“It was bad enough to find out Wayne was cheatin on me with a woman who had the same name as me. Prob’ly the only way the eejit could be sure he wouldn’t mess up and call one of us the wrong name! Wayne is not a smart man.”
Phoebe laughed so hard she dropped the phone. By the time she had it back against her ear, she’d missed part of the story. Waneeta was saying, “… had to find a place of my own and I didn’t have no money. The best I could do was rent a used single-wide trailer. I’d always swore to myself that I wouldn’t ever live in no trailer, but there I was. I was feelin mighty low.
“The first time I went inside the thing I was dreadin what I’d find. But it turned out to be a nice little place and was as clean as a whistle. In that whole house, there was just one single item left behind by whoever’d lived there before.
“A weddin dress was hangin in a bag in the bedroom closet. Either it’d never been worn or had just come back from the cleaners. Whichever it was, the dress was in absolutely perfect condition.
“That dress turned out to be such a blessin. The mystery of tryin to figure out who left it behind, and why, gave me somethin to think about besides myself and my own problems.
“I never did find out whose dress it was or what’d happened to em, but I figured it was a woman who’d lived there before me and she was leavin me a present to show me there was a good future for me out there somewhere. And that, just like her, I wouldn’t always be livin there. It was like we was friends, but we never did meet.
“And that woman was right. Before long I was able to move out.”
“What a wonderful story,” Phoebe said, enchanted. “It’s like you were helped by an angel. An angel in a trailer.”
“That trailer angel saved me some money, too,” said Waneeta
“How?”
“I wore the dress for my third weddin!”
***
As soon as she hung up, Phoebe reached for the dog-eared spiral notebook she kept beside her seat. It was full of possible lyrics to country music songs. Her secret dream was to write a song for Tim McGraw. And Waneeta’s life was a constant source of great material.
She scribbled notes about the pristine wedding dress left behind in a trailer by some unknown person for a broken-hearted woman to find.
Maybe the woman who’d left it had been broken-hearted, too. What an interesting riddle. Just like Waneeta, Phoebe loved a mystery.
Chapter 24
When Jill looked up she saw a flash of metal glinting in the sun and a patch of yellow. It looked like a piece of cloth. She moved a few steps to get a better view. It was a jacket worn by someone perched high up in a tree. They were sitting on a limb with their back against the trunk and their legs stretched out in front of them.
Whoever it was had colorful ropes running up into the tree above where they were sitting and also dangling down below them. There were bits of metal hitting against each other and jingling as the ropes blew in the breeze. This was the source of the tinkling sounds and the glinting.
Jill called out to the climber, but got no response. She moved around and parted the foliage to get a better look. The blond hair cascading around the slumped head made her think it was a woman. She called several more times, then finally she saw the person try to raise their head. One of their hands twitched and fell to the side, but that was all.
Clearly something was wrong. Jill needed to get help, but there was no cell service in the area. And there was no way for Jill to get to the woman or get her down by herself. She had no equipment and no climbing skills.
Jill had a strong impulse to hurry back to her car, but she made herself slow down and find a way to mark the place before she left. She looked around for something to use as a flag and for clues as to the climber’s identity.
But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Jill knew that animals would carry away food or anything with an interesting smell, but it made no sense that every last bit of the climber’s gear would be gone.
Surely the woman had brought more with her than she’d taken up into the tree. But who would’ve taken her things and left without calling for help once they got to the road? She knew approximately how long the woman had been up there because the flashing had started a day and a half ago.
This was highly suspicious. Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe someone had hurt the woman on purpose. But who was it, how had they done it, and why?
Jill walked in a spiral around the base of the tree, widening her search. Then she saw it, a broken stick with a rubber knob on one end. She picked it up. The rubber tip had blood on it. She had no idea what the item was, but she suspected it had been used somehow to hurt the climber. She made a few more widening circuits of the tree, finding nothing, and then changed her mind about how best to help the woman.
She took off her jacket and tied it around a nearby sapling. Her gut told her the quickest and smartest way to get help was to walk to Leon’s. The log road would take her most of the way. And walking downhill straight toward Leon’s cabin would be faster than hiking back up to her car and driving out via the circuitous route she’d have to take.
Leon lived on his family’s farm adjacent to the park. He’d had search and rescue and emergency medical training from the Park Service when he was a teenager. He also had experience recovering lost hikers as a volunteer. And he taught the Boy Scouts how to tie knots and how to climb and rappel. Leon would know what to do and he’d be discreet.
Jill was worried for the woman and wondered what had happened to her. But she wanted to wait til she understood for sure what the situation was before deciding how best to approach the authorities. The people of White Oak preferred to handle local matters among themselves.
Over a thousand local families had been thrown off their land in the 30’s to create the park and the feds has sent an arrogant gang of outsiders in to run the place like an occupying army. The locals had seventy-five years worth of reasons to dislike and distrust the invaders. There was no rush to bring them into this.
Bad blood could last a long time in the mountains.
***
At the same time Jill was making her way down toward Leon’s place, Henry was driving to Knoxville to talk to Ivy’s former boyfriend, Tim Cardwell. He wanted to ask him some more questions, this time without an audience.
Henry called Cardwell and made arrangements to meet him at The Tomato Head, a trendy vegetarian hangout on the old Market Square in the center of downtown Knoxville. It was not a convenient location for Henry, but he enjoyed the occasional opportunity to leave the damp mountain wilderness and visit a crowded, noisy, asphalt-coated urban landscape. It always reminded him why he loved his job.
Cardwell was sitting at a wrought iron table outside the café waiting for Henry. Seen here among city dwellers, Cardwell radiated the rude good health of a young man who enjoyed the outdoors. A tan set off his bright blue eyes and sun streaked brown hair.
Henry brought Cardwell up to date on his inability to get in touch with Ivy and then asked, “Remind me what you’re studying at U.T.?”
“Bryophyta.”
“Come again?” Henry said, smiling.
“Mosses and liverworts,” he said. “I’m third year in the Ph.D. program.”
“Is that the same as what Ivy’s studying?”
“We’re both in the Botany Department, but she’s in Mycology. She studies Myxomycetes,” Cardwell said, then remembered to translate, “She’s first year, in slime molds. “
“Slime molds?” Henry asked. “No offense, but why would a young woman be interested in slime?”
“Oh, like anything, it can be intriguing once you really get into it,” Tim said. “I don’t share her fascination, but it works for her, clearly. She was obsessed. It used to be all she’d talk about, but then one day she suddenly stopped.”
“How do you mean?”
“She changed,” Tim said. “She used to tell me about what she was working on and sometimes even ask me f
or help. Then she stopped telling me what she was doing, where she was going. She got almost, like, secretive, as if anyone cared about her gnarly molds. Then she pretty much stopped coming around. It got to the point where we hardly ever saw each other.”
“When was that?” Henry asked.
“A coupla months ago,” he said with a sigh. “She’s always spent a lot of time in the field, she’s crazy about climbing the most humongous trees she can find, but the last I knew, she was spending nearly all her time out in the most remote areas of the park.
“At least that’s where she said she was. I didn’t really believe her anymore. We fought about it, a lot. Then, a few weeks ago, she broke up with me.”
“Where do you think she’s been spending her time?” Henry asked.
“With butterfly boy,” Tim said, bitterly.
“Molyneaux?”
“Yeah, the chicks go for that French accent, I guess,” Tim said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Gotta be something like that, because that guy is way old.”
Henry was stung by the harsh view younger people tended to take of their elders, as if any years beyond one’s own age were calculated in dog years. If Tim thought Molyneaux was way old, that meant Henry had to be way, WAY old. But he agreed that Molyneaux was too old for Ivy.
“Did the breakup make you mad?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“How mad did it make you?” Henry asked.
“You mean like you think I might’ve done something to Ivy, to hurt her?” he said, incredulous.
“Did you?”
Tim shook his head, “I was into Ivy. I liked her a lot. But not enough to go all stalker on her.” He looked at Henry, gesturing with both hands at the open pedestrian mall around where they were sitting. “Dude, look around.”
When Henry raised his eyebrows for clarification, Tim added, “There’s like 10,000 chicks going to school in this town.”
“Are mosses and liverspots pretty good chick magnets?”
“Liverworts,” Tim said. “Believe me, chicks go for moss way more than the pieces of lint butterfly guy is shopping around.”
Henry considered pointing out that apparently Ivy didn’t agree, but because he was way WAY old, he was too merciful to rub the kid’s face in it.
Chapter 25
Leon lived in small, charming cabin he’d cobbled together from the remains of several old buildings on his family’s property. The central part of the house was built of hand-hewn logs salvaged from a smoke house and an apple barn. Two rooms built of weathered oak boards from an old shed and corn crib jutted out on either side of the log cabin. The whole thing sat perched about eighteen inches off the ground on stacks of rocks hand-chiseled by his great grandfather.
The farmstead sat in a meadow at the back of his family’s farm. His field shared a border with one of the most rugged areas of the national park.
It didn’t take long for Jill to make it to Leon’s place. But it was getting dark already down in the hollows and if she hadn’t been there several times before, she’d never have been able to find it. There were no lights on, the weathered wood blended perfectly with the trees, and the cedar shake roof was nearly invisible under a thick layer of moss.
She stepped across the fence on a stile and walked through the pasture toward the gate nearest the house. The cabin was surrounded by elaborate, meticulously cared for herb and vegetable gardens. Jill didn’t know that much about herbs, but she thought the gardens were beautiful, even though they were obviously not just ornamental.
At one end of the garden there was a row of beehives. At the other end were several rows of brightly colored zinnias to attract butterflies. And running along one edge of the herb garden was a half circle of large etched stone pillars. She’d have to ask Leon about the stones. She didn’t remember seeing those before.
She climbed the steps to the front door and knocked on the thick wood. The curtains were drawn on the small windows on the front side of the house, and the place was quiet, so she couldn’t be sure he was inside. His pickup truck was in the driveway, though, looking even more beat up than she remembered.
She sat on the steps and waited, enjoying the peace and the twilight view across the little meadow. Soon it was full dark.
“Hey Jill. Where’s your car?”
Jill swiveled around to see Leon standing behind her in the open doorway of the cabin.
“Oh Leon, I’m so glad you’re home,” she said. “I need your help. Somebody’s hurt.”
She handed him the strange broken and bloody stick and told him about finding the injured woman. “I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think it was an accident.”
Leon examined the stick and said, “This is an arrow for a crossbow. They call em bolts.”
“It didn’t feel right to go to the law. At least til we figure out what’s goin on. So I come to you instead. Can you git her down?”
“Prob’ly,” said Leon.
Jill turned to go back the way she came, saying, “She’s up this way,” but Leon laid a hand on her arm and said, “We need to take a little detour first so I can borry some climbin gear.”
Twenty minutes later Jill stood guard as Leon moved around in the dark in a storage room at the dude farm Cloud Forest. He was stealing a ridiculous looking six-foot-tall slingshot, several coils of rope, and a duffle bag full of climbing paraphernalia used to teach wilderness skills seminars.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “It’s only temporary. I’ll bring it back when we’re done and they’ll never know it was gone.”
***
“We’re gettin close now,” Jill said, as they walked along the logging road.
“I know this place,” said Leon. “My grandma used to bring me here. It’s got some kind of special climate on account of the ridges acting as wind breaks. Grandma said the Cherokee people consider it a holy place. Whatever eejit hurt somebody up here’ll have a curse on em for life. It’s like killin somebody in a church.”
Jill was having trouble seeing in the darkness of the forest at night. She had to use a small flashlight. Leon didn’t seem to need one.
“I think I’m sorta lost,” Jill said.
“Don’t worry, I can see her now.”
“How?”
“Look up. You can see the reflective strips on her shoes.”
Jill played her flashlight played around til it illuminated the jacket she’d left tied to the little tree. Leon was uncanny.
Then, in the same way Ivy had used a crossbow, Leon used the Big Shot, the six-foot-tall sling shot, to throw a bean bag over a limb slightly higher than the one the woman sat on. It took most of his body weight to pull back on the flipper, but he was accurate and made the shot on the first try.
He tied a heavy rope to the nylon cord and reeled in the cord until his climbing rope was draped across the limb. Then he quickly rigged a harness and climbed up to where the woman sat.
He hung beside her and reached over to touch her neck. Although she was cold and non-responsive, he could tell she was still alive.
“Girl,” he mumbled as he clipped her harness to his, “this gives a whole new meaning to bein out on a limb.”
He pressed down on both her Blake’s hitch and his and lowered them together, letting her own ropes bear her weight as long as possible. Then he clipped their harnesses together and made the last segment of the descent with both their weights borne by his rope.
When they reached the ground, Leon laid her flat on her back. “Need to borry yer flashlight,” he said.
He knelt to lift the woman’s eyelids, shining the light into each eye in turn. “Well, at least her pupils are equal and both reactive to light. That’s good.”
He looked her over with clinical efficiency and said, “Head wound’s the problem.”
Then he stood to retrieve and pack his climbing gear. He left the woman’s ropes dangling up in the tree. He handed Jill the duffle bag and the Big Shot and hoisted the woman over one shoulder in a fir
eman’s carry. He grunted at her weight.
Jill shot him a look and he said, “What?”
“The way you’re carryin her, it’s like she’s a sack of potatoes.”
“She don’t care!” he said. “Hell she weighs as much I do! She’s a hundred an fifty if she’s an ounce! Built like a dang weight lifter.”
“Should you be carryin her upside-down like that when she’s got a head injury?”
“Trust me, okay? She’s young, she’s gonna be fine.”
She didn’t argue any further except to say, “Well, it ain’t very romantic lookin.”
Leon snorted and moved past her on the trail. Jill had to run to keep up with him. A few minutes later he mumbled, “I run up a mountain, do a hundred and fifty foot vertical ascent, and rescue some woman I don’t even know. Then I carry her back down the dang mountain, by myself. That’s pretty dang romantic if you ask me.”
Chapter 26
Henry and Phoebe arranged to meet at the parking lot of a restaurant close to the Newport exit off I-40. Phoebe left most of her stuff in her Jeep and came toward Henry’s SUV carrying a plastic grocery bag full of food.
“Phoebe, we’re only goin to North Carolina. You’ll be back home a few hours.”
“Hey, this is regular work for you, but it’s a vacation for me. I don’t go on any road trips without Cheetos and Diet Coke.”
“And Almond Joys,” he added, looking at her supplies. “And Peppermint Patties.”
“What’s your point?”
“When I patrol the AT, sometimes I go out for five days at a time. All I take with me is half a dozen cans of pork n’ beans!”
“Oh, you are so tough. I bet you don’t even use a can opener. Do you chew a hole in the can or shoot the lid off?”
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