Nobody Knows Your Secret (14 page)

But Humpty didn’t seem to think so. He always looked like his stomach was griping him something fierce whenever he stood in front of that headstone. Maybe, Beanie thought, Humpty could just make out the faint whispers Mama Eldon was making from her grave. Did he hear her old brogans kicking at the lid of the pine box, signaling to her son that she knew he was visiting? Or was Humpty always suffering from a bad case of indigestion?

“Hey, Humpty,” Beanie said quietly.

“EYEIII!” Humpty yelled. “Beanie Fugate! You’ll give me a heart attack!”

“Sorry, Humpty,” Beanie said. “How ya’ doin’?”

“Okay, I guess. You keepin’ busy?”

“As long as grass grows and weed sprout up, I’ll keep busy.”

They stood looking at the towering stone.

Humpty coughed, like he had a frog stuck in his throat. His face was all wrinkled up like he was going to cry.

“Well, Humpty,” Beanie said, “I got work to do. Don’t mind me. I need to get back to it. Enjoy you visit. Good seein’ ya.”

Humpty just shook his head.

Beanie got a big bucket of water from the back of the golf cart he used while working in the cemetery. The golf cart was perfect vehicle for hauling tools or for tooling about the grounds. Not too large. Not too small. Not to complicated to operate.

Beanie kept an extra fuel can on the cart. He’d let the engine run out of gas once. Harvey hadn’t fussed when Beanie abandoned the cart to walk to the station for more fuel, but what if he’d let the golf car run out of gas at the end of the day. It would be morning before he could refuel it.

Beanie thought it would be disrespectful to leave golf cart parked among the graves overnight. Besides, it was an open invitation for any mischievous or golf-loving spirits to take a spin. Who only knew what ruin a ghost and a golf cart could do from sundown until sunup?

Even Beanie realized such things as fuel was an unnecessary necessity for a spirit intent on cruising among the tombstones at all hours of the morning.

Beanie got his brush and bucket and began to busily scrub a nearby headstone.

“Beanie,” Humpty said, “what are you doing?”

“I’m de-birding this stone,” Beanie said.

“You’re what?”

“I’m cleaning off the bird poop, Humpty,” Beanie said.

“But, Beanie,” Humpty said, “won’t the rain do that for you?”

“Usually,” Beanie said. “Unless I got me one with OCD.”

“What’s OCD?” Humpty asked, having never heard of obsessive compulsive disorder.

“It’s somethin’ Hadley says I have sometimes,” Beanie said. “I think it means ‘
old crow’s daiquiri
or maybe
old crow’s drunk
.’

Humpty looked confused.

“I don’t know, either, Humpty,” Beanie said. “It’s what Hadley tells me when I rub her last nerve. She’ll say, ‘Beanie! Stop that. Your OCD will drive this old crow to drink.’

Now, I know that Hadley likes somethin’ she calls a daiquiri. She let me taste one once. I spit it right out in her kitchen sink. Nasty stuff, but Hadley swears them daiquiris is the best. And Hadley calls herself an old crow. I ain’t never seen her pickled but maybe that sweet syrup can make you tipsy. I don’t know.

“Anyway, I sometimes get me a crow flyin’ over with bad kidneys. That bugger will find him a favorite stone and aim for it every time. And not just once, neither. But over and over and over and over again. If that crow wasn’t such a OCD, I wouldn’t have to keep scrubbing off his favorite rock.

“The rain can handle a dive bomb or two from any bird, but a crow that’s OCD can coat one of these babies so fast it will make your head spin. I hate it when a crow is OCD.”

“Oh,” said Humpty, deciding it was better to let Beanie get back to his work.

Humpty stood there in front of that headstone for a few more minutes. The sound of Beanie’s brush scrubbing the stone reminded Humpty of his mother scrubbing on the old washboard.

Life was simple then, Humpty thought.

“Bye, Mama,” Humpty whispered, relieved that for another year at least, he wouldn’t have to stand in front of the giant headstone whose tiny two letters stared down at him making him feel like the bad little boy who had just tracked cow manure all over his mother’s newly mopped kitchen floors.

S
kip was driving
his truck down the winding country road toward his land. He had had a rough day. First, he’d had to unpack the delivery trucks at Pixies. After unloading two tractor trailers of boxes, the compressor on the milk cooler had broken down, and he’d had to remove gallon after gallon of milk, storing them in the refrigerated cooler in the back of the store. He had had to restock the canned vegetable aisles and help Dorie set up a new display of washing detergent. His back muscles were sore, and he had the dull throbbing of a headache starting as he left work. He needed a break and some alone time and the soothing balm of nature.

Something caught his eye moving in the grass on the road side. Pulling the truck off the road, he got out and went to investigate. He saw what appeared to be an injured bird, a hawk of some kind, trying unsuccessfully to fly. He went back to the truck and looked behind the driver’s seat. He retrieved an old beach towel he had used last summer while tubing the river and brought it to the bird. Slowly, he bent down, speaking in calm, hushed tones.

“It’s all right, shhhhhh. Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

He gently wrapped the injured bird in the towel. He tenderly held it close to his body to prevent further injury. He went back to the truck. With the bird nestled under his arm, he drove back into town and on to Mega Park.

“Let’s get you to the animal shelter and see if they can fix you up. Don’t worry, it’s going to be all right. Just stay still,” he cooed.

Nearing the entrance to the park, he looked at the crazy clown. He could only shake his head. Why in the world somebody would think it was fun to walk into a clown’s mouth was something he had never figured out.

As a youngster, Skip remembered hearing rumors this site was cursed. Kids told stories of how the Indians once roamed the area. For the tribes, this was a sacred place. A holy place.

The Indians were forced off the mountains by pale strangers who were invading the mountains like locust. The tribes had vanished, but not before they placed a curse on the white strangers and on all who came after them.

Something remained here.

An uneasy feeling.

Something you couldn’t exactly put your finger on.

Something, perhaps, you never wanted to put your finger on.

The place was creepy. Rusty metal squealed when it was moved by the mountain breezes. Gates moaned and creaked on broken hinges. Doors slapped open and shut when nobody was standing near them. Winds whispered through the carousel pipe organ, creating an eerie, sad tune for the carousel animals. Those poor beasts with the fading stares, frozen forever in mid-gallop on a circular platform of rotting wood, were always going nowhere.

There were the stories, too. Lot of spooky stories passed down in the playground by kids of unexplained accidents, injuries, or deaths that had occurred through the years. Cars suddenly ran into trees, or into each other, on the many curves leading to the park. Nobody could explain why. More often than not the driver and passengers did not survive. More often that not, there were never witnesses. Only the wreckage remained, leaving more questions than answers.

Signs placed on the highway warning
Danger Ahead Use Caution
did little to stop the calamities. And the amusement park had seemed to be just as cursed.

Skip remembered tales of injured workers during the amusement park’s construction. A tree landed on one of the landscapers clearing the land for the project. One minute it had been standing tall. The next, workers looked to see it crashing to earth.

A chainsaw sliced into another’s leg. Someone fell off the roof of the big barn that now housed the animal rescue center. It seemed as if unexplained accidents or mysterious mishaps happened almost every day as the park took shape.

Was there a malevolent force at work here? Were the spirits of the dead aroused that a holy site had been violated? Ancient history? Superstition? Just bad luck?

Skip drove over the cracked asphalt and steered round a curve, glimpsing to his right just in time to spy the decaying skeleton of the killer coaster called The Blue Cyclone.

He tried to imagine the ride in its heyday.

It was easy to envision the snowy white and bright blue paint of the wooden railings gleaming brightly at sunrise. He could see the billowing, brightly-colored flags positioned along the railings of the ride snapping smartly in the mountain breeze and cheerily advertising the park. He could feel the excitement pulsate as the coaster’s cars slowly rose higher and higher into the clear blue sky. He imagined himself in the front seat. The coaster would be packed, filled with eager riders waiting to have the living daylights scared out of each of them. He could hear the metal clack, clack, clack, as the cars traced their way up to top of the highest peak, ran the short plateau, then fell at full speed straight down at a breakneck speed.

It was a sharp, harrowing drop that seemed to last forever, then a hard swing to the left, and a horizontal turn sharply into the next curve that switch-backed in the opposite direction. The echoes of screams and laughter rang in Skip’s ears. There was no hint of evil in his daydream. No trace of malingering wickedness or sense of tragedy just waiting to happen. The cars would be waxed to a blinding shine and the wheels underneath greased for speed. There was only pure fun permeating the crisp, mountain air.

“Man,” he muttered, “I bet you woulda been one heck of a ride.”

But not anymore.

The paint was peeling off the carcass of the coaster like burnt skin after a really bad sunburn. It was flaking off in sheets, exposing raw wood to the elements. It looked like the whole frame was sloughing and disintegrating and ready to collapse.

The wooden scaffold holding up the tracks was rotting. The coaster’s framework appeared as flimsy as air. It was impossible to see how the coaster was still standing at all.

Boards barely clung on, hanging precariously in midair. Time and the weather were eating away the once proud structure as surely as a cancer eats a body. Slats between the tracks had loosened and fallen off, giving the ride a toothless appearance. The whole ride looked like a street bum who had been on the streets for way too long. The coaster was breathing its last. It was obviously inches away from crumbling.

Skip sighed. It was a sorry sight. But that was the way life was. Neglect and abandonment allowed Mother Nature to reclaim the area.

He drove around to the service entrance and buzzed in at the security gate. A voice he did not recognize acknowledged him, and the gate swung open. Skip parked and got of the truck. He gently cradled the wounded bird against his body. He was glad someone was still on duty after-hours.

“They are going to take good care of you, buddy,” he said. “It’s gonna be okay.”

The back door to the building opened, and a tall distinguished-looking man greeted Skip.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Wilson. What you got there, son?”

“I think it’s some kind of hawk,” Skip said. ‘I found it by the roadside. It can’t fly. I don’t know what happened. I was hoping you could help it. Where’s Ruth?”

“She’s somewhere in the back. Let’s see what we have here,” the vet said, gently taking the bird from Skip.

“She is a red-tailed hawk,” the vet said. “Looks like some of her feathers have been damaged.”

Ruth Elliot walked in from another room.

“Hi, Skip. Did you bring us a new patient?”

“Yes,” Skip said. “I found an injured hawk by the side of the road. I was hoping you could help it.”

“Well,” Ruth said, “let us check her out. We’ll see what we can do.”

Ruth saw Skip out as Declan took the injured bird to the exam room. Ruth watched him stroke the injured animal. They had first met at a veterinarian conference several years ago.

Declan had gallantly come to her rescue in the parking deck of the conference center. Her rental car had a flat tire. As luck would have it, he had been parked in the space next to hers. The conference had not been memorable; however, the handsome stranger who had rescued her that day in the parking deck stuck in her mind.

He introduced himself as Declan Wilson, and she remembered seeing him sitting near her in the conference room. He removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, offering to change her tire. It was late and in the dark parking deck, she quickly accepted his offer.

He grabbed the jack and removed the spare from the trunk.

Here was a man who was good with his hands, Ruth thought. He was softly humming as he worked. Immediately, she felt at ease with this tall, handsome stranger.

“Well,” he said, storing the flat in the trunk, this thing will get you to a tire replacement center. But I wouldn’t trust it on a long journey.”

“It looks like a baby tire,” she said.

“It is,” Declan said. “It won’t last cross country, but it will last a little while.”

He leaned against the car.

They talked a little. He had always loved animals and had gone to veterinary school. She told him of her inheritance of some land in the on the Blue Ridge and her passion for creating a center to rescue and rehabilitate injured and orphaned wildlife. Her goal was to release as many as possible back in the wild,

“Well,” Declan said, “your chariot is repaired. I’m hungry. Know any good restaurants nearby where a good Samaritan and a mechanic could get a bite to eat?”

Dinner was delicious. It had ended much too soon. She wondered if he really liked her as much as he seemed. They said their goodbyes and left for different hotels. Ruth was a little wistful as she watched his car vanish into the darkness of the city night. However, he hadn’t asked for her phone number, and Ruth was too much a lady to push the issue.

Several months later her phone rang.

“Need any assistance from a good mechanic? He’s pretty good with animals, too.”

Ruth had been pleasantly shocked.

It was Declan. She had not heard from him since the conference.

She had thought of looking him up on the Internet a few times, but some crisis at the center always seemed to come up, and it slipped her mind. Whenever she thought about him later, she was too exhausted to do anything but go home, take a quick shower, and drop into bed.

And then one day she looked up, and the tall, handsome, mysterious doctor was standing outside the security gate of the wildlife center. Ruth was thrilled to see him but muted her response. She decided not to put too much into his surprise appearance until she found out more about why he was here. She walked up to him. “This is a nice and unexpected surprise,” she said.

“Hello, Ruth,” Declan said. “I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I wanted to see this place you have out here. I looked you up online and saw you have a new way to get the word out about your work with the animals. I think The Band-Aid is a great idea. You can help the local artisans and the wildlife at the same time.

“I couldn’t believe that Hobie Stricker lives so close by you all. He’s an incredible talent. I play a little myself, and I’ve been coveting a Stricker guitar for a long time. And when I read on your site that Stricker and his band would be playing at your shop this weekend, I had to come.”

“I’m a fan of Hobie’s, too” Ruth said. “I think he’s a treasure. He’s so incredibly talented but so humble and down to earth.”

“He is,” said Declan. “I gotta confess that Hobie’s only the second reason I had to come up here. The real one is that I wanted to see you, too.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” Ruth said. “For a minute there, I thought I was going to be playing second fiddle to an acoustic guitar.”

“So,” Declan said, “are we going to stand here in this morning mist until we drown, or are you going to show me what you’ve got going on here? I was hoping you’d let me volunteer, too. I want to help in some way while I’m here.”

“Sure. I can always use experienced hands. Are you on vacation or something? Hope Rock County isn’t exactly America’s premier destination for sun and relaxation. It’s not what you’re used to, I’m sure. Compared to where you live, we’re very primitive out here.”

“It’s beautiful here, Ruth. And I just decided I needed a break. Besides, there is the chance to get that Stricker guitar. Do you play?”

“You couldn’t call it that. I was so lucky Hobie agreed to appear at The Band-Aid. It draws such a crowd. Helps with donations for the center, too. Hobie has been a god-send.”

“I’ve been a fan of Hobie for years. I heard him live in Nashville a couple of years back. He was playing one of the first guitars he ever made. It had the sweetest sound I ever heard.

“Right then and there, I promised myself if I ever got the chance, I would try to get my hands on one. My grandfather taught me to play when I was a kid. I still have his old guitar, but there’s nothing like a Stricker.”

“Well, if you liked his guitar,” Ruth said, “I am sure you will like the man. He is one of a kind. Even though he is so famous, he still has both feet on the ground. He’s the nicest man you’d ever want to meet. He’s just like a regular guy.

“I couldn’t believe it when he told me he’d be willing to donate his time teaching the kids in the area, too. He loves these mountains. He loves animals. He has even volunteered here a couple of times and helped out with feeding the orphans.”

“Is he married? Sounds like he would be a good catch for you.”

Ruth smiled. She did not remember telling Declan she was single. And she surely had no idea what his love life was like. She could not tell him that Hobie Stricker was a wonderful guy, but he was just not her type.

“We have a patient who’s waiting for us,” Ruth said. “Shall we?”

She showed Declan into her small treatment room. He placed the injured bird on the exam table. With Ruth’s assistance, they anesthetized the young hawk and took x-rays. He noted the bird’s feature characteristics: larger broad head, wide wings, powerful thighs and feet. They observed the heavier blockier build that characterized the female of the species.

Ruth examined the films.

“No broken bones.”

“Good,” said Declan. “But she’s got several tail feathers missing.”