Dangerous Undertaking Page 4

  “And you’ve no one to lash out at but God,” he said. “I understand and God understands. He’s there for you and He can lift the anger off of you. Take comfort.”

  “Here’s my comfort,” I said, sweeping my good arm in an arc wide enough to encircle the ridges surrounding us. The fall colors—orange, red, and yellow—blazed across their backs and the ice-blue sky arched over them like an infinitely deep canopy. “I take comfort in this. No offense, but they speak louder than any sermon I’ve ever heard.”

  Pace looked at the panorama surrounding us. “They latch onto you, don’t they? These mountains.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Yes, they do. Despite my efforts to escape them.”

  “But it’s the people hidden in the coves and hollows who keep me here. The people your father has served all his life.” He started walking again, slower, and he spoke in a cadence matching his stride.

  “Whenever I get discouraged or think that God has abandoned me, the people hold me. First time it happened, I’d been here only six months. One Sunday morning in a little shack of a church near Hickory Nut Falls—chicken coop churches folks used to call them—I finished my last service for the day. Back then, I’d preach over in Yellow Mountain community at eight in the morning, hop in my forty-eight Plymouth coupe and high-tail it like a bat off the devil’s doorstep to Eagle Creek for nine-thirty worship, and then be in Hickory Nut Falls at eleven. There were only ten to fifteen families in each congregation.”

  “Chicken coops?”

  Pace laughed. “When I say ‘chicken coop,’ I’m not straying from the God’s truth. The church was a combination of old plank boards, tar paper, and tin roofing that a couple of the families had pulled together from their own houses.

  “No cross, no white steeple, no sign out front with my name and this week’s sermon topic. Just a shelter from Life’s storm where these folks could escape their poverty and hardship for an hour and praise God for the simple joys money can’t buy. Inside, the pews were only wooden benches, the pulpit was a post with a board nailed to it, and the music was whoever happened to bring a dulcimer or guitar. I wanted to build a real church and fill the pews, but it wasn’t happening. I was down on myself and down on the calling. I’d petitioned the bishop for a new assignment.”

  “Bet he didn’t want to hear it,” I said.

  “I wasn’t the first young pup old Bishop Wallace had to train. He said he’d pray about it, which meant I couldn’t complain while a divine response was in the making.

  “Several weeks later, after Sunday service, I boxed up my Bible and the hymnbooks I carried from church to church, though most of the congregation couldn’t read. A few folks came up to talk with me, mostly some of the ladies and their young-uns as the men tended to hold back or even sit outside during the preaching and singing. Like I said, I’d only been here a little while, so people were a little gun-shy.

  “When I thought everyone had left, I lifted up the box with the Bible and hymnals and walked down the narrow aisle to the front door. Just before I reached it, a man stepped in the doorway, blocking my path. He was about six foot tall, lean as a twig, wearing a beat-up pair of overalls and a gray, sweat-stained work shirt. Pushed back atop his head was an old, floppy-brimmed, brown felt hat. A squirrel rifle lay across his folded arms. I especially noticed the squirrel rifle.”

  “Guess he didn’t like the sermon,” I interrupted.

  Reverend Pace smiled. “That’s what I thought, Barry. I took some comfort that the hammer wasn’t cocked. Yet.

  “‘Preacher, you in a hurry?’ he asked.

  “I had never seen him before. Didn’t know if he was one of the men who sat outside, but I did know that in my six months experience, no one brought a gun to church.

  “‘No, not particularly,’ I said. ‘Can I help you?’”

  Pace stopped walking and leaned on his stick. His eyes held mine and his smile disappeared. “What I at first thought was meanness in his face melted with my offer. I realized the old man was tensed up over something. Evidently, I could help. I felt the pastoral call to feed the flock.

  “‘I’d be obliged if you’d come back to the house with me. I got a burial needs tendin’ to.’ He looked at the box in my arms. ‘Bring the Good Book.’

  Pace laughed and started walking again. “Well, now there’s nothing more confounded than a speechless preacher. I must a looked like every bit of sense had been snatched from my head. At last I stammered, ‘But has the body been prepared? Paperwork filled out and everything?’

  “‘All ready,’ he said. He looked down at his feet, ashamed to meet me eye to eye. ‘I ain’t learnt enough to say the words. Ain’t no church goer.’

  “Having made his confession, he made his demand. ‘So, you goin’ to help?’

  “Now I’d done a few burials, and even interred one on family property with your dad, but never an impromptu funeral. I didn’t know what to say, but I sure didn’t say no. Just nodded my head and followed that mountaineer outside.”

  A flash caught my eye along the edge of the rail bed. I jumped back toward Pace. “Wait,” I said. “I see something.” In my mind, it was a glint off Dallas Willard’s shotgun.

  We stood silently for several seconds. The only sounds came from a chorus of blue jays. Then somewhere down the track a squirrel chattered.

  Pace and I ventured back to the edge of the crossties. Instinctively, he stepped away from me so that one shotgun blast could not take both of us. I carefully stepped down the gravel rail bed. While Pace covered me, I grabbed a handful of green mountain laurel leaves and lifted the branch.

  “Beer cans,” I said with relief. “Can you believe it? We’re two miles from nowhere and here are the relics of a party.”

  “I’m surprised the astronauts didn’t find beer cans when they landed on the moon,” said Pace. “You got good eyes, Barry.”

  He extended his walking stick so that I could grab the tip and steady my climb up to the track.

  “Yeah, good eyes but bad nerves,” I said. “Sorry. I left you facing a real gun in church.”

  “Like I said, nothing like this had ever happened before. A command performance at a funeral. So, this old man and I stepped out of the church and all I saw was my Plymouth and the cornfield down to the creek. I knew he had walked out of the hills.

  “‘Can we drive to your place?’ I asked.

  “‘Partly,’ he answered.

  “We got in the Plymouth and drove off. Me and the old mountain man, the Bible and hymnals bouncing between us. He never spoke. Just pointed the turn at each crossroads. The pavement became gravel, the gravel became dirt, until finally two ruts were all that marked what had been an old wagon trail. I stopped the car, afraid to push my luck any farther.

  “‘Don’t forgit the Good Book,’ he reminded me.

  “We walked up the ridge on an overgrown footpath till we came to a little clearing of a couple acres of pasture. In the middle was his cabin. Shack, I should say. Front porch roof propped up with small tree trunks, bark still on them. Side planking had been covered in black tar paper for weathering. It was torn through in places and I saw cracks in the slats through to the inside. In front, a few chickens and guinea hens scratched for grubs. No other sign of life.

  “We walked around the side by a pile of cordwood. A couple wedges and an axe lay up under some of the logs. In the back, a well-traveled path led from the rear of the cabin to the outhouse, its door half off makeshift hinges. Over at the edge of the clearing, about thirty yards away, was a freshly dug hole. Maybe three foot by four foot. The dirt was heaped up beside it with a shovel lying atop the pile. At the far edge of the hole, I saw an old tattered tarp stretched out over something and weighed down with stones.

  “A chill rippled down my spine, and I shuddered in horror at the size of the tarp.

  “‘My God,’ I thought. ‘It’s a child. This man has lost a child.’

  “Calling up every ounce of courage, I followed him over to the grav
e site. I braced as he bent down and pulled back the tarp. There before me lay the mangiest ol’ coon dog I’ve ever seen. His eyes glassed over and body stiff as a board. His legs were so straight and rigid, I swear to God, if you’d set him up, he could have been a footstool.

  “All the fear, the dread that had built up inside me since the stranger blocked my doorway busted loose and I did one of the meanest things I’ve ever done in my life. I laughed. Laughed till I thought my insides would pop loose.

  “I heard the squirrel gun cock. The sound snapped me out of my hysteria.

  “The man stood up from bending over the dead animal. He glared at me with a look of hurt and hate. The gun barrel pointed straight at my belly.

  “‘That’s Roddey,’ he said. ‘The finest friend I ever had.’ He held the rifle in one hand and removed his hat with the other. Tears ran along the creases in his weathered cheeks. ‘Am I goin’ to have to dig this hole bigger?’

  “My heart stopped. I must have gone white as a sheet. I don’t know what kept me from passing out and falling into the hole. I felt my knees start to give on me and my hands were shaking so much I could hardly get the Bible open.” Pace smiled at the memory.

  Looking at the white-haired preacher with a staff in his hand and pistol in his belt, I found it hard to imagine him as once being terrified.

  “But I found passages of Scripture I didn’t know I could find. We went through the birds of the air, beasts of the field, lions laying down with lambs, anything that had an animal, I read.

  “Then I prayed for Ol’ Roddey—the finest dog that ever lived. It was somewhere in the prayer—two prayers actually, the vocal one for Roddey, the silent one for me—that I heard him uncock the gun. I said a few more ‘Thank you, Lords’ from the bottom of my heart and we committed Roddey’s carcass back to the mountain.”

  Reverend Pace shook his head, then started walking again, carefully placing his rhododendron stick on the crossties. “Yeah, we covered Roddey up and the old man asked me into the cabin. He and I shared some corn—liquor that is,” he added with a chuckle. “As a Methodist, I considered it medicine to calm my nerves. Only then did he tell me his name. Jake McGraw.

  “You see, Barry, I’d performed a spiritual function for Jake no one in my seminary class could have imagined. I was an outsider, but Jake McGraw needed me. Praying over Roddey was doing the Lord’s work. I understand that now. After that, Ol’ Jake came down every Sunday and sat on the back corner of the back bench. He was still a strange old hermit, but in his own way, he gave me a stamp of approval. Believe me, it didn’t go unnoticed by the other mountain folk. In a year, Hickory Nut Falls was my largest congregation. Today, there is a church there instead of a chicken coop. And a parking lot too.

  “Ten years later, your dad and I buried Jake beside Ol’ Roddey. And I swear at the final ‘Amen,’ a coon dog howled from the mountain top.”

  “Yeah, right,” I laughed. “You’re doing a number on me.”

  “It’s true,” said Pace. “You can ask Charlie. He was a friend of Jake’s.”

  The preacher pointed to a break in the bordering pines. I saw a field sloping away from us. Halfway down the hillside, a massive workhorse plodded along. Behind him, with both hands guiding the wooden plow, a skinny man in blue bib-overalls stepped over the clods of freshly turned earth. The old guy was eighty if a day.

  “That’s Charlie Hartley,” said Pace.

  “Don’t believe I know him.”

  “Well, you’re about to.” He swung the walking stick in the air and caught the farmer’s attention. The man pulled back on the reins and hollered “whoa-up.” The gentle beast lumbered to a halt and snorted his displeasure. He shook his head, twisting his neck around the sweat-stained collar to roll an eye toward the barn at the far end of the field.

  “Charlie’s never had a tractor touch his soil. Got no use for them. His horses are his children.” The preacher left the railroad tracks and started across the field. “Come on,” he said. “Rude not to talk a spell.”

  “Hello, Reverend,” said Charlie. He wiped the sweat from his hands with a red bandanna and grasped Pace’s right one with both of his own. “Good to see you.” He looked me over. “They finally get you some help?” he asked Pace.

  The Reverend laughed. “Yeah, but he ain’t it. This is Barry Clayton. He’s Jack Clayton’s boy. Barry got shot up at the Willard funeral last week.”

  “Heard something about that,” he said with a nod. “You work with your pa?”

  “They don’t call me Buryin’ Barry for nothing.”

  The old man didn’t crack a smile at the joke I’d been saddled with since junior high. He turned to his horse like Pace had turned to me.

  “This is Ned. He’s paying for his pleasure. Told him last February he shouldn’t have jumped Nell. With her foaling just a couple months off, it’s just him and me to ready the winter field.” He turned and lectured the animal. “Remember that next spring ’fore you go mountin’ your plowmate.”

  The horse flipped his tail as if to say “lay off.” Charlie chuckled at the big stallion’s rebuttal. “Course you are giving me a grandchild of sorts. Guess I should be grateful.” He reached into his shirt pocket for a sugar cube, and, as the horse took the treat, Charlie scratched the coarse hair between his dapple ears.

  “What are you fellows doing walking in on the Hope Quarry spur?”

  “Guess you didn’t know Dallas Willard’s still missing,” said Pace.

  “Nope. Ain’t been to town since Monday.”

  “He hasn’t been seen since the shooting. Then his truck shows up yesterday by the railroad about two miles south of where the quarry spur splits off. Search parties spent today combing half the county.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “We could use your phone to check in. After we walk down to the quarry.”

  “How much farther is it?” I asked.

  “Couple hundred yards,” said the preacher.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “You call the sheriff’s office.”

  “I’ll take Ned to the stall,” said Charlie. “Come get me when you’re ready.”

  On my return, I walked into the shadows of the old barn. The sound of my footsteps died in the carpet of brown hay strewn over the dry, packed earth. The rich pungent odor of manure, sweat, and feed rose up like a barricade. I stopped for a moment while my eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  Against the golden backdrop of the barn’s open rear door, I saw the motionless silhouettes of Reverend Pace and Charlie. They sat on barrels and watched the mare drink from her water trough. The barn odor mellowed into an aroma of age. With reluctance, I intruded upon their silent pleasure.

  “I didn’t find anything,” I said. “You talk to Tommy Lee?”

  “Yeah, patched through the two-way radio. Nothing.”

  “Great day in the morning,” muttered Charlie. “What’s the sheriff planning?”

  “To keep looking at least through the weekend,” said Pace. “It’s about all he can do. National Park Rangers have agreed to scout park land at Montgomery Rock and Black Bear Bluff. Sheriff’s got a couple of the mountain families to do the same on their own land. He hopes somebody will find some sign. Maybe a campfire. Dallas could be lost if he wandered too far into the gorges.”

  Charlie Hartley kicked the dirt with his work boot. “Tarnation. He’s a local boy who knows these hills as well as anybody. He’s been up and down them since he could crawl. He ain’t lost. If he ain’t dead, he’s bad hurt. Dogs. Ought to bring in dogs.”

  “Tried that,” I said. “Tommy Lee got the SBI to bring them to the truck. No use. Nothing for the dogs to follow. Scent ended at the tracks. Said Dallas may as well have caught a train.”

  “Maybe he hopped a freight,” said Charlie.

  “Railroad told Tommy Lee that would be impossible,” I said. “It’s not a crossing, and they’re usually going thirty-five to forty miles an hour. SBI ran aerial surveillance over the tracks, but
it’s not as effective as walking the ground, which is what I guess we’d better get back to doing.”

  Pace stood and clasped a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Take care of Nell, you hear.”

  “You come up and see her colt.”

  “Sure. I kiss all the new babies.”

  Pace picked up his walking stick and followed me out of the barn, leaving Charlie to lean against the stall and admire his mare.

  I knew something was wrong as soon as Pace and I got to the funeral home. From the high corner eaves, the spotlights blazed even though the sky still held the last purple rays of twilight. They were the sign of official business, the illumination for visitors and mourners going to and from the circle of grief.

  “Uncle Wayne told me nothing was scheduled for this Saturday night,” I said. “That’s why we invited you to stay over.”

  Pace glanced at me as he slowed my Jeep to a crawl.

  “Maybe you’ve got company,” he said.

  We saw the old blue pickup with dented aluminum camper-top parked at the edge of the pavement. Next to it was a rusted Chevy Nova. “No, not the social kind,” I answered. “And I don’t see Uncle Wayne’s car. I’d better not leave until we know what’s going on.”

  We walked through the side yard to the back porch off the kitchen. My mother bustled out of the door, waving her arms in frantic ellipses, her plump body bobbing up and down as she exhorted us into the house.

  “Oh, Barry,” she whispered. “It’s awful. Just awful. And Wayne’s not back from looking for Dallas Willard.”

  Pace gently held her by the shoulders to calm her. “It’s all right, Connie. Tell us what happened.”

  Her voice quivered and she blinked back tears. “They brought him in the back of a truck. Wouldn’t even call for the ambulance.”