“So, anyway, she wrote a check for $300 and asked him to deliver the painting the next day as a surprise for her father. She wanted it exactly at one o’clock . . . Would you like coffee sub with your burger, Mr . . . .”
“Qwilleran. No, thanks. I’ll skip the beverage today.”
“Well, he drove to Tiptop on Sunday, and Sherry told him where to hang the painting in the hallway. Just as he was pounding the nail in the wall, the Old Buzzard rushed in—that’s what Forest called him. The Old Buzzard rushed in from somewhere and said to his daughter, ‘By God! What’s that damned rabble-rouser doing in my house? Get him out of here!’ She didn’t say anything, but Forest said, ‘I’m delivering a painting of a mountain, sir, so you’ll know what mountains used to look like before you started mutilating them, sir!’ And the man said, ‘Get out of my house and take that piece of junk with you, or I’ll have you arrested for trespassing and littering!’ And he grabbed a stick out of the umbrella stand and was threatening him. Forest won’t stand for abuse, verbal or otherwise, so he said, ‘Go ahead! Hit me, sir, and I’ll have the publisher of the Gazette charged with assault and battery!’ The Old Buzzard was getting as red as a beet, and Sherry told Forest he’d better leave.”
“He left the painting there, I gather.”
Amy nodded. “She’d paid for it, you know. Anyway, he stomped out of the house and drove back to the cove, madder than I’ve ever seen him.”
“What time was that?”
“About one-thirty, I think. At three o’clock the police came, and Forest was charged with murder! We couldn’t understand it! We didn’t know what it was all about! We were all so confused. And then—when Sherry told such horrible lies at the trial—it was like a nightmare! . . . Excuse me.”
Two tourists had walked into the restaurant, and Amy went behind the counter, greeting them with her usual smile, her eyes glistening unnaturally. There was a happy squawk from Ashley.
“Goo goo goo,” she said. “His name is Ashley,” she told the customers. “He’s two months, one week, and six days.”
Qwilleran smoothed his sensitive moustache. He thought, If Amy’s story is true, and if Forest didn’t kill J.J., who did? And why is Sherry Hawkinfield protecting the murderer?
ELEVEN
AS QWILLERAN WAS leaving Amy’s Lunch Bucket she said meekly, “If you want real coffee, you can get it at the bakery up the hill.”
“Thanks, Amy. You’re a real friend,” he said.
“Have you ever seen the waterfall? It’s very exciting. The trail starts behind the bakery.”
“Are there poison snakes back there?”
“Of course not! There are no poison snakes in the Potatoes, Mr . . . .”
“Qwilleran.”
He ambled up the gradual incline on the wooden sidewalk until he scented a yeasty aroma and came upon an isolated building with the remains of a steeple. The weaving studio occupied an abandoned schoolhouse; the bakery occupied an abandoned church. Hanging alongside the door was a barnwood sign shaped like a plump loaf of bread, but he read the lettering twice before he could believe what he saw: THE HALF-BAKED BAKERY. A screened door flapped loosely as he entered.
“Why the screened door?” he asked by way of introduction. “I thought you didn’t have flying insects in the Potatoes.”
“It’s the damned health code,” said a man in crumpled whites with a baker’s hat sagging over one ear like a deflated balloon. “They make us wear these stupid hats, too.”
The same uniform was worn by a woman taking a tray of crusty Italian bread from an oven. Like all the equipment—grinders, mixers, dough tables, scales and whatnot—the oven looked secondhand if not actually antique. At the front of the shop were four wooden student chairs with writing arms, as well as a coffeemaker with instructions: “Help Yourself . . . Pay at Counter . . . Cream in Fridge.” Separating the bakery from the snack area was a scarred glass case displaying cookies, muffins, Danish pastries, and pecan rolls, although very little of each. What elevated this humble establishment to the sublime was the heady fragrance of baking bread.
Qwilleran helped himself to coffee and bought an apple Danish from the baker. “If you don’t mind my saying so,” he said as he pulled out his bill clip, “you picked a helluva name for your bakery.”
“Tell you why we did it,” the man said. “Everybody told us we were half-baked to open a whole-grain bakery in Potato Cove, but we’re doing all right. Overhead’s low, and we wholesale to a food market and a couple of restaurants in the valley, so we have a little cash flow we can count on.”
“Do you supply the golf club?” Qwilleran asked slyly.
“Hell no! But you see that tray of bread? It’s going to an Italian restaurant. They pick it up every day at four o’clock.” He looked at Qwilleran’s moustache. “Are you the fella that bought Vance’s big candlestick?”
“Yes, I’m the proud possessor of fifty pounds of iron.” Qwilleran looked around the shop. The unifying note in the bakery was paint; everything paintable had been painted orchid: walls, ceiling, shelving, tables, student chairs, even the floorboards. “Unusual paint job you have here,” was Qwilleran’s comment.
“Thrift, man! Thrift! Lumpton Hardware advertised a sale of paint, and all those fakes had was pink and blue. It was my wife’s idea to mix ’em.”
Qwilleran carried his purchase to an orchid student chair and bit into a six-inch square of puffy, chewy pastry heaped with large apple slices in thick and spicy juices. It was still warm.
“I’m forced to tell you,” he said, “that this is absolutely the best Danish I’ve ever eaten in half a century of pastry connoisseurship.”
The baker turned to the woman. “Hear that, sugar? Take a bow.” To Qwilleran he said, “My wife does the gooey stuff. Wait till you taste the sticky buns! Everything we use is whole grain and fresh. Apples come from Tater orchards—no sprays, no chemicals. We stone-grind our flour right from the wheat berries. Bread’s kneaded and shaped by hand. Crackers are rolled the same way.”
“That’s my job,” said his wife. “I like handling dough.”
“Bread untouched by human hands may be cheaper, but nobody says it’s as good,” the baker said. “You’re new around here.”
“I’m here for the summer. My name’s Jim Qwilleran. What’s your name?”
“Yates. Yates Penney. That’s my wife, Kate. How do you like the Potatoes, Mr . . . . ?”
“Qwilleran. I’m not sure I like what’s happening to Big Potato.”
“You said it! The inside of Big Potato looks like a mangy cat, and the outside looks like a war zone. City people come up here because they like country living, and then they drag the city along with ’em. The Taters have the right idea; they build themselves a rustic shack and let everything grow wild, the way Nature intended. We’re from Akron, but we know how to fit in. Right, sugar?”
Qwilleran said, “What is this waterfall I’ve heard about?”
“You mean Purgatory?”
“Is that what it’s called? I’d like to see it.”
The baker turned to his wife. “He wants to go to Purgatory.” They communicated silently for a few moments until she nodded, and then he explained, “We don’t encourage sightseers because they throw beer cans and food wrappers in the falls, but you don’t look like the average tourist.”
“I take that as a compliment. Is the trail well-marked? I’d like a quiet, leisurely walk without getting lost.”
“It’s quiet, all right,” said Kate. “Nobody goes back there on a Tuesday afternoon. Only on weekends.”
“You can’t get lost either,” Yates assured him. “Just follow the creek upstream. It’s about half a mile, but all uphill.”
“That’s okay. I’ve been practicing. Where did Purgatory get its name?”
“Some old-time Taters named it, I think. It’s not an Indian name, I know that. Anyway, the water drops off a high cliff and down into a bottomless pit, and the mist rises like steam. Quite a sight!�
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“Good! I’ll take a little ramble. I have some time to kill while Vance works on my car.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing serious. Mountain-itis, I guess you’d call it. While I’m standing here I’d like to pay for some Danish and sticky buns. I can pick them up when I finish with the falls.”
“We close at four,” Kate warned him.
“If it’s only half a mile, I’ll be back well before that,” Qwilleran said.
“Take care!”
“Don’t fall in,” the baker said with a grin.
Behind the bakery Qwilleran could hear the creek before he could see it. Swollen by heavy rain, the waters were rushing tumultuously over boulders in the creek bed. An irregular path on the edge of the stream had been worn down by generations of Taters and perhaps by Indians before them, who made the pilgrimage without benefit of handrails, curbs, steps, or warning signs. This was raw nature, and the footing was muddy and treacherous. Sharp rocks and wayward roots protruded from the walkway, camouflaged by pine needles and oak leaves that were wet and slippery. Tufts of coarse wet grasses grew over the edge, dripping and ready to chute an unwary wanderer into the stream.
After a few stumbles Qwilleran realized the impossibility of ogling the rushing stream and walking at the same time. Only by alternating a few careful steps with a few motionless moments could he appreciate the wild beauty. Brilliant green ferns abounded, thriving in the damp shadows. Every cleft rock had its trickle of water trying to find the creek and soaking the ground en route. Then there were the wild flowers—clumps of them in yellow, white, pink, blue, and red, growing among the wild grasses or in the crevices of rotting logs or across the face of rock outcroppings. Hundred-foot pine trees rising like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral filtered the sun’s rays through their sparse upper branches. Moose County could never produce a show like this!
The course of the creek angled sharply and sometimes plunged out of sight, only to reappear with added force. Qwilleran was following it upstream, of course, and its exuberance increased—in noise and in turbulence. When the waters were not splashing wildly over boulders, they were cascading smoothly over rock ledges in a series of naturally terraced waterfalls. And Qwilleran, when not picking his way along the precarious path, was clicking his camera. Take it easy, he told himself, or you’ll run out of film.
The higher he climbed, the more dramatic the views and the louder the thunder of water, until he groped his way around the last projecting cliff and found himself in a rock-walled atrium. There it was! Purgatory! An immense column of water, four times higher than its width, poured over a lofty cliff with unimaginable force and deafening roar—tons of water dropping straight down into a black hole in the rock from which rose clouds of vapor.
Qwilleran caught his breath. To be alone in the woods with this mighty dynamo gave him an eerie sensation, as if he were a supplicant consulting an oracle in a rock-walled temple, somewhere in the distant past. Perhaps Native Americans had worshipped their spirits here. Perhaps, he thought for one giddy moment, this was where he would find the answers. Overwhelmed by the experience, he had forgotten the questions.
Then the hypnotic moment passed, and he was a summer vacationer with a camera. Climbing carefully over the surrounding boulders he found numerous photogenic angles and clicked the shutter recklessly until he realized he had only one picture left. For the final shot he wanted to try a profile of the cascade entering the cauldron of billowing steam.
The path had ended, but he edged around the perimeter of the atrium until he found the right angle. Studying the view-finder critically for his final shot, he made one impulsive move—a step backward.
Immediately his feet shot out from under him and—sprawled on his back—he started to slide slowly but inexorably toward the abyss. Twisting his body in panic, he clutched at wet rocks and grabbed handfuls of shallow-rooted weeds. Nothing stopped his slide down the muddy slope. His bellowing shouts were drowned by the pounding waters . . . and now he was enveloped in fog . . . and now he was slipping into the black hole. He grabbed for the rim, but it crumbled. Grasping wildly at the nearly vertical walls of the chasm, he managed to slow his descent and find a ledge for his toe. It bore his weight. It was a wisp of hope.
He clung to his perch and tried to think. Spread-eagled against the face of the rock he ran bleeding hands over its surface in search of a projection. Behind him the shaft of water was thundering, and he was drenched like a drowning man. Something flashed into his mind then: mountain climbers in Switzerland . . . scaling the flat face of a peak . . . with infinite patience. Patience! he told himself. The mist stung his face and blinded him, but he fought his panic. Running his hands painstakingly over the flat surface in search of crevices, testing craggy ledges for strength, he inched upward. Time lost its meaning. He spent an eternity clinging and creeping, never knowing how much farther he had to climb. Patience! When the darkness lessened he knew he was approaching the rim, although he was still enveloped in mist.
Eventually one exploring hand felt level ground. It was the rim of the pit, but the trial by mud was not over. He had to hoist himself out of the hole, and one misstep or one miscalculation could send him plunging back into the depths. The terrain above him was slimy, but it was blessedly horizontal. After several tries he found something growing from a crevice, something tough and fibrous that he could grab as he clambered out. Facedown in the mud he crawled and squirmed out of the mist and away from the pit until he felt safe enough to collapse and hug the earth. No matter that he was muddied from head to foot, his clothing in shreds, his hands and knees bloodied, his watch smashed, his camera lost; he was on terra firma.
Only then did he pay attention to a shooting pain in his ankle. It had been torturing him throughout the ordeal, but the life-or-death struggle had superseded all else. When he turned over and tried to sit up, he yelped with pain and shock; his ankle was swollen as big as a grapefruit. Rashly he tried to stand up and fell back with a cry of anguish. For a moment he lay flat on the ground and considered the problem. A little rest, he thought, would reduce the swelling.
He was wrong. His ankle continued to throb relentlessly, responding to every move with agonizing spasms. How do I get out of here? he asked himself. At the bakery they had said no one went to the waterfall on a Tuesday afternoon. Having great lung power, he tried a shout for help, but it was drowned out by the roar of the falls. Suppose he had to stay in the woods all night! Beechum had predicted more rain. The nights turned cold in the mountains, and his lightweight clothing was wet and tattered.
With a burst of determination he proposed to drag himself along the trail, an inch at a time if necessary. Fortunately it was all downhill; unfortunately the path was studded with sharp rocks, and his hands, elbows, and knees were already lacerated. Even so, he squirmed downhill a few yards, trying to save his ankle, but the pain was non-stop and the swelling had reached the size of a melon. Defeated, he dragged himself to a boulder and leaned against it in a sitting position.
For a while he sat there thinking, or trying to think. Vance would wonder why he hadn’t called for his car; Yates would wonder why he hadn’t picked up his baked goods.
Now that he had inched his way out of the atrium, the crashing noise of Purgatory was somewhat muffled. “HELP!” he shouted, his voice echoing in the rocky ravine. There was no answering cry. The sky, glimpsed between the lofty treetops, was now overcast. The rain was coming. If he had to spend the night in the woods, wearing cold, wet clothing and lying on the drenched ground, covering himself with wet leaves like a woodland animal, he would be ready for an oxygen tent in the morning . . . that is, if anyone found him in the morning. They might not find him until the weekend.
“HELP!”
Then a chilling thought occurred to him. The Taters may have intended him to disappear in the Purgatory abyss. If so, they could have only one motive; they suspected his purpose in visiting their precious mountain. They may have mi
staken him for a federal agent. What were they growing in the hidden coves and hollows? What was stockpiled in those caves? Beechum’s banter about bears and bats and poisonous snakes may have been something more than mountain humor.
“HELP!”
Did he hear a reply, or was it an echo?
He tried again. “HELP!”
“Hallo,” came a distant cry.
“HELP!”
“Coming! Coming!” The voices were getting closer. “Hold on!” Soon he could see movement in the woods, screened by the underbrush, then heads bobbing along the trail. Two men were coming up the slope, and they broke into a run when he waved an arm in a wide arc.
“For God’s sake! What happened?” the baker shouted, seeing the tattered, mud-caked figure leaning against a boulder. “What happened to your ankle?”
“You look like you been through a ce-ment mixer!” the blacksmith said.
“I sprained my ankle, and I was trying to drag myself back to the cove,” Qwilleran said shortly. He was in no mood to describe his ordeal or confess to the careless misstep that sent him sliding ignominiously into the pit.
They hoisted him to a standing position, with his weight on his right foot, and made a human crutch, unmindful of the mud being smeared on their own clothes. Then slowly they started down the precarious slope to Potato Cove. Qwilleran was in too much pain to talk, and his rescuers were aware of it.
At the end of the trail a group of concerned Taters waited with comments and advice:
“Never see’d nobody in such a mess!” said one.
“Better hose him down, Yates.” That was the baker’s wife.
“Give ’im a slug o’ corn, Vance. Looks like he needs it.”
“Somebody send for Maw Beechum! She’s got healin’ hands.”
Qwilleran’s rescuers stripped off his rags behind the bakery and turned the hose on the caked blood and dirt, the icy water from a local well acting like a local anesthetic. Then, draped in a couple of bakery towels, he was assisted into a backroom and placed on a cot among cartons of wheatberries and yeast. Kate, serving hot coffee and another Danish, explained that Mrs. Beechum had gone home to get some of her homemade medicines.
The Cat Who Moved a Mountain Page 14