Molly: House on Fire

by R. E. Bradshaw

  “So, what are they saying? I’m curious.” Molly wondered if any threats were being made publicly.

  Shauna approach with a stack of white envelopes containing tiny photographic images of the newspapers Molly requested. While she loaded the first negative into the machine, she began to talk.

  “Well, like any small town, there are differing opinions. Your little showdown with Stick Branch — isn’t that the funniest name — anyway, that sure got the gossip line humming.”

  “I would imagine,” Molly said, chuckling, “and yes, that is a funny name.”

  Shauna turned on the machine, making sure it was working properly. “Some folks think Joey is guilty and are offended that you’re here to help him. The others, well,” she stopped and looked straight at Molly, “there’s a prevailing sense that the cast off child has come home to set things right.”

  “And what am I supposed to set right? The fact the police are allowing a serial killer to roam among you, while holding an innocent man in jail because he was a convenient suspect?”

  “Oh, I agree with you there. Joey is not a killer and he would never hurt his mother. He loved her, well, the way he could, you know. He doesn’t think like the rest of us.”

  “So, you know Joey?” Molly said, sitting down in the old wooden library chair, in front of the machine.

  Shauna hesitated, and Molly knew why when she finally said, “I used to date Leslie. If you date Leslie, you date Joey, too.” Shauna’s gaydar was working well. She pegged Molly pretty quickly, judging her safe with this disclosure.

  “I see,” Molly said, beginning to look at the first pages.

  “I hear she’s staying at the Dawson house with you.”

  Now that was a loaded question. The ex was probing Molly and she was not being too subtle about it. Molly looked away from the screen and up at Shauna. “Her house was burglarized. Tammy and Brad offered a room in their house. Leslie is staying with them, not me. I just happen to be there, as well.”

  This seemed to relieve Shauna. She smiled and said, “Don’t you just love Tammy? And, Lord, can she cook.”

  Molly went back to the screen, scanning the dates, headlines, and obituaries. She answered, “Yes, she can. I’m going to be running a lot, because of it.”

  “Leslie can show you the best places to run. She’s a fanatic about it.”

  Molly was curious, but did not want to appear so. She worded her question carefully. “Did you go to high school with Brad and Leslie?”

  Her question had the desired effect. Shauna launched into their entire history, and she was dying to share.

  “No, I’m four years younger than they are. I mean, I knew who they were. It’s a small town. Athletes and cheerleaders are the stars every Friday night. You couldn’t miss them, but I didn’t really meet Leslie until I came back here after college.” She paused, considering her words. “I said I dated Leslie, but the truth of the matter is, she let me hang out with her for a while, slept with me when she felt like it, and basically did whatever she wanted to. She’s not relationship material, if you know what I mean.”

  Molly was constantly amazed with the amount of personal detail women were willing to share. Molly also imagined those same words had been said about her, too. So, Leslie was a player, or at least someone who played by her own rules, much like Molly, who commented, “I’m sure we all know someone like that.”

  Shauna’s sharing continued, “She’s married to her job. Joey and the rest of her students, they come first. She’d rather spend a day hanging out with them than me, that’s for sure. I mean, I admire her dedication, but always playing second fiddle is not a whole lot of fun, you know.”

  “I don’t imagine it would be,” Molly said, stopping on article published in the Sunday edition of the “Dobbs Daily,” November 28, 1982.

  She focused on the headline, “Dobbs County Gold Legend.” Molly leaned closer to the screen.

  “Well, I see you’ve found something. I’ll leave you to your research.” Shauna walked to the door, but turned back to Molly before leaving. “If you’re going to be in town for a while, maybe I could show you around. Unless, of course, Leslie is doing that.”

  Molly turned and smiled at Shauna. “I appreciate the offer. I’m not sure how much free time I’ll have, but I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Shauna almost giggled. “I’ll give you my number before you leave. Just shout out if there’s anything you need help with.”

  “I will, thank you.”

  Shauna left her alone, finally. Molly started reading the article, part of a local history series printed in 1982. The gold legend had been saved as the second to last story, giving it prominence among all the historical events of the county. The Civil War occupation was scheduled to be the last story in the series. The legend, it seemed, had more fact than fiction associated with it. By 1982, people had been looking for the gold for one hundred and twenty years. Molly jotted notes on the pad.

  Eli Branch was the sheriff during the Civil War.

  Legend is: he gathered up all the gold in town when the Yankees began tearing up the tracks and burning the Wilmington & Weldon bridge south of Goldsboro, December 17, 1862. He said he hid it and told only one other man the location of the gold. Eli Branch was shot and killed in June of 1863, without revealing the whereabouts of the gold. No one was ever charged with his murder and the identity of the other man never discovered. His son, Burgess, went on to be a successful farmer, wealthy when others were struggling. Rumors persisted that he was the other man, but no gold was ever seen in his possession and he denied knowing anything about it. Countless searches have turned up nothing.

  Molly read down to the last part, finding a quote from Old Man Branch, whose real name was Walter Branch, Jr.

  “That gold has been a black mark on my family for generations. If it is ever discovered, I hope it will be returned to its rightful owners. My bet is it was found years ago and only the person that found it knows where it is today, if there is any left. There’s only one reason any of that gold would still be around,” the old man winked and continued, “the power it holds by remaining hidden.”

  Molly sat back from the screen. Old Man Branch knew something, but he was keeping it to himself. Molly thought about the gold coin. He gave it to Molly just a few months after the article was written. That was the only concrete clue she had to the gold’s existence and it could be the only piece from the original stash still around, if it was part of the legend gold at all. The coin was the key and Molly needed to find the secret it unlocked. She looked at the clock on the wall. Horace should have the coin by now. He would call when he knew something. She dropped change in the printer, made a copy of the article, and went back to her search.

  Before long, Molly found herself in March of 1983, the month that changed her life. On the fifth of the month, in the obituary section, she found Walter Evan Branch, Jr., aged seventy, had passed away the day before after a short illness. He was a gentleman farmer, deacon of his church, husband of Drusilla, and father of two, Jarvis and Evan Branch. There was no mention of a grandchild, surely Drusilla’s doing. Molly was non-existent to her grandmother, but the old man had been different. Molly felt sadness for his loss, though she barely knew him. He had been kind to her and that was more than she could say for the rest of his family. He did what he could to protect Molly. The judge told her that, but neither the judge nor Molly’s grandfather could stop the brutality Evan rained on Sarah, without her cooperation. Molly would never understand the hold Evan had on her mother. It appeared no one else could either. She sighed and printed the obituary.

  Moving slowly through the month, she realized that as a child she was unaware of most of what was happening around her. Outside of the little shack and school, Molly knew little of the goings on in town, around the state, and the world. Beach erosion along the coast was a hot topic. Some things never changed. El Salvador was being called the new Vietnam. NC State had beaten North Carolina to make it to the finals
of the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament, held that year on Molly’s tenth birthday. That reminded Molly, March Madness was in full swing and she had not watched a single game. A love of ACC basketball was just part of being a Duke graduate. Molly did her turn as a Cameron Crazie, the legendary Duke fans of Cameron Indoor Stadium.

  She scanned past her birth date and approached the twentieth, the day of the fire. It was a Sunday and it happened late in the afternoon, early evening. The story was on the front page of the Monday evening edition. The headline screamed, “Local Man Dies in Suspicious Fire.” A photograph of the smoldering ruins was under the headline, with Molly standing in the frame watching it burn. The caption said, “Molly Harris, age ten, watches her home go up in flames.” Molly did not remember pictures being taken. She did remember seeing the photo in the paper after the fire. Molly also remembered the kids that taunted her, until she refused to go back to school, finishing the year at home before the other kids were out for the summer. They called her momma a murderer. Little did they know, Molly was the one who sent Evan Branch to his maker.

  She read on through the weeks and months of speculative reporting, until the Grand Jury cleared her mother of any crime. That set off a firestorm of letters to the editor, probably from friends of Drusilla, whose many quotes along the way pointed an accusing finger at Sarah Harris. Nowhere did it mention that her mother required over forty stitches to close the gashes on her head and face, from Evan’s last beating. The paper suggested, not too subtly, that theirs was an illicit relationship. After all, Evan was a married man and his young wife was pregnant, such a tragedy. They did mention a police officer smelled alcohol on her mother’s breath at the time of the fire. In the end, no one cared and the final article Molly found was on the last page of the paper, buried under an ad for the local grocery store. In it, Drusilla made her last public statement, “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll see that Sarah Harris pays for murdering my son.” Molly printed out that article, too.

  Done with 1983, she moved on to 1989. If Stick was six-years-old when his mother died, as Robbie said, then she died the year Sarah made her miraculous recovery. Molly knew a death like Amber’s would have made the small town paper’s front page. She was right. Ten days into the New Year, Amber Stovall Branch’s car hung vertically over the Neuse River in a grainy black and white photograph, dominating the space above the fold. A wrecker was parked on the bridge, dangling Amber’s car like a fish from a hook. River water was still gushing from the front grill when the picture was taken. The photographer framed the photo so the bridge’s name was in the foreground, Branch Crossing.

  Molly read the article beneath the picture. She learned that Jarvis Branch was the person who called in the damage to the bridge, supposedly not knowing a car was in the river, and that his sister-in-law was trapped inside. The highway patrolman, dispatched to assess the damage to the bridge, discovered the car. Dobbs County deputies recovered the body, still buckled in the driver’s seat. Cause of death was not known at the time the article was written. If Amber drowned, she did so within sight of the surface. The car was found in less than five feet of water. The last sentence of the article expressed sympathy for the family, after losing the matriarch, Drusilla, only eleven days earlier to a sudden heart attack. Molly printed the picture and the article.

  She scoured the news of the next few days for anything about the accident. Amber’s obituary provided her with Stick’s real name, Evan Clark Branch. Amber was only twenty-six years old at the time of her death. She was twenty when she married thirty-year-old Evan, who died “tragically” only months after their wedding. Molly was not sure she needed it, but she copied it anyway.

  She was standing by the copier when Shauna stuck her head in the door. “Are you doing all right in here?”

  “Yes, thank you, but I think I’m going to need more change for the copier. I haven’t seen a coin operated one in years. I’m afraid I came unprepared.”

  Shauna walked over to the machine. When Molly’s last copy finished, she smiled and said, “Watch this.” She opened a panel, flipped a switch, closed the panel, and said, “Now, they’re free. I learned that trick in librarian school.”

  “Really, I’d like to pay,” Molly said.

  “If you’re that noble you can drop a donation in the bowl on your way out. Is there anything else, a cup of coffee, water?”

  “Wow, a full service library,” Molly said, adding, “No, I’m fine, but thank you.”

  “Well, if you change your mind just shout out. No one’s here but us. There rarely is anyone here. I could run through the stacks naked and no one would know.”

  Molly had met exactly two lesbians since coming to town. One of them barely paid attention to her, and the other was offering a thinly veiled invitation to get naked and run through the stacks. It would relieve some tension, but Molly really was not interested. She was busy and running through the stacks with a local gal was not on her to do list, at the moment.

  She smiled politely and said, “Don’t get too near the windows, and I think you’ll be safe.”

  Molly returned to her search and Shauna took the hint, but not before one last less than subtle mention that it would be lunchtime soon. “I usually just put a sign on the door and lock it for an hour, but you can stay as long as you want.”

  “I’ll be finished soon,” Molly answered.

  She did not laugh until she was sure Shauna was out of earshot. Molly shook her head and decided if Shauna was that persistent with Leslie, then it probably had been just a matter of time before Leslie gave in. There had to be more lesbians in this town. The two Molly met had slept together. Molly tried to avoid little cliques of women who passed each other around in relationships, everyone having had everyone else at some point and remaining “friends.” If Molly was going to pursue Leslie, then sleeping with her ex was not appealing. Molly went back to her search and left the subject of women on the back burner, simmering. It would come to a boil soon enough on its own.

  A thorough search of next week’s editions revealed only one article, a short story on the front page, below the fold. The headline, “Woman’s Death Ruled Accidental,” announced the investigation’s findings. The cause of death was drowning. The injury to her head probably happened when her car impacted the bridge railing, or when it crashed to the river bottom below. It was sufficient enough to have left her unconscious, unable to remove herself from the car. There was no hint that Amber’s death was a suicide, just another tragic, sudden death in the Branch family. The suicide talk must have been county gossip. From this investigation alone, it was obvious to Molly that the rumor mill ran full-time in Dobbs County, generating its own brand of fact and fiction.

  Molly made copies and changed the negative. The new one contained the newspapers from the week her mother died. She wanted to hurry, before Shauna returned to tell her the door was locked. There were no pictures from her mother’s death, just a short article on the second page. The read headline, “Local Woman Accidentally Hangs.” It basically said Sarah Harris died from accidentally hanging, while attempting to retrieve her dropped purse. The last paragraph included information about Sarah’s involvement in a house fire that “tragically” took the life of Evan Branch, eight years earlier. That was the sum total of the coverage of Sarah’s death. Molly scanned beyond the date of the “accident” ten more days and saw nothing else. She sent the article to the copier.

  Molly was packing up when Shauna reappeared, bearing a blue pocket-style folder with the library’s façade etched on the front in silver.

  “Here,” Shauna said, holding out the folder, “I thought you might need something to put your copies in.”

  Molly took the folder. “Thank you.”

  She opened it to put the stack of paper inside and noticed Shauna’s business card slipped into the little holder on the left.

  Shauna explained, “I wrote my cell number on the back, in case you need that tour, and you can call me here if
you want me to look up something for you. Honestly, this rotation is so boring. I can’t wait to get back to the main library.”

  Molly considered the offer and decided giving Shauna a task could serve two purposes. “I do have something you can do for me,” Molly said. “If you could find everything in this library about the Dobbs County gold legend, I would greatly appreciate it.”

  A talker like Shauna was going to tell someone Molly was there doing research. She knew the years Molly looked through, and now Shauna knew Molly’s interest in the legend. If she blabbed, as Molly knew she would, everybody in town would know what Molly was up to. In addition, she may very well dig up pertinent information on the legend. It was a win-win for Molly. Flushing out Jarvis Branch, or whoever else wanted her out of Dobbs County, was the only way she would ever know for sure. Molly had to have a confession, or make herself a target and hope the result was not another tragic death, hers.

  Shauna excitedly accepted Molly’s challenge. “I would love to do that. How can I reach you when I have something?”

  Molly had not considered that necessity. She thought fast and killed two birds with one stone. “The number on my card is the office in Durham, so if you need to contact me, just call Leslie. She’ll know how to reach me.” She paused to let that sink in, and added, “I don’t have her number with me, but you still do, don’t you?”

  The message landed, as it was meant to, crushing Shauna’s hopes. Her expression was one of understanding and disappointment. She was not without a comeback, though.

  “Yes, I have her number. I think I listed it under, never again.”

  Molly winked, flashing the lesbian icon smile Shauna was so fond of. “That’s good to know.”

  She dropped a twenty in the donation jar and walked out the big front door. Molly was closing it behind her when she distinctly heard Shauna say, “Fuck Leslie!”

  #