Road to Nowhere (50 page)

“Motion carries,” Joe said. “Minutes are accepted. Next is receiving public comment. I will state the rules I have for this evening.”

Steve looked through the faces in the audience. Every one was locked on Joe. It was his voice. There was such absolute authority in it and . . . and power. Inexorable, overriding, like the flood. Like a million tons of water flowing and strong and unstoppable.

“We will be discussing Gold River Highway this evening. Every person will be given their chance to speak, and you can say whatever you want. I won’t impose any limits. Just remember your words are being said in front of your neighbors and friends and families, and you’ll have to live with them.

“After we’ve heard everything, this board will make its final judgment.”

Eliza had closed her eyes. It was so bright to look at Joe. His face was blazing like the sun.

Then the people came. Joe watched. Listening was hard. Remembering who they all were was hard, too. But he was here for a purpose. That would be hardest.

People kept coming. Joe looked at the faces.

Then he made himself look at the one face, and that was why he was here.

“I’m Roland Coates, and you all know what this has meant to me. I’ve lost a million dollars of furniture and almost my factory, and had to take insurance money which I never have before. I might still lose the whole business and 150 jobs.

“And I’ve lost my son. And that’s what I came to say.

“Right here in front of everybody, Joe Esterhouse, I’m sorry for what my son did to you and your wife. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

Joe didn’t answer. He could only look at the one face, and it was staring back at him.

“Byron Brown. I’ve worked for Mr. Coates at the furniture factory for forty years. If you don’t build the road, the factory’s going to close sooner or later. What’s been important to me is having a job and putting food on my table. But times are changing, and I don’t know what’s important anymore.”

“Cornelia Harris. I came tonight because Gold River Highway was so important to my husband, Wade. I want to ask all of you on the board to do what you think is right. And I want to ask all of the rest of us to accept whatever they decide.”

It was near the end now.

“Mary Anderson. I live in Tampa, Florida. I’m speaking for my mother, Rose Esterhouse. She wants me to say that the decisions you make will last for years to come, after we’re all gone. Don’t think about just now. Think about the future.”

“Kyle McCoy. Dad, I know this has been real hard for you for this whole year, and probably most people here don’t know how hard this has been for all the board members. Whatever you decide will be okay.”

Then no one else. It was the end, but not yet. Joe waited and finally one more came up.

“Luke Goddard, and I live right here in Wardsville.

“Well, it’s been a lot of fun, hasn’t it? I can’t thank you all enough for the newspapers you’ve sold for me, and just the grand time I’ve had writing about you all.

“Steve, I bet you’re wishing you’d just stayed over there in Gold Valley and not got mixed up with all this trouble. And, Eliza, people thought you were crazy, and you must think the same about them.

“But you others should know better. It’s just whoever yelled at you last that you’ll do what they say, isn’t it, Randy? Or whoever cried the most, Louise? It wouldn’t matter except when something real comes along, which it has now for once.

“And, Joe.”

Joe waited, and watched.

“Doesn’t eighty years wear a man out?” Luke said. “Shouldn’t you be napping in some rest home instead of lording it over people who still have their lives left ahead of them? You won’t even live to see that road built. Why are you deciding for people who will?

“You’re small little people, and now you have this big road that the big people in Raleigh and Atlanta are pushing and tugging over. The best thing would be to just get out of their way. Because you can get hurt. Can’t you, Joe?

“We all know what’s going to happen. When it comes right down to it, none of you are really brave enough to vote for something this big and new.

“Now go ahead and get it over with.”

That was the end. The other four looked shaken enough by it.

“I’ll ask that we have a motion and second, whether members plan to actually vote for it or not,” he said.

“I’ll move we accept the funding and plans for Gold River Highway,” Steve said. “Second?”

“I’ll second,” Louise said.

“Any discussion?”

He waited again. He didn’t have any doubt now. He hadn’t before. But seeing the face through it all was enough by itself.

“Let’s just vote,” Randy said. “I think just about everything’s been said.”

“Then we’ll vote. Now, I’m going to use my prerogative as chairman to change our voting procedure. I’ll have Patsy hand you each a sheet of paper, and I’ll ask each member to write their name and their vote on it.”

“It this a secret ballot?” Jim Ross asked out loud. “You can’t do that.”

“I’ll read them out, with the names,” Joe said. “But I want each person to vote without worrying how anyone else has voted, or whether they’re first or last. Go ahead, Patsy.”

Patsy was handing out her little pink message papers. Joe took his and wrote his name and vote on it. Then Steve handed him his vote, and Eliza’s, and then Randy handed him his and Louise’s. Joe glanced through them.

“The vote’s unanimous—”

“I knew it!”

Randy had been so glad Joe had let them vote that way with the paper ballots, and then when he said that word,
unanimous
, Randy’s brain had overloaded for just a second to where he almost couldn’t make out what else was happening.

He knew why he’d finally decided. There were too many opinions and facts and uncertainties to ever make a logical decision, so he’d finally just picked what seemed right, and not even why it seemed right, only that it did.

But just like everybody else, he was turning and staring at the back wall, where Luke Goddard had stood and shouted out before anyone else had time to think.

“I knew it!” Luke said, loud enough to hear in the hall outside. Everybody was sort of shocked, and of course most people had to stretch or even half stand up to see him back there. “I knew when you finally had to vote you’d end up scared to death.” And what was more, his voice had gotten high pitched, and that made it all the more startling.

“Come on up here,” Joe said, and compared to Luke, those words were as slow and heavy as old trees.

Luke froze a second, but then he stepped right up to the podium, people pulling back to let him by, almost like they were afraid to touch him, and the grin on his face was like it was carved on.

“I think I’d even take those votes,” Luke said once he’d got himself planted there, “and keep them in a glass case down at the newspaper. Or we should put the case out in front of the courthouse. Right out there next to Mort Walker’s little monument stone. That would be the place. It’s a good thing he didn’t live to see his road fail like this, without even a single vote!”

“The road passed,” Joe said.

Eliza had drawn back from bright, frenzied, fire-lit eyes. When Joe Esterhouse spoke, the flame died almost to black. But then it blazed out, and words were its hot embers.

“You’re lying.”

She made herself face him. His face was set against Joe. But she had to see him. She had to see that it was his mouth from which the words came.

“I’m not lying,” Joe said. “It’s true.”

“It’s a lie!”

She had to see him speak. The shrill voice and its fierce, frantic cry were only a man. She saw the man in front of her! His words were a wild wind, but that broke against the answer to them.

“It’s the truth.”

Eliza closed her eyes.

“No!” the voice screamed. And she knew the voice. She had known it her whole life, and she had known it tonight.

Louise wasn’t even breathing. Something was going on, something terrible. Seeing Joe and Luke faced off like they were, she just couldn’t breathe. Luke’s eyes were like he was only alive on the outside and dead inside. They were fixed on Joe the way a snake would fix onto a chicken.

And Joe was fixed back on him, and Joe looked almost dead, so old and hard, but all night there’d been something inside him she’d never seen anywhere, strong and alive. It was like a rifle pointed straight at the snake’s eyes.

Nobody had moved or anything when Joe said the road had passed. For all everybody was feeling, the lock between Joe and Luke was too strong to do anything but just watch.

“It’s the truth,” Joe said again and held up the pages, their five yes votes.

Truth
. The word filled the room like the smell of something cooking when a person was hungry. It was invisible but it was everything.

“That’s what it’s all been about,” Joe said. “The truth. Knowing what’s true.”

Luke held on to the podium, a bare tree in a whirlwind, and everything Joe said was whipping against him.

“Luke,” Joe said. “Now, you tell the truth. Did you kill Wade Harris?”

The whole world fell apart. Louise heard herself sob out a quiet, “Oh no,” and all the rest of the room, too. And while she was just breaking, trying to even start understanding what it meant, she knew from seeing Joe and Luke both that it was true.

“Nobody killed him,” Luke said.

“I said to tell the truth,” Joe said.

“Then it was Jeremy Coates,” Luke said. “Everybody knows it would have been. He’s been shooting at people and starting fires. The police are looking for him. He killed Wade.”

“It wasn’t Jeremy Coates,” Joe said. “What will you do when they find him? They will, and then he’ll tell the truth. Then we’ll know it was you.”

“Joe?” Gordon Hite was standing by the door. “You shouldn’t be doing this. It’s not legal.”

“Be quiet.” It was a different voice, and it was a knife.

Steve waited a second to make sure Gordon was staying quiet, then he looked back at Luke. And Luke was looking at him, a caged tiger stare.

“You saw him that day,” Steve said.

“You be quiet,” Luke said. “You don’t have any part in this.”

“I think I do. You talked with him that afternoon.”

“I didn’t, and how would you know?” Luke turned back to Joe. “It was Jeremy Coates that saw him last. They had a meeting, and then Jeremy went ahead over the mountain and was waiting for him.”

“He never made it to see Jeremy Coates,” Steve said, and he had Luke’s stare back at him. “He was coming up the mountain from Wards-ville. It’s obvious, looking at where it happened.”

“Now, I wouldn’t say that,” Gordon Hite said.

“Yeah,” Steve said, “exactly. We’ll get a real detective to look at it.”

He put his stare back at Luke. “I’d say Wade Harris told you he had a meeting and he was going over the mountain. You went ahead and were waiting for him.”

“You don’t know anything,” Luke said.

“So how did you know it was Jeremy Coates he was going to see?”

The caged tiger had scented danger. “Well . . . Gordon must have told me.”

“That’s news to me,” Gordon said. “Jeremy told me he was down in Asheville all that day.”

“Then he was lying,” Luke said.

“He was,” Steve said. “But you are, too. You’d only know who Wade was meeting if Wade told you.” Steve turned to Joe. “You’re right. It’s true.”

“Luke,” Joe said into the dead silence, “did you kill Mort Walker?”

Randy was already staggering, completely astounded at the turn events were taking, and with Cornelia Harris’s white face engraved into his memory, and Roland Coates’ mouth hanging open, but hearing Mort’s name was still the last thing he’d have expected.

“Nobody killed Mort!” Luke said back at Joe, and Luke looked just as amazed, but not surprised, if such a thing was possible. “Why would anybody kill him? Nobody knew anything about the road back then.”

“I didn’t say anything about the road,” Joe said. “Is that why you killed him?”

“Nobody knew about the road!”

“Now, I think you might have,” Randy said, because it suddenly occurred to him that Luke could have worked it out. And now Luke was looking right at him, and Randy had to take a deep breath to keep going with that terrible stare. But he knew he had to keep going, because he was part of it all, too, and it was becoming a matter of real life and death, and he wasn’t going to back down.

“Because,” Randy said, “you would have seen that advertisement back last November, the one with all the unpaid taxes listed in it, and I think you might have noticed that the Trinkles weren’t on the list—that they finally paid up after all those years—and that would have gotten you thinking something was happening, and then I think you might have gone out to see Mort, to see if he knew.”

“You don’t know any of that,” Luke said, and he seemed to have gotten a little of his confidence back. “And anybody could have seen that ad.”

But Joe answered. “The ad was in the same newspaper that told about Mort dying. You’d have been the only one to have seen it before it came out.”

“You don’t know any of that,” Luke said again.

“It doesn’t matter,” Joe said. “The only thing that matters is if it’s true. Is it true, Luke? Did you go to see Mort Walker?”

“Going to see him doesn’t mean anything.”

“Well, it might,” Randy said. He hadn’t even noticed, concentrating so hard, but there was Sue Ann standing beside him, and he looked up at her and saw the fright in her eyes—fright because she was realizing, like he was, that if Mort and Wade had both been killed, then everyone on the board had really been at risk. And Byron Brown looked to have thought the same thing, because he was right beside Louise, and then

Kelly was up to stand with Sue Ann, and Kyle planted with them, football fierce and ready to hard tackle.

“And I know,” Randy said, “it does seem farfetched, but it does also make sense, that Mort dying just that week would be the one way to get Eliza elected, and you’d know that as well as anybody, Luke, or even better.”

“It is true,” Eliza herself said, her first words since her
I am here
and her
I vote no
at the beginning of the meeting.