Road to Nowhere (49 page)

“Byron, are the chairs all put out?”

“The chairs are all put out.” He was watching football on the television.

“Look out the window and see if they’re here.”

“If they’re here, they’ll come in.”

She ran out to the front door to look, but there wasn’t a sign of them. Back to the dining room to count places again.

Back to the kitchen, and there was Byron standing at the sink!

“Now, what are you doing in here?” she said.

“Checking on you.”

“Well, nothing’s going right. I almost burned the rolls and now the sweet potatoes won’t be ready. Oh, Byron!” She collapsed into her chair. “It’s all terrible.”

“No it isn’t.”

“It is.” They’d be in the driveway any minute, and starving. “There isn’t even enough food for everyone.”

“Louise!”

“There isn’t.”

“There’s enough to feed an army!”

“Nothing is right.”

“Get ahold of yourself.”

She tried. She breathed in and it was almost sobs breathing out.

“Now what’s wrong?” Byron asked.

“Everything!”

“It can’t be everything.”

“It is,” she said. “Jeremy and Rose Esterhouse and Wade Harris and the factory and everything. Everybody mad at each other and the shopping center and the road. Isn’t that everything? What else is there?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

That stopped her. “You’re still on half days at the factory.”

“Mr. Coates came in today, for the first time since the shooting, and that’s a start.”

“Will he ever get over Jeremy?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “But you and I, though. We’ll see it through. Those other things aren’t what’s important.”

He was right. “We will see it through.” She took another breath, and this one came back out easier. “If you’re all right,” she said, “I guess I am, too.”

“Sue Ann, that was about the best dinner I can imagine anyone ever making for Thanksgiving.”

“It was just what we usually have,” she said.

“That might be true, but you’re still only saying the same thing I am.”

“Oh, Randy.”

“It has left me charitable to all mankind, which is a useful mood to be in when I’m looking through the newspaper. And poor Luke looks like he needs a little sympathy.” Randy read through the paragraphs. “This is his final feature article on the upcoming vote, and it doesn’t look like he got enough of an answer from anybody to even misquote. Every board member he could talk to said they had no idea how they’d vote, and that was just Steve and Louise and I. And there’s no telling about Eliza.”

“And what about Joe?”

“No telling about him, either, and whether he’ll even come to the meeting.”

Must . . . stay . . . awake.

Steve smiled at the three little faces.
They
were all awake. They all smiled back.

“Okay. Turn the page.”

“Turn the page!” Two shouts and a giggle.

He turned the page. “The little train started up the big hill. It started out easy. Turn the page.”

“Turn the page!”

He turned the page. “But then it got harder. Turn the page.”

“Turn the page!”

Even Andy wubbled along. Steve turned the page.

“And then it got harder. Is he going to make it?”

“Yes!” Josie said.

“Daddy,” Max said, “he always makes it.”

“So why am I reading the book?”

“Because we want you to.”

“And then it got so hard he gave up and—”

“Daddy!”

“Don’t you want a little tension?”

“That’s not what it says,” Max said.

“How do you know?” Steve said. “You can’t read.”

“It’s
obvious
.”

“The train kept trying and trying. ‘I can make it!’ he said. ‘I won’t give up!’ Turn the page.”

“Turn the page!”

“And then, suddenly space aliens invaded—”

“Daddy!”

“And then he reached the top of the hill! And there, in the sparsely developed valley below, was the perfect spot for a brand-new strip retail center—”

“Daddy!”

“No, really. But the little train realized that it would be much easier to get over the mountain with a four-percent grade, which would require a thirty-five-meter ridgeline cut. And what if the geology won’t support it? Then what should the little train do?”

“You’re being silly,” Josie said.

“It is pretty silly. Max, should the little train vote
for
a new road or
against
it?”

“What does
ridgeline cut
mean?”

“It means you drill really, really deep holes into the top of the mountain and fill them with dynamite and then blow the whole thing up, and it leaves a big hole.”

“Do it! Daddy, do it! I want to watch!”

“The poor mountain,” Josie said.

“Mountains can’t feel anything,” Max said.

“Don’t hurt the mountain, Daddy,” Josie said.

“Would there be digger trucks?” Max asked.

“Lots, except we’d have to wait at least a year. But,” Steve said, “the real question is whether the retail center would have a pizza place.”

“Where?” Max asked.

“Just down the road. Where we get on the highway.”

“Pizza?”

“A whole big shopping center. They’d have a grocery store, too. We could get ice cream whenever we wanted. All we have to do is maybe blow the top off the mountain, build an interstate, tear down all the trees, and put up houses everywhere.”

“Oh, Daddy,” Josie said, and she put her head down in his lap.

November 30, Thursday

“Well, another year,” Randy said, “and I’m sure each one is going by faster.” Boxes were piled around the living room, filled with lights and wreaths and angels, and the lights were more tangled each year, despite his best efforts.

“Then that makes Christmas come that much quicker,” Sue Ann said. She already had the little carolers on the dining room table, which just by themselves made the whole house festive.

“And this has been a year to remember, that’s for sure.” It was going to take a while with the lights, and Randy set them down. “Sue Ann, as much as I’ve dreaded having that vote, I am certainly looking forward to having it now, so that it can be over.”

Now the earth had the leaf covering. The trees were dead, or so they seemed.

For the trees, winter death was only an appearance. They would live again and die and live again. The leaves would descend even further, into the soil, and become the tree’s new life.

Eliza sat by the window. She had the rocker inside.

And even when the tree did die from age or disease or fire, it would still live again. The earth would take it in, and every root would draw from it.

But what would happen to a woman, or a man?

“Nobody’s called so far today,” Sue Ann said.

“They don’t know I’m home, and I expect the answering machine at the office is already full.”

“What have they been saying this week?”

“You know,” Randy said, “it’s still almost straight even between the people who want a new shopping center and the people who don’t want a big road through the neighborhood, at least for the people who’ve been calling me.”

“What will you do, Randy?”

“I guess I’ll have to think for myself. But without Joe, it might be over before I even vote, because it’ll take three of the four of us to say yes.”

“Have you heard from him?”

“No, and since I saw him, I’d be afraid to try calling again myself, for fear Mary would tell me they’re not either of them any better. But now, let’s see what else we can do before we go out.”

“Byron?”

Where had the man gotten to?

He wasn’t watching television. Louise looked in the bedrooms and he wasn’t anywhere.

His car was in the driveway. “Byron!”

The back door creaked, and she went running back to the television room. There he was.

“What have you been doing out there?”

He didn’t even have a coat on.

“Now, why do I have to explain any single thing I do?”

“Well. I just couldn’t find you.”

“I was just out back.”

“It’s cold out.”

“I was only out for a minute. Looking around.”

What would he be looking for? “Was there anything out there?”

He shook his head. “Not that I saw.”

Kyle and Kelly were home from school, and they didn’t even take off their coats but just waited while Randy and Sue Ann put on theirs, because it was the last day of November and there was a job to do.

“Sunset alert!”

Steve pulled himself away from the computer simulation of 3-D topography to look at the real thing. “Thanks,” he said to Natalie. “You know, when you’ve seen one sunset, you’ve seen . . . that one sunset.”

The four of them trooped out into the yard and down the block and around the corner, on up to the end of the street, talking and remembering about all the other years they’d done this, and into the woods, this part being Roland Coates’ property.

Eliza watched the shadows unfurl across the floor. Now the day was dying, but it would come again. The sun would return from its death to break the new day.

What did it mean?
She heard the voice,
Do not question
.
Where was Wade now?
There is no life. There is no death.
Why did he die?
Do not desecrate, do not defile, do not violate.

And up a ways, keeping an eye out, Kelly found a likely white pine, one they’d actually noticed last year but had decided to leave at the time. With all the rain, though, it had been a good year for growing, and it was green and full and just about perfect.

“Well, that looks like the one,” Randy said, and Kyle lifted his hatchet.

There they were, staring across the table at each other, her at Byron and Byron at her.

“I guess I’ll clean up,” she said.

“I’ll see if there’s a game on.”

“Byron, how should I vote about this road?”

“What’s most important to you?”

What was? “Right now, just clearing the table is. That’s as far as I can think.”

The sun was gone and the light was going, and Steve hadn’t moved. Somehow Josie had ended up asleep in his lap.

There was something portentous about the night, and it made him feel small. There were so many big things.

What right they had to tear down a mountain? A small and insignificant guy like him.

“What’s the weather for tomorrow?” Louise was up to her elbows in hot soapy water, and she could hardly believe fall was over already. It seemed like the cold was earlier every year, and it was so dark outside the kitchen window.

“Haven’t seen it.”

“Well, if you do, let me know.”

How could just two people use so many dishes in a day? There was such a pile. Maybe Angie was right about a dishwasher. To tell the truth, it was silly to wash them all by hand.

It just depended on what was most important to her.

She pulled the casserole dish out from under the other dishes, and they settled with a great big clatter.

“Louise?”

Byron was there in the doorway looking at her.

“Well, what is it?” she asked.

“Just heard something and I thought I’d check on you.”

She took a deep breath. “Everything’s just fine. Don’t get all worried.”

“The weather’s coming on,” he said. “Leave those and come sit in here.”

They settled in together and watched.

“I love you,” she said.

It was dark outside, but the shadows of the cabin were darker. The forest was lit by the starry sky.

The night had come slowly. The day was bright. The afternoon shadows had grown without notice and finally the twilit sky had led the world into black. And now, because she had accepted the leading, she sat in her own black dark.

She had been drawn into the dark through her whole life.

She stood abruptly and struck a match, and lit a candle, and then the lantern. It was bright. The night had come slowly—but in a moment it was dispelled.

Blazing light! Randy stood up from plugging in the lights, and the tree was a hundred stars right in the living room, and a dozen angels, and wrapped in gold.

“It’s what I think heaven is like,” Sue Ann said, and she always had such a way with describing things. Randy stepped back to see it better.

“Heaven where trees go,” Kyle said.

“Then heaven where we’ll go must be that much better,” Randy said, and then he had a thought, and he had to laugh. “And the Gold Highways in heaven are already built and we don’t have to vote on them.”

December

December 4, Monday

Time to start. Bang the fool gavel.

“Come to order.” The room was dead quiet anyway. “Go ahead, Patsy.”

“Mrs. Brown?”

“I’m . . . here.”

“Mr. Carter?”

“Uh, here.”

“Mr. Esterhouse?”

It would be the last time. “Here.”

“Eliza?”

“I am here.”

“Mr. McCoy?”

“I’m here.”

Randy was half flabbergasted, or more than half. Everybody in the room—and that was as many as could be in that room, with the rest outside in the hall—had their eyes on Joe, and they had since he’d walked in thirty seconds ago. Nobody had known before if he would even come.

Joe had always reminded him of stone. Now he was more like hard iron. His words cut through the room like a sword.

“Everyone’s here, Joe.”

“Thank you, Patsy,” he said. “Jefferson County North Carolina Board of Supervisors is now in session. Motion to accept last month’s minutes?”

“I’ll move.”

“I’ll second.”

“Motion and second,” Joe said. “Go ahead, Patsy.”

“Mrs. Brown?”

“Yes.”

Louise was barely getting her thoughts back together. They’d been shattered like a dropped plate when that side door had opened and Joe came in. He looked older, but not more worn or weary. It was his hair. It wasn’t cropped short like it always had been. It was just long enough now to show pure white, like bleached wool—or like a mountain in winter.

“Mr. Carter?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Esterhouse?”

“Yes.”

“Eliza?”

“I vote no.”

“Mr. McCoy?”

“Yes.”

“Four in favor, one opposed,” Patsy said.