30

Mill Springs was a town that had withered and died in the shadow of nearby Lufkin, which had grown and flourished by comparison and absorbed most of Mill Springs’ industry and residents along with it. That was the gist of the dissertation—far more lengthy than necessary—given us by the old man who ran the gas station on the main, and perhaps only, real street through the town. He didn’t recognize either of the two names I connected with the town—Hope or Arnesty—having lived there only for the past five years. He and Keith discussed the various problems of Edwin’s automobile, now shuddering in place as though it were exhausted and short of breath. All four tires were flat and had to be pumped up.

I walked past the dirt-encrusted gas-pump dome, down the street to a cafe, never pausing to consider how I must have looked without hat or handbag, Keith’s suit coat wrapped around my shoulders to keep me from freezing.

The waitress in the cafe, pouring coffee for an old man seated at the counter, did not miss an inch of my appearance, head to toe, however. The smell of bacon and eggs turned my stomach over with hunger, but there was no need in admitting this when I had no money to buy breakfast or even a cup of coffee.

I asked if she’d ever heard either of the names. She thought for a moment as she popped her chewing gum and forked the bacon over. Then she said, “I’d nearly forgot. Arnesty was the name of that feller who owned part of the mills for a time. That the one you’re talking about?”

“Yes,” I answered eagerly. “Did he live in a house with a little hill behind it?”

She laughed. “Honey, there’s lots of little hills around here. But if I remember right, he and his wife disappeared about thirteen years ago. Just took off. I don’t know what they’d been doing, but there was an investigation by the marshal from Nacogdoches.

“He never found nothin’ though, and finally they dropped the case. Course I was just a youngster then, and I don’t remember much about it except what my folks said.”

“Do you know if the house is still there?”

“No, but it probably is. Ain’t no reason why it shouldn’t be.”

Then the man at the end of the counter, thus far occupied with his bacon and eggs and coffee, rose from the stool, flipped a coin onto the counter, and wiped his mouth. “That’s the place up there on the ten-mile road.” He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. Then he added, “Gotta big old dead tree in front, with ivy growing all through it.”

“Yes, yes,” I told him excitedly. Nathan had mentioned that tree. “Does anyone live there now?”

“I don’t think so. Nobody’s lived there all these years. Kinda gave people the creeps, after what happened.”

“Could you direct me to the ten-mile road?” I asked.

He walked to the window and pointed with his finger. “Go on up here to the end of this road about half a mile. There’s a fork. Follow the left tong. Go about three, four miles down that road and it begins to curve off to the left. When you get to the cemetery, turn to your right and go about another mile and a half. You’ll see the ten-mile road there. There ain’t no sign or anything, but there’s a rock pile, or was last time I was up that way. Used to be a chicken ranch on further up where I bought my eggs. Turn to your right on the ten-mile road and go on till you come to the house. It’s the only one around.”

I wondered how he was able to sit quietly while the waitress unloaded her thimbleful of information, when he could have led me right to it. “Wait a minute. That’s too much to remember. May I borrow a pencil and some paper?”

While the waitress was fiddling about for a piece of paper, I found out the reason for the old man’s reticence. “You related to Sam Arnesty?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well he was a mean rascal. I worked under him as foreman up in the planing mill till he disappeared. If you want my opinion, the marshal dropped the case because everybody in town despised him.”

He lifted his arm again toward the bright morning sky. “This used to be a darned good town. As long as the mill was operating, everybody done just fine. Wasn’t a night passed you didn’t see that smoky blue haze rising above the main plant. Only twice in my life the mill closed down for a while because of bad drought, and the haze disappeared. Those were bad times. Yessir.

“But when Sam Arnesty came along he started to bleed the mill of money—that didn’t come out till later, of course—some Oregon outfit come down here and bought it out and moved the equipment away. The buildings were left there to rot, till finally they caught fire and burned down. Probably some old hobo spent the night there and built a fire, they was always doin’ that, and burned the place to the ground.

“It all started with Sam, though. When he disappeared, no one wanted too much investigating done, and they let the marshal know it.”

“I see … well I wasn’t related to him,” I reassured him. The waitress was handing me a tablet. By the time I had the directions down, Keith was pulling up out front. “Oh, we’ll have to have a shovel,” I told him.

“Yes, but if we buy one we’ll have the whole town watching us, and besides that, we’re nearly broke.”

“Maybe there’s one around the place that we could use, or maybe we could steal one along the way.”

“Steal?”

“All right, borrow.”

Keith rolled his eyes. About halfway there we came across a farmhouse and barn that looked unoccupied. “Stay here, I’ll check the barn,” I said. “Honk the horn if you see anyone.”

I was out of the car and halfway across the front yard before he could react. When I came back, shovel in hand, he was laughing in amazement. “Did you learn to work that quickly before or after you joined the BNA?”

“I haven’t joined the BNA. I was impressed into service. Oh Lord, I just thought of Mother. I wonder if she’s tried to reach me since the telegram was released to the papers. And your parents. They must be sick with worry.”

“I called them from the gas station and reversed the charges. They thought we’d eloped.”

“Oh, that’s funny,” I said, and we both dissolved into laughter.

Then Keith said, “I told them we had.”

My mouth fell open.

“Well, what else could I tell them? You swore me to secrecy.”

We drove up in front of the dead tree around eleven-thirty. Just as Nathan had told me long ago, the tenacious ivy crept up its trunk and pushed out along its branches. Seeing it gave me a spooky feeling … something living taking sustenance off something dead. I felt the hair rise on my neck. In fact the whole place was a little eerie, though surely it would not have been except for the things I knew about it. The house itself was merely a shell of a structure that was probably fairly decent at one time. The wood had rotted and turned silvery brown from a long period of neglect. The features of the house that gave it lingering respectability were the finials on the pitched roof and the gingerbread trim around the front porch, now broken in places. I thought of Nathan’s mother, in there sewing dresses for the ladies of the town.…

We left the car and walked up. From our first step on the porch stairs, the boards creaked beneath our feet. The front door squealed on its hinges. Inside there was no furniture left—who had taken it, I wondered?—the place had long since become a roosting place for wild birds and, from the smell of it, a place of shelter now and then for barnyard animals who’d wandered by. There was one large gaping hole in the roof where the sun shone down in the center of the kitchen like a heavenly ray of light. Keith suggested lightning might once have struck the roof. I thought of the two people, seated at the table one pleasant evening when, from the distance, came a shot.…

I turned around and looked at the wall across from the window. It was hard to tell whether there was stain from blood there, or simply shadows caused by the glancing sun.

Only after we had walked through and wound up in back, facing the small hill, did I realize what a tremendous job we had in front of us. It was one thing to dig up a grave underneath a house, and quite another to locate it after thirteen years. The house seemed all at once three or four times bigger. Keith looked underneath. “The ground’s pretty uneven. I don’t see how Nathan got a grave dug without breaking his back, but I’ll tell you one thing. We won’t have to worry about going down too deep.

“Now, let’s see. He would have had to go under the house at a place where Cabot could keep his eye on him and if we can assume Cabot stayed on the hill, then Nathan would have to have gone under from this side, so the graves are probably in this vicinity.…”

I started to ask if he didn’t think he ought to go on and become an engineer and forget flying, the way he busied himself calculating. He felt around the ground a bit and finally stood up, rubbed his hands together, and announced, “They must not have had any rain around here in sixty years. The earth is packed down like cement.”

“We’ll take turns,” I said. “I can go first. I got you into this mess.”

He was rolling up his sleeves. “I’ll give it a try. If I wear out, you can dig for a while.”

I did some snooping and found a rusty spade in the barn, then followed him under the house. There was around four feet of headroom. “Consarne it, we don’t have any light. See if your friend left a lantern or anything in the car.”

We were in luck. As I carried the lantern back I thought to myself, Edwin may not have taken care of the car, but he apparently did remain prepared for quick trips, just as he indicated over the phone.

Back on my knees again, I realized for the first time I was sore from all the running since the morning before.… It seemed such a long time ago that I’d headed down King William, certain I was going to discover the dead body of Nathan Hope. We dug around to no avail until about two o’clock, then came up for air. We were both so tired we could hardly stand up. “Look, why don’t we give up and rest a little,” said Keith. “My back’s so tired I can hardly bend over anymore, and I know you must be exhausted. We don’t need to hurry. No one’s going to be looking for us, I don’t imagine.” I thought of the young Nathan, exhausted from digging, frightened and perplexed by the figure on the horse, watching.…

We walked to the car and sat inside with the top pulled over. The wind was picking up and it was getting colder all the time. Keith sat back. “Here, you can lean against me,” he said, and held out his arm. I never thought we’d fall asleep, let alone sleep for such a long time, but when we awoke the sky was purplish pink with puffs of gray splashed against it.

Arms and legs aching and weary to the bone, nonetheless we both got back to work under the house, by the light of Edwin’s lantern. Finally I struck something hard, like metal, and called excitedly to Keith. I’d hit one of the hinges of a suitcase. We dug it out and busted the rusty latches. It was full of limp, musty clothes. “Well, this is great, but it won’t get the job done,” I told Keith. So back we went.

It must have been close to nine o’clock when finally Keith reached something else.

I rushed over behind him to watch. His face, lit by the lantern, grew more and more intense as he threw away the shovel and started moving clay-like soil with his hands. Then slowly and carefully—I would have never considered the danger of damaging or even destroying our find, as he did—he moved the dirt around with his fingers until at last he disclosed a skull, and leaned back momentarily, staring at it. Finally, with an effort at joviality, he said, “Ken would have a ball with that set of teeth.”

I was beside him then, ferreting out the one that must lie next to it, but I was on the left side and he discovered it, minutes later, on the right. “This is it, Camille,” he said excitedly. I peered over his shoulder as he smoothed away the dirt, and saw perspiration roll down the side of his face and drop off. The whole back of his brand-new white dress shirt was sopping wet and dirty. I reached out to touch him, but drew back my hand. Then I took a hanky from my pocket and wiped his face.

“Hold up the lantern,” he said, and as I did he slowly and carefully dug away the rest of the soil until the full skeletons were disclosed. By then my heart was thumping madly. Keith sat back for a moment to catch his breath, and I said, “If not for you, this moment might never have come.… I could be down at the bottom of the San Antonio River right now.…”

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and we crawled out and stood up. His whole suit was rumpled, and there was a big tear in one of the trouser legs. For the first time in my life I could think of no adequate way of expressing what I felt. I flung my arms around his neck.

He kissed me then, not a peck on the cheek like one buddy gives another, but long and hard, like a man kisses a woman he cares about.

“I guess we missed your birthday party,” I said breathlessly.