The Ghost of Tobacco Road

by Dale Young

  He put the hot dogs in a pot of water and turned on the stove, then went and took a quick shower. After his shower, he put a few dogs in buns and grabbed a paper plate out of the cabinet. Before long he was parked in front of his television eating his supper and watching one of the more popular shows where cheating husbands were confronted by their wives. Logan ate one of his hot dogs while a pretty young woman had to be pulled off of her husband kicking and screaming after his mistress was brought on the stage.

  “It’s not always the husband doing the cheating,” Logan said to the television as he chewed his hot dog. Despite his problems, particularly with alcohol, Logan knew that he would never be a cheating man and that if he ever was lucky enough to have another woman that the last place he would find himself would be on the stage of a TV show being slapped by his wife for cheating on her.

  Sarah… Logan suddenly thought about Sarah. Her husband had cheated on her and she was gorgeous, much prettier than the women he was watching on the television show. Logan just shook his head. Maybe it was just in the blood of some men to cheat on their wives.

  Logan finished his supper and watched a few hours of television until he finally fell asleep on the couch. He awoke sometime after midnight and went and crawled into his bed. He was proud of himself for not stopping at a convenience store to buy beer for the evening. A beer or two would have certainly made his hot dogs taste better, but he knew that it was time to get off the bottle and he knew that it would take every ounce of willpower he had to do it.

  Once in his bed Logan laid awake for almost an hour while thinking about the letter from the attorney, the town of Starlight, and all the images he had seen in the books in the library. In the morning he would pack an overnight bag and drive to the town. Whatever his inheritance was it was his for the taking according to the letter. Apparently this long lost relative of his wanted him to have something and Logan knew he had little to lose by spending a day or two on a roadtrip to Starlight to find out what it was. Maybe she was rich and had left him her old Bentley or maybe a Rolls Royce. The thought of this caused Logan to smile. How would that look, him driving onto his old used car lot driving a car like that? Logan chuckled lightly at this idea and then finally drifted off to sleep.

  ***

  The next morning Logan awoke just after sunrise. He went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee and then took a quick shower. Breakfast was a couple of eggs and toast, washed down with several more cups of coffee.

  “A man with a pot of coffee can do anything,” Logan announced to his empty trailer, as if it could understand him. He turned up his cup and took the last swallow of coffee. Then he went into his bedroom and packed his overnight bag with two pairs of jeans and a few of his favorite shirts. He made sure one of his shirts had a collar on it. He planned to change into it before he met the attorney so that he would look presentable. It was obvious that this long lost relative of his had been wealthy and Logan didn’t want to show up for his inheritance looking like he didn’t have a penny to his name.

  Once he was finished packing Logan took his overnight bag and sat it on the couch. Then he suddenly had a bright idea. Before he could talk himself out of it he grabbed his cellphone and dialed Sarah’s number.

  “Logan?” Sarah sounded half asleep when she answered her phone.

  “Hey,” Logan said, suddenly ashamed of himself for calling Sarah so early in the morning. He hadn’t even thought about it before dialing her number.

  “Logan, what’s up? Is something wrong? You’ve never called me this early in the morning.”

  “I’m sorry. And I just realized you must be at home. I hope I didn’t wake your husband.”

  “He’s in Myrtle Beach for a big golf tournament. She’s with him.” Logan could hear the edge in Sarah’s voice at the mention of her husband’s mistress. Logan knew that Sarah planned to leave her husband when she was finished with her plan and that she knew he was still cheating on her, but it didn’t ease the pain of knowing he was out of town and holed up in a fancy hotel with another woman.

  “So you’re alone?” Logan felt a flicker of hope danced in his chest.

  “I’m alone,” Sarah answered.

  Logan decided to just ask her what he wanted to ask her. He figured he had little to lose.

  “Say, I just got a letter from an attorney in the town of Starlight. It’s some little one-horse town a few hours north of here. Apparently some long lost estranged aunt or whatever she is has left me something in her will. The letter said the will stipulated that I be told in person of the inheritance so I have to ride up there to see what it is. I was wondering if you, well, I was wondering if you wanted to ride up there with me. You know, just for the hell of it.”

  Sarah was silent for a few seconds. It seemed like minutes to Logan.

  “Oh Logan, I’d love to. But I’ve got plans tonight. You know that partner I was telling you about? He’s coming over to my house tonight to help me with an insurance policy. At least that’s what he thinks he’s coming over to do. And he knows my husband is out of town. You remember my plan, right?”

  He closed his eyes and winced. Yes, he remembered Sarah’s plan to have sex with every married attorney in her husband’s firm and then ruin their marriages by emailing the proof to their wives. Logan couldn’t understand why he was so disappointed and he felt a flash of jealously at the thought of Sarah having sex with another man. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t like they were dating. Why did he care?

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. I thought you might like to go on a road trip. You know, through the countryside, eating gas station food, listening to the radio, that sort of thing. But it’s cool. No worries. I wish you the best of luck tonight, Sarah. Like I’ve always said, your husband is the biggest fool on the planet.”

  Logan chided himself for rambling. The last thing he wanted to do was sound pitiful to Sarah. There was an uncomfortable pause in their conversation but then Sarah finally spoke.

  “You’ll have to tell me all about this long lost relative of yours when you get back,” Sarah said. Logan could sense that she wanted to get off the phone. Who am I kidding? he thought to himself. He knew Sarah had better things to do than to waste her time on the phone with a man who moved used cars for a living.

  7

  Logan tossed his overnight bag in the backseat of his car and then got behind the wheel. The atlas from the library was lying on the passenger’s seat. He would have much rather had Sarah’s perfect ass in the seat instead of the atlas but he knew that it had been a foolish thing to hope for. Today it would just be him and the forty year old atlas.

  The sky above was clear and the air carried the industrial scent of the nearby shipping port. He knew he should probably go tell Lowell where he was going and ask him to watch his trailer while he was gone, but Logan knew that Lowell and his wife were probably still asleep recovering from their night on the town.

  He already felt bad about waking Sarah up this morning and asking her, like a stupid teenage boy, if she wanted to go on a road trip with him. Logan didn’t want to compound his guilt by waking up Lowell and his wife to tell them he was going on some damn fool snipe hunt to a little tobacco town that he was sure Lowell and his wife had never heard of. Besides, he had already told Sarah so at least one person knew where he would be if something happened to him. Logan grinned and shook his head. What could happen to him? About the only thing he could think of would be him dosing behind the wheel and driving off the road into a tree or a bridge abutment. Logan knew that few people, if anyone, would even care if that actually happened to him.

  Logan flipped open the atlas and found the page he was looking for. He traced a few lines on the map to figure out where to go and then tossed the atlas back onto the seat. He flipped open his cellphone and called the Harmon Blackwell’s office in Starlight. He was greeted by the same friendly voice that had greeted him the last time he called. He informed the lady that he would be in Starlight by that afternoon. She to
ld him Mr. Blackwell was free after 1 p.m. and that he could come by any time after that.

  He cranked his car and rolled down the windows. In a few minutes he was headed up the coast highway on his way to a town that he was still not convinced would actually be there once he got to the point on the map. He couldn’t figure out why he had to find an old atlas to locate the town of Starlight, and seriously had no idea why he wasn’t able to find the town on the Internet. Everything was on the Internet, he thought to himself as he began to fumble with the dial on the radio.

  He hit a drive-thru window of a fast food joint and got himself one more cup of coffee and a sausage biscuit to go with it since he was still hungry. Then he got back onto the coastal highway and headed north. As the salt air circulated around the interior of his car, he took a sip of his coffee and realized that he had seen worse days than this. He knew that as long as he just took one day at a time that he would be okay. And for today at least he had a nice cup of coffee in his hand, gas in his tank and the smell of the ocean around him. He was alone, but he was used to the feeling. A few more months of it and he knew he would get to the point where he wouldn’t even care.

  ***

  Thirty minutes north of Wilmington, Logan left the coastal highway and turned northwest onto Highway 6. According to his atlas he needed to follow this road for about fifty miles. Then he would turn north onto State Road 7 that would lead, at least according to his forty year old atlas, right into Starlight.

  Logan sipped his coffee and finished his biscuit as he watched the countryside glide by. An occasional farmhouse and barn sitting in the middle of a huge field were the only signs of civilization. Logan tried to figure out what was growing in each field as he drove by but had no idea. He had been born and raised in the city and as far as he was concerned things like vegetables came from the supermarket, not a farm. But Logan knew one thing, and it was that the fields he was driving through were not growing tobacco. And they were not growing corn. Even a city boy knows what cornstalks look like. And after looking through the books in the library, Logan now knew what a tobacco plant looked like as well. He knew that the short, bushy plants that were in the fields on each side of the road were definitely not tobacco plants or cornstalks.

  It wasn’t until he turned onto State Road 7 that Logan saw his first field of tobacco. He was awed at the sight of it. Waist-high plants with large, broad green leaves spread from the side of the road to the distant tree line. A farmhouse sat in the middle of the field and along the tree line Logan could see a row of what looked like to him to be barns, and these barns had chimneys like the ones in the books from the library.

  Suddenly Logan heard the sound of a loud air horn. He had been so intent on studying the field of tobacco to his right that his car had wandered across the yellow line in the middle of the two-lane road. A large farm tractor was coming from the opposite direction and the driver was laying on his horn in an effort to warn Logan.

  Logan jerked the wheel to his right and narrowly avoided the slow moving tractor coming at him on the opposite side of the road. He overcompensated and the wheels on the right side of his car left the pavement. He jerked the wheel again and managed to get all four wheels back onto the road. He felt a rush of panic flood his bowels.

  “Fuck!” he yelled as he clamped down tightly on the steering wheel. “Pay attention shithead!” He always called himself a shithead when he screwed up. After a few seconds, he settled back into his seat and looked into his rearview mirror. He could see the huge tractor turning onto a dirt road to leave the highway.

  “They just let them drive those fucking things on the roads with the cars? Holy shit!”

  He was in new territory. He was surrounded by tobacco plants and was sharing the road with huge green and yellow tractors, the likes of which he never seen before. He checked his rearview mirror again and saw that the tractor had disappeared in a cloud of dust down the dirt road, apparently headed to some field to do whatever it was big tractors did. Despite almost hitting the tractor head-on, Logan found himself enjoying this newfound rural world. He had definitely never seen anything like it. When he was younger the only traveling he did was with his parents, and all they had ever done was drive to Carolina Beach in the summer. And that was not even twenty miles from their house. And since their deaths he had barely had enough money to live much less take vacation trips out of town.

  A thought suddenly entered Logan’s mind. He checked his rearview mirror again and there was no sign of a car behind him nor was anything coming towards him from the other direction. Not even another big green and yellow tractor. He let off the gas and began to slow down. Then he pulled off the side of the road next to a row of tobacco plants on the edge of the field to his right. Even though he was a grown man he suddenly felt as mischievous as a teenager.

  Logan brought his car to a stop and checked once again for cars coming from either direction. Nothing. There was a lonely farmhouse standing vigil to his left, across a huge field of tobacco. Apparently the field to his right also belonged to this house as well. Several more of those strange barns with the chimneys sat near the far edge of the field.

  It was midmorning and the warm air was crisp and clean. As he got out of the car, Logan thought about how much better the air smelled out here in the country as opposed to the industrial, diesel fuel-laced salt air in his trailer park. He raised his arms over his head and stretched, and then walked around to the other side of the car so that it was between him and any prying eyes that might be looking out of the windows of the farmhouse across the road. Once there he unzipped his fly and took a leak. He could not ever remember pissing by the side of the road way out in the middle of nowhere. He was amazed at how liberating it felt.

  Once finished, Logan looked over his shoulder at the farmhouse and then back at the row of tobacco plants not ten feet away. Full of curiosity, he couldn’t help but feel the urge to touch one of the plants. Keeping the car between him and the farmhouse as best he could, he walked over to the closest tobacco plant. He had no idea what a farmer would have to say about someone messing around in his field, but Logan figured that it would be anything but friendly.

  Logan looked down at the strange plant and wondered why he had never started smoking. Lots of people did, but it had just never appealed to him. And now he was staring down at the plant that made it possible for people to smoke. Logan looked at the strange plant as its leaves hung motionless in the still air. The leaves were large, about a foot across, and were green near the top of the plant and yellow near the bottom. Logan frowned when he saw the stubs near the bottom of the stalk where the leaves had apparently been pulled from the plant. He had no idea why anyone would pull the leaves from the bottom of the plant.

  He reached over and touched a broad leaf near the top of the plant. The surface had a moist, waxy feel to it. He wondered what it would be like to just tear the leaf off the plant, roll it up into a cigar and light it up using his car’s cigarette lighter. A homemade cigar, he thought as he rubbed the edge of the leaf between his thumb and forefinger. Then he thought about just ripping the leaf from the plant and tossing it in his car as a souvenir. This seemed a little more appealing. Logan didn’t smoke and he knew now was not the time to start.

  Just as Logan was about to tear the leaf from the stalk of the plant, he glanced over his shoulder at the farmhouse. Apparently someone had taken notice of him because there was a man standing on the porch looking directly over at Logan’s car. Logan immediately let go of the leaf and walked back to his car. Once he got around to the driver’s side he brought one hand up to shield his eyes from the sun and used his other hand to wave at the farmer. This gesture was not so much an act of friendliness on Logan’s part as it was a way to show the farmer that both of his hands were empty and that he had not taken a leaf from the tobacco plant. Logan remembered how the library book had called tobacco the golden leaf because of its value, so he understood why the farmer would be leery of anyone in his fields.
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  Once back in the car Logan wasted no time in getting back on the road. Maybe he could get himself a souvenir tobacco leaf some other time. Logan figured it would be a nice thing to show Lowell since Lowell liked to smoke, and would give them something to talk about during their late evening patio shoot-the-shits by the grill.

  Logan pulled his car back onto the road and waved once again at the farmer standing on the porch. To Logan’s surprise, the farmer waved back. Logan was relieved the farmer did not appear to be upset. The last thing Logan wanted was a run-in with the local sheriff, who probably knew the farmer or was even related to him. Logan brought his car up to speed as the farmhouse receded in his mirror.

  The fields continued on each side of the road. The scenery didn’t change much as Logan made his way up the road to Starlight. He knew he couldn’t be more than an hour or so away. The sun was high in the morning sky and the warm air circulating through the car was beginning to make Logan drowsy. He decided to stop and get a soda at the first place he came to.

  After thirty minutes Logan had all but given up hope on finding a store when ahead to his right he finally saw a sign that advertised gasoline. He pulled into the small gravel parking lot and came to a stop near the front entrance to the store, which looked like it was at least fifty years old and badly in need of a paint job. Once inside he found the cold sodas, grabbed a candy bar and then took both to the front counter to pay. Behind the counter sat a gray haired woman who looked to Logan to be in her late sixties. A cigarette was pinched between her lips and one of her eyes was squinted shut. Logan paid for his soda and candy bar and then decided to ask the woman a question.

  “Can you tell me how to get to the town of Starlight? Is this the road that goes to it?” Logan then waved his hand at the road in front of the store. “Am I going in the right direction?”

  The woman smiled at Logan and removed her cigarette from her mouth. She turned her head slightly to her right and exhaled a large blue cloud of smoke.