Coming Home (Norris Lake Series)

  In fact, it probably was a personal home at one time. There were wide wooden stairs leading up to double French doors situated in the middle of the front of the inverted V of the roof. A small 6 foot by 4 foot balcony rested above the double doors with double doors of its own leading to the loft of the A-frame structure.

  Inside there were three rooms, a storage room, a unisex bathroom and a large bar area upstairs was an empty room with only the balcony reserved for private conversations.

  The indoors was raw wood timbers as was the outside. The walls held hundreds of pictures of the history of the area; pictures of locals with bass they’d caught, deer they’d shot, and piles of ducks with Labradors and duck hunters proudly standing next to their catch.

  A second set of double doors sat opposite the front ones except they opened up on to a large deck which stretched the length of the back of the A-frame out over the black lake water on sturdy pilings. Wooden booths aged with burn marks and carvings were set at intervals inside.

  On the back deck were six wooden picnic tables which also carried years of wear. Layers of smoke hung in the air as patrons filled ashtrays with cigarette and cigar ashes. The smell of stale beer mixed with the sour stench of fish and wafted on the slight humid breeze that blew in across the lake through the open back doors.

  A tall bald man with a beard and mustache passed drinks from behind the bar. He looked like the typical Harley-Davidson rider muscular with a black Harley t-shirt, faded blue jeans, black motorcycle boots, and an intricate cross tattooed on the back of his neck.

  “Hey buddy, send over another pitcher.”

  With a nod, John poured a pitcher of beer.

  “Here you go bud.”

  “Put it on a tab.”

  “No tabs here, man. Pay up or get out.”

  He dug around in his wallet and pulled out a twenty. “There, my last one. Now leave me in peace,” he swore with disdain.

  John picked up the twenty and made change out of a wad of bills from his front pocket. “I ain’t no servant boy. Mind your tone when you speak to me or you’ll find your ass out in the lake,” John warned with both hands on the table and a snarl in his voice.

  The young man backed up as far as possible and nodded without a word then reached out and poured himself another beer as the big man stalked away.

  As he took a swig he saw two vaguely familiar faces walking towards him. They each took a seat at his table.

  “Hey man how’s it hanging? I haven’t seen you in forever. Hell, since high school.” The dark headed man with a goatee exclaimed. The other man with straight blonde hair pulled back in a long braid down his back said nothing as he sat down.

  “Yeah, good to see you. Where’ve you been? Here have a drink, man. Let’s get drunk and remember old times.”

  The bar filled over the next few hours and the three slowly got stone drunk.

  Smoke filled the air and the sound of cue balls chirped as two pool tables in the back of the room were constantly monopolized. Each new rack drew a new set of pool sharks to the frenzy. There was little room to move. Few women, if any, were present, not welcome in the dark environment. Here was a place where the men could come drink, shoot pool, smoke and make lewd conversation without watching their backs for judgment from the opposite sex.

  The three had moved from the indoor table to a picnic table out on the back balcony overlooking the lake. Their conversation was as dark as the night.

  “Life’s shit. There’s something I want you to do for me. I need for there to be an end to that new condo project on the other side of the lake. I am not asking for you to do anything except make a little trouble and stir things up so they miss their deadline.”

  “What’s in it for us? Not that I think that old sheriff could find his ass with two hands and a flashlight, but I just finished a stretch in county and don’t want to put my ass on the line unless there’s something in it for me.”

  “I can pay - $1,000 a piece. I want that bitch managing the project to look bad. She and her old man have been nothing but a thorn in my side for as long as I can remember. Just once I want them to know what it feels like to be on the bottom struggling for a way up.”

  “The risk’s too large. That’s not enough cash. The cops are bound to be keeping an eye on the place. That Tarlington is loaded and has those good old boy cops in his back pocket. If we were caught….”

  “Well, then I’ll take the first step. You make it hard on her and the crew. If she can’t show up and can’t get her men to show then there’s bound to be trouble. Accomplish that and I’ll make it $2,000 each.”

  “I don’t trust you, man, how are you going to come across that kind of dough?”

  “I have it. To prove it, I’ll front you a half now and the rest when the job’s done.”

  “One more thing, I know the bitch you’re talking about. I’ve seen her around town and remember her from high school. She was one stuck up cunt and wouldn’t have given me the time of day. So, man, you give me a third up front and I’ll do it. One catch, you turn your head when I take the bitch and have some fun with her first.”

  “You do what you want with her. I don’t give a rat’s ass, just as long as that project comes in behind schedule.”

  “You got it, man. This should be some fun. I can’t wait,” the blonde said licking his lips. His interest finally peaked enough to make a comment.

  Chapter 15

  She nestled deeper into the covers snuggling against her feather pillows with the quilt wrapped tightly around her. The little black dog whimpered against being woken up and then rolled onto her side. Through the windows of the bedroom, the night still lay sleeping. The world outside was silent as if poised waiting for the day. The only light were the floodlights at the corners of the house reflecting back on the windows.

  She tried to hold onto the last waking dream of the night halfway between sleep and wakeful when the dreams seem the most real.

  In her mind she could see a brown cape cod home with yellow shutters. She stood in the large kitchen with white cabinets and a dark green floor. Two French doors overlooked a huge back porch and several fenced acres. A large red and white spaniel lay on the kitchen floor in front of two silver dog bowls, one full of Kibbles-n-Bits, the other with water. It was late evening on a Saturday, she didn’t know how she knew but she could feel it. The dream moved in slow motion she was both in the dream and watching from above.

  Behind her a door opened and she could hear someone come in the house. The front screen door slammed shut and in her husband walked through the small wood paneled living room to the kitchen. He was tall and thin with black hair and the dark mustache. He wore a white button-down shirt and a light brown cardigan with the red tie printed with green and red chili peppers. The ensemble was complete with dark brown pants and dark shoes. He jingled his keys and put them on the white round oak kitchen table.

  She stood there in a pair of warm worn blue sweat pants and an old white sweat shirt that said Polo across the front. It had frayed cuffs as if it had seen better days. She wore long white tube sock, bunched around her ankles. He came up and put his arms around her from behind grasping his wrists in front of her and held her close nuzzling her neck. She leaned back against him but her eyes closed feeling the passion of the embrace. They were still learning each other in their new relationship and it was just yesterday he had asked her to marry him with an antique gold diamond ring he had found at a pawn shop.

  “How did your day go honey?” she asked.

  “Fine, Love. I sold two and made about $500 my part, not a bad take for one day.”

  “That is wonderful. I am so proud of you. Guess what? I am almost finished with my paper. I have been studying all day. Someday I am going to get that Ph.D. and be finished with school.”

  “You’d better hurry, if you are going to beat me to the top. I have a surprise. I am now the Assistant Sales Manager for Cunningham Ford. It’s just the first step. Someday I am going to be the ge
neral manager.”

  She turned her face around into the warmth of his arms and closed her eyes tight. She had a sense of peace, warmth, belonging and perfection. The sun streamed through the window, her dream faded, the room grew cold again and the feeling of peace evaporated. She lay still trying to hold on to the memory of her life long ago. Maybe if she were still…. She finally opened her eyes to a new morning and a yawn.

  Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she put one hand on the bundle of black fur next to her. “Wake up little dog. Let’s get going; time to get ready for work.”

  After a steaming hot shower, and a quick breakfast of buttered toast, she walked toward the door. The little dog barked furiously.

  “Ok. You can come with me to work if you promise to be good.” She bent over and Patty jumped into her arms. She carried the animal out to the truck placing her in a dog carrier in the back seat. Patty crawled into the box turned two times and lay down with one paw on a small stuffed animal.

  “Kaboom!” A loud thunder of an explosion ripped through the air. Dust filtered down through the sky showering the trees and coating them with a fine brown powder.

  “Kaboom!” Another blast shook the otherwise peaceful landscape. A crew of construction workers walked towards the site examining the hole and planning where to set the new charges. A white pickup with blue lettering, spelling out Tarlington Construction, pulled down the old logging road and behind a makeshift mobile office unit.

  A young man, about thirty with neatly trimmed hair, a white shirt and tie, climbed out of the truck. He held a rolled-up length of paper beneath one arm and a clipboard in his hand. Staring up at the sun, he leaned into the truck and pulled out a new yellow construction helmet. With quick determined strides, he walked to the office and pulled open the storm door to the unit.

  "Hello. Is anyone here?" he called inside. There was no answer. Turning he looked out at the construction site searching for the site supervisor. He spied Bubba Wells standing alongside a group of men watching the workers as they tried to dig out a section of the hillside. Just then Bubba turned and waved at him. He gestured back and walked towards the group.

  "Hey, Jeff," Bubba said with a broad smile on his face. "What brings you out of that posh office of yours?"

  "I just wanted to see how the digging was going. I hear that you have been hitting a lot of rock and have even come across a few caves."

  "Yeah, I knew it would be like that." Bubba pulled a can of dip from his hip pocket. "These here hills are covered with caverns. You can hardly dig anywhere without hitting rock." Another man walked up to join them.

  "Hey new boy,” he said teasingly.

  "Hello, Billy Joe" Jeff replied.

  "We hit another cave with that last blast," Billy Joe said as stared out over his shoulder at the lake beyond.

  "I heard that downtown and thought I had better come out and see get an idea on what type of delay we’re looking at. Old man Tarlington won’t like telling the stockholders and the new tenants that there are going to be delays,” Jeff said in a concerned voice. He really didn’t want to tell Mr. Tarlington that the construction crews were behind schedule. This was his first project since his promotion and he wanted it to come off under budget and on time.

  "Some of those new homeowners are looking to move into their fancy lakeside condos in time for the swimming season next year,” Bubba continued. "Sure seems a shame to tear up this area and spread high-priced city dwellers all over it. This lake will never be the same. I remember when you could see black bear around the shores about thirty years ago, now you hardly even see them up in the deep smokies".

  Bubba shook his head and turned to walk over to the giant hole that was being dug. A backhoe sat alongside the hole, its operator waiting for the next charge before attacking the rock hard ground once more. The three men peered into the whole which was filled with rock.

  "Looks like we’ll have to go almost through to China to get this foundation laid," Billy Joe shouted over the hum of the backhoe. Jeff nodded his head and mentally calculated how much additional time and materials would be needed. Just then a warning signal split the air.

  "Back up, boy, unless you want to be down in that hole," Bubba yelled at him.

  Jeff followed the other men hurriedly to a safe distance.

  "Kaboom!" Another blast cascaded dust and small pieces of rock through the air. Jeff dusted off his white shirt sleeves.

  "You can’t always stay clean in this business, boy,” Bubba said laughing as the boy shook his head to stop the ringing in his ears. "Enough to wake the dead isn’t it? Legend tells that the last time they did some major blasting in these parts was to build Norris Dam."

  "What legend is that?" Jeff said still brushing dirt from his slacks.

  "Oh, it wasn’t nothing. I don’t even think people talk about it anymore. Bubba walked Jeff back towards his truck. "When the dam was put in this area remote here, there were hardly any people, just some old country hicks here and there. Naturally, there were bears, mountain lions and wild boar that would eat your hide if they caught you too. Then TVA came in and bought up all the property, built that dam; well bought most of it. When they built the dam they used enough TNT to get the attention of Satan himself. They flooded a lot of the homes, but not all of the homeowners left. Some of those poor SOBs drowned right there in their beds.

  Seems that there was some talk of curses and witches, then townsfolk started to disappear. After that, local workers refused to come near the lake, no matter how much they were paid. In the end TVA had to hire themselves a lot of Negro workers to finish the job.

  I don’t think if they ever found out what was stealing up in the night swiping people up and carrying them off, but it must have been pretty horrible,” Bubba rambled on with Jeff listening intently. "My daddy was on a crew that found the remains of women that disappeared. He never said much about it, but I could tell it scared him. Sure wasn’t no bear either. Some say a mysterious green light accompanies whatever evil it must be."

  "How do you know that?" Jeff said softly.

  "Because my daddy never set foot in a church before he went to work and found that woman,” Bubba said, pulling his can of snuff out of his back pocket again," and he ain’t never missed a Sunday since. I asked him once why he started us all going to church and he said that he had been convinced that the devil really did exist or that he was sure going to pray that he didn’t meet up with whatever it was that killed that woman."

  Jeff put his hand on the handle to his truck and paused. "So what do you think?’

  Bubba scratched his forehead with the back of his hand pulling his hardhat off with his other hand. "I don’t know, boy, but something out there gets people every now and then who are just like you and me and they do disappear without a trace in most cases when they woke up one morning, I don’t think any of them anticipated what would happen to them that day. You never know what the Lord or maybe the devil has in store for you."

  Just then a woman drove up in a pickup truck parking just in front of the trailer that served as the headquarter for the construction project. She got out and waved to the men and walked into the trailer. Jeff whistled a low wolf whistle.

  “Who’s that?” Jeff asked Bubba. “That’s some piece of hot ass”.

  “Boy you are barking up the wrong tree and you just might get yourself castrated with that kind of behavior,” Bubba warned.

  “What do you mean?

  “Those are pretty strong words to attach to a piece of ass. Jeez, boy don’t you let the boss man hear you talking like that. That “piece of ass” is his daughter and if he hears you talk about her like that…well let me just say, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, if you know what I mean.” Bubba chuckled as he saw Jeff’s smile drop quickly away. You could just find yourself disappeared too Bubba mused, voicing his thoughts out loud.

  Hours later, Caitlyn rustled through the papers on the desk in the small construction trailer. It was a tiny tan box with off-
white walls, a window at each end and one door. Papers littered every table top and dirty boot prints were obvious on the gray tiled floor. Two makeshift stairs stepped down to a four square of concrete blocks sunken in a few inches of mud and brown water. A moat of gray gravel surrounded the trailer like water surrounding an island. Looking out the dirty window she thought through her upcoming day. The architect was coming at 10:00 a.m. and the codes enforcement officer at noon. Her foreman had the carpenters working on the perimeter fence and the painters finishing up on the interiors of the individual units of each condo. Once the electricians finished and the carpet was laid they could start on the final paving and landscaping – about another month’s work at least.

  A red 4X4 Dodge dually pulled through the 10 ft. chain link fence surrounding the worksite parking lot. She peered out of one of the dirty windows. A 6-foot stranger with dark hair and dark eyes stepped out. He looked to be about her age and walked with a purpose. His face was somehow familiar but she couldn’t quite place it. It was a rugged face, not beautiful but rather sensitive with high defined cheekbones, a narrow cleft chin, a well-trimmed mustache and beard, high forehead with heavy dark eyebrows under swept dark bangs. A navy blue golf shirt stretched across a set of broad shoulders tucked into a pressed pair of tan Dockers topping white leather Reeboks.

  His faced held a serious, stern look as he stopped to talk to one of the workers. When the worker pointed to the trailer, the stranger nodded his head and turned walking directly toward her. Caitlyn rolled up a set of building plans and put them into a cardboard tube as she shut the top, the door opened and the stranger stepped into the trailer. His presence took up all of the space in the building as he closed the door behind him. She looked around and suddenly she wondered if someone had just sucked all of the oxygen out of the room. She had a feeling of déjà vu but wasn’t sure why.

  Where’s the man in charge here? The stranger asked brusquely looking around at the otherwise empty trailer