by Cameron Judd
“How old is Megan?”
“About eleven or twelve, I think. Megan’s got a head of curly black hair, like her mother. Not much resemblance to her big sister. Melinda used to work with them before she went off to college to study the news gal business.”
“‘News gal business.’ That’s a major I never noticed in any college catalog.”
Lundy laughed. “Yeah, that’s likely not what they called it.”
“So where we going this morning, Jake?”
“Well, a little later we’ll head up near Mr. Carl’s place. For that surprise I was telling you about. But we got some time before that gets started. Tell you what … I’ll take you out to a place that involves some Kincheloe County history you ain’t going to want to include in your magazine, and another part you surely will. We won’t have time to stop except maybe long enough to get some coffee-to-go at a particular store out there, ’cause we got to get back to Mr. Carl’s for that surprise I told you about.”
“Lead on, Jacob!”
“Flea Plank or bust, then!”
“What or bust?”
Lundy put on a poorly faked Asian accent. “Patience, grasshopper. Shut up and ride. All becomes clear to the patient man.”
They traveled to a corner of the county that Eli had never visited. The terrain was rugged, hilly and with abundant forest. It reminded Eli much of the western mountain country of North Carolina around the tiny town of Marshall, though not quite as shadowed.
But Marshall was a metropolis compared to the community Lundy drove them to … not that there was much to differentiate the community from the undeveloped countryside around it. A small post office with the name FLEA PLANK on its front was there, with a big and obviously very old general store standing beside it. Above the store’s long railed porch hung a sign declaring it to be FLEA PLANK MERCHANDISE AND GROCERY.
“What the heck is a ‘Flea Plank’?” Eli asked as Lundy parked in front of the store. “I never heard such a silly name.”
“Yeah, it’s a stupid old name, but this is a stupid old world. And you like the sound of it. Admit it. You’ll never forget the name of Flea Plank now that you’ve heard it, huh?”
“You’re right about that. But who came up with it?”
“There’s as many answers to that question as there are people who’ve tried to answer it. And as far as I’m concerned, there’s not a one of them answers yet that can be a hundred percent believed.” Lundy put on a dramatic 1930s-style radio announcer voice. “The verified origins of the Flea Plank name are a Kincheloe County mystery lost in the shrouding mists of time.”
Eli replied in his own old-style radio voice. “A mystery, you say? Then perhaps we can solve that mystery with some research and play it up in the magazine, eh?” He dropped the silly voice. “I was already thinking of doing something about community and road names anyway, and this would fit right in.”
“Eli, you can study the origins of Flea Plank from now until the end of time, and you’ll not find anything except the same stuff that’s been printed twenty times before. But I also know there’s going to be no stopping you from trying, so go at it, young man! If you talk to the Crosswaites, take all they tell you with a big old grain of salt, though. Especially Custer.”
“Who are the Crosswaites?”
“Oh Lordy! So much they boy still has left to learn! You telling me you been in Kincheloe for days now and nobody has told you about ‘them twin cousins’?”
“‘Twin cousins’? Not a word.”
“Son, in these parts the Crosswaite cousins are second only to the Sadlers in terms of fame … and in some quarters they outshine even them! Buster and Custer Crosswaite are dancers. Old-timey style, buck dancing and clogging and so on, but with their own twists and tricks. You ain’t seen nothing like them two on a dancing stage, I guarantee! Both of them born and raised in Flea Plank, and Buster still lives near here, out on Yankee Camp Road, which is up yonder way.” Lundy pointed.
“Yankee Camp Road,” Eli repeated, immediately drawn to the musicality and evocative quality of the name. “Got to be a story in Yankee Camp Road.”
“There is, and there’s no mystery about that one. It’s just a road that leads up to a place where the Federals had a camp during the war during the East Tennessee occupation. That’s another story I’ll volunteer to write for you.”
“Consider it yours, then, unless David says different.”
“Come on. There’s mighty good coffee in this store, made in an old-fashioned pot like the one Marshal Dillon had in his office for him and Festus. Good stuff. I’m buying.”
STEAMING POLYSTYERENE CUP IN hand, Eli studied the terrain as Lundy drove further into the hollow. He turned the truck rightward onto a narrower road, obviously long neglected by the county road department, that left the hollow and climbed up a forested ridge. The woods all around thickened and protruded toward and over the road. Small old houses of board-and-batten, plywood, or vinyl siding, along with trailers in abundance, stood in roadside clearings cut back into the encroaching woodlands. Eli pondered that a more cliched vision of Appalachia could not have been contrived by a Hollywood set dresser.
Lundy’s thoughts apparently were running along similar lines. He said, “A lot of this looks pretty dismal, don’t it? You know, Eli, some folks in this part of the country get upset with the hillbilly, rednecky way us Appalachianites are perceived and portrayed on TV and in movies and the like. And there’s plenty to complain about. A lot of nonsense out there, a lot of cliches about ‘backward’ folk like me. What we’re a lot less ready to admit, though, is that there’s times the stereotypes and cliches are pretty close to accurate.” He pointed past Eli toward a rough little porch-fronted house on the right side of the road. “I mean, look at that place over there … can’t you just picture Burt Reynolds come striding out of the door in his full 1973 Gator McKlusky glory, or his Bandit cowboy hat, lighting up a smoke? You know what I’m saying?”
“I think so. You’re saying that sometimes stereotypes and generalizations have at least partial root in truth.”
Lundy chuckled. “Righto! And let me tell you a little tale about that: here a couple of years ago Bowington College hosted a big seminar about how Appalachian folks are being ‘victimized’ in the way they are portrayed in movies and TV. Dukes of Hazzard and Beverly Hillbillies and all that. They asked me to come be part of the panel since I write all the time about Appalachian folks in my column. Well, I don’t do panels, so I told them no, but durned if Davy Carl didn’t decide it was me who should be the one to cover the dang thing for the paper, anyway. So there I was, listening to them pencil-neck academic types moaning and groaning about the poor country folk being hurt so bad because the rest of the country was seeing them as hillbillies and rednecks and all that. And you know what? Even though I’d refused to be on that panel and generally try to keep my big trap closed in situations like that, I ended up hefting my hind end up out of my seat and storming up to the microphone in the aisle, the one you were supposed to talk into to ask a question to the geniuses on the panel.”
“What did you ask them?”
“Didn’t ask a durn thing, but I told them a few things. Gave them a piece of my hillbilly mind. I told them, first off, to quit whining, that the Appalachian folk would be fine without being rescued by them. I told them that these poor ‘victimized’ people they were so fretful about came from generations of folk who’d walked into the wilderness and turned it into a place where their people could live and grow and do themselves proud. I told them that some of the first moves into government-by-the-people-for-the-people were made right here in these wild hills and mountains and valleys well before other folks had even much thought of such a thing, and that it was these same ‘victimized’ people who marched across and whipped old Pat Ferguson’s sorry ass at King’s Mountain. Later on, their descendants stood up when the Civil War commenced, looked the rebels in the eye, and said, ‘Thank you kindly, but we still believe in the gra
nd old nation our fathers built and we’ll be proud to defend it against any who want to turn against it, so be warned.’ I told them eggheads sitting at that table that the Appalachian folk might be kind of backward in some ways, but that whatever they were, one thing they weren’t was a bunch of weaklings so puny they needed the protection of a bunch of pointy-headed intellectual types to keep them from being ‘victims’. Victims, my giant old butt! The folks in these backwater places come from strong stock, are strong folks themselves, and are among the best neighbors and friends you can find anywhere.”
“Sounds like you got kind of riled up, Jake.”
“Oh, I did! So riled that I figured somebody would come down and tell me to get back in my seat and shut up. But nobody stirred. Them eggheads on the panel just gaped at me with their faces all pale and their Adam’s apples bobbing up and down, so scared of this raving country wild man that they were having to swallow back their own spit. And the folks in the audience, well … you know what? They applauded me. Can you believe it? Gave me a big, long ovation! It was downright humbling, Eli, I got to say. All those pathetic ‘victims’ giving me a big old bold round of applause for speaking out for them to say maybe they weren’t really victims at all.”
“That’s a good story, Jake. Maybe we can have you put some of those thoughts down in a, well, calmer fashion and put them in the magazine as a kind of essay, or editorial column. What do you think?”
“I think you’ve got that magazine on the brain, son. You can’t seem to think about nothing else.”
“Somebody’s got to be thinking about it, Jake, or it isn’t going to get done.”
“You’re right about that. Time’s a-wastin’, as they say.”
“Hey! Whoa, what was that?”
“What?”
“That road we just passed … the road sign there said ‘Harvestman Lodge Road.’ I just barely caught it before we were around the turn and I couldn’t see it anymore.”
“Yeah, that’s Harvestman Lodge Road. And that is the thing I was talking about that you ain’t going to want to even try to put into your magazine.”
“Why? What is it?”
“Just a road, that’s all. Beyond that, just something best left forgotten and ignored.”
“What does ‘Harvestman Lodge’ mean?”
“Pretty much what it sounds like. There was a fraternal group back some years ago, that met in a lodge building up that road. Nice stout building, paid for by Sadler money. ‘The Fraternal Order of Tennessee Harvestmen.’ Started out in the 1920s as a good community organization for farmers, or ‘harvestmen,’ as they called their group just to sound more uppity. Then it became a case study in how things that start out good can spoil. Beyond that there’s not much point in saying anything else about it.”
“Jake, that’s the most attention-grabbing thing you’ve told me yet, and now you’re clamming up on me.”
“Suffice it to say that there’s no point in trying to put the Harvestmen in that magazine in any fashion or form, because Davy Carl, believe me, won’t let it happen. Nor will Mr. Carl, and sure not Miz Deb. It all goes back to that sacred cow business we talked about.”
“The Sadlers.”
“Mooooo.”
“So whatever bad happened with the Harvestman Lodge had to do with the Sadlers?”
“Let’s just say there were stories going around. All kinds of them, all bad. I don’t know that anybody ever got to the bottom of it all, what the full truth was or what part the Sadlers had in it.”
“Jake, speaking of Sadlers, there’s a name I’ve heard mentioned several times since I came to Tylerville. Benton Sadler. I saw his law office downtown and I’ve heard his name spoken, and seen it in old papers I’ve looked through. And I feel like I even heard that name some when I was still living in Knox County.”
“Oh yes, Benton Sadler. In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, he’s the golden boy of the Sadler family and all your ‘traditional family values’ conservative types across the state, not to mention being the pride and joy of all Tylerville. He’s a fellow who is going places, and it’s the conventional wisdom in Nashville that he’s on a fast track to be governor before he’s done. He’s already served two terms in the state senate, though he declined to run for reelection in the last race because his wife had suffered some big health problems. She’s fine now. I happen to know our own Miz Deb is one of them who is counting on Benton, who is her kin, making it to the governor’s mansion. He’s in his early sixties now, so he’ll have to get to it soon, if he’s going to do it at all.”
“What kind of man is he?”
“Good lawyer and good citizen. Active in the community, successful in his work, generous in his giving, busy in three or four civic clubs and also a staunch Presbyterian. Not your PCAs or Cumberlands. The old Blue-Stocking USA variety of Presbyterian. Like my buddy the Right Reverend Touchy Feely. He’s a member of Touchy’s church, in fact.”
“From what little I’ve heard of Benton Sadler, he’s a down-to-earth fellow.”
“I guess. Though with your political types of Benton’s style, it’s hard to know what part is real what what part is play-acting. Benton Sadler, you see, is a man known for being humble and unpretentious. The reason he’s known for it is that he goes about being humble and unpretentious in the most un-humble and pretentious ways he can. Benton Sadler will break his neck running across a room to open the door for somebody else, preferably somebody of humble standing so he can emphasize the contrast, and he’ll open that door and step back and wave them through with the biggest flourish you ever saw, so that nobody in the room misses seeing him do it. He takes great pride in showing off his lack of pride, you see.”
“Are you being fair, Jake? Maybe he’s just a decent guy.”
“Here’s a little truth of life for you Eli, and call me a cynic if you want to. Here it is: He who insists on always being the one to condescend to help those below him has to first believe they are below him. In short, the man who always makes sure he’s the one holding the door or paying the tab at the restaurant, that fellow may not be as humble as he wants you to think. He may be just be making sure nobody fails to notice he’s the top dog in the kennel.”
Eli shook his head. “‘Call me a cynic,’ you said. Okay, Jake. I’ll call you a cynic. Because that’s about as cynical an attitude as I’ve ever encountered.”
“I know, I know. Cynical, but accurate in some cases.”
“You’ve got some hang-ups, don’t you, Jake?”
“Plenty. Way more than my share.”
“Does Benton Sadler, humble or otherwise, really have a serious shot at being governor one day?”
“Better than anybody else in the state, or so all the big boys say. I’ll be surprised if he don’t make it, honest truth. There’s been only one governor from this county in the state’s history. Way, way on back. And he was a Sadler, too. Heyward Sadler. The one they named the highway after.”
Lundy glanced at his watch. “Hey, Eli, I’m going to turn around now and head back to town. We got to get to Mr. Carl’s.”
“You’ve got me puzzled about that surprise you say you’ve got for me today.”
The fake Kung Fu accent returned. “You’ll be enlightened soon enough, grasshopper. Patience, patience.”
Lundy whipped the truck into the parking lot of a tiny churchhouse with the daunting name of Tabernacle of the Lord Jesus Christ the Only King, painted crudely on a big sheet of exterior-grade plywood nailed to the wall above the front door. Smaller letters declared the pastor to be one Parnell Lloyd Shanks. Lundy wheeled around in the gravel lot and pulled back onto the road to head down the way they’d come.
As they passed the foot of Harvestman Lodge Road again, Eli looked up it and saw nothing but the rutted, washed-out gravel road itself, climbing the ridge and passing over the top of it. “Is the Lodge building still up there?” he asked.
“It was the last time I saw it – that’s been three, four years back. B
ut like I said, forget that place. There’s nothing there you’ll be writing about.”
“Maybe not in the magazine … but maybe there’s something there I can build a novel around.”
“I thought you wrote frontier stuff … flintlocks and forts and coonskin caps and Cherokees and all that.”
“I do. But I want to try my hand at other kinds of stories, too. That whole fraternal lodge thing sounds like something that might have some legs, something that could lead to a good piece of fiction. And the Harvestman name is evocative. Intriguing. At least to my ear.”
“You remind me of my buddy Touchy. He got all wrapped up in the Harvestman Lodge thing for a while, just burning up with curiosity about it. He started poking around, asking questions, interviewing old-timers and so on … then as far as I know he pretty much gave up on it. He’s a strange bird, Touchy is. But I like the man, even if he is too dang liberal.”
“I like him, too. I may have to ask him what good information he found out about the Harvestman Lodge stuff.
“There’s nothing good about Harvestman Lodge, my friend. Just put it out of your mind, especially as long as you’re part of Kincheloe County and the Clarion.”
Eli shrugged and said no more. But he planned to learn what he could about Harvestman Lodge, whatever Jake Lundy, David, the Sadlers, or anyone else thought about it. Being told he should forget about it guaranteed he’d do anything but.
Chapter Ten
THE HOME OF MR. CARL and Miz Deb Brecht was not a mansion, but it was big, well-kept, beautiful, Edwardian, and stood proudly atop a round hilltop on the northeastern edge of Tylerville. Eli had driven past the place several times in his still-new residency in this town, without knowing whose house it was he was passing. As Lundy’s truck climbed the driveway, Eli admired the huge oaks and maples in the expansive, well-managed lawn. Well-managed, no doubt, thanks to the regular labors of Jimbo Bailey.
