Road to Nowhere (43 page)

“Now we have a request from Mr. Roland Coates for a zoning change for his commercial property on Hemlock Street in Wardsville. Could you describe this, Steve?”

“I could try.”

There was already a weariness in the room, but those listening came awake.

“Mr. Coates is presently functioning under a special-use permit,” Steve Carter said. “It allows him to operate the factory, but it does not allow any substantial changes to the size or use of the structures. Now, Mr. Coates, you’ll correct me if I get any of this wrong?”

“I sure will.” Roland Coates was watching, very awake.

“Okay. Mr. Coates is involved in some business deals where it might be necessary to make substantial changes. Due to the confidential nature of the deals, he can’t specifically tell us what the changes would be. So the request will be to grant a new special-use permit. It would be for any industrial or commercial structure and use, with specifics to be added within twelve months. That’s all correct?”

“That’s what I want,” Roland Coates said.

“Let me get this straight,” Randy McCoy said. “We’re voting to let Mr. Coates do anything he wants, and he’ll tell us later what it is?”

“That’s about it,” Steven Carter said.

“Is that even legal for us to do?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it should be.”

Joe spoke. “This comes from the Planning Commission without a recommendation for or against.”

“Right,” Steve said. “We only had two members present, so we couldn’t vote. By the way, Joe, do you think we could maybe get some new people on the commission? We have one vacancy and it seems like some of the other members aren’t that interested.”

“We’ll put that on the agenda,” Joe said. “We’ll have to find someone. Now on this special use request, What would you say, Lyle?”

“Well, Joe.” Lyle was such a funny man! “It’s
special use.
You can kind of do what you want.”

“Joe.” This was Louise. “I think we should try, at least. I know especially in Mountain View that people are worried what might happen, but Mr. Coates has been here his whole life, and I don’t think he’ll do anything that would hurt anyone else. I don’t think he’s trying to fool anyone, either. I think it really is that he can’t tell us.

Louise turned to look out at the audience. “And I’ll say something else that might make people think twice about rejecting the request. Everybody knows Mr. Coates is all for Gold River Highway, but I just wonder about this zoning. Maybe if he got the zoning he wanted, he wouldn’t need the road as much.”

“How would that work?” Randy asked.

“I’m just sort of thinking it. It’s not that I know.”

“Or,” Randy said, “maybe you do know but you can’t say it, the same way Roland can’t say it, either, and since Byron works there you might have heard some of what’s supposed to happen.”

“Oh, just never mind!” Louise said, with an anger that surprised Eliza. “I just think we should vote.”

“Is there a motion?” Joe said.

“I move,” Louise said. “Joe? What if it fails?”

“He would have to wait two years before he can apply again, unless there is a substantial change in the application.”

“Would approving the road count as a change?”

“That would count,” Joe said. “Is there a second?”

“I’ll second,” Steve said. “If we don’t vote tonight, the Planning Commission will get it back.”

“Go ahead, Patsy.”

“Mrs. Brown?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Carter?”

“No.”

“Mr. Esterhouse?”

“No.”

“Eliza?”

Of course, it all meant very little. She only knew that for Louise, and for Roland Coates, it meant very much.

“I vote yes.”

“Mr. McCoy?”

“Good gravy.”

Randy seemed confused; Eliza had come to recognize this in him. Did he ever receive guidance?

“I guess the right thing, not knowing where we stand on the highway itself, is to vote . . . um, no.”

It was a struggle for him to say this, but those listening had no struggle. Eliza hadn’t seen this type of celebration at a meeting.

“That’s two in favor, three opposed,” Patsy said.

“Motion fails,” Joe said. “And our last item is a report on renovations to this meeting room.”

“Oh.” Steve said this after a wait. “The plywood. I looked at it before the flood. I think we could take it down. I just didn’t want to do it by myself. It’s heavy.”

“I’ll have Kyle help you,” Randy said.

“Anything else?” Joe said. “Then this meeting is adjourned.”

“Now, Louise,” Randy said, finding her there in her big coat at the back door, “I just want to say I do appreciate everything you said up there about Roland and his factory and all, and I just hate having to choose between Mr. Coates, who is such a pillar of our community, and my friends and neighbors, but it seemed like, with the votes we’ve had all going against Mountain View, they really deserved to have their way for once.”

“I was just hoping so much we could get the zoning the way Mr. Coates wanted it,” she said. “And then we wouldn’t need that road.”

“Do you really think it would have worked out that way?”

“It might have. Mr. Coates did say a few things to Byron that we’re not supposed to let out. Now I don’t know what to do! I don’t want that new Regency place, with a big road running right out of town to it, and Byron is beside himself worrying that the factory’s going to close down, and he’s so worn out working these long shifts.”

“I’ve been hearing about all that,” Randy said. “It sounds like they’re building the biggest pile of desks and bookshelves there’s ever been.”

“It’s all just going into that warehouse in back,” Louise said. “They can’t sell it all. I just don’t know what’s going to happen!”

“I’m expecting Roland to express his disappointment to me,” Randy said. “Maybe Everett will have a kind word, to make up for it.” Then he noticed something out in the parking lot that took his mind completely off Roland and Everett and even the road. “Well, now, look at that.”

Eliza was standing, straight as a telephone pole like she always did, and the young man who’d driven her to the meeting was sitting in his car, and the hood was up.

“She’s having trouble?” Louise said. “Let’s see if she needs help.”

“She’s got help. Don’t you see who’s there under the hood?”

Joe didn’t even try fixing new cars. But old cars without all the gadgets, sometimes just the smell could tell what was wrong with them.

And he couldn’t just walk past and leave them.

“Try it again,” he said.

The boy turned the key.

Joe stood up and came back to lean in the window. “Pump, I’d say.”

“Fuel pump?”

“There’s no gas even getting to the engine. You got gas in the tank?”

“Yeah.” The boy had his hair tied in a long tail. But the car had been taken care of properly.

“Had any trouble with the pump before?”

“No, but it’s old. I was going to replace it.”

“They go sudden like that,” Joe said.

“Is that garage down the block open?”

“Not since the flood. You’d have to go to Marker to get it fixed, or Asheville.”

“I can fix it. I just need a new pump.”

“Might be that Gabe could get you one. Or the junk yard.”

“Yeah. Okay. So I need to figure what to do now.”

“Do you need a ride?”

“I can stay in town. I just need a ride for Eliza.”

“Thank you,” Eliza said. Joe Esterhouse closed the door for her and she watched him walk around to his own door. What hard work this truck had seen! It was written on the seat and the steering wheel and the doors how many miles there had been, and with what effort.

Joe sat beside her and started the engine. “Where do you live?”

“Do you know Cherokee Hollow?”

He only nodded. Then he began his driving.

She sat with him in silence. She could always see something of the interior of a woman or a man, but Joe Esterhouse was only a wall. He had always been that to her, from the moment she had met him. She had assumed there was anger behind the wall, at first, but now she couldn’t tell at all.

“Where’s Gulotsky from?”

There had been ten minutes of silence as she had tried to understand anything in him. Now he was looking into her!

“At first it was Ganolvsga.”

“That’s Cherokee.”

“Yes. But too hard. A government man changed it so he could write it more easily.”

Then he said, “Wind.”

She was surprised! Did he really know?

“
The wind blows.
And I was Ayetsasdi.
Laughter!
No one knows those words anymore.”

“There were still people speaking it seventy years ago.”

“My parents did, and my husband too.”

Then silence again. Dark, also. They turned from the paved road to the old road, and he slowed. There was no sign whether he had driven this road before.

“All the way to the end,” she said.

“Not much back there.”

“Just me!”

“You aren’t with your husband now?”

“He died. Many years ago.”

Through the last trees and to the stream, and the truck stopped. Joe got out and came around to her.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be all right now.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll check inside for you.”

This was an act of courtesy. She led him to the steps and to the door and opened it for him.

He had a flashlight, suddenly very bright, and he searched the whole room. This was more than courtesy.

“I will be all right,” she said again.

He stepped forward to see better into corners. He was looking into her—deeply! But she wasn’t fearful of him. The flashlight went dark, and it was very dark, and the moonlight filled the room very slowly.

“You’re here alone?” he asked.

“Yes. But there isn’t danger.”

“I don’t like that boy’s fuel pump breaking.”

She didn’t understand. “Zach’s car?” She lit the kitchen candle.

“You need to be taking care,” he said. “At least until this road vote is over.”

“The road.” She could see Joe’s face, for the first time since the meeting. “What power does it have? There is such anger and war over it.”

“There’s no trouble like there is with a road.” He stared into the candle’s single light. “Greed and fear and hate. And each one having his own way. Will you be voting no on it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll be safer if you do, and if you let people know it.”

“Safer?”

He turned to look outside. The flashlight pushed aside the dark.

“What did you have planted?” His light had found the garden.

“Oh, everything! Here.” She lifted the curtain to the pantry closet.

Joe turned back to the room and turned off the light. “Rose cans about that much.”

“I’ve only finished. There is so much.”

“Why do you say you’re safe here?”

“I am safe.” It seemed he would understand. “The Warrior. This is his place.”

“Ayawisgi?”

“You . . . know?”

He nodded his head, not in agreement, but in acknowledgment of what surrounded them. “Ayawisgi, Warrior, that’s what the word means. The mountain.”

“The strength of the mountain. Its spirit. Its purpose. It is the Warrior, the Ayawisgi.”

“Is that from your parents? They were Cherokee?”

“My father taught me. Do you know about the ancient spirits?”

“I know of them. They aren’t right for churchgoing people.”

“You think they don’t exist.”

“It might be they do.” He walked out to the porch, to stare at the peak above them, pale under the moon. “There’s evil behind this road.”

“The Warrior is against this road.”

“There’s evil on that side, too.”

She accepted Zach’s ridicule, and even Jeanie’s disapproval. She had never heard a man who understood in this way.

“The ancient powers aren’t good or evil, they only
are.
”

“No.” He said it with certainty. “They’ll be one or the other. And what’s not good is evil.”

“What is good?” She didn’t believe him.

“Only the Lord’s good.”

Which Lord? He had said it simply, as if anyone would know what he meant. She remembered—at the funeral for Wade Harris—how she had felt.

“I don’t understand.”

“You should be careful, Eliza. Good night.”

October 6, Friday

“You’re home?” Louise went running into the front hall.

“We’re home,” Byron said, with Matt right behind him. “Both of us.”

“Did Mr. Coates let you out early?”

“Mr. Coates just let us out, period,” Byron said. “No Saturday work tomorrow, and half shifts next week, and Matt’s laid off.”

“Laid off? What’s wrong?”

“It’s okay, Grandma. The job was only for a few weeks.”

“It’s not okay.” Byron stomped past them toward the television. “Mr. Coates is giving up, and that’s what’s wrong.”

Louise went running after him. “Giving up?”

“That’s what he said. Said he’s run out of money, and he has a warehouse full he can’t sell, and he’s not going to make payroll for this last week.”

Matt was in the kitchen and Louise was right by Byron. “You’re not getting a paycheck?”

“The man’s trying as hard as he can! But nothing’s working out for him. He thought maybe he’d got one of the store chains to take a shipment, but it fell through. And there’s more. He called me up to his office to talk.”

“Just you?”

“Just me, except he wanted you to know. He said he talked to the people buying the factory to tell them how high production had been with all the extra shifts, and how that might prove they wouldn’t need to expand the factory to get what they wanted out of it.”

“What did they say back to him?”

“It just wouldn’t make a difference. They want the road and they want the zoning and that’s that.”

“Oh, Byron!”

“And that’s that with the whole shebang. At least we’ll all get a rest now. And he says he’ll get caught up on payroll as soon as he can.”

“We’ll make do,” Louise said. “But what am I going to do with you?”

Eliza was silent. Zach beside her followed the old roads, circling the mountain. These were roads that had been before roads were driven, or ridden. They climbed: the road, the car, them; through the northern gap, and the vale of swift Galvquodi was beneath them Now Galvquodi, the sacred, was called Gold River, and with the gold leaves and gold light, it was a good name. The whole world of the valley was gold and black, and the sun was far to the west.