by Cameron Judd
It annoyed him, because he’d done nothing to deserve the cold-shoulder treatment.
More than that it made him worry.
Chapter Thirteen
ELI WAS SURPRISED when Melinda came to his office door the next morning, open and warm and full of apologies for the icy way she had treated him. “You were right … I was upset by that picture on the wall. I saw someone in the crowd I was related to, an aunt of mine, Aunt Kathy Dobson, my mother’s older sister, who was killed in a car crash in 1978. A horrible, horrible wreck, with fire, out on the Sadler Highway. I’ve seen a yellowed old copy of the front page of the paper from the next day. A huge photo of the burnt car. The coroner said it appeared to him she was still alive after the crash, and probably died from burns. I loved Aunt Kathy so much. No children of her own, and I think I felt to her like I was her own. The thought of how she must have suffered at the end has always distressed me.”
“I can see how seeing that picture could have been upsetting. Thanks for telling me, Melinda. I wondered if I’d done something and made you angry.”
“Forgive me, Eli. I just wasn’t ready yesterday to be reminded of her and what happened.”
“Nothing to forgive. I understand. And I’m truly sorry about your aunt.”
She smiled sadly and advanced to give him a quick kiss. The world was bright again. Eli was vastly relieved. His standing with Melinda mattered.
TWO DAYS LATER, ELI WAS IMMERSED in an increasingly common task: scrolling through the newspaper’s microfilmed old editions in its archives room, with an eye toward bicentennial magazine content. Such work was tiring to his eyes, so he paused frequently to look away from the screen, especially while scrolling rapidly through the pages. As he rested his eyes an old green filing cabinet in a corner, he noticed one of the drawers was labeled TRAFFIC FATALITIES BY DECADE.
He thought at once of Melinda’s aunt, and struggled to remember her name. Kathy … of that he was sure. Dodd, Dodson, Dobbins … no, Dobson. Kathy Dobson.
He was digging through the cabinet within ten seconds. Clippings of the coverage of individual accidents were filed by the month, year by year. He grabbed the folder for ‘78 and tried to remember if Melinda had stated the month her aunt had died. She had not.
Folder by folder, he checked clippings, looking for the name of Kathy Dobson.
Nothing. No big front page story with a lurid photograph. Yet Melinda had talked of front-page coverage.
Was the file for a month missing? No, they all were there, January through December.
But no story. No Kathy Dobson.
For years, Mary Helen Truxton had been building a careful, cross-referenced file of obituaries from 1940 onward. Not only did she have a filing cabinet nearly filled with the actual clippings, but huge and growing index volumes as well, in loose-leaf binders she added to weekly. The home of the obit index volumes was a shelf in the back of the room beside the filing cabinet that held the actual clippings. Eli went to the binder for 1978 and plunged in.
Again no Kathy Dobson. He checked the volume that indexed obituaries by name rather than year. A few Dobsons. No Kathy.
Puzzling. Had he misheard what Melinda had said regarding the year or the name? Had Kathy been a family nickname unconnected to the aunt’s actual name? He could think of no reason Melinda would have lied to him.
Unless … unless the Kathy Dobson story was a misdirection to divert him from knowing what had been the real cause of her reaction to that huge election party photograph hanging on the wall. Melinda’s distress over that picture had been authentic; of that he was sure. If the distress had not been because of seeing the face of an ill-fated late aunt, then what? Or whom? And why would Melinda need to be cagey about it?
The newspaper office was empty, even David Brecht for once having gone home at a reasonable hour. Eli left the archive room and went back up to the hall where the huge photograph hung. After turning on the hallway light, he studied the photograph closely, looking for he knew not what.
He studied the faces of a past decade’s strangers, perplexed. He gave it up after a few minutes as wasted effort.
He’d go by his office on the way home on the chance she might still be in the building. If she was, he’d ask her directly why she’d been compelled to tell him a story about an aunt who never existed.
But he drove on by Hodgepodge without a stop. Her car was not in the lot. He went on home and forced himself to make plot notes on his upcoming Farlow’s Trail sequel. It bored him terribly after only fifteen minutes, but he compelled himself to keep at it. The phone rang, giving him an excuse to quit. He reached for the receiver in hope he’d find Melinda on the other end of the line.
Just somebody selling magazines. Eli didn’t want any, said so, and hung up. He thought about calling Melinda, but remembered it was Wednesday and she usually tended the nursery at her church for its Wednesday night Bible studies.
“That family spends more time in church than anybody I’ve ever known,” Eli muttered to himself as he foresaw the dull and lonely evening ahead of him.
He pushed a tape into the VCR and listlessly watched an old black-and-white spy movie until he fell asleep, unusually early, on his couch.
The phone rang again and awakened him rudely. He glanced at his watch. Church time was past; it had to be Melinda.
“I was hoping you’d call … couldn’t get you out of my mind,” he said as he answered, then grimaced when he heard Micah Ledford’s voice come in reply.
“Well, I’m touched!” Ledford said. “I’ve been thinking about you, too, sweet thing.” He laughed and Eli had to laugh as well. “Listen, Eli, Nancy and I are barbecuing some chicken tomorrow evening and want you to come join us. I have to say I’m pretty good at the grill, and Nancy has a homemade barbecue sauce so good you’ll want to wallow in it. What do you say? And bring that girl of yours with you. And if you’re wondering how I know about her, I saw you two holding hands while you walked down the sidewalk the other day. Up on Stewart Avenue. Was that the Buckingham girl from TV?”
“It was … is.”
“Beautiful girl. One of the prettiest this town has ever brought forth. Bring her with you, assuming she likes barbecued chicken and doesn’t mind seeing a grown man – me – getting sauce all down his chin while he eats. Heck, when I’m really hungry I even smear it up in my eyebrows!”
“I’ll forewarn her. Whether she can make it or not, I’ll be there. Thanks, Micah. And thank your better half for me, too.”
“Will do! About six o’clock, or as close thereafter as you can. The beer will be on ice. Cheap as dishwater, but on ice.”
“See you then.”
BY THE NEXT MORNING, ELI was largely unconcerned about the misinformation Melinda had give him regarding her supposed deceased aunt. A night’s rest had cleared and tempered his thinking. Whatever her reason for being evasive, it obviously had nothing to do with him; nothing deriving from a photograph from a long-past decade in a town he had not lived in at that time possibly could.
She had accepted without hesitation his invitation to join him at the Ledford house. She would later admit to him that her eagerness was only partly to be with Eli and enjoy barbecue. Her parents were hosting the members of their Sunday School class at their house that night. Melinda was glad to escape.
Eli had yet to meet Melinda’s parents, and she’d not exhibited any particular eagerness to change that situation. He anticipated possibly meeting them as he picked her up to go to the Ledford home, but she came rushing out of the house as he pulled into the driveway, so he never even left the car.
“Away, driver!” she declared with exaggerated drama. “Take me away from here before I lose my sanity!”
Eli grinned. “Melinda, have you ever considered the possibility that maybe you’re at that point in life where you need to get your own place to live?”
“Oh my gosh, Eli, when do I not consider that? Don’t get me wrong … I love my parents dearly, but in their eyes I’m a f
ifth grader, not a university graduate and working professional! They try to control everything about me, and it drives me up the wall! You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with … oh.” She paused, aghast at herself for what she’d been about to say. “I’m so sorry! I was going to say something unintentionally awful, considering that your parents are … uh, passed on.”
“It’s okay to say ‘dead,’ Melinda. It’s not offensive, it’s just a fact. You were going to say, I think, that I’m lucky I don’t have to deal with parents treating me like a child. And you know, you’d have been right. I loved my folks, I miss them, and I’d bring them back if I could … but I’m not ignorant of the fact that there are freeing aspects of having no one but myself to answer to. That’s just the way life works.”
“You’re wise, Eli.”
“Aren’t I, just!”
“Maybe I should try to get my own place to live … but you know, I haven’t figured out the best way to approach that with them. I still work in the family business when I’m not working for the station, and I’m also the proverbial ‘daddy’s little angel.’ It would be so easy to hurt him if I pulled away too abruptly.”
“Abruptly? You’re an adult! Adults need their distance and freedom.”
“I know. I know.”
Eli’s apartment was spacious and comfortable, even if nothing fancy, and the temptation was sudden and strong to bring up the possibility of her taking residence with him. There were lots of reasons to resist that impulse, though, first among them being that she simply would not agree. Not only were they still very new in their relationship; he also knew that proposing such an idea, commonplace and accepted though such arrangements were in 1980s America, would go against everything Melinda had been taught was sacred and right. Even if she was weary of being under the thumb of her parents, he’d heard enough from her to know she had largely embraced their highly conservative, Bible-belt values. Eli had been raised in a much more liberal, unfettered tradition, but that would not matter. Melinda had set her boundaries, and he knew what and where they were, and that it would not be prudent or productive to challenge them.
“MICAH KNEW WHO YOU ARE when I talked to him on the phone, Melinda, but I took it he hasn’t met you, maybe just knows you as a regional TV personality,” Eli said, driving. “Or do you know the Ledfords personally?”
“I knew a Cindy Ledford in elementary school, but she moved away. And there’s a Ledford who’s a producer at the station, but he’s from Carter County. There are a lot of people of that name around here, but I don’t know your friends.”
“You’ll like these two, I think. Micah is friendly and funny, and his wife is very pretty and makes a mean toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich. And Micah is something of a history buff, so he’s interested in the novel I did. I think that’s why he’s been so friendly to me.”
“Does he know about the new deal for the novel trilogy?”
“No. I’ll be sure to tell him about it.”
“You probably won’t, from what I know of you. You aren’t one to brag on yourself, Eli.”
“I was raised on the teaching that it is a virtue to be humble.”
“Well … if you won’t brag on your achievements, I will! I’m proud of my man!”
He cast a quick glance her way. “Am I that to you, then? Your man?”
“Did you not know that?”
“I hoped that. And in my more self-confident moments, kind of assumed it. But we’ve never really talked about us. As a thing, a couple, you know. An us.”
“I … I guess we haven’t. Maybe we should, sometime. Because there most definitely is an ‘us’ to talk about.”
He smiled. “I’m glad.”
“Eyes on the road, boy! You’re driving!”
They rounded a turn and saw, on the right, a crumbling old rural schoolhouse, long abandoned. “Oh!” Melinda exclaimed. “Can we come back sometime and explore that?”
“Explore what?”
“The old schoolhouse! I love to poke around in old empty buildings. I don’t know why … I just do. Some friends and I used to do that in high school.”
“That’s funny, because I enjoy that kind of thing, too. There was an old empty house about two miles from where I grew up, and I used to hike down to it alone and just look through it when I was a kid. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just exploring. And after I’d gone through the place two or three times, I knew what was in there, anyway. It didn’t matter. I kept going back and exploring some more. Eventually I caught myself making up stories in my head about whoever had lived there. That was one of several things in my life that steered me toward becoming a fiction writer.”
“So can we go explore the schoolhouse some Saturday soon?”
“That … and one other place.”
“The old Harvestman Lodge, maybe? Are you familiar with it? I’ve always thought that would be a kind of mysterious place to look through, if you could get in.”
Eli’s jaw dropped. He’d not expected to hear that, not when he’d never even mentioned to her his current interest in the mysterious old fraternal order that no one seemed to want to speak about.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Eli?”
“It’s just that … it’s because … yes. Yes, I would like to visit the Harvestman Lodge, now that you mention it. But that wasn’t the place I was going to mention.”
“Where, then?”
“My grandparents’ old empty house out on Harmony Road. Jake Lundy and I passed by there, and he kept trying to get me to go down and look around inside it. I wouldn’t do it, but now I’m thinking I want to. It’ll be all the better if you do it with me. Will you?”
“I’d love to! I love old empty places, the more broken-down and shadowy, the better. Will we be able to get in?”
“I’m sure we can. The place has been empty for years. There’s a door into a mudroom off the kitchen that I’ll bet we can pop open. And it’s on the side of the house that can’t be seen from any other house in the area.”
“It’ll be fun. I’m already looking forward to it.”
“Me too.”
They drove another mile without more words. Then Eli said, as they drew near the site where Essie Ledford’s old store had stood, “Hey, what made you mention Harvestman Lodge? What do you know about that place?”
She shrugged. “Very little. All I know is that the few times it has been mentioned at home, my dad starts quoting Bible verses and spewing on and on about human wickedness and the power of Satan and how mankind corrupts every good thing there is.”
Eli nodded. “Yeah, nobody seems to want to talk specifics about whatever it was that supposedly happened there. You hear condemnation in broad terms, absolutely no details given, and then silence … except for hints that important local names maybe tie in to it all. Lundy warns me never to mention it to my boss in regard to the bicentennial magazine. He says David would shoot down anything in the magazine about the Harvestman group.”
“I wonder what the story is?”
“I was hoping you would know, being a local, because I surely don’t. The whole thing, though, has the kind of vibe that makes me think it might provide a foundation for my first mystery novel.”
She smiled. “What an idea! I’m so proud of your creative ability, Eli! To think I’m dating a real, published author!”
“Hey, and I’m dating a TV star everybody calls the most beautiful young lady in the eastern half of Tennessee. I got the better end of the deal, I think.”
“You’re too complimentary, Eli. I’m nobody, really.”
“I think you’re great.” He chuckled. “You know … to go explore old empty buildings with.” He could easily have added that he could think of some interesting things a healthy young couple could do while exploring old empty buildings, but knew better than to speak it.
They reached their destination a few minutes later, and decided to park in front of the old store location. Eli took a moment to show Melinda
the spot on the concrete worn smooth by the feet of ice cream-awaiting children years before. She, of course, could not resist slipping off her own footwear and giving it a try.
“You’re right … it does feel very smooth against your feet!”
“I told you! Now get your shoes back on … we’ve got to climb the hill to get to the house.” He paused, sniffing the air. “You know, I can I smell the barbecue already, all the way down here.”
“So do I. Smells wonderful!”
She got her socks and shoes back on quickly and they headed up the Ledfords’ hill as fast as they could hike.
Chapter Fourteen
ELI STOOD BESIDE THE SMOKING grill with Micah Ledford, enjoying the spiced scent of the sizzling chicken. “I’m a charcoal man when it comes to grilling,” Ledford was saying. “The way I see it, if you’re going to cook over gas, why not just put it in the oven?”
“Me, I’ll take barbecue chicken any way it comes, as long as the sauce is good,” Eli replied. “And from how this smells, I think this will be some of the best.”
“It will be. Absolutely. My Nancy makes one devil of a barbecue sauce. Some kind of family secret recipe … she even makes me leave the kitchen when she’s mixing it up, so I won’t see all that she puts in it. She makes a grocery store trip on her own when she’s buying the ingredients.”
“State secrets, huh?”
“Oh, it’s a lot more covert than that.” Ledford raised his beer bottle to his lips and took a long swig. Eli followed suit. He glanced over toward the plate glass sliding door leading into the kitchen, and through it saw Nancy and Melinda moving about, gathering plates and cutlery and bowls and platters of corn-on-the-cob, baked beans with bacon, baked potatoes, and whatever other culinary delights Nancy had decided to make part of the coming feast. Eli’s stomach growled.