Drift (12 page)

He took the license out of my hand, but didn’t look at it. “Actually, I’d like you to stand with your feet together and your arms at your sides.”

His efforts to piss me off were working, but so were my efforts to contain my anger—proof I didn’t need anger management training.

“Now put your arms straight out to your sides, and then touch your index fingers to your nose.”

I could feel my eye twitching, and I thought about touching my fingers to his nose instead, but I took a deep breath and complied.

As I did, a black Saab came around the bend and drove slowly past us. I couldn’t see everyone inside, but I could see Derek Roberts looking at me through the driver’s window. Our eyes met, and his unibrow furrowed. Then he turned and looked straight ahead as he drove away.

By the time Pruitt got to the part where he said he was letting me off with a warning, a tow truck had arrived and my anger had cooled. I still couldn’t tell whether Pruitt was an asshole for hire or just an asshole, but either way, he had it in for me. And the feeling was mutual.

25

The car was crumpled all along the driver side, and the right fender was dented, but it was riding fine.
I
was riding a little rougher. There was a lingering soreness on the side of my head from Dwight Cooney, and compounded by the overall pummeling from getting run off the road, I was hurting. Maybe I was a little more attached to that car than I wanted to admit, or maybe it was one thing too many to pretend to ignore, but seeing it all beat to hell made me feel sadder than it should have.

When I got home and saw Nola sitting on my porch, I felt better. She was wearing denim shorts and a gray Cornell hoodie over the same pale blue T-shirt from the first time I saw her, at Branson’s. I wondered if the effect that T-shirt had on me would ever wear off.

She got to her feet when I pulled up. “Your car!” she said when I got out. “What happened to it?”

I didn’t want to go into it, but I told her anyway. “Someone ran me off the road.”

“
What?
”

“Two of them. One flanked me, the other was behind me. Pushed me off the road, into a ditch. How did it go with the caterers?”

“They were upset but understanding. They’re going to get back to me next week.” She pointed at my car. “Are you sure it wasn’t an accident?”

“Positive. Hit me more than once.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Maybe it was a message. I didn’t tell her about my tussle behind Branson’s.

“Are you okay?”

“A little sore, but I’m fine. The best part was when Pruitt shows up, and I tell him what happened. Asshole gave me a twenty-minute drunk test.”

“He thought you were drunk?”

“He knew I wasn’t drunk.”

“He really doesn’t like you, does he?”

I decided it would be best if I kept my suspicions about Pruitt’s motives to myself. “No, I guess he doesn’t.”

She leaned over and cupped my cheek. “That’s okay. I like you.”

I couldn’t tell if she was messing with me, but her hand felt nice on my cheek. “You ready to go?” I asked.

“I guess. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Yup.”

“You’re sure your car is okay?”

“It’s fine,” I said, opening the door. “Just a little body work, that’s all.”

She had a picnic basket, and she put it behind her seat. “I brought lunch, for later.”

“Great.”

I could feel her staring at me as we drove off. The Siberian elm loomed darkly over the landscape, and sensing she was about to ask again what had happened, I tilted my head toward it. “Kind of imposing, isn’t it?”

“And totally invasive,” she said, launching into a detailed explanation of how the elms spread and why it’s a problem, and probably some other things.

After Meade’s Christmas Tree Farm, the right-hand side of Bayberry Road was punctuated with a couple of roads, an antique shop, and a church with a tall white spire. The left-hand side was a green wall for a quarter mile before it angled back from the road to make way for a few houses, continuing uninterrupted behind them.

“That’s the Gilbert farm,” Nola said as we passed the first farm. “They sold the land to a developer two years ago, but kept the house. She’s a schoolteacher, and he got a job at the Home Depot up in Saint Clair. The developer sold the land, and it’s changed hands at least twice since then.”

Over the next half mile, she repeated the same story three times, but with different names and different post-agricultural professions. Across the street from one of the plots was a farmhouse that looked abandoned.

“That’s the old Denby farm,” she said. “Otis Denby died six years ago, left behind a big stack of taxes. None of his kids wants anything to do with the place.”

As we drove on, the road curved, revealing another sagging farmhouse. A U-Haul truck was parked in the driveway, the back doors open. As I slowed to a stop, a sweaty figure came out the front of the house, staggering a bit under two big boxes. He put them in the back of the truck and slid them in as far as his arms would reach. As he straightened up, wiping an arm across his sweaty forehead, he spotted us getting out of the car and his eyes narrowed, his face bitter in a way that made me think there weren’t many people he would have been happy to see.

He coughed against the back of his arm and then spat in the dirt. “Can I help you?”

I hung back a step, letting Nola take the lead. “Hi,” she said with a big smile. “I’m—”

“I know who you are,” he said brusquely. “Is there something I can help you with?”

Nola stopped, her smile stuck on her face like she didn’t know what to do with it. As the silence dragged out, I was about to jump in, but she toned down the smile by half and continued. “Moving?”

“Goddamn right I’m moving. This town is going downhill fast, between the Mexicans and the hippies and the yuppies and the city folks. I got a once-in-a-lifetime deal to sell and get out of here, and I’m taking it … unless someone fucks it all up.”

I stared at the guy’s face, wondering if he was the one who had been making the calls.

“Who you selling it to?” she asked.

He snorted. “You know who I’m selling it to. Same folks who wanted to buy your place.”

“Redtail?”

He nodded and stiffened, looking at me then back at Nola. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”

“I’m just trying to find out who owns the land next to my farm. I want to talk to them.”

His shoulders slumped as he stifled a cough, and his belligerent eyes suddenly looked tired and vulnerable. “I don’t know about any of that, but I’m asking you please don’t fuck this all up. If you don’t want to sell, don’t sell, I don’t care. But don’t start any other trouble that’s going to mess this up.”

*   *   *

She was quiet as we drove away, maybe wondering if he was her midnight caller, maybe thinking about the quiet desperation of the other property owners, trying to escape the burden of their farms. Maybe she was questioning her decision to keep her farm, thinking about the implications if it caused the deal to fall through. Maybe she was questioning her decision to buy the land in the first place.

As we drove, the terrain grew hillier and the green wall disappeared behind a swell of pale green fields. A couple of times, Nola told me to slow down for an access road or driveway, but each time, it was gone, graded over or filled in. The road twisted and turned, and I was starting to lose my bearings when we came upon a big yellow farmhouse with a leather-faced figure in overalls and a John Deere hat sitting on a rocking chair on the porch.

We pulled up the driveway, and when Nola got out, the old man sat forward.

“How you doing?” she asked.

“Morning,” he replied. “Can I help you?”

“Is this your farm?”

“It’s my house.”

“It’s very nice.”

“I sold my land. Now I just own the house. Kind of nice, I can still look out my window and see the land, or parts of it. Kind of sad, cause it reminds me it ain’t mine no more.”

“You mind if I ask who you sold it to?”

“You another developer?”

“No.” She smiled and shook her head. “No, I own a small farm over on Bayberry.”

“You’re that organic girl.”

She smiled and looked down. “Yes. Yes, I’m afraid I am.”

He sat back. “Makes good sense to me. I never did much like the idea of all those chemicals and whatnot.”

“So who did you sell to?”

“Company called Baker/Anderson. Man by the name of Rogers. But that’s not who owns it now.”

“Who owns it now?”

“I have no idea.”

Nola looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I just shrugged, but I got her point; it may have looked like a lot of undisturbed farmland, but someone had bought it all up, and no one seemed to know who.

“How do you know it’s not Baker/Anderson?” she asked.

He smiled sadly. “Had a change of heart a few months after I sold it. Wanted to buy it back, or part of it. I found out who they sold it to, but they’d already sold it, too. I got sick of digging, figured maybe sitting on this porch weren’t so bad after all.”

26

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s totally creepy,” Nola said, giving the old guy a cheerful wave as we drove off. “These companies are out here buying up huge tracts of land, the whole area, and no one seems to know who they are or what they are doing.”

“No, you’re right.” I didn’t want to feed into her paranoia, and those types of land deals probably go on all the time, but it didn’t feel quite right. “I’m sure they’re not up to anything nefarious but I’m not crazy about the fact that no one seems to know who they are. It makes me wonder what they are hiding.”

“Exactly, and don’t be too sure it’s nothing nefarious. These people will do anything to make a buck, mountain top removal mining, or massive livestock operations, or whatever. The communities always end up devastated.”

A half hour later, we came to another cross street. Nola sighed and informed me it was Bayberry. We were almost home. I flicked on my left turn signal.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

I shrugged, but my stomach growled.

“Make a right,” she said. So I did.

We drove in silence for ten minutes, until we approached a sign that said
HAWK MOUNTAIN
.

Nola said, “Turn in here.”

“Mountain climbing?” I asked as we turned into a large parking lot. I was wearing sensible shoes, but I was tired and sore and I wasn’t prepared for an expedition.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s a picnic.”

We parked next to a small visitors’ center, and I followed her up a wide trail that narrowed as we climbed. Small wooden signs pointed at side trails leading to lookouts and other landmarks, but we were headed to the top.

The incline was gentle, but the top was impressive—a rocky outcropping with a sheer drop and an expansive view. It was barely a mountain, but it was the biggest one I’d been on. The land was dense and green beneath us, except for a white scar of exposed rock. To our left was a patchwork of farm fields. A set of train tracks cut across them, looking like a not-very-realistic scale model.

The height was dizzying, but more striking was the sight of dozens of hawks circling below us, soaring on the air currents.

“Wow.”

Nola smiled. “Pretty cool, isn’t it? This is a major migration point for hawks and all sorts of raptors. I used to come out here all the time, but it’s been awhile.”

We stood there side-by-side for a few seconds, taking in the view. I had just put my arm around her shoulder when we heard voices and turned to see a woman in a brown Girl Scouts T-shirt followed by a small group of girls climbing up behind us. Nola rolled her shoulder out from under my hand.

“Not only hawks,” the guide was saying, “but also monarch butterflies, which are also migratory. Can anybody tell me where they are headed?”

One of the girls shouted out, “Mexico!”

Why don’t you join them,
I thought as another moment with Nola slipped away.

“That’s right,” the guide said. “These butterflies are just passing through. Who can tell me what states they will be passing through?”

The girls’ hands shot up into the air, and they started shouting out names of states.

“You’re all correct,” the guide told them. “Monarch butterflies are amazing creatures. Sorry we couldn’t get the larva this year to raise some ourselves, but luckily we have thousands of them coming right through our area. These butterflies will cover thousands of miles, passing through twenty states on their journey south to Mexico, where they will meet up with their cousins who are covering just as much territory on the west coast. And after the winter, what happens?”

“They get eaten by birds,” I whispered into Nola’s ear.

“No, they don’t, smart aleck,” she whispered back, giving me a swat on the arm. “They’re bitter and poisonous.”

“They fly back!” the girls shouted.

“Well, their grandchildren do, but I’ll give you credit.”

“That’s like me, bitter and poisonous,” I whispered. “It’s a self-defense mechanism. My plumage, on the other hand—”

Nola gave me another swat and pushed me away, but her eyes sparkled as she stifled a laugh.

The guide pointed down toward the treetops below us. “If you look closely, you can see monarchs migrating right now.”

I couldn’t resist looking where she was pointing, and saw a few butterflies fluttering around the treetops, then a few more. It was like looking for fireflies; the more I looked, the more I saw.

“It is pretty cool,” Nola said. “You look at them and you think ‘delicate little butterflies,’ not an army on the move across two thirds of the country.”

As the guide led the Girl Scouts away, I moved my arm back toward Nola’s shoulder, but she was already clambering over the rocks, off to the side of the peak.

“Come here,” she said, grabbing my sleeve. “I want to show you something.”

I followed as best I could, very aware of the sheer drop.

She put the picnic basket between two boulders and took out two sandwiches, handing me one. It was tuna salad, but made with egg and celery and slathered on some kind of toasted sourdough bread. It was very good. We ate in silence for a minute, enjoying the view and the steady breeze. Then Nola reached into the basket again and took out a pair of binoculars.