"I think Millie panicked because Jerry disappeared right after two strangers stopped by the farm house. The last time she saw him, he was talking to them."
No, apparently she wasn't aware she was reading his mind. It could be simple coincidence, but twice? "Well, I'm glad he wasn't hurt," Jordan said. "But surely strangers aren't all that threatening—especially in the summertime, with the tourists and all."
"That's true. Eureka Springs draws a lot of tourists this time of the year," she continued. "So does Beaver Lake. But Shelton Valley is a bit off the beaten path."
Jordan forced himself to return his attention to the road. One look into the blue pools of her eyes and he found himself fighting for control of his senses. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Keep it light, he told himself. Keep her talking.
"You know, Sarah, one thing puzzles me. How did you become the owner of Monte Ne?" His voice was cautious as he probed the parameters of what she might consider either a fair question or an invasion into her private affairs.
He waited a moment. Then when he failed to detect any signs of resistance, he continued. "Even before you were born, all that remained of the old resort was its name on the country plot. Yet your name was on practically every Monte Ne deed I inspected."
Sarah welcomed the question, glad to be on familiar ground. She'd seen the barely concealed spark of personal interest in his eyes and known she wasn't able to deal with it. Keep him interested in Monte Ne, she told herself. After all, that was the reason he was here.
It was an inheritance, and it isn't strange, not if you understand hill folks," she explained, yielding to the skill of his gentle questioning. "I ended up owning Monte Ne because my great-grandfather Wilson didn't cotton to outsiders."
Jordan's voice also echoed the results of the lightened atmosphere. "Somehow I get the idea that 'cotton to' doesn't exactly say it all." The tiny laugh lines around his eyes creased as he grinned. "Are you going to tell me the story?"
Sarah smiled back.
Her heart-stopping smile pulled the breath from his body.
"I knew you were perceptive," she told him. "Of course, I'm going to tell you. I'm just trying to decide which story to give you, the official account or the unexpurgated version?"
"Ah," Jordan said, still grinning. "I'm willing to bet your respect for the true and complete version of history will win."
Sarah felt her eyes widen in surprise. After such a short acquaintance, could he really read her that completely? "How did you know?"
"Let's just say I hope you never play poker," he said in a lighthearted voice that suddenly reflected his mood. When she failed to respond immediately to his comment, he lifted one hand from the steering wheel, reached across the seat and touched her hand with a quick, light stroke of his fingers.
"So, what did Great-grandfather Wilson have to do with Monte Ne?"
"Nothing," Sarah said, striving to deny the effect his touch had on her heartbeat. "Absolutely nothing. At least not at first. You see, he was one of those hill men who accepted change slowly. He didn't like strangers, and certainly not the idea of outsiders owning a part of his Ozarks. Over the years most of the locals were won over to the idea of Monte Ne. They enjoyed the entertainments it offered, and I guess they added local color to its activities. But the family says Great-grandfather never participated, not even in the annual fiddling contest. And he was supposed to have been one of the best fiddlers in these mountains."
Sarah laughed slightly to herself, then added, "he also believed a man should take advantage of his opportunities. So he finally resigned himself to getting some good out of it."
"What did he do?" Jordan asked. The teacher facet of Sarah's personality was the easiest for him to deal with. He could enjoy her presence and still keep his mind on the business—mostly. When she was playing her role as eager instructor, he wasn't as tempted to wander down the other paths he so desperately wanted to explore.
"He cleared every field he owned and planted corn."
"Corn?"
"Corn," Sarah repeated.
"But what did corn have to do with Monte Ne?"
"Oh, come now, Jordan. You may not be a historian, but you should be able to figure that out. What can you do with corn?"
Jordan looked puzzled. "I guess you can cook it to eat or store it as food for livestock or as seed. You can dry it and grind it for cornmeal, too."
Sarah grinned. "You forgot one."
Feed, food, seed, meal. Jordan frowned as he mentally listed the options, trying to concentrate. Once again he found himself floundering in his efforts to retain control of his thoughts as she turned the full power of those mysterious eyes on him.
"Food, feed, seed, meal," he repeated and shook his head. "I can't think of another thing," he admitted finally, recognizing that the surrender signified more than an inability to discover a fifth use for corn.
"You can also distill it."
"Distill it? You mean like moonshine?"
She nodded. "Around here we call it white lightning. Anyway, Great-grandfather had a ready market for his product right on his doorstep, so to speak. By the time of the crash, he had saved quite a little nest egg. As Monte Ne land came on the market, he bought it. He must have thought it was poetic justice that the very outsiders he objected to gave a native the means to reclaim the land."
"That's the official account?"
"No, that's the true story. The official account says he found a cache of Confederate gold buried in one of the caves on his north section." She stopped, puzzled, when Jordan burst out laughing. "What's so funny?"
"It just seems strange to me that a story that shows such an entrepreneurial spirit would be hidden in favor of one that depended on luck."
Not if you remember that Carrie Nation lived right down the road." Her grin flashed with the brilliance of the sun breaking over a high ridge at dawn.
"You mean the Carrie Nation? The teetotaler? The one who chopped up liquor barrels with her hatchet?"
"The one and only," Sarah assured him. "In fact, Hatchet Hall, her last home, is quite a tourist attraction in Eureka Springs."
"Well, I'll be damned."
"I don't know about that." Sarah laughed. "But Great-grandfather would have been, at least in some circles, if his business had become known."
As Jordan's appreciative laugh joined hers, Sarah allowed the warm tremors of his voice to wrap around her. It was going to be all right. Her anxiety had been for nothing. Jordan Matthias was exactly as advertised—a man who was looking for information about Monte Ne. For those few moments, when he'd looked straight into her eyes, she had imagined something different. But that was all it was, imagination. Like the make-believe feelings she experienced when he'd kissed her on the bluff. Summer madness. A simple case of summer madness.
"I take it your family's been here for a long time."
"Every family in Mountain Springs has been here for a long time. The younger people are sometimes forced to leave because of the local economy, but the people who stay have been here forever. If there was room for newcomers, more of the younger generation would be able to remain."
"The young man who came after you the other day—is he a local farmer?"
"T.J.? He's helping on the family farm and trying to start his own quarter-horse spread. Why?"
"No particular reason," Jordan said, surprised at himself for wanting to know and at Sarah for not guessing why. "I just wondered if he was one of the younger generation who planned to stay."
"I don't think T.J. could survive away from here, not if he had to leave for good. For him, this is home."
As it is for you, Jordan thought silently. You leave to teach, but always come back. You would never be at home any other place, either, would you, Sarah Wilson? For some reason, the thought was depressing.
"What about you, Jordan? Where is home for you?"
Jordan shrugged his shoulders. "I don't have one. Haven't really had one since we left the farm after my dad d
ied. My mother died a couple of years later. I was in the army for a while. Home was always the next assignment. When I left the military I kept right on roaming, wherever the next story took me. I have a small apartment in St. Louis, a place to hang my hat between assignments. But you couldn't call it home. Sometimes I don't see it for a year at a time."
Sarah tried to understand. "And it doesn't bother you? Not having a place where you belong?"
"Never has," he told her. "I've always felt I belonged in the place I happened to be at the moment."
That explained a lot, Sarah though. And it certainly tallied. Aunt Cinda had said he had no roots. Sarah didn't know whether she felt sorrier for him or for herself.
"Is this the road where we turn?"
His question forced her attention back to her surroundings.
"This is it. Just follow the road until we run into the lake."
Minutes later Jordan parked at the side of the road. The summer sun high overhead reflected brightly off the placid lake nestled at the bottom of the valley. Dried, cracked mud flats extended down the hillside from the lake's usual high-water mark to the present water level.
Sarah choked back a small gasp of surprise. "They said Beaver was down, but I didn't realize it was this low."
"But why? I mean, why is it so low this time of the year? It's only June."
"Beaver's a hydro-power lake," she told him. "Electric power generation demands determine how much water is released through the dam. Spring rains were a little low this year, but, it's unusual for them to lower water levels this much."
Without waiting for Jordan's assistance, Sarah jumped from the high seat to the ground. The scene before her was eerie in its silence. It was a silence broken only by the buzzing drone of the few flying insects energetic enough to cavort in the hot summer air and the occasional call of a bird from the wooded thickets on the ridge above them.
"Look," she told him, emphasizing the command by pointing down the shoreline. "Even the amphitheater is exposed. We couldn't see it from the bluff."
But Jordan's attention was caught by the sight of a large concrete structure standing high on the bank overlooking the lake. The straight lines of its undressed concrete walls were relieved by three tiers of precisely spaced openings, bare of even the wooden casements necessary to support the missing windows.
"Is that the same tower we saw from the top of the bluff? The one you said was once part of Oklahoma Row?"
Sarah stumbled as she raised her eyes in the direction of the tower. As her step faltered, Jordan moved to catch her, his fingers wrapping securely around her elbow.
With the physical contact, Sarah could feel the heat of his hand on her bare skin and the surge of energy flowing between them. Her eyes shifted from the tower to his face. She saw the concern reflected in his eyes.
"I'm fine. A misstep. Really, I'm okay." She moved restlessly under his touch, pulling her eyes away from his, shifting her gaze back down the shore toward the tower. She was unable to control the tremor that rippled through her body.
Jordan slowly released his hold on her arm. He frowned, as if puzzled by her absorption in the ruins of the old tower.
"It's impressive. Even more so than from the top of the bluff. It is the same tower I saw from the top of the bluff, isn't it?"
"Yes. It's the same one—the south tower of Oklahoma Row," Sarah told him.
"Is it possible to see it up close? To actually go inside? I saw old photos of the hotel in the museum, but they didn't look real. Standing there, being physically present in the same place, might give me a better perspective."
Sarah tore her gaze from the old tower, turning her head to look out across the expanse of blue-green water. A whisper of a breeze moved across the surface of the lake, ruffling its mirror finish, blowing cool against her heated skin. She lifted her eyes, searching the sky for clouds, for any sign that would indicate an approaching storm. She found none, only the bright glare of sun on water.
"Sure, we can walk to the tower, if you like," she told him with determined cheerfulness. "But I'll warn you, there isn't much to see."
Jordan heard her reluctance. What was disturbing her? Was it him? He was willing to admit to feeling awed to find himself surrounded by the physical remains of Monte Ne, but she was already familiar with them, and something of a historian besides.
"Let's walk by the lake's edge. There's usually a breeze off the water," she said as they began moving down the shore in the direction of the tower.
"The tower's never really underwater, is it? It seems a long way away from the edge of the lake."
"You're right." The tower is just inside the high-water line. The basement level gets water when the lake's at normal levels. But even when the lake's brim-full, water never reaches the first floor level. Of course, there's no first floor anymore. It's an empty shell—one of those skeletons you were talking about." She stopped suddenly and pointed up the bank, away from the lake.
"Oh look, there's one of the footbridges I told you about. Several were exposed the last time the lake was this low, but I didn't know if any of them had survived another decade under water."
"One of the bridges you had to cross if you want a ride in the gondola?"
"That's right. They were small works of art in themselves. Built by local labor. If there's anything an Ozark native knows, it's how to work with stone."
In unspoken agreement, they turned their backs on the lake and began walking in the direction of the small bridge.
"You're right," Jordan said as they drew close enough to make out the details of the picturesque bridge. "Native stonework, and beautifully laid. If this is a sample of landscaping, Monte Ne must have been impressive."
I think so, too. The historical society has old photographs of most of the buildings—the important ones, anyway. But I've never seen any photos of the gardens. Harvey was such a perfectionist, they must have been at least as picturesque as the rest.
Sarah grinned in spite of herself. She didn't know what was wrong with her this morning. The prospect of seeing Jordan again had made her afraid that he might consider that moment of summer madness on the bluff an invitation to continue, or worse, that he might think she casually accepted such physical intimacies. Yes, that was the right word. Even though it had only been a kiss, there had been something intensely intimate about it.
But Jordan hadn't referred to the incident. He'd done nothing to make her uncomfortable, nothing to cause the queasy feeling she'd been trying to shake since arriving at the lake. Must be too much sun, she decided. She should have brought a hat. The sun's merciless rays were as potent for natives as for outsiders. She shaded her eyes with her hand and squinted up at the sky.
"Looks like we're not the only ones taking a trip into the past," Jordan said, pointing to several vehicles parked near the tower. "I didn't realize this was so well known to tourists. There's a station wagon from Tennessee, a car from Illinois and a pickup from Oklahoma. I don't see any passengers, though."
"The Oklahoma pickup doesn't count," Sarah said. We're so close to the state line, we see them often. We don't even consider them tourists. Everyone's probably on the other side of the tower. Part of the foundation slab is still there. It makes a nice level spot for picnicking."
Jordan hesitated for a moment. "Let's skip the tower for now and go on to the amphitheater. I'm not in the mood to share my personally guided tour with a group of strangers."
Sarah nodded without speaking and turned in the direction of the amphitheater. She was unable to repress her sudden pleasure. She didn't want to share these moments either.
They arrived at the amphitheater near the location of the old stage. The ornamental concrete seats of the vast outdoor arena, their original splendor now eroded and stained, still stood in stately rows. They extended from the top of the hill down to where the blue-green water at the present low-water line of the lake lapped softly against the shore
Jordan had seen old photographs in the files of
the historical society. He'd studied the original plat map of Monte Ne in an old county atlas. He'd listened to Sarah's descriptions. But now, for the first time, he began visualize the scope, the actual physical dimensions, of what had once been. He found himself mourning the passage of a magnificence that could be recaptured only by the imagination.
As he turned to speak, Sarah, seemingly oblivious of his presence, began climbing through the stained, eroded benches, up the hillside and away from the water. Jordan followed. They moved along the original aisles when possible, when necessary climbing over or around the massive overturned benches that blocked their path. Sarah stopped to rest a little over halfway up the mountainside.
Jordan turned to look in awe toward the top of the amphitheater. He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. "Is all this usually underwater?"
"Yes, most of the time. In fact, the last time I remember the amphitheater being this exposed was over ten years ago. Her voice was hushed, as if she were reluctant to allow the present to awaken what had once been.
He wondered if visitors to the world's mausoleums felt the same unwillingness to awaken the resting past. When he spoke, his voice reflected a quiet reverence for this place of forgotten dreams. "I'm going to the top. I want to see it in its entirety."
"Go ahead," Sarah answered quietly. "I'll wait here." She watched him begin the climb to the top, then sat down in the shade cast by one of the benches, leaning back to enjoy the coolness of the concrete.
She listened to the buzz of flying insects, occasionally joined by the raucous call of a pair of crows in the distance. Somewhere nearer she recognized the song of a bluebird. The sound of Jordan climbing through the ruins above her gradually faded away.
Sarah let her mind go free, thinking of nothing in particular, enjoying the solitude. Time slipped by unnoticed and unobserved. She wasn't sure how long she'd been resting when she realized that the birds were gone. No song of bluebirds. No call of crows. The quiet was disturbing, chilling.
Suddenly alert, she heard the ponderous sound of rolling stones. Instinctively, she flung herself under the nearest concrete bench. From a distance she thought she heard Jordan call her name, but the thundering noise of falling rock and concrete made it impossible to be sure.
Stranger on the Shore Page 7
