***
Later, in the wee hours of the morning, they sat together in the Explorer atop a ridge astride the North Carolina-Tennessee state line. Henry said, “Here, try this on,” and offered her a confusing web of black elastic straps laced through the fingers of both hands.
“What is it?” Phoebe asked. “Some sort of thong thing? You can forget about it, mister.” She was really disappointed in Henry. She’d thought he was different.
“It’s not a thong! It goes on your head for goodness sake,” he explained as he reached out to roughly position the straps. “You’ll like it, Phoebe, I promise.”
“I’ve heard that before,” she mumbled, but allowed him to place the mysterious snarl of fabric over her hair and adjust it. It was part hairnet and part helmet. It seemed designed not to protect your head from injury, but only to hold the major bits of it in place in the event of a serious accident.
Then something like a jeweler’s loupe dropped down to cover her right eye. “Oh my Lord!” she said. “It’s night vision!”
She swiveled her head to scan the woods around where they were sitting. “This is amazing! I can see better than in daylight! How’s that possible?”
Phoebe expected the Americans to have something better than the only other night vision optics she’d ever used – the Russian military surplus gear her father had borrowed years ago from a friend. All she and her father had ever used it for was to watch possums amble through the yard in the dark. The old Russian technology was built like a heavy oversized pair of binoculars. And the image it produced had been disappointingly green and fuzzy.
This was something else all together. It was wonderful.
“It’s third generation optics,” Henry said. “For only six thousand dollars, you can have one just like it.”
“Six thousand dollars?” she repeated, fiddling with the monocle and the headbands to get the eyepiece just right. “Well, if you’ve got the money, this wouldn’t be a bad way to spend it. I can distinguish every leaf and twig out there. My poor human eyeballs can’t manage that under any light conditions.”
She swiveled on the seat to face him and lifted the monocle up, “This is some pretty pervy stuff. Tell me, what’s the freakiest thing you’ve ever done with it? And don’t lie.”
He laughed, then held up his right hand like he was swearing and said, “Aside from strictly regulation activities, I’ve only ever used it to hide from people who were comin toward me on a trail when I wasn’t in a talkin mood.”
“By not in a talking mood, you mean not wantin to be discovered hikin in the park at night in full camo with a silenced sniper rifle and night vision?”
He smiled and nodded, “Exactly. When I’m hog huntin, if anybody got a load of me all decked out like that, it’d give em the scare of their lives. They’d never believe I was a ranger and doin it for their own protection. It’s better if people don’t know we hunt hogs on the AT at night.”
“If they knew you were out there terminating dangerous animals with a high-powered rifle, right outside their tents while they snored, with only a thin layer of mosquito netting or rip-stop polyester between them and … you.”
“Yeah,” he smiled.
“You’re The Night Stalker.”
“I am not!” he said. “When I was young I used to love to hunt. And straight out of college I was lucky enough to get a job right here in the park as a full time hunter. But, I’ve had to kill so many wild hogs, now it’s just work. There’s not much sport in it. “
He sighed. “Somebody’s gotta do it, though, they’re ruinin the ecology of the park, but it’s too big a job. There’s too many of em. It’s ruined huntin for me forever.”
She made a face that expressed something she hoped looked like poor baby but she was faking it. She was upset by what he’d told her. She’d thought of him as a sort of wild animal groomer, but a lot of his job involved killing. It was like a veterinarian having to put so many people’s pets to sleep.
“Hey, I wanna show you somethin else,” Henry said, sort of excited.
Phoebe wanted to make a smart-alecky retort, but she was too tired.
“I’m gonna warn you, with the night vision you’ll be seein all sorts of different things out there in front of you, things you’ve not been able to see before. Sometimes you can’t interpret the picture right away. This’ll be one of those kinda things. Follow me and do what I say, but no talkin. Be as quiet as you possibly can.”
He led Phoebe down a game trail for a hundred yards and then pointed at a stump and indicated she should sit down on it. Then he pointed to something else. She didn’t see what he was pointing at and shook her head. He put his hands on her shoulders to hold her in place and flipped the night vision loupe down over her eye. Then, sure enough, if he hadn’t been restraining her, she would’ve lurched out of her seat.
A pair of glowing eyes was floating through the air a few yards in front of her. Henry held her still and in a few moments she realized there were several pairs of eyes. Just glowing eyes, and nothing else. The eyes were bobbing up and down in total silence. Phoebe stared and stared, but couldn’t see what the eyes might be attached to.
She was freaking out. She looked up at Henry sending him a telepathic scream asking what is that?
He reached down and lifted the eyepiece out of the way. Then Phoebe couldn’t see anything at all. The eyes disappeared. There wasn’t any sound being made either. She had no idea what she’d been seeing.
Henry kept one hand on her shoulder and used the other to move the night vision loupe up and down a couple more times and it was always the same. With it down, there were several pairs of eyes floating in the air and with it up, nothing.
The hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end. She looked up at Henry again and he whispered, “Night-hawks.”
“Birds?” Phoebe asked.
“Yep,” Henry whispered. “They’re not really hawks, they’re more like Whip-poor-wills.”
Phoebe looked again, less afraid now. The eyes belonged to night birds which were popping up into the air and then fluttering slowly to the ground. They did it over and over. It was apparently a little flock of them, all jumping up into the air and then floating down.
“That is the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she whispered.
After a couple more minutes, Henry tightened his hand on Phoebe’s shoulder and said, “I’ve gotta work tomorrow. And I need to get some sleep between now and then.” So they walked back to the Explorer.
“Your job’s rough enough during the daytime, I don’t understand why you work nights, too.”
“Cause that’s when the animals are active and the tourists aren’t.”
“Oh.”
“That’s the whole problem with animals in the Smokies. This park is stuck in a choke hold, ringed by fast food drive-thrus, outlet malls, and rental cabins. The poor critters are all caught in a trap that’s slowly closing in on em. More and more people are coming closer and closer to em all the time, wavin food or cameras in their faces. I’m just trying to help keep em all as safe as possible.”
“You got a hard job.”
Henry nodded.
Chapter 28
“Open the tailgate, will ye?” Leon asked Jill. He bent over and, as gently as possible, he sat the unconscious woman down on the tailgate of his pickup, then carefully laid her on her back. “I need to borry that flashlight again,” he said.
He stooped to take another look at the woman’s eyes. “She’s had a hard lick on the head,” Leon said, “but she’s already lived through the worst of it.”
Jill looked at the woman with concern.
“Where to now?” Leon asked.
“Should we should take her to the hospital down in Knoxville?” Jill asked.
“Ordinarily I’d say yes, but somebody is tryin to kill this girl. Maybe they think they already have. But if we take her to the hospital it’ll get in the news and they’ll know she’s still alive. �
�
Jill looked at the unconscious girl with concern.
“The cops don’t have any jurisdiction in the park,” Leon said, “and the Park Service won’t git anywhere investigatin somethin like this. Nobody around here will tell em anything.
“We’ve got a better chance of findin out what’s goin on than they do. She’ll be safer with us til we git things figured out.”
“Well, I can keep her at my place,” Jill said.
Leon drove them to Hamilton’s, carried the girl in, and placed her on a day bed in Jill’s studio.
“She’ll be okay,” he said.
“How can you tell?”
“Her breathin and color are good, better than they was when we found her, and her heart’s strong.” He lifted a corner of her jacket and said, “Her clothes are wet, but it hadn’t rained. She’s been up there for hours to collect that much moisture. Prob’ly overnight. So she’s strong. All anybody can do at this point is just keep her warm and wait.”
Jill deferred to Leon because she knew he’d had the special first aid training. She sent Leon out of the room while she undressed the woman, bathed her, examined her for injuries, and put her into a clean nightgown. She tucked her under a pile of warm covers, then called him back in to tell him what she’d found.
“She’s got the head wound, some scratches on her hands, and two awful bruises on her body, one on the back and another on a thigh. The only other marks on her are chap marks from the harness straps around her legs and waist.”
He nodded, then sat down in a chair next to the bed, saying, “I’ll watch her.”
“Who do you think she is?” Jill said.
“No idea,” Leon replied. “Could be from anywhere.”
“Clothes look American.”
“Well, that narrows it down,” Leon said.
“Do you reckon it was an accident?”
“No. You don’t leave a person stranded with a head wound unless you mean business.”
“Maybe she had someone with her who went for help and got lost,” Jill said.
“I don’t think that’s what happened. Like you said, where’s her stuff? And surely if anybody’d been with her, they’d’ve tied a rag on the tree or marked the place in some way. If you didn’t leave some sort of sign in a place like that, you might not be able to find her again. It’d be hard enough to find her again, even if you did.”
“Surely there’s not very many people who can climb like that,” Jill said. “So maybe she’s in some sort of club. They might be able to tell us who she is.”
“I better tell Phoebe about this,” she said as she dialed the phone, but there was no answer. “What should we do now?”
“We better be careful who we talk to,” said Leon. “Why don’t you go on to sleep. I’ll stay with her. I promise I’ll come get you if anything changes.”
***
Leon watched over the unconscious woman throughout the long night.
He sat beside her bed until it was almost morning. When he heard Jill moving around, he went to knock on the door to her bedroom and said softly through the door, “Jill, it’s time for me to take off. She’s still sleepin. There hadn’t been no change.”
Jill dressed and went to see for herself that the woman was sleeping peacefully, tried to call Phoebe again, but her phone was still going directly to voice mail. Then it was time to start making breakfast for the regulars. She baked biscuits, boiled grits, and fried up hash browns, bacon, and sausage patties. She made gravy with the grease left from frying the pork. Then she put on her game face and unlocked the door for the first customers of the morning.
***
When Doc came in to get his usual breakfast of grits and scrambled eggs, Jill leaned in close as she filled his coffee cup and said, “Before you go, there’s somethin I’d like to ask you about.”
“Sure,” he said.
By the time Doc finished his meal most of the breakfast crowd had already cleared out. Jill had him follow her into the back. She closed the door between the store and her private area, saying, “There’s somebody I’d like you to take a look at. He nodded and went into the studio with her.
“Yesterday I went lookin to see what that was flashing over in Greenbrier and I found a woman sittin way the heck up in a tree, passed out. Leon got her down and brought her here last night. Her color’s been good and her breathin seems fine, but she hadn’t woke up yet. She didn’t have no identification on her.”
Doc examined the mystery woman.
“You and Leon have done just fine,” he said. “The only thing a hospital could’ve added to what y’all have already done would’ve been to run a drip of lactated Ringer’s solution by IV, but that’s not strictly necessary.”
He adjusted the blankets and said, “Is there a reason you didn’t take her to the hospital?”
“Somethin waddn’t right,” Jill said. She showed him the broken arrow and said, “The way she was when I found her, it didn’t look like an accident. She didn’t have a blessed thing with her except what she had on and the gear she was tied into. Not even some of the things she woulda needed to get up there where she was. Somebody had took them.”
“And left her trapped up there,” Doc said, “to die.”
Jill nodded.
“Well, thanks to you and Leon, it doesn’t look like they’re gonna get their wish.”
He shooed her with his hands and said “Go on and do whatever you need to be doing. I’ll sit with her.”
He settled himself comfortably in an old overstuffed armchair and propped his feet on the edge of the bed. “Go on!” he said, “Leave this to a professional for a change.”
Jill gratefully left him sitting there and went to get the café ready for the lunch bunch.
Later, when the café had cleared out again, she came back to relieve him, bringing him a grilled cheese sandwich and some banana pudding. The girl was still unconscious. “Don’t worry, she’ll wake up when she’s ready,” Doc said. “In the meantime, after I polish this off, I’ll go get Todd and we’ll fetch your car back.”
Only then did Jill remember she’d left it up on the mountain.
Chapter 29
As she drove to her morning calls Phoebe should’ve been tired from staying up so late the night before, but she felt surprisingly refreshed and peaceful. She found herself musing about the difference between saints and sinners. Often there wasn’t much. In her experience everyone was a mixed bag, switching roles from minute to minute.
Phoebe’s train of thought was brought on by the fact that she was on her way to Nerve’s place again. A fine mist of rain was falling when she arrived, but it wasn’t enough to bother with a raincoat. She parked and walked up a path toward the house. She was met halfway by a couple of skunks slowly waddling in the opposite direction, browsing. The cute duo made her smile. She stepped off the path and stood admiring their beautiful coats as they passed by. Skunks were among God’s most striking critters, in more ways than one.
The skunks glanced at her briefly with nearsighted curiosity, not particularly concerned, and certainly not afraid. Of course they didn’t need to be worried. The world didn’t hold many dangers from a skunk’s point of view. The only potential predators were large owls with hardly any sense of smell.
Phoebe pondered the fact that skunks were born with a bomb strapped to their rear ends. Fortunately they weren’t irritable. They were gentle creatures who always gave plenty of warning before deploying their weaponry. They’d raise their tail, prance around, and stamp their feet, trying every way in the world to warn you off. They didn’t enjoy spraying. If you’d leave them alone, they’d leave you alone.
Unfortunately, your average human was not as merciful as your average skunk. Phoebe wondered why it was so hard for people to leave each other alone. She’d always felt sorry for people who went out of their way to kill spiders or wasps whether they were bothering anybody or not. Or people who enjoyed humiliating others or advocating extreme political view
s they knew were likely to be offensive to their audience. Or spammed masses of women with ads for unseemly products they knew none of them could use or want. Some people always had to be attacking something.
Most days Nerve was one of em.
Teresa, Nerve’s oppressed daughter-in-law, let Phoebe in. “How’s she doin?” Phoebe asked.
“Quiet,” said Teresa. “Hasn’t said a word all day.”
The women raised their eyebrows at each other. They both knew better than to think that would last.
Phoebe went back to Nerve’s room and sat down in the chair opposite Nerve’s rocker without saying anything. She thought she’d just sit with her awhile and keep her company. That was another thing that was hard for some people to do, to sit with anyone in companionable silence. But Phoebe had learned that sitting quietly with a peaceful mind, just listening, whether the patient was talking or not, was deeply healing to both people.
To Phoebe’s way of thinking, friendly listening without having any opinions about anything was the ultimate healing gesture. It wasn’t easy to do, though. In fact, it was the hardest thing in the world. You had to shut yourself up first. Almost nobody could do that, or if they did, they went to sleep.
This one thing, wait with me, was all Christ had asked the disciples to do for Him the night before He died, but even the best men in the whole world had let Him down. Of course they’d all been men. The women around Him never let Him down. The women were always first in and last out, and seemed to have the only understanding of what was going on at all the crucial moments, but precious few bible scholars ever seemed to notice that.
Nerve’s eyes suddenly opened. She looked at Phoebe and said, “There’s evil a-stalkin.”
Phoebe maintained eye contact with the old lady. Nerve’s expression was clear and lucid. “Who’s it stalkin?” she asked.
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