by Cameron Judd
“It’s their real names. Their mothers were twins and were pregnant at the same time, and I guess they thought close-matching names for close-matching babies seemed to fit the circumstances.”
“What were their fathers named?”
“Their fathers were twins, too, you know. I’ve only heard their fathers’ nicknames, which is what they always went by. Custer’s dad was known as Fire-Pop, and Buster’s was Hotshot.”
“Oh my gosh.”
Silence held a few moments.
“Thunky, huh?” Melinda said.
“Yep. Chunky Thunky.”
They drove on, nearing Harvestman Lodge Road.
“SO TELL ME AGAIN about that ‘rising angel’ thing in the crazy woman’s exhibit hall,” Eli said as Melinda drove them up the same road Lundy had taken during Eli’s introductory tour of Kincheloe County communities. That felt long ago to Eli now.
“Well, she wasn’t exactly clear about it,” Melinda said. “She might call it the ‘Hall of History,’ but there’s more mystery than history to the thing. Maybe some hysteria, too. I did tell you there’s one part about a flying saucer, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“As regards Harvestman Lodge, the only particular I could come away with was that the scandal of the place involved in some way a tragedy involving a child. Erlene’s ‘angel,’ which she represented with a little angel figurine hanging on a thread so it seemed to be flying heavenward above the model of the lodge building.”
“Implying that the child, whomever it was, died in the lodge?”
“It was unclear. And … here we are, Harvestman Lodge Road ahead!”
“Gotta wonder what happened there, and why everybody is so clammed up about it.”
“I doubt we’ll find any answers just looking at the building.”
“Yeah, but I still want to explore it. Don’t you?”
“You know I do. And here we go.” She made a turn onto Harvestman Lodge Road.
BACK IN TYLERVILLE, CURTIS Stokes was leaving town, on foot as usual, and heading toward the county line. Beyond it, a neighboring county, a neighboring town, and a library where Curtis would find the woman he valued above all others, the only one he’d ever felt truly accepted him, without negative judgment, as he was.
Kendra Miller was younger than Curtis, though not by much. He’d known her only a short time before he’d become enraptured by her. It wasn’t her beauty, because what Kendra might have possessed of that had largely faded, worn away by time. They’d talked enough for him to know life had not been easy for her, but details she shared were few.
What Curtis did know about her, though, was what she had grown to be: a wonderful, beloved, warm person who seemed to be interested in him in a way that involved not a trace of condescension or unwanted pity. She treated him as worthy of appreciation and affection. But that affection, he feared, could never be of the sort he might dream of … a woman who could embrace him as her partner in life … a lover or even a spouse. If only it could be … if only. Try as he would, though, he couldn’t see himself as worthy.
Back in the first half of the 1960s, he’d dwelt in the same house as Kendra for a time, though only briefly and merely as a housemate. And not with her alone. She, like Curtis, had been granted refuge by kindly old lawyer-turned-hermit Coleman Caldwell, living in his overgrown house with him, hiding from the world like Caldwell himself did. It would have made Curtis happy if that shared life could have gone on far beyond the brief time it actually had. Caldwell, though, had known that Kendra would need to be able to make her own way in life, and support herself when he was no longer around to do it. So Caldwell had made phone call after phone call, called in favors, pulled strings, explored the extensive personal and professional networks he’d created during his active attorney years. He’d finally found work for Kendra through a younger cousin living one county over, the Head Librarian of Handrick Memorial Library. Kendra would work in the back of the library building, repairing damaged volumes with glue and binder’s tape, and if she demonstrated an ability to do it, reading aloud to children through the library’s “Listening Ears” program. For the first days of her work in the library, Caldwell had driven the seemingly sickly Kendra (she was a frequent victim of nausea and dizziness at that time, Curtis had noticed) to her job and fetched her back to Tylerville again at day’s end … a time-consuming, gasoline-wasting commute. When it became clear that she was taking happily to her work and even discovering new talents through it, Caldwell helped locate an apartment for Kendra with walking distance of the library. With that development, she had moved out of Caldwell’s house and out of Curtis Stokes’s life, except for those times Curtis made the long walk to see her, or talked Caldwell into driving him over.
During one of those visits some weeks after Kendra started her job, Curtis had realized the truth of why she seemed sickly. He found her taping up damaged book spines back in her work area, her midsection thickening and her face broadening and puffy. “I’m going to have a baby, Curtis,” she said. He’d asked her how that could be, since she had no husband, and she’d told him it was just something that happened sometimes. She told him further to be careful what he said in the presence of other library staff; she’d told them that she was married but being divorced by her husband. That way, she said, they were willing to let her go on being the Listening Ears Story Lady, because it was okay to be pregnant if it was a husband who got you that way, but not otherwise.
NOW TWO DECADES past those earlier days, Curtis knew there would be no more hitching rides with his benefactor to go see Kendra. Coleman Caldwell of 1985 was an aging man in fast-declining health, afflicted with diabetes, hypertension, arthritis. His driving days were over, other than short hops to medical appointments. Apart from catching occasional lifts from other helpful folk, Curtis would be afoot from here on out when he went to visit Kendra.
It did not bother him to walk. He’d walked his way across town, county, and region for years, and rather enjoyed it, apart from the pole shadows. And even those, unpleasant as they were, were nothing that actually harmed him. A grip, a spasm and jolt, and he was through, shaken but uninjured. And many times he could avoid the shadows simply by passing by the pole on its sunlit side.
He’d learned how to survive his own peculiar world, Curtis Stokes had, and he took a certain private pride in that. A man had to find something in his life to take pride in, however small it might be.
Before him on this morning was a long stretch of roadside almost completely free of pole shadows. The sky was overcast, freeing him from searing radiant heat, and the day was on the cool side, unseasonably so. It looked like rain might come later. No problem for Curtis. If he found shelter he’d take it until the rain passed. If not he’d just keep walking. It was only water, after all. Nothing to hurt a man.
Walking was fine, dry or wet. Still, a ride was awfully helpful when it came along.
He was just beyond the town limits when a car slowed and a window rolled down.
“Curtis Stokes? Can I give you a lift? Where you headed?”
Thank you, Lord, Curtis said inside his mind as he nodded brightly and reached toward the latch on the car door.
Once in the seat he looked more closely at the forty-something woman who had just given him a ride. “Oh, now I know you!” he said. “You looked familiar, but it took me a minute to remember. How have you been, Mrs. Tate? It’s been a good while since I’ve seen you.”
“It has, hasn’t it? I’m glad I ran across you here. Where are you going?”
“I’m going to see Kendra Miller, my friend who tells stories to children and repairs books at the Handrick Memorial Library across the county line. You going anywhere near there?”
“I am now. I’m just out taking a drive for the sheer joy of it today, and maybe do a little shopping if I run across something, so I’m glad to go pretty much anywhere.”
“I ’preciate the ride a lot, Mrs. Tate.”
“I guess I n
eed to tell you, Curtis, that the Tate name isn’t mine anymore. I’m divorced and back to my maiden name. Losing the Tate name isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t a name held in the highest esteem around Tylerville. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Curtis said, though he wasn’t really sure about what “esteem” meant. In these kinds of situations he usually simply smiled and pretended.
“Nice day for traveling,” he said, just to make conversation.
“I don’t guess you get to ride all that much, do you, Curtis? Usually I see you out walking.”
“Yeah. But it’s okay. I like walking. And a doctor told me once it keeps me healthy and strong. And he told me the pole shadows ain’t actually doing me no harm, even when I hit one, and I ought not worry about them. Just walk and enjoy walking, he said, and forget about pole shadows. But I still worry about them.”
“Walking’s good, Curtis. But riding’s fun and comfortable. Especially when you’ve got air conditioning in your car on a hot day.” She flipped the AC control a notch higher.
Curtis let the chilled air from the vent bathe his face. “Yeah, that’s nice. Thank you for giving me a lift, Mrs. Tate – uh, I mean, Miss Goode. You’re a mighty nice lady.”
“I try to be, Curtis. And just call me Amber, okay? Hey, when we get to that library, will you introduce me to your friend?”
“If you want me to. She’s a nice lady too.”
“Curtis, let me ask you something personal. Is that okay?”
“Uh … yeah. I guess so.”
“Is she your girlfriend, this library friend Kendra? Like you’d like to be with her for permanent, for good? Do you love her?”
Curtis was struck speechless. He’d never figured that his love for Kendra mattered, because no one, not even Kendra, could ever love in return a man as crazy as he was. Amber Goode’s query forced the question to the forefront of the moment, though.
“Do you, Curtis? I’m asking you for a reason, not just to be nosy.”
“I think that … I think maybe that … I …” He trailed off, then gave Amber a helpless look. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I love her. I’ve loved her for years and years now.” And saying it made him cry, though he wouldn’t have expected it.
“Oh, Curtis. I didn’t mean to upset you. But I’ll tell you why I asked.”
He shakily rebottled his spilled emotions. “Why?”
“I asked you because I believe everybody has the right to find the right person to love.”
“Even somebody everybody calls ‘Curtis crazy’ and laughs at?”
“Even him. Maybe especially him, because he is a truly good man.”
“But I can’t ask her to love me back, Amber. I got nothing to offer to her.” He paused. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course.”
He spoke softly, as if there were others there to overhear.
“I don’t make enough money at my work to live on. I can’t sell enough pencils to get by. If it wasn’t for Mr. Caldwell letting me live in his house and giving me food and sometimes some extra money, and getting me some help from the government, I wouldn’t be able to live except for maybe out in a tent with Plunker Williams, like I used to do.”
“Curtis, everybody has to have help sometimes. Everybody. If not money, then something else. My daddy once stopped to help Caine Darwin change a flat tire on his car. Mr. Darwin knew how to run stores and be a rich man, but not how to change a tire. He needed help, you see. Even him.”
“Yeah, but he’s a big man, important … and me, I’m … I’m a big nothing. I’m a nobody who don’t know how to do nothing but get laughed at and sell pencils. And you can’t take care of no wife when you sell pencils.”
“Let me tell you why I asked you about your friend, Curtis: because you could do a lot more than you think. You’ve got some problems dealing with shadows of power poles, sure, but beyond that you’re a hard-working, kind-hearted, capable man. I know several people working at the plant with me who have a whole lot less going for them than you do. You could do more than sell pencils. There are jobs at Spears-Hinkle, where I work, that you could do well. No lie.”
Never before had a serious thought of undertaking a real job crossed Curtis’s mind in anything more than a passing flash. The way Amber said it, though, it seemed like something that maybe could be real.
“What about the pole shadows?”
“We work indoors. No sunlight, no pole shadows. But even if there were, I truly believe you can shake that fear off you, if you want to bad enough. When I was a little girl, I was scared of bugs, any kind of bug. Praying mantises, worst of all. I mean, I wasn’t just a little scared – I was full-out terrified. Why, I couldn’t look at a picture of a mantis in a book, or even touch the page with the picture. Now, though, I can let a mantis crawl up my arm and just grin at him. I had one jump onto my face once, and I just calmly plucked him off and set him on a tree branch. No problem with mantises or any other kind of bug now.”
“How’d you do it? Get over being scared?”
“I just talked to myself over and over again, told myself what I knew down inside was the truth, that I was bigger than them and could hurt them a lot easier than they could hurt me. I told myself until one day I really believed it. And from then on it was a matter of just refusing to be afraid anymore.”
“I wish I could do that with being afraid of them shadows.”
“You can. You do know, in your mind, that they can’t really hurt you, don’t you?”
“Well … yeah. Yeah, I know. I just don’t feel it.”
“Forget about how you feel. Go with what you know. It’ll set you free, Curtis. Believe me, I know. You could get past your fear of pole shadows just like I did with bugs and mantises. You really could! And once you do it, you’ll be no different than anybody else. No more of that ‘Curtis-crazy’ nonsense. You could work a job that paid you better than pencils do, and maybe you could get with that lady you love.”
“You really mean it? About the job and all?”
“I do. And I know for a fact there are some easy line jobs about to open up at the plant next month, if you want to apply for one. I can put in a good word for you. You have to realize, I can’t make you a guarantee they’ll hire you … but I’d sure give it my best try. And the man who does the hiring there, he owes me some favors. Because I’ve done a few favors for him, shall we say. ’Nough said about that.”
He gaped at her, eyes big and beginning to water again. The part about the “favors” she did for the hiring man sailed right past him, but he understood the part the mattered, and that it could be life-changing for him. And maybe for Kendra.
“You’d show me how to ask for a real job?”
“I would. And I will, if you just tell me to. A way for me to help a friend.”
Tears streamed, and he managed to choke out. “Yes, please. I want to try. Thank you, Miss Amber. Thank you.”
She was struggling against tears of her own now, but she managed to smile as she said, “And Curtis … with a job like that, and with your girl working too, you could get married.”
He could not find his voice to speak again for two more miles.
Chapter Twenty-Four
KYLE FEELY HAD NEVER intended to become preoccupied with the story the ailing Jonas Corbin had told him. He’d crossed the line into obsession when he first obeyed the impulse to go place flowers at the cave where Corbin and his fellow firefighter had disposed of the burned corpse of the girl who died in the Millard Tate house fire. After that first trip, Feely had felt driven to go back again for further floral commemorations. Twice since that first flower placement he’d returned and left newer bouquets, feeling half-crazy for doing it.
It was a waste, he supposed, since there was no way a long-dead girl could know her life and memory were being honored. But that was true at every place on the globe where the dead were remembered: every mausoleum, every graveside. It simply seemed right to him that somebody should treat the lost girl�
��s memory with respect. So back again to this spot Feely had come, flowers in hand, once, then twice … and now a third time. White roses on this particular Saturday morning, bought at a florist three blocks from the church where he ministered and kept his office.
His obsession with Jonas Corbin’s grim and gruesome story had exhibited itself in ways beyond the mere placement of flowers at the dead girl’s resting place. Feely had begun investigating on his own the facts surrounding the story of the lost girl to see what more he might learn of her. His investigation had been subtle because he knew inquiries might easily stir unwanted repercussions from and among those locals who did not want old sins brought to light. Further, he was mindful of his pledge to Corbin to “do nothing” with information he had been told in pastoral confidence.
In the meantime, though, Feely simply had to learn what he could. This wasn’t the first time he’d thrown himself into an effort to find answers to questions others would prefer to leave unaddressed.
Junie was a big part of it. After hearing Corbin’s story, he’d been unable to shake off a sense of obligation to Junie herself. It would be wrong to allow her to be left as a barely remembered ghost of a misused human being.
Further, there probably were others out in the world with a right to know of her and about her. Junie had been born to an unmarried couple, and, if what Millard Tate always told Junie’s male visitors was true, Junie’s mother was pregnant with her even before she met Millard’s son, the late Roger Tate. Somewhere, then, there probably remained other, authentic kin of the late young woman: a biological father, aunts and uncles, cousins, maybe even grandparents.
Feely’s drive to learn about the girl had led him so far as to seek out and talk to Millard Tate’s only remaining offspring, the local mechanic and hobbyist photographer Roy Tate.
He’d called on Roy at his workplace on a Tuesday morning, and amid the clang and clamor of automotive repairs going on all around, had almost knocked Roy off his feet with one simple and straightforward pronouncement: “Roy, I’m here to talk to you about Junie, and pictures I hear you took back in the days she was being used for prostitution at your father’s home.”