A Change in Altitude

by Cindy Myers

  “Pershing.” Bob nodded curtly.

  “What do you want, Gerald?” Lucille asked.

  “I’ve spent a very productive morning on the phone with the safety engineers,” he said. “As soon as we give them the go-ahead, they’re ready to install the new ventilation system and bracing in the Lucky Lady Mine. All I need is for you to write me a check for your half of the first payment and they can get started day after tomorrow.”

  “I can’t just write you a check, Gerald,” she said. “You’ll need to submit a requisition to the town council. We’ll consider it and if it’s approved, the town treasurer will submit payment directly to the contractor.”

  His face folded in an expression of hurt. “Lucille, you talk as if you don’t trust me.”

  Bob snorted. “She doesn’t trust you as far as she could throw you, and neither do I.”

  Gerald ignored him and turned to Olivia. “You’re looking lovely today,” he said. “So much like your beautiful mother.”

  Lucille resisted the urge to make a gagging gesture. Olivia only smiled. “Thank you, Gerald. You know, I was thinking, before you get any contractors up to the mine, you ought to have some sort of religious ceremony—an exorcism or a native American blessing or something.”

  Gerald looked amused. “Why is that?”

  Olivia’s eyes widened. “You didn’t know? Everyone at the Dirty Sally says the Lucky Lady Mine is haunted. It’s the reason no one has worked the claim for years.”

  Gerald laughed. “Haunted! Oh, that’s a good one.” He leaned toward her, his voice low, confiding. “The reason the mine hasn’t been worked for years, my dear, is that all the easy gold has already been taken out. The ore that remains is more difficult to reach, and requires technology and equipment that has only recently been developed.”

  “I don’t know, Gerald,” Olivia said. “People around here usually know about these things. I’ve heard that if you don’t honor the ghosts, they’ll get in there and wreck your expensive machinery, and then where will you be?”

  Gerald drew back, eyes narrowed. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to do.” He shifted his gaze to Lucille, then Bob. “All of you. But you won’t scare me away so easily. I’ll present the payment request to the town board,” he said. “And if it is not paid promptly, you’ll be hearing from my lawyers.”

  He left, and none of them said anything until he was well out of earshot. “That didn’t go so well,” Olivia said.

  “No, you did good.” Bob patted her hand. “You planted the idea in his head. That’s the first step.”

  “This isn’t going to work,” Lucille said. “You can’t frighten a man like Gerald with ghost stories.”

  “I still think it’s worth a try,” Bob said. “What have we got to lose?”

  “Only the last shred of my dignity, Bob. At least let me keep that.”

  “Make twenty more copies of the petition, and use the heavy cotton copy paper, not that cheap recycled stuff. I don’t want these falling apart before they’re full of signatures.” Cassie dropped the petition form on Sharon’s desk. HELP NAME TOWN PARK AFTER PIONEER WOMAN ERNESTINE WYNOCK stood out in bold capitals across the top of the paper. Cassie had plastered the town with the flyers, and yesterday she’d spent all afternoon going door to door, persuading people to sign her petition. Sharon imagined Cassie could be very persuasive.

  “How’s the petition drive coming?” Sharon asked, as she carried the sheet to the copy machine.

  “People around here are too afraid of change.” Cassie moved aside the Date Due stamp, which she still insisted on using on every book, despite the computerized checkout system. “Half of them I talk to want to argue about the need to change the name of the park at all—as if ‘Town Park’ was ever an appropriate name in the first place. The other half are just plain ignorant. ‘I didn’t even know the park had a name,’ they say.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Still, it looks like you’ve collected a lot of signatures.” Sharon nodded to the folder on the corner of Cassie’s desk, which bulged with a stack of signed petitions.

  “Not all of them are legitimate.” Cassie plucked a sheet from the folder and scowled at it. “I don’t think Elmer Fudd is going to impress the town council. And the tourist signatures won’t count either.”

  “How did your presentation to the town council go?” Sharon asked. The older woman had been in a state yesterday. She’d finally persuaded Lucille to put her on the meeting agenda, but she had only three minutes to make her pitch to rename the park. She’d made Sharon listen to her presentation so many times Sharon practically had the few lines memorized.

  “I was doing fine until Junior Dominick interrupted me to say he didn’t think the park needed to be named after anyone at all. I told him we might as well change the name of Eureka to ‘Generic Mountain Town’ and call the Last Dollar ‘the café,’ the Dirty Sally ‘the bar,’ and everything else by a similar label.”

  “How did he react to that?” Sharon asked.

  The scowl deepened; it looked as if Cassie’s face was folding in on itself. “Lucille told me my time was up and I needed more legitimate signatures to prove I wasn’t the only one who thought changing the park name was a good idea.”

  “I’m sorry things didn’t go better.” Sharon straightened the stack of blank petitions and handed them to Cassie. For one thing, she’d have to hear about the park all day long for more days or weeks to come. She was becoming expert at feigning interest while tuning out, but the effort was tiring.

  “They’re more concerned with getting someone here to make movies than honoring the people who really matter,” Cassie said.

  “Someone is making a movie in Eureka?” Now this sounded interesting.

  “Not yet. But they’re hoping to lure someone here. As if Hollywood is dying to relocate to small mountain towns.” Cassie sniffed.

  “Yeah, why would anyone want to move here?”

  Sharon cringed at the words, and half a second later her daughter slouched around the corner, the picture of the tortured teen. Alina hefted her backpack onto the wooden table at the center of the room with a resounding thunk! and dropped into a chair. Day four of the I’m-so-put-upon hit parade. How was Sharon going to survive a whole month?

  “Treat library property with more care or you will not be allowed to use it.” Cassie peered down her nose at Alina, the picture of the dour schoolmarm. Truly, the woman belonged in another century.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Alina moved her backpack to the floor and sat up a little straighter. Though Cassie showed little warmth to any young person other than Lucas, and treated most of her patrons with disdain, Alina didn’t seem to mind her. “If she bans me from the library, you’ll have to let me come home after school,” she’d pointed out after her first day serving her punishment.

  “If she bans you, she’ll probably fire me,” Sharon said. “Then you won’t have a home to come to, after school or any time.”

  The threat was extreme; they were still living in Jameso’s little rental, Sharon’s meeting with the real-estate agent not having yielded anything suitable or affordable in the Eureka housing market. “Something will come along,” the agent had warbled breezily. “It always does.”

  In any case, the specter of homelessness had induced Alina to sullen quiet in the library, which satisfied Cassie, if not Sharon. Meanwhile, Sharon was doing her best to ignore Alina’s pouting.

  “Hello, Alina,” Sharon said evenly. “How was school?”

  “School is dumb. If we still lived in Vermont, I wouldn’t have to go to school.”

  “So you’d rather go back to being homeschooled and stay at the house all the time, with me as your teacher?”

  Alina moaned and laid her head on the table. “Are you studying drama now?” Sharon asked.

  “No, I don’t get to do anything fun.”

  “I just wondered, because you’re seriously overacting.” She nudged the back of Alina’s chair. “Sit up and d
o your homework. Then you can help me shelve books.”

  “Oh, joy.”

  “Oh, come on. You like shelving.” Alina, like her friend Lucas, enjoyed perusing the titles and discovering unusual gems among the dusty volumes. Cassie apparently didn’t believe in culling the shelves, and thus the Eureka County Library had books dating back to the turn of the twentieth century scattered among the modern novels and technical manuals.

  Alina glared, the message in her eyes simple: I don’t like you.

  The sound of sneakers squeaking on the polished wood floors signaled the approach of another patron. Sharon turned in time to see Lucas Theriot lean his lanky frame against the checkout counter. “Good afternoon, Miss Wynock, Mrs. Franklin.” His smile broadened. “Hey, Alina. You beat me here.”

  “I’m not allowed to stop anywhere between here and school,” Alina said.

  This wasn’t exactly true; Sharon had agreed that Alina could go home to change and grab a snack, as long as she was at the library one hour after school let out. But she supposed the girl thought it sounded more dramatic to picture herself as not even allowed a bathroom break before she had to hit the books under the eye of her slave-driving mother.

  “I think you just ride faster than me.” He sat across from her at the big table. “I keep telling my mom and D. J. that I need a new bike—the one I have used to belong to my grandmother! But they’re too caught up in all this house stuff to pay attention.” He smiled up at Sharon. “That’s a great bike you got, Alina.”

  “It belongs to my uncle,” Alina said. “So it’s not even really mine; he just lets me use it.”

  “Maybe when you’re older, he’ll let you borrow his motorcycle,” Lucas said. “That’s such a cool bike.”

  Jameso had explained, on one of his brief visits to the house, that the 1948 Indian Chief was a rare and valuable motorcycle. Maggie had added that she sometimes thought Jameso loved the bike more than he did her. He’d denied this, but the pained look on his face told Sharon that his devotion to the bike was a close second to his love for his fiancée.

  “Jameso Clark is a menace on that motorcycle,” Cassie said. “I’ve complained more than once about him speeding through town on that thing at all hours.”

  “Motorcycles always sound like they’re going faster than they are,” Lucas said. “You should ask Jameso to give you a ride sometime, Miss Wynock. I bet you’d like it.”

  Sharon had to look away, afraid her face would give away how hard she was fighting not to laugh at the ludicrous picture of Cassie, in her modest skirt and blouse and sensible shoes, perched on the back of a motorcycle behind a black-leather-clad Jameso.

  Alina had no such reserve. She laughed out loud. “I’d like to see that.”

  “Enough of this nonsense.” Cassie turned to Lucas. “What are you doing here?”

  “Alina and I have to work on our social studies project.”

  The fond look the two young people exchanged made Sharon’s stomach hurt. Not that she didn’t like Lucas—he was smart and had good manners and even Cassie, who had a low opinion of most people, thought highly of Lucas. But she didn’t like the idea that her daughter would fall under the sway of a boy at such a young age. She knew from personal experience how a man could lead a young girl astray.

  What was she thinking—Lucas wasn’t a man, and other than making Alina go off without telling Sharon, he hadn’t done anything bad. When she’d met Joe, he had been twenty-seven to her fifteen, positively ancient in some ways, but he had a man’s confidence and a man’s strength, and he’d stood up to her father, threatening to slit his throat if he laid a hand on Sharon again. That had been enough to make her love him—to make her believe he was the one who could save her, now that her brother, Jay, had joined the army and left her alone.

  She shoved the painful memories back into the corner of her mind where she kept them locked away. Alina didn’t need anyone to protect her; she simply needed a friend her age, and Lucas fit that role. Sharon shouldn’t worry. “What’s your project about?” she asked.

  “Rockets,” Lucas answered. “Mr. Ames is letting us use the science lab at school to make one that really flies. But we also have to write a paper and do a presentation.”

  “We’re going to get an A,” Alina said. “Nobody else is going to the trouble to actually build a rocket.” She glared at her mother again. “If I wasn’t grounded, we could work on the rocket after school, instead of just during our study period.”

  “I’m sure we can arrange a special dispensation to work on a school project,” Sharon said.

  “I told you it would be all right.” Lucas nudged Alina, but she continued to frown.

  “Lucas, I believe you wanted to see more about the history of Eureka from our historical collection?” Cassie, either bored with talk of rockets or eager to once more be the focus of Lucas’s attention—Sharon suspected a little of both—held out a hefty scrapbook. A stack of sheets of black paper five inches thick was sandwiched between embossed cardboard covers, yellowed bits of lace and faded flower petals sticking out on all sides.

  “Wow, look at this, Alina.” Lucas took the book and carefully opened it on the table between them.

  “That scrapbook was compiled in 1961 by my grandmother and the other members of the Eureka Women’s Society,” Cassie said. “I have others, but this one is most closely focused on local history.”

  “There’s your house.” Lucas pointed to a fuzzy black-and-white photograph of a white house with upper and lower porches across the front and pillars like the posts that support wedding cake tiers. It was set back on a large lot, landscaped with abundant flowering shrubs.

  “The yard was much larger then,” Cassie said. “My grandmother had two gardeners to tend the plants. Of course, that sort of thing isn’t practical now.”

  Or affordable, Sharon thought. Though she had not been invited to visit Cassie in her home, Lucille had pointed the house out to her: a faded version of the mansion in this photo, on a small plot of land, flanked by other houses and the street. Cassie’s grandparents or parents must have sold off their excess acreage long ago, judging by the age of the neighboring houses. But in this photograph, at least, the house reigned as a fine estate, befitting the founder of a town.

  “I think it’s wonderful that you know so much about your family’s history,” Sharon said. “Few people these days have roots that run so deep.” The flattering words came easily, maybe because part of her meant them; she did envy Cassie her deep roots in the town. Sharon had never lived in any one place long enough to truly feel at home.

  “Yes, I’m very fortunate.” Cassie smoothed her hand over the page with the picture of her family home; then she gave Sharon a sharp look. “What about your family? Where are you from? Are your parents and grandparents still alive? Jameso never talks about them; I always suspected it was because he had something to be ashamed of.”

  “Not ashamed,” Sharon said, aware of Alina listening intently. “Ours was never a close family. I guess you could say Jameso and I are the only family we have left.”

  Cassie sniffed. “It’s a disgrace how many people don’t know anything about their heritage. Knowing where you come from gives you pride not merely in what you yourself have accomplished, but in your history, and all your family has done and represents.”

  “But other people don’t care so much what your family did or who they are,” Alina said. “They look at you and what you do and what you stand for.”

  “I stand for the same values and achievements my ancestors stood for,” Cassie said. “They have established an example I strive to live up to. It’s another reason it’s important for us to remember what those who came before us did, and to remember them with acknowledgments, such as naming the park for my grandmother.”

  Lucas nodded, but he appeared to have lost interest in the subject. He turned the pages of the scrapbook. “Do you know if there’s a picture of the house my mom and D. J. bought?” he asked.

&
nbsp; “Let’s see.” Cassie leaned over him and flipped through a few more pages. “What was the name of the woman you bought it from?”

  “Mrs. Gilroy. She was really old.”

  “Mavis Gilroy is eighty-five,” Cassie said. “She taught home economics when I was in school. She was famous for her meringue pies. She and her husband bought that house after he left mining and opened a hardware store, about 1969. Before that, the house belonged to Cecil McCutcheon.” She turned more pages, then stopped and put a stubby finger on a photograph. “There it is.”

  Everyone—including Sharon—leaned forward to study the picture of a two-story wood-sided house with some kind of blooming bushes flanking the narrow front stoop. Unadorned with shutters or porches, the house had an air of simple dignity, but no luxuries.

  “Is it true that Mr. McCutcheon murdered his wife?” Alina asked.

  Cassie’s head shot up. “Where did you hear that?” she demanded.

  “Mr. Prescott told my mom,” Lucas said. “Is it true?”

  “I’ve never heard such nonsense,” Cassie said. “The McCutcheons were perfectly respectable people.”

  “So you knew them?” Lucas asked.

  “Not well. But I believe Adelaide McCutcheon was in the Women’s Society with my grandmother.” Cassie flipped to the front of the scrapbook, to a group photo showing a dozen women in long white dresses arranged on the steps of what appeared to be a church. Cassie adjusted her glasses and peered at the photo, then at the accompanying roster. “I think that’s her, third from the left in the second row.”

  Mrs. McCutcheon was a thin, pale woman with a narrow face and an impressive bouffant of blond hair. She stared solemnly into the camera, a high lace collar almost covering her chin. Sharon thought she looked as if she was holding her breath. “But did her husband kill her and bury the body in the back garden?” Lucas asked.

  Cassie closed the scrapbook. “Bob Prescott should be ashamed of himself for making up such wild stories,” she said. “First of all, Eureka was always a law-abiding, peaceful town. I don’t believe we’ve had a single murder in the history of the town. And second, if Cecil had killed his wife, someone would have found out about it.”