Road to Nowhere (4 page)

“That’s not what it says in here.” Everett was waving the newspaper around, wild enough that Randy had to keep his eye on it and be ready to duck. “It talks about this ‘secret midnight vote in an empty courthouse for an unpopular road that could disrupt the entire county.’ ”

“I read that myself, Everett. And you’d have to ask Luke Goddard what he’s talking about in that article, because I don’t think that’s the meeting I was in.”

“Will they widen Hemlock Street? That would take half my front yard.”

“I really don’t know.”

Everett slammed the paper on the desk. “Everybody knows that road will never happen, and we’re counting on it not happening.”

“Now, it has been on the plans, you know, and people knew that.” Randy braced his elbows a little harder against the desk and his head against his hands.

Everett about exploded. “Don’t you tell me about some fifty-year-old plan! If you can’t stop it, there must be somebody else who will. And there are plenty of other people to buy insurance from, too.”

“I know that, Everett, and I’m very appreciative of your patronage and support all these years. Let’s just not worry about it yet. And if it does happen, well, at least the trucks from the furniture factory could use it and not come through Mountain View.”

The desk shook from Everett’s fist. Randy had got his elbows off it just in time, or he’d have lost a couple teeth, and that would have been just as bad, because Richard Colony, the dentist, was Everett’s brother and they lived just across Hemlock Street from each other.

“Hey, Corny, we got some cream cheese?” For all they spent on food, there was nothing to eat. Wade closed the refrigerator and tried the pantry. Sometimes Lauren had granola bars. “What’s for supper tonight, anyway?” No dice with the granola. Back to plan A, the bagel. He tried the refrigerator again. “How about some jelly?” He closed the refrigerator again.

Cornelia was standing in the doorway, watching him. “Yes, lasagna, strawberry. Are you still here?” She had on a nice thick ski sweater and blue jeans.

“Yeah, and I’m late. I got a family from Greensboro at the office in twenty minutes.”

“Why don’t you just sell them our house.”

“No, they want something small, for a summer place.” Wait a minute. Sell them what? He looked at her closer. “Hey, I told Charlie I was done here. If that road happens, this house’ll be worth thirty thousand more, and we can sell it and get something nice back in Raleigh.” Maybe forty thousand more. High ceilings, stone fireplace, nice ski lodge feel. Put in that road and year-round people would start looking at Gold Valley. Not just weekenders.

She didn’t answer. There was a photo album on the table and he picked it up. “What’d you get this out for?”

“I was just thinking about it.”

He opened the first page and for a minute forgot about everything else. There they were, the two of them, ten minutes married. Cornelia was fresh and glowing in her white dress, twenty-five years old, twenty-four years ago.

“Hey, look at you here.” He looked at her, the real Corny, the middle-aged mother of two grown-up girls, standing beside him, and then back at the beauty in the picture. “You know, I didn’t remember. You were almost as gorgeous back then as you are now.”

“Oh, Wade.” But she smiled.

“Yeah, and tell you what. This summer. We should go on a trip. Maybe France, but this time just for us, not on business.”

“We don’t need to.”

“I think we should. For our anniversary, this fall. It’ll be twenty-five, right? Okay, I got to go. What’s for supper?”

“Lasagna.”

“That’s right. Hey, I’ll be there.”

“Good morning, Patsy. Thought I’d stop by and see if there’d been any mail come in.”

Randy was really just needing a breath or two after his meeting with Everett, and the courthouse was only around the corner from his office.

“You can have this one that came in certified.”

Randy glanced at the return address, a law firm in Texas, and that was all he needed. “Trinkle farm.”

“There’ve been a lot of those in the last few months,” Patsy said.

“There’s a lot of Trinkles. Where do we even send the tax bill to?”

“Every address I can get. Texas, Michigan, California, Georgia. Every cousin. I even send one to those lawyers.”

“When was the last time they ever paid?”

“I’ve never seen a payment in the five years I’ve been working here.”

“We’ll have to get a lawyer and foreclose eventually.” He opened the letter and there it was, a whole long five pages of legal gobbledygook. “I guess we’ll need a lawyer just to make this out.” He tucked the letter into his pocket. “I’ll put this with the others, and sometime we’ll have to see what they’re all about. It’s usually just copies we get whenever one of them sues another over who owns the deed, and not anything we ever have to worry about. And there’s enough I do have to worry about.”

Patsy nodded and sighed. “I saw the newspaper this morning.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. For goodness’ sake, that Luke Goddard is one to make trouble.”

January 11, Wednesday

Louise opened the big appointment book. It was always fun to see who’d be coming in.

She had just started looking down the columns when Rebecca and Stephanie came through the front door together. Rebecca was in a pout and that meant she’d been arguing with her mother already this morning, but Stephanie was happy.

“Good morning, girls,” Louise said, and went back to the appointment book. Rebecca had a perm to do first thing. “Becky, dear, you’ve got Grace Gallaudet in ten minutes.”

Louise had her own morning mostly open, and that would be fine to catch up on the bookkeeping. She walked back past the four chairs and the big mirrors to her desk in the back corner, where she could keep an eye on the shop and the girls, and started opening the mail.

It was still as cold as it could be, and it had been all week. Not a bit of the snow from the weekend had melted. She turned up the thermostat. She didn’t want the ladies shivering when they came in.

Grace was there just at nine and Louise chatted with her a minute to make up for Rebecca not wanting to. And that was where she was standing when the door opened and everybody—Rebecca and Stephanie, Grace Gallaudet, and Louise herself—turned to just gawk.

“Eliza! You came!”

She stood there for just a moment, looking at the salon and the salon looking at her. She was a sight to behold. She was tall, or it was more that she was thin, or not thin but like a tree, her arms lifted up like branches and her hair spread out wild. Her magnificent hair!

“Of course I came!”

Eliza’s hands were still in the air and it seemed just right for them to be. Then she brought them together up against her cheek, so filled with excitement, like the salon was such a wonderful new place to see.

“Thank you so much for your invitation,” she said, just as grand as a queen would say it.

Louise ran right over to her—she couldn’t help it! “I’m so glad you did.” And she was even more taken as she got up close. “And what a beautiful coat! I wanted to see it after the meeting, but I couldn’t in the dark.”

“Thank you.”

It was so beautiful. It was pieced and quilted, every color and pattern and shape and size there was, but altogether just wonderful, like a spring flower garden. “Did you make it?”

“I did.”

“I’ve never seen such a thing!” And here, up close, she could also finally see Eliza herself.

Her face was thin, buried under the mound of hair, older than she looked from a distance. But the wrinkles looked more like they came from laughing and crying and feeling than from age.

And that hair! It was about the thickest that Louise had seen, mostly gray but streaked with pure black in places and pure white in other places, and long enough to be more than halfway to her waist if it were hanging straight. It wasn’t, though. It puffed and teased and curled itself out in every direction, like a thundercloud.

“Well, just sit for a minute and get warm. I know you’re not meaning to have anything done.”

“Oh . . .” She smiled, a little surprised schoolgirl smile. “I hadn’t even thought.”

Louise put her hand up to the cloud and touched it softly. “I’m not even sure what I’d do.”

“I’d be thrilled to find out!” Eliza said. “It would be splendid.” And then a look, one side to the other, and her shoulders hunched up a little, like she was telling a secret. “But not extravagant. I wouldn’t have money.”

“Don’t you worry about that. And I don’t know what I’d do with it all.” She had her hands in it, feeling the texture. “I’ll have to think about it. I just really don’t know.” She didn’t, either. But she would. “And Eliza, I know we weren’t very friendly at your first meeting, but I want to welcome you to the board.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll have to put up with Joe. And with Randy and Wade and their wrangling. The most important thing is not to mind anything that anyone says, because they’ll say just anything. And I know it might be scary to vote about things you don’t understand.”

Eliza smiled. “Voting isn’t frightening to me.” She smiled more. “Not much is.”

“Just use your common sense and that’s good enough. Most things we all vote yes.”

“When I vote, I listen.”

What could that mean? “What do you listen to?”

“If I hear, I’ll vote yes. When it’s time.”

“When you hear?”

“I do hear!”

Louise had to stop and think. “Hear what?”

Eliza sighed. “And we just follow.”

Louise sighed right along with her. “Dear, I don’t know what you’re going to make of us for four years, and I sure don’t know what to make of you.”

January 14, Saturday

The sun wasn’t up, and Randy didn’t feel much awake, either. This was taking a chance but he didn’t see a better way, and he might as well get up at six o’clock on a frigid Saturday morning. The only other thing to be doing was sleeping in a warm bed, and he’d have missed the opportunity to scrape ice off his windshield, too, in that nice howling arctic wind with all those little bits of sleet in it.

But here he was sneaking into Marker at not even seven o’clock. And there was his destination, the Imperial Diner, bright fluorescent glare from inside the plate glass shining on all those pickups rowed up outside. Right in the middle was the one he was looking for. At least he was not suffering fully in vain. Randy walked on in, just as if he had a right to be there, and he did anyway, the place was a public restaurant.

This was where the farmers of Marker often found themselves early on a Saturday morning, and if Joe Esterhouse wasn’t a farmer, no one was. Joe saw him right away, so there was no sense for Randy acting like he was there for any reason but to talk to him.

He strolled over to Joe’s table and put himself in an empty chair. Joe was finishing a conversation, and Randy had a moment to consider that he was probably the youngest person in the room, maybe by ten or fifteen years. Some of the farmers might have been older than the tablecloth in front of him.

“Good morning.” The waitress was about his age. He gave her as big a smile as he could with his cheeks frozen solid.

“I’ll just have eggs over easy, and coffee.”

“Regular or decaf?”

“Honey, just look at me.”

She did. “I’ve seen worse.”

Joe was watching him. He would be understanding that this was serious, that Randy was showing respect by coming out here at this time of the morning.

“Morning,” Randy said. “I want to talk a minute.”

And Joe might just feel obliged to give him an answer.

“Go ahead.”

Randy lowered his voice a bit. “This road we talked about Monday night. Gold River Highway.”

Joe was just still, a weathered granite statue, watching him. A person would never think he was eighty, not even seventy, but he could also have been as old as the mountains.

“It’s not very likely to happen, now, is it?” Randy said.

“You’ve had some folks asking?”

“I wouldn’t say they were asking anything. I’d say they were expressing their opinions, which they held very strongly.”

“I expect they did.” Joe’s voice was about as rough and hard as anything else about him. His white hair cut short made him look like the marine he’d been sixty years ago.

“So,” Randy said, “I’d like to set their minds at ease, and it would be a big help if I could tell them that you didn’t think we’d ever get that money.”

Joe was taking his time to answer, and the look in his eye was that he was deciding how much to say. Randy waited.

“We’ll get the money. You might as well count on it.”

“Now, why in the world would they give it to us? There must be hundreds of other projects, and no reason at all that we should get picked over them.”

But Joe wasn’t going to argue. “Then I guess we’ll wait and see.”

Randy had not driven through the blizzard to argue, either, but to humbly supplicate, and he did so now.

“If you think we’ll be approved, then I’ll believe you, even if it doesn’t seem reasonable. But are you just sort of thinking it’s possible or are you really sure?”

Joe Esterhouse turned to stare through the foggy window at the dark outside, like he did a lot of looking into dark black places. The glass shook back at him from the cold wind against it trying to get in.

“We’ll get the money. Sure as the sun’ll rise.”

February

February 6, Monday

Wade checked his watch. Three, two, one—bang went Joe’s gavel.

“Come to order.” The geezer was looking a little better this time. Last month the guy looked about ready to croak. Now he was just grouchy like usual. “Go ahead, Patsy,” Joe said.

Wade checked out the audience.

Five chairs were filled in the front row, side by side, and the natives were looking restless. Somebody had something on their mind.

“Everyone’s present, Joe,” Patsy said.

For once, the newspaper guy wasn’t asleep. Luke Goddard. He wrote the entire paper, three times a week. Wade read it none times a week.

“Thank you, Patsy. Jefferson County North Carolina Board of Supervisors is now in session. Motion to accept last month’s minutes?” Someday he’d have to jump in and second before Randy could. That might even make it into the news. “Motion and second,” Joe said. “Any discussion? Go ahead, Patsy.”