High Country Fall

Nothing happened.

“Are you sure you have the right place?” asked the woman. “I think that unit’s still occupied.”

I tried the combination again and this time it released the lock. Turning the knob, I pushed open the door. The inside looked as if it’d been hit by Hurricane Fran.

“Oh, my!” said the woman, who stared past me in frank curiosity at the jumbled mess.

The couch and chairs had been shoved to the center of the room and lamps and end tables were stacked on top of them, as is not unusual when a place is being painted. Instead of the usual drop cloths, though, the furniture was covered in a tangle of colorful T-shirts, jeans, sweaters, and dirty socks. A pair of high heels sat atop the entertainment center, and was that a black lace bra draped over a clump of stained sneakers? Through the archway, I saw a dining table piled high with pizza boxes and drink cups.

“I didn’t think they looked like they were leaving for good when they went out of here this morning,” said the woman. “Somebody must have messed up on your rental.”

“No, no,” I said. “It’s okay. This is my cousin’s place and her kids are painting it in their spare time. They’ll probably be back soon.”

“Don’t count on it,” said the man. “They haven’t gotten in before midnight the whole time we’ve been here.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“And you’ve been here how long?”

“Since Friday a week ago.”

Ten days? My mind raced through the possibilities. Had the twins lent the place to some of their friends without telling their parents? I gave a mental shrug and began carrying in my things. Beverly had given me their telephone number at the college, and if they didn’t show up by the time I was settled in, I’d call and sort it all out.

As I went back to get the last bag of groceries, the man was already in his car with the motor running. His wife finished locking the door and gave me a concerned look. “I do hope everything will be all right for you.”

“It will,” I assured her. “Y’all drive safely now.”

“Don’t worry. The only time we’ve ever been stopped was for driving too slow on the interstate. Can you imagine that? A warning for going too slow? When teenagers are weaving in and out in those little red cars, going ninety miles an hour?”

“Well, you do see more little red cars pulled over than big blue Mercs,” I said, thinking how there would probably be more kids than grandparents standing before me tomorrow morning.

The car moved slowly away, then backed up. The man powered down his window and thrust a thin newspaper into my hand.

“The local news,” he said. “Only comes out on Friday and if it didn’t happen in Cedar Gap or affect Cedar Gap directly, you won’t read about it here, but it does carry ads for all the good restaurants here and in Howards Ford.”

I had to smile as I watched his car disappear down the slope, brake lights bright red all the way. People accustomed to big metropolitan dailies, like the Miami Herald or the New York Times, never seem to grasp the concept of small-town newspapers; but Linsey Thomas, who owns and edits the Dobbs Ledger back home, explained it to me once when I teased him for running a half-page account of a Scout troop fund-raiser my nephews had been involved in. “Big papers sell news,” he said. “Little papers like mine sell names. Am I gonna print the names of any little peckerwood that was there? Heck, yeah. Their mamas’ and daddies’ names, too, ’cause every doting grandma’s gonna buy at least three extra copies to send to friends and family who live somewhere else and they’re all gonna keep renewing their subscriptions.”

The editor of the High Country Courier apparently practiced the same policy. The pages were folded open to an article about a patchwork quilt made by volunteers and raffled off to benefit the local hospital. It appeared to name every woman who had worked on the quilt, the winner of the raffle, and a picture of the presentation ceremony at the hospital, wherein an administrator received a check from the officers of the volunteer group. I was surprised to note that they’d raised nearly twelve thousand dollars on that one quilt. At a dollar a chance, they must have hit up every tourist that came through town this year.

I carried the paper inside with me, stepping around an open foam carryout box that contained the dried-up remnants of a sandwich. From the pillows propped against the couch, someone had apparently lounged there on the floor in front of the television to eat and then gotten up and left the box. For a moment, I was almost tempted to phone the nearest motel down in Howards Ford and throw myself on a clerk’s mercy. Instead, I picked up the kitchen phone to dial the dorm number Beverly had given me.

Unfortunately, the phone was dead. No dial tone.

Resigned, I looked a little closer and realized that the place wasn’t as dirty as it initially appeared, just a little shabby and a lot cluttered.

Beverly said they were going to junk most of the stuff and refurbish once the painting was done. “If they’re going to pay fifteen hundred a week, tourists want everything new and fresh.”

Paint buckets sat on newspapers in the middle of the hall and brushes and rollers were soaking in a bucket of water, but so far as I could tell, only the walls of the smaller bedroom appeared to have been painted. Even there, the trimwork was still untouched.

The condo consisted of living room, large eat-in kitchen, a bath off the hallway, two small bedrooms, and a slightly larger master bedroom with its own bath. Since I was the sole legitimate occupant now, I had no hesitation about moving the clothes and toiletries I found there into one of the smaller bedrooms and taking this one for myself. Fresh linens were in the closet and cleaning supplies were under the kitchen sink.

When I went to strip the bed, I stumbled over a telephone receiver on the floor between the bed and the far wall and followed the cord to the unit itself, one of those with a built-in answering machine. The red light was blinking as I pulled it out from under the bed, so I put the receiver back on the cradle, pushed the play button, and heard a young voice with a clipped New Jersey accent.