Road to Nowhere (38 page)

August 19, Saturday

“I told Wade I wanted to meet you.”

Eliza sat and rocked in the porch shade, and Cornelia Harris rocked beside her. “What did he say?”

Cornelia laughed. “You know Wade. He said, ‘Go ahead. I don’t think she’s contagious.’ ”

“That is just like him!” They both were laughing. But Cornelia was like the leaves that had opened so joyously before but were now full-grown and drying and tired.

So Eliza led them beneath the leaves, through the trees, and they walked. And they talked. They talked about Wade and his ways, and the girls Meredith and Lauren, and her life now. Both of their lives.

“You were married . . .” Cornelia said.

“Yes,” Eliza said. “I was.”

“And now?”

“He died.”

“Tell me.”

“His name was Card.” He was old, very old. His wife had died and he wanted someone to keep his house. Eliza had been old herself, past marrying age, and Card talked to her father. That was how it was done back in the mountains, back in time.

Her father had been of the old people, the ones who lived there long before houses and roads, and Card had been, too. But also mixed with early white settlers.

“Was that all right?”

“It was very right.”

Her husband had wanted more than someone to care for him. He himself had wanted someone to care for.

Then five years later she moved back as a widow to her father’s cabin, this cabin, empty by then. She and little Jeanie.

“And I’m still here.”

August 26, Saturday

“Well, well, this is all fairly interesting, if I understand it,” Randy said, looking at the letter from Asheville.

“What is it?” Sue Ann asked.

“All those letters the lawyers have been sending about the Trinkle farm. I sent them to our own lawyer down in Asheville, and it looks like he speaks the same language that those Trinkle lawyers do. Did you ever know any of those Trinkles, Sue Ann?”

“They were all gone out of the county, weren’t they?”

“As far as I remember, they were. There was old Hermann back fifty years ago, and his sons with the German names that were our parents’ age, and they were the ones who all moved out, and their children, the ones that are our age, that are the ones that have always been fighting over the farm, I don’t think they were even raised here.”

“But they owned that big farm in Gold Valley.”

“Somehow or other they did, not that they could ever agree on how. But according to this letter, those other letters were saying that they finally had agreed last year, and all their lawsuits were being dropped.”

“Then it didn’t matter that you never did anything with those letters.”

“Well . . . well, maybe we should have. Because it looks like their lawyers were asking us to clear up a few matters on our end about the deed, although I’m not sure we could have, anyway, as they go back to the Civil War or earlier, and I know we don’t have any such records.”

“The Civil War! That far back?”

“That far. Isn’t that something? So we never answered, and I guess they just decided not to worry about it.” Randy leaned back into his armchair, grateful as ever for it. “I’ll give this letter to Patsy and see if there’s anything we want to do with it. And I wonder if it’s going to stay warm much longer.” He turned on his television to hear the weather.

“Weather Seven!” the weather man was just saying. “Here’s the radar, and just a little rain there south, toward Spartanburg. Should be cool tonight. Our first hint of fall! Low sixties in most of the region and maybe fifties high in the mountains. Warmer tomorrow. Let’s look at the map.”

“We’ll close the windows tonight,” Randy said to Sue Ann.

“I’ll get some extra blankets out,” she said.

“And here’s the tropics. Let me introduce you to Grant, who just got qualified as a tropical storm. Someone to keep an eye on.”

August 28, Monday

Steve stared at the living room floor.

“There was a tornado?”

Natalie looked up at him from the sofa.

“Three tornadoes.”

He stepped over the Legos, around the cars, dodged the doll house.

“It was completely clean when I went into my office.”

“That was three hours ago.”

“Three hours?” He looked at his watch. Five o’clock. “So what’s for supper?”

She didn’t answer right away.

“Fish sticks,” she said, finally. “When are they going to build that new shopping center? Will it have a pizza takeout?”

“A couple years.” Five o’clock! “I want to see the weather.” He turned the television on. “So where are the tornadoes now?”

“They went thataway.” She pointed toward the bedrooms.

“. . . and there it is, folks, Hurricane Grant. We’re guessing landfall Friday or Saturday, and it could be anywhere between Daytona Beach and Maryland.”

August 29, Tuesday

“I don’t know how long we can do it!” Byron said. “And I can’t believe what it must be costing, all the overtime and the wood and the lacquer and all. And we’re just piling furniture up in the warehouse out back.”

“Isn’t anyone buying it?”

“Oh, they’re calling all their customers and trying to get it out the door. Must be offering all kinds of discounts to move it.”

“And does anyone know why?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

He didn’t real often, so Louise listened close.

“You know,” Byron said, “he told us about needing that road and the zoning to sell the factory, so they could expand it. Well—I think he’s trying to show that the factory can build as much furniture as anybody would want, just the way it is.”

“I think you’re right, Byron! That makes perfect sense.”

“Wouldn’t need another row of saws if the ones there work three shifts a day.”

“Would they? For month after month?”

“I’d hate to be part of it,” he said.

“But he still doesn’t have anyone to buy the furniture.”

“And I don’t know how he’ll pay the bills when they’re due.”

Byron turned on the television. The weather had just started.

“. . . and now, we’re looking at it coming ashore about midway between Jacksonville and Savannah and following a track inland northwest from there, probably just missing Atlanta on the east side. And up here in western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, if it gets caught up in this low-pressure system, it could just stall out for a couple days.”

August 30, Wednesday

“Mr. Carter? This is Patsy, at the courthouse. Joe said to call you. There’s a man from Asheville who needs to talk with a board member, and Joe thought you should.”

“Who is it?”

“Mr. McDonald. He’s with the State Department of Emergency Services. He wants to talk about flood emergency plans.”

“Okay, I’ll call him.”

Beautiful day out there. Blue skies, puffy clouds. Life was nice. Who needed a grocery store?

“Emergency Services, Angus McDonald.”

Angus?

“Hi. I’m Steve Carter with the Jefferson County Board of Supervisors. I’m supposed to call you?”

“Hi, Steve. Thanks for calling. The subject is Hurricane Grant.”

“Okay. Good.”

“We’re being proactive here. The department is contacting all local governments to coordinate emergency planning.”

“I’ve been following it,” Steve said. “What are you forecasting?”

“We’re just watching the Weather Channel like you are.”

“It sounds like a lot of rain.”

“Exactly. I’ve been looking at hydrology reports for the Gold and Fort Ashe valleys. I don’t want to sound too technical.
Hydrology
basically means groundwater.”

“I was looking at some of that data this morning, too,” Steve said. “We’re on a fifty-year high for precipitation since March, and the water tables are probably as high as they can get. The last thunderstorm caused flash floods. I even did some ground conductance testing with my kids— kind of a science project.”

“Uh . . . really?”

“Yeah. Way high. Not that it was real precise, but this was the third year we’ve done it, so we have sort of a baseline.”

“I see.” Mr. McDonald sounded amused. “Then I guess you don’t need me to tell you what a major rain event is going to do.”

“I can guess,” Steve said. “But I don’t have any way to run a real simulation. Do you have some scenarios?”

“We do. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

“Try the good news.”

“Okay. Hurricane Grant might miss you to the west, and you’ll get two inches of rain.”

“I’ll take that,” Steve said. “What’s the bad news?”

“Well . . . Grant slides down the low-pressure trough and stalls right over your head. Complete worst-case scenario if that happens: a five-hundred-year flood.”

The worst flood in five hundred years.

“But,” Angus said, “the planning scenario is a fifty-year flood.”

“The last one was twenty-nine years ago.”

“Then it’s a twenty-nine-year flood.”

“What does that translate to for river levels?”

“Hard to say,” McDonald said. “Ten to twenty feet I’d guess. What are your flood plains like?”

“Mostly good. Gold River is pretty clear. There are just a few structures in the actual plain, and the main bridge is the interstate, and it’s way high up. The Fort Ashe has more buildings. The most vulnerable place is Wardsville itself. The first buildings are about nine feet up.”

“Okay. What’s your plan?”

Steve smiled to himself, one of those ironic Humphrey Bogart smiles. “Basically cross our fingers and hope it’s not too bad.”

“That’s your flood emergency procedure?”

“I just wrote it this summer. I added the part about crossing our fingers.”

“That’s probably not going to do.”

“This is a really sparse county, Angus. Low population, low budget, on the edge of economically depressed. There’s not much we can do.”

“I think I need to come up for a visit.”

“We’d be honored,” Steve said.

“I’ll put you on the list. How about Friday night? It’s getting real busy around here.”

August 31, Thursday

“What a pile of furniture,” Byron said. “Desks, hutches, tables, everything. I never saw the like.”

Louise was just settling into her chair. At least he’d waited until after supper and the kitchen was clean.

“Is it enough?” she asked. “That he wouldn’t need the new road?”

“Road? I don’t know. I only know it’s about killing us all.”

“Because I was reading today about the shopping center. Luke God-dard wrote a big long article in the newspaper about how those new shopping places destroy historic downtowns like ours.”

“It says what?”

“And that’s why I don’t want any road,” she said.

“What historic downtown?”

“Wardsville.”

“I wouldn’t give a nickel for downtown Wardsville. It’s the factory that’s important, and Mr. Coates sure wants the road.”

“It’s not his salon that’ll get put out of business.”

“There’s more to this town than your salon.”

“There is,” she said. “And they’ll all be put out of business, too.”

“The furniture factory might be out of business without the road.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“And you’d love to shop at those new stores they’d build up there.”

She sniffed “Not when they’re built over all my friends’ graves.”

“Graves? What are you talking about?”

“That’s what the newspaper called it.”

“For crying out loud! That’s the most fool thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. And besides, how could I shop there anyway? With the salon closed, I wouldn’t have a penny to spend.”

“Are you saying I can’t take care of my own house and family?”

“But it wouldn’t be my money.”

“If I’m out of a job at the factory, then what would we do?”

She really was about to cry. “I don’t want to talk about it any more. It’s the most terrible thing that could ever happen to this county.”

“What’ll I tell Mr. Coates?”

“Just tell him whatever you want! I said I don’t want to talk about it! He can just take his old factory and make it a salon itself, for all I care.”

“Turn the factory into a salon? Are you crazy?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!”

“You say that and then you keep talking about it!”

“I’m not saying anything else. Except I don’t want any road.”

“Louise!”

The weather report was just coming on the television.

“. . . big storm coming! Batten down the hatches, folks, because it’s going to be a monster!”

County landfill. Joe said the sand pile was out here. Steve parked at the end of the dirt road. Yep, landfill. What a smell.

Whoa, right there—that was a pile of sand, all right. He started pacing it off with his wheel measure, estimating angles. Fourteen feet in the center? At least twelve.

He’d do calculations when he got home, but he was already doing them in his head. Pretty much a cone—pi times radius squared times height, divided by three—at least seven hundred cubic meters.

Utility building. He had the key. Stuff, stuff, stuff, there. Burlap bags. Tied bundles. Ten bundles, fifteen, twenty—seventy-five, eighty—a hundred thirty—two hundred fifty bundles. Twenty bags per bundle. Okay.

Driving to Wardsville. How to get all those tons of sand from back there to town? Where to put them?

Take a walk through downtown. Figure out a line—keep the elevation constant, but shortest distance. He had his wheel measure—okay, so here’s the geek taking his little wheel for a walk around town.

He’d check his calculations and the topo maps back home, but it was pretty obvious how this was going to work. If it was going to work.

“That was Patsy,” Randy said to Sue Ann, setting down the telephone. “There’s a man coming up from Asheville tomorrow night, and Joe said we’ll have a board meeting to hear him.”

Last edge of sunset slipping behind the mountain. Sky was clear except off to the south. Mostly stars. Moon wouldn’t be up for hours to come.

Joe focused on the stars.

Sky was full of them. Once in a while he thought about how far away they were. A man could almost feel the earth turning under his feet, looking up at a sky of stars.