Road to Nowhere (28 page)

“What’s that got to do with this?”

“I don’t know! That’s why I’m asking.”

She waited.

“My family?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got a wife.”

“What is her name?”

“Miranda.”

“And do you have a son?” Eliza asked.

All of the softening was gone. The anger and the hardness had returned.

“What is his name?”

“Jeremy.” He put all of the anger and hardness into the name, but he was suddenly emptied, rocking slowly in the chair on her porch, with the stream speaking comfort, and the breezes peace.

Eliza waited.

“His name is Jeremy,” Mr. Coates said again, but there was no anger left. Just pain.

“Joe, I have been wanting to see you.” Louise smiled her biggest smile.

“Then I guess you are.”

She ignored his silly old scowl. “I guess I am.” And when he turned to look at Patsy, she didn’t let him get away with it. “And don’t you fuss at her. I told her that she had to call me the next time you set foot in the courthouse, so it’s not her fault.”

“Then what’s on your mind?”

“Just this mop of old white hair.” She couldn’t help saying it. And he just stared, annoyed with her as ever. “Let’s find a room,” she said, when she thought they’d both had enough. “I want to ask you something.”

“Tell me about him,” Eliza said.

“Well, what’s there to tell? The boy’s a hotheaded fool.”

“What has he done?”

“I don’t know why I’m saying all this.”

“But I want to know.” Eliza made her voice as peaceful as the calming water. “Please tell me.”

“He’s always been impatient. Never would listen, never would be satisfied. Finally just walked out.”

“Walked out . . . of where?”

“The business. Hasn’t hardly been back since. Even left town.”

“He moved away?”

“Far as I hear, anyway. Asheville.”

“Now, Joe.” They were in the county records room at the end of the hall. She wasn’t about to sit in one of the chairs around that old wood table, covered with a lot more dust than Patsy should have let accumulate, so they were standing by the door among the filing cabinets and boxes of copying machine paper, and a bucket and mop, and an old typewriter, and a shelf of staples and paper clips and such.

“I know you make your own decisions and let the rest of us make ours.” She folded her arms and looked him right straight on. “But you have some explaining to do.”

“Jeremy . . . you wanted him to be with you at your business.”

“It’s natural, isn’t it? Thought we’d work together, and he’d take over after me. But he was too impatient. Always wanting to have his own way. Thinks he knows everything.

“So now he’s on his own, and I’d say good riddance. But he’s not letting go! He’s threatened me, and worse, acting the fool. I had to call the sheriff. Gordon Hite says he didn’t have anything to do with Wade Harris, but I still wouldn’t put it past him, not after what he did to Randy’s car, and to mine. So then he said he’d burn my factory down. My own son.”

Eliza waited.

“But that’s not the concern here,” Roland Coates said. He had closed the door. “And you don’t know what I’m talking about anyway. It’s the road.” He leaned toward her, and the peace between them was forced back. “Now, I guess you’ve heard, too, about selling the factory. Everybody’s heard. Well, I’m going to. Not for what it’s worth, but it’s enough.”

“Yes. I’ve heard this said.”

“And I need that road.”

Joe just waited. Louise was thinking she’d need pliers. “I want to know why you voted against Steve Carter.”

Nothing.

“When you came to the salon that day,” she said, “I should have known you had something you were chewing on. So now we’ve got him voted on, thanks to dear Eliza, and Randy, too, which proves he’s not as bad as you think. But I cannot make sense of you.”

Not a peep out of him.

“And I have all day.” She was right between him and the door. “And you’re too much of a gentleman to push me out of the way.”

Roads and factories and “development.” They didn’t matter to her, or even have meaning. She only knew that those who spoke of them spoke with the voice of her enemy.

Her enemy. This power from outside that was contending with the Warrior. Even now the Warrior was speaking.

“The road,” she said to Mr. Coates, “and your factory. They are together.”

“Together?” He pulled back away from her. “Together? Now, who told you that?”

“You speak of them in the same way, as if they are the same.”

He was watching her as a dog would watch an unfamiliar animal— suspicious, alert, but not fearful. “Well, maybe I was.”

Then he made his decision, and came back close. “All right. Tell you what. I’ll level with you, but I don’t want this getting out. You probably don’t talk with anybody anyway. Sure the road’s important.” His voice got quieter but still was noisy and harsh. “It’s part of the deal.”

“Fool business.”

He still had a voice. Louise waited. She had him over a barrel.

“No, I’m not talking to you about it,” he said.

“That just makes me all the more determined. There is something going on here.”

“There is,” he said. “And you should just let it be.”

“Well, I’m not going to, Joe.”

“Fool business.” He was spitting the words out. Then he finally decided to let out another few words. “This fool road.”

“The deal?”

“Yeah. You see, the people that want to buy the factory. They say they’ll only do it if they can add on another set of saws and lathes. Too small as it is now. That’ll mean building another room—it’ll about double the place. But they won’t do any of that if there isn’t a road out to the interstate. Big plans, big changes, lots of hiring and jobs, lots of good for Jefferson County. More than anyone has a right to expect. We just need the road. You understand?”

Eliza didn’t understand.

“The road and the zoning,” he said. “That’s the other rub. Can’t do it the way the place is zoned now, so I’ll need that changed. Once we get the road. That’s why it’s important.”

But it was strange. She saw this man’s pain and disappointment, and she wanted to bring him healing and peace.

Yet she felt anger against him, not her own. The Warrior was against him and his road. She was saddened for him, but the great forces could not be turned back.

“Gold River Highway?” Louise said.

“I’d just as soon he didn’t get tangled in it.”

“Now, Joe, we talked about all of that. It was just the fair thing to do. Without Steve on the board, Gold Valley doesn’t have any say about the road.”

Joe fixed his stare on her like he would have melted her. “It would have been for the better.”

And that was that. Louise knew she’d pushed him as far as she could. And that last thing he’d said, somehow it made her . . . well, scared. Just from the way he’d said it.

“I don’t understand,” she said. But then she just turned and marched out the door into the hallway. She didn’t want to be there with him anymore.

She didn’t even say good-bye to Patsy. She just walked out into the sun and the hot day. And she didn’t understand.

All the families filing into the auditorium, and the band on stage playing, and everyone dressed up so nicely, and still seats left but filling up quick.

“Dad,” Kyle said, “over there.”

“Let’s sit by them,” Randy said.

The four of them edged down the row to the empty seats near the end, and there wasn’t anyone else sitting close.

“Good evening, Cornelia,” he said.

“Good evening!” She smiled at him, a real smile, but also forced. “I’m so glad to see you. Sue Ann. And these are . . . Kelly and Kyle?”

“Well, yes, they are.” So now he had to remember. “You’ve got Lauren graduating, and this is Meredith, isn’t it?” They looked so much better than at the funeral.

“Mr. McCoy was on the Board of Supervisors with your dad,” Cornelia said to the beautiful young lady next to her.

They went on a little, as was proper, and Randy did his best to make them all feel welcome, because even though the Harrises had lived in the county for four years, it was mostly Wardsville and Coble and Marker families in the auditorium that Cornelia might not know well. And then they stood with the band playing “Pomp and Circumstance” while the seniors wearing their blue gowns marched in, and listened to Stephanie Balt give her valedictory speech, and to other appropriate comments from the school officials, and then listened to names of each of the hundred forty-three seniors as they walked across the stage. There was even a special extra applause for Lauren Harris, and she waved at her mother and sister.

Then afterward out in the foyer with the lemonade there were quite a few parents who came up to Cornelia to wish her and Lauren well, and Randy stepped out of the way and talked with his own neighbors and friends.

“Randy—you know most of the people in Wardsville. Do you know Jeremy Coates?”

“Well, yes, I sure do, and I’ve known him for years, since he and I graduated together right up on that same stage, and I know his family real well, too.”

“It’s his family that owns the factory?”

“Yes, it is, although he and his father are not on good terms right at the moment. In fact, I understand he’s down in Asheville these days, last I talked to him. Now, where have you come across Jeremy?”

“I talked with him the night before Wade’s accident. He made an appointment for the next evening, before the board meeting. I believe he would have been the last one to see Wade.”

“Jeremy? Of all people. You’ve never talked to him?”

“No. I will sometime, but I’m not ready yet.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“The sheriff asked. He was filling in his forms, that was all. And— you must know Everett Colony, also.”

“Oh yes. And Wade was getting to know him, too.”

“We’ve talked about him. He came out to Wade’s office that Sunday night.”

“Everett Colony?” He didn’t say it, but that must have been some fireworks.

“Wade didn’t get to tell me what they talked about. He wasn’t talkative at all when he came home that night, and then we didn’t have a chance the next day.”

June 20, Tuesday

Steve was staring at the green binder. Charlton Heston on Mount Sinai staring at the stone tablets.

“I haven’t looked through it,” Mrs. Harris said.

He touched the thing. It felt like any other big heavy notebook.

“Well—thanks. I’m sure this’ll help.” Short pause. He’d have to force himself to pick it up.

“Do you have children, Mr. Carter?”

“Three little peanuts. Max was six last week, he’s the oldest.”

“He was in kindergarten?” She was being friendly. It made him feel a lot better.

“Natalie kept him home. It’s such a long way to the school, and we didn’t want to throw him on a bus. She’s been teaching him.”

“It was hard for Meredith and Lauren to adjust. We moved here in the middle of the school year. Meredith was in eleventh grade.”

“Will you go back to Raleigh?”

“Sometime. It’s too hard to think about.”

She looked like a faded Hollywood starlet, old and tired, a washed-out Lauren Bacall.

“If there’s ever anything we can do, we’ll be glad to,” Steve said.

He said good-bye, and then thanks, again, then another
whatever we
can do,
and then he finally got himself to shut up and leave the poor woman alone.

Not fun. He backed out of the Harrises’ driveway.

What would Natalie do if he died? Time to check the life insurance.

The binder was beside him on the car seat. Now he was kind of looking forward to going through it.

No, really, he was. Somebody had to be a geek.

He came to Gold River Highway and turned south, up the mountain. Just for fun.

Half a mile to the end of the road. The barricade was getting kind of rusty after whatever it was, seven or eight years, since the road had been built this far. And just before the
Road Closed
sign, the old dirt road branched off. He’d driven that thing maybe twice. When did they ever go into Wardsville, anyway, besides him for the meetings?

But he felt like trying it.
Trust your feelings.
Off road, here we go!

Stupid feelings. After the first quarter mile, he was ready to go back to being rational. This road was wretched. The vertical distance to the top was maybe six-hundred feet, but bouncing up and down out of ruts and holes probably doubled that. And the winding—the horizontal distance was at least tripled.

He’d have turned around if there’d been a place to.

But somehow he got to the top, and stopped.

Wow.

It was a whole new definition for
vast.
Two huge valleys, Gold River on one side and Fort Ashe River on the other. Still more of Ayawisgi towering above the gap. Fiddler Mountain etched by streams and shrouded in green. The bridge in Wardsville a little Tinkertoy, and the town itself a pile of building blocks. A couple of mottled flat spaces, way off. And mountains everywhere.
Everywhere.

Who’d have ever thought the world was flat?

And it seemed like a good place to look through Wade Harris’ papers.

Two and a half years of agendas and minutes and . . . stuff. What a tiny, mundane little world it described. Enough to drive most people off a cliff.

Scratch that. Bad thought.

But Steve himself actually found it all sort of interesting. There was the civil engineering involved. But something else. He’d seen plenty of counties where the board of supervisors was trench warfare. Every vote would be three to two, two to three. Here, it was as close to unanimous as any board with an Eliza Gulotsky on it could be.

It must be Joe. Actual leadership. How rare.

Wait, here was Wade voting no. Parking meters? Oh, right, he remembered that meeting. Everett Colony’s first appearance. Wade had lost his temper.

And here was April, Wade’s last meeting. The night the funding had been announced.

An actual handwritten note. The first one in the whole notebook. Right beside the agenda item about the road. And all it said was, “Charlie. That crook.”
Crook
underlined three times.