MONDAY
1
After a long, hot Sunday spent cleaning out the barn and taking care of the cattle, Monday morning couldn’t come soon enough. I arrived early for class and found Cedar hanging out in the student lounge with Luigi and Gretchen.
“Hey, Sheriff Hoyt was talking about you in the paper.” Cedar said when I came in. “Keep reading, Gretchen.”
“This tragedy could’ve been avoided,” Gretchen read aloud, “if the folks sworn to protect the citizens of this county had done their jobs instead of tampering with my investigation.”
“Tampering?” I said, my voice rising.
“Let her finish.” Cedar pulled me onto the chair arm. “It gets better.”
Gretchen cleared her throat. “Hem, hem. When ask if I was considering tampering charges, the sheriff said, I’m considering all kinds of charges. Uh-oh, Boone’s going to get busted.”
“Not in this lifetime.” Cedar picked up her notebook and blew the eraser dust in Gretchen’s general direction.
“Ew.” A fine cloud of dust settled on Gretchen’s flip-flops. She waggled her toes to clear them. “I was about to read the sports column about your outrageous ownage at tennis, but I can tell my reading skills are not appreciated.”
“Whatever,” Cedar said.
“I appreciate your skills,” Luigi said, his head resting on the desk. “Please, keep reading. It helps my listening comprehension.”
“Really?” Gretchen let out a tiny squeal. “Okay.”
Luigi’s comprehension was terrific. All he cared about was hearing Gretchen giggle. But their love was doomed, since Luigi was returning to Osaka soon.
“Galloway possesses a bullet-like serve that she can place within four inches of a target. She demonstrated the feat for this reporter, destroying six different targets in a row. Wow. Huh?”
“Impressive,” Luigi said.
While Gretchen read, my thoughts turned to the morning’s news. So much happened since Friday that I was still sorting it out. Learning the victim’s identity was a mix of emotions. It was satisfying to know that she had been identified and that a face and name had been put with the body. She was now a person, and that gave me peace. But the fact that she may have died because Eugene Loach had too much hate in his heart to rescue her made my stomach turn.
I hated dealing with human emotions. Human bones were another story. The information they held told you so much about a person’s body: How old they were, what injuries and diseases they had, what kind of dental problems they faced. But as my little voice reminded me, bodies couldn’t tell you names, and they couldn’t tell you personalities.
Through the fog of my brain machinations, someone was calling my name.
“Childress!”
“Huh? Sir?”
Dr. Echols, my history professor, stood in the hallway, looking at his watch. “Class starts in one minute. Care to make the journey into the past?”
I blinked back to reality. My hand resting on Cedar’s bare knee. “Yes sir. On my way.”
Echols disappeared down the hallway. I gave Cedar a quick kiss goodbye before jogging to the classroom.
“All right, young people.” Echols dimmed the lights and pulled down a screen. “Let’s start off with a discussion of Roosevelt’s New Deal and its impact on the great State of North Carolina, shall we?”
Like the class he taught, Dr. Echols was something of a time warp. He wore black pants, a short-sleeved dress shirt, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.
“Specifically,” Echols continued, “the Department of Interior’s homestead programs, the first of which was in this county. Over a period of years, a total of four homesteads were established. Notes, people. Write this down.” He turned on the projector and clicked a PowerPoint slide. “Let’s start with the farming utopia of Atamasco, which was followed almost immediately by a similar homestead in Tin City.”
My ears perked up. “Dr. Echols, did you say Tin City?”
Echols clicked to the next slide. “Yes, I believe I did. There it is right there on the slide. It’s spelled T—“
“Got it,” I said.
“Excellent. Moving on. Atamasco Farm was followed by three other homestead farms. The aforementioned Tin City, followed by Black Oak Hill and Nagswood. Of the four, only Atamasco was a long-term success. It is the only remaining population center, while the others have officially ceased to exist. The question for today is: What qualities did Atamasco have that the other three homesteads lacked? Here’s the first one.”
I raised my hand. “Dr. Echols, sorry to interrupt. Could you talk more about the other homesteads?”
Echols strummed his fingers on the lectern. “I’m not that familiar with the ghost towns of Allegheny County. If this sort of history really interests you, you should talk to Mrs. Yarbrough.”
“The college librarian?”
“Also the director of the regional history museum. Pay attention to the resources around you, Boone. Now, can I get back to my lecture?”
“Yes sir.”
“Thank you.”
Echols clicked for the next slide, but his voice was already fading in my ears.
Failed homesteads in Tin City and Nagswood.
It had to be a coincidence.
Or was it?
2
Conversing with a southern woman was a dangerous thing. Anyone who had seen that biopic about Truman Capote would know this. Capote grew up chatting with blue haired matrons, listening to their conversations, picking up on their gossip, worming his way into their hearts and their inner circles.
In the South, if somebody told a young male that she wanted to chat, his blood would run cold. Because to chat in the South, especially when blue haired matrons were involved, meant a polite, torture session that exposed the very fabric of your soul.
My torture session took place in the library. It started from the moment I was greeted by Mrs. Yarbrough.
“So, here we are,” she said, seating me across the desk in her cubicle office. “A little bird tells me you’re interested in the history of our fair county.”
“I’m most interested in the homesteads farms. The ones that failed?”
“Yes!” she said. “Of course. Nagswood and my personal favorite, Tin City, with which I have several personal connections. My grandparents were one of the original families to settle there. What a progressive idea it was, a social utopia.”
And then, she was off. Over the course of an hour, she told me about her grandparents, her great grandparents, and their parents, who were the first in her family to settle in the area. But she never came around to my original question, despite my best efforts to keep her on topic.
“Look at the time,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Where does it go?”
“But,” I said. “I still have questions about those farm projects.”
“Can’t drink deeply enough from the water cooler of history? Boone Childress, you surprise me. Well, I suggest you visit me at the Allegheny County Regional History Museum one day soon. We’re open every day, Monday through Thursday, four to sevenish. Except on Wednesdays, of course, when we close at six sharp for church.”
She had the look of a bulldozer that had quit work for the day—there would be no budging her.
“Yes, ma’am.” I took the business card for the museum. my head was so full of questions, it was about to burst. "I'll come by the museum soon."