Harvestman Lodge Page 20

  “But not gone from your mind and memories,” Feely said.

  “Right. Or my conscience. That poor little girl has haunted me like a ghost, Preacher. Not in some spooky, spiritish, moaning-in-the-attic kind of way … just in being aware of what happened to her, and that she never even had the privilege of being known to anybody in this world except for a bunch of men who were willing to take advantage of her for wicked reasons that she was in no position to decide for herself about.” Jonas wiped his eyes again. “It just isn’t right. And after all this time, I can’t believe I was part of that, hiding a corpse. And me being a fireman, with duties and obligations that go with that job. God forgive me. God forgive me.”

  “Jonas, now that you’ve told me this, what do you want me to do?”

  “Well … I guess I haven’t thought a lot about that part. It was all I could handle, just thinking about telling it to you. Unloading the garbage. I never considered what would come after it was unloaded.” After a few silent moments, Jonas looked at Feely with his reddened eyes. “Do you think maybe … maybe that you could just do … nothing? Just know it and let it go? There’s nothing to be done for that poor girl now, and nobody but a bunch of local fellows who could be hurt, and their wives and families hurt, if tales of their youthful sins came out.”

  Feely heard himself saying, “I suppose I can just keep my mouth shut. I don’t want to be an instrument of harm to anybody.”

  “Thank you, Preacher. And thank you for just hearing me out. I hope what I’ve told you isn’t going to be a burden on you like it has been for me.”

  “I’m accustomed to hearing the worries and fears and secrets of others. It goes with my vocation. But I do want to point out a thing or two you might not have considered. As well-concealed and deeply buried as the girl’s corpse is, it might still be found. People explore caves, you know. For recreation, research, science, photography, whatever.”

  “Preacher, two years after we dropped Junie’s burned corpse down that hole, there were some boys who came close to falling in the same pit, just poking around back in the cave like boys will do. One of them was a nephew of Benton Sadler, and Benton started making noise and pulling strings and talking about the danger of that open cave, and offered to have truckloads of rock and fill brought in to fill the pit. So that’s what they did: hauled truckloads of fill dirt and stone up to that cave and had it carried back into the cave and dumped down that hole. It took a good week of steady hauling and dumping to get it filled up to about twelve feet from the mouth of the pit, and that upper part they sealed in with concrete. No, that body won’t ever be found.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Jonas seemed different now, better and brighter, even momentarily healthier, for the unloading of his mental burden. The tears were gone, and even the headache was lessened.

  Feely prayed with his friend and promised to keep what he had been told in confidence, though he admitted to feeling as if the girl Junie, who had been deprived of so much in her short lifetime, was doubly deprived in occupying an anonymous place of rest, with not so much as a marker to let the surviving world know she ever had existed. Jonas Corbin nodded along as Feely made his comments, but had nothing to say on the matter afterward. He was glad to leave Junie forever part of the past.

  As Feely was about to exit the house, though, with Jonas’s wife pulling her grocery-laden car into the driveway, Jonas threw in one final, quick comment: “You know, there’s one thing about this whole business that has seemed ironic to me. Odd that the Millard and Junie business ended up in a place within spitting distance of the old Harvestman Lodge. You know, given the history of that place.”

  “History, or rumor?”

  Corbin flashed a grin. “From what I’ve heard, you might know more about how to answer that question than most. I’ve heard you’ve done a good deal of research to try to find out what it was that destroyed that organization.”

  “You can hear a lot of things, Jonas. You have to decide what you’re going to believe.”

  “So you haven’t researched Harvestmen Lodge, Preacher?”

  “I didn’t say that. And I’d rather not say either way. Now, you have a good rest of the day, Jonas. Your better half just got home.”

  “You have a good one too, Preacher. And thanks. I feel better now. That was something I needed to tell.”

  “I understand, Jonas. And call me anytime, hear?”

  “I hear. That’s one of the few things left that I can still do.”

  Feely was going out the door as Karen Corbin came in bearing a bag of groceries and a typically beautiful smile. “Did you two find much to talk about, Rev. Feely?”

  “Just old memories,” Feely replied. “That’s all. Old memories.”

  IT WAS A PRETTY DAY and Feely had a tankful of gasoline and no immediately urgent pastoral business to attend to.

  He drove to a large grocery store on the edge of Tylerville, and at the floral department counter purchased a bouquet of daisies.

  “Made her mad, didja, Preacher?” one of his church members joked as Feely passed him on his way out of the store.

  “You know how it goes with the womenfolk, Walt,” Feely replied, grinning and playing along. “Fragile feelings and all. Flowers fix things sometimes.”

  He got into his car and drove through Kincheloe County until he reached a remote but well-known road leading up to old caves in a limestone hillside. In the largest of those caves, at one time, Kincheloe County men running north to join the Federal Army had hidden out to avoid detection by the Confederates. In that same cave, a century later, two guilt-ridden fireman had disposed of the charred remains of a girl who had died too young. A heavy lumber barricade blocked the cave entrance now.

  Feely knelt, laid the daisies at the mouth of the closed-off cave and looked back between the barricade timbers into the shadowed depths. “Rest in peace, Junie,” he said softly, then quietly prayed, rose and returned to his car.

  Chapter Sixteen

  HADLEY KING, DAPPER IN a white sportcoat and with hair momentarily devoid of any accidental shade of violet, was as usual the first member of the Bicentennial Planning Committee to show up. The meeting location was the board room in the Tylerville Light and Power System headquarters. Eli and Melinda arrived at the same time, in their separate cars, parked side-by-side in a nearby church parking lot, and walked into the meeting room hand-in-hand. The smiling King welcomed them heartily.

  Eyeing their clasped hands, he went into an extended exposition about the “glory of young love” and the “delight of seeing two bright and dear youngsters find one another.” He found half a dozen ways to expand upon the theme, and after at least three minutes of uninterrupted chatter in his precise and elegant voice, had the two all but married and beginning a huge family. Both Eli and Melinda hoped something would distract the well-meaning man from his embarrassing commentary before other committee members arrived to hear it.

  The spectacular arrival of Custer Crosswaite did the trick.

  Even leaner and lankier than Carl Brecht, the six-foot-four-dancer from Flea Plank literally clog-danced his way into the room, tall brogans laced tight around his ankles. With short tacks sunken down to their heads in the heels and toes, the workman’s shoes produced a muted tap-shoe sound on the tile floor. Custer Crosswaite tapped, stomped, shuffled, leaned, and at one point flailed about wildly as if about to lose his balance. He didn’t. Instead he turned the move into an intricate leaping spin worthy of a backwoods Baryshnikov. Melinda cheered and clapped and Eli laughed at himself because he’d actually lunged out of his chair to go rescue the weathered dancer from crashing to the floor.

  “Fooled ya, didn’t I, son!” Crosswaite said. “I’ve been fake-falling since my first days of dancing, back when the falls weren’t so fake.”

  “You did fool me, sir,” Eli said, advancing and putting out his hand. Custer Crosswaite’s grip was firm, his fingers so long they felt like he could wrap them twice around Eli’s hand. He
jerked Eli’s arm up and down so vigorously that fears of shoulder dislocation were roused.

  “Are you the new young man down at the newspaper, the book-writing feller?”

  “I am, sir. Eli Scudder.” Eli managed to get his hand freed and stuck it protectively into a pants pocket.

  “I read about you in the paper. Pleased to meet you. I’m Custer Crosswaite. One-half of the world’s best dancing team, officially called the Crosswaite Cousins of Kincheloe County, and mostly just called the Twin Cousins, or just the Cousins. The other half the team is my first cousin Buster, who folks tell me looks like my twin, though I know in my heart I’m a whole lot prettier. Ain’t that right, Hadley? About me being prettier, I mean?”

  “Whatever you say, Custer,” Hadley King replied. He wore a look hinting he maybe found Custer’s flamboyance something to be endured more than enjoyed.

  Custer pointed at Melinda. “I know this gal here, and not just from seeing her on my TV set. I’ve watched that youngun grow up in this town, getting more fetching by the year. No wonder she found a career in front of the camera! That’s where a face like that belongs.”

  “Mr. Crosswaite, you’re flattering me,” Melinda said.

  “Uh uh. Just telling the straight truth, little lady.” He turned to Eli again. “And son, not only is she pretty, she’s smarter than a whip. Graduated high school a year early! I tell you, if I was your age, I’d be chasing that little lady!”

  “I’m way ahead of you, sir.”

  Hadley King spoke. “He is indeed, Custer. These two came in tonight hand-in-hand. We have a young courting couple here. Absolutely lovely, both of them. Lovely!” Eli felt slightly uncomfortable in that King was looking at him, not Melinda, as he made the final comment.

  Custer Crosswaite looked at Eli as well. “Young man, I already respected you for being a writer of books, which is an uncommon achievement, and for the good stories you’ve had in the newspaper. Now I respect you even more, for your taste in ladies.”

  Melinda and Eli, both red-faced now, shared a glance at one another and struggled not to writhe under the nearly worshipful gazes of the older pair.

  The sudden arrival of a third older man changed the focus of the moment. If not for the three weeks he’d spent looking through old microfilmed newspapers, Eli would have been unable to recognize old Caine Darwin, a long-retired merchant-businessman known to be the richest man in town. His flagship clothing and home goods store, called simply Darwin’s, had been launched in Tylerville at the end of World War II, and gave rise to a chain of Darwin’s stores across Northeast Tennessee. The first Darwin’s building still stood in downtown Tylerville, but now housed a furniture store, the Darwin’s chain having been bought out by a big box discount chain at the time Darwin retired. Old Man Darwin, as most called him in conversations in which he was not a participant, had gone home from that deal with a well-stuffed bank account. The big discount chain had wasted no time in beginning to shut down the Darwin’s stores, which had for years been a Main Street presence in nearly every East Tennessee town. The company did ease the blow as much as possible by phasing out the Darwin’s closings progressively across the region, and by offering better-paying jobs in its own stores to most of those put out of work. Eli knew the details from his research in old copies of the Clarion, just as he knew that the maiden name of Darwin’s wife was, not surprisingly, Sadler.

  “Very pleased you could join us this evening, Mr. Darwin,” said Hadley King. “I’m hopeful your reason for being here is to present the idea you shared with me when we ran into one another downtown this week.”

  “It is, Hadley.” Darwin said. “And I’ll share with you here and now that I have decided to personally – and fully, if necessary – back the launch of that venture out of my own pocket.”

  “Oh my! That is noteworthy! If you wish, sir, we can place your proposal at the top of the evening’s agenda,” King said.

  “Not necessary,” the rich old man replied. “Simply call on me when you want me to speak. Having a few moments to wait merely gives me time to collect my thoughts while allowing me the pleasure of watching your fine committee do its work.”

  “Sounds boring as hell to me,” piped up Custer Crosswaite, making Hadley King wince but evoking not so much as a blink from Darwin.

  THE REMAINDER OF THE committee members arrived within the next two minutes, as if shuttled in on the same bus. As they entered and spotted Old Man Darwin seated on the front row of folding chairs facing the big boardroom table, it was if they’d just realized they were in the presence of royalty. Postures straightened, errant shirttails were tucked in, and cloud-like coiffures of old-lady hair were patted into better shape. Eli marveled at the fawning deference being extended to the committee’s special visitor.

  Ah, the power of money.

  Micah Ledford had told Eli that, in Kincheloe County and Tylerville, Old Man Darwin pretty much got his way in whatever matters he wished to involve himself. Unless, of course, enough Sadlers wanted something different.

  The only person in the room who didn’t seem to have been stricken with Sunday School propriety by the presence of the town’s richest man was Custer Crosswaite, who was sprawled like a lanky puppet cut free of his strings and allowed to drop onto a folding chair.

  The committee began its business with the usual recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag in the front corner of the room, and a long and lofty prayer from a committee member who was the minister at Asbury Memorial Methodist, the church next door where Eli and Melinda had parked. As the clergyman finally ended his prayer, Custer Crosswaite bellowed out a loud “Amen! Glory Hallelujah!” and leaped from his chair to do a dance step. Seeing the chiding looks given him by some of those in the room – not including the chuckling Old Man Darwin, Eli noticed – the dancer merely shrugged and said, “Dancing before the Lord, folks! That’s all! King David did it right in the Bible, ’cept he was right near butt-nekkid when he did it … check it out with Rev. Talk-the-Lord’s-Ear-Off sitting there if you don’t believe me! He can cite you chapter and verse, betcha!” Then he flopped back limply into his chair again.

  “Yes, David did dance before the Lord,” said a stern-looking, seventyish woman near the end of the table. “And the Bible also tells us that a woman who saw him do it ‘despised him in her heart’ for it.”

  “Yeah, Miz Wilks? Well, she was probably just another uppity old snoot like you,” Custer replied.

  “Moving on now, moving on,” Hadley King said before things degenerated further. “Mr. Scudder from the newspaper and Miss Buckingham from the television station, I wish to ask you to update us on the media projects planned in association with our celebration.”

  Both had anticipated the possibility of being asked to make such a report, but neither had made much formal preparation. Seeing the pleading glance Melinda shot his way, Eli volunteered to speak first, and improvised his way through a rough description of magazine’s anticipated content as best he could remember it without notes. He could not tell from the expressions of the rest of the group whether they were pleased by what they were hearing, but finally decided their subtle frowns were most likely mere efforts to look like appropriately studious and attentive little worker bees in front of Old Man Darwin.