A Life for a Life - Lynda McDaniel (whitelam books TXT) 📗

Cleva whispered names as the members of the Green Treatise streamed in, clucking her disapproval as she identified her nephew among them. Alex had plotted exactly when and where the Green Treatise met, including a map with coordinates. I didn’t know how Alex found all his sources—it took a lot more than plugging into LexisNexis—but then that’s how he’d won his awards. I wished he were with us and not back in the truck (which we’d decided to take instead of his car), tucked behind a thicket of tall rhododendrons.

Cleva and I found a good hiding spot on the ridge above their gathering place. I couldn’t get comfortable, and neither, apparently, could my stomach. Around six o’clock, just as I closed the store, Cleva showed up with a picnic supper: fried chicken, potato salad, and pecan pie. We’d had a warm, sunny day, so we sat around the picnic table on the side of the store, under the gentle shade of two willow trees that some patient soul planted a couple of decades ago. The food tasted great at the time, but as I watched the evening unfold, I started to feel seriously sick.

Next came Roger Turpin, pulling up in his pickup with Wayne Burnett riding shotgun. They scrambled to get some boxes out of the back of the truck. About twenty men and four women were milling around a crackling campfire, the spew of pop tops syncopated with chirrups of crickets. I had to admit I was surprised to see women who had spoken kindly to me at the store, thanking me for ordering their favorite bread or buying from local farmers. At first, I thought their presence at the gathering represented loyalty to their men, but that didn’t seem to be the case. They picked up rifles and automatic weapons and pointed them with deftness that spoke of practice. One woman aimed a rifle near where we sat, though in the dim light, I knew she couldn’t see us. She was just admiring the precision of the gun’s sight.

“Good Lord,” Cleva said softly, patting my hand. “That’s Dexter and Geneva Skinner. And Butch Soderquist and Erlene Patterson. What’s this world coming to?”

My stomach grumbled again when Madras Man got out of a brownish pickup, its original color competing with rust and Bondo. He carried a boom box, which he set on a flat tree stump near the center of a circle of folding chairs and logs positioned around the fire. With a touch of a button, music blared. Waylon Jennings sang “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” and The Highwaymen harmonized on “Desperados Waiting for a Train.” Cleva had gone quiet—eating a biscuit she’d tucked into her pocket like a squirrel, nervously gnawing at its edges. “I don’t know that fella,” she whispered.

“That’s the guy who was running away from Lucy’s body.” He didn’t have on his Madras shirt, and I couldn’t see his tattoos, even though he’d partially rolled up the sleeves of his plaid flannel shirt (standard issue for wilderness men). But I’d never forget his face.

Another car came speeding down the road, spewing gravel in its wake. A woman got out. “Ain’t that the girl from the new art gallery?” Cleva asked, reverting to her mountain roots as she watched the strange scene below.

“What the hell? What in the world is Kitt Scanlon doing here?”

They turned off the boom box, and Turpin ordered everyone to take their seats. The meeting was about to begin. We weren’t close enough to catch everything, but sometimes they shouted loud enough for us to hear: “Goddam gov’ment,” “Open OUR roads,” or “Don’t tread on US!” All their fists shot in the air to punctuate their hate-filled slogans.

“This gives me the flibbertigibbets!” Cleva said.

I hugged her and whispered, “I moved here to get away from so much vitriol. I didn’t know I’d be in the midst of it again, on an even scarier level. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” My stomach grumbled its agreement.

They turned on the boom box again and played a canned speech by Grissom Wells, a militia bigshot, I assumed. The volume was way up, so we could hear, and his speech scared the bejesus out of us both. He was basically granting listeners myriad justifications for their baser desires. We looked at each other and mouthed the words, Let’s get out of here.

As we made our way back to the truck as quietly as possible, a man approached us, and we both jumped. It was just Alex, but the fright he gave me was all my stomach could take. I threw up dangerously close to his new Fabiano hiking boots.

“Oh, honey, I hope something I made for supper didn’t make you sick,” Cleva said, handing me some tissues from her bag.

I wiped my mouth and moved away from the mess. “No, Cleva, it was all that hate I couldn’t stomach. And the fact that we’re spending such a beautiful evening immersed in it.”

Alex shepherded us back to the truck, where he ran the heater on high to ease our chills—at least the ones on the outside. We rode home in silence. When we pulled up next to Cleva’s car, we said our goodbyes and promised to talk more in a day or two.

I slept poorly, unable to shake off the Green Treatise experience. I’d covered a Ku Klux Klan rally back in the seventies, and the Green Treatise triggered flashbacks. Witnessing evil emanate from under a sheet—or a canopy of trees—could keep a narcoleptic awake. And something we’d seen didn’t quite fit. I lay there with an uneasy feeling, straining to figure out what was bothering me. I finally gave up.

When I did sleep, I had a long, involved dream with a lot of fighting. It seemed like World War I, with people shooting at each other from trenches. I was glad when I awoke around four o’clock. My mouth was parched, so went to the kitchen for a glass of water. I found Alex awake and reading, Jake sacked out next to him. I hadn’t even noticed Jake had abandoned me. I told myself that was because I was thrashing about and had nothing to do with his wanting to be with Alex. We talked for a while, and I loved on Jake. They eased my mind enough that when I headed back to bed, I finally slept peacefully.

I had to admit I appreciated having Alex around, sharing ideas and getting to take advantage of his sharp mind. And maybe more than that. Though he’d spent his nights on the couch, I felt closer to him than that last year we shared in the same house. On Sunday, we’d put his designer hiking boots to real use on some of the trails surrounding the falls. I enjoyed watching him get excited about spotting a thicket of flame azalea or a belted kingfisher diving for its dinner.

But by Monday morning, he was ready to get back to the city. We had a quick breakfast and headed downstairs. Abit was already in his chair. I said good morning and opened the front door. Alex sat on one of the benches.

“Great to see you again, V.J.,” Alex said, sticking out his hand to shake. Abit looked pissed off at first, but his good nature won out. He smiled and shook Alex’s hand. They chatted a while, though I was certain Abit was more than ready for Alex to leave so things would go back to normal. If only they had.