by Aiden James
“I’m looking to return this,” he said, holding his hand out and loosening his fierce grip so the ranger could see the bag clearly.
He picked it up out of David’s hand and examined the name and stains on it. He turned the bag over in his hands and almost opened it, but shook it instead while he listened to its contents jingle.
“The bag somehow got mixed up with our stuff when my wife and I visited here a couple of weekends ago,” explained David. “Once we found out about it, we wanted to bring it back here at the first opportunity to do so.”
“Are you from Littleton, Colorado?” the ranger asked him, lifting his eyes from the bag.
“As a matter of fact I am,” he confirmed, feeling un-comfortable from the scrutinizing gaze of John Running Deer. It seemed like he could see through him, and David feared the man might be more formidable to hide the truth from than even Miriam.
“What’s your name?”
“David. David Hobbs.”
“Nice to meet you, David Hobbs,” said the ranger, extending his hand for David to shake. “John Running Deer.”
“It’s a pleasure, Mr. Running Deer,” said David, impressed by his powerful grip. Ruggedly handsome, the ranger stood only an inch shorter than he.
“Please…feel free to address me as either John or Mr. Ranger,” he told him, revealing his generous smile. “Follow me.”
David followed him, moving inside the gift shop and past other tourists who paused to watch them weave through the circular post card and novelty displays on the way to a long counter located in the very back. John stepped around the counter and opened a drawer beneath it, producing the mailer David had sent last Thursday to Gatlinburg.
“This was forwarded to us by our main office in Gatlinburg on Saturday, since it contained a letter dealing with several items being returned to the cove,” he said, showing the empty mailer to David. “The letter mentioned the little bag you’ve brought with you today. Did you forget to put it inside the envelope?”
He handed the mailer to David, who examined it along with Miriam’s letter inside. No signs of any tears or damage to the mailer, other than when the park service employee who first handled it on Friday officially opened it. John stated the main office’s receptionist commented in her note to the Cades Cove visitors’ center that the package arrived sealed and unopened when originally delivered by the USPS delivery person Friday morning. It contained two arrowheads and one pyrite piece.
Avoiding any details about how the bag ended up missing from the padded envelope, David shrugged his shoulders and handed the empty package back to John.
“In your wife’s letter she states the items in question were picked up while you were visiting the old ravine which used to serve as Cades Cove’s ‘Lovers’ Lane’. How’d you learn about that place?”
“My boss back in Denver, Ned Badgett, told me about it before we came here,” said David. “I thought it would be a great place to visit for our fifteenth anniversary.”
“Well, congratulations on making it to your fifteenth anniversary—you do mean you’ve been married to your wife that long, correct?”
He confirmed this with a nod.
“That’s interesting…. The Badgett clan was one of the last to leave from the major migration back in 1934, when Congress first created the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” said John. “Not many folks visit that particular ravine anymore, although my people once revered it above all other places in the cove. I doubt someone just recently lost this out there, don’t you?”
John eyed him in such a way that David feared the man had stolen a peek into his most hidden thoughts.
“I’ve been debating whether to simply return the bag here or if I should return it to the ravine,” said David, glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one else listened in. “I set up a picnic blanket with my wife beneath one of the larger oaks near the top of the ravine, and that particular oak has the name ‘Allie’ carved inside a heart engraved on the tree’s trunk.”
John nodded thoughtfully and then returned his attention to the bag, picking it up and shaking it again.
“It might not make a difference either way,” he said. “If you’d like, I can take it back there today or tomorrow, along with a few other odds and ends that were sent to us since last week.”
“So, something like this has happened before?”
Startled to learn of other items, David wondered if the same kind of events precipitated similar notes and objects sent to the park service in haste.
“‘Afraid so,” he confirmed, opening up another drawer a few feet away from the one that had contained the mailer. “It happens all of the time. I’d say we get anywhere from fifty to a hundred items back each year taken from various areas throughout the park. But the largest concentration comes from Cades Cove. At least that’s where we get items with the longer letters.” His eyes twinkled as he said this, like he found the whole business amusing.
“What kind of things do you normally get back?”
“Usually arrowheads and rocks, like the ones you sent us. Or, other items that could’ve once been used as tools, either by the Cherokee who once lived here or from the first white settlers in the early 1800’s,” he said. “Now and then we get something like a rusted door hinge or a ceramic whiskey jug—odd things like that. I’ve never seen a little bag like what you’ve brought in here today.”
He studied the bag again, feeling its texture and gently squeezing the items inside. David wanted to reach over and empty the damn thing so John could see the items clearly, and grew irritated watching him.
“Like I said, I’ll be happy to take this back to the ravine for you by tomorrow.” John looked up as if aware of David’s annoyance. “Unless you’re in a bigger hurry to take the bag back there yourself. You’d at least have the satisfaction of leaving it exactly where you found it.”
A feeling of dread swept through David, and he realized why he brought the bag in here after his debate in the car. He didn’t want to take it to the ravine. He feared the spirit would be waiting there for him, maybe lurking behind the oak bearing her name. Confident no one heard Miriam’s orgasmic cries two Saturdays ago, certainly no one would hear him scream either.
“I really appreciate you taking care of this for me, John,” said David, hoping he didn’t sense just how grateful. He looked forward to the end of their conversation, so he could get the hell out of here and back to Pigeon Forge.
“All right.” John picked up Allie’s bag of treasures and tossed it into the drawer and closed it. “It’s been nice meeting you, David Hobbs.”
He extended his hand and David responded with a grip almost as strong as the ranger’s.
“Thanks for your help,” he told him, and turned to leave.
John watched him go, and then stepped back out onto the floor of the gift shop. He confirmed the start time of the next Cable Mill tour that afternoon for a group of senior citizens browsing through the circular post card displays. When he glanced out a nearby window facing the parking lot, David’s LeSabre was already gone.
***
He hurried back to the hotel. For the rest of the afternoon and evening he remained in his room, reading most of a John Grisham novel he purchased in Chattanooga’s airport. The only interruption was the steak dinner he ordered through a local takeout restaurant. Every so often he got up and stretched, walking around his room and checking the bathroom and his balcony. As far as he could tell, nothing had followed him from the visitors’ center.
Miriam called him at ten o’clock to check on him. He left her a voice mail message earlier from his cell phone on the way back from Cades Cove. Like him, she worried whether or not John Running Deer would actually take the bag back to the ravine.
David told her he’d like to move his return flight to Denver from Wednesday afternoon to Tuesday evening. It just depended on whether his auntie could meet him for lunch tomorrow instead of Wednesday. Otherwise, he planned on staying in Chattanoo
ga
Tuesday night and fly out Wednesday as originally planned.
They finished their conversation and David got ready for bed. He grew tired enough to retire around eleven-thirty, and decided not to leave any lights on tonight. He thought it might bring him good luck if he refused to give in to any paranoia. Peering into the shadows of his room once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he listened to the steady hum of the heater sending warm air into his room. Refusing to think long on anything else, he fell asleep around midnight.
Chapter Twenty-eight
When the clock’s alarm went off at 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, David didn’t awaken right away. Instead, the steady pulse of the annoying beep merged into his dream. The slick weight of a heavy hoe in his sweaty hands slammed into the unforgiving earth over and over again, in perfect rhythm with the beep. Hot sun in a cloudless summer sky beat down upon his bare neck, and burning pain told him the sun’s anger would be with him long after his present chore ended at nightfall. Still, he continued to churn the dry earth as sweat poured down his dust covered face and body.
Clad in torn boots and trousers and a low neck T-shirt, the hard, torturing work provided a balm to his bitter mind. Overflowing with rage, he wanted revenge against the community that wouldn’t accept him as an equal, as one of their own.
But damned straight the earth would obey his command to produce...even if it killed him making it happen. He grinned maliciously, pausing to look out over the several acre spread of crusted land. Like a young dick-tease refusing to spread her legs for him, he’d teach the land a lesson. Then everyone would see that he and his kin ain’t idiots for trying to save this god-forsaken hell-hole, where the soil had long suffered from drought and neglect. Once he proved em’ wrong, he’d shove this very hoe all the way up their pompous asses until it smashed their teeth on its way out from their smirking faces. “Screw em’ all!” he hissed, and went back to slamming the hoe down into the earth. Over and over, deeper and deeper, in line with the steady pulse of his blood flowing hotly through his veins, until the alarm’s steady beep grew louder and replaced the images of the dream….
David sat up, fumbling in the room’s dimness to turn off the alarm. Light from daybreak crept in through cracks along the edges of the window’s curtain. He wiped his eyes to regain his orientation. Images from the dream began to fade. He couldn’t believe the intense malice and anger, wondering what it meant. He didn’t recognize anything from the dreamscape...a mule pulling a cart nearby and the view of a modest shack sitting at the edge of the barren field he furiously tilled by hand.
Chalking it up to the mashed potatoes and gravy that hadn’t set well with him the previous evening, he let the matter go and started getting ready for the day. He had just finished brushing his teeth and about to trim his beard when he noticed his wristwatch was missing. Thinking he might’ve laid it on the dresser next to the TV he checked there first, shifting the tele-vision pay-per-view advertisements and a Ripley’s brochure aside as he searched. Not finding it, he turned his attention to his nightstand and stopped.
His watch sat on the far side of the alarm clock, the gold band forming a perfect circle. In the circle’s midst sat the little cloth bag, its leather strap hanging over the band like someone casually deposited the bag there during the night.
No friggin’ way!
David slowly approached the nightstand, glancing nervously around him. He wondered for a moment if John Running Deer decided to have some fun with the foolish man from Colorado, who flew all the way out here to deliver an item that should’ve been much easier to mail. But then he noticed footprints next to his bed.
The light gray carpet looked fairly new, and the fibers resilient enough to bounce back from foot traffic to keep the carpet looking neat and even. That should make the carpet resistant to footprints. He looked around him, seeing no other footprints in the room, not even his own. The only ones were these, left next to the nightstand and bed. Much smaller than his shoe size, two identical sets of barefoot indentations had been left on the carpet’s surface. One pair faced the nightstand and the other faced the head of his bed where he slept. The depth of the imprints told him whoever made them stood in each spot for quite awhile.
He shuddered at the thought of Allie Mae watching him sleep. Perhaps she laughed to herself at his naivety, thinking he could dispatch such an ominous opponent by leaving his dirty work for someone else. He stared numbly at this scene for several minutes until he finally picked up his watch, setting the bag on the bed. Fearful the spirit might pop into the bathroom at any moment, he showered quickly. Once dressed, he threw the bag inside his briefcase and vacated the room.
He stopped for breakfast at a nearby pancake house after check-out at the Comfort Inn, and then drove into the national park. When he arrived at nine o’clock, the Cades Cove visitors’ center was far more crowded than yesterday. He waited for John Running Deer to finish a tour, perusing postcards inside the gift shop.
“Mr. Hobbs, I understand you’ve been waiting for me,” said John, upon his return to the gift shop. “What can I do for you this morning? I don’t suppose you came back for the little bag you left here yesterday.” He smiled, impish.
“As a matter of fact, I did come back here because of it,” said David. He looked around, uneasy; the gift shop had quite a few patrons. “Can we talk someplace private?”
“Sure,” said John, glancing back to the counter where they had talked yesterday. Another employee assisted a tourist wearing a backpack. “We can talk in my office.” He led David out of the gift shop and past the main information counter to a door near the east corner of the building. A storage room, it also served as a workspace.
“Micky, Cheryl, and I share this room, so please excuse the mess,” he advised, turning on an overhead light and pointing to a metal folding chair on one side of a mahogany desk. He moved to another chair, gathering several loose papers strewn across the desktop. “Our main office is in the park station on the other side of the cove.”
Not so much messy as cluttered due to lack of space, David thought, with rows of boxes stacked neatly around the desk. An old meridian phone sat next to a flat-screen computer monitor.
“I found this waiting for me on my nightstand this morning,” he told John, setting his briefcase on top of the desk and opening it to where the ranger could see the same item left with him yesterday afternoon.
John’s smile disappeared. “Wait here, please. I’ll be right back.” He rose from his chair and left the room.
David noticed a row of photographs on the right side of the desk. He studied the pictures belonging to John. The first, a group photo with several other rangers taken next to Abrams Falls in Cades Cove. The second featured John on a boat in Mexico, where he and another Native American male held a trophy swordfish. In the next photo, he stood arm and arm with an attractive blond woman, taken twenty to thirty years ago. The last one, and the most recent, featured him with his arm around the waist of a beautiful dark-haired girl in her early twenties.
“That’s my granddaughter, Evelyn,” John commented as he stepped back into the office and closed the door behind him. “One of her boyfriends took the picture last summer down in Charleston.”
“She’s quite beautiful.”
“Why, thank you.” He returned to his chair at the desk. “I thought I should check the drawer where I put the bag yesterday before jumping to any conclusions. But it’s not there, and none of the other employees working here yesterday got into that drawer after you left. Won’t you sit down?”
He motioned for David to take his seat again.
“Can I get you some coffee, or tea?”
“Coffee sounds good.”
John poured a cup from a portable machine and handed it to him, along with two small containers of cream and a sugar packet. He then pulled out a pencil and tablet from the top drawer and set it on the desk near the open briefcase.
“You’ve got a hell of problem, I’d say,” he ob
served, frowning. “Hand-delivering the bag hasn’t worked out any better than sending it through the mail.” He wrote a few notes on the tablet page.
“What if I’m supposed to take it back to the exact location where I first saw it, in the ‘Lover’s Lane’ ravine?” said David. “It could be the key to this whole thing.”
“Maybe,” agreed John, looking up from the tablet. “I thought the same thing yesterday, even though you said it somehow got mixed up with your things. Since you now say you actually saw the bag while in the ravine, I must also assume you took it home willingly.”
David realized he just slipped up, and evasiveness about any other details would be much harder now.
“Okay,” he sighed. “I did know it was there when we left the ravine. Miriam wanted me to turn it in here before we left Cades Cove, and my intent was to do just that…but I couldn’t do it.”
John didn’t reply right away, continuing to jot down his notes. When finished, he laid the pencil down.
“May I?”
David encouraged him to remove the bag from inside the open briefcase. Holding it carefully, John loosened the leather strap. The powerful mixture of mustiness and the alluring floral fragrance wafted toward him, causing him to draw back. He squinted and pulled the bag closer to his nostrils.
“It didn’t start out smelling like that,” said David. “It used to just smell like something old, like when I was a kid playing in my grandmother’s closet.”
“That odor is still there beneath the other ones,” noted John, still sniffing the bag. He turned it over in his hands, rubbing his fingers across the stitched name as if reading some sort of psychic Braille. But unlike yesterday, where he did this without going further, he went ahead and emptied the items onto the desk.
