Road to Nowhere (47 page)

“Thank you,” Patsy said.

“And now the minutes,” Randy said.

It didn’t seem right to be having the meeting at all. Louise closed her eyes to not see the audience.

“And next,” Randy said, “I’ll just tell everyone that Joe and Rose’s daughter Mary is up from Florida and I talked to her yesterday. She’ll be staying with them as long as they need her, and she said they’ll be going back from the hospital to the farmhouse this week. And Sheriff Hite wants everyone to know that his office is working real hard to find the person responsible.”

He didn’t say who that was, but they all knew. Poor Mr. Coates. Byron hadn’t seen him in the factory all week, he was so broken up about Jeremy.

“And I guess now we’ll listen to public comments.”

Louise closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the faces.

“Everett Colony, 712 Hemlock in Wardsville. I’ve been telling you all year how this road will destroy our neighborhood. Do you see how it has? It’s ripped this town apart. Neighbors split, families split. It’s set brother against brother and father against son. . . .”

“Roger Gallaudet, 715 Jackson Street in Wardsville. It’s not the road that’s done all this. It’s us. It’s only uncovered what we always have been. Build it or don’t build it. Just get it over with. . . .”

“Jim Ross, 4500 Eagle’s Rest Drive in Gold Valley. Build it. That mountain’s been a wall between two halves of the county, and the road will tear it down. . . .”

“Annette van Marten, 2970 Lofty Ridge Road in Gold Valley. I thought I wanted the road. But after all this fighting, I’ve gotten to where I’d rather have a wall between me and Wardsville. . . .”

It was starting to all run together.

“Eileen Bunn, and I own the Imperial Diner in Marker. There must be so many better things to do with all that money. . . . Ed Fiddler, 713 Washington Street, and I say build that road as fast as you can if this county isn’t going to shrivel up and die. . . . I’m Emma Fiddler, and I say just leave us alone and build that road somewhere else. I’ll agree with Eileen Bunn, there must be better ways to spend that money. . . . Zachary Minor, Junior. I’m the proprietor of Zach Attack Whitewater Rafting. What gives any of you the right to tear down a mountain or fill a valley with your stupid huge houses and parking lots? . . . Annie Kay Rout, Cherokee Hollow Road. We have everything we need already. We don’t need to truck in food from a thousand miles away. I moved to Jefferson County to get away from waste and pollution. Please don’t do this!”

It kept going and going.

“Humphrey King. I hope more than anything we don’t get that new shopping center. All of you here, if King Food hasn’t been good enough for you and you want something else, I promise I’ll make it better. I’ll even knock out the wall on one side and that’ll make room for three more aisles, and I’ll get whatever you want in there. Because if a big new store opens, I’ll be closed down in six months, and what will I do then? I’ve lived here my whole life with all of you.”

“Richard Colony. Everett was right about splitting families. Well, if they’re split, then the damage is already done, and we might as well go ahead and build it. The fire’s already been kindled, and not building the road won’t put it out.”

“Don’t talk about fire!” Louise couldn’t listen anymore. She had to say what she had to say!

“I didn’t want to come tonight because I didn’t want to listen to hours of meanness and cutting each other, and I’m not going to put up with any more of it.

“When Wade Harris died, how did everyone act? Terrible. The only thing anyone could think of was what it meant for themselves and Gold River Highway. When we asked Steve to be on the board, people said terrible things about him.

“We’ve been through too much now! We’ve been through the flood and we did everything we could to hold this town together and we just barely made it. And that’s thanks to Steve, especially, but all of you. Did you see what we can do together? But just the next board meeting, people who were side by side through that were right back to their fighting and being hateful.

“And then the fire! That’s put more than a hundred people out of work, and everyone here is affected by it.

“And now this. I don’t know why anyone would have shot a gun into Rose’s kitchen, no matter what anyone says or thinks. I know it can’t be that they wanted to hurt her.

“It’s an attack on all of us! It’s like all of us have been hurt.”

The pain of it was almost too much.

“We have been hurt,” she said. She looked right at Richard Colony. “You said the damage is already done. Well, I say we can undo it.

“Now, if this road and shopping center are so important that all you can say is that Gold Valley is selfish and wrong for wanting their road, or Wardsville is selfish and wrong for not wanting it, or anybody is wrong for wanting or not wanting that shopping center . . .” She had to swallow. “Well, it isn’t wrong to want those or not, and I’m talking to myself as much as to any of you. What’s wrong and selfish is cutting off friendships we’ve had for years. Now, you look around here before you say something, and think real hard about what you’re going to say before you say it.”

And then she folded her arms and shut her mouth and stared up at the ceiling and not at anybody else.

“Well,” Randy said after about three minutes of silence. “Maybe we should go on, and I’m sorry if any of the rest of you had meant to say something but got scared out of it, and I know it isn’t really right for board members to intimidate the audience like we’ve sort of done here.” He waited a few more seconds.

“But we do all know she’s right,” he said.

November 9, Thursday

“Good afternoon, Gordon, and I’m just stopping in for a minute.”

Gordon looked up. “Do you need something, Randy?”

It was assurance, really, that Randy was looking for, but it wouldn’t do to ask for that, at least here. “Well, if there was any news about Jeremy, I would be real glad to hear it, and I’m not trying to be a pest, but I had a question or two about the fire at the furniture factory, since I’m still trying to get all the insurance forms finished up, and I thought I’d stroll down here and ask.”

Even though the forms actually were all finished up, and had been for a while, but it seemed the best way to ask about Jeremy Coates.

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Well, even that’s something to say, I guess. There really isn’t any news at all about Jeremy?”

“Nothing.”

“And all that anybody can do about the fire, or the shooting, is to find him, isn’t it?”

Gordon hadn’t moved a bit, leaning back at his desk, staring at Randy with about the same feeling a person might have for their alarm clock going off at six o’clock in the morning.

“What else would there be?”

It seemed to Randy like that was really Gordon’s job, to know what else, but maybe there truly wasn’t anything. “Well, I don’t know, but the underwriter for Roland’s insurance policy is looking at that million-dollar check they had to write, and I expect he’d like to have a word with Jeremy, at least.”

“The State Police and the FBI are looking for him,” Gordon said. “Nothing I can do. He’s probably out of the state now anyway.”

“I’m sure they’ll find him. Gordon, just putting a few things together, from the newspapers, and Roland, I’d like to ask you a question.”

“Well, go ahead.”

“It was Jeremy that shot at my car, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, why can’t that just be let go of? Yes, it was.”

“Now, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Jeremy was in enough trouble with Roland.”

“You should have told me.”

Gordon hunched back in his chair. Everett thought we shouldn’t.”

“Everett Colony?”

“He thought we might cause a lot more trouble if we did.”

“I guess I should talk to him. And I’m wondering, too, if you’ve talked with Joe any this last week.”

“I haven’t.”

“I guess I should do that, too,” Randy said.

Steve stepped out of his car. The dirt was soft.

He’d pulled to the side, but on this road, that was still the middle. Nobody would be along here anyway.

This was the curve. There was no sign of the crash anymore, six months later. Just some scars on the big tree. If there was anything else, it was under the leaves.

The trees were bare and the leaves a crunchy foot deep.

Steve walked around the bend and turned to look at the tree. A person coming up the hill would be facing this way, just as he slowed to take the bend. That tree was right in front of him.

It was a tight bend. Wade would have slowed way down to take it, no matter how much of a hurry he was in. Instead he went straight over the edge. Why?

Coming down the hill—if he had taken the bend too fast, maybe he could have rolled and ended up back there. It was hard to see how that would happen.

Gordon Hite said Wade had been coming down the hill. Ergo, Wade had really been going up the hill. That was one thing for sure—if Gordon said something, it was wrong.

Looking at the scene, it was obvious that Wade had gone straight over the edge.

Steve walked to the edge. There was another tree, right by the road. He leaned against it, looking down the winding dirt road. Wade would have come right up there, right at him almost. Then right on by, inches away, straight over.

This was where a person would have stood if he’d wanted to watch the whole thing. A person would be looking right into the car, right at Wade.

No, no, no!

A person could have been behind the tree, so Wade wouldn’t have seen him. Steve moved back, behind the tree. Right there.

Why would the person have been there that day? Why was Steve here today?

Because it was all so obvious, only Gordon Hite couldn’t see it.

Steve did not shoot guns. He knew how they worked, though. He stood there a minute, put his arms up, and pulled the trigger. He felt the recoil, heard the report. Then he turned to his right—careful, the ground was uneven—and put his hand through the leaves at just where the casing had landed. He patted the ground, back and forth, feeling for it.

It was all just his imagination.

All but the cold, hard cylinder he touched. An inch long and gray.

Randy looked in Everett’s office, and Everett was there.

“Excuse me, Everett.”

“Randy.”

“She said to come on back.”

“That’s fine. Sit down.”

Randy did sit, and he didn’t know just how to start. But it wasn’t going to be fine. “It’s about Joe, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Everett, I don’t know how much you can tell me, and I know it might be a while before any of us would know anyway, but I’m just asking about Joe and the board, and if you have any thoughts about when he might be back to work with us.”

“He won’t be.”

Randy nodded. “Can you tell me how he’s doing? Or Rose? How will she be?”

“Rose won’t recover. Not at her age and hurt as bad as she was. She’ll be in bed a long time. Maybe she’ll be walking again eventually. But I told them not to take her home. They need to find a place where she can be cared for. And Joe, too. That farm’s no place for either of them.”

“That’s real bad news, Everett.”

“Sometimes it is.”

“I guess that’s so.” It was a feeling like an earthquake, in a way, having someone as absolute and dependable as Joe suddenly taken away from them, and Randy felt himself reeling. And that might have made it easier to blurt out the next question. “And, Everett, excuse me also for asking, but why didn’t you let Gordon tell me about Jeremy? Especially about shooting at me?”

“Oh, that.”

“It’s a serious thing, really, and I had a right to know. He shot Roland’s car, too. Gabe told me his windshield got broken just like mine.”

“That’s why I told Gordon to keep it secret,” Everett said. “Because of Joe.”

“Now, I don’t understand that.”

“Joe Esterhouse has had an obsession all summer about the road! He was fantasizing about murders and attacks and saying he’ll call in the State Police to investigate.”

“Murders? Now, Everett, you aren’t talking about Wade Harris, are you?”

“No, I’m not. But Joe was.”

“Joe was. . . .”

Of course. Especially since the shooting at Joe’s farm, maybe even before that, Randy had had his own thoughts. It wasn’t a surprise, really, that Joe had been thinking the same. But hearing Everett say it did make it seem more real, despite that he was meaning the opposite.

“And they would have latched on to Jeremy right away,” Everett said. “He wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, just scare people into voting against the road.”

Randy had to take just a moment to think all that through. But it didn’t take long to fill himself up with more questions. “But it might be that Jeremy did shoot at Wade.”

“If he did, it wasn’t to hurt him.”

“And what about Joe and Rose?”

“I don’t think he meant to hurt them, either.”

Randy was having a hard time continuing the conversation. “Well, maybe,” he said, “but that’s really up to the police. Now, why are you taking such an interest in Jeremy, anyway?”

“Someone has to. Gordon Hite doesn’t have the sense.”

“I don’t think that’s the reason.” He took a deep breath. He might not have said it, but Everett was having quite an effect on him. “I think you’ve been afraid they’d find out that you tried to bribe Wade Harris.”

Everett Colony was stock still, and then his mouth dropped a little, and then opened wide, and then narrowed.

“How did you . . . Ed Fiddler. He had no right to tell you anything.”

“Well, he did drop a bit of information, but it was Cornelia Harris that really got me started thinking, mentioning you went out to see him that night.”

“I thought he didn’t say anything to her. No one brought it up.”

“It’s just my own thinking, and I was even ashamed to have thought such a thing. But, Everett, I’d believe it of you. Especially with the way you’re acting right now. I think you’ve been using Jeremy to scare Gordon into keeping outside police from getting involved, because you didn’t want them to find out what you’ve done.”

Everett was just scowling, but looking down and not at Randy. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said.