“Well, wrapping it up, about two years ago I walked into a bar and met this woman I knew a long time ago, back before she got married and had kids. We get along, you know. She owns the bar and works late, so when we go out, it's usually for lunch on a Saturday or Sunday. We hook up a few times a month. I like her, and I guess she likes me, but it's got its limits. Make sense?”
“Probably makes more sense to you.”
“Not really. I don't think I understand women at all. I could guess all day and still be wrong. Maybe that's why I like surveying.”
“What do you mean?”
“Surveying is full of mysteries that can actually be solved. How far is it from A to B? What's the slope of this hill? This bunch of trees on a hilltop with a cemetery at the back... Right now I have no idea why. Why a bunch of trees in the middle of farmland? Why this shape, why this size? And since when? And who? Who the hell owns all these trees and how did he or she get to own it? Where the fuck is he-- or she? Right now I don't know any of that, but I promise you this, my friend: I will know. Before it's over, I will know.”
“I bet you will,” he said.
I checked the company cell phone for time. “Let's go set up our instruments and get some data. We'll start solving this mystery tonight.”
Getting consistent results requires consistent technique. First, mount the base to the tripod, and get it up, level, and over the point. Clip the GPS unit into the base, turn it on, and level it. Loosen the tightening nut just a smidge and, looking through the eyepiece, slide the crosshairs over the point. After that, it's like any computer program: open existing job; add new point; type in the new point ID; choose static mode; acquire satellites and collect data. Done and done. Steve finished the same time I did, and we walked toward each other along the side of the road. By the time we met, I had an idea.
“Let's look around before it gets dark and see if we can find any property corners. C'mon. We'll get the sniffer out of the truck and start at the corner nearest to it.”
“I'll get it,” Steve said.
We found the first pin with little effort, right at the southwest corner of the lot. The pin to the east was buried under an old anthill and required the metal detector to find. Ours look nothing like those favored by beachcombers and film directors. It's just a yellow wand the size of a broomstick with a box handle at the top for batteries and controls. Once it pointed to the pin, Steve dug straight to it.
“Next one?” Steve asked.
I looked to the west. “Sun's setting,” I said. I walked across the road and saw that the GPS unit had been collecting data from eight different satellites for the last twenty-five minutes. In that time, it had calculated its own position to one hundredth of a foot, a level of accuracy professionally known as “gnat's ass” tight. “When I get down the road and holler,” I said, “shut down this unit and restart it. Same point number; new session. You know the deal.”
“Ten-four, Addie.”
It takes almost three minutes to walk almost two football fields at a quick pace. Reaching the unit and looking out over the river valley, I saw the sun had dropped below the horizon, lighting the clouds in brilliant shades.
Reaching the unit, I turned to face Steve and keyed the radio. “Holler!” I said.
I saw him start punching buttons: Stop. Stop collecting data? Yes. Store data? Yes. Point number? Use next. Collect data. Start collecting data? Yes. New datapoint? I punched in the existing data point. Save as new session? Yes. Begin. I looked up from the unit at a glorious sunset, then I looked over at the trees and saw someone by the truck. That person turned to look in my direction, then ran off into the woods.
I started jogging. I saw Steve far down the road, walking back from restarting his unit. I got to the truck and saw movement in the woods. I stopped. Steve had seen me jogging and had begun jogging, too, but when he saw me stop he slowed to a quick walk. Pretty soon he stood next to me.
“What did you see?” he asked.
“Someone. I saw someone by the truck, then I saw something moving through the woods.”
“Anything missing?” Steve squinted. “Couldn't pick a worse time to try to see something.”
I peered into the trees. Steve was right. It's the lack of contrast that makes it so hard to resolve detail. Traditionally, by which I mean the days before every Barney Fife carried night-vision goggles, smugglers and gun-runners preferred to work in the gloaming.
“What kind of someone?” he asked. “Man, woman--”
“Um, I don't know. My size, your size... Black, I'm pretty sure. Damn, it was all so quick! I swear I saw somebody.”
We looked at each other, and I knew Steve was waiting for me to decide what to do. Instinctively, I rested my hand on the butt of my machete.
“Stay right here. Watch the equipment and watch the truck. I'll go see what I can see.”
I started off through the woods, following roughly the same path Mike and I followed on my first visit. The light was fading fast, and I instantly wondered what the hell I was doing, wandering into the woods with no flashlight. Going back for one now would seem a little chickenshit, so I kept walking forward into the trees, into the growing darkness.
Suddenly I found myself at that big tree, standing at the edge of its huge canopy, and right in front of me stood a large African American man. He wore pinstriped bib overalls, a blue work shirt, a soft hat with a brim, and boots, and he stared at me. He turned to his left, and I saw, carried low in his right hand, a full-sized double-bit tree-felling ax.
I think I stopped breathing. At six-one and a hundred ninety-five pounds, I am not small. My machete is sharp. This guy was bigger and his weapon mightier, and he was staring at me, hard. I wanted to say something, but before I could think of what, he turned away from me and walked right into that huge, gnarly, bullet-scarred old tree.
I looked again. I looked around. I was alone. I slowly circled the tree until I was back where I'd started. Nobody. If someone were still in these trees, they were hiding. Really well. Every second, the woods grew darker. I made another executive decision and started jogging. I caught a few small branches across the head as I made my way back.
Steve sat on the tailgate, calmly drinking water. He looked at his phone. “That didn't take long,” he said. “See anything?”
I hesitated. What did I see? It all happened in seconds. I saw a man-- or did I?--, and he walked into a tree. How completely ridiculous. I laughed a little.
“Man, I'm not sure what I saw. It kept getting darker, you know... I walked back there to where this giant old oak tree is--”
“--aaaaaaaaaand..?” he stretched it into three syllables.
“And, uh... I don't know. I thought I saw somebody, but I looked again, and all I saw was trees. Nothing's missing?”
Steve shook his head. “Nah.”
“Weird.”
“Maybe he was goin' home. I hope he locked the gate behind himself.”
“I hope he finishes cutting the grass.”
“You say that, but you'd freak right the fuck out if you heard a lawnmower start up right now.”
“Indeed, I would.”
“Reckon these things have figured out where they are by now? I'm starvin'.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Let's pick' em up and get something.”
“Ten-four, Admeister.”
7. A Weekend at Home
Okay, so I don't have a lot of friends. You may have noticed and wondered why. Back in my Twenties, when I sold pot, I had a hundred. Then, as we used to say, some crazy shit went down.
Specifically, a hydroponic growing supply store opened in Atlanta and did a booming business. Having never stepped foot in the place, when the news broke that all their regular customers had been rounded up overnight, I was genuinely astounded and horrified to discover how many of my friends' and business associates' license plate numbers had been recorded in their parking lot. It quickly got worse. My connection-- a Nam vet, mind you, a contact I had earned th
e old-fashioned way: by being polite and on time, by never asking too many questions, never showing up drunk, and never never ever ever showing up with a story instead of cash--, freaked out over the number of my friends in custody, calculated me a security risk, and cut me off. Just like that. The ensuing economic uncertainty contributed to my breakup with Dina. In a single night of police work, my life changed forever while I watched teevee with my girlfriend.
Let me catch you up: a year after I met Rita on the deck of ChillBlain's, I had changed jobs and was back in Atlanta. This is when I began picking up short construction gigs of all sorts and amassing my wide range of skills. I worked under some brilliant folks, but they didn't pay very well, and by the time I turned 23, I had found a way to supplement my wages.
That's what I was doing when I met Dina at a jukebox. While she completed her degree and waited tables, I worked part-time, sold pot full-time, kept the cable on, took us to Florida for a week in the summer, and for almost three years, I thought, everyone was happy. Then everything went to hell. Overnight, I was scrambling for greenbacks with a desperation I'd forgotten. I was even looking for a real forty-hour job, but Dina seemed unimpressed. Current perspective allows me to observe that this was the first time my lack of education had become an employment issue for me, but all I saw at the time was that I was trying really hard to find a job that wasn't janitorial or fast food, the bills were piling up, and suddenly Dina said she was pregnant.
I was happy. Yes, I was shocked, but I was happy. Dina was gorgeous, talented, and smart. I had already thought about asking her to marry me, and I told her so. As I recall, though, the conversation went exactly like this:
“Hello, love. I filled out more applications today.”
“I'm pregnant.”
“Wow. That's shocking but wonderful news. Let's get married. I was going to ask you, anyway.”
(eye roll) “I'm starting a new job at Turner, and I'm moving out. The apartment is in my name, so you should make other arrangements.”
“What about me? What about us? What about the baby?”
“Good luck finding a job. There is no us. I'll send you your share of the bill.”
And that was it. There may have been, on her part, a deep commitment to our relationship and serious investment in those three years she spent as my girlfriend, and probably much justified frustration, that I left out. I may have neglected to describe how she wept a little as she explained that to her going forward meant flying solo, and she may even have hugged me before I left, but other than that, it was pretty much just as I described.
I went out with the boys and got shitfaced. My buddy Ray said I didn't want to go to her place, so he just drove me to his. That's how I wound up on Ray's couch. About a month later, she sent me my share of the bill, just to tie off that thread.
So there I was with no friends, no place to live, no job, and no girlfriend. Moving into Veronica's garage gave me a job and a place to live, but I never recovered from the hit I took to my friend count. First a dozen real friends disappeared: some skipped town, some went to jail, and some got religion. When my connection cut me off, the other eighty-eight people with my phone number just stopped calling.
At Veronica's, I worked a full-time job for the first few months, one that included free lunches and dinners. The job also came with a reasonable nightly ration of beer or wine, with the landlady occasionally pouring a couple of whiskeys. Evenings I spent in the garage, either working or just smoking and reading. Within a month of Dina's announcement, my life had completely changed, as I spent all my time at Veronica's house and doing things with Veronica, including the two weekends we spent selling her antiques.
That's how I came to think of an old lady as my best friend. Over ten years, that best friend saw me through a half-dozen attempted relationships with Donna, Lynn, Vyki, Sharon, Joy, and Peggy, first by promoting me as prime husband material, then later by treating my resulting blues with sympathy and shots of whiskey. Not a lot of thirty-nine year-old men hang out with seventy year-old women, I know, but Veronica was not like a lot of women.
The week had ended with no call from Eleanor, but I didn't mind. I had a strong feeling that she would call when she had information for me. Every time I thought of her my heart picked up a little, and it was pleasantly odd to be excited about romance again. As exciting as it was, it was equally weird. Somehow of all the women I'd pursued or thought of pursuing, I had never before wanted another man's wife. Married people, whether they like each other or not, are still married. As a precaution against heartache, whenever I thought of Eleanor I reminded myself it was all probably just flirtation. On her part.
Mike was standing outside smoking a cigarette when I arrived at the office.
“That number you gave me has been disconnected,” was the first thing he said.
“You're not going to ask how my week went or what I got done?” I asked him.
“I'll know after you dump your data. I'll know everything. Where you were and when. What time you got started. How long you worked every day. Let's take care of that first, then I'll see if I have any questions. Get on it. Let's get you out of here before I have to pay you overtime.”
I don't exaggerate Mike. I don't have to.
Hours later I parked between the house and the garage and got out with my laundry. I felt instantly tired, although the most strenuous thing I'd done all day was deal with Mike. No car meant no Veronica to talk to or drink with, so I dropped my laundry by my fridge, pulled out a beer, and went upstairs. As I had left no windows cracked to let hot air escape, my bedroom was stifling. I opened my windows and turned on a fan. As soon as cooler air from the shady outside began moving through, the temperature dropped to tolerable, and I stretched out across my love seat by the window to enjoy the breeze. Before long, I was asleep.
I awoke in the dark, momentarily confused. My first thought was that it was time to get up for work. I sat up and looked across the room. My alarm clock read ten-fifteen. So it had to be night. Yes. And a Friday night, too, with no work tomorrow. Hmm. I looked out my window. Wherever she had gone, Veronica still hadn't returned. I was hungry. It was still early enough to go out, but I just didn't feel like it. I went downstairs. I grabbed a box of raisin bran off the shelf and filled a bowl. From my fridge I pulled out a quart of milk and discovered it had soured while I was out of town. I poured the cereal back into its box and took down a can of minestrone. It heated quickly in the microwave, but as I sat down to eat it, I smelled something funky, something rude. It was my laundry. Possibly myself. I told myself it was a good thing that no one was there to smell me, but I didn't really believe it.
I took a shower and grabbed a collection of Twain short stories off the bookshelf. Having read them all before, I knew I'd enjoy them. I clicked on the lamp and settled into the love seat. My light seemed a tad dimmer than usual, or perhaps my eyes were still sleepy from my nap. I stared at the table of contents and realized that when I moved the book away from my face, it came into focus. Weird, I thought. Hope that doesn't last. With my book at the proper distance, I reread stories from “Roughing It” until my eyelids shut for the night.
I woke up at eight, still in the love seat. I put my feet on the floor and slowly straightened as I stood. My back hurt in two places, low and high. My arm was numb, my neck was stiff, and I had to pee. I shuffled to the circular staircase and down. Coming out of the bathroom, I heard a car. I walked to the door and pulled aside the curtain to spy on Rita, but instead, Ellen got out of her Benz and walked to the kitchen door, calling for Veronica. I climbed the stairs to my bed and got under the sheets to await the Sex Fairy.
I woke up again at ten. My neck felt better, but my back still hurt a little. It was one of those perfect mornings in late April when the temperature and humidity are just right and a light breeze feels like the world's most perfectly-adjusted air-conditioning. I lay atop my sheets for awhile until I reached two conclusions: the Sex Fairy wasn't coming, and I needed to wash my
sheets, too.
By the time Veronica and Ellen had returned from the Farmer's Market down in Forest Park, it was noon, and I was in full cleaning mode. I had stripped my beds and gathered every dirty, kinda dirty, and slightly questionable clothing item in my possession, and all this I had dragged downstairs and neatly piled in and outside the laundry room, so I was running around in gym shorts and a Braves T-shirt helping them unload from Ellen's black convertible.. Veronica nodded her approval of the cleaning binge, and Ellen nodded her approval of the gym shorts, then they both invited me to a luncheon of BLTs made with country bacon and early tomatoes. When they threw in fresh-squeezed lemonade, I could not refuse.
After lunch, Veronica had something for me to look at. Not to brag, but I do good work that lasts, so I hadn't had anything to fix in a good while, and I was intrigued by the thought of a new project. It turned out that she had water leaking down a bedroom wall during a storm, beginning at the ceiling.
The Dead Hand of Sweeney County Page 8