The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1)
Page 22
Unfortunately, after five or six years, the timber making up many of the plank roads began to warp or rot and had to be replaced. Maintenance on the roads soon became so expensive that the construction of new roads diminished and then died altogether. In 1875, with the dearth of new orders for roadbuilding timber, the town council voted to give the city its third name, and Pine Oak it has remained. Still, every year, on August 22nd, the city celebrates its rich past by holding the Plank Festival. Today, most of our harvested pines are trucked to another county, where they are pulped and used to make disposable diapers. Just thought I’d throw that in.
Yet the most interesting piece of information was contained in a single paragraph in The History of Jasper County. It was the paragraph I read when I followed the last index reference under “plank road.”
It is an irony that Planktown, which supplied great northern cities with materials for building hundreds of plank roads, had only one of its own, a five-mile stretch connecting the old Torrington homestead with the new railroad line. There is no record telling what the road’s purpose was, although it can be assumed that it was used to haul timber over difficult terrain. The road, as well as the homestead, have been lost to the mysteries of time.
What did that mean? That the location was lost? That the old homestead had burned down or was reclaimed by the forest? Well guess what, folks, I had found it, and I obviously wasn’t the first.
Was Krista the descendent of Cecil Torrington? And could the compound be the original Torrington homesite? Who owned it now, I wondered; then I remembered the maps Gina had brought over.They, too, were the jackpot; Gina had done great.
When Jack came back in about seven-thirty, I was hunched over the dining room table with the maps and a magic marker. He dropped off some groceries in the kitchen, then took his camera bag into his—into Cindy’s—bedroom, where I heard him moving around for a few minutes. When he came back he started unpacking the grocery bags.
“Watcha got there?” he asked.
“I’m trying to get an idea of who owns the woods in back of the pasture here.”
“Thinking of buying?” he asked.
“Who, me? No. Sorry, I’m a little distracted. You want me to talk you have to give me coffee.”
Jack went to the coffeemaker and complied with my request, and in a few minutes he was sitting next to me at the table. Although I had vowed not to involve Jack in what I was doing, I began telling him the goat story. The truth is, I needed someone to talk to just then, and he was there. When I finished telling him about trips into the woods and what I had seen there, I began explaining what I was doing with the maps.
“The first map starts right here at the location of Meekins’ Market. What I’ve been interested in is who owns the property in back of it—in other words who owns The Clearing; who owns the place where I shot the rattlesnake, and, more important, who owns what’s further out? Those two people I saw walking out of the woods—where were they coming from?” I stopped and sipped from the cup of hot coffee and nodded toward the map. “As you can see, most of the parcels are pretty big: fifty acres at least. As I find out who owns each one, I’m outlining it with this marker and writing the owner’s name on the map.”
“Have you found anything interesting yet?” Jack asked.
“Lots. Look, Gina got two maps from the Property Appraiser’s Office. One for in back of Meekins’ Market and one for the neighborhood around my house.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, the two intersect. See how one map fits right over the left side of the other?”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“With the winding dirt roads and squirrelly trails, I didn’t realize that I could walk out that path behind Meekins’ Market and eventually get to my back door through the woods. It might take a lot of hours, and I’d have to take some twists and turns, but it could be done.”
“So who owns all that land in back of you there?”
“I do.”
“Not all of it?”
“Not all of it, no, but at least 400 acres, including 50 acres of pines. A lot more than I thought I owned. Well, actually, I didn’t know I owned any—my mother bought most of it when she and my dad moved out here and she put the land in my name. But look here. Look back at this other part of the map. Clarence Meekins told me that he owned a few acres in back of the market. That was the first thing I found that was weird.”
“Why was that weird?” Jack asked.
“He actually owns a thousand and six, so Clarence lied to me. And he lied to me again when he told me that the paper company owned some of the land out there. They don’t. He also told me that a woman named Mae Barnes owned some property out that way. She doesn’t; know why? Because Clarence Meekins bought it from her seven years ago.”
“How do you know all this?” Jack asked.
“Gina got me a website for the Property Appraiser’s Office. I call up a map of the county, pinpoint a certain area, then zoom in. Every single parcel of land in Jasper County is on that map, along with who owns it and who that person bought it from.”
“Holy wow.”
“Here’s something else that’s weird,” I went on. See these next five or six parcels in back of the one Clarence owns? From the dates I found on line, the parcels have been bought up slowly over the last hundred years by the same family.
“What family?”
“The same family that founded Pine Oak back in 1830. I mean, I never knew there were even any Torringtons left until I met Krista the other day.”
“The girl with the gray horse?”
“Right. I think she’s part of the original family.”
“Why?”
“Because I saw her earlier today.” I pointed to a place on the map that I had outlined with a large red rectangle. “Right here.”
“You walked out in the woods today?” he asked.
“Alikki got out and I had to go find her.” I summarized my trip, describing the compound, the plank road, the gunshots, Krista, and her scarred companion.
“So how does all this connect to the goat?” Jack asked.
“I have no idea in the world.” I told him. “But, somehow, it does.”
I had been working nonstop, with breaks only to feed and check on Alikki, whose teats were very distended and beginning to drip, so when Jack produced a glass of merlot while he cooked a spaghetti dinner, I was well content.
“Where have you been all day,” I asked him, moving my maps to the side and getting some dishes from the cupboard.
“Photo shoot,” he replied. He was working with tomato sauce, sautéed chicken bites, green peppers, onions, and a few spices—all of which he must have bought when he was out.
“Photos of what?” I asked, amazed at his ability to take his work wherever he went, at his ability to be his work.
“I’ll show you in a minute. Watch the sauce; it’ll still take fifteen minutes or so. I have something cooking in the bathroom. I mean, the darkroom.” He disappeared into his bedroom.
When he had been gone ten minutes, I went to the stove and finished the cooking. I had just put the food on plates when he came back in. He sat down and handed me a still-wet contact sheet with photographs of what looked to be a dozen teenage girls. Different hair styles, different outfits, different expressions, doing different things. “Who are . . .” I began, and then stopped. Different degrees of makeup. Different . . . One of the photos showed a girl dressed in a fashionable black gown, with black hair, dark black eyebrows, and bright red lipstick, in fact, the lipstick was the only color in the photo. It was Becky Colley as she had never seen herself before. “Jack, this is extraordinary!” I said. I looked closer. Different outfits, different hair styles, different locations, different everything but subject. All the pictures were of Becky Colley. And every one of them showed a different side of the confused girl.
“She called my cell,” he explained.
“Where did you take these?” I asked.
“You were alone with a sixteen year old in an empty house?”
“Nah, her mother was with us most of the time. Rebecca talked her into letting me do the shoot. Is she sixteen?”
“I don’t know how old she is. I don’t see any nudes here, though, so I guess it’s all right.”
“You know I don’t do those kinds of pictures,” he said. “I saw her naked, though, because she changed clothes in front of me when her mother was on the phone in the kitchen.”
“You let her?” I exclaimed. “Jack, don’t you know what kind of trouble—”
“Don’t worry about it, Sue-Ann,” he interrupted. “I think it meant a lot to her to have me see her naked. I told her she looked great naked, but between you and me I thought she was a little on the skinny side.”
The rest of the dinner was peaceful; I mean, if things can be peaceful on the outside while my mind was humming like a gyroscope. We ate, drank wine, and puzzled together over the maps. We did the dishes, and when they were put away, Jack was content to go back to his Zane Grey book while I went back to work.
As soon as I sat back down at my desk, I found an email from Panhandle Slim. The petite cowboy sent me not only a brief bio on the eventual winners of the cowboy- mounted shooting event, but the entire list of the competitors, presumably so that I could see how many classes there were and how many competitors were in each. Or maybe he was expecting The Courier to print the whole list. Dream on. I pulled up the background piece I had written earlier, and spent a half hour plugging in details about the winners. I saved the file and emailed a copy to Cal at The Courier. I was printing out a copy of the finished story for my records, when Jack walked into the room in his boxer shorts and t-shirt holding another photo.
This was a finished color glossy that showed Krista riding bust-ass for leather at the mounted shooting event. She was racing toward the camera, pigtails flying, leaning toward the row of balloons with an expression of delicious freedom. It was a photo that captured not only her delight, but showed the exact moment her pistol went off, a shower of hot powder grains spewing from the barrel toward an exploding balloon a few feet away. “I printed this up for that girl we met,” he said. “Maybe her boyfriend can give it to her.”
It was a wonderful photo and I considered asking Jack to make a copy for me. Problem was, if I had copies of every one of Jack’s photos that I wanted, I’d have to empty my archery stuff out of the barn to make room for them.
“I’ll give it to her myself,” I told him.
“You’re planning on seeing her again?”
“Oh, yes.”
Jack seemed satisfied with that answer and went off to bed. It had been a long day and I was tired, but before I could shut the computer down I heard another ding telling me I had email. I clicked on it and was surprised to see what looked like a moving valentine—a throbbing heart—in the middle of the screen. No words, just the heart. I looked at the sender window.
It said ginette@thecourier.com.
I smiled.
Chapter 14
One of my favorite books is Traditional Archery, written by a stickbow lover named Sam Fadala. I took a copy with me to the hospital on Monday morning in case I had to wait a few minutes before getting my stitches taken out. Although it is a beginning book for recurve or longbow shooters, I enjoy going back through it every year or so to confirm some of my ideas or habits. It contains a little history, a bit of practical lore, and many enjoyable suggestions. This is the book that introduced me to stump-shooting, for instance. What it avoids are the technologically advanced target bows that are used in the Olympics and most national championships. And for good reason. Olympic bows, with their long adjustable carbon stabilizers, counter balancers with weights for precision tuning, clickers, doinkers, plunger buttons, mechanical arrow rests, double-click target sights, and unbreakable carbon limbs, are to recurves what robots are to humans. Whenever I shot one, I felt like a cyborg—and looked like one.
But shot them I did, spurred on by my old mentor Crookneck Smith. When Crookneck had won the world championship back in the 1970s, they didn’t have all this folderol, but he had kept up with the newest innovations and encouraged me to upgrade.
“If you weren’t good enough,” he told me, “I wouldn’t say anything.”
And that was kind of nice. Crookneck had long ago had to hock his championship bows for food and booze, but the archery store—which just managed to pay its own way—let him keep his hand in. As I mentioned earlier, he once shamed me by mentioning that my equipment was not of the highest quality. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I sold my Martin Mamba and bought a Hoyt Axis with its machined and forged metal riser.
But the higher the technology the closer we come to perfection, and when I shot my first perfect end at 30 meters and later broke 600 in a 72-arrow final at 70 meters, I felt like I had when I had shot Crookneck Smith’s souped-up compound half a dozen years before in his ratty little archery shop outside Huckleberry Spring, North Carolina. I began to feel less human and more robotic and, after my sojourn in Sydney for the 2000 Olympics, I sold my target monstrosities and began relearning how to shoot naturally. With my wooden bows I could strive to get better throughout my life knowing that whatever I achieved, I did it with steady hands, keen eyesight, and firm instinct.
“Doctor Morris will see you now.”
I looked up from my book with a start, then got up and followed the nurse into a small examining room. Dr. Morris, brown hair disheveled as much in the morning as in the evening, stood waiting, holding his ever-present clipboard in both hands and his well-chewed pencil in his mouth.
“Mmm, mmmmph,” I said, as I entered.
He took the pencil from his mouth, grinned at me, and asked me to have a seat.
It was a fun visit. He took out the stitches from my scalp, made some silly comment about my gorgeous, silky, long, dark tresses, and proceeded to ask me about how my medication was working out. I was feeling better, getting stronger, and had decided to go with the radioactive iodine treatment option. I told him I’d have to wait at least a month because of Alikki’s foal, which was going to be born any day and who I wanted to imprint without fear of giving it radiation poisoning. This was all cool with Dr. Morris; in fact, it would give him more time to study the effects of the initial drugs. Then, when he had replaced the small patch on my scalp, he looked at his watch.
“I’ve been here since five a.m.,” he told me, “and I haven’t had anything to eat. Come on down to the cafeteria and I’ll buy you a coffee.”
“Coffee?” I answered. “How could I say no to that?”
The cafeteria had only a few tables and was kind of dingy, but I got a coffee, a yogurt, and a banana. Dr. Morris had a breakfast that looked like it came out of a frozen package, but he seemed satisfied. He looked at the book I had put on the table on top of my purse.
“What’s traditional archery?” he asked.
“Shooting with wooden bows,” I answered.
“Aren’t all bows wooden?”
“They should be.”
“You shoot?”
“Some,” I said. I really didn’t want to be long winded so I deflected the question by asking, “Did you know that archery is the national sport of Bhutan?”
“Where’s Bhutan?” he asked.
“Near Nepal,” I told him.
“Ah,” he nodded. “Well, everyone should have a sport, but why did I get the impression that you were a soccer player?”
“Through an over-vivid imagination,” I smiled. “Although I did eat at the same table with Mia Hamm once.”
“Really?” he asked. “Where was that?”
“Long story that I don’t really want to get into right now. But, I mean, we weren’t friends or anything.”
Dr. Morris concentrated on the last of his food, then l
ooked up. “Ever play golf?” he asked.
“Nope. That’s a sport I missed out on. Isn’t it kind of boring, though?”
“I guess it is for people who don’t play,” he admitted. “But hey, look whose talking.”
I laughed. “Point for you,” I told him. “But if you think archery is boring, you should watch my other sport.”
“Other sport?”
“Dressage.” It wasn’t an outright lie; after all, I had taken dressage lessons, although only a handful. What was slightly disconcerting was the thought that I had subconsciously made the decision to start riding again—to actually start getting serious about dressage.
“You’ve got me there,” he said. “Is it the national sport of Nepal?”
“It’s kind of like horse ballet,” I told him. “My mother used to say that watching dressage was about as exciting as watching hair grow. I won’t be riding for a while, though. Why are you smiling? Do I have banana on my face?”
“No. You’re a careful eater. I was thinking of something that happened at the golf course on Sunday. Something not so boring.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Okay, you know what a driving range is?”
I nodded. “It’s a practice area, right? It’s got yardage markers.”
“Exactly. At the Jasper County Country Club, the practice range is right near the second tee. On Sunday morning I was carrying a bucket of balls out to the range. There was a foursome on the tee and eight or nine players hitting balls at the driving range. The guy next to me was an incredible golfer—beautiful swing, great follow through, and he was hitting a one iron, something that most people don’t even own. He was hitting long, low line drives. One of the guys on the second tee was just addressing his ball when this guy next to me smacks one right into the center of the 150-yard marker, and all of a sudden, bong! It sounded like the Chinese army was being called into battle. The guy on the second tee must have jumped three feet in the air and missed his tee shot completely.”