Dangerous Undertaking (4 page)
“Count me in,” I told Tommy Lee.
He looked at my useless arm.
“Hey. There is nothing wrong with my legs.”
He smiled. “No, I guess not. Too bad I can’t say the same thing about your head.”
The next day was a cool and breezy Saturday. Reverend Lester Pace and I were hiking along a five-mile rail spur that ran to an abandoned quarry. Friday afternoon’s search had netted no sign of Dallas in the immediate area. The truck yielded no clues, and there were no missing person or stolen vehicle reports to indicate Dallas had hijacked someone on departing the scene. Tommy Lee had checked with the Norfolk-Southern and the CSX rail lines. Neither reported trouble with any of their freights running along that stretch. It was as if, as Deputy Hutchins had said, Dallas had vanished into thin air. The search was being conducted regardless, and Tommy Lee had coordinated groups of officers from other counties with his own team, pairing the searchers so no one worked alone or without someone familiar with the area. A few civilian volunteers were included who knew the coves and hollows, but each was instructed to adhere to any orders or commands issued by the accompanying law officer. Tommy Lee’s goal was to comb the rail lines within a thirty-mile radius of Dallas’ truck.
Pace and I were the exceptions. Tommy Lee had reluctantly given in to my request to be a part of the search because he respected the training I had received on the Charlotte force. He teamed me with Reverend Pace because Pace knew the area as well as anyone, and he too wouldn’t take no for an answer. We were given a dead-end stretch of track and told to stay on it. Tommy Lee insisted we be armed for our own protection. I carried my five-shot .38 Smith & Wesson Special high on my hip. Tommy Lee also insisted that if we saw any sign that Dallas might be or had been in the vicinity, we were to summon up the proper authorities to take further action.
Of all the preachers I dealt with in the funeral business, Pace was my favorite. He had been a Methodist circuit-rider for over forty years. Time might have lessened his step but not his stamina. He carried a twisted rhododendron trunk as a walking stick, which he brandished like a drum major marshaling the band. Although the temperature couldn’t have been above forty-five, I worked up a sweat matching stride with him. As we walked along the rusted steel rails, the preacher searched the right side of the gravel bed and I took the left.
“Haven’t seen your dad in about a month, Barry. How’s he doing?” Pace asked the question after we’d covered a couple miles and thoroughly talked out the shooting at Crab Apple Valley Baptist Church and the possible reasons for Dallas Willard’s actions. It was not lost on Pace that the missing man was mentally disturbed and needed compassion along with capture. Pace’s compassion was genuine; so was the .32 Colt tucked in his belt.
“Dad is more frightened,” I said. “Stays upstairs most of the time. A few steps out in the hall and he forgets where he is going. Forgets where he is. And there are times he looks at me and can’t quite place my face.”
The old preacher shook his head. “Alzheimer’s is a hell of a thing. Hardest on the ones closest. God give you strength.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want God’s strength. I wanted Him to take this curse off my father, the gentlest man who ever lived. Pace read my thoughts.
“Your father is quite courageous. You know that?”
“Yes,” I replied tersely.
“A few years ago, he told me he had only one fear. That fear wasn’t for himself. He knows his death will come through a painless oblivion. His fear is for you.”
“Me?” I stammered before I could stop myself.
“He’s afraid you will become bitter. Bitter that your love for him and your mother disrupted your own life. Brought you back to the small town and the job you had no interest in having. He has accepted you wanted more than Gainesboro could give and that he would not pass the funeral business on to you like your grandfather had handed it to him. But then, it happened.” Pace took a deep breath and seemed to stare back five years to that dreadful day when the whole town realized something was wrong with my father.
Mother had called in tears. Dad had been driving the limousine behind the hearse en route to Good Shepherd Cemetery when, to the shock of the grieving family, he pulled out of the procession and passed both the hearse and Tommy Lee’s escorting deputy. Dad had forgotten where he was and what he was doing. A host of doctors and tests yielded a diagnosis that was more of a slow death sentence: Alzheimer’s at age fifty-five, an age struck by fewer than three percent of the cases and a statistic of brutal consequences. For three years, he and Mom struggled to keep the business going while seeking someone to take it over. Uncle Wayne, Mom’s brother and a man older than my father, had neither the ambition nor the finances to buy it. No other individual came forward with an offer, and none of the big chains were interested. The burden fell to me.
Pace spoke again. “You have my respect, Barry, for what you did. But, if it turns you against yourself and against your God, then you should make every effort to sell and go back to the life that made you happy.”
“What life,” I said. “My wife wouldn’t follow me here. So much for ‘for better or for worse.’ What do I have to look forward to? Going back to working nights on the Charlotte police force? Re-enrolling at the university in a foolish quest for a master’s? Chasing some half-baked notion of working for the FBI? No one should feel sorry for me or worry about me, Preacher. I’m not the one whose personality is being erased each day. I’m not the one whose body will be a living shell of the man who won’t remember being husband or father.” I felt the words choke me up, and I stopped walking and looked away.
“And you’ve no one to lash out at but God,” he said. “I understand and God understands. He’s there for you and He can lift the anger off of you. Take comfort.”
“Here’s my comfort,” I said, sweeping my good arm in an arc wide enough to encircle the ridges surrounding us. The fall colors—orange, red, and yellow—blazed across their backs and the ice-blue sky arched over them like an infinitely deep canopy. “I take comfort in this. No offense, but they speak louder than any sermon I’ve ever heard.”
Pace looked at the panorama surrounding us. “They latch onto you, don’t they? These mountains.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Yes, they do. Despite my efforts to escape them.”
“But it’s the people hidden in the coves and hollows who keep me here. The people your father has served all his life.” He started walking again, slower, and he spoke in a cadence matching his stride.
“Whenever I get discouraged or think that God has abandoned me, the people hold me. First time it happened, I’d been here only six months. One Sunday morning in a little shack of a church near Hickory Nut Falls—chicken coop churches folks used to call them—I finished my last service for the day. Back then, I’d preach over in Yellow Mountain community at eight in the morning, hop in my forty-eight Plymouth coupe and high-tail it like a bat off the devil’s doorstep to Eagle Creek for nine-thirty worship, and then be in Hickory Nut Falls at eleven. There were only ten to fifteen families in each congregation.”
“Chicken coops?”
Pace laughed. “When I say ‘chicken coop,’ I’m not straying from the God’s truth. The church was a combination of old plank boards, tar paper, and tin roofing that a couple of the families had pulled together from their own houses.
“No cross, no white steeple, no sign out front with my name and this week’s sermon topic. Just a shelter from Life’s storm where these folks could escape their poverty and hardship for an hour and praise God for the simple joys money can’t buy. Inside, the pews were only wooden benches, the pulpit was a post with a board nailed to it, and the music was whoever happened to bring a dulcimer or guitar. I wanted to build a real church and fill the pews, but it wasn’t happening. I was down on myself and down on the calling. I’d petitioned the bishop for a new assignment.”
“Bet he didn’t want to hear it,” I said.
“I wasn’t the first young pup old Bishop Wallace had to train. He said he’d pray about it, which meant I couldn’t complain while a divine response was in the making.
“Several weeks later, after Sunday service, I boxed up my Bible and the hymnbooks I carried from church to church, though most of the congregation couldn’t read. A few folks came up to talk with me, mostly some of the ladies and their young-uns as the men tended to hold back or even sit outside during the preaching and singing. Like I said, I’d only been here a little while, so people were a little gun-shy.
“When I thought everyone had left, I lifted up the box with the Bible and hymnals and walked down the narrow aisle to the front door. Just before I reached it, a man stepped in the doorway, blocking my path. He was about six foot tall, lean as a twig, wearing a beat-up pair of overalls and a gray, sweat-stained work shirt. Pushed back atop his head was an old, floppy-brimmed, brown felt hat. A squirrel rifle lay across his folded arms. I especially noticed the squirrel rifle.”
“Guess he didn’t like the sermon,” I interrupted.
Reverend Pace smiled. “That’s what I thought, Barry. I took some comfort that the hammer wasn’t cocked. Yet.
“‘Preacher, you in a hurry?’ he asked.
“I had never seen him before. Didn’t know if he was one of the men who sat outside, but I did know that in my six months experience, no one brought a gun to church.
“‘No, not particularly,’ I said. ‘Can I help you?’”
Pace stopped walking and leaned on his stick. His eyes held mine and his smile disappeared. “What I at first thought was meanness in his face melted with my offer. I realized the old man was tensed up over something. Evidently, I could help. I felt the pastoral call to feed the flock.
“‘I’d be obliged if you’d come back to the house with me. I got a burial needs tendin’ to.’ He looked at the box in my arms. ‘Bring the Good Book.’
Pace laughed and started walking again. “Well, now there’s nothing more confounded than a speechless preacher. I must a looked like every bit of sense had been snatched from my head. At last I stammered, ‘But has the body been prepared? Paperwork filled out and everything?’
“‘All ready,’ he said. He looked down at his feet, ashamed to meet me eye to eye. ‘I ain’t learnt enough to say the words. Ain’t no church goer.’
“Having made his confession, he made his demand. ‘So, you goin’ to help?’
“Now I’d done a few burials, and even interred one on family property with your dad, but never an impromptu funeral. I didn’t know what to say, but I sure didn’t say no. Just nodded my head and followed that mountaineer outside.”
A flash caught my eye along the edge of the rail bed. I jumped back toward Pace. “Wait,” I said. “I see something.” In my mind, it was a glint off Dallas Willard’s shotgun.
We stood silently for several seconds. The only sounds came from a chorus of blue jays. Then somewhere down the track a squirrel chattered.
Pace and I ventured back to the edge of the crossties. Instinctively, he stepped away from me so that one shotgun blast could not take both of us. I carefully stepped down the gravel rail bed. While Pace covered me, I grabbed a handful of green mountain laurel leaves and lifted the branch.
“Beer cans,” I said with relief. “Can you believe it? We’re two miles from nowhere and here are the relics of a party.”
“I’m surprised the astronauts didn’t find beer cans when they landed on the moon,” said Pace. “You got good eyes, Barry.”
He extended his walking stick so that I could grab the tip and steady my climb up to the track.
“Yeah, good eyes but bad nerves,” I said. “Sorry. I left you facing a real gun in church.”
“Like I said, nothing like this had ever happened before. A command performance at a funeral. So, this old man and I stepped out of the church and all I saw was my Plymouth and the cornfield down to the creek. I knew he had walked out of the hills.
“‘Can we drive to your place?’ I asked.
“‘Partly,’ he answered.
“We got in the Plymouth and drove off. Me and the old mountain man, the Bible and hymnals bouncing between us. He never spoke. Just pointed the turn at each crossroads. The pavement became gravel, the gravel became dirt, until finally two ruts were all that marked what had been an old wagon trail. I stopped the car, afraid to push my luck any farther.
“‘Don’t forgit the Good Book,’ he reminded me.
“We walked up the ridge on an overgrown footpath till we came to a little clearing of a couple acres of pasture. In the middle was his cabin. Shack, I should say. Front porch roof propped up with small tree trunks, bark still on them. Side planking had been covered in black tar paper for weathering. It was torn through in places and I saw cracks in the slats through to the inside. In front, a few chickens and guinea hens scratched for grubs. No other sign of life.
“We walked around the side by a pile of cordwood. A couple wedges and an axe lay up under some of the logs. In the back, a well-traveled path led from the rear of the cabin to the outhouse, its door half off makeshift hinges. Over at the edge of the clearing, about thirty yards away, was a freshly dug hole. Maybe three foot by four foot. The dirt was heaped up beside it with a shovel lying atop the pile. At the far edge of the hole, I saw an old tattered tarp stretched out over something and weighed down with stones.
“A chill rippled down my spine, and I shuddered in horror at the size of the tarp.
“‘My God,’ I thought. ‘It’s a child. This man has lost a child.’
“Calling up every ounce of courage, I followed him over to the grave site. I braced as he bent down and pulled back the tarp. There before me lay the mangiest ol’ coon dog I’ve ever seen. His eyes glassed over and body stiff as a board. His legs were so straight and rigid, I swear to God, if you’d set him up, he could have been a footstool.
“All the fear, the dread that had built up inside me since the stranger blocked my doorway busted loose and I did one of the meanest things I’ve ever done in my life. I laughed. Laughed till I thought my insides would pop loose.
“I heard the squirrel gun cock. The sound snapped me out of my hysteria.
“The man stood up from bending over the dead animal. He glared at me with a look of hurt and hate. The gun barrel pointed straight at my belly.