by Cameron Judd
She smiled and it was like turning on the lights in a dark room. He drew in a fast, shallow breath and held it without even realizing he was doing it.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Melinda Buckingham and I work down the hall. I tried to buy a Mounds bar from this vending machine and it gave me a lousy Butterfinger instead. Is this your machine?”
Eli stared at the candy bar and had to laugh. “You punched in the number for Mounds and it gave you a Butterfinger?”
“Yes. Who do I need to talk to about getting a refund?”
“I honestly don’t know. I have no connection to that machine other than being the cause of that dent down toward the bottom of it.”
She looked at the dent, then back at Eli, puzzled.
“I kicked it. After I tried to buy a Butterfinger and it gave me a Mounds instead.”
She pondered that a couple of moments and then laughed too. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Honest truth,” Eli said. “And I hate coconut in candy.”
“And I don’t like Butterfinger bars. Ha!”
“Make you a deal. I’ll trade you the Mounds bar lying on top of the machine for that Butterfinger in your hand. The bar on the machine is the one I got by accident.”
It was a good deal for both sides and Melinda agreed. Eli fetched down the Mounds bar and invited her into his office. “We’ll have a little candy bar picnic. And I’ve got a coffee-maker in there with a full fresh potful.”
“TV reporter, right?” he asked her midway through the Butterfinger.
“I am. The station’s set up a news bureau for Tylerville, mostly to cover the bicentennial stuff coming up.”
“I’m here for the same reason. I work for the Tylerville Clarion. Eli Scudder. Newcomer to town.”
She put out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Eli. Call me Melinda. I grew up in this town.”
“Pleased to meet you too, towny.” Her hand was small and light as he shook it.
“Why in the world would you move to a podunk place like Tylerville?” she asked, and Eli launched into a brief history, hoping to find she was also a UT alum, giving them something in common. She wasn’t. She’d graduated from East Tennessee State University, a communications and broadcast journalism major.
“What’s your background here in ‘Podunk,’ as you called it?” he asked her.
“I’ve been here forever. My family runs Buckingham Video Services. I still work there sometimes when I’m not doing something for the station and they need help. We do wedding videos, anniversaries, award presentations, business events, church functions, pretty much anything … and we can turn home movies into home video. That’s one of most in-demand things we do, especially around the holidays. Because that makes a good gift, you see … people put all their old home movies on video cassettes and give them to grandparents and parents and aunts and uncles and the like.”
“I would think that kind of work would be a good launching point for a television career.”
“Very much so. It helped me out a lot, though I did have a problem in deciding whether I wanted to focus on journalism, or be more of a tech person. I love working with cameras and video tech. Dad saves up most of the movie transfers for me to do, much of the time, because I enjoy that work so much, and he gets bored with it. I’m just a geek, I guess.”
“Well, you do geekdom proud.”
“I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”
“It was intended as one. I’m a bit of a geek myself, truthfully. I write. Fiction, of all things.”
“Published?”
“Yes.”
She presented him a quirky little frown that only made her prettier. “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” she said. “I know who you are, my friend! There was a story in the Clarion … Some fellow from Knox County wrote a novel about the Davy Crockett-Daniel Boone days of Kincheloe County, or something like that. There was a review of the book … it said it was good.”
“Yeah, that would be me. My editor told me he’d written about my book in the paper at the time I interviewed. I think AP picked up an abbreviated version and sent it out statewide.”
“Impressive, meeting a real author.”
“It was just a paperback. No biggy. Mass-market paperback originals go on and off the store shelves almost like monthly editions of magazines.”
The conversation went on, immensely enjoyable to Eli and seemingly to Melinda as well. He was happier than ever that David Brecht had made a private office his primary location. A conversation such as this could hardly have taken place in the open newsroom of the Clarion.
He’d just finished telling her about the Thursday night Bicentennial Planning Committee meeting when another knock rattled the door and startled both of them. Eli rose and found Jimbo Bailey on the other side.
“Doing my trash run,” Jimbo said, stepping in. “Wanted to see if you had any – “ He cut off abruptly, seeing Melinda. “Oh. Didn’t know you were busy. Why don’t I come back later on?”
“Nah, it’s okay, Jimbo. I got somebody here you should meet. This is Melinda Buckingham. She’s a TV reporter from WVKT who is stationed down the hall in that office that just got rented out.”
Melinda rose and put out her hand. Jimbo, who always enjoyed meeting attractive young women, shook it vigorously, nodding. “Yes, ma’am, I knew they’d rented out that office to somebody, just didn’t know exactly who. I think I’ve seen you on TV in the evenings, ma’am.”
“Maybe so. I don’t get a lot of airtime, but I do occasionally get on. And I’ve filled in at anchor on weekends and holidays a time or two.”
“Yeah, I did see you!” Jimbo exclaimed. “I seen you do that! Sitting right there at that big desk! You done good at it, Missy! Real good!”
“Thank you, Mr. Bailey.”
“No mister, just Jimbo. I work for the Brecht family what owns this mess of a building, and part of what I do is sweeping up and hauling out the trash and so on two, three times a week. Usually Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays, but it varies.”
“I’ll try to keep all my trash in the can so you don’t have a mess to pick up, Jimbo,” she said.
“Nice of you, Missy.”
Eli said, “You might not have heard her name right, Jimbo. It’s Melinda, not Missy.”
“I know. I know. I’m old but I ain’t deaf. Not plumb deaf, anyway. Missy is just what I call nice young women. It’s a way I honor them. The pretty ones ’specially.”
Melinda laughed. “Why, thank you, Jimbo!” she said. “And you’re a very handsome man!”
He looked at Eli. “What’d I tell you, son? They all go after me! I try to put ’em off and they just try that much harder. When you got them Bailey looks, ain’t much to be done for it.”
“‘Bailey looks,’ huh?” Eli said.
“I could’ve made it in the movies, young man. I surely could’ve.”
Melinda smiled. “You are quite charming, Jimbo.”
“And handsome,” Jimbo added.
“Of course.”
Jimbo stood up straight and proud. “Mr. Eli, sir, I might just have to take this one for myself!”
“I don’t know, Jimbo. She might have a boyfriend she hasn’t told us about.”
Melinda gave no response, merely keeping her smile.
Jimbo got back to business. “Have you got any garbage that needs carrying out, Eli?”
“Couple of bags sitting by the restroom door over there.”
“I’ll fetch them. You got any trash down at your place, Missy Melinda?”
“No. Not a speck, I don’t think.”
“Well, when you do, old Jimbo will take care of it for you.”
“Thank you, Jimbo.”
“Nice man,” she said to Eli when Jimbo was gone.
“He is. He got me settled in here very quickly, and he’s responsive if you need anything. That closet door over there got where it wouldn’t latch shut, and he fixed it ten minutes after I c
alled him about it. I have a feeling he’d respond even faster if you called. Jimbo has an eye for the ladies, I think.”
“I think you’re probably right.”
Melinda swept her eyes around the room, down and up and all around. “You’ve got your office set up nicely,” she said. “But this building as a whole … how in the world did it get like this?”
Eli grinned. “Jimbo called it a ‘butt-ugly wart of a building.’ And he told me the story behind it.”
“I’m all ears.”
Eli recounted the tale of Eddie the juvenile architect and Melinda reacted with suitable astonishment and amusement.
She glanced at her watch. “I should get back to my office,” she said. “Paul from the station is coming in to talk to me about some coverage he wants me to do … it’s got to be that same meeting you told me about. If it is, he’ll probably be pleased that I’m so up-to-speed that I already know about it. So thanks!”
“My pleasure. And I’ve got a prediction for you: once you attend that committee meeting they’ll make you a committee member.”
“We’ll see come Thursday night, I guess. Hey, thanks for the conversation. And the candy bar. Glad to have a friend in the building already.”
“I think you know Jake Lundy, who writes the feature columns in the paper … “
“Yes. He goes to our church. My dad thinks the world of him.”
“He’s got a name for this building. Hodgepodge.”
“Entirely appropriate. I’ll remember that.”
He watched her walk back down the hall toward her office.
BEFORE ELI LEFT ABOUT 5:30 THAT EVENING, Jimbo Bailey showed up again. He had a hole in his left pocket and had lost a treasured Buck pocketknife down the leg of his pants sometime during the day and was retracing his footsteps to find it.
“Not here, Jimbo. Sorry.”
“It’ll turn up.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Mighty nice young lady, that miss from down the hall. I may have to steal her away from you.”
“I wish I could say she was mine to be stolen,” Eli said. “I just met her today.”
“Well! Makes it all the easier for Smooth Jimbo to make his move, then.”
“I’m going to have to go against you on that one, Smooth Jimbo. Go get your hooks on one of those other women you say are always chasing you.” Eli looked down the hall and the now-closed office door of the television news bureau office, Melinda having slipped out of the building exactly at five o’clock. “This one’s mine, Jimbo. You hear?”
Jimbo sighed and shook his head. “I hear you. But Lord, I wish I was younger. I really do.”
Chapter Twelve
FROM THAT POINT ON everything in life moved into faster gear. The remainder of Eli’s and Lundy’s week of exploration sailed past quickly, and Eli was gratified that by the end of it, they possessed a strong, even if still preliminary, list of story assignments. Lundy began writing his own anticipated assignments immediately, never being one to procrastinate. Routinely given more time flexibility than the rest of the writing staff, Lundy long ago had adopted the practice of rising at 4 a.m. to do the bulk of his writing at home, allowing him to leave the newspaper office early during the day, or even sometimes not come in at all. On those days he would instead head out in the county, gathering the human interest material that was his story fodder. “Field days,” he called them.
The rest of the staff was jealous of Lundy’s freedom – just as they were of Eli for having an office of his own away from the eternally watchful eye of David Brecht – but they voiced no protest regarding the former. Lundy’s material was not hard news, was presented in Lundy’s own very distinctive style, and did not require much ongoing input from David Brecht. As long as Lundy, who was salaried rather than hourly, got his work done, which he always did, and kept his stories entertaining and relevant, David was content to let him largely keep his own schedule.
Lundy gave Eli an early look at his story about the history of Reunion Church, using that landmark house of worship as an entrance point into a surprisingly entertaining exploration of the flow of church history in Kincheloe County. He also showed Eli the best of the photos he had taken during their stop at the two-steepled churchhouse. Good work all around. Eli was impressed.
The list of story ideas provided by Deb Brecht, to Eli’s pleasure, turned out as Lundy had predicted: mostly good ideas. Eli was pleased to see that Miz Deb had suggested a story regarding the development of civic organizations for women in the community, how women’s auxiliary organizations that began as mere appendages of established male clubs had evolved into independent and distinctive groups that possessed identities fully their own. Puzzling, though, was the fact she made no suggestion at all that the history of local male civic organizations be similarly recounted, even though a cursory scanning of microfilmed newspapers had shown Eli that civic organization life had for much of the 20th century been dominated by men’s groups, not women’s.
Obviously Miz Deb had simply erred, unless for some reason she didn’t want Eli poking around through the history of men’s organizations in Kincheloe County. He wondered if it could have something to do with the apparently checkered secret history of the Fraternal Order of Tennessee Harvestmen, the defunct group Lundy had been so insistent that Eli ignore.
Even the mere possibility that he was being deliberately shooed away from looking into the history of the Harvestman group made Eli more determined than ever to do just that. He intended to find out what this ambivalence about a lapsed organization was all about. If the group had once been alive and active, surely there would be material about it in the newspaper archives. Eli would find it. Even if there proved to be good reason to ignore this particular avenue of local history in the magazine, maybe the mystery of Harvestman Lodge could contribute to a later Eli Scudder novel.
Despite Eli’s pleasure with the story list he and Lundy had worked up, he was less so with David’s handling of it. In the time since Eli had turned the list over to David for approval, the editor had played it predictably close to the vest and handed out not a single assignment to staffers. Business as usual, Lundy assured Eli. He’ll probably dawdle until Mr. Carl steps in and forces his hand. Happens all the time. David will think and rethink the assignment list until the writers barely have time to do the proper job. That’s why it’s best to move forward on the obvious stories without him, as much as we can.
Despite work-related discouragements and delays, Eli had was generally in a buoyant frame of mind these days. His acquaintance with Melinda Buckingham quickly had developed into genuine friendship and was showing signs of becoming something more than that, and fast. Eli could hardly believe that such a beautiful, smart, and personality-rich young woman was not already enjoying company with a steady boyfriend. Her presence in Eli’s life was a daily delight, and of course also a distraction.
Jimbo Bailey took interest in the developing relationship between his two young friends, and began increasing his maintenance-related visits to Hodgepodge, using those visits to individually tease both Eli and Melinda and subtly encourage their interest in one another. To Eli, of course, he jokingly professed to be stealing Melinda away for himself, though he did his teasing in a way that always managed to pass along encouraging, positive things she had said to him about Eli.
Eli began to time his comings and goings, his lunchtime, and where he parked his car in the lot to make sure he encountered Melinda as often as possible. That she was making exactly the same kinds of efforts was obvious.
Life was good and looking like it could get better.
THE PROGRESS OF THE COMMUNITY’S Bicentennial Planning Committee was not really progress at all. Discussions tended to degenerate into arguments, and arguments led to factions sniping at one another.
There was one good development, though: Eli had persuaded the committee leader, Hadley King, to invite Melinda to join the group.
He told King: “She’s assi
gned by her station to keep up coverage of what we’re doing to celebrate our big community birthday, and she’s a local who knows Kincheloe County and Tylerville as well as anybody. She is a natural for the planning committee. And she’s smart as a whip.”
“And pretty as a picture, too, eh, young man?” the town historian said, grinning knowingly. “Nudge nudge, say no more, say no more!”
Eli had to smile. Hadley King spoke Python! One more thing to like about the man. King already was one of Eli’s three favorite local community figures apart from those he knew at the newspaper. The second favorite was Betty Harley down at the cafe. Lately Eli had begun making a point of going to Harley’s once a week for lunch and eating a shredded chicken breast sandwich with baked chips that Betty Harley stocked at Eli’s personal request. He washed down the healthier-than-typical-Harley’s fare with unsweetened iced tea, something Junior Harley declared to be an atrocity and abomination, a sin against all that iced tea was meant to be. From Junior, a well-liked man who almost made it to Eli’s favorites list himself, Eli received mostly questions about what Lundy was up to. He also relayed complaints from Bufe Fellers that Jake Lundy, as his favorite relative, was lax in keeping touch. From Betty Eli got questions about his work and an endless flow of gossip and news Betty picked up from customers.
Eli’s third favorite local was another female: Barbara Bell, a cantankerous lifelong spinster who was something of a female counterpart to Hadley King. Barb Bell did not take her lunches at Harley’s Cafe, preferring the somewhat more refined and far less greasy atmosphere of the Cup and Saucer, a downtown local eatery Eli sometimes visited on days he had bothered to wear a tie to work. It was good to be wearing a tie in case he ran into Miz Deb, who visited the Cup and Saucer almost daily. She favored tasteful ties on men representing the Clarion, ideally with white dress shirts.
Partly for the sake of healthier eating and personal economy, Eli brown-bagged his lunch most days. His best reason for doing so was that Melinda Buckingham usually did the same, and was always ready to take Eli up on his standing invitation to spend lunchtime with him. On pretty days, they ate at a picnic table out back. It did not escape their notice that, once Jimbo Bailey realized who were the most frequent users of that picnic table, he began keeping it covered with sturdy vinyl tablecloths he changed out twice a week.
