In a Dark Season (7 page)

Chapter 8

Burn Job

Monday, December 11, and Tuesday, December 12

T
he wail of an approaching siren cut through the clamor of shuffling feet and excited voices as the erstwhile audience re-formed for the unexpected second act of the evening. In a loading zone at the end of the parking lot, mercifully well away from most of the cars, leaping red flames drew the crowd like so many helpless moths. Doors open and interior blazing, a boxy orange vehicle squatted there—a monstrous jack-o’-lantern from hell. The insistent tang of kerosene hung in the air, underscoring a stench of burning plastics.

The watching throng stood at a cautious distance, fascinated by the spectacle of a very new, very expensive car rapidly depreciating as they watched.

“Here comes the fire engine now. That ve-hicle is gonna be a total loss though. Somebody done a burn job on it for sure.”

“I believe that’s the car the developer folks come in—see there on the front door it says RPI.”

“Reckon who could have done such a thing? Someone said they was two big fellers runnin’ off.”

“What’s that writing there on the ce-ment? Appears whoever it was got busy with the spray paint afore they set that car on fire.”

Elizabeth craned her neck to try to read the words: yard-high letters scrawled in green paint on the pavement near the wheels of the burning car. At her elbow, Ben spoke, in a voice flat with grim satisfaction. “Looks like not everyone’s ready to welcome Mr. Noonan as a new neighbor.”

Between the hazy yellow illumination of the mercury vapor lights and the glow of the fire, it was just possible to make out the double set of initials:
R.I.P.—R.P.I.

“Elizabeth, does that kind of thing happen a lot around here? I’ve heard some stories about bad feeling between natives and newcomers, but I didn’t believe them. I’ve felt really safe. All the local people I’ve met have been really nice to me.”

Amanda, usually so self-possessed and unflappable, was pale and wide-eyed as Ben pulled the farm truck into the line of vehicles creeping out of the high school parking lot. Behind them the fire truck was still pumping water onto the blackened shell of the Hummer, and a second police car had just arrived to join the sheriff’s vehicle and the police car that had accompanied the fire engine.

“Oh, Amanda…the people here
are
nice. This was…an anomaly…or maybe an accident…” Elizabeth’s words trailed off doubtfully. The smell of kerosene still in her nostrils insisted that the destruction of the RPI car had been no accident.

“Get real, Aunt E—you saw that writing. That was a political statement. ‘RIP—RPI’ may not be as obvious as ‘Death to RPI,’ but it makes the same point.” Ben laid a hand on Amanda’s blue-jeaned leg pressed close to his. “More likely it was some of the so-called radical environmentalists—the rabid tree huggers. But, I don’t know…they’re opposed to pollution, and burning a Hummer, even though it stands for everything they’re against in a vehicle, is kind of counter—”

As the truck inched its way to the top of the drive leading down the hill to the highway, Elizabeth broke into Ben’s musings.

“Look over there, Amanda. That’s Pinnacle Mountain—the one in the middle of the horizon. See that one little light in the middle of all the dark…about a third of the way down? That’s my porch light. I always get a thrill out of seeing it from here.”

As Amanda leaned forward to peer through the window, Elizabeth was struck anew with the young woman’s quite exceptional beauty.
That perfect profile…
Thick, naturally blonde hair pulled up in a careless knot caught the light of a following car and glinted silver-gold. Sometimes it seemed incredible that Amanda, not yet twenty-five, had abandoned what, according to Gloria, had been a promising modeling career, choosing instead to create gardens and live in a primitive cabin with Ben.

“That’s awesome that you can see it from here. I really like the way it looks—kind of a beacon. Like on the raft trip last week, remember, Ben? How they had a battery lantern on the shore so we’d know to take out before those bad rapids.”

Amanda snuggled back against Ben, a look of pure happiness spreading across those perfect features as an oncoming car’s headlights briefly illuminated the truck cab, lighting up her face.

Like the flash on a camera. She probably got used to that.
Elizabeth closed her eyes but the image stayed with her.
High cheekbones, elegant nose, perfect teeth—such regular features that at first you don’t notice her looks, particularly since she doesn’t wear makeup. But in that magazine spread Glory sent just so I could see who Amanda “really was”—my god, the girl’s a raving, tearing beauty!

It had been a feature article, clipped from a glossy fashion magazine and still redolent of some expensive perfume sample. There had been page after page and shot after shot of Amanda, posed in one improbable designer outfit after another, against the background of the old city of St. Augustine. The text had referred to Amanda’s “privileged upbringing” and had dwelt on her stubborn determination to fund her own college education by modeling.
Wonder what that was about? According to Glory, Amanda’s family is “extremely well-to-do.”

As they passed a sign giving directions to the River Runners’ outpost, Elizabeth was jogged from her reverie. “Ben, Amanda—tell me about that raft trip. I keep meaning to ask—it must have been gorgeous, with the full moon. But weren’t you freezing all the time?”

“You would have loved it, Aunt E. It was fantastic!” Ben slowed to a crawl to accommodate a scuttling possum out for an evening ramble. “And with the wet suits and the paddling jackets, we stayed warm enough. But the river’s dangerously cold this time of year and we had to be extra careful not to get dumped—that’s why we took out before Sill’s Slough—even though Josh’s made the run hundreds of times, he says it’s too tricky at night. There’s a hydraulic thing going on there that can be really dangerous. It wasn’t too many years ago a guy fell out of a raft and got sucked under. Of course, if he’d had his life vest buckled tight—”

“It was just amazing, Elizabeth!” Amanda interrupted Ben’s explanation, eager to describe the experience in her own terms. “The moon was so bright that after our eyes adjusted we could see really well. And Josh told us just when to paddle—he
says
he could do the river blindfolded. It was magic, like…like sliding down a ribbon of molten silver with dark woods rising on either side. It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”

She sounds like someone reciting poetry—or describing a vision,
thought Elizabeth as Amanda continued on, her voice low and dreamy.

“And the sound, the continual low purr of the river and the paddles splashing—it was hypnotic: no one wanted to break the silence. Josh would give directions—you know, ‘Paddle left,’ or ‘Back right,’ just loud enough to be heard. And then we began to hear the rapids, a low, continuous roar almost like surf at the ocean.

“And it got louder and louder and we were going faster and faster and down the river we could see the molten silver turning to white foam and then the roar was so loud that we could hardly hear Josh’s voice and just when it seemed like we might be going over the edge of the world, Josh pointed to this light on shore and steered for it, yelling, ‘Paddle hard if you don’t want the Dakwa to get you!’”

Amanda stopped abruptly, breathless with the emotion of reliving the experience. Ben squeezed her knee and said, “You sound like an English major, girl. But you know, Aunt E, there really is something about the river at night—kind of spooky. It’s not too hard to believe that there
could
be some big monster lurking there.”

“The Dakwa—is that the fish monster that the Cherokees told stories about—the one that would drag people under?” A memory nibbled at the edge of Elizabeth’s mind,
something about a river monster in the museum over in Cherokee? Or was there some mention of the Dakwa in those notes I took from Nola’s house?

“Correctomundo! And the way the current and the hydraulics are there at Sill’s Slough, you can see how a story like that got started. It’s perfectly safe if you know just which way to go, but it’s tricky, like a slalom course. You have to stay in this narrow little channel, between these honkin’ big rocks and the killer hydraulic.”

“Between a rock and a hard place—or like, what’s that thing from Greek mythology…Scylla and Charybdis. They didn’t tell us all that when we took our raft trip last summer—of course the water was low then so maybe it wasn’t as dangerous.”

Phillip watched as Elizabeth’s finger traced the river’s course on the photocopied map from Nola Barrett’s papers. A title at the bottom of the page, surrounded by an embellishment of scrollwork, read,
The French Broad River with the Buncombe Turnpike and Drovers’ Road, showing all Stands and Inns together with Fords, Ferries, and Bridges. Thos. W. Blake fecit ~ 1861.
Here was Gudger’s Stand, but there had been no bridge in 1858; a spidery
Frry
marked the site of an old ferry, evidently just downstream from the present-day bridge. And here were the rapids with delicate calligraphy noting
Sills Slough.

“Is that another stand, there at the rapids?” Phillip leaned closer, trying to read the faded lettering. “What’s it say—‘Flores’…and something in parentheses?” His face touched her ear and she turned, her wide smile embracing him.

“Hey, you, I’m glad you came out for dinner.” Her lips brushed his cheek. “And I’m glad you’re spending the night—in the middle of the week, you wild and crazy guy.”

I could be here every night if…
Phillip brushed aside the perplexed irritation that always surfaced whenever he thought of Elizabeth’s dismayed reaction to his proposal of marriage. He draped an arm around her.

“Well, my first class tomorrow isn’t till one, and I’m caught up with my paperwork—plus Mac had some mysterious something he wanted to see me about in the morning. So—”

Elizabeth tossed the photocopied map to the table. “Did Mac mention if they’d found out who burned up that car Monday night?”

“Nope, just the usual cop line about pursuing promising leads. It’s pretty obvious, though, that it was someone who doesn’t want the RPI folks and their development.”

He motioned to the pile of papers on the coffee table before them. “So this is what you stole—excuse me,
rescued,
from your friend’s house? The map’s pretty cool—what else is there?”

“Lots of great stuff—I told you she was working on a novel about the history of the county and the old house.”

Elizabeth pulled the stack of handwritten notes and typed pages to her and began to leaf through them. “Here,” she said, offering him several pages paper-clipped together. “This is evidently the beginning of a section on the Drovers’ Road. She’s describing the old house at Gudger’s Stand. It’s like some kind of epic.”

Phillip stretched lazily and patted at his empty shirt pocket. “My glasses must be in my briefcase. Why don’t you read it to me?”

Elizabeth gave him a stern look over the tops of her own reading glasses as he leaned back against the sofa cushions.

“Okay, then. Pay attention now; there may be a quiz.”

He closed his eyes and gave himself up to listening, enjoying the soothing cadences of her low voice, the warmth of the fire, the soft embrace of the sofa cushions.

“The logs have seen it all. Giant chestnuts, virgin timber, dragged by ox teams from the endless forest, they had been heaved into place in the year of eighteen hundred and thirty-one. Great fieldstone chimneys had been laid, rock by careful rock, at either end of the long structure, and the gentle flatlands at the riverside had been cleared for field and pasture. The roaming Cherokee who had camped and hunted there time out of mind were sent west on the Long Walk, the Trail of Tears, and the new inhabitants of the land began to shape it to their own uses and desires.

“The great road whose coming had called the house into being stretched along the river from Tennessee to South Carolina, rugged as the men who had carved it from the rocky cliffs. Along its narrow trace came travelers of every ilk: on foot, by horse, by wagon or jolting stagecoach, they followed the road, seeking land, trade, adventure, or the healing waters of Warm Springs.”

“Warm
Springs? I thought—”

“Ahh! You
are
listening! I was afraid you might have dozed off. No, it’s not a mistake. The town was named Warm Springs, which is really more accurate, and got changed to Hot Springs at some point. A marketing ploy, I expect, for the hotel there. Do you want me to finish?”

“Sure—I’m enjoying it. It’s just that I can focus on it better with my eyes closed.”

“Right. Where was I? Oh, here
…In the fall of the year, the road was given over to the great livestock drives. Down from the mountains they flowed, bound for the railheads and slaughterhouses of South Carolina, churning the dirt of the road to reeking mire. Fat with corn and the chestnut mast of remote mountain coves, they came in near-endless streams: horses and mules, cattle and hogs, slow-moving ducks, and majestic, strutting turkeys.

“Turkeys? Ducks? That must have been challenging—about like herding cats, I’d think.”

“I guess so. I read somewhere that the challenge was to get the turkeys to a stand before nightfall, otherwise they’d fly up in the trees to roost and the drovers would have to camp right there by the side of the road and miss all the comforts of the stand.”

There was the rustle of paper and he could hear her clearing her throat to resume. “One last page—the most intriguing.

“The house on the drovers’ road had welcomed them all, offering food for man and beast, stout corrals for the stock, and a place near the hearth for a man to roll up in his blanket. And if some whispered that those who slept too soundly there might never see the morning, the fiery applejack from the landlord’s still and the still-fierier eyes of the landlord’s wife convinced many a drover to risk a night at the house called Gudger’s Stand.”