Road to Nowhere (23 page)

“Everett Colony target shooting? In his own backyard? Randy, that’s the looniest thing I ever heard.”

Randy took a good slow swallow. “I’d have thought so, too, but it’s just one of those things, finding a bullet there, and I was curious.”

“Do you have it?”

“What?”

“The bullet.”

“What bu . . . oh, of course. Yes, of course I do. Right here.”

He held it out to Gordon, and the man took it and frowned. “Not Everett’s. This is a rifle bullet, and he only has a little handgun.” He kept looking at it. “At least, that’s what he has the permit for. He might have a whole arsenal of rifles in his living room, for all I know, just not any permits to carry them concealed.”

“I doubt that. I expect you were right the first time, it isn’t Everett’s. And that means I don’t know whose it is, but I’m not really so concerned about it anyway.”

“Did it hit anything?”

“It . . . it might have, I don’t really know—”

But Gordon was still staring at the bullet.

“Mind if I keep it?”

Randy was wishing he hadn’t stopped in. “Now, why would I mind? I don’t have any reason to hold on to something like that, and it hardly counts as mine, anyway, as I was just the one who happened to find it.”

“Thank you, Randy.”

Gordon Hite swung around in the narrow hallway and clumped back the way he’d come.

And that was a relief, not that it had been but just the wildest of thoughts, anyway, to know that it hadn’t been Everett shooting a gun at his car. Well, not that the bullet maybe even had anything to do with the broken windshield anyway. It might have been in that seat for years. Maybe a stray from someone hunting.

“We actually met this guy,” Jeanie said, her words like the spicy scents hanging about them. Eliza was rocking beside the woodstove. There was not wood piled in it but a mass of field flowers instead, a daisy blaze.

“The one who got killed?” Zach asked.

“See?” She held up the newspaper. “He was in my raft, back a couple months ago.”

“I don’t remember. You knew him, right, Eliza?”

“Yes. I knew him.” So much was in the air, the scent of every herb and fruit and grain in the store. And Eliza’s own thoughts.

“He was a real estate salesman,” Zach said, “and he worked for the developer that’s cutting all the roads on the mountain. Sounds pretty slimy.”

“He crashed in his SUV,” Jeanie said.

“Live by the sword, die by the sword. So do you get to kick all those guys out of the county?”

“I don’t know,” Eliza said. “I don’t know what I can do. I don’t know what I’ve done so far.”

“Have you ever stayed for one of her meetings?” Jeanie asked.

“No way,” Zach said. “I can’t think of anything worse.”

“Mother, what do you do at those things, anyway?”

Eliza shrugged. “They all talk so much. I listen.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I still think it’s crazy,” Zach said. “Eliza getting elected. I mean, it was kind of cool, filling in the forms and getting the signatures. I never thought she’d win.”

“If I’d known you were going to win, Mother,” Jeanie said, “I would have stopped Zach right at the beginning.”

“What was meant to be, is.” Eliza had put her own doubts aside.

Zach smiled. “Oh, right. The Powers and the Ancestors. Who was the chief, again?”

“Her great-grandfather,” Jeanie said. “Follower-of-the-Wind.”

“Right. Grandpa Follow-the-Wind.”

“It is my place to be on the council,” Eliza said. “It was my ancestors’ place.”

“To be on the Jefferson County Board of Supervisors?” Zach said.

“To be an elder.” Zach was a joy to her, but he was of his own world, and he didn’t understand hers. “And it has come to me. It is all for a purpose.”

Randy leaned back in his desk chair. There was no danger of desk pounding or loudly spoken viewpoints. There was just Louise.

“Now, this is a treat,” he said. “Whatever do I owe this honor to?”

“Oh, Randy.” She smiled, but of course for Louise that was hardly unusual. “That’s nice of you to say.” But then the smile lost a bit of its brightness. “I wonder if you got one of these?”

She handed him two papers folded like they’d been in an envelope, and he took them a little carefully, considering the way she was handling them. Then he started reading them, and then he started making sense of them.

“They came in the mail?” he asked.

“But there was no name on the envelope. And marked in yellow just like that.”

“For goodness’ sake.”

At least no one was pounding on the desk. But it might as well have been.

“Let me get this straight,” he said when he thought that was how he had it. “There’s a state law from—let’s see—” he checked the paragraph reference—“from 1970 that says that a person serving on a county Board of Supervisors by appointment, which I suppose means he was appointed and not elected, that that person can’t vote on state-funded road projects unless he’s been on the board for at least six months.”

“That’s what Byron and I decided it meant. But I don’t know why they even have a law like that.”

Randy was thinking about that. “Well, I might guess. I’d think it was to prevent shenanigans. Now think . . . say an important vote was coming up and it was going to be close. If somehow a person could be forced off the board, the members who were left could maybe appoint that person’s successor based on how they thought the new person might vote on the issue coming up. So this law would keep that person from voting for six months.”

“But just on roads.”

“Well, I can think of two reasons for that. One is, roads are the main thing the state has a say over, and so that’s why the state government could make a law about county supervisors voting. And the other reason is, about nothing makes as much trouble as roads.”

“That’s the truth, Randy.” Louise was looking genuinely sad. “Now, why would someone send us those papers?”

“They didn’t send them to me.”

“I don’t understand that, either.”

“I think I’ll guess about that, too. I’d say whoever it was that sent you that is for Gold River Highway, because it’s really about Gold Valley having a vote, which would be a yes. And since people probably think I’m leaning toward a no, it wouldn’t do any good to send that letter to me.”

“For goodness’ sakes. I’d have never thought.”

“That’s what so special about you, Louise.” Which was the truth. “But what do you think we should do?”

“About the papers?”

“About a new board member.”

“Oh—my! Well, that’s right. We do need to do something.”

“Or else we don’t,” Randy said. It was an interesting point, that if they didn’t appoint someone right away, that would be the last word on the highway. There’d only be four voters, and two of them would be Eliza and himself. “If you don’t mind, I’ll make a copy of those pages.”

“Hi, Joe, it’s Louise.”

“Good afternoon.” There was wood to be split and that would take till dinnertime. No time for talking on the telephone.

“Sorry to call on the phone, but we need to talk.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“Whether we need to appoint someone to the board at the next meeting.”

So they’d mailed her one, too. Made him sick.

“Don’t like being hurried.”

“Well, I don’t, either. But I found out there’s a state law that I hadn’t known about before.”

“I got the letter.”

“Oh.” That took her a minute to work out. “Oh, well then you know about it.”

“I do.”

“Now, Joe, I know what you’re thinking. And I think you’re right, that it’s an awful thing to send out those letters without saying who they’re from, and they even sent mine to Louisa Brown instead of Louise. But that doesn’t mean we should just ignore them.”

He’d prefer to. “I understand.”

“And I think it’s about being fair. I think Gold Valley deserves a vote on the highway, and they won’t get it unless we appoint someone in June. Now, I did talk to Randy about it.”

Randy McCoy wouldn’t be thinking about fairness. “Imagine he wasn’t in a hurry, either.”

“Well, you know Randy. It’s hard to ever get him to decide on a thing. But what do you think, Joe? Do you think it’s important?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, I think it is. And I think we shouldn’t let it go by. We should decide to either appoint someone or not.”

“Who do you think that might be?”

“For goodness’ sake. Joe, I don’t know. It would have to be someone in Gold Valley, wouldn’t it? Of course it would. Who do we know over there?”

There was work to be done outside.

“I’d have to think it over,” he said finally.

“Oh—well, I think we all should think about it. And if I think of anybody, I’ll call you back.”

They hung up their telephones, and he frowned at his. He’d rather he didn’t even have one. Never anything good came from it.

Then he took himself outside in the sun. It helped his disposition to do that. Rose was in the garden.

He looked into the tool shed and took down his axe. Two old trees from down by the creek that had fallen in the April winds. They were easier to split green, but there hadn’t been time with planting. They’d been half dead anyway. They’d be dry enough to burn by December.

Leonard Darlington from the next farm over had cut them down to length. Joe didn’t use chainsaws anymore. But he could still split wood.

It was his daddy’s heavy old axe he used, and he kept it sharp. Most logs snapped right apart with one strike.

That was a big pile of wood. Could be discouraging to look at, but he just took one piece at a time. Then another. And another.

The goal wasn’t to finish, it was to just not stop. Finishing would take care of itself. That was from his daddy, too.

Rose had gone in to start dinner.

The pile of split wood was getting bigger. Might not get it all this afternoon, but at least there’d be an afternoon’s worth done.

Just lift the axe. It could do it’s own falling, and the logs cracked, one and then another.

If they put another man on the board, then that just might be another accident, and another funeral. Particularly if the man was voting for the road.

“I heard you’re picking someone to replace Wade Harris.”

Randy stared at the telephone plain confused, partly for what the person was saying, but mostly for not even knowing who the person was.

“Now, you’ll have to give me just a second,” he said, not wanting to offend someone who might be a client or a constituent. “And just to be fair, as I said who I was when I picked up the telephone, I think I should have the honor of knowing who it is I’m talking to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh.” That had been just enough more of the voice to recognize it. “Now, you need to say,
This is Luke Goddard
, when you call someone. Like I said, it’s only fair, especially if I’ve already told you who I am.”

“But I know who you are. I called your number. Who else is going to answer? And who are you picking? That’s why I called.”

“Well, no one that I know of, not yet anyway.”

“But what about Gold Valley having a vote on the road?”

Randy was still feeling reasonably confused, but he could think fast enough to realize what that meant.

“Now, Luke, how do you know about that law?”

“State law is public information. But I asked Louise when you’d pick somebody, and she said you had to do it this month, and she said she’d told you, too. So what are you going to do? You have to pick somebody at the next board meeting or else Gold Valley doesn’t get a vote.”

“I hardly want to say a thing for fear of what you’re going to put in that newspaper of yours.”

“
No comment.
Got it. Is that with an exclamation point, or a comma followed by some excuse?”

“Luke! That’s not what I said.”

“Or maybe you won’t appoint anybody. That would about kill the road, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Luke.”

“In my article, I’ll be sure to mention that you made that point.”

“Then have Eliza say it. Nobody will call her to complain. Anybody besides me. And that’s made me think of a question for you.”

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

“Well, answer this one. When you were in the courthouse there a couple weeks ago and I was asking you to quote somebody else, you said you were going to be talking to Wade Harris. Did you ever catch up with him?”

“No. It was going to be that day of the board meeting. He called and said he had to show a house. So he never came into town.”

“Joe?” Rose looked into the front room, where he was reading. “It’s Louise on the telephone.”

“Take a message, if you don’t mind.”

He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just hope he was wrong about it all.

Couldn’t call Gordon Hite. Might as well not have a sheriff.

Mort Walker and Wade Harris. Two men dead. Two board members dead who’d have voted for the road.

The fool road.

“Joe. Louise said to give you this name. Stephen Carter. She said if that sounded good to you, she’d leave it to you to talk to him.”

“Carter. I suppose.”

“Is that for the board?”

“It is.”

“You’d put someone new on?”

“Louise wants to.”

“He’d be voting for the road.”

“Likely he would be.”

“Can you stop it?”

“Might be that Randy and Eliza will.” What else was there to do? It was like a room filled with smoke. Trying to see what was good and evil, and what was true, and it was all hidden.

“I wonder who owns that land, anyway,” he said.

May 17, Wednesday

A beautiful spring day for a walk. But Randy hadn’t enjoyed it, mostly because the walk had been just over a couple blocks to Everett Colony’s house. All things considered, it seemed best to break the news himself, before Everett read it in the newspaper.

“This does it then!” Everett waved the papers under Randy’s nose. “Gold Valley won’t have a vote.”

“Louise Brown is thinking we’d appoint someone this next meeting.” Randy said.

A cloud passed over the sun. A thundercloud.

“She’s trying to stack the board,” Everett growled. “She’s decided to vote for the road, and she knows Joe Esterhouse will. She has to get one more yes vote, so she’s going to appoint one.”