Road to Nowhere (3 page)

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.”