Road to Nowhere (41 page)

“And we appreciate the help. I don’t think we would have recovered from a flood this time.”

“Let me know if you need anything else.”

September 5, Tuesday

The water was still high, but it was down closer to where it was supposed to be.

“Hi, Grandma,” Matt said, sitting right down on Becky’s chair in the salon. “It’s a mess out there.”

“It’s nothing like the last flood,” Louise said. “That was a mess!”

“This is enough.”

“So, did you talk to Lyle?”

“He said I could work for the week.”

“Then your grandpa can get you that job at the factory, and you can be in the basement as long as you want. Do you really want to stay?”

“Sure! For a while. I need to find a job.”

“You won’t find one around here,” Louise said.

“Grandpa says if the road gets built, they’ll be hiring at the factory.”

Louise bit her lip. She was not going to pull Matt into all of that.

But right then, the door opened and Randy McCoy and Steve Carter came tromping into the salon.

“We’ll need new bags anyway,” Steve was saying. “Hi, Louise!”

“Well, look at you two,” she said. “I bet you’re both feeling pleased. There is not a spot of mud on Main Street.”

“Which is different than the last time,” Randy said. “But there’s still the paper work to be done, just like for anything.”

“We’re figuring what the county had to spend, and we’ll get the state to reimburse us,” Steve said. “I hope. Bags and sand. Emergency services. Police overtime. Food. Did you spend anything on all that food?”

“Of course not,” Louise said. “Everybody just brought it.”

“It’ll cost to clean up the sandbags,” Steve said.

“Matt’s all ready to start on that,” Louise said. “Lyle hired him.”

“Oh. Good,” Steve said. “So what are you doing with them?”

“Sheriff Hite told us to just dump them in the river,” Matt said.

A big scowl appeared on Steve’s face. “He said what?”

“Dump them in the river.”

“What does Lyle say?”

“He says do whatever the sheriff says.”

“He would.” Steve didn’t seem to have gotten off real well with Gordon. “Just throw the bags in whole?”

“No,” Matt said. “Cut the ends and dump the sand off the riverbank, then send the bags back to the storage shed at the landfill to use again next time.”

“Can we fire Gordon?” Steve said.

“Don’t worry about Gordon,” Louise said. “He’s just never been through a flood before as sheriff.”

“Actually,” Randy said, “we can’t even talk about it. We can’t have more than two board members talk official business together except at official meetings.”

“Then I won’t talk to you,” Steve said. “You’re Matt?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell your grandmother, and Mr. McCoy, that guy right there, that I think we should fire the sheriff.”

“Grandma . . .” Matt started.

“I heard him,” Louise said. “We won’t right now, and besides, we can’t. He’s elected.”

“Why is he even involved in this anyway?” Steve said. “The sheriff isn’t in charge of cleaning up.”

“Now, Steve, we’re all involved,” Randy said. “Sometimes it’s just who’s there that makes a decision.”

“But that’s the wrong decision. Where does all the sand go if you throw it in the river? Somebody should figure that out first. And we’re not going to use the bags over. We can do better than this.”

“I’m all for that,” Randy said. “I just don’t think anybody knows how, and there isn’t any money to pay for it anyway.”

“Look what we did already!” Steve said. He’d gotten so determined in the last week! It made Louise feel determined herself.

“Steve,” she said, “just go have a talk with Lyle. And if he or Gordon give you any trouble, we’ll put Joe on to them. But I think you’re right. Nobody would have thought we could beat a hurricane, and we did.”

“We did beat a hurricane, didn’t we,” Randy said. “Even if it took the National Guard to help. But we beat it.”

September 12, Tuesday

Tearing. Ripping. Leaf after leaf. Everywhere was smelling of tobacco.

Joe was walking the fields, tearing leaves but still watching. Fifteen boys, high school and past school, tearing leaves.

Leonard Darlington hired Mexicans. Most of the farmers did. Joe cobbled together a crew from town and around and Rose fed them all, but it was harder each year to find enough, and they cost more.

But he’d got enough for this year. Wouldn’t need them next year.

In the computer age, why were so many trees dying? And why did so many of them show up in his mailbox? The physical inbox, the one that brooded on the corner of his desk, usually in lonely solitude but today crushed under the massive weight of . . . Mount RushMail. He wasn’t running a civil engineering practice—he was a mere cog in the great life cycle of paper as it went from forestland to landfill.

Time to slay this dragon. Steve took his weapon, Murgatroyd, the purple plastic letter opener with little green race cars, which Max had given him for Christmas, and attacked.

An hour later he was approaching the bottom.

Big manilla envelope. No return address. Asheville postmark, from August. A little curious.

He wielded Murgatroyd—who was actually quite sharp for a thirty-nine-cent piece of plastic.

A contract, some paragraphs blacked out. December 1, a year ago, between . . . Trinkle Land Trust and Regency Atlantic Associates.

Well, how interesting. Jarvis had come through.

But there was still other mail. Set Mr. Jarvis aside for a more opportune moment.

“I’m doing my big article on the flood,” Luke said, plopping himself down in Randy’s office.

“You’re only now getting around to it?” Randy said.

“I’m sure you’ve been following my ongoing coverage. But this is the inside story with all the investigative details. You know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

“What I want to know is why the county was so poorly prepared, and all those other backroom deals and decisions.”

“Just go, Luke. I don’t have any time for this.”

“Who was mad at Gabe to leave his garage outside the sandbags?”

“His insurance will get him right back in business. It’s your place we should have let flood.”

“I love these quotes,” Luke said.

“Speaking of quotes—I wanted to ask you something.”

“Oh, I don’t answer questions. I only ask them.”

“Back in April, one of those times you were bugging me about Gold River Highway. You said you were meeting Wade Harris in town here. Did you ever do that?”

That put a cork into Luke for a few seconds at least. “Well, no,” he said, finally. “He died before we could.”

“Wasn’t it going to be that day of the meeting?”

“It was, but he called and canceled it,” Luke said. “Said he was meeting a customer and couldn’t make it into town.”

“Now, what does that mean?” Randy said.

“What does what mean?”

Wade hadn’t seen Jeremy, and he hadn’t seen Luke, either. Where had he been coming from? “Well, I’m just wondering where Wade had been all afternoon.”

“I wish I’d seen him,” Luke said. “That would have been a story.”

September 18, Monday

“I like this better, Joe.” Marty Brannin was at his place at the kitchen table. The morning sun was a flood in the window. “Lots better than dark night meetings. And I don’t mind any delay in getting back to Raleigh.” Wolfing his eggs and bacon, poor man was always in a hurry. “I’d be hard-pressed to decide between late night pie and a country breakfast. But anything’s better than a fast-food egg biscuit.”

“You’re always welcome, Marty.”

“Thank you both. Let’s see, anything I need to do for you since your flood? The governor has taken an interest. Wardsville and Jefferson County are magic words in Raleigh right now. The little town that could, you know.”

“Steve Carter’s been taking care of things.”

“And now I’ll sing for my supper. Joe, I had a scheduled sit-down meeting with Jack Royce. I said I wanted to ask his advice. I wasn’t sure he’d talk to me, except I used my own magic word.”

“What word was that?”

“
Trinkle.
I said, ‘Jack, I’ve got an unusual opportunity here, and I just have a feeling you might want to discuss it.’ I told him there was a prime slice of real estate in my district, and there were some possible deals, but I’d been given his name to talk to first. And of course he remembered my asking about that Charlie Ryder and West Carolina Development. So he took the bait. I acted like I knew more than I did, and he acted like he knew less than he did. But just dropping that Trinkle name made his eyes get real big. He knew, if I was asking
him
about
them,
I must know enough. So he told me he’d been working with them on some legislation. Then he said we better keep each other informed.”

“What does that mean then, Marty?”

“I’d bet one of Rose’s apple pies that the Trinkle family paid Jack Royce to get that road built.”

“I’d about decided that, too.”

“Then it’s for sure. A couple other things. He’s never heard of that Regency Atlantic. That must be a legitimate business deal. Next, I haven’t found anything about who’s against the road, and that’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

“Seems to be,” Joe said. “But knowing for sure about the Trinkles means a lot. I wonder when anyone here would have heard about any of this.”

“It would have been happening by last fall. That’s when the Clean Air Act was written. So, what do I do now?”

“I don’t know. I suppose we should just keep in touch.”

“The Planning Commission of Jefferson County North Carolina is now in session.” Either try to sound like Joe, or try to not sound like Joe. Steve would never find his own independent existence as a board chairman. He would always be under the shadow of the master.

Be patient, Grasshopper. Your time will come. In just fifty years, you too will understand the Gavel of Authority.

“Is this a quorum?” he asked.

“Probably not,” Ed Fiddler said. They were the only two. Humphrey King was absent. Duane Fowler had not actually been to a meeting yet that year. In fact, Steve hadn’t even met him yet. And now that Randy was off the commission—it was getting pretty sparse.

“Okay. We’ve got one item here, so we can discuss it, but we’ll have to pass it on to the Board of Supervisors without any recommendation.”

The only other person in the room was Roland Coates.

“Mr. Coates,” Steve said. “Do you have any comments?”

“Just what I’ve said already. I want my zoning changed.”

“Can’t you tell us anything?”

“It’s a business deal, and I’m not telling you my business.”

“How can we do anything if we don’t know what you want us to do?”

“I don’t see that I need to,” Mr. Coates said. “You can’t vote one way or the other without your quorum, and its Randy’s board that counts anyway.”

“I guess that’s correct,” Steve said. So who needed an existence, anyway? “Mr. Coates, could you tell me one thing?”

“Maybe.”

“This isn’t going to be another grocery store, is it?”

“Where in tarnation did anybody get that idea? No, it isn’t any grocery store or any kind of store and it never had been!”

“Okay. Thanks. I was just checking. And thanks for your help in the flood.”

“Pleased to be of service.”

“I really mean it, thanks. Um . . . anything else?”

“I don’t have anything,” Ed said.

“Okay. I guess we’re adjourned. Thanks for coming, Ed.”

“No problem. I was on my way to get some ice cream at the store and just thought I’d stop in.”

The last sunset light swept across the porch. And Eliza was also sweeping the porch. The leaves that had opened so jubilantly were now aged, dry, humbled. Their moment of the circle was past, and they would return to the soil.

But not on her porch!

The leaves were like the weeds, only by misfortune appearing where they were not allowed. And like the river waters.

It was still troubling. She had sided against powers of wind and water that had greater right to do as they wished than she had to prevent them. And now she had a bond with the people of the town that she had not before.

She swept the leaves away. And any more that fell would follow!

“You’re back early,” Natalie said. She smiled. “You can say goodnight to everybody!”

“Sure,” Steve said. “I rushed through the entire agenda just so I could get here. Gosh, what a waste! Let’s see—twenty-five-minute drive to Wardsville, five-minute meeting, twenty-five minutes back. That’s nine percent efficiency. Or ninety-one percent inefficiency.”

“My whole life is inefficiency.”

“It depends how you juggle the numbers. I’ll go say good-night.”

Which he did, very inefficiently, but to great constituent approval. And then he was at his desk.

A little extra time. What to do? Ah yes, my dear Watson. The Trinkle case. He took the envelope out of the drawer.

There was a big difference between engineering specifications and contracts. They might both
look
like dense, intractable, boring piles of printouts. Well, actually they both were. But at least with engineering, either the sewer system worked or it didn’t. With contracts there were always clogs.

Surely a reasonably intelligent person with enough Extra Strength Tylenol Headache Formula could figure it out. And after a while he had a few interesting points highlighted.

Regency would buy the Trinkle farm from the Trinkle Land Trust.

The contract was written August 20 of last year.

The contract was signed December 12 of that year.

The closing would take place within one year of signing.

The sale was contingent on many things, but most had been satisfied between the writing of the contract in August and the signing in December. Some others had still been open.

The contract was contingent on clear title to the land, with no outstanding lawsuits. That had been satisfied.

The contract was contingent on all taxes having been paid. That had been satisfied.

The contract was contingent on the commitment to complete Gold River Highway into Wardsville, and that one hadn’t been satisfied.