Mountain Top

by Robert Whitlow

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because they were meeting at night, handing him some worthless beads. And it fit with the verses about the deeds of darkness. Do you understand?”

  “Land deeds.”

  Sam smiled in satisfaction. “Yep. You’re going to do just fine. And I told Mr. Hatcher that the Lord saw what he was doing and would bring it into the light.”

  “It’s a far-fetched theory. Did you mention other people being involved?”

  “Not by name, since it wasn’t clear, but I told him I saw a group of people. It’s not as important that I understand what I see as the person receiving it. They’re the ones who have to ignore it or act on it. Since they were all together, I figured he could tell them himself.”

  “What about Larry Pasley? Did you contact him?”

  “Yep. I went by his place. He lives in an old shack that his grandpa built, and his family has owned property up that valley for a long time. Larry dropped out of school when he was a boy and can’t read and write very well. He said he’d been paid enough money to buy a new hot water heater and a color TV and in a few months might get enough to buy a trailer for his son and daughter-in-law. I told him it might not be a good deal, but he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. He’d had a lawyer check everything out for him.”

  “Who was the lawyer?”

  “I didn’t ask, and he didn’t say.”

  “Was he selling his home place?”

  “I doubt it, because he bought a new hot water heater.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No, there was something else. I remember ending the letter with a little poem. I’ve never done that before.”

  Sam turned the page in his notebook. “Here it is. I put it on the next page.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Don’t laugh at me. I barely graduated from high school, and I’m not much of a poet.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Sam cleared his throat like a schoolboy about to recite before the class.

  Deeds of darkness produce only tares.

  Those who sow for gold will reap despair.

  He looked up at Mike. “It’s not much, but at least it rhymes.”

  Nine

  MIKE AND SAM WENT OUTSIDE TO JUMP-START SAM’S TRUCK.

  “I had a troubling dream last night about you and Danny Brewster,” Mike said as they walked across the yard. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of Muriel.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Mike told him the dream about the interview room at the jail and dark figures who carried Danny and Sam from the room. Sam leaned against the side of the truck and listened.

  “I woke up in a sweat,” Mike concluded. “What do you think?”

  “We’re in a fight, and it’s not just against flesh and blood. You helped Danny in his case and now you’re helping me. Some of our enemies have faces; others are in the spiritual world. I’ve seen the faceless ones myself. They are pure evil.”

  Mike shuddered slightly. “Why didn’t you get out of the chair?”

  “Because I was at rest in the battle.”

  “You were in danger.”

  “I know. And with your help, I won’t mess up.”

  “I was paralyzed and couldn’t think of anything to say.”

  “Words with power come from your spirit, not your mind,” Sam replied with a smile. “Keep loving Papa, walking with the Master, leaning on the Helper, and eating the Word. After a while, you’ll learn how to fight the Enemy in the right way.”

  Sam attached the cables to the dead battery. Mike raised the hood of his car.

  “Hook up your end of the cables,” Sam said. “Make sure the ground is on black.”

  Mike attached the cables to the battery of his car and turned on the engine. He joined Sam while they waited for the dead battery to build up a charge. Sam got in the truck and turned the key. The truck engine sputtered to life. Mike unhooked the jumper cables from both batteries and coiled them up.

  “I’ll let it run awhile,” Sam said. “It’d better start tomorrow because I need to be out of here at the crack of dawn. There’s no telling how much business I’ve lost.”

  “Was there anything in the paper about your arrest?”

  “Just one line, but you know how people are. That could really hurt me.”

  Mike thought a moment. “Would you be willing to put in a bid to cut the grass at Little Creek Church? It’s a long way across the county, but it might be worth the drive. The cemetery alone would take a full day.”

  “That’s mighty nice of you,” Sam said appreciatively. “I’ll try to get over there and take a look at it.”

  IT WAS ALMOST 1:30 P.M. BY THE TIME MIKE RETURNED TO Shelton. He pulled into a parking space near traffic light seven and made notes on a legal pad about his conversation with Sam Miller. The information in Sam’s notebook was too speculative to serve as a cogent defense in the case. Mike’s stomach growled. He’d missed lunch, and the sweet tea provided by Muriel Miller wasn’t a substitute for a meal. Mike called the church. Delores answered.

  “Any problems?” he asked.

  “No, it’s been real quiet. I’ve been reading one of my magazines.”

  Delores loved gossip magazines and kept close tabs on the real and imagined scandals of movie and soap opera stars.

  “Anything I need to know that’s going on in Hollywood?”

  “Not really, but if I see a good sermon illustration, I’ll mark it.”

  A CONCRETE-BLOCK BUILDING ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN WAS home to the world’s greatest hamburger. Owned by identical twin brothers, the Brooks Brothers Sandwich House had been serving up hamburgers topped with homemade chili and sweet onions since Mike attended high school. He pulled into the gravel parking lot.

  Next to a pale yellow building was a long wooden table under a tin roof that provided open-air eating. The building itself was too small for a dining room, so all the brothers’ business was either take-out or eaten by customers alfresco style at the communal table. Between noon and one o’clock, the line of construction workers and businesspeople stretched out the door.

  The kitchen was open to public view, and one of the brothers was busy flattening round balls of fresh meat on a grill top. In a pan on a single-coil electric unit rested a smoking pot of chili. Orders were written on the white bags used to hold each order. The Brooks brother at the grill looked up when Mike entered the restaurant.

  “Hey, Mike! How you doing?”

  “Pretty good.”

  Mike had known the Brooks brothers for more than twenty years. He’d watched their hair turn gray and their waistlines grow, but he’d never been able to tell them apart. In middle age, they remained carbon copies of each other. While one brother cooked, the other filled Styrofoam cups with tea and lined up orders of thick-cut french fries.

  A rough-looking man named Dusty with the sleeves cut out of a biker T-shirt took the orders. Scowling, and with a pen in his hand, he stood behind the counter and waited for Mike.

  “I recommend the fried liver mush,” Dusty said. “It’s fresh and crisp.”

  Mike would occasionally eat the square patties of liver, but if Peg found out, she made him brush his teeth twice and gargle with mouthwash before getting close to him.

  “No, my wife has been extra nice to me the past few days, and I don’t want to ruin it. I’ll have two cheeseburgers all the way.”

  He moved down the counter toward the cash register. Hamburgers sizzled on the black grill. Above the cash register hung a small bell that Dusty rang every time a first-time customer came into the shop.

  “Been on any cruises lately?” Mike asked Dusty.

  The counterman saved his money so he could book a cheap three- or four-day cruise every year.

  “It’s coming up in a month.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Aruba, Grand Cayman, and St. Thomas.”

  The brother pouring tea laughed. “Don’t bel
ieve him, Mike. It’s the same thing he always does. They fly him to Miami, drop him in a dingy, and tow him to the Bahamas where he drinks beer for forty-eight hours before coming home.”

  Dusty patted his belly with a grin. “I know what they mean by all-inclusive— it’s all the boiled shrimp and beer I can put down from the time the boat leaves Miami until it gets back to the dock.”

  The door opened and Braxton Hodges, a reporter with the Shelton paper, entered. Braxton, a balding man with glasses and rumpled white shirt, reported on everything from livestock winners at the county fair to the annual black-tie fund-raiser for the local hospital.

  “Heard you were in court this morning,” the reporter said to Mike after he ordered.

  “That’s not news.”

  “It is in Shelton. Getting bored with the pulpit?”

  “No, just trying to help someone out of a jam.”

  Dusty handed Mike his sack of food. “The liver mush makes a tasty dessert.”

  “Talk Braxton into it,” Mike said. “He can write an article about what it does to his digestive tract.”

  Mike went outside with his food. He bowed his head for a silent blessing, then pulled out a burger and took a bite. Like the Brooks brothers’ physical appearances, the hamburgers were always the same and uniformly excellent. Braxton Hodges joined him.

  “Admit it,” Hodges said. “You wanted a thick slab of liver mush between two pieces of white bread.”

  “If a loaf of mush had been hanging on the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, I don’t think Adam and Eve would have sinned.”

  Hodges smiled. “Years ago I started to write a story about the history of liver mush. I didn’t go back to Genesis, but like many regional dishes, I discovered it was created by poor folks who couldn’t afford to get rid of anything remotely edible. I finished the prep work but couldn’t get past the third paragraph of the article. I dreamed about pig livers for weeks.”

  Mike took a large bite from his burger. The combination of onions and chili with the slightly crispy meat was superb.

  “Have you had any dreams worth reporting lately?” Hodges asked.

  Mike looked sideways as he chewed his food. “What kind of newspaper reporter question is that?”

  “If you’re hanging around Sam Miller, I figure you’ve been talking to him about dreams.”

  Mike wiped his mouth with a thin napkin. “Until I started representing him, I didn’t realize how famous the old guy is around here.”

  “Who else mentioned him to you?”

  “Can’t say. It’s an ongoing case.”

  Hodges shrugged. “You probably couldn’t tell me much I haven’t heard. He’s been writing letters to the paper for years. Most of them land on my desk then transition to the round metal file I keep on the floor.”

  “What does he write about?”

  “Nothing for the editorial page. Mostly about his dreams mixed in with Bible verses. For a man who cuts grass for a living, he has a very vivid imagination. I guess that’s what happens when you walk behind a lawn mower for thirty years. If I could come up with some of the stuff he writes, I’d quit reporting the facts and start writing the world’s greatest science fiction novel.

  In the meantime, I’m waiting on his prediction for the end of the world. Once that’s in, I’m running a full story on him.”

  “Do you always throw away the letters?”

  “All except one.”

  “Why?”

  Hodges turned toward Mike. “Because he wrote it to me.”

  “Tell me.”

  Hodges dipped a french fry in ketchup. “Now you’re the one in confidential territory. The only thing I’ll say is, whether from looking in a crystal ball or reading his Bible, Sam Miller knew a few things about me that no one else knows. It got my attention.”

  “It wouldn’t be hard to guess your sins,” Mike said.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Hodges answered seriously. “It was encouraging—in a religious sort of way. And ever since, I’ve always had a soft spot for him. I was sorry when he got into trouble.”

  “He’s worried the report of his arrest in the paper is going to hurt his business.”

  “I buried the crime blotter for that issue at the bottom of the fourth page.

  As a felony, I couldn’t keep it out; however, the negative publicity could have been worse. The publisher in Asheville got a call from Jack Hatcher asking us to write an investigative piece. I put him off and haven’t heard anything since.”

  Mike stopped unwrapping his second burger and put it down.

  “Jack Hatcher called the owner of the paper?”

  “Yes, which I found strange. Hatcher should want to keep the situation quiet, not publicize it. The bank wasn’t at fault, but no one likes to think their money is going to end up in the wrong account.”

  “How do you know the bank wasn’t in the wrong?” Mike asked. “That was the first possibility I considered when I met with Sam.”

  “A bank error that made it all the way to a criminal prosecution? That’s a stretch. Even a sloppy investigation would uncover that type of problem.”

  “You’ve got more faith in the criminal justice system than I do.” Mike shrugged. “A few wrong keystrokes, and anyone could be a millionaire. The more I’ve talked with Sam, the less I think he would embezzle a hundred thousand dollars.”

  Hodges shrugged. “I’ve seen him around town but never met him. He could be a wife-beater who grows marijuana in an abandoned chicken house.”

  “I’ve been to his place and met his wife a couple of times. That’s not happening. Do you know if he writes letters to anyone else?”

  “No one has ever mentioned it to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Mike paused and decided to make a calculated gamble.

  “Last year he wrote a letter to Jack Hatcher.”

  Hodges looked up. “Really? What did it say?”

  “I haven’t seen it, but I believe it was inflammatory and would like to find out more about it. It could definitely shed light on Hatcher’s personal interest in the case.” Mike took another bite of hamburger and chewed it thoughtfully. “Could you revisit the idea of an investigative article about Sam and see if you could uncover anything?”

  “If a one-liner hurt Miller’s business, what do you think an article is going to do? He’d starve or leave town.”

  “Liver mush,” Mike responded simply.

  “Sam Miller likes liver mush?”

  “Probably eats it three times a week for breakfast, but that’s not what I had in mind. Just because you research an article doesn’t mean you have to print it.”

  Hodges grinned. “I see, but I couldn’t spend a lot of time working on something that wasn’t going to run.”

  “It might be a quick dead end, but then again—it might be the piece of journalism that wins you a Pulitzer prize.”

  MIKE FELT ENERGIZED DURING HIS DRIVE TO THE CHURCH. Appearing in court was stimulating, but the investigative part of the law, whether researching a legal issue or uncovering a factual matter, had always been his favorite part of the practice. He could happily sit for hours in front of a computer screen, analyzing a tricky point of the law and enjoyed tracking down and interviewing hard-to-locate witnesses in out-of-the-way places.

  Most clients he’d represented in criminal matters had been so obviously guilty that a jury trial wasn’t the prudent path to follow. In those cases, he usually worked out a plea bargain. The Danny Brewster burglary and Ridley moonshine cases were different. Because there was doubt in his own mind, the desire to find the truth about the charges against his clients motivated him to work harder. In the Ridley matter, the result was a stunning victory. Danny Brewster’s story had a tragic conclusion. Mike wasn’t sure where Sam Miller’s future lay.

  When he entered the administration wing of the church, Delores put down her magazine and stifled a yawn.

  “You have a big stack of congratulatory phone messages on your desk.�
��

  “Congratulating me for what?”

  “The baby, of course. Have you forgotten that you’re going to be a father?”

  “No, I’ll get right on it.”

  Mike settled in behind his desk and began returning phone calls. The wholesale excitement about the baby was touching. Several wanted to talk at length, offering advice about everything from safely designed nursery room furniture to the wisdom of using a pacifier. It was almost five o’clock before he reached the bottom of the stack. He stood up, stretched, and stuck his head out the door.

  “That’s it,” he told Delores. “I’m up to date.”

  “Not quite,” she replied, holding up a thinner stack. “These came in while you were on the phone.”

  “Should I return them now or tomorrow?” Mike asked.

  Delores flipped through the names. “I’ll pull out the ones who will be upset if they don’t hear from you today.”

  AN HOUR LATER, MIKE LEFT THE CHURCH. WHEN HE ARRIVED home, Peg was in the kitchen stirring a pot of soup. He came over to the stove and sniffed. She greeted him with a kiss. Judge, who lay in his bed in the corner, raised his head and gave a short woof.

  “What did you have for lunch?” Peg asked.

  “Brooks Brothers.”

  “I thought I tasted a hint of onion. Something light would be good for supper. Will you stir while I put together the salad?”

  Mike took the spoon. Peg opened the refrigerator.

  “What happened in court?” she asked.

  Mike told her about his day. She listened without comment until he reached the part about his encounter in the hallway with Mr. Forrest.

  “Maxwell Forrest squeezed all he could from you when you worked for him,” Peg said matter-of-factly. “Now that you’re no longer under his control, he’ll treat you differently.”

  “I thought you loved it when I was part of the firm.”

  Peg placed two large salad bowls on the table. “I did. But you’re in a different place now. If Mr. Forrest thinks you’re going to hurt his business, he’ll cause problems for you.”

  As they ate, Mike related the private courtroom conversation with Judge Coberg about Sam.