Miss Julia Hits the Road (23 page)

“I intend to get a sample of it,” I told her. “So let’s take a Mason jar or something. I don’t know how we could get it tested. Lord knows, I wouldn’t drink it. But we can at least see what it looks like.”

“I bet if we went up Mountain Lake Road, we’d see a turn-off somewhere,” Little Lloyd said. “Those men I saw had to’ve walked in from there because they sure didn’t come in from Willow Lane. We’d’ve seen their cars if they had.”

“You’re right,” I said and headed for the catch-all drawer next to the refrigerator. “We need to look at a county map and figure out how to get in from the other direction.”

“I bet there’s even a trail we can follow,” Little Lloyd said.

“This chile don’t need to be followin’ no trail in the middle of the night,” Lillian said. She glared at me, but she didn’t know the time constraints I was under.

“I bet it’s easy to get in from the other side, Miss Lillian,” Little Lloyd said. “We won’t have any trouble.”

“Yes,” I said. “And equipment means they were doing something up there.”

Lillian was about fed up by this time. “Y’all don’t listen to nothin’ I say.”

Little Lloyd patted her shoulder. “Yes, we do, Miss Lillian.”

“Of course we do,” I said. “I hear every word you say and almost always take it into account. But Lillian, we can’t just sit back and hope everything’ll work out. Sometimes you have to take a hand in things and
make
them work out.” I’d found the county map by this time and began spreading it out on the table. “And I intend to find out what Clarence Gibbs is up to before I climb on that motorcycle with Sam Murdoch or anybody else.”

Lillian still wasn’t happy about it, and she let me know it by refusing to look at the map.

“Lillian,” I said, hoping to bring her around. “What if I rode on that thing, then found out that Mr. Gibbs wouldn’t sell to us? What if, after risking my very life, he announced that he was going to do something else with that property? Believe me, I would be hard to live with if that happened.”

“You not all that easy to live with now,” she said, cutting her eyes at me. Then she laughed. “Well, Law, I ’spect I better go on an’ go with you. I ain’t never argued you out of nothin’ anyway.” Then she frowned, thinking up some other argument. “I feel better, though, if you let Mr. Sam or Mr. Pickens know what you doin’. Even Miss Hazel Marie, who get us some help if we need it.”

I just let her ramble on. I wasn’t about to be deterred or made to listen to reasons why I shouldn’t go. Which was exactly what Sam would’ve given me, and exactly what I didn’t want to hear. “I’m going up to put on my galoshes so I won’t ruin my shoes.”

“Well, if I gotta do this, I gotta change outta this new uniform I just got,” Lillian said as she headed for the back stairs. “Miss Julia, you oughtta get you some long britches, you gonna be tromping through the woods like you plannin’ to do.”

“I don’t know why everybody’s so worried about my clothing,” I mumbled, hurrying out to change my footwear.

We gathered back in the kitchen to study the county map again to make sure we had our bearings. I was somewhat taken aback when Lillian appeared in her nylon running suit with, of course, those thick-soled blue and white boats on her feet. Lillian had already cut slits in the sides of both of them to make room for her corns, and now said that they were the best walking shoes she’d ever had, but she didn’t aim to do any running in them, regardless of what they were made for.

I leaned over the table and peered at the tiny lines running every which way. “I can’t make heads nor tails of this thing.”

“Here’s Polk Street,” Little Lloyd said, pointing to a line that ran east-west across Main Street. “And here’s Willow Lane.” He pointed to a thin line that just ended, without joining up with anything else. “Now, this area here is that old pasture and, look, Miss Julia, here’s the ridge.”

I followed his finger as he moved it across the map. “Find Mountain Lake Road for us,” I said, moving my head up and down as I tried to bring the map into focus. It was my experience that the printing on anything I picked up, from maps to telephone books, had gotten smaller every year. And it wasn’t all due to my eyesight. “I declare, I don’t know why they don’t print these things so a person can read them.”

“Here it is,” Little Lloyd sang out. “See, Miss Julia, it’s this twisting line here, the one that goes up the mountain. Now let me see.” He bent his head closer. “Right here. See this little bitty line? It comes off Mountain Lake Road and looks like it ends up on the other side of the ridge.” He looked up at me. “It might be an old logging road because it’s not even named. I bet that’s it.”

“Let’s try it,” I said, straightening up with a hand on my back to help me do it. “But if we’re going to go, we’d better go now before it gets any later.” And before Mr. Pickens and Hazel Marie get back, I thought to myself.

“We could still go in the mornin’,” Lillian said.

“Lillian, I have no intention of running into Mr. Gibbs in broad daylight,” I said. Not to mention that by daylight, I had to give him an answer.

“We better take some flashlights,” Little Lloyd said, running to the pantry where we kept the necessities for power outages in the winter. “We’ll need ’em.” As usual, the child was thinking ahead and preparing for all contingencies.

I pulled onto a weed-filled dirt road off Mountain Lake Road and parked the car a few feet in. There was no sign of any other cars, so I figured that whoever had been on the ridge that afternoon was long gone. The night had fully settled in, with only our headlights cutting a tunnel through the blackness. The thick stand of pines on each side of the rutted road enclosed us in a deep darkness. I was beginning to think that this might not have been the best idea I’d ever had.

“You have our sample jar, Little Lloyd?” I asked, preparing myself to brave the wilds.

“Yessum. Right here.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“I don’t much like this,” Lillian said, looking out from one side of the car to the other. “I jus’ been thinkin’ ’bout that ole graveyard out yonder. We ought not be ’sturbin’ no haints in the middle of the night.”

“Lillian,” I said. “You know better. We’re not going to bother them, and they won’t bother us.”

“It’ll be all right, Miss Lillian,” Little Lloyd said as he opened the car door. “Just shine your flashlight in front of you so you won’t trip on anything.”

“You can stay in the car, if you want to,” I told her, but she pushed up the front seat and got out beside Little Lloyd, mumbling that she wasn’t about to stay by herself.

It was fairly easy walking along the old logging road, but I was glad I’d had the foresight to wear my galoshes. The weeds rustling against my feet and lower limbs would’ve ruined my stockings.

I held up my hand and whispered, “What’s that noise?”

We all stopped in our tracks and listened. “I don’t hear anything,” Little Lloyd whispered back.

“Me neither,” Lillian said, swallowing hard.

“Well, now I don’t, either,” I said. “Let’s keep going.”

But as soon as we started walking again, I heard a rhythmic rubbing noise as if something or someone were following alongside of us. I swung the flashlight beam on each side of us, but the trees were too thick to see anything.

I stopped again, as did they, and the noise stopped, too.

“What’s it sound like?” Little Lloyd whispered, his voice slightly on the quavery side.

“Like somebody’s rustling through the leaves, making every step we make,” I answered. I didn’t want to scare him or Lillian, but I was on the verge of being unnerved, myself.

“I think it me,” Lillian said. “See, this be what you hearin’.” And she walked a few steps as we stood watching her. Sure enough, the nylon fabric of her running suit sliding between her lower limbs with each step made the noise that had given me such a turn.

“Lord, Lillian,” I said with a nervous laugh. “You need to do something about that. Anybody could hear us coming a mile away.”

“They’s not nobody out here anyway,” she said. “Ever’body in they right mind be home eatin’ they supper.”

Little Lloyd had walked a few feet beyond us and was shining his light along the left side of the road. “There’s got to be a path somewhere,” he said. “This road just stops on the map and doesn’t go over the ridge at all. There has to be a way for those men to cut across the ridge to get to where we saw them.”

We kept on walking, pulling our coats closer as the autumn cold began to seep around us and the night kept getting darker. I glanced up and saw one lone star twinkling in the deepening night. About the same time, I began to realize that the left side of the road was getting steeper as the ridge rose beyond it. We watched for a path that had to branch off the dirt road.

“Here it is,” Little Lloyd called out, pointing his light into an area of flattened weeds. “This has to be it. You want to follow it, Miss Julia?”

I pointed my light into the narrow opening among the trees and rhododendron thickets, and saw how the path angled upward. “Well, we’ve come this far, so I guess so. I just hope it’s not too steep.”

“We can always turn back if it is,” Little Lloyd said as he plunged in. I followed with some trepidation, and Lillian brought up the rear.

“Don’t y’all go too fast an’ leave me,” she said.

The walk was easier than I had feared, though I wouldn’t’ve wanted to do it every day. The path soon leveled off as we followed it along the top of the ridge. I could see a sprinkling of lights from the town through the trees.

“Be careful here, Miss Julia,” Little Lloyd said. “And you too, Miss Lillian. We’re starting to go downhill now.”

It wasn’t long before I could smell a dampness in the air and, in spite of the noise Lillian’s running suit was making, hear water bubbling and trickling.

“Hold up,” Little Lloyd said, stopping so that we almost ran into each other. “There’re rocks and boulders along here.” He threw the beam of his flashlight around so that we could see a rocky incline. The sound of water was louder, and Little Lloyd’s light finally steadied on a small, noisy rush of water that seemed to seep from among some large rocks above us, then fall in a miniature waterfall to pool at the bottom.

“This must be it,” I said, not at all impressed with its size. “The one Mr. Gibbs wants to bottle and sell, if anybody can believe that.”

Lillian peered over my shoulder. “It don’t look no different from any other spring, an’ I seen a million of ’em.”

“Slip down there, Little Lloyd,” I said, not wanting to slide down the incline. “Scoop up some of that water for our sample, while I hold your flashlight.”

As I lit his way, the boy slid down to the little basin below the spring. He knelt down and filled the jar, then turned to climb back up.

As he reached us, Lillian drew a sharp breath and said, “You hear that? I think them haints is movin’ ’round.”

Before I could answer, Little Lloyd grasped my arm and whispered. “Turn off your light.”

I did, Lillian did, and he’d already done his. I was blind as a bat in the sudden darkness.

“What is it?” I whispered, feeling the child edge closer to me and Lillian reach for him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Something.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Lillian said under her breath. “They be comin’ up from they graves.” I could feel her trembling behind me. Or it could’ve been my own shivering.

As the three of us huddled together on the path, fearing even to breathe, a bright light from the other side of the spring suddenly spotlighted us. I nearly fainted.

“Well, as I live and breathe,” a voice I could’ve done without hearing called out. “I do believe that’s Mrs. Julia Springer and her entourage out gallivanting after dark.”

Of all the people I hadn’t expected to run into, Thurlow Jones was the most unlikely. “Turn that light off,” I snapped. “You’re about to blind us. And get out here where we can see you.” I flicked on my flashlight as soon as the bright beam swung away from us. “What do you mean jumping out at us like that?”

Thurlow Jones moved his scrawny self out from behind a large boulder on the other side of the pool, his flashlight in one hand and a quart Mason jar in the other.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said. Our lights glinted off his glasses, and I thought to myself that he looked even crazier than when I’d last seen him.

“But we didn’t scare
you
half to death, Mr. Jones,” I reminded him. “And I don’t appreciate being sprung at like you did. What’re you doing here, anyway?”

“Same thing you are, little lady. Testing the waters.”

I drew myself up tighter and taller, taking offense at his term of address, as well as his assumption of my mission. “I’ll have you know that I have no interest whatsoever in testing water from a cow pasture.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said, holding up the Mason jar. He gave the jar a shake so that the water in it sloshed around. “It’s supposed to give a man a new lease on life and, as I’ve already had a jar full of it, I can feel it doin’ its work. Stand back, folks, I’m coming across.” And he backed up on the slippery bank to get a running start to jump the stream.