The Kudzu Kid

by Darrell Laurant

  “They do a lot of business in the county,” Daniel said. “Funny thing, too—Buddha always seems to have the low bid when the county needs a vehicle, and Clinton always seems to come in low on construction jobs. Of course, they don’t vote when these things come up, but, still…”

  “Why haven’t we nailed them for conflict of interest?” Fogarty asked.

  “Because those boys are a lot smarter than they look.”

  A few nights later, Fogarty found Cassie Ledbetter stationed in the Randolph County High School parking lot, waving her campaign fliers at the incoming football crowd. The people just surged around her as if she were a rock in a stream, but Cassie—wearing a long peasant-style dress in spite of the late-summer heat—seemed undaunted.

  “What has Clinton Apperson ever done for you?” she demanded of each approaching group. And then, as they passed by without looking at her, she would call after them, “Think about it!”

  Cassie spied Fogarty immediately and waved him over.

  “Mr. Fogarty, I understand you were over talking to my opponent the other day,” she said. “I demand equal time.”

  “You got it,” said Fogarty, who was running late himself. “I’ll call you.”

  “Come to my house,” she said. “I’ve got some things I want to show you.”

  As Fogarty walked away, he heard Cassie’s shrill voice braying behind him: “Think about it!”

  The pale ghost of a full moon had appeared in the still-clear sky, slightly out of focus, as if waiting its turn onstage. This was the first Friday night game of the season for the Randolph County High School Wildcats, and the stadium lot had already overflowed a half hour before game time. Like bits of metal summoned by a powerful magnet, seemingly half the citizens of the county were making their way to the scene.

  “Don’t these people have a life?” Fogarty asked Assistant Coach Husky Howell as the rows of metal bleachers on the Randolph County side began to bow beneath the weight of what promised to be a capacity crowd.

  Howell pondered the question.

  “This is their life,” he said finally.

  Fogarty was standing along the sideline near the Randolph County bench, buffeted by noise. He had chosen that vantage point rather than the blue-and-gold painted press box because he had the Echo’s cheap camera hung around his neck and needed to be closer to the action. Claude, who seemed to possess an inexhaustible vault of needy relatives, was out of town again.

  The Wildcats and the visiting Generals of William Campbell High School were warming up on the field, which looked mummified and faded despite the best efforts of the school groundskeeper. The coaches and captains had led both squads through an almost identical ritual of calisthenics, after which the receivers formed ragged lines to provide targets for the quarterbacks, dropping at least half of the short passes; it was, after all, the first game of the season. Off behind the visitor’s bleachers, the Randolph County marching band was doing unspeakable damage to an old Chicago tune.

  This was both old and new to Fogarty, who retained some vestigial memories of having watched his best friend Mike Sellers play football in high school. But never from the sidelines where the sights and sounds of the game were amplified a hundredfold. These were kids, fifteen to eighteen years old, some with acne-dotted faces, others with weed-whacker haircuts. Most of them hardly looked like athletes. With their battle gear, however, came a transformation—the shoulder pads added artificial width, the facemasks wrapped around the helmets hid the anxious expressions.

  Tyrone Fuqua stood out, of course, both in size and demeanor. Fogarty noticed some of the red-clad William Campbell players sneaking glances in the direction of the huge and scowling Wildcat end, and he wondered what they might be thinking.

  Randy Akers, meanwhile, was everywhere—slapping his players on the back, shaking a finger in their faces, huddling with his assistant coaches, studying the clipboard in his hands, pacing the sidelines. He was so animated that it seemed to Fogarty that he might explode.

  The Rev. Linwood Morgan delivered the invocation from the press box in a sonorous voice, the words floating down to the field as if from heaven, noting at one point with mournful redundancy, “And dear Lord, please don’t let any of these young men be hurt, or injured, or maimed.”

  Once again, some of the William Campbell players looked over at No. 87, Randolph County’s Tyroneosaurus.

  Then the Randolph County band bleated its way through the Star Spangled Banner, and the team captains trotted out into the center of the field, their cleats stirring chalk dust as they crossed the freshly marked sidelines. Tyrone Fuqua was one of those captains for Randolph County, joined by Ernest Dixon and linebacker Chuck Mayfield. It was still hot, and Fogarty was beginning to sweat.

  William Campbell, a non-conference rival from up near Lynchburg, won the coin toss and elected to receive. As Mayfield teed up the ball and prepared to kick it downfield, a game-long dance began, all the Randolph County coaches and players moving down the sideline to follow the flow of the action. Fogarty moved with them.

  Mayfield’s kick was abysmally short, and a tiny William Campbell back caught it on the first hop at the twenty-five-yard line and cut toward the Randolph County sideline. He had only traveled about ten yards when the home team’s Rusty Riddick, impersonating a heat-seeking missile, leveled him. The noise of the collision startled Fogarty, a resonating soggy thud like a heavy sack hitting the ground from a great height, and the William Campbell player released his hold on the football and flew backward. For an instant, the ball lay untouched and almost unnoticed beyond the vortex of the violence. Then Montessori Moon, one of the Wildcats’ defensive ends, scooped it up and ran untouched into the end zone.

  Fogarty couldn’t imagine a crowd at Ohio State making any more noise. The sound swirled around him as Moon banged helmets and chests with some of his teammates and Randy Akers hugged him and smacked him on the facemask as he came off the field.

  Mayfield, who was the worst kicker Fogarty had ever seen, missed wide left on a flabby extra point attempt, but the Wildcats’ season had gotten off to a dramatic start.

  “Hey, Eddie, did you get a shot of the hit Riddick put on that guy?” Husky Howell yelled over to him.

  Suddenly, Fogarty remembered the camera hanging around his neck.

  “Shit!” he muttered.

  “My fault,” he added, as if he had been the player who had fumbled.

  As it turned out, it didn’t matter. William Campbell, a normally strong program undergoing a rebuilding year was no match for the Wildcats.

  For his part, Fogarty had never worked so hard in his life. He was clutching a flimsy ten-page program in one hand, keeping track of each play in a reporter’s notebook and simultaneously attempting to take photographs. Part of the problem with the latter was that the action tended to surge laterally across the field, making it difficult to focus the camera.

  On one occasion, as he tried to zero in a play moving with frightening swiftness toward his vantage point—Fuqua, on defense, in hot pursuit of the terrified William Campbell quarterback—he was almost flattened when the Tyroneosaurus shoved his quarry out of bounds with one huge hand. Suddenly out of control, the William Campbell player went spinning into the crowd on the sidelines, knocking down one member of the chain crew, and bouncing off the backpedaling Fogarty. Fortunately for his dignity and his camera, Fogarty managed to stay upright.

  “Hey, maybe we’ll put you in for a couple of plays,” Husky Howell shouted over to him.

  The game ended in a 48-0 Randolph County victory, and Fogarty interviewed players and coaches as they milled about on the field.

  “We saw…whew!…we saw a lot of things we liked,” a breathless Randy Akers said as wild-eyed fans kept pounding him on the back, “but it’s only the first game. William Campbell’s going to be a good team, but they’re real young right now. I thought Ernest did a good job running the offense, and our offensive line moved them around pretty good.”


  “How about Tyrone Fuqua?” Fogarty asked.

  “I’d rather you didn’t print this,” Akers said, “but there were scouts from Virginia Tech and North Carolina State in the stands, looking at Tyrone. Next week, North Carolina and Maryland will be here, and maybe Tennessee. He’s a definite stud.”

  But not a talker. Despite his fearsome appearance, Fuqua just looked down at his cleats and mumbled when Fogarty complimented him.

  “You know, I thought it went pretty good,” he said softly, shifting from one foot to the other. “Why won’t you go talk to Ernest?”

  He found out later that it was the first time the Tyroneosaurus had ever been interviewed. Whitt Scruggs never bothered.

  Fogarty bought a six-pack on the way back to the Echo building and checked his phone messages before getting on the elevator. One was intriguing.

  “This is for Mr. Hamer,” said a voice that sounded young and black and confused at hearing the name Fogarty on the tape. “You don’t know me, but my daddy knows you. This is about Theo Moore. I’ll catch you some other time.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  COMPLICATIONS

  The house that Cassie Ledbetter shared with her sister, Breeze, was in the Bonifay area, the northern section of the county, not far from the parental farm Zoe Vaden was struggling to unload.

  “They’re nice enough,” Zoe had told Fogarty when he asked about the two women. “I see them every now and then. Sometimes, they bring me tomatoes.”

  A pause.

  “Of course, you know they’re witches.”

  “Come on,” Fogarty replied. “They’ve got their own business. Cassie’s running for the board of supervisors. How can they be witches?”

  “You’ll find out when you go over there.”

  For almost a decade, ever since their father died suddenly of a heart attack, Cassie and Breeze had operated the 58 Drive-In on the eastern edge of Jefferson Springs. It was one of the few outdoor movie theaters remaining in the state, and the sisters pulled just enough money from it to keep it—and them—alive. The movies they showed were often six months past first-run, the film occasionally snapped in mid-showing, and the screen was pitted and streaked.

  Still, it was a safe place to bring small children and let them scamper around, and several generations of Randolph County teens had used the back rows as a sex education workshop.

  Cassie Ledbetter had never married, Breeze, who used to be called Marcia, was divorced. The sisters kept mostly to themselves, separated from the outside world by a half-mile dirt driveway. The paint on the two-story farmhouse was peeling like sunburned skin, a half-dozen shingles were missing from the roof. Breeze’s old pale-blue Buick was parked in the front yard when Fogarty arrived, a sticker on the rear bumper proclaiming, My Other Car is a Broom.

  Even without that not-so-subtle clue, Fogarty was beginning to believe Zoe. Yard decoration for most Randolph County homeowners consisted of a portable grill and maybe a concrete deer or two. Cassie and Breeze favored concrete art, as well, but their statues were of goddesses—five of them, lining the front walk like a receiving line. A metal cauldron sat on the porch, and Fogarty counted at least a half-dozen furtive, furry figures skulking around the shaggy shrubbery next to the house, several of them black.

  “So, I see you like cats,” Fogarty said as Cassie opened the door.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “We’ve got sixteen.”

  Fogarty’s nose twitched as an overwhelming odor assailed it, an acrid scent that crawled into his sinuses and immediately snatched him back to college. Cassie saw his puzzlement and smiled.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Fogarty, it’s nothing illegal,” Cassie said. “Breeze and I smudged the house before your arrival.”

  Fogarty looked puzzled.

  “We burn sage. It helps clear the energies, so we can talk freely. Can I offer you something to drink?”

  Another hesitation on Fogarty’s part, as he imagined some sort of dark potion moving toward his lips.

  “Coffee, tea or Diet Pepsi,” Cassie said.

  Cassie was the older of the two women. As usual, she was wearing a long dress and sandals. Her strawberry hair was pulled back into what would have been a bun had not half the hair refused to be confined, and reading glasses dangled from a chain around her neck.

  “I don’t believe you’ve met my sister,” she said, motioning toward a tall woman who stood in the shadows.

  “Blessings,” the sister said, stepping forward and extending a thin freckled hand. “I’m Breeze.”

  “Breeze…?”

  “Just Breeze,” she said. “It’s my Wiccan name.”

  The interior of the house was stranger than the outside. Bright, surrealistic colors had been slathered on the walls, rows of bottled herbs were arranged on wooden shelves, sticks of intense glowed in gloomy corners. A big stone fireplace dominated the living room, along with a poster-sized pentagram.

  “That,” Breeze said, pointing to the poster, “is to Wiccans as the cross is to Christians. It symbolizes the four elements, with the top point representing spirit.”

  “No kidding,” Fogarty said.

  He slid his skinny notebook from his back pocket and sat down in an overstuffed chair that smelled of dust and candle wax.

  “I guess what we need to talk about is why you’re running against Clinton Apperson,” Fogarty said to Cassie. “And why you think you have a chance to win.”

  “I’ve been told to run,” Cassie replied.

  “By, uh, the local Democrats?” Fogarty wondered.

  “No. Just…told. These are dangerous times, Mr. Fogarty.”

  “There is wickedness all around us,” Breeze chimed in from the hallway, pausing on her way to get his coffee.

  Fogarty felt a slight chill.

  “It’s the landfill,” Cassie said, her voice slipping into a lower range, almost trance-like. “Unspeakable things are destined for that landfill. You mark my words. Some men from up north will try to sell the county on free space for our trash, but it’s going to be a Trojan horse. The next thing you know, our wells will be poisoned, our cattle will be dying. These are evil men, Mr. Fogarty.”

  “How do you know all this?” Fogarty asked. “Nobody’s even made a presentation to the board of supervisors yet.”

  “They’ve been around to try and buy our land,” Cassie said. “We’re right next to the old Winfree place, which is vacant. Plus, I did a Tarot reading on it.”

  Breeze returned Fogarty’s coffee and handed it to him without a word, her long, prematurely gray hair swinging sideways from the motion. Then she moved across the room and sat cross-legged in a distant chair.

  “Do you really think you can win?” Fogarty asked Cassie, trying to bring the conversation back to familiar ground.

  She laughed.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Of course not. A lot of people around here think I’m the devil.”

  “Then why bother?”

  “Because I need to get the word out. The only way I can get quoted in your newspaper, Mr. Fogarty, or get a seat at the debate table, is to be a candidate. Clinton Apperson is just helping me in his own way.”

  “Is that what you want me to put in this article?”

  Cassie frowned, considering the question. A gray cat scampered across the room with quick little feline steps, almost startling Fogarty into spilling his coffee, and landed softly in Breeze’s lap.

  “Why don’t you write that the voters are going to be very surprised at what I have to say,” Cassie finally replied.

  There were a few more questions about her background and her perspective as a small business owner, Fogarty taking only a couple of sips from the tepid instant coffee and keeping a wary eye on the gray cat.

  When he returned to the office, Zoe looked up from proofing the classified ad pages and grinned at him.

  “I’m surprised to see you back,” she said. “I kind of figured you’d be a toad by now.”

  “Actually, I think they liked me,�
� he said. “But not enough to feed me, and it’s lunchtime.”

  Zoe still wouldn’t submit to any interaction with her editor that might be considered a date, but the two often ate lunch together. To Zoe, lunch was just an extension of work.

  She saw a lot of herself in Eddie Fogarty, and that wasn’t necessarily good. Like her, and like her ex-husband, he seemed rootless and cynical. In addition, Fogarty exuded an air of self-importance that grated on her, especially since she found his writing dry and mechanical, devoid of soul. Even a newspaper should have soul, she believed, although she never expressed that to anyone at the Southside Echo.

  Lunch, however, was acceptable. And on this particular day, she had something to tell Fogarty that he wasn’t going to want to hear.

  She had known for some time that Regina Judkins had been occasionally sleeping with Otho Mosby, a member of the Jefferson Springs Town Council. Otho was a stocky, florid-faced lawyer who, like Whitt Scruggs, was active in the local Sons of the Confederacy and claimed an ancestral connection to Civil War hero John Mosby, the “Gray Ghost.” He handled most of the grunt work in the downtown firm of Reese, Talbert and Mosby, leaving the defense of accused criminals to Smyth Talbert and the more lucrative corporate clients, including the Southside Echo, in the hands of Watkins Reese.

  To Regina, however, Otho cut a romantic figure as an attorney. He was also the only male member of Town Council who was under sixty. And, he was married, which added a certain thrill to the relationship.

  The problem, of course, was that Regina covered Town Council for the Echo. Out of curiosity, Zoe had glanced back at some of Regina’s most recent council stories. Invariably, Otho emerged as the dominant force at every meeting, his quotes outnumbering those of the other four council members combined.

  “Shit,” muttered Fogarty when he got the news, halfway through a barely edible Reuben at the Railroad Diner.

  “Another complication.”

  “Would you rather I hadn’t told you?” Zoe asked.

  “I’d have found out anyway. But this isn’t going to be fun.”