"Where you're at starts out as Old Black Road and ends up as nothing down on the river. It's where me and Daddy goes fishing. All's down there is moccasins and mosquitoes."
"I must have read the directions wrong," Anna said. "Way wrong. Those old boys was having a joke and you were it," Daddy said succinctly. "You go on a couple miles'n you'll see a place to turn around. Then you go back the way you come twenty miles or so.
You'll find 27. If you hit the interstate, you gone too far." Anna thanked them again. They waited. She waited. Then she realized they weren't leaving till they saw her safe in her car and on her way. Having loaded Taco, she climbed in the Rambler and pulled back into the twisted night.
Daddy was right. She'd not misread the directions; she'd followed them to the letter. One of her rangers wasn't anxious to see her arrive: Randy Thigpen, a GS-9 field ranger she'd be supervising. Anna wished she could dredge up some surprise at the petty betrayal, but she was too old and too cynical. Nobody involved in the hiring process had come right out and said anything, and in these days of rampant litigation and gender skirmishes, they wouldn't dare. But she'd heard the subtext in the pauses. There'd never been a female law enforcement ranger on the far southern end of the Trace, and there'd never been a female district ranger in any of the nine districts and four hundred fifty-odd miles of the parkway. It had been unofficially deemed too conservative, too old-fashioned for such an alarming development.
From the gossip she'd picked up, she was hired because she was known to have an "edge." She to was an experiment, They would find if she was to be a cat among the pigeons or the other way around. The "old-fashioned" people, Anna had thought, would be the park visitors. Randy Thigpen evidently wanted to carry the experiment into the office. jump off that bridge when you come to it, she told herself.
W hen she finally found her way onto the Trace, the sun was rising and, with it, her spirits. The vague picture she'd formed in her mind of a bleak and dusty place, over farmed by sharecroppers, dotted with shacks and broken-down vehicles, was shattered in a rainbow brilliance of flowers. "Wake up, Taco," she said, nudging the beast with her knee.
"Hang your head out the window or something useful. The place looks like it's been decorated for a wedding." The Natchez Trace Parkway, a two-lane road slated, when finished, to run from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi, had been the brainchild of the Ladies' Garden Clubs in the south. Besides preserving a unique part of the nation's past, the federal government bad believed, building the Trace would pump money, jobs and a paved road into what was then a depressed area. Unlike other scenic parkways, such as the Blue Ridge in Tennessee or the John D.
Rockefeller Jr. National Parkway in Wyoming, the Trace would not be based on spectacular scenery but would conserve the natural and agricultural history of Mississippi. It would follow and, where possible, preserve the original trail made through the swamps and forest by Kentucks, entrepreneurs out of what would become Kentucky, walking back home after rafting goods down the Mississippi to be sold at the port in Natchez, and by the outlaws who preyed upon them, by Indians trading and warring and finally by soldiers of the Union Army bent on bringing the South to heel.
This morning no ghost of the violence remained. Mile after mile, the road dipped and turned gracefully through rich fields, grassy meadows, shoulders bright in red clover, daffodils, pink toe-pyc weed and a water-blue flower Anna didn't recognize. Dogwood blossoms winked I I through the spring woods. Purple wisteria, vines covering trees fifty feet high, draped to the ground. Red bud trees added crimson patches.
Carolina jasmine, yellow falls of blooms, draped over fences and downed timber. And there was no traffic. Not a single car coming or going. The dreamlike quality of the frog-song-filled night was carrying over into the light of day.
After twelve miles of garden beauty, the road widened briefly into four lanes and Anna saw the sign for Rocky Springs Campground.
"We're home," she told the animals. The words sounded mocking, though she'd not meant them that way Mississippi was about as far from home as Anna had ever been, if not in miles, then in mind. Anna had no trouble finding her house. Randy Thigpen hadn't been the only one to give directions. Those of the Chief Ranger John Brown Brown, based in Tupelo, Mississippi, one hundred sixty miles north of Anna's district, had provided her with a more accurate map: first left after the campground entrance, first house on the right.
To Anna's tired mind, it sounded not unlike the directions to Never-Never Land.
As promised, on the right was the park employee housing, two identical brick structures. Long and low, built in the sixties with windowed fronts, they resembled dwarf school buildings with carports on one end.
In the carport of house number one was a white patrol vehicle sporting a green stripe. According to John B. Brown, the keys to the car, the house and the ranger station would be atop the left front tire. Rangers the country over were so trusting it was touching. Anna hoped that would never change. That the members of the law enforcement agency boasting the highest average level of education also retained the highest level of faith in their fellows was an indication that things were not as bad as the media would like people to believe.
Anna parked, emancipated Taco, muttered unheeded promises of succor to the ever-shrieking Piedmont and went to retrieve the keys to her new kingdom.
Wooden beams, painted barn red, cramped the low-roofed carport.
Every joist, junction, every crevice where wall met upright or upright met roof, was festooned in ragged gray-white. Spiderwebs, an immodest, immoderate, unseemly number of spiderwebs. Keeping her hands and arms close to her sides lest she inadvertently brush one of her neighbors onto her person, Anna peered into the web-fogged shadows.
Seven of the nearer webs held visible arachnids. One of these was the size of a half dollar, bigger if one looked with the imagination and not the eyes. Anna had come to terms with tarantulas of the Southwest. She'd made every effort to refrain from annoying them. In turn, they stayed sedately on the ground.
They did not drape one's corners and drop down one's collar.
Soon, in this carport, there would be serious harassing of wildlife.
Having looked carefully before thrusting her hand into the dark, she snatched the keys off the tire and fled back to the sunshine.
She was of two minds about the house. Compared with her tower in Mesa Verde, it was completely lacking in charm. Compared with much of the Park Service housing she'd inhabited, it was palatial. The floors were hardwood, the walls white. There was a bath and a half that appeared clean and serviceable, and three small bedrooms, only two of which she was allowed to use. Exhibiting true governmental logic, the NPS was willing to rent her the house at the slightly lower monthly rate of a two-bedroom if she promised she wouldn't use bedroom number three. "Not even for storage?" she'd asked. Not even for storage.
Those not employed by the parks might well ask: "Who would know?" Those with the Park Service for any length of time knew everybody knew everything all the time. Information traveled by gossip, innuendo and osmosis. Probably employees in the Port Gibson Districtif not everybody from Natchez to Nasbvlllc-already knew more about her than a shrink or a priest would discover in a lifetime of revelations.
The kitchen was small, with white counters and a linoleum floor.
Over the sink was a view of her backyard, a weedy mowed area divided by a broken clothesline and hemmed in on two sides by an apparently impenetrable wall of trees. Not the tidy spaced trees of the water-poor Four Corners area, forests where one could stroll and contemplate the serenity of nature, but a tangled, creeping wall of life. Trees tied to vines laced with Spanish moss formed a Curtain of green that dropped to the ground. There shrubs took over. Her backyard looked not so much planted as carved from the forest and mightily defended by repeated mowing. Just such country had the original Trace been cut through with no tools but those a man could carry on his back.
Had Anna been rested, she might
have been more appreciative of the feat.
As it was, she just wondered why they hadn't stayed home.
On the counter by the refrigerator was a five-gallon plastic container of store-bought water with a Post-it note on it. She plucked the note off and held it to the light. Somewhere between forty-three and forty-five her eyesight bad changed. That, or small print had grown insidiously smaller. "The water here won't kill you but that's all the good I can say of it. Welcome to the Trace, Steve Stilwell, DR, Ridgeland." Stilwell. Anna remembered one of the many new names thrust upon her over the telephone during the past month. Stilwell was the district ranger in Ridgeland, the section of the Natchez Trace north of Jackson, about forty-five miles from Rocky Springs. He'd been doing double duty, his district and hers, till she came on board. Steve Stilwell, she was prepared to like. She had spent too many years in the desert not to feel kindly toward a man offering water.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she wandered into the dining area, the short leg of the L-shaped living room. On the wall near the windows overlooking the backyard were two shockingly green lizards, each about four inches long. For a moment she watched them doing push-ups as they gauged the distance between themselves and this intruder.
"If you eat spiders, I'll ask Piedmont to let you live," she told them.
Saying the eat's name reminded her of her responsibilities.
Having rescued the orange tiger cat from the Rambler, she establisbed him, a litter box, food and water in one of the back bedrooms, opened the door of his carrier and shut the door to the hall to let him acclimatize to one small piece of real estate at a time.
Back in the living room, she realized she had no idea where she was headed. The U-Haul had her goods locked up and, at the moment, she hadn't the energy for moving heavy objects. Food would help but she had none and no clear idea of where to get any. It was too early to call anybody and ask questions, too late to go to bed.
Taco bounded into the house, mud on his Jaws where he'd tried to enjoy a little Mississippi cuisine. Anna decided to walk the dog.
A tedious task but one that always made her feel appreciated. With Taco carefully leashed-she didn't want to be seen breaking the rules her first day on the job-she walked down the short spur where park housing was located. The day was already warm and promising to get warmer.
Soft, damp air swaddled and embraced. She missed the light, indifferent caresses of the mountain breezes. To her right was the Trace. just off of it, introducing the campground area, was a small brick building with public toilets and, she had been told, a tiny office for the Rocky Springs ranger. Because of budget cuts, two of the ranger positions in the Port Gibson District would go unfilled. The Rocky Springs office would stand empty Anna's office at District Headquarters was twenty miles south in Port Gibson. Taco pulled left toward where the road forked. The campground was to her right. What lay straight ahead, she had no idea.
Too tired for adventures, she chose the known and allowed Taco to drag her toward the campground. Rocky Springs camp was laid out in a loop. A narrow asphalt road circled a wooded area several acres in size. Camps, cleared areas with grills and picnic tables, were located on both sides of the road. Two brick buildings housing toilets sufficed for the amenities. Though it was a medium-sized campground by NPS standards, the crush of trees made it seem intimate.
Incognito in civilian clothes, with Taco for cover, she wandered unimpeded past several RVS and a small silver Airstream with Michigan plates. Campers were quiet at this hour, sleeping or standing dully over wood fires, coffee cups clasped reverently to their bosoms. Birds, none of which Anna could see in the dense canopy of leaves, discussed the situation in hushed warblings.
Feeling mildly rebellious, she let Taco off his leash. The retriever loped off to a deserted campsite and stuck his nose into something she was sure she didn't want to know about. Enjoying not being in an automobile and not traveling any faster than the gods intended, she continued on without him.
Near the top of the loop, where the road curved to the left out of sight, a strange phenomenon brought her out of the meditative state. In the shallow ditch between the asphalt and the inner circle of camps, a stone the size of a large cantaloupe was moving, bobbing as if it rode atop bubbling waters.
Thinking again about the need to get her eyes examined, she left the road for the mowed grass on the shoulder. After she had walked a yard or two, the rock resolved itself into a more logical form.
An armadillo was rooting through the grass in search of its breakfast.
No stranger to these marvelous beasts, Anna bad seen them in the Guadalupe Mountains, where she'd been a ranger once upon a time. On the Trans Pecos, they were fondly referred to as "Texas speed bumps." There was even a Joke made for them: Why did the chicken cross the road? To show the armadillo it could be done. The animals were slow, nearsighted and not terribly bright. The armor they'd evolved to defend themselves was no match for speeding automobiles.
This was the first one Anna could remember seeing alive.
An old alcoholic's tale said that, when sneaked up on and surprised, the compact little animals would jump straight up, sometimes as much as four feet. Having nothing she'd rather do, Anna decided to see if it was true.
Careful to stay directly behind the creature and to walk as quietly as she could-she'd never heard armadillos had keen hearing but this one had big cars and nature was usually a practical mother-she followed the animal in its single-minded grub seeking. Inch by inch she closed the gap between them. Her plan was simple, as befitted the gravity of the experiment and the fogged state of her intellect. When close enough, she would lunge, grab its tall, yell "Jump!" and see if it compiled.
There is no Zen like the Zen of the predator. The world narrowed to the scope of the hunt. By the time the armadillo had nosed and waddled around the bend in the road, Anna was less than thirty-six inches from the gray and scaly hindquarters. She'd geared herself for the leap into scientific discovery when a voice blasted into her consciousness.
"Them's not very good catin'." The world shifted and Anna found herself back in the big picture.
Finally wised-up, her armadillo scuttled ahead, winning back the ten yards Anna had so cunningly eaten up. Disappointment turned to irritation in the time it took her to turn her head toward the interrupter, and irritation vanished in amazement in the blink of an eye.
The man who had frightened away her beastle was a Confederate soldier: his crumpled gray cap looked as if it had seen more than one campaign, and his gray button-front trousers, worn and sweat-stained, were held up by suspenders, the trouser legs stuffed into battered black boots. The hallucination didn't stop with the soldier. Behind him, two tents, old and made of canvas, were pitched around a central fire, where a couple more soldiers, sleeves rolled to greet the coming heat, a day's growth of beard darkening their chins, drank coffee out of tin parmikins. One wore a saber at his belt. Three rifles, manufactured early in the nineteenth century but clean and oiled, leaned against an old wooden tucker box. Above the tents flew a Confederate flag, and a smaller flag, white with a red bar along one side, a blue canton with a white star and what looked like a magnolia tree. "Wboa," Anna said. "You wanting a little breakfast?" the soldier asked politely. He drawled. Not the tobacco-juice sort of draw] Anna'd heard when Daddy and Baby talked, but a genteel, Rhett Butler kind of a drawl that was in keeping with the captain's insignia on his cap. "No," Anna managed.
"I was..." Suddenly her experiment seemed too hard to explain to an army man of any stripe. Or era. "I was just watching him. I wasn't going to cat him." The soldier looked at her long and hard. "You're not from around here, are you, girl?"
"Not really," Anna admitted. Taco appeared from the woods to slobber on her thigh. "Hunter?" This time Anna was prepared. "Just an overgrown lap dog."
"Let us give you a cup of coffee?" Anna followed him into the Civil War and was treated to good coffee in a tin cup that burned her bands. Her costumed campers w
ere reenactors. She'd heard the term now and again but had never appreciated the scope or the enthusiasm with which the hobby was pursued. In fact the word "bobby" was met with polite outrage, as if she'd suggested to an Orthodox Jew that reading the Torah was a nice pastime.
The soldier who had ended her game with the armadillo was Jimmy Williams, a tax lawyer with a firm in Jackson. The other two referred to him as Captain Williams or "Cap." His lieutenants-this camp was conspicuously devoid of privates-were Ian McIntire, a Honda salesman from Pearl, and Leo Fullerton, a Baptist minister from Port Gibson.
Captain Williams suited the role of a soldier: lean and stronglooking with thick brown hair just beginning to show a salting of ago. Though Anna put him at around fifty, his youthful body, married to a face creased with the kind of wrinkles only the sun can scour into flesh, gave him an ageless look. The Honda salesman was a different story.
Ian McIntire would look more at home in a suit, preferably seersucker, and a tie. Probably of an age with Jimmy Williams, he had hair that was white, cut short and bristling like frost in the morning sun. jovial- it oozed from him. His belly was round, his face oval and fleshy, his eyes bright St. Nick blue and his smile boyish. When he laughed, and that was often, the laughter was high-pitched yet pleasant. The kind of laugh actors love; one so infectious others must laugh along with it.
Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 08 - Deep South Page 2
