When I pulled up in front of the vine-draped farmhouse, I noticed that the kudzu seemed to have swallowed another foot or two all around the edges. O’Conner seemed unconcerned, though. He was sitting in the same rocking chair where I’d first met him. He lifted a hand in greeting, but continued to rock in big, easy arcs.
As I mounted the sagging steps to the porch, O’Conner reached over and pushed down on the arm of the rocker beside his, setting it into motion. I synchronized my timing, then eased down into it. I found my rhythm matching his.
“Hey.” I said, “Why aren’t you in jail? The sheriff said he was gonna arrest you days ago.”
He chuckled. “They’re watching my house in town. They don’t know about this place yet.”
After a minute, he reached into his shirt pocket and took out a photo and handed it to me. Its corners were unraveling and the colors had faded with age, but there was no mistaking the pretty blonde girl smiling at the camera. It was Leena.
“She sent me that while I was overseas. Last letter I ever got from her.” I studied her face; she looked almost like I’d imagined her, but there was a trace of sadness or fear in her face that I hadn’t expected. Perhaps things had already started to unravel for her, too. Or maybe I was just imagining things in hindsight.
“Mind if I borrow this and make a copy? I’ll take good care of it.”
“ ’Course not. Anything that helps. Any headway on the case?”
“Not really. Not unless you count the break-in and the cave-ins as headway. There might be some disgruntled students who’d consider an attempt on my life to be a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t shed any light on the murder.”
“Maybe not directly. But somebody’s mighty nervous. Afraid there’s something more you’re about to find out, or about to figure out.”
“Well, I wish I were as smart as someone seems to think I am.”
“Answer’s bound to bubble up soon. You’ve just got to let it simmer for a while.” He stood up. “Speaking of simmering, how about a cup of tea?”
“Sure, if you’re having some, too.”
O’Conner disappeared through the screen door, then emerged a minute later and handed me one of two pottery mugs, handmade, imprinted with the outlines of lacy ferns. “Nice mugs,” I said, remembering some of what Kathleen had taught me about shapes and glazes. “Local potter?”
He smiled. “Local as you can get. Made ’em myself. Everything you’re holding in your hand came off this property — the clay, the ferns, the spring water, the honey, even the tea.”
“You’re a regular one-man biosphere.”
“I like being self-sufficient when I can. Meeting your own needs for food and utensils seems satisfying at some deep level, at least to me. Helps keep a man honest, somehow.”
For a reputed outlaw, O’Conner was quite the renaissance man: philosopher, potter, beekeeper, tea farmer. I took a sip of the steaming brew and swirled it in my mouth, startled — it wasn’t like any tea I had ever tasted. Underneath the honey, there was a bitter, rocky tang to it. It tasted somehow of mountains and leaves and roots and springs. “That’s interesting. I think maybe I like it, but I’m not quite sure. What is it?”
He bowed slightly, acknowledging the slight compliment. “Ginseng. ‘Sang,’ most folks around here call it. Makes you smarter, healthier, hornier, and more virile, if five millennia of Chinese and Native Americans can be believed. Those UT coeds better watch out for you tomorrow, Doc.” Visions of Sarah and Miranda flashed into my mind, and I felt myself blush. “See,” O’Conner said, “it’s working already.”
I laughed, despite the embarrassment. “Well, I don’t feel any smarter yet.”
“That doesn’t kick in till the third or fourth cup. It’s tea, Doc, not a miracle potion.”
We rocked and sipped. Across the valley, a swirl of thick mist crept up the hillside. As it met the morning sun, which was slanting over the ridge behind us, the mist grew soft and wispy around the margins, then gradually faded to nothing. “Doc, you think we humans are anything more than a passing wisp of fog ourselves?”
He wanted to talk about mortality? “All depends on how you look at it, Jim.” I pointed across the valley. “Before it evaporated, that scrap of fog drifted across that stand of hemlocks about halfway up that hillside. I’d say those trees will grow a little extra because of that. Maybe some ferns down around the base of those trees will, too. Dry as the weather’s been lately, it might be this morning’s fog that keeps those ferns alive. Next time a potter needs some fronds to press into a clay mug”—I wagged my cup for emphasis—“they’ll be right there waiting for him.”
I took another sip, and found the taste growing on me. “I’ve had students tell me, years after they graduated and went on to work for medical examiners or police departments or museums, that I had a big influence on their career path. I think we all leave an imprint on the world, and on the people we cross paths with, sometimes in ways we don’t fully understand.” I traced the imprint of a fern. “I know my wife left a hell of a mark on me. When she died, it felt like a tree got uprooted from my heart. Still does, sometimes.”
He looked away, and I guessed he was thinking of Leena. “Jim, as an anthropologist, I’m curious: what did you want to show me? Not just your pottery, I’m guessing.”
“Not just the mugs, but they’re not completely irrelevant. You ever done any research on what a premium we humans put on finding the magic elixir, Doc? The biochemical fuel additive, you might say, that’s going to fix things for us? Mind-numbing things like alcohol and pot? Octane boosters like cocaine or meth or Ecstasy?”
I nodded. “It is interesting. Not just humans, though — animals, too. Elephants gorge on fermented fruit to get drunk. So do orangutans and chimpanzees. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some pothead chimps somewhere in some California commune. I haven’t made a study of it, though.”
“I have, sort of,” he said. “Not so much scientifically as financially. People will pay a lot of money for something that makes ’em feel good, or look good, or last longer in the sack. There’s people up here in Cooke County that ain’t got a pot to piss in, as my daddy used to say. But some of ’em trade their food stamps for pot or meth. Lotta money to be made in supplying what they demand.”
I thought about the questions the FBI and DEA agents had asked about O’Conner. “Some people think you might be doing some supplying,” I said. “Hard not to wonder what goes up and down such a good gravel road that’s so carefully camouflaged.”
His eyes took on a brittle glint, and I wondered if I’d struck a nerve. “You’re right; trafficking in exotic substances is a tradition in these hills. Maybe even a birthright. My daddy tended a whiskey still for twenty years. When I was a kid, one of my chores was to split the oak he burned to cook the mash.” He shook his head. “Damned thing ended up killing him — getting him killed, anyhow, which amounts to the same thing.” He peered into his mug, swirling the liquid. “Over in ’Nam, I smoked a lot of dope; lots of guys did harder drugs. When we weren’t out on patrol — hell, sometimes even when we were — we’d be high as kites. Helped make it bearable, though I swear I don’t see how any of us made it out of there alive.” He drew a deep breath. “When I came home, I started growing marijuana. Selling it.”
He fell quiet, and I felt my opinion of him begin to sink. “Funny thing, though, Doc. Didn’t take real long to decide I didn’t like what I was doing, or who I was becoming.” My opinion stopped its freefall and hung, suspended. “Cooke County’s a tough place, Doc. Folks up here have a hard row to hoe even when they’ve got their shit together. Turn ’em into stoners and you pretty much guarantee they won’t never amount to nothing, if you’ll pardon the triple negative. Didn’t seem the neighborly thing to do.”