January 2, Monday
Time to start. Bang the fool gavel.
“Come to order.” Dead quiet anyway. “Go ahead, Patsy.”
“Mrs. Brown?”
“Here.”
“Mr. Esterhouse?”
“Here,” Joe said, and he hated that he was. Wicked, evil business.
“Miss? . . . Gulotsky?”
“Please. Just Eliza. I am here.”
“Mr. Harris?”
“Here.”
“Mr. McCoy?”
“Right here.”
“Everyone’s here, Joe.”
“Thank you, Patsy,” he said. “Jefferson County North Carolina Board of Supervisors is now in session.”
So many names over the years. Thirty, maybe, or forty. It wouldn’t be easy to remember them all. “Motion to accept last month’s minutes?”
“I’ll move that we accept last month’s minutes.”
“I’ll second that.”
He didn’t even listen to who said which. It was usually Louise Brown, then Randy McCoy. Now that the meeting was started, he just wanted to be done.
“Motion and second,” he said. “Go ahead, Patsy.”
“Mrs. Brown?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Esterhouse?”
“Yes.”
“. . . Miss . . . Eliza?”
“Just Eliza. I vote no.”
“You what?” Wade Harris said, beside her. “You’re voting against the minutes?”
“Well, she wasn’t even here last month.” That was Louise, from the other end of the table. “It’s her first meeting.”
“Go on, Patsy,” Joe said.
“Mr. Harris?”
“I vote yes. For Pete’s sake.”
“Mr. McCoy?”
“Yes. Sure.”
“Four in favor, one opposed,” Patsy said.
“Motion carries,” Joe said. “Minutes are accepted.” Just be done, that was all. “Next is receiving public comment.” He raised his voice to talk to the audience. “Any of you have anything you’d like to say to us?”
Nothing. There were only three people sitting in the rows of chairs. The newspaper reporter was sleeping in his corner, and the two others were each there for a reason of their own, and not this.
Those three. Five board members. Patsy, the clerk, at her desk, and Lyle, the county manager, quivering beside her. Just ten people in the whole big fancy room.
And not Mort. Joe couldn’t bring himself to look to his left, past Wade Harris, where Mort Walker should have been. Where Mort had been for thirty-two years.
It didn’t seem worth it anymore and he was tired of it. There was no purpose to the bickering and anger. Tonight there’d be plenty of that. He looked down at the pages on the table in front of him, a letter as wicked and full of trouble as anything he’d ever seen.
He set his other papers on top of it.
“We’ll get on with the agenda. Everyone’s got a copy?”
“Left mine at home.”
That was Wade Harris. The man could just barely be bothered to come to the meetings. And likely as not, he had some hand in the letter and its trouble.
Patsy handed Wade a copy of the agenda.
“First item,” Joe said. “Contract to pave five miles of Marker Highway. Winning bid was Smoky Mountain Paving. We need a motion to award the contract.”
“I’ll move.”
“Second.” Louise and Randy again.
“Motion and second. Any discussion?”
“Wait.” Wade again, of course. “Which road?”
“Marker Highway,” Randy McCoy said. “From Wardsville to past the interstate.”
“What happened to Gold River Highway? I thought that was next.”
“That’s next on the list. It’s not funded yet.”
“So when does Gold River Highway get paved?” Wade asked.
“Whenever it gets funded,” Randy said.
“Any more discussion?” Joe asked. The little there’d been had been more than enough. He didn’t know Wade enough to trust him, and he didn’t much care to know him better anyway. And tonight he was trusting him even less.
“Voting to award the contract,” he said. He wanted the meeting to be over, more than he ever had. “Go ahead, Patsy.”
“Mrs. Brown?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Esterhouse?”
“Yes.”
“Eliza?”
“I vote no.”
“Mr. Harris?”
“What if we all vote no?” Wade asked.
Randy answered, “I’ll be voting yes.”
“I mean, what if the board votes no?” Wade said. “The road doesn’t get paved?”
“Lyle,” Joe said, and Lyle startled. The poor county manager was as jumpy as a rabbit, anyway. “Explain what happens if we don’t award the contract.”
“Uh . . . Joe, when we sent out the request for bids, we said the contract would be awarded to the qualified low bidder. If you don’t award it, they could bring a lawsuit.”
“So why do we even vote?” Wade asked.
“The county can’t enter into a contract without the supervisors voting,” Lyle said.
“So we have to vote, but we have to vote yes. Whatever. I vote yes.”
“Mr. McCoy?” Patsy said.
“Yes,” Randy said.
“Four in favor, one opposed.”
“The motion passes,” Joe said.
Why was she voting that way? Every vote she’d be reminding him that Mort wasn’t here.
The reporter was awake and scribbling.
Keep going. “Next item.” There’d be more bickering about this one, too. “Nomination to a county board. Mr. Stephen Carter has agreed to serve on the Planning Commission, to fill the open seat.” Joe checked his watch again. He’d give them five minutes for their squabble. “You see his qualifications. Is there a motion to appoint him?”
Wade Harris stifled a yawn. “I move we appoint him.”
Louise. “I’ll second.”
“Motion and second,” Joe said. “Any discussion?”
“Joe.” Randy McCoy was shaking his head. “I’m not sure about it. Mr. Carter certainly seems to be a nice man, and real smart, and I appreciate his willingness. But I just think someone should live here in the county for a while before we appoint him to the Planning Commission.”
Carter himself was in the audience. “How long have you lived here, Mr. Carter?” Joe asked.
“Five years, sir.”
“How long do you think he should have to live here?” Wade asked.
Randy frowned. “Well, maybe longer than that. Especially if he doesn’t live right here in town.”
Wade frowned back at him. “Now, that’s your real problem, isn’t it? He doesn’t live right here in town. Your problem is that he lives in Gold Valley.” He held up five fingers. “We’ve got five places on the Planning Commission. One’s empty, that we’re filling, and one’s Duane Fowler, and he lives in Marker.” He folded down two fingers. “And the other three are Ed Fiddler, who’s your next-door neighbor, and Humphrey King, who’s your cousin, and you.” He pointed right at Randy. “Well, I think it’s about time there was someone from Gold Valley on the commission. It’s as much a part of the county as Wardsville.”
Joe just watched and waited.
With Mort and Louise on the board, there’d been three of them with a lick of sense and they’d get done what they needed. Without Mort it would be different. But even just the two of them would most often be enough. It would be tonight for appointing Carter.
“Now, Wade,” Randy was saying, “it’s not that he lives there in Gold Valley, which I know is part of the county, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m only worried that, if he hasn’t lived here but a couple years . . .”
“Five years.”
“. . . that he might not really have a good feel for how people do things here.”
Joe checked his watch. He knew Randy plenty well and didn’t trust him, either. Three more minutes.
And after this, they’d take up the letter.
Wade was getting hot. “And since I’ve only lived here four years, what’s that supposed to mean exactly? None of the rest of you has ever lived in Gold Valley for a week, and it’s as much a part of the county as Wardsville. In Raleigh the Planning Commission was divided by districts so everyone had a representative. . . .”
“You aren’t in Raleigh anymore, Wade,” Randy said.
“You don’t need to remind me. It is really obvious. . . .”
“And you really don’t need to remind us about Gold Valley being part of the county, because like I just said—”
“As long as we just pay our taxes and shut up—”
That was enough. Joe tapped his gavel. “As there is no further discussion, I think we’re ready to vote.” He’d have given them two more minutes if they’d stayed civil.
Louise patted Randy’s arm. “It’s only fair,” she said.
The reporter wasn’t even looking up, just writing. He’d have his article finished before the meeting was. Always sat in the back corner.
“Go ahead, Patsy,” Joe said.
“Mrs. Brown?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Esterhouse?”
“Yes.”
“Eliza?”
“I vote no.”
“Mr. Harris?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Yes!”
“Mr. McCoy?”
“Well . . . yes. But I still don’t think he’s necessarily the best person.”
“We couldn’t find anyone else, anyway,” Louise said. “Thank you, Mr. Carter. We really do appreciate that you’re willing.”
“I’m glad to, Mrs. Brown.”
“That’s four in favor, one opposed,” Patsy said.
“Motion carries,” Joe said. Louise was right. Taken two months to find someone willing. “Next item.”
This was the one.
If he’d felt like it, and if he’d had time, he’d have called someone in Raleigh to ask a couple of questions. Or he might have just ignored the letter and never said a thing about it. But there was a chance good might come of it. It was likely evil already had.
He took the letter out from his pile, as wicked evil as anything he’d ever seen.
It was about a road.
There was no trouble like there was with a road. A whole year of strife in one letter from Raleigh, and that would be for any road. This one would be worse.
“ ‘North Carolina Department of Transportation has announced a limited one-time grant program to complete highway projects meeting certain criteria.’ ” He was reading the first page. “ ‘The program is intended for high-priority projects of long standing.’ ” He glanced at Wade, but the man looked as ignorant as ever. “We would need to vote to apply.”
“I’ll move,” Louise said.
Randy was frowning. “What project would we be applying for?”
“I’m sorry,” Louise said. “Does that have to be in the motion?”
“It does,” Joe said. “There’s a pile of rules. We only have one project on the county plan that qualifies.”
“What would that be?” Wade asked.
Joe leaned back and said the words. “To bring Gold River Highway over the mountain into Wardsville.”
And that did it.
Everyone acted up together, even Louise. Even Patsy and Lyle. Right away there was a hubbub and people sitting up straight and the few of them in the room sounding more like twenty, like a chicken coop with a snake at the door. And that’s what it was, anyway.
“Where did you get that?”
It was the reporter, from the audience, shouting over everyone else. Joe tapped his gavel. “We need that road,” Wade said.
“Read it again,” the reporter called.
“Patsy will make copies after the meeting,” Joe said.
“Good gravy,” Randy said. “You don’t mean they actually might build it?”
“Why not?” Wade said, turning on Randy.
“Well, that’s not what I’m saying,” Randy was saying, “not that it shouldn’t, it’s just that I don’t think we’ve ever really expected it. Joe, wasn’t that on the plan even before you were on the board?”
“No, it wasn’t.” Even Gold River Highway wasn’t that old. He could remember the hand-drawn maps and the engineer up from Asheville presenting them. “It was added in 1967.”
“Lot has changed in thirty-nine years,” Randy said.
“You bet it has,” Wade said. “Like four hundred houses built in Gold Valley. I’ll second that motion.”
“Her motion didn’t count,” the reporter said.
“I don’t think it did,” Louise said.
“Then I’ll do it,” Wade said. “I move that we apply for this grant, whatever it is, to get Gold River Highway put over the mountain.”
“Second?” Joe said.
“I’ll second,” Louise said.
“Now we can discuss it.”
The reporter had moved up to the front row.
“What’s to discuss?” Wade said. “That road is the most important project in Jefferson County.”
“Well, now, I think we should discuss it,” Randy said. “Like I said, a lot has changed in thirty-nine years. You know, that road would come over Ayawisgi Mountain right into Hemlock Street, and there’s a lot of houses in there, too.”
“Does it have to come in right there?” Louise asked.
“We’ve been over it on the Planning Commission a dozen times. The only place it can get over the mountain is through the gap, along where the dirt road is now, and right into Hemlock. The high school’s on one side and the furniture factory’s on the other side. That’s the only place it can go.”
“That’s where it should go,” Wade said.
“That is a residential neighborhood,” Randy said, “and it’s no place for a big highway.”
“But that’s where the road needs to go, for Pete’s sake.” Wade was practically yelling. “That’s the point! So people in Gold Valley can get to the school and the factory and into town at all without having to go all the way out to the interstate.”
“I don’t think any of the city people with their vacation houses in Gold Valley are wanting to get to the furniture factory, or even the high school,” Randy said.
“The furniture trucks might want a better way out to the interstate than right through Wardsville.” If Wade had been surprised by all this, he was sure recovering fast. “And I’ve got a daughter at the high school who rides a bus forty minutes each way. Look, this has been the plan all along. And all that development in Gold Valley has been based on the plan.”
“Maybe it’s the plan, but nobody ever expected it to happen.”
“That’s what a plan is, Randy.” Wade was about as exasperated as a man could be. “A plan is what you’re expecting to happen. Everybody in Gold Valley sure has been expecting it.”
“Joe,” Louise said, giving people a chance to calm down, “I thought the state didn’t have any money for new roads this year.”
“It says there’s twenty-five million dollars here in this program.”
“Twenty-five million?” Randy said. “That’s nothing.”
“It’s enough to build Gold River Highway,” Wade said.
“But every county in the state is competing for it. Our share wouldn’t be enough to put in a traffic light.”
“We can still apply,” Wade said.
“Is there a deadline, Joe?”
“February first.”
“That’s three weeks,” Randy said. “We don’t even have time.”
“Four weeks,” Wade said. “And how long does it take to vote on a resolution? Two minutes?”
“But there’ll be forms to fill out and engineering drawings to be made. We couldn’t do all that in three weeks.”
“We only need the resolution,” Joe said. “If we get approved, the state will do the planning.”
“Is this the only vote we’d have?” Louise asked.
“What’s the timetable?” It was the reporter again.
Joe ignored him. “We’d vote again. What we’re doing now is not the final vote. If our application is approved, we’d vote again when we saw the plans.”
“Yeah, what is the timetable, anyway?” Wade asked.
Joe found the page of the letter. “ ‘Application, February first.’ ”
“Wait a minute.” The fool reporter again. He’d dropped his notebook and was on the floor getting it. “Okay, go ahead.”
“Announcement of projects approved, April board meeting,” Joe said. “Presentation of engineering concept drawings, July board meeting. Public comment period following. Final county board approval by January first of next year. Detailed engineering and putting out for bids, approximately one more year. Construction begins after that.” He handed the page to Wade. “If we were approved, we’d vote in December. They’d start work about a year and a half later.”
“There is no way we’ll get accepted,” Randy said. “Now, in my opinion, I don’t think we should apply if we’re not even going to be approved. Those folks in Raleigh have plenty to do as it is without going through a bunch of papers from us way out here that don’t have any chance of being accepted anyway.”
Wade was staring at him, full flabbergasted.
“Are you flat crazy?” he finally said.
Joe tapped his gavel. “Any more discussion?”
Louise had a question. “Joe, why only four weeks? I’ve never heard of such a short deadline.”
“The letter came back in October.”
“Nobody saw it?” she asked.
“It came to Mort,” Joe said. Then he had to wait a minute. “He was the county contact for the Department of Transportation. It was out at his house. I only saw it yesterday.” He glanced out at the audience, at the one person who hadn’t yet said a word. “I think we’ll vote now.
Go ahead, Patsy.”
“Wait a minute!”
Joe was already plenty angry without the fool reporter interrupting every two minutes. “The board is not accepting public comment,” he said.
“You can’t just vote!” the reporter said. “Nobody even knows what you’re doing!”
“There’s no requirement to schedule public hearings before we apply. Go ahead.”
“Mrs. Brown?” Patsy said.
“Joe, you’re sure we’d vote again if it’s approved?” Louise said.
“That’s what it says.”
“Well . . . I’d want to think more about it. But to apply, I’ll say yes.”
“Mr. Esterhouse?”
“Yes.”
“Eliza?”
“I vote no.”
“Mr. Harris?”
“Yes, so it passes. Good.”
“Mr. McCoy?”
“Well, it’s already passed, so it doesn’t matter.”
Patsy waited. “Are you abstaining?”
“What? Oh. Well, I really don’t think we should apply, and even more I don’t think we should build a road, but I hate to vote no and seem contrary when something’s already passed.”
“What are you voting?” Wade asked.
“I suppose I’ll say yes, since it doesn’t matter anyway. But I know it won’t get approved.”
“That’s four in favor, one opposed,” Patsy said.
“Motion carries,” Joe said. “Lyle, you’ll make sure someone in the office fills in the forms?”
“I will, Joe.” Lyle would probably do it himself. He was about all the engineering staff the county had. Patsy would check it over to make sure it was done right.
“And if it does get approved, somehow,” Randy was saying, “I think a lot of people will have a lot to say about it.”
“You bet they will,” Wade said.
“There will be time for public comment,” Joe said. “Everybody will have plenty of opportunity to say their piece.”
“But it won’t get accepted,” Randy said. “So it doesn’t really matter.”
They’d know soon enough. Joe put the papers back in the envelope and handed it to Lyle. He might still call Raleigh, or he might just wait. There was nothing he could do to head off the fight they’d surely just started.
Roads were a mess, and this one would be like nothing any of them had ever seen. The reporter would stir it up even worse. That’s what the man thrived on. He already had another page filled with his scrawls.
And it wasn’t just that people here in the county could fight with each other. This would have people outside fighting, too. That made Wade worth watching.
Or maybe it wasn’t worth anything, not anymore. Just let the lot of them have their way and do what they wanted.
He was still hating being here. Because now was time for the last item, and the hardest one. Not hard for the others—just for him, and maybe for Louise. “Final item. Proposal to put up a suitable monument in the flower bed outside the courthouse in honor of Morton Walker and his service to the county.”
Silence. For this, not one of them dared to say anything. None of them had any right to say a word, even Louise. For thirty-two years Mort had been on this board, a better man than these two schoolchildren arguing over every blame thing.
Everyone in the county had known him, and not a one would have even run against him for respect of what an upright man he was. Not a one, but her.
Who knew how the idea had got into her head ten years ago. She’d run in every election she could since then, and never gotten more than a dozen votes. She’d run last November against Mort, an insult to the whole county, but nothing to even take notice of.
Then Mort had died three days before the election.
Joe forced himself to look to his left, past Wade, and there she was, sitting where Mort should have been sitting right now. She’d gotten her usual ten votes in the election, but there was no else who’d got any, because Mort, his friend, was dead.
He hated it.
“Go ahead, Patsy.”
“Mrs. Brown?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Mr. Esterhouse?”
“Yes.”
“Eliza?”
He didn’t want to hear her even speak. What right did she, of all people, have to be here voting on this, of all things?
“I vote no.”
Silence, again.
“Keep going,” Joe said.
“Mr. Harris?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. McCoy?”
“Yes.”
“Four in favor, one opposed,” Patsy said.
“Motion carries,” Joe said. “Any other business?”
He waited just long enough for it to be a wait. “This meeting is adjourned.” He stood and walked to his right, behind Randy and Louise.
“Joe?” That was Minnie Walker. The one other person in the audience. “Thank you. Mort would appreciate it.”
“The least we could do.”
“I hope that letter doesn’t cause any trouble. I’d have brought it before but I kept forgetting.”
“It doesn’t make a difference,” he said.
He tried to leave the room before anyone would say anything else, but Wade Harris was talking to Louise. He tried not to hear it but he did.
“Mort would have voted for the road,” Wade was saying. “Bad luck he died right when he did.”
Not even eight-thirty. That was one thing about old Joe being chairman, he kept the meetings short. Wade popped the Yukon into drive and started around the block.
What a joke. Everything around there was a joke. That loony tune Board of Supervisors was a joke, the town of Wardsville was a joke.
Just look at the buildings. Another plank of siding had fallen off the drugstore. Smack downtown, right beside the courthouse. Didn’t that look dandy? At least the place was still open. Half of them weren’t. What a shabby heap the town was, piled next to the river and straggling up the mountainside. The county was too cheap to put up even one streetlight, but the full moon shining on the snow was plenty bright to see it all. And top it all off, it was bitter cold.
He was behind the courthouse now. That was one building that would last a while—solid granite head to toe, and decked out like a wedding cake with arches and pillars and gables and a dome half the size of old Mount Ayawisgi.
Louise was standing in the back doorway, with about four coats on and a big white hat over her big white hair. He rolled down his window.
“Hey, you want a ride to your car?”
“Thanks, Wade, but I’m just looking for Eliza.”
“So, what’s her problem?” Wade said. “She said ten words the whole night, and they were all ‘I vote no.’ That’s what we have to look forward to for four years?”
“It was her first meeting, and nobody said a single thing to her except you being mean.”
“You were expecting Joe to give her a kiss? He looked like he was going to slug her there at the end.”
“And you and Randy carrying on,” she said. “You’re all terrible. She was probably scared to death.”
“Not her. Hey, weren’t we supposed to swear her in or something?”
“Patsy said she refuses to take oaths. So Joe said to skip it.”
“Whatever.” He glanced up the street. For Pete’s sake. . . . “Hey Louise, here she comes.”
And there she came, all right, Eliza Gulotsky, looking like an unmade bed. Her hair straight out in every direction, and whatever she was wearing for a coat looking more like a ratty old quilt.
In his mirror he saw Louise coming out to meet her, and then he had a chance to think about the real bombshell.
Gold River Highway, and that was no joke. Where in the world did that come from? He’d have to call Charlie.
But first the Big Decision. Which way to get home? Option A, drive south three miles down Marker Highway to the interstate, drive twelve miles north, around the mountain, to the Gold Valley exit, and drive five miles back south on Gold River Highway to his house. Option B, one mile north on Hemlock through Mountain View and past Randy and all his cousins, two miles on Ayawisgi Road over the mountain to the south end of Gold River Highway, and north one more mile home.
Four miles or twenty miles, and the twenty would be faster because Ayawisgi was the mountain road that cars had nightmares about. Dirt road made it sound better than it was. Washboard dust or foot deep mud, and about twenty hairpins—the only good thing about it was the views, and those were looking out over sheer drops without guardrails. Someday, someone was going over one of those cliffs.
There it was up there, old Ayawisgi itself, shining under the moon. Nobody even knew what the name meant. It looked like a big pile of snow looming over the town, right in the way of everything and no use to anybody.
Except . . . people want to live in the mountains, and Ayawisgi was one big mountain, and that’s why he was here. Somebody had to sell the people their big, beautiful, expensive mountain homes.
Gold River Highway! He was still dialing through the possibilities. Putting Gold River Highway over the mountain would make those houses a lot more accessible, and a lot more expensive.
What a wondrous thing a road was. Wardsville might be dilapidated and Gold Valley might be more speculation than reality, but a road would change everything. Wardsville would be worth developing, and Gold Valley would explode. This was big bucks. Real big bucks. And he had to make that call to Charlie in Raleigh.
That meant option A, the interstate, because cell phones were out of luck on the mountain, except at the very top. He pointed the Yukon south.
“It is too cold!” Louise set herself right down in front of the television. Byron was watching some basketball game. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold.” She hadn’t even taken off her coats.
“Fix yourself some hot cocoa,” he said. Just the thought of it made her tingle.
“I think I will.”
“And while you’re at it . . .”
She jumped right back up and marched into the kitchen. And stopped. Goodness sakes!
“You couldn’t have even put the food away?”
“Forgot.”
That Byron. To think she’d put up with him for forty years. “Then I’m going to be a while.” Angie said they should get a dishwasher, but Louise could wash dishes just fine, and she enjoyed doing it. She put some milk on the stove to heat. “Eliza Gulotsky was there tonight.”
“It’s a disgrace,” Byron said. The television room was just across the hall from the kitchen and most of their talking was through the two doorways.
“Oh, it isn’t! It’s sad about Mort, but besides that there’s no harm her being there. And I told her to come in to the salon and visit.” She had the sink filled with soapy hot water and she put her hands deep down into it and just stood and felt the warm go all through her.
“What’d she say?”
“She said it would be splendid. That was what she said.” Louise put the plates and cups in the drainer and took a good stiff scrubber from under the sink to do the pots. She had to concentrate. Everything had dried on, but it was her own fault, leaving it for Byron. He wouldn’t have known where to start!
But there hadn’t been a minute to spare and Joe couldn’t abide anyone being late.
Wade turned onto the bridge, downtown Wardsville arrayed in all its glory behind him along the Fort Ashe River. It was almost quaint in the moonlight. Just as long as a person didn’t look too close. Quaint and derelict were about three steps apart, and this place had already taken two of them.
What they needed was a good flood to get rid of a few buildings and clean off the rest.
At the far end was mighty King Food with its seven, count them, seven aisles of groceries. Cornelia drove all the way to Asheville instead of setting foot in that dump.
Time to call Raleigh. “I want to talk to Charlie.” Right after the Fort Ashe bridge, the road got in range of a cell tower for a mile.
He’d covered half of it before he finally heard, “Charlie Ryder.”
“Hey, boss, it’s Wade. I was at the supervisors’ meeting tonight and something came up.”
“Zoning again?”
“No. A road. The road from Gold Valley over the mountain into Wardsville.”
No answer.
“Charlie, are you there?” It was dead. This was too hard. No use trying in these hills—he needed to be on the interstate if he was going to have a phone conversation. So he got himself to the interstate, and didn’t waste time doing it.
But he still had enough time to think. Charlie always had some deal up his sleeve. Usually too many deals. The more Wade thought about Gold River Highway, the more it was starting to look like a setup.
Right when he hit the ramp, his phone rang.
“What road did you say?” Charlie said.
Yeah, and hello to you, too. “Gold River Highway into Wardsville. Brand-new paved highway.”
“They said that at the meeting?”
“It’s some special funding from the state,” Wade said. “It’s just a chance, though, not a sure thing.”
“I want that road.”
“I know, Charlie.” Like talking to a three-year-old. “That’s why I called. Do you know anything about it?”
There was static. “I couldn’t hear you,” Charlie was saying.
“I’m just saying, if you’re going to fix something in Raleigh, you could let me know first.”
“You just take care of it at your end,” Charlie said. “I could start two hundred houses up there the minute that road is announced.”
“I know. But we don’t have the money yet. We’re just asking Raleigh for it.”
“I’ll take care of Raleigh.”
“It’ll still have to be approved here, too.”
“Then approve it.”
“It’s not easy. We have to vote on it. The Board of Supervisors.”
“Aren’t you a supervisor or something?”
“One of five.”
“Then fix it with the others, who are they, anyway?”
“That’s why it would have been nice to have a little warning. Just a minute.” He set the phone down to pass a truck. And take a deep breath. “Okay, here it goes. I represent Gold Valley. That’s one yes vote. Randy McCoy represents Wardsville. He’ll vote against it because it’ll come right down into his neighborhood.”
“Does it have to?”
“That’s what they say.”
“So forget him for now. Who else?”
“Joe Esterhouse is a tobacco farmer, and his district is all the farms around Marker. He doesn’t care, he’ll vote for it. Louise Brown will probably vote for it. Her district is southeast—it’s called Coble.”
“That’s enough votes?”
“Maybe. When all the people in Mountain View in Wardsville start unloading on her, she could change her mind. She’s pretty touchy-feely.”
“Who’s the fifth?”
“Eliza Gulotsky. Nutcase, certified. She just got elected as the at-large member and it was her first meeting. She’ll vote no. Unless maybe it’s a full moon or her tea leaves tell something different.”
“Then work on the other lady.”
“And besides, Joe the farmer, he’s eighty. He’ll vote yes if he lives long enough, but the guy could keel over tomorrow. That’s what happened to Mort, the other geezer. He was the guy before Eliza. They found him in his barn, heart attack or stroke or something. Too bad, he would have voted for the road.”
“Get that lady’s vote,” Charlie said. “Is there any way to persuade her?”
“I’ve already thought about it, Charlie. I don’t think so. It would probably backfire.”
“Well, do whatever you need to, a deal or cash or anything. Five thousand would be nothing.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Hey, bribe me. I’d take five thousand.”
“I already own you, Wade.”
You don’t— Wade bit off his answer, just barely. “Look, Charlie, tell you what. After the vote, I’m coming back to Raleigh.”
“You’re moving back?”
“Cornelia’s a sport, but we’ve both had enough. Four years.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Yeah. Once the road’s built you won’t need me to sell houses up here. Everybody in the office there will want to. You can take your pick.”
“Then get the road built.”
“I will.”
Somehow.
The milk was hot, so Louise put it in two mugs with some cocoa and marshmallows. She gave Byron his and settled herself back into her big soft chair, and there they were, two big marshmallows themselves.
It was just a little room and filled with cute things, and she loved it. New houses didn’t have shiny varnished paneling like this, or the red linoleum in the kitchen that looked like a brick floor. It was all so cozy.
The basketball game was ending on the television.
“And you’ll never guess what we voted on tonight,” she said. “They might go ahead and put through Gold River Highway over the mountain.”
“Believe it when I see it.”
“Well, sure. It probably won’t happen. But you should have seen Randy and Wade, like cats and dogs.”
“I see plenty of that every day at the furniture factory,” Byron said. “And I can read it in the newspaper if I want to, and I won’t want to.”
“I’ll want to see what Luke puts in his newspaper,” Louise said. “He sure got excited about the road.”
The news had come on. She stared and listened for a minute. “Oh, turn it off. I don’t want to hear that.”
It seemed like every night it was the same pictures and the same story. “He’ll be all right,” Byron said.
“I still worry. And Angie does, too.”
“Matt can take care of himself.”
“I don’t like him being there . . . wherever that is.”
“Baghdad. In a big army base.”
“Angie says we should get a computer so he could send us e-mails. He sends her one every day.”
“She’s his mother. And who’d show you how to use a computer?” That was about the last thing Byron would spend money on.
“I could learn,” she said. “The girls at the salon could show me. They send e-mails.”
“It’s a bunch of nonsense. They had computers at the furniture factory and they never worked right.”
She was up again, taking the mugs, and she patted his shiny bald head. “I think you’re the one who doesn’t work right, you old stick-in-the-mud.”
“It’s the computers. When Jeremy left, nobody took care of them.”
“Well, can’t Mr. Coates find someone else who likes computers?”
“He wouldn’t want to. It was Jeremy that put them in. Mr. Coates never trusted computers. That’s part of why the two of them fell out, Jeremy always wanting to change things around and Mr. Coates not wanting any of it. When Jeremy left, Mr. Coates took them all out.”
“Those two. It’s a shame they can’t get along.”
“No one can fight like a father and his son,” Byron said. “And those computers were one more bone between them.”
She was tired of fighting. “There are too many bones, and mine are tired. I’m getting ready for bed.”
January 3, Tuesday
Randy McCoy was having a somewhat unpleasant morning.
“Now look, Everett,” he was saying, but it wasn’t much use, as the gentleman was not listening.
“You voted for it?”
“It wasn’t exactly that I voted for it . . .”
“It says right here that you did.” Everett Colony slapped the newspaper with the back of his hand, and Randy knew just how the poor thing felt.
“It was just a first vote,” Randy said. “It had already passed, and you know I don’t like voting against everyone else.”
Dr. Colony was only getting angrier. “Then why are you on the board? If that road comes through Mountain View, it’ll destroy the place.”
“There’s no cause for alarm. It was just one vote, to apply to get the funds, and there’s not much chance of that happening.”
Randy was hunched up over his desk, the way he usually was when a constituent had come to his office to express his or her views, because it seemed to lessen the impact of the blows. Not real blows, it hadn’t come to that—yet, of course.
He’d always leaned back when he was selling insurance, but this old wooden chair was none too stable. Once he’d been elected to the board and started getting to hear so many people’s opinions, he’d worked out that having his elbows up on the desk made him feel more steady.
“That road better not happen.”
“I really don’t think it will, Everett.” It would not be good for Everett to have a heart attack or a stroke right at this minute since he was the main doctor here in town and it was a long way to the hospital in Asheville. “Every county in the state’s going to be grabbing at that money, and we were late off the starting line anyway.”
“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.”