Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [41]
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FOR A WHILE ON THOSE late-summer drives, Stubblefield began believing he had fallen into an adventure. Near the top of Jorre Gap stood a lone log cabin, a tourist shop selling folkloric products, according to a hand-lettered sign by the road. Local honey, handmade pottery, rabbit-tobacco door wreaths, quilts, arrowheads. But the shop was closed. It had either failed or had taken a recuperative pause after Labor Day and was waiting to reopen early in October, when the leaf lookers drove up from the flatlands. Passing the tourist shop, he noticed a face behind the window, indistinct in the shallow light. Stubblefield’s initial reaction was to declare it a girl’s face, and possibly a pretty one. As he switchbacked from gap to valley, he wondered why his first thought was to distinguish man from woman, pretty from not pretty? Probably because he was so damn lonely and because the schematic of our fool brains inclines us that way. Always looking for any opportunity to cast our sad little package of hope into a future we won’t inhabit.
Stubblefield soon abandoned all other beautiful routes in order to drive over the gap every day. He found that unless the light was too faint or too bright, the girl was always there. Then he began to wave as he passed, and thought he saw a response. He started detecting a kind of agitated air about the woman. Not that she thrashed about or anything, but she seemed frazzled and distraught.
Stubblefield found himself constructing a story. A beautiful but emotionally disturbed young woman locked away in the cabin by day while her family went about the necessary business of life, jobs, and all that kind of crap Stubblefield had so far mostly avoided. But not a very serious disturbance, just a romantic manic-depression that might be lightened by Stubblefield’s presence. He imagined her neglect and dishevelment represented, movie-like, by a stray strand of hair, a two-fingered smudge on one otherwise perfect pale cheek. She probably sat all day in a rocker glooming out onto the infrequently traveled mountain road. His passing and waving would be a thing anticipated and remarked upon. He imagined her only company a radio tuned all day to the local station, the only one available until the sun set and the world blossomed outward. Midmorning, the Mortuary of the Airwaves, with the names of the deceased and their survivors announced over plodding organ music that made death sound like something with big slow feet. Midafternoon, Tell It and Sell It, with the hesitant voices of callers seeking buyers for used mattresses and dinettes and forlorn puppies. In between, nothing but country songs with tales of burning love and faded love and the longevity of yearning long past any possibility of fulfillment.
Stubblefield could save the troubled girl from all this. He would take her to his cottage, which is what he had started calling the garage apartment. She could bathe away her smudge in his tub while he sat in the living room drinking coffee and listening to Kind of Blue, which would be exotic to her. She would come to him, flushed from the hot water. He would be all cool and cook a simple dinner, which they would eat at the table out back under the walnut tree at dusk.
So, the upshot was, somebody ought to do something for her. But still, Stubblefield didn’t want to meddle too deep in local matters. Back here, that was a good way to become a shotgun victim.
Yet, finally, one afternoon, Stubblefield worked himself up to visit the sheriff’s office. He said at the front desk that he had a concern about someone’s safety, and he was told to go see Lit, in the second office down the hall. The deputy sat behind a metal desk, and when he stood to shake hands, Stubblefield towered over him by a foot and found himself stooping a little to reach Lit’s hand. Lit wore his dark hair combed straight back, shiny with Brylcreem, comb tracks straight as soybean rows. No jewelry, not even a wristwatch. His faded chino uniform was starched and pressed sharp, with a silvery shine along the seams