why the driver lost control.
He had acquaintances who were developers, and they always talked about how obstinate these old mountain families were. Rumors went around that some of these backwoods rednecks shot at every three-piece suit that turned a cuff on their land. That they believed anybody who showed up without a hound at their heels was either a Revenuer or an evangelist, both of which meant you’d better be on your toes. That anybody who had all their teeth couldn't be trusted. But that was ridiculous. The movie Deliverance was not a documentary. At any rate, Emerland wasn't scared off that easily.
Emerland enjoyed the hunt. The faint-hearted could go elsewhere, to backfill the Everglades or build shopping malls over abandoned toxic dumps in Jersey, making easy money. But their dreams were flat. Even if they built an eighty-story office building in Atlanta, they'd never reach as high into the sky as Emerland did with his mountain monuments. No one would be able to look down on him.
He shouted Mull's name again, growing impatient. He'd at least expected barking dogs. In the city, he would have clamped down on the car horn until he got results. But right now, he wanted to be the slick seducer, not the head-butting goat.
He looked around at the land that would be his. The decrepit outbuildings looked like they'd be no challenge to a stiff wind, let alone Emerland Enterprises's bulldozers. But maybe he'd let the barn stand, renovate it into an old-timey saloon, with rusty cross saws and staged photographs of moonshiners on the walls. The bar could charge eight bucks a shot for drinks named 'Mountain Squeeze' and 'Blue Ridge Brandy' and 'Olde Firewater.' And maybe he'd leave the outhouse standing so the tourists could have their pictures taken in front of it.
He yelled once more, then stepped onto the porch. Yellow-green chicken shit and old black stains covered the planks. The windows were boarded over and shuttered with pine slats. An old rocking chair, held together by twine and spit, showed an imprint of two bony buttocks in its frayed seat cushion.
Yes, this old bastard would hop at the chance to move into a high-class condominium.
The screen door was broken, splinters and wire mesh sagging from brown hinges. The front door was open. Emerland peered into the dark interior. The place was a mess, with furniture tilted over and shattered Mason jars covering the floor like spilled silver. Mull must have pitched a hell of a drunk.
'Mister Mull, are you home?' he shouted through the doorway. His words were swallowed by the cold warped walls.
Damned old coot. True, I didn't make an appointment, but that must be his truck there. I doubt if that SUV came to take him away. And from the seedy look of this place, I'm positive Mull's not out somewhere tending his farm.
Emerland put his hands on his hips. He might as well walk around and get a feel for the place. Maybe he'd step into the woods and peek over the ridge at the view. Look at Sugarfoot and admire his own handiwork. But first, he wanted to check out the Pathfinder.
Emerland pressed a hand to the SUV's hood. The engine had cooled, which meant the vehicle had been there for a while. He knelt and stuck his head inside the shattered sunroof. Papers and cards had spilled from the glove box to the driver's-side door. He shuffled through them until he found the white registration sheet. He pulled it out into the sunlight, looked at it, and let out a grunt.
'I'll be damned. Herbert DeWalt. Now what the hell is he doing over here?'
He put this piece into the puzzle. Could DeWalt have been tipped off about Emerland's plans? Emerland didn't trust any of his assistants. He'd bought or stolen most of them from rivals, and he knew that the practice worked both ways. A well-placed bribe, forty pieces of silver here and there, had been known to tempt even the most faithful of inner circle members.
But DeWalt had had three years to make a move on this property and apparently hadn't reached Mull's price yet. If DeWalt was after the land, he must have lost his old edge, the skill and instinct that had chopped millions from the bank accounts of others. True, the rich bastard had wheedled a few acres off of Mull, but that was a drop in the bucket. Emerland believed in buying entire mountains.
He stood up and looked at the bristled pine ridge tops. Mull might be showing DeWalt around right now, pointing out boundaries and right-of-ways. And it would be just like DeWalt, from what Emerland had heard, to pretend not to give a damn that he'd just wrecked his expensive toy. Probably wrecked on purpose just to show off, like a cartoon character lighting cigars with a hundred dollar bill. Emerland clenched his fists in rage. If DeWalt wanted to go to war, Emerland was ready to bring out the big guns.
Because he had made up his mind that this was his land. He walked toward the woods.
James walked beside Aunt Mayzie, prepared to catch her if she stumbled. He wondered why she couldn't watch from the porch like any normal person would. She could have seen plenty from there, the city workers decorating the stage and some of the vendors setting up their displays. But no, she just had to stick her nose into things, get right in the middle of those white people and bump their shiny shoes with the rubber tips of her crutches, smiling and saying ‘scuse me.
All around them, people shouted and chatted happily, excited about tomorrow's Blossomfest. Decorations hung from the light poles, giant yellow tulips that could be turned upside down and spray-painted silver for use as the town’s Christmas bells. Traffic had been detoured from Main Street and the asphalt was covered with hay- packed replica wagons and folded plywood booths. A banner proclaimed 'Welcome to Blossomfest' in red letters on white vinyl, with Mayor Speerhorn's blown-up signature at the bottom. The banner fluttered stiffly beneath a power line, catching the spring wind.
James felt like a period typed onto a blank page, the way the white folks clustered around them. But with Aunt Mayzie, that made two periods, or maybe a colon. And he was so busy helping Mayzie weave through the crowd that he couldn't keep an eye out for the mushroom creature in the Red Man cap.
Oh, but I thought you decided that was a dream, bro'. Just a drunken nighttime sideshow. A wrong turn by that gray ball of meat you keep under your flattop.
But James hadn't convinced himself it was only his imagination. Because he wasn't really the imaginative sort. In grade school, when the English teacher had told the class to get out a sheet of paper and play 'What if?' James had stared at the tip of his pencil until his eyes crossed. He was always more concerned with 'What had been.' And at the end of class, he'd turned in a page with one sentence scrawled across the top: What if I can’t think of anything?
But if the subject was history or science, something with a past, James filled the front and back of a page in fifteen minutes. He was too analytical and left brained to create phantasms, fictions, or things that go bump. Not to mention thinking up a fruit salad scarecrow with green eyes and an alfalfa wig. So that would be that.
Still, he found himself looking into the white eyes, searching for green light.
Aunt Mayzie was having a grand time, talking to people she knew or asking vendors about the merchandise. They wandered past the soap makers and the tobacconists and barbecue cooks. One old man wearing fireman’s suspenders and a dark “NYPD” ball cap was weaving a basket from brown reeds. A blotchy-faced woman at the next booth, who was almost as wide as an elevator, stapled canary yellow bunting to the edge of a table.
'What are you going to be showing, ma'am?' Aunt Mayzie asked, leaning forward on her crutches, her shortened leg angled behind her.
'We're delivery florists, but we also do flower arrangements. Weddings, funerals, that kind of thing. You want our business card?' the blotchy woman said without looking up.
James looked around. The words 'floral arrangements' had flooded his mind with too many unwanted images. He looked into the tops of the trees that lined the main street, expecting some sort of overgrown spider to drop down.
'I'm not in any danger of either a wedding or a funeral,' Aunt Mayzie said to the woman. 'Where's your store?'
'Down in Shady Valley. We get a lot of business from the university. You know, academic functions and such. And boys saying thanks to the girls, if you know what I mean.'
The blotchy woman opened a gym satchel and handed Aunt Mayzie a card.
“Petal Pushers,” Aunt Mayzie said. 'Ain't that a cute name, James?'
James nodded, anxious to move on. The sun was starting to flatten out above the western ridges, growing fat and orange the way it did before it dropped over the side of the earth. And then the darkness would come. And even the sodium street lamps and the heavy police patrols wouldn't make James feel safe. He cleared his
