At the End of the Road (13 page)

Kyle stood in the middle of the road. He couldn’t move. He reckoned he was in shock. He had never known an adult to snatch up a child that didn’t belong to them. It just didn’t happen. His daddy would shoot this man. If his daddy found out about this, he would shoot this man down dead. And nobody would ever say he did wrong.

“Boy, you’ve got work to do.”

Kyle stood there mute.

“Do you understand? I know what you did. And I’ll tell.” His eyes cut to the doll in his fingers. “I’ve got the proof. Won’t be no question about it.”

And that’s when Kyle finally realized what was behind all of this. The paralyzed man had them. He had the proof that they started that fire. That doll put them there. It proved that it was him and Grace that had burned down seventy-five acres of woods.

Kyle looked down between his feet and saw a dirt clod. It wasn’t as good as a rock, but a dirt clod was hard like a rock. It was all that was there and Kyle wasn’t thinking anyway. He was just reacting. Something deep inside of Kyle was telling him what to do, so he did it without thinking about it.

The dirt clod fit in his hand like it was custom made, and whatever was driving him had good aim. The hardened chunk of root bits and dried mud sailed through the air, and Kyle and the paralyzed man had time to hold each other’s eyes, an understanding passing between them. Then the clod struck him straight on the forehead, right between the eyes. It exploded in a little puff of orange dust, leaving behind a thick, raised scum of dirt. Then the blood started flowing, washing the dirt away in a filthy little red trickle.

The paralyzed man let go of Grace and clapped his hand to the wound. Grace took off from the porch and crossed the road to Kyle. Kyle grabbed her hand and they took off like the devil himself was chasing them with his pitchfork.

And Kyle heard the paralyzed man’s voice call out after them. And his voice was loud and clear, but it wasn’t emotional or angry or anything like that. His voice was calm and certain. Sure of itself.

“Tonight, firebug. Be back here tonight. Midnight. Or I’ll tell.”

acting normal when nothing in his life was normal at all. Mama fixed hot dogs and sauerkraut for dinner that night, and Kyle ate his fair share. After dinner, all of them went to the living room and watched Lawrence Welk on the TV. They ate vanilla ice cream with Hershey’s Syrup while they watched it. Kyle stopped eating his ice cream for a minute and listened to the music of everybody’s spoons clinking against their bowls while they ate their ice cream. It sounded good to him.

After that, Grace and Kyle had to go to bed since they were the youngest. Mama tucked them in, and she told Kyle he would not be going with his brothers to vacation Bible school next week. She said that they did not have enough money this year to sign him up for it. Kyle didn’t care.

Later, in the dark, Grace asked him what was he going to do.

“I reckon I’ll go on over there.”

“No, Kyle, don’t do it,” she said.

“I reckon I have to. There ain’t nothing else to do but to do it.”

“That man grabbed hold of me.”

“I seen it, didn’t I?”

“Don’t go.”

“Grace, do you know what Daddy will do to us if he finds out we set that fire? Do you know? Do you have any kind of idea?”

They lay there in bed for a long time, listening to the others down the hall still up watching TV. Then, real quiet, Grace said, “Kyle?”

“What?”

“Will you get her back for me?”

“Your doll?”

She didn’t say anything, but Kyle could feel the movement of Grace nodding her head in the dark.

“I reckon so,” Kyle said.

wards lay awake in anticipation of his midnight meeting with Kenny A hearn, Sheriff’s Deputy Officer Dana Turpin walked down Eden Road, her department-issued shoes kicking up tiny orange ground-level clouds in the July sun. It must have been ninety-five degrees out there. Not a good day to pound the pavement, or, in this case, the dirt.

Dana’s black skin was so dark as to appear almost purple. She would have liked to have lighter skin, and she was very much aware of the fact that the brutal sun would turn her even darker. She cursed herself for having left her cap in the patrol car. Vanity. Pure vanity. She had given herself a relaxer at home the night before and didn’t want her uniform cap crimping her hair. Not that it mattered, she thought. The humidity out here would puff it up into an afro inside an hour.

Melodie Godwin’s route from her home on Falls River Drive to the Sweetwater Reservoir had only been three-and-a-half miles—assuming Melodie had taken the most direct route, and, at this point, there was no reason to assume otherwise. Melodie worked as a waitress at the Douglas Inn, and lived with her boyfriend in the house on Falls River Drive, just off of Lee Road. Dana didn’t like the boyfriend, George Hicks, one bit. He had hands that looked like they wanted to hit. Something. Anything. Anybody. But he had been at his engine lathe at Anderson’s Machine Shop all day except for a thirty-minute lunch that he had taken on-site in the break room. He was clear.

There was a party and cookout planned for noon at Sweetwater Reservoir—Melodie’s niece was turning six. Melodie had called her mother from home to confirm the party at 10:30 that morning. She never showed up. No one had seen or heard from her since.

This was the second day of the investigation. Actually, it was the first day of the investigation, and the second day of the disappearance. Mrs. Godwin had reported her daughter missing a few hours after she failed to show up at the reservoir on Saturday, but Melodie was twenty-two years old, an adult, and adults were allowed to skip children’s birthday parties without the sheriff’s department hunting them down to find out why.

When Melodie failed to show up for her shift at the Douglas Inn Saturday evening and also did not return home that night, Mrs. Godwin called the sheriff’s department every thirty minutes, certain that something was wrong. So, even though it had been less than the required twenty-four hours, the sergeant had gone ahead and assigned Dana to look into it. Just so they could tell the mother they were doing something. Normally, Dana was off on Sundays, but she had dropped her daughter off at the babysitter’s so she could get started. If harm had indeed come to Melodie Godwin, then every minute was critical. If Dana was going to take this as a serious matter, then starting the investigation could not be delayed. And in any event, she needed the extra hours.

Dana started with the basics. At seven that morning, she started knocking on doors. She wanted to talk with all of Melodie’s neighbors. None of the neighbors appreciated being woken so early on a Sunday, but for the most part their irritation dissipated when Dana explained the reason for her intrusion. None of the neighbors had any information that Dana found useful. She drove the route between Falls River Drive and Sweetwater Reservoir three times (Melodie’s mother having told Dana about the back road shortcut Melodie used to get there), but saw nothing that drew her interest. She visited the boyfriend (who was working from 6 AM until 2:30 PM that day, getting time and a half for a special order), but other than sensing a potential for violence just beneath his polite surface, Dana gleaned nothing of use for having interviewed him. Nothing.

A single phone call to her mother at 10:30 yesterday morning, then Melodie Godwin just disappeared completely.

After driving the short route for the third time, Dana got some lunch and then stopped by the station. She went into the file room where it was cool. She pulled a muscle in her shoulder reaching for a box of files looking for cases that involved Melodie’s family members, boyfriend, or Melodie herself. Later, if necessary, Dana would look for records that involved Melodie’s neighbors or coworkers. Dana found a single file, a domestic dispute between Melodie and her boyfriend. They had both been drunk, screaming, fighting loud. Neither had been arrested. Dana noted the name and address of the neighbor who had phoned in the complaint, and copied it in her notepad. She wondered why the neighbor had not volunteered the information this morning. It was clearly of importance.

When she followed up on it, the neighbor had not been home, so with no other ideas on how to proceed, Deputy Officer Dana Turpin decided to walk Melodie’s assumed route that day. By now, it was going on three o’clock in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day. A three-and-a-half-mile hike in mid-July. Dana hitched her duty belt and started walking. The asphalt of Falls River Drive had absorbed so much of the sun’s heat that the tarry surface was pliable, like black dough. Her dark blue uniform absorbed the brutal rays of sun, intensifying the heat. She could smell the raw polyester giving off fumes. The heat did ease the nagging pain from her shoulder, though. That was a nice bonus.

Dana scanned the environment as she walked up the residential road. She paid particular attention to the gutters and sewer grates. Just looking. Looking for anything.

Lee Road. Lee Road was thick with churchgoers and truckers heading for I-20. The trucks roared past leaving her engulfed in back drafts of heavy, hot air that robbed Dana of her breath. But she was only on Lee Road for three-quarters of a mile before she came to Eden Road.

Eden Road began at a hidden juncture on Lee Road. A small stand of mimosa with outstretched, low-hanging limbs obscured the mouth of the road. And kudzu vines threatened to overtake the mimosa. An old-timey produce stand (
DADDY-BOB’S
it proclaimed, but Daddy-Bob was nowhere to be seen) stood there, otherwise there was nothing to mark it. No sign was erected. In fact, when driving the route, Dana had driven past it four full times before finally seeing it.

Dana figured that 99 percent of the people that drove past never noticed the road. And those that were aware of it used it only as a shortcut to the reservoir.

Instead of sewage grates, concrete gutters, and curbs, a rocky drainage ditch ran along both sides of Eden Road. Dana stopped often to toe through the accumulated debris or shift through the thick brambles. Looking. Just looking.

The road opened up and there was a pasture with a bull and grazing cows to her left, and a few houses to her right. The houses had generous space between them, and they were set well off the road. This was like a world unto itself. Like waking up on Walton’s Mountain.

The scattered houses were mostly empty, this being Sunday. Church was an all-day affair for many folks: Sunday School, followed by a fire-and-brimstone service, ending with dutiful visits to the sick and infirm. Dana saw nothing out of the ordinary. She heard the pop of a .22 rifle, or maybe a firecracker, but couldn’t locate the source. She saw a boy, still dressed in his Sunday suit, riding his bicycle down a long gravel driveway, and he had gone back to his house long before she made it to his driveway. That was the only house she had seen on the left side of the road. She studied it for a moment. It was nestled between the cornfield and a field of something Dana couldn’t identify. The house looked safe.

Turning forward, something glinted in the drainage ditch. Dana went to investigate and plucked a tiny pebble of glass from the dirt. It was safety glass. The kind used in car windows that shatters into tiny pebble-like pieces instead of sharp shards like conventional glass. Dana used her pen and poked through the dirt looking for more. She found seven pieces of glass and put them in a small plastic bag. Probably nothing, Dana decided, but if it had been in the drainage ditch for very long, rain runoff would have worked it deeper into the earth or washed it away. She made a mental note to check to see if there had been any wrecks reported on this road.

She worked her way down the remainder of Eden Road. The stands of corn, pole beans, okra, peanuts, and potatoes gave way to dense woods that consisted mostly of scrub pine and pin oak. There was a horse paddock to the right, and Dana could see riding trails in the woods.

with the Sweetwater Reservoir directly across from it. Dana crossed the blacktop and was within twenty yards of the water. She rested a moment at the reservoir’s edge. The duty belt with her weapon, ammunition, baton, two sets of cuffs, flashlight, police knife, and all the other paraphernalia she was expected to carry and trained to use, added at least eight pounds to her burden. And Dana was not a small woman. The breeze coming off the water refreshed her, but she was thirsty from the heat and all the sweating she had done.

Dana walked along the perimeter, passing by black men perched atop boulder-size hunks of Georgia granite scattered along the shore. The men fished using cane poles with bobbers weighted with lead sinkers and paid no attention to Deputy Turpin. It was peaceful down here, and Dana liked it.

A squat little cinder block building sat off to the right. The words
BAIT SHOP
had been spray painted on the side. Inside, it was shadowy and damp—not cool but humid and sticky. Dana saw earthworms, minnows, and crickets for sale. A sharp insect odor from the cricket cage burned in her nostrils.

Dana selected a bottle of Dr. Pepper from a pebbled aluminum chest cooler. The cooler hummed, and when she leaned over it she could feel warm air blowing up into her face from the wheezing compressor. Dana thought to herself that it was the bad compressor and the water from the open minnow tank that kept it hot and humid in here. The Dr. Pepper was ice-cold, though, and the glass bottle started sweating as soon as she pulled it out and popped off the metal cap with the bottle opener mounted with rusty pan screws to the cooler’s side.

The old woman behind the counter was smoking a Kent. It dangled from her mouth, and she squinted against the smoke while she rang up Dana’s drink.

“Mighty hot,” Dana said to the old woman.