Harvestman Lodge (48 page)

Melinda examined the chair closely. “Reverend, do you know if the name Wilmore Blanchard was on the original roll of Harvestmen?”

“I think so. It rings a bell. Why?”

“I believe he was the maker of this chair. He was the most noted woodworker and furniture builder in Kincheloe County, back in the Depression years. Some of his work is in the mansion of the Tennessee governor. And he made the pulpit in your own church. Did you know that?”

“I’ve heard only that it was made by a well-known furniture maker from earlier in the century. I don’t know if I ever heard the name. I can tell you, though, that this inlay looks very much like the ornamentation on the pulpit I use.”

“I am sure this is a Blanchard piece,” Melinda said. “I studied Blanchard once for an honors class presentation in my senior year of high school, and I am interested in furniture and furniture-makers just as a hobby.”

“Is there anything you aren’t proficient at, Melinda?” Eli asked.

“Not much,” she replied, and coming from her it didn’t sound like bragging.

There were cabinets built into the wall around the room, blending so well it was difficult to see the outlines of the doors. Eli wandered over and opened one. Empty. Same with the second he tried. Feely went to the other side of the room and opened a counterpart cabinet door. In a back corner of the shelf was a stack of about a dozen small picture frames. He reached in and pulled out the stack.

For the next few minutes, the three lodge explorers sat on the edge of the stage, looking at the framed photographs Feely had found. They were all much the same: apparent induction photographs for a round of new Harvestmen, probably ‘50s or early ‘60s vintage judging from hair and clothing. Each inductee was shown seated tensely in the ornate chair on the stage behind them. No one recognized any faces, until Melinda gasped slightly after she picked up one of the photographs.

“Look, Eli … the eyes … “

“That’s him, Melinda. That’s the same face from the election party photograph.”

Feely leaned over and looked. “That looks like pictures I’ve seen of the Parvin boy who played football some years ago, then got himself into trouble for drugs … but it can’t be him. Not unless these pictures are much newer than they appear to be.”

“You’re thinking of Rawls Parvin,” Melinda said. “And no, it isn’t him. It’s his father, I think. Cale Parvin.”

“Cale Parvin is old now, and blind and wheelchair-bound, I heard from a lady I work with,” Eli said. “In his younger days he bore a striking resemblance to his son. Startling resemblance, really. His face is visible in the crowd in that big election party photograph on the front hallway wall at the newspaper.”

“So Rawls’ father was a Harvestman,” Melinda said. “A good indication of the lowering standards of the organization, letting Parvins in.”

Feely paused, then said, “I feel I shouldn’t say such a thing, being a spokesman for a faith built on the belief that all men possess value and hope for betterment, but yes, Melinda, I have to agree with you where Parvins are concerned. In fact, your statement is more true than you know, as relates to the Harvestmen. It was a Parvin, more than any other single person, who led to the moral decay and final downfall of the organization.”

“Cale Parvin caused that?”

“No. A different Parvin. One of the last to be inducted, sometime in the early ‘70s, the worst of a bad bunch. I shouldn’t be so judgmental, maybe, but sometimes harsh facts are harsh facts. Especially with Parvins.”

“I know,” said Melinda. “Believe me, I know.”

CURTIS COULD NOT STOP gazing at Kendra Miller as she neared the end of the latest Listening Ears Story Hour with her rapt audience of young listeners. She had finished the day’s main story, Wilde’s “The Selfish Giant,” was closing with one of her favorite and often-requested memorized recitations, a Stephen Vincent Benet story-poem about a young Georgia hillbilly who enters a fiddling contest and discovers just how good he really is. Curtis had heard her recite it before, and it was one of his favorites, too, because he could see some of himself in the person of that young, ragged, “lonesome-born” hillbilly fiddler who’d been “raised runnin’ ragged through the cockle-burrs and corn.”

Her soothing voice was even softer as she began the first line in the story of Hillbilly Jim: “Up in the mountains it’s lonesome all the time, soft wind a-slewing through a sweet-potato vine …” Curtis wanted to close his eyes and drift off mentally to those lonesome mountains, but to do so would deprive him of seeing Kendra’s black locks and dear face … the face of the woman he had just admitted to Amber Goode, and to himself, that he loved. His eyes stayed open, fixed on her.

He wished Amber had stayed in the library to meet Kendra, like she’d said she would, but instead she’d headed on to a nearby shopping mall, talking about new shoes. She’d promised to come back by, though, and drive him back to Tylerville with her. Maybe she would meet Kendra then.

Curtis listened to the fiddle contest story told in the highly rhythmic poem, becoming caught up even though he knew already how it would progress and end. It was Kendra’s way of speaking it that made it seem new each time, something you could listen to over and over, like a piece of good music.

Kendra’s pace of recitation increased as the narrator told, through her voice, of the fiddling prowess of Old Dan Wheeling, with whiskers in his ears, who’d been the king-pin fiddler for nearly twenty years, and of wall-eyed Big Tom Sergeant, and of Little Jimmy Weezer, who could make a fiddle cry, as they amazed the judges and crowd with their bowing skills.

Soon came lines that, Curtis had noticed before and noticed again today, made Kendra’s voice change and maybe break a little when she said them. Something with a personal meaning to her, possibly. In the persona of the hillbilly narrator, she spoke: “They wasn’t no crowd to get me fazed, for I was alone where I was raised. Up in the mountains, so still it makes you skeered … where … ” And she trailed off, apparently having forgotten the words for a moment. When the pause became uncomfortable and she showed embarrassment in her eyes, Curtis motioned to catch her attention and began to mouth the line for her: “Where God lies sleepin’ …”

She was reminded then, and went on. “Where God lies sleepin’ in his big white beard.”

No further recitation problems after that. She completed the poem with full vigor and spirit. Hillbilly Jim fiddled away the night until somewhere or other the dawn was growing, and went on to win the Essex County Fair fiddling contest, and an extra final honor when none other than Old Dan Wheeling himself humbly put his own fiddle into Hillbilly Jim’s hand, and the noise of the crowd began.

Kendra’s own little library crowd made noise of their own as she finished, clapping and thanking her in a hubbub of childish voices. Curtis clapped along with them, beaming at his beloved friend. She came down off her small platform, tousling the hair of her young “Listening Ears” friends as she passed back to Curtis at the rear of the group.

She hugged him like he’d never been hugged before, and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m glad you came, Curtis. I’ve missed you … and thank you for helping me when I forgot my words just now. I’ve never forgotten that line before, because it’s one of my favorite ones in the entire poem.”

“How do you remember all that? It’s long!”

“It’s not hard. And you’ve heard me do it enough that I bet you could recite most of it yourself.”

“Nah, nah.” But he frowned in concentration and silently began to mouth words, then smiled as he realized she was right. “I be durned!” he exclaimed. “I believe maybe I really could say almost the whole thing, if I had to!”

“Told you! You’re a smart man, Curtis! Hey, can you come with me to the doughnut shop next door? I’ll buy us both some coffee and doughnuts. I just got paid a few days ago and haven’t spent it all yet.”

“Okay! I love doughnuts!”

Kendra spoke to the head librarian for a moment, letting her know where she was going, then grasped Curtis by the hand and led him to the nearby doughnut shop.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

CURTIS HAD BEEN HAPPY to detect Kendra’s light mood, and was disturbed when she grew much more serious as they sat in their booth with their coffee and pastries before them.

She nibbled a small bite of her colorfully sprinkled cake doughnut and laid it down again. “Curtis, I need to tell you something.”

“I need to tell you something, too, Kendra.”

“Why don’t you go first, then?”

“Kendra, part of the reason I came today is I got to tell you you need to come to Tylerville soon and see Mr. Coleman. Otherwise you may not see him again at all.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I think he’s going to die before too long. I believe he thinks so, too.”

“Oh no! What happened? Did he get sick or have a heart attack or something?”

“No. But even when you were still still living with us there, you know he had all kinds of things wrong with him … I never saw nobody take so many pills as he takes.”

“Yeah … but that’s been going on a long time. Why would things be worse now?”

“I don’t know. He just has been weaker and slower, and he’s been getting worse that way for months and months now. He told me last week he’s been having dreams about dying. I didn’t want to hear him say it, but he did. And he’s took up his writing again, writing like somebody’s holding a gun to him to make him do it, fast and so hard he gets out of breath just from typing. He’s been writing a new book of stories, and he read some of them to me. You’re in it, and me too. But mostly you. But we don’t have our real names, and the town ain’t named Tylerville, but you can tell it’s us. He’s writing about some other things besides you and me, but we’re in there. So is he, but with a different name, too.”

“What kind of story could he tell about me?”

“About how you came to find him and to be at his place. And me kind of the same thing. But like I said, all the names are different. But he says doing it that way he can tell things without ‘stirring up trouble.’ And he says the story ain’t really full-out true, just has bits and pieces of true things in it, a lot of them mixed up together and shifted around and smushed up into something make-believe.”

Kendra sipped her coffee, heavily sugared and swimming with cream. Curtis had taken his black. “If he’s writing, then he must not be feeling too weak or sick,” she said. “I remember hearing him say that writing a book was harder most times than digging a ditch, and could make you just as tired.”

“Well, he writes steady now, almost all day long. Even though his arthur, arthur –”

“Arthritis?”

“Yeah, him … that’s bothering him a lot more now. He walks with a walker sometimes. And his fingers look like they’re crooking up on him. I don’t see how he types on that old typewriter with them stiff keys and his fingers like they are.”

Kendra drifted away a moment, frowning. “Yes, I’ve got to go see him. You’re right.”

“Have you got a car?”

“I do. It’s old, but it runs good enough, and I took driving lessons and got my license and everything last year. Before that I did like you and just walked everywhere, or caught rides. Now I can drive! Want to see my license?”

“Sure! Show ’em to me!” he said, treating “license” as a plural word, as about half of rural East Tennesseans were prone to do.

She proudly displayed her State of Tennessee driver’s license and Curtis shook his head with sincere envy. “I want to see your car, too.”

“Okay. It’s not much to look at. I got it real cheap because it had been in a wreck, and part of one fender is kind of crushed in.”

“Pshaw! I wouldn’t care about that. Hey, what did you say you wanted to tell me?”

She’d been smiling, talking about her license and car, but the smile faded abruptly. “Curtis, I may be wrong, but I think you may not like what I’ve got to say.”

“Kendra, you ain’t got the cancer or nothing, have you?”

“No, no. I’m fine. Fit as old Dan Wheeling’s fiddle, you could say.” She flashed a smile. It didn’t last.

“Good.”

A pause.

“What is it, Kendra?”

“Curtis … there’s been a man coming around to see me, somebody who likes me a lot and has been taking me out to dinner and to movies and on rides in his big old boat … and we’ve gotten to be good, good friends.”

Curtis’s expression became grim. But he said, “Yeah. It’s good, having friends.”

“He tells me he wants it to be a lot more than that, Curtis. He told me last Thursday that he’s planning to ask me to marry him.”

Curtis pulled in a fast breath and gusted it out like he’d been stomach-punched. “Ask you to … ”

“That’s right. He says he loves me, and wants to be with me all his days.”

“Kendra … you … you can’t … what are you going to say when he asks you?”

“I’m all alone, Curtis. I gave my baby up to be adopted a long time ago, and I’ve been by myself ever since. Years and years now. I have to take care of myself, and when I go home at night there’s nobody there but me. I might tell him yes, Curtis, so I don’t have to be alone the rest of my days.”

Curtis stared at his half-consumed doughnut. He tried to lift his coffee cup to his lips, but his hand was trembling and he succeeded only in splashing the tabletop.