversation with you like anybody else. The only problem he has involves those shadows.”
Lundy turned the truck around and headed back to get Curtis Stokes.
“WHERE YOU BEEN, SON?” ASKED Junior Harley at the grill as Eli walked into the cafe with Jake Lundy and Curtis. “I thought we’d be seeing you from time to time once you got moved into town, but you ain’t set foot in here since that day you had your job interview.”
Eli raised his right hand. “Guilty as charged. I’ve been brown-bagging my lunch most days. Y’see, Lundy here is making all the big money up at the paper, and there’s not much left for the rest of us, so we live like paupers who can’t even afford to buy their own meals.”
“You know better than that, Junior,” Lundy said, one brow raised. “Ain’t nobody but the Brecht boys making money working for Mr. Carl.”
“I believe that,” Junior said, slapping raw hamburger onto the hot griddle. “Curtis Stokes, is that you I see hiding back there in the corner?”
“Yessir, Junior. It’s me.”
“Might want to be careful of them corners … might be some shadows there.”
“Regular shadows ain’t nothing. It’s just the telephone pole shadows that you got to worry about.”
“Yeah. The kind that can reach out and shake you like a wet dishrag.”
“That’s right. That’s the ones.” Curtis shuddered as if hit by a chilly breeze.
“I’m picking up supper for Curtis,” Lundy said. “Throw on one of them big burgers he likes so well … and one for me, too. Heck, fry up one for Eli here, while you’re at it. And put them all three on my tab.”
“You ain’t got a tab, Jake,” Junior Harley said. “We don’t run tabs.”
“Well, durn it, then, I guess I’ll just have to pay as I go.” He dug in his back pocket for his billfold.
“We’ll settle up there at the cash register.”
“No need for you to pay for me, Jake,” Eli said. “I can get my own burger.”
“I want to do it. I insist.”
Moving expenses and utility fees had left Eli somewhat tapped out, so he accepted Lundy’s offer with a little more obvious readiness than he intended to show.
“Where’s Betty?” Lundy asked.
“Out picking up flour and eggs. She’ll be back.”
The garlic-salted burgers, with thick slabs of tomato and onion piled on with lettuce, mustard, and ketchup – the “Harley standard” for burger presentation, Junior informed them – were delicious, and locally famous. Eli forced himself not to eat too quickly. Curtis Stokes showed no such restraint, wolfing his meal. When he was done he thanked Lundy profusely and left the little cafe. He went ten feet down the sidewalk, turned, and came back.
“Next one’s on me, Jake,” he said through the door.
“I’ll take you up on that, Curtis.” A wave, and Curtis was gone.
“Where does Curtis live?” Eli asked.
“Years ago he had a tent out on an empty lot in some woods, and lived there most of the time in warm weather. Slept there at night, anyway. Not far from where your office is, actually: on down the highway maybe a mile or so from Hodgepodge. During the daytime, in good weather and sometimes not-so-good, he sits outside some stores in town, selling pencils for whatever folks are willing to pay for them. Most give him a dollar … try to give him more than that and he gets insulted. He’s not looking for charity, y’see … selling those pencils is his job, as he sees it, and all he asks is that his job be respected, like anybody else’s, and taken seriously. You try to give him five bucks for a pencil, and he’ll get mad, figuring you’re treating him like some sad charity case who needs pity. You heard him say just now that the next meal’s on him. He means it. He may never have quite enough in his pocket to actually buy it for me, but I guarantee you right now he has it in mind to pay for my lunch one of these days. He’s a man with a damaged mind but a good heart. I respect him even if I do laugh at him going spastic when he jumps through a telephone pole shadow.”
“Sad, having to live out in a tent all the time.”
“He doesn’t anymore, hasn’t for years, in fact. Plunker Williams, the town drunk, kind of horned his way into staying out there in that tent with Curtis, and Curtis didn’t like Plunker’s drinking. So Curtis gave his tent over to Plunker and went looking for a different place to stay. He ended up with a room in Coleman Caldwell’s place. Coleman took him in.”
“Coleman Caldwell … I haven’t run across that name.”
“Coleman’s Curtis-crazy in his own way,” Junior Harley said over at his stove, having been listening in. Standing at a grill in a place where conversations flowed all around, sometimes five or six of them at a time, he’d grown adept at picking out the interesting parts of what was said. “You’ll know what I mean when you see his house. If you ever can see it. Right, Jake?”
Lundy nodded and explained. “Coleman Caldwell is a retired old lawyer. Bachelor all his life, so far, anyway. He inherited one of the old houses out on Cherry Avenue, same house he grew up in. After his daddy died he took care of his old mother there until she passed on too. After she was gone, Coleman went all hermit and quit coming out of that house except when he had to. And he had already quit cutting the grass or trimming the shrubs and ivy and such, just let it all go. What got that started was his mother couldn’t bear the noise of lawn mowers or chain saws or anything loud while she was laid up sick and dying, and also she said she wanted to look out the window and see nothing but ivy and branches and leaves because she always thought of heaven as a green garden kind of place. That’s the story as it’s told, anyway. For that or whatever reason, Coleman just let everything grow up around the house, never mowing, never pruning, not touching so much as a twig. And when his mother died something must have kind of snapped in his mind, because he never started back to maintaining the property again, even though she was gone. Now the place is covered up with so much greenery you can’t really tell there’s a house there at all, in the summertime. One big thicket, that’s all it is. You can’t even go in and out the front door … there are ivy vines so thick across it I doubt three strong men could break through it together.”
“The city lets him get away with that?”
“They’ve told him five or six times to clean it up, but with no enforcement. I think part of it may be that he doesn’t let garbage pile up or throw his old food out the back door or anything. He sets his garbage cans out for pickup at the end of his driveway just like you’re supposed to. The entrance of the driveway is just about the only visible part of the property in summertime. It just kind of winds its way up into the undergrowth and overgrowth.”
Junior Harley cut in again. “All Coleman does is let the vegetation grow on his lot, just lets nature take its course. I heard the mayor say once that it’s kind of hard to fine a man for letting nature do what nature does. Of course, the mayor’s a second cousin to Coleman, so he may be cutting him a break. And it don’t hurt that Coleman’s providing a place for Curtis to live, which is kind of a public service. Otherwise Curtis would probably just be living in his tent or out on the streets.”
“How do Coleman Caldwell and Curtis Stokes get in and out of the place if it’s all blocked up with vines and so on?”
“There’s a basement door off the driveway, and just enough of a path that they can get through. Coleman gave Curtis a key. Curtis has his own little room down there to live in.”
“That’s good.”
Lundy went on: “Something you might want to know about Coleman Caldwell: he’s an author, like you are. Or used to be. He had two, no, three novels that got published back in the late 1950s … books about a small town like this one. Detective stories, crime novel of things, small town instead of big city stuff. I read them and liked them pretty well, but I don’t remember much about the plots. I do recall that everybody said they thought he was just writing about Tylerville under a different town name, but Coleman said no. He said his town was make-believe, start to finish, not just Tylerville renamed.” Lundy shrugged. “I don’t know … I’ve nev
er written fiction, just columns and stories about real-life people and places. So I don’t know the rules or whatever about fictionalizing something.”
“There aren’t really any rules except for what the author makes for himself. I understand what Coleman Caldwell was saying,” Eli said. “When you write about a fictional town or county or whatever, it’s going to have things about it that you base on places you’ve lived or been in a lot. But the place in the story won’t be a real one. It’ll be one you put together from bits and pieces of other places, mixed in with your imagination. But you do want it to seem real, to have what they call ‘verisimilitude.’”
Lundy dipped a french fry in ketchup. “Way too artsy for me, son. You sound like a dadgum English lit professor. I’m not possessed of what you’d call a literary mind.”
“Same here,” said Junior Harley. “Louis L’Amour’s as literary as I get.”
They finished their meal with little further conversation. Lundy went home in his truck, promising to pick up Eli the next morning at his office. Eli, whose car was parked at the newspaper lot, walked to it, thought about running in to see if David Brecht was still in his office, but instead simply got in his Rambler and drove home.
The contents of the flap-top mailbox on the wall near the apartment door included welcome news: a nearly forgotten proposal for a follow-up to Farlow’s Trail had received a positive reception from the publisher of the original novel, and seemed likely to generate not one, but two further contracts, expanding upon the foundational story to make a full paperback trilogy.
Unsurprisingly, the advance money would be low, but a sale was a sale, and not to be taken lightly by a newcomer in the competitive world of genre fiction. He’d call Allison tonight and brag a little while trying to sound as if he weren’t.
Chapter Eight