by Cameron Judd
“I’ve seen it, yes.”
“What do you know about what happened, Coleman?” Eli asked.
Coleman shifted in his leather chair again. “You know the Arcade Building downtown, of course.”
“Of course.”
“You’ll find the answer to that last question there.”
“I don’t understand.”
Caldwell answered by reaching into the inner pocket of his tacky sportcoat and bringing out a small keychain, bearing two standard-sized door keys and one smaller key, the latter sized for a desk or filing cabinet lock. He handed the keys to Eli.
“Upper level, end of the balcony walkway,” he said. “Room 205. My name is still on the door.”
“Is this your old law office location?”
“Yes. Directly above the old Spancake jewelry store. The filing cabinets are against the wall to your left when you go in the door of my personal inner office.”
“What exactly should I look for?”
“You’ve got a fine imagination, Eli. It was evident in your novel. Use that imagination. You’ll find it.”
“Will you be there?”
“You can handle this on your own. If anyone challenges you about opening my office, show them the keys and tell them to call me. I’ll vouch for you. And if you need to call me while you are in my office, the phone on my desk is still live. I don’t know why I keep it, because I never go in there anymore, but it just seems the thing to do, if one has an office, is to have a working phone in it.”
“When should I go?”
“That’s entirely up to you. And before you ask, yes, Melinda is welcome to go with you.”
“The small key … ”
“Fits all the filing cabinet locks in the office. And the desk. I’ve always been lazy about keeping up with a bunch of different keys, so I had the smaller locks made uniform.”
“Why are there two different door keys?”
Caldwell smiled. “I won’t lie to you, young man: I’m a bit of a game player. A giver of challenges and tests. The second door key relates to that part of my personality.”
Caldwell was right in what he’d said before, Eli thought. He really is one of this town’s eccentric, oddball characters.
“So the second key … ”
“… Indicates you’ll find a second door. But you may have to look for it. That’s all I’ll say … except to add that finding it will prove worth the effort, if you are truly looking for answers.”
“No tips as to what files specifically to look for?”
“You’ll find what you need. Just activate your brain as you go in the door. My files are clearly marked. All I ask of you is that you do not get things out of order, and that you lose nothing.”
“Fair enough. Thank you, Coleman.”
“If you want to thank me, do it by reading this.” He took a manuscript box from his desk and handed it over. It was big enough to hold about a ream and a half of paper, and felt nearly full.
“What’s this?”
“I have a firm rule for myself: no reading and evaluating manuscripts written by others, even though I’ve been asked many times by many would-be writers. You probably have been asked the same kind of favor yourself.”
“A couple of times, yes. But I follow the same guideline you do. I’m a writer, not an editor. Two different skill sets. Related, obviously, but not the same. And even if I loved a manuscript, I’m not positioned to get it published.”
“Precisely, my friend. I agree. And because we both see this in the same way, you have every right to despise me for handing you that box. In it is a manuscript, a new one, one I have been working on rather maniacally for months now, one I hope will become my entrance back into the world of the published writer.”
“Is this the novel that ties to Harvestman Lodge?”
“It is not. That one is to be found in my Arcade office, along with other Harvestmen-related notes and files.”
“Of course. We’ve just been talking about all that. Sorry for the dumb question.”
“No such thing, my friend. As regards this manuscript here before us, I’m asking you to read it and react to it. To tell me if you think it has merit. It is, without doubt, the most personal work I’ve done. It’s not a novel at all, but a collection of short stories set in my fictional East Tennessee county of Burley County, which you’ll recognize as a disguised version of our own Kincheloe, named after the type of tobacco that is our long-time cash crop here. Most of what is there is derived from actual events, and actual people who have been part of my life.”
Eli was put on the spot. “Like I said, Coleman, writing and editing are two different skills. I am a writer, able to evaluate my own work, but not adept at doing the same for the work of others, as, say, a skillful acquisitions editor at a publishing house would do. Or a perceptive literary agent.”
“Are you refusing me, then?”
With the taste of a flawless meal and good wine lingering on his tongue and the key to Caldwell’s own private office now in his pocket, Eli owed the man. He was stuck.
“I’ll read it,” he heard himself saying. “I’ll give you an honest reaction. But be aware that even if I love the manuscript, I have no inroad, no special positioning, to do anything with it. So far I’m an author of paperback originals, for God’s sake! Not even a hardcover. In the world of books, my usual meal is humble pie. Your own track record is far more impressive than mine.”
“But my track runs through the past, not the present. It may be that a young and talented eye will see something in my work to recommend it, or that perhaps hampers it and needs excision or revision. As writers we must be willing to ‘kill our darlings,’ as the saying goes.”
“Yes. Just out of curiosity, what can you tell me about your new manuscript? As ‘just regular folk’ would put the question, what’s it about?”
“It’s untitled so far, if that matters. Maybe your reading of it will bring a title to your mind that I’ll be able to use. As for the book itself, you’ll recognize a good deal of Tylerville in my fictional community of Barton. Keep in mind, of course, that names are changed for both people and places, and reality-based personalities may not fully reflect their real-life incarnations. I find it convenient at times to combine characteristics and personalities of people I know and blend them into a single character.”
“I did the same in my own novel, and again as I work on the sequels.”
“Tell me some about how you are approaching those sequels, if you would. Sequels, I know from experience, present their own special challenges.”
And so the conversation drifted away from Harvestman Lodge and half-understood mysteries and became shoptalk between two writers. Melinda listened with mild interest for a while, then the richness of the fine dinner she’d eaten, the extra glass of wine she’d drunk, the comfort of the loveseat on which she sat half reclining, and the coziness of the book-lined room all combined to make her eyelids heavy, and before long she dozed while the two men droned on quietly, their voices in the present setting quite mesmerizing.
Chapter Forty
MELINDA THAT NIGHT WOUND up the possessor of the new, untitled Caldwell manuscript. Eli was more interested in getting his hands soon upon whatever he could find in Caldwell’s old office in the Arcade that might illuminate more of the history of the Harvestmen.
Though Melinda was tired and eager for rest, she pulled a small stack of pages from the box after she went to bed, and began to read, curious as to Caldwell’s writing style.
An hour later she was still reading despite drooping eyes and a heavy, thick feeling inside her skull. Caldwell had snared her, and after each page she thought: Just one more page, then she would read three more instead. At one-thirty in the morning she was up, making coffee, unwilling to sleep until she’d read all she could.
Sipping her second cup in bed and hoping the caffeine wouldn’t keep her awake the entire night through, Melinda again became engrossed in the manuscript. She wa
s particularly drawn to one story that felt so real Melinda wondered if it was really fiction at all, or a true recounting presented with altered names.
The story involved a young woman, Marla. Born to unmarried parents unfit to raise her, she was raised instead by a man even more unsuitable. The man, her guardian of sorts, forced her into prostitution in her mid-teens, luring men to the house where she lived essentially in captivity, then threatening the men with public exposure if they revealed his vile little money-making scheme.
In the story, Marla had escaped her situation only when the house caught fire. Caldwell’s story described Marla’s flight from the burning house, how she had watched the firemen at work, vainly trying to save the place, then had made her way on foot down roads and across fields and even backyards, until finally a kindly motorist had offered her a ride and asked her where she needed to be taken. Having nowhere to go, she’d asked simply to be taken “to town,” and once there had departed from her benefactor and simply wandered on foot through the fictional town of Barton, a place she’d lived close to all her life, but had seen only through the tinted back windows of her captor’s car.
As a storm rose, fictional Marla was given refuge in the home of an eccentric recluse on property long-neglected and overgrown. Mistrustful of males for very good reason, she’d happily found the eccentric man to be kind and fully uninterested in exploiting her as her ersatz-grandfather guardian had. An attorney, Marla’s rescuer in the story helped her instead of hurting her, quietly obtaining for her a Social Security number and even a rather questionable birth certificate.
Melinda’s only complaint with that particular story was that it seemed incomplete and unsatisfying to her: the protagonist Marla ended up finding work and leaving her rescuer’s home. Not very dramatically satisfying. Real life usually just ticked and meandered along until it reached its end. A good piece of fiction, on the other hand, needed to go somewhere, to lead to something meaningful and gripping and even teleological, something hinting destiny and purpose was at work.
Caldwell had said many of the stories in this latest work were thinly fictionalized versions of true events. If this story was one of those, Melinda had to wonder who the real-life inspiration for Marla was.
Remembering the picture in Caldwell’s upstairs writing room, the one showing the young lady who had recently become Curtis Stokes’s fiance, it was easy to make a likely guess.
At last Melinda laid Caldwell’s manuscript aside, turned off her reading light, and rolled over to sleep, though she doubted sleep would be easily chased down after two cups of late-night coffee. It was at that moment her bedroom door opened and her little sister walked into the darkened room.
“Melly? Are you awake?”
“Yes. Is something wrong?”
“I had a bad dream. Can I sleep in your bed the rest of the night?”
Melinda never much minded the times her little sister came to her bed for refuge and comfort, beyond Megan’s tendency to sprawl and take up more than her share of mattress space. What could she say, though? Her little sister was fast growing up, and the time would come soon when she would no longer see Melinda as her older and wiser protector, someone to flee to when a dream had turned bad. Melinda would miss that.
“Crawl in, goofy-head.”
“Goofy-head? Well, you’re … you’re a … you’re a silly-butt.”
“Oh my! I guess I’ve really been put into my place now!” Melinda had to smile at the silliness of their childish repartee.
When they were settled, Melinda asked about the nightmare. “It was nothing I can even remember,” Megan said. “Just a spooky feeling, mostly. And when I woke up, everything in my room looked scary and mean.”
“I’ve had dreams like that,” Melinda said. “Not one of them ever turned out to be anything real, including the scary way my room looked after I woke up. It was just shadows, that was all. But shadows can be scary, that’s true.”
“Yeah. Like they are to that man in town who is afraid to go through telephone pole shadows.”
“I know that man. His name is Curtis and he’s actually a very nice fellow. I had a chance to visit with him this evening, me and Eli both. And you know what? Curtis isn’t afraid of those shadows now. He talked to himself and told himself there was nothing to be afraid of, until finally he believed what he was saying. Now he can walk through pole shadows like anybody else does.”
“That’s cool.”
“Very much so. And he’s starting to work at a real job, and he’s planning to get married.”
“Hey, is he the same one who sells pencils to people?”
“That’s him. Curtis Stokes, the pencil man.”
“Yeah, he always sits near the door at Discount World with a box of pencils and a change box. You know, Melly, sometimes people like that are scary and you just kind of know to stay away from them. But the Pencil Man never makes me feel that way.”
“I think that’s because he’s a good man, and it just kind of comes through his eyes and his manner and voice. Sometimes you can tell when a person has a good heart in them. You just know.” Having said that, Melinda realized that particular idea might be the wrong kind to plant in the mind of an adolescent girl. Not every kind-acting, apparently good person in the world was in fact kind and good. So she added, “But take that with a grain of salt. Sometimes people can seem to be nice and not really be that way.”
“Yeah, I know. Sometimes you can’t tell. But a lot of times you can, especially if somebody’s bad. Just from how they make you feel, how they look at you or things they say.”
“Has somebody made you feel that way?”
“Well, maybe. Kinda sorta.”
“Who?” Good lord, Melinda thought. Am I turning into as big a worrier as my father?
“I don’t want, uh, to say. It makes me feel silly to talk about it.”
“You can tell me, Megan. I’m your sister, and I want to know what’s going on with you.”
“Well … it’s nobody, really. Mostly it’s the janitor at school, and one other man. Mr. Stockwell is the janitor.”
“I remember him. He was janitor there back when I was in school.”
“Well, all the girls think he’s creepy, the way he looks at us. And some of them say he has holes drilled through the wall of the girls’ dressing room beside the gym.”
“I don’t remember him that way. Do you think that’s true about the holes in the wall?”
“It isn’t true. Sara and me checked the wall. There aren’t any holes.”
“So … could it be he’s getting a bad rap, and isn’t all that creepy after all?”
“Well … he still seems creepy. He always tells the girls how pretty we are. And his eyes have this funny, twitchy thing about them.”
“I can see how that might creep you out. Back when I was with Rawls, sometimes the ‘Parvin glare’ he and the other male Parvins have would kind of make me feel that way.”
“Melly, what was Rawls trying to do to you when Daddy shot him?” The little girl had always been told he’d been trying to “hurt” her big sister, but as she’d grown and become more life-knowledgeable, had begun to suspect the matter had more to it than she had been told.
The question felt clumsier to Melinda than she would have expected. To her Megan was still very much a child, innocent, living in a world that shouldn’t ever have to take adult-life things into consideration.
It was ridiculous, of course, and Melinda knew it. When she was Megan’s age she’d known (however indirectly) almost all there was to know about such grownup matters.
“He was trying to make me have sex with him, Megan. Even though I didn’t want him to, and he knew it. He was going to force me.”
“That’s what that word means, isn’t it? The R-word?”
“That word is rape. It’s not a bad word, like the F-word is. It’s a bad, bad thing, but not a bad word in a cuss-word kind of way.”
“Daddy caught him?”
“
Daddy walked in without knowing we were even there … and he saw what was happening and yelled at Rawls to stop. He had a loaded gun put away close by, and went for it. That scared Rawls, but not so much that he didn’t try to get the gun away from Dad. One thing led to another and Dad ended up shooting him. He hit him in the leg, even though at that time he was so mad I’ve always wondered if he was actually trying to shoot Rawls in … ”
Megan said, “In the testers … the testics … oh, whatever the name is.”
“Let’s just say he was aiming for the crotch. I’m pretty sure of that, anyway. What he hit, though, was Rawls’s leg. But you do know that a different story got told publicly about what happened.”
“The barn story. But Melly, you know what? Nobody believes that. Everybody knows that Daddy shot Rawls.”
“You’re right. The truth tends to creep out about things like that, over time.”
“Why did they make up a story about it to begin with?”
“The Parvins were the ones who made up the cover story. It was actually good for Daddy, though, because you can get in trouble for shooting somebody even if you have a good reason. And he could have had trouble from the Parvins, and his business could have suffered from people around who loved Rawls so much for his football talent that they would have blamed Dad because their favorite player couldn’t bring them big victories anymore.”
“Seems like Rawls would have wanted people to know the truth, then, just to cause trouble for Daddy.”
“It’s that pride thing. If I know big old tough guy Rawls like I think I do, he wouldn’t want people knowing he’d been shot by the father of his own girlfriend. That would have just been humiliating. Especially considering what he was trying to do when it happened. And being known as a would-be rapist would have made college football programs shy away from him even if he’d been able to play again. The real twist of it is, if he’d gone on to a real doctor and had treatment, then the right kind of physical therapy, he might have gotten healed up. But he couldn’t get past the belief he could hide behind a cover story. Now everybody seems to know the truth anyway.”