Harvestman Lodge (78 page)

He was waking up now, though, and his sense of calm was fading. Jang had him in the car again, and they were somewhere outside of town. The Sadler Highway, it looked like, though his vision was somewhat blurred by the drugs.

“Where we going, Jang?” he tried to say, but wasn’t sure he’d formed words. He was incredibly thirsty, his lips dry and cracked, and his throat and tongue unwilling to work properly and let him speak.

Jang didn’t understand him, but guessed what Lukey was asking.

“Lukey, do you remember when we here before, the time we procured the little girl at the lodge, and our car struck a dog that ran into the road while we were driving away from town?”

The drugs were loosening their grip unusually fast, and Lukey actually could make out, through the muffled ringing in his ears, what Jang was saying. He nodded.

“The dog had a collar on, with the name of its owner. A rich man, very influential here.”

Lukey nodded again, and tried to say “Darwin.”

“The dog was, I think, a Samoyed, very expensive, and much beloved by its owner. You told me we should dispose of the dog’s body, and we did. The place where we put it was out this road. That much I remember. It was near a motel, some yards off the road, in a thicket of woods.”

This time Lukey contented himself with merely nodding.

They passed the old Winona site, now a horrifically ugly office building, and a short distance up the road, Jang pulled his car onto the shoulder.

“Come on, Lukey. Let’s get out. We need to get some fresh air into your lungs and clear your head out.”

“Still feeling … dopey,” Lukey muttered. “Just stay … here.”

“Out, Lukey. I need you out. Hang on, I’ll come around and help you.”

Had he not been under the lingering influence of what had been injected into him, Lukey might have sensed something here felt threatening. As it was, he was ready to do anything Jang told him. Jang appeared at his door, opened it, and rather roughly urged Lukey out of the car, pulling hard on his arm. Lukey got out, wobbling on his feet, and Jang said, “C’mon.”

“Where are we going?” Lukey managed to slur out.

“To where we got rid of that rich man’s dead dog.”

“Why?”

“Just come on.”

BENEATH MUCH OF KINCHELOE COUNTY ran an extensive branching network of caverns, some small passages and fissures in the ground that ran for mere yards and ended, others meandering for miles through the rock until they joined huge caverns never seen by human eyes. In some cases the fissures were more vertical than horizontal, reaching up from the caves and tunnels below to the open world above.

One such fissure snaked its way up from a large, flooded subterranean cavity a hundred-fifty feet below to a broad, brushy sinkhole in the area between the old Winona building and the place where once had stood the dwelling and garage of the late and unlamented Millard Tate. Into that sinkhole, twenty-three years before, a little girl of ten named Emmie Moody might have vanished had she not caught herself on protruding roots. As it was, she’d gotten out safely and gone on to catch her brother smoking sneaked parental cigarettes outside the Winona Court Motor Lodge, where the Moodys were spending what would be their final night as a united family.

“Why’d we come out here?” Lukey asked, his words a little clearer-spoken now.

“Convenience,” said Jang, producing from his shirt pocket one of the pre-loaded srynge and hypodermic needles. In a deft motion he pushed the needle into Lukey’s shoulder and injected a lethal dosage of the drug that had been keeping Lukey in a stupor.

Lukey had not even time to try to speak again before the drug took effect. Jang had only to give him a gentle shrug to send him toppling into the sinkhole, where gravity funneled him down into the crevice at the bottom. He didn’t go through at once, his hip wedging him in place.

Jang swore, found a long fallen tree branch, and nudged it against Lukey’s body. Lukey felt nothing; the drug was already bringing his heart to a stop. His body shifted as Jang’s stick nudged it, and Lukey Parvin forever left the world of life and sun and made a long drop through the throat of the sinkhole into the unending darkness below.

“Goodbye, Lukey,” Jang said, and let the branch drop into the hole after his newly deceased companion in crime.

Jang was walking away when his eye caught sight of an interesting oddly-shaped stone resting on a rocky outcrop jutting from the side of the sinkhole, another outcrop extending over it. A rock collector in his boyhood, Jang retained some interest in geology as an adult. He couldn’t have begun to say why, his other interests being far more hedonistic.

Kneeling and leaning carefully into the space between the horizontal outcrops, he picked up the strange stone, and examined it as he returned to his car on the shoulder of the road.

It wasn’t a stone, but a metal wedge of some sort, quite rusted and old. Even so, it was inexplicably interesting, so he tossed it into his backseat as he slid behind the wheel. He waved and winked toward the thicket he’d exited, a final goodbye to Lukey Parvin, and went looking for the nearest phone booth so he could inform those who had sent him that Lukey Parvin would never again be a problem for the Flower Garden.

Chapter Fifty-One

INDEPENDENCE DAY, JULY 4 1985

ON PARADE DAYS IN TYLERVILLE, EACH news staffer of the Clarion became a photographer, stationed strategically along the parade route in hope that a barrage of snapping by enough cameras would generate at least one good color image of each float. Then, whichever entry won the top award from the Chamber of Commerce, the paper was assured of having a usable image for the front page. In small towns, parades made big news, and a big color view of the winning July 4 or Christmas float was traditional to the point of being requisite.

The best image would probably come from the camera of Jake Lundy, who had a natural ability to frame an image in his viewfinder so that little or no cropping was needed. He was equally adept at using light to his advantage, and the day’s slightly overcast skies, dulling the intensity of shadows as well as sun glare, would be helpful. Lundy’s skill at photography was envied by all on the staff, and he was often asked to provide tips about how he did it. “I just do it,” was the best answer he could give.

Melinda was hard at work, too, on this slightly overcast Thursday morning. With Kincheloe County and Tylerville being her news beat, parade coverage fell to her. She’d hoped the station would send a videographer to help out, but on July 4 every town in Northeast Tennessee had something special going on, and the crews were spread thin. Once again she was a “one-man band” news operation.

As the parade began, Eli was literally smiling down on Melinda from above. He’d been assigned to shoot images from the four-stories-up rooftop of the Kincheloe County Bank in the center of town. His perch gave him a view of all Center Street, the heart of the parade route, and the crowds lining both sides. Melinda at the moment was across the street from him, walking down the line of people, videoing them while they waved at the camera and held up babies and small children in hope of seeing them later on television.

Meggy, Eli knew, was in the parade staging area at the National Guard Armory on Taylor Avenue, getting in place to dance on a moving flatbed with the Crosswaites, while Mr. Carl and the Tuesday Morning Picking Club provided the music. The tune would be one Mr. Carl had already unveiled to the newspaper staff when he simply walked in on a Monday morning staff meeting with his banjo strapped on and announced he’d composed a tune in honor of the coming bicentennial celebration. With David just beginning to ask his father to please not interrupt the meeting, Mr. Carl had broken into his “Bicentennial Backstep” tune to the delight of the staff and the obvious annoyance of David. The annoyance contributed greatly to the staff’s enjoyment of the moment.

As parades will do, the first distant strains of band music started a half hour later than scheduled. Police cruisers with lights flashing were the first sight to appear, creeping down the street in advance of various gleaming convertibles provided by local dealerships and bearing an assortment of beauty queens. Most were local or regional, but the last of the lovely bunch was Miss Tennessee herself, a coup for Tylerville brought about through the influence of Benton Sadler. Sadler himself appeared next, seated astride the most unusual float in the lineup, a large touring motorcycle mounted in its middle, with Sadler straddling it and waving to the crowd. Sadler was frequently seen on the streets of Tylerville, riding his big ‘84 Aspencade, so the visual reference was lost on very few paradegoers.

Even from the rooftop of the bank, Eli could hear the cheers Sadler received. A popular man, clearly. He snapped several photos of the lawyer/politician as he passed almost directly below him, arm lifted and waving at the public he hoped would put him in the governor’s office one day.

The local high school marching band arrived in short order, moving with spirit up the street to a band arrangement of “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Proud parents snapped photos in machine gun rapidity from both sides of the columns of uniformed young musicians. The drum corp pounded hard, their percussion literally vibrating up through the walls of the building upon which Eli stood.

An interesting play of shadows revealed itself as the marching band passed through the intersection of Center and Railroad streets, and Eli zoomed in in hopes of capturing a photo even Lundy might admire.

When he’d snapped a few frames, he looked around again for Melinda, and saw her farther up the street, aiming her video camera into the faces of a family out for an all-American smalltown Independence Day. Eli grinned at the sight, then randomly swept his eyes across the crowd — and sucked in his breath.

At the end of an alley on the other side of the street he saw an unexpected face. The Asian man. The one he’d seen outside the Arcade building. And on the piece of film from Harvestman Lodge.

He pushed his telephoto lense to its max and took several fast shots. As he snapped off the last one he saw the Asian man notice him, wheel, and vanish up the alley like a fleeing rat.

The man was alone this time. No Parvin nearby.

The sighting was remarkably unsettling, and pulled Eli’s thoughts away from the job immediately at hand, and back to the entire matter of Harvestman Lodge, Broken Flower, the secret film.

It was going to be hard to concentrate now on something as trivial as a smalltown parade.

THE COUSINS WERE DOING SOME HIGH kicking when their float came into view far up the street. From the perspective of Eli, the effect was spidery: long, denim-clad legs in fast motion, the nearing images of them blending to the point they gave the illusion of entertwining. And around them the little girls of Meggy’s dance class, in their red, white, and blue leotards, stepped and twirled. Above, on an elevated and backset stage constructed on the flatbed, Mr. Carl and crew stood, playing the “Kincheloe County Backstep” over and over again.

Looking through his magnifying lense, Eli made sure he could pick Meggy out of the group, and was relieved when he saw her. Knowing that the Asian man was in town, present at this public event, created a feeling of danger that tightened the muscles at the back of his neck.

Eli knelt at the edge of the roof so he could prop on the wall around the top of it and steady his camera. Leaning over slightly, he watched the float bearing the Crosswaites get closer and closer, until it was nearly below him. Custer Crosswaite happened to look up, saw Eli poised at the edge of the roof, and with great drama froze in place, pointed up, and yelled, “Don’t jump, son! Don’t jump!”

That, of course, caused most in the crowd to look up and see what Custer was reacting to, and Eli flushed bright red with embarrassment. He was, at heart, a shy person. He backed away from the edge and stayed out of sight for a full minute, mentally berating Custer. Worst of all, he had noticed at the last second that Len Cosner, the photojournalist working on the PBS documentary about Buster and Custer, was at work below on the street and had caught Custer’s pointing and calling incident on video.

THE MOST RECENT PRESIDENT OF THE Chamber of Commerce had entered his job three years earlier vowing to shake things up in the usually staid and unadenturous world of supporting local enterprise. So far the only progress in “shaking up” that Roy Canter had made was getting the Chamber building painted a more garish shade of blue – which actually garnered him zero plaudits and plenty of complaints. That, and he’d added candy-tossing to the annual Tylerville July 4 Parade, making it more like the later Christmas parade, during which Santa (actually the
Clarion’s
“Chunky” Thunky Fincher in a fake beard and red suit) heaved handfuls of cheap sweets to the children and whatever adults weren’t too proud to scramble at the curb for what the younger ones had missed.

For Independence Day, Santa wasn’t to be found, and the candy-throwing was left to a trio of community theater actors dressed as Uncle Sam, taking turns based upon who was available. Roy Canter made sure the candy thrown by Uncle Sam was of better quality than the Christmastime Santa offerings, and the result of that had been what he’d hoped: his star rose in the community. The Chamber received actual letters of thanks from locals who appreciated the obvious effort that had gone into the whole business with the candy. They declared that they were speaking on behalf of their children, though all knew better.