Harvestman Lodge

by Cameron Judd

“Eli, I do hope you like pizza.”

  “I could eat my weight in good pizza. And unless my nose is greatly fooling me, this is going to be good pizza for sure.”

  “Thank you! I do get rave reviews on it.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “And I’ve heard you get rave reviews of your own, for your fiction. That is impressive that you’ve achieved a published book!”

  “Thank you. And I’m signed for two sequels to make it into a trilogy. I feel lucky. I’ve found it to be a wonderful opportunity to do something I enjoy that also pays at least some dividends.”

  “Would you want to do that as full-time work someday?”

  “I would. But I’m quite aware it’s a rough row to hoe. Still, that would be a dream fulfilled for me. Maybe someday.”

  “Never let dreams like that go, Eli. Sometimes they’re all you find to get you through the parts of life that … that aren’t very dreamlike.”

  Eli nodded, wondering what parts of her own life Dot Buckingham saw as not “dreamlike.”

  He heard a man’s voice from another room, booming out a version of “In the Garden” that, oddly enough, could be described only as boisterous. Ben Buckingham’s voice, a stern baritone.

  “I’d best go say hello to your husband,” Eli said. “Would he want me to call him Ben, or should I stick with Mr. Buckingham?”

  “Ben, certainly, since I know you two have already met. No need for stuffiness and formality among fami … among friends. Right?”

  “Right. Dot.”

  Eli vacated the kitchen and went looking for Ben Buckingham. Melinda went with him. Moral support, just in case.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  RAWLS PARVIN MET HIS UNCLE Lukey at Flatt’s Big-Time Barbecue ten minutes earlier than planned, pulling his pickup into a spot just beside the giant lighted clock-shaped sign in the front parking lot. He saw Lukey walking his way with a grin on his face, and knew at that moment that he was not, after all, going to back out of his agreement to join in the criminal enterprise into which Lukey had invited him. If Lukey Parvin could find it in himself to work with the Flower Garden, then Rawls Parvin could too.

  He just couldn’t say no to Lukey. There was both a natural sense of family loyalty and a lifetime’s worth of admiring Lukey from a distance. Of all the Parvins, Lukey was the most fearless, the most willing to do what he wanted no matter what anyone else thought of it. Rawls admired that, wanted it for himself.

  In the movies, Rawls had noticed, big life-changing moments of decision came in conjunction with great storms, or crashing oceans, and swells of dramatic background music. In real life, it wasn’t like that. The evening was calm, the setting common and plain, the background music absent. Even so, in that ordinary moment in the parking lot of a rural barbecue joint, he was making a firm and significant, even life-changing, decision.

  Stepping out of his pickup truck and walking in Lukey’s direction, Rawls Parvin decided to cross an invisible line in his life. In his vision of things, nothing for him would ever again be the same.

  He’d learned some stunning things in that library research visit. He had a clearer idea now of what Uncle Lukey was drawing him into, and how purely evil it was. No wonder Lukey had been short on detailed information when throwing out his baited hook. To describe outright what the Flower Garden did, and what its “flowers” were, would send most people running. Rawls had considered doing that himself when he read that library material. He had not known the relevant facts when he’d given Lukey that initial yes in Jeff Parvin’s family beer hall. Now he did know.

  And the “yes” still stood. Rawls had made his decision, and would not backpedal, no matter what the consequences. He was a Parvin, and Parvin men were tough and unyielding.

  “Both of us a little early, boy,” Lukey said. “That’s good, though. We’ll beat the crowd.”

  The barbecue joint was within the boundaries of Kincheloe County, but just barely. When the “Barbecue Master” (an ostentatious title the owner of Big-Time Barbecue had invested upon his cook) threw out scrap pork bones at the end of the day in back of the restaurant, the bones actually landed in a different county from which they’d been launched. Same with the thrown-out dishwater. The county line was barely a yard past the back door.

  Rolly Flatt was the founder of the barbecue joint, and lived in a renovated, big farmhouse on a lot immediately behind the restaurant. The lot sloped sharply upward from front to rear. His house was positioned so that the view from its huge front porch was dominated mostly by the trashy rear of his restaurant and the dumpster and grease collection vat that served it. Rolly didn’t care about the ugliness of the vista: to him it was a panorama of the enterprise that had finally given him his first and only a taste of success in life. He was not wealthy by the standards of most, but he had a nice home, some money in the bank, and the ability to pay his bills. He was grateful that his late parents had lived long enough to see their ne’er-do-well son find his niche. His place had won the Best Barbecue award for three years running in the Tylerville Daily Clarion’s “Citizens Choice Award” contest. It was good to be king.

  This day had been Flatt’s day off, employees handling the operation of the restaurant. He’d had no intention of going into the place at all, but a phone call from a friend and frequent customer had let him know that one of his waitresses had badly botched two orders. Flatt couldn’t let that pass. So he’d turned off the baseball game on television, thrown on some jeans and a clean shirt, and down the hill he went to see what was going on with Candice the waitress. He wasn’t surprised she was the source of the reported problem; lately the young woman had been moody and preoccupied. A boyfriend problem, one of her co-workers had told Flatt.

  Normally Flatt would have entered the restaurant through the rear kitchen entrance. This evening he decided to circle around to the front so he could see the place from the entering customer point of view.

  He was on the edge of the front parking area when he noticed two men heading for the door, and knew them instantly to be Parvins. No great trick there; Parvin men were as easy to identify as poison ivy, and in some parts of the county, just as common.

  This sighting, though, brought a surprise: Flatt recognized right away that one of the men was the former local football standout quarterback Rawls Parvin, whose career hopes had been snuffed by a leg injury received either in a barn accident or from a bullet fired by the father of the girl he reportedly was molesting. The story depended upon whom you asked. The question mark of the evening, though, was the fact Rawls was here at all. Wasn’t he still locked up for drug trafficking?

  Equally surprising was Flatt’s recognition of the man Rawls was with: Flatt’s old high school classmate Luke “Lukey” Parvin, uncle of Rawls. Flatt and Lukey had been friends of sorts back in those days, but Lukey had, to Flatt’s knowledge, been in recent years off in California, reportedly operating a camera making the kind of movies Flatt sometimes sneaked off to Nashville or Atlanta to watch in the sort of theaters Tylerville did not have. Now that VCRS and rental videotapes had come along, Flatt didn’t have to make those long drives anymore and hunker down in squalid grindhouses among wheezing degenerates in the dark. Ah, the wondrous and helpful advances of technology!

  Lukey Parvin’s glaring eyes caught those of Rolly Flatt just as Flatt saw him, and from the look on Lukey’s face and the way his eyes shifted quickly from side to side, it was obvious Lukey knew he was recognized. He didn’t look happy about it.

  Flatt went to the restaurant’s front door, pulled it open, and with a smile motioned for the two Parvins to go inside. The pair came near but did not go through.

  “Lukey? That is you, ain’t it?” Flatt asked.

  “Yeah, Rolly, but I was kind of counting on being able to come and go without being known by anybody this evening.”

  “Hell, Lukey, you grew up here, and you got the Parvin look as strong as any other of your kin I know. How’d you figure nobody would know you?”
<
br />   “I guess I was just stupid. And I didn’t even know this was your place … it wasn’t here back before I left for the coast. Who else is in there right now, Rolly? Any others who’ll know me if I go in?”

  Rolly let the door swing closed again. “Probably. I ain’t been in there today so I don’t know who’s inside.”

  “I got cause to lay low,” Lukey said. “I may have to move on elsewhere for my supper, somewhere across the county line. No offense to you or your place.”

  “I know just the place to fit the bill,” Rolly said. “We’ll just head up the hill to my house, up in back of the restaurant here. And believe it or not, the county line runs right behind the back door of this place. I’ll run in the restaurant and take care of a little bit of business I have to do, and I’ll carry us up a bucketful of our best barbecue pork and some hot rolls. We’ll have us a fine meal in private. I keep some fine cold German beer in the fridge. We can talk about old times and you can tell me about your work. I figure being behind the camera making some of them, uh, ‘special’ movies might be nearly as fun as being in front of it. Am I right, Lukey?”

  “Man or woman, it takes a special breed to be involved in them movies. We can talk about it more at your house. Are you married now, or alone, Rolly?”

  “My wife divorced me last year. I’m alone.”

  Lukey looked at his partner. “You up for it, Rawls?”

  “Good barbecue and cold beer … yeah, I’m always up for that.”

  RAWLS COULDN’T HELP BUT NOTICE, after all the earlier talk about having to be hard, tough, and silent about the Flower Garden, Lukey was drifting dangerously close to talking openly about it the more of Flatt’s beer he poured into himself. He kept diverting Flatt’s questions about being a cameraman for dirty movie makers, saying he’d used that work mostly as an avenue of contact for “something a lot bigger and richer” than camera work.

  Flatt pressed him, but Lukey wouldn’t describe in detail what the “something bigger” was. Then he said something that largely gave it away: “Let’s just say that there is still camera work involved in part of it, but this time the girls in front of the lenses and lights are, maybe a little on the youthful side.”

  Flatt almost stopped breathing. “You’re doing that kind of movie? Damn, Lukey, you can get yourself in a hell of a lot of trouble for that!”

  “What are you talking about, Rolly? Did you hear me say anything, Rawls?”

  Rawls had heard it all loud and clear, but of course had to play along. “I didn’t hear a thing, Uncle Lukey.”

  Flatt looked at his old high school classmate with an expression of awe. “You always were a crazy dude, Lukey. Even when we was kids. And bold. Bolder than anybody else I knew.”

  Lukey shrugged and gulped down half a bottle of beer. “A man can be bold, or a man can be nothing. It’s his own choice, and I’ve made mine. But listen to me, Rolly: you ain’t going to breathe a word of anything you think you heard me say just now, not a single tiny whisper of a word, because you said it right: a man can get himself in bad trouble with this stuff. And sometimes it ain’t just the law you got to worry about … you got to worry most about the ones you’re working for. They’ll gut you like a fresh-caught bass if they think you betrayed them.” He paused. “Which of course don’t have nothing to do with me, anyhow, since I ain’t involved in nothing like that anyway.”

  “Ain’t involved? But you just said … ”

  “Rolly. Silence. Silence.”

  “I gotcha,” Flatt said, and pursed his lips tightly.

  Rawls wondered how big a fool he probably was being to let Lukey lead him into this wicked business that, at the moment, he was both denying and affirming being involved in. Still, though, Rawls had made his decision and his commitment. He’d stick it out to the end.

  And just hope that that end wouldn’t be his own.

  WHILE RAWLS PARVIN PONDERED his own wisdom or lack thereof, miles away in the Buckingham house, Eli Scudder was finding, to his surprise, that he actually enjoyed the company of Ben Buckingham.

  Buckingham was making an obvious effort to be on his best behavior and create a good impression. He complimented Eli on how he’d covered that last beer board meeting, throwing out insults toward the reporter who previously had that assignment, then apologizing for his “harshness” toward that reporter. “Melinda chides me all the time for being too critical and outspoken,” he said. “I suspect the charges have some merit.”

  While the pizza came together in the kitchen, Melinda and her mother working together, Eli and Buckingham talked local politics, news, sports. Eli noticed that several opportunities arose for Buckingham to throw in his radical viewpoint about alcohol, yet he didn’t take them. The intensity Melinda had frequently warned him to expect seemed mostly absent.

  It was a relief. Every day that passed, he woke up feeling more certain that he and Melinda were destined for a life together. It was impossible anymore for him to conceive of any other acceptable option. Allison was a distant memory.

  Into the room came someone Eli had never met: Melinda’s little sister, Megan. Only twelve, she strongly resembled her mother in complexion, hair, and stance. She bore no resemblance to Melinda, which was no surprise now that Eli knew Melinda had been adopted. She was, however, almost as pretty as Melinda, though with a completely different look.

  The young girl walked confidently up to Eli and put out her hand.

  “I’m Megan,” she said. “You must be Eli.”

  “Yes. Pleased to meet you at last, Megan. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Same here. Eli, Eli, Eli … Eli this, Eli that, Eli … everything!” Megan dramatically rolled her eyes and shook her head in mock exasperation. “It’s all we hear around here anymore.”

  “I … I feel like I should be saying I’m sorry. Actually, though, I’m glad to hear that.”

  “You work at the newspaper … do you know that my picture was on the front page yesterday? Me and some of my friends from the dance school … we’re going to be dancing with the Crosswaite Cousins in the July 4 thing downtown, and they took a picture of us in our red, white and blue outfits!”

  Eli was chagrined to admit he had not seen the photo. “I work for the paper, but I’m involved in a different project than the day-to-day newspaper, and some days I’ll miss a particular edition. I’ll be sure to go back and look at that one.”

  “I’ll get it now,” Megan said. “Daddy picked up ten extra copies, so we’ve got plenty.” Megan darted to a different room and returned half a moment later with the paper in hand. She handed it to Eli, who gave the photograph the sought-after admiration and praise.

  “Thank you,” Megan said, faking embarrassment. “That’s so sweet of you to say.” She gave Eli a smile that revealed the inevitability of a future career as a breaker of hearts.

  The pizza, perfect and aromatic, was conveyed by Melinda and her mother from kitchen to dining table.

  “Megan, dear, could you go get the pitcher?” Dot said. Megan scurried in and came back with a big frosted pitcher, filled to the brim.

  Eli wished the pitcher contained beer rather than iced tea, but made his peace with the reality that, in the house of Beerless Ben Buckingham, such a thing was not going to happen. Ever.

  PARTING FROM MELINDA WAS a different experience for Eli this time, saying his goodbyes there at her own front door, with her family inside. He wondered if they were being watched around the edge of a curtain. Melinda clearly wasn’t worried about it; she gave Eli the hardest, most intense, deepest kiss he’d gotten yet. And to his astonishment, her hand wandered in a way he never would have anticipated.

  “I wish we could be together the whole night,” she whispered to him.

  “Just say the word,” he replied, almost ready to throw her over his shoulder and cart her over to his car and then to his apartment. All that would get him, probably, would be the same kind of bullet-through-the leg treatment from Ben Buckingham that Rawls Parvin had re
ceived, and he knew it, but it almost seemed worth taking a shot at it.

  Almost. At heart, though, Eli was not prone to take the caveman approach to romance. Especially not with Melinda, the first woman he’d truly loved. He mentally thanked God, right there on the porch, that relationship with Allison had gone south. At its best it had been nothing approaching what he had with Melinda. Even with the boundaries Melinda insisted he respect.

  “Say the word?” Melinda replied. “You do know what the word is, don’t you? Or actually, the words?”

  “I do.”

  “Exactly right. ‘I do.’ When we get that out of the way, the whole night, and everything that goes with it, will be ours.”

  “You’re way too old-fashioned, Melinda.”

  “Yes, I am. And I’m worth it, Eli. I promise you, I’m worth the momentary frustration.”

  “Do you feel any of that yourself? Frustration?”

  “Of course I do. I just have chosen my standards, that’s all, and I don’t give a flying flip whether they fit the spirit of the age or not.”

  “I respect that. But don’t be mad at me for being a normal guy.”

  “I’m not mad. Why would I be mad?”

  “Because I keep pressuring you.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Eli. I’m not mad. I love you. And the truth is, you’re not all that skillful at the pressuring part.”

  “I love you too, Melinda.”

  One more kiss and Eli was on his way. The frustration didn’t fade, but he couldn’t help but think the evening had been a positive one. He’d gotten on well with Melinda’s family and was more sure than ever of Melinda’s devotion to him.

  He was driving past one of Tylerville’s three in-town cemeteries when he realized he had not remembered to share Curtis Stokes’s news with Melinda, or even to tell her about the invitation to dine with Coleman Caldwell at his home.

  He’d have to call her as soon as he got home.

  HE GLANCED OVER INTO the cemetery he was passing, and slowed for a better look.