Harvestman Lodge (38 page)

“That’s the way it was before our kind came,” Erlene said. “We changed it all, and changed those folk with us.”

On down the table, the diorama blended with one showing frontier traders traveling by canoe down a river, wary Indian boys watching them from hiding along one bank. The next scene showed a parlay between the Indians and whites, one in which Melinda noticed with admiration the amount of detail Erlene had managed to sculpt onto the miniature faces.

“I see you looking … I done the faces with the ends of toothpicks,” Erlene said proudly. “I was just teaching myself when I made these first ones, but I think I done right well. There’s better ones further back.”

“I’m impressed, ma’am,” Melinda said, her mind already on the intriguing feature piece she could do about such an odd, virtually unknown would-be historical attraction as this one. If she could do a good job of it, maybe the old woman’s entrance-fee jar would have more than a few bills and coins in it.

They moved on down the table, seeing the advance of local history as envisioned by Erlene Ledford. Forests of model trees were cleared by clay-figure axemen, cabins rising, plows breaking land, and in the middle of the second table, a miniature frontier fort, its palisades made not of clay, but of carefully whittled sticks.

“That’s Kincheloe Station,” Erlene said. “Whittled it myself, and cut my fingers aplenty doing it. But it came out good, I think, and I made it to scale, or close as I could.”

“You’re talented, Miz Ledford.”

“Thank you, miss.”

In the area devoted to images from the mid-1800s, Melinda found a diorama, labeled AN UNANSWERED PRAYER, that she couldn’t quite interpret. A whittled figurine man knelt in a posture of supplication to heaven, an axe on the ground before him, looking from a patch of woodland toward a burning house surrounded by men bearing torches and rifles. Between the raiders and the kneeling man were the dramatic and well-carved little figures of a cowering woman and a little girl, both loomed over by two of the raiders.

Melinda studied the diorama closely and asked what it depicted. “It’s an old local tale,” Erlene said. “Some declare it true. I can’t say.”

“But what’s happening there?” Melinda waved at the display.

Erlene tried to stand a little straighter, with meager success, and managed to change her voice to make it sound dramatic. Her lines were obviously well-rehearsed, which was impressive because she probably seldom had reason to recite them given the obvious low visitor level of the Hall of History. “His name was Albert Kincheloe, descendant of the line and loins of old Col. Kincheloe himself. He was a godly man who farmed out near the old Winona Court Lodge location, and when the war came, he sought to live peaceably with all men and not tie himself to either side. But living in peace was no easy thing in those grim days, and he found himself threatened on all sides. Even so, he refused to carry his rifle with him when he went to his fields, seeking to show that his faith was in God and not in protections devised by men.

“It was when he was chopping wood, of course having left his rifle at home, that the raiders came. Vile, wicked killers, a dozen devils, seeking to use the troubles of war to their own gain. They struck hard and took Albert Kincheloe’s wife and daughter from their home and set it ablaze. Then it came clear that death was intended for the Kincheloe women, and before that things worse than dying. From the edge of the forest, Albert saw the wickedness happening at his home, and knew he had no weapon with which to fight for the rescue of his family. No weapon except one axe. A single axe against a dozen armed raiders. Albert dropped to his knees and prayed that God would give him the power, somehow, to do what had to be done. ‘God, may this axe be blessed so it may become an instrument of rescue for the innocent.’ And with the axe in hand he raced to where the raiders were doing their work, and attacked them without fear.”

“That’s an inspiring story, ma’am,” said Erlene.

“It is not, miss. The prayer went unanswered. Albert took his axe and ran out to do battle with the raiders, but he was shot down fast. The axe was taken from his hand and flung far into a thicket that had sprung up around a hole in the ground, having saved no one despite Albert’s prayer that it would save the innocent. Mother and daughter died that day, after bad misuse, and Albert was left lame and barely alive from the bullet that had pierced him. He lived, but put aside his faith and was a despiser of his Maker for the rest of his life.”

“Oh. That’s … very sad.”

“There are happy stories shown in this place, and happy ones out there in the world, miss. But there are sad ones as well. Stories of faith’s victories, and faith’s defeats. That’s the reality of this world we live in, miss.”

“I like the victory stories,” Melinda said. “I think I’d rather not hear the others.”

“You belong in Kincheloe, then. That’s the way of this county: hide the woeful tales beneath the happier ones, and pretend the woe is not there.”

“I’m ready to move on and look at some of those happier stories now, ma’am.”

They moved again along the table rows. Despite the creepy feeling the old woman gave her, Melinda’s admiration for Erlene’s craftsmanship, and grasp of history and storytelling, grew with every step. That admiration made a sudden jolt backward when they reached a scene, somewhat larger-scaled than others, showing a man kneeling on a hillside in a posture of terror, arms raised protectively over his head. Above him, dangling from a thin wire, was a clay model of a flying saucer.

“That’s my cousin Franklin kneeling there in fright,” Erlene said. “In 1953 he was visited and took by the Martians right up into their saucer-plane, which flew right over him and stopped dead still in the sky like a hummingbird. It hit him with a spotlight, like this.” Erlene reached under the dangling saucer and flipped an unseen switch. A high-intensity desk lamp bulb came on and bathed the kneeling male figure below in light.

“They drawed him up, like Jesus rising to heaven’s glory, and visited with him awhile. They let him go in the end, but he was never right after that. It done something to his mind and his body. It left him so he couldn’t tell whether it was cold or hot outside. It all felt the same to him. He froze to death in January of ’63, having wandered naked from his house into the snow. No one ever knew why … some say he heard a call from the sky, beckoning him to come out.” The old woman paused and actually wiped a tear that told Melinda that Erlene was utterly serious about this farfetched flying saucer story.

Melinda’s fast-developing plan to do a human-interest segment about this place screeched to a halt. She’d have to think hard about whether she wanted to promote Erlene and her strange museum. Erlene obviously was a talented natural sculptor of small-scale figures and scenes … but flying saucers that left a man so numbed he couldn’t tell he was freezing? Maybe there wasn’t as valid a story here as Melinda had hoped. Human interest was her lifeblood as a broadcast journalist, but she had no ambition to submit either Erlene or herself, or the television station, for that matter, to public ridicule.

The last table was reached, and Melinda was amazed by an extraordinarily detailed model of the town of Tylerville as it had been around the year 1970. Though the town was fifteen years older now, much of it remained the same, and Melinda marveled at the care Erlene had taken with even such minor things as the architectural ornamental details at the top of the courthouse pillars and the distinctive steeple of the Asbury church. She’d even put in a shadowed area on the brick wall of a Savings & Loan on Brandon Avenue, reflecting an area of damaged brick on the real-life building where a truck had crashed into the building in 1968.

Surely
, she thought,
I can find a way to get a valid story out of Erlene’s Hall of History.
Perhaps simply by focusing on the obvious skill behind it and the historical aspects of it that weren’t doubtful or loony. She could simply breeze past the section with Cousin Frank and the flying saucer. There would not be time for much detail, anyway, being television news.

AT THE BACK OF THE DISPLAY ROOM they reached a door, upon which hung an intricate and strangely shaped hardwood plaque bearing a chiseled-in image of a man behind a plow, digging a furrow behind a plow mule. Below the plaque were letters painted on the door in the same manner as those on the sign outside. RISING ANGEL.

“Is there more to see in there?” Melinda asked, and Erlene seemed to tense. She said nothing for a moment.

“Did I say something I shouldn’t have, ma’am?”

“Ain’t nothing in there you’d want to see or know. That’s the room where the ghosts of secrets whisper, child. The kind folks don’t want revealed … though all secrets are revealed in their time. Even ugly secrets stained dark by the sins of evil souls.”

Melinda was puzzled by this melodramatic double-talk. “What is the plowman plaque on the door? It’s very well-designed and pretty. And what does RISING ANGEL mean?”

“I can’t speak to you of the Angel, because it rouses such a sickness in my spirit. But I will tell you about the plowman. You know what the Bible says of white-washed tombs, miss? Beautiful on the outside, full of foulness and rot within. Such was the place where that plowman image once hung. It hung in a pretty building where the ugliest secrets of Kincheloe County were hidden.”

“What was that, ma’am?”

“The Harvestman Lodge, child. That plaque there, made by my own hand, hung above the fireplace mantle inside the Harvestman Lodge.”

Melinda’s heart raced. “What happened there, Miz Ledford? Nobody ever seems to want to say.”

“Not many really know, my dear. A lot make guesses and come up with stories, but not many know the facts of it. The true facts.”

“Do you?”

“I do, child. They’re carved into my very heart.”

“Miz Ledford … will you let me see inside that room? I want to know the truth.”

“The truth can set you free just like the Lord says. But some truths burden a soul. Are you sure you want to know, child?”

Melinda thought of Eli and his determination to learn what was behind the hidden scandal of Harvestman Lodge. It seemed right to her that she be able to reveal it to him, assuming Erlene Ledford really did have valid knowledge.

“Yes, ma’am. I want to know.”

“Then that door will be opened for you, dear. Wait here. I have to fetch a different key.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

IT HAD BEEN A DAY not to be forgotten, however much she might wish it could be. The horror of the bloody crash she’d covered by morning, the disconcerting strangeness of the old woman Erlene Ledford and her even stranger Hall of History dioramas, and the sad-but-vague tale embodied in the final diorama in that back room … all these things together had Melinda Buckingham distressed and shaky.

She wanted to be alone. Not fully alone, though: alone with Eli. Reaching Hodgepodge, she was delighted to see his car parked in its usual spot. She whipped in beside it, only then noticing that Jimbo Bailey’s truck was parked nearby as well.

She met Jimbo coming out while she was going in. There was no missing the redness of his eyes, nor the smell of alcohol hanging about him. “Hi, Jimbo. Are you feeling all right today?”

She’d never seen him looking so maudlin. “Fighting the blues, missy. Some days you just think about … things. More than you do other days. Y’know?”

She smiled sadly and hugged him, and felt his shoulders heave. “Jimbo, I’m so sorry. So sorry. Have all the courage you can … sometimes things go better than expected.”

“You’re a dear one, Lindy. Yes indeed. Pray for old Jimbo when you think of him, will you? Pray for me. The Lord’ll listen to such a one as you. Me, I’ve hung up the phone on Him too many times. I doubt he pays much heed to me now.”

“I promise, Jimbo. Prayer every day. And don’t you stop praying yourself. I believe He hears us all, no matter how many times we’ve ‘hung up the phone on Him,’ as you just put it. He doesn’t demand that we earn the right to talk to Him. He just listens.” She hugged Jimbo again and he hugged her back.

“Thank you, missy. But there’s more than me to be prayed for now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Flora. My little sister, Flora. She’s found she’s got the same kind of bad heart I do. Something that runs in the family, I guess.”

“Oh, Jimbo.”

Tears rolled down his face. “I’m discouraged to the pit of me, Miss Melinda. So blue and discouraged.”

“Courage, Jimbo. Courage.”

He somehow managed to smile into her face. A feeble smile that clearly required a great effort. “I’ll do my best, Lindy girl. I promise it.”

MELINDA DUCKED INTO THE ladies’ room and with fresh water and and rejuvenation of makeup did her best to cover the tracks of an emotionally straining day. When she’d done what she could, she went to Eli’s office and found him in little better shape than she had been.

“Jimbo paid his visit to me this afternoon,” Eli said, his eyes tellingly red. “He told me about his health situation, and his sister’s … and he told me he has been talking to Mr. Carl, and will be cutting back on his work. They’re going to hire somebody to replace him at the newspaper office, so he won’t have to do the sweeping and facility maintenance and so on there … but he told me he asked to keep up what he does here. He said he told Mr. Carl that his ‘favorites’ were down in this building. And then he gave me the gift you’d told me he had for me. Something for you.”