HELLO, SUMMER
By Rowena Meigs
Cupid’s quiver must be mighty empty this week, as your correspondent received notices of no fewer than three recent engagements! Regrettably, we will not be announcing these upcoming nuptials, due to the fact that the brides-to-be have been living with their intendeds without benefit of clergy for several months now. Your correspondent realizes that this is an increasing fact of modern life, but we do not intend to publicize or sanctify such arrangements.
We are, however, delighted to announce that one of Silver Bay’s most talented young students, LizaJane Hooper, recently won second place in the United Daughters of the Confederacy speech contest. This year’s topic was “Democracy: What It Means to Me.” LizaJane is a rising junior at Griffin County High School and the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Stephens Hooper. LizaJane’s maternal grandmother, Arthureen Gresham, is vice president of the North Florida chapter of the UDC. LizaJane’s prize was a dozen roses from Francine’s Florals and a gold-tone UDC medal.
What a delightful time was had by all at the elegant soirée hosted by the children of Harkness and Jinxy Westphail in honor of the blessed couple’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. Golden and silver centerpieces of mixed mums and daisies decorated each table, and guests feasted on fried shrimp, fried catfish, hushpuppies, coleslaw, and a specially prepared wedding cake with a cake topper bearing an uncanny likeness of the honorees, crafted from Rice Krispies and colored frosting by talented granddaughter Sonia Castleberry, who also decorates cakes at the Silver Bay Bakery.
A late note: Silver Bay was deeply saddened by the tragic death this week of longtime congressman Symmes Robinette. Your correspondent will have all the news of the funeral in next week’s column. In the meantime, deepest condolences to the family.
Conley glanced down at Rowena’s copy. “I can’t,” she said, tossing the papers onto her desktop. “I haven’t had enough coffee yet to tackle this.”
“Take it from me. There isn’t enough coffee in Colombia to make sense of Rowena Meigs,” Lillian said. “But your sister was real specific that this needs to get done today.”
“I’ll rewrite it when I get back,” Conley said, heading for the door.
“Back from where?”
“Scene of the crime,” Conley replied.
She’d intended to make another visit to Bronson County sheriff Merle Goggins, but she slowed down as she approached the accident site on the county road where Symmes Robinette had died. Traffic was heavier this time of day, and with a pickup truck close on her rear bumper, she pulled onto the shoulder of the road about a hundred yards from the spot, spying, for the first time, a break in the barbed wire pasture fencing and a narrow dirt road that led through the field.
Conley parked the Subaru just inside the entrance to the dirt road, got out, and walked over to the crash site. The scorched pavement, still littered with bits of red taillights and shattered glass, made her stomach clench just as it had the previous week.
It apparently hadn’t rained lately in this part of the county. She saw several sets of heavy tire-tread marks crisscrossing in the hard-packed dirt and weeds along the shoulder. Probably from all the rescue vehicles that had responded to the 911 call, she thought. When she saw a break in the traffic, she darted across the two-lane road. The grassy weeds here were more matted down, with heavier tire imprints. The shoulder was strewn with cigarette butts and empty plastic water bottles, more evidence of the rescue crews who’d battled the car fire.
She crossed back to where she’d parked the Subaru and leaned against the rear bumper, swatting at mosquitoes and watching cars and trucks whiz by as she wondered exactly why she was drawn, yet again, to this macabre scene.
Her musings were interrupted by the putt-putting of a motor. As she turned, she saw a dust-covered, olive-green four-wheel Ranger vehicle like the ones used by local hunters approaching. But this one was driven by a woman, with a large dog riding shotgun in the seat beside her.
“Can I help you?” the woman called as she drew nearer. Conley saw that the driver was older, in her seventies maybe, with steel-gray hair topped with a white sun visor.
“Oh, uh, no. I’m okay,” Conley said when the ATV stopped a few feet away.
“You’re parked on my property,” the woman said pointedly. “Having some kind of car troubles, are you?”
Up close like this, Conley saw that the dog looked to be some kind of hound mix. He had large, floppy ears, a grayed muzzle, and big, droopy brown eyes filmed with cataracts.
“Oh no. My car is fine.” Conley found herself unaccountably flustered. “I’m, uh, a reporter, and I’m just trying to figure out what happened here last week.”
“The night that poor man burned to death?” Her blue-gray eyes traveled to the scorch marks on the pavement. “That was an awful thing.”
“It was,” Conley agreed. “If this is your property, do you live around here?”
The woman waved in the general direction of the fields behind her. “Right back there. How about you? What kind of news outfit do you work for?”
“I’m a reporter for The Silver Bay Beacon. My name is Conley Hawkins.”
The woman tilted her head and studied her. “Kin to Chet Hawkins, are you?”
Conley slid easily into the Southern speech patterns she’d lost during her years in the city. “Yes, ma’am. He was my daddy.”
“Well, your daddy was a nice man. When my husband was alive, we did business with your daddy’s bank. He was always square with us.”
Conley knew this about her father, but it was nice to hear from a stranger. Her father valued being square. He’d always talked about and tried to exhibit qualities like integrity and honesty and loyalty. These weren’t just words for a DAR speech contest for Chet Hawkins. She liked to think maybe those qualities were ones she’d inherited, along with her great-grandmother’s aquamarine ring and a box of tarnished sterling silver flatware that she’d left behind in a rented storage unit in Atlanta.
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said now. “About last week. Did you see or hear anything that night?” She slapped at a mosquito that had landed on her forearm.
“It’s blazing hot out here,” the woman said. “Why don’t you come on up to the house, and we’ll talk. Might as well leave your car here.”
The woman patted the dog on the rump. “Scoot over, Sport. We got company.”
The dog opened one eye, gave a baleful sigh, and slid onto the floor of the Ranger.
The field spread out before them with crops that had already grown two feet high in the hot Florida sun.
“Is all this land yours?” Conley asked.
“Yes, but we lease this part to a hunting club. Farther back on the property, we grow peanuts and soybeans. Well, I don’t grow any of it anymore; my sons and I lease it out. Stopped farming after Alton died.” She turned and offered Conley a weather-beaten hand. “I’m Margie Barrett, by the way.”
They drove past a decaying wooden farmhouse with a collapsed front porch and saplings growing through the rusted-out tin roof. Bales of hay were visible in the open doorway.
“That’s the old homeplace,” Margie commented. “Alton and I lived there when we were newlyweds, but after that, I told him I wasn’t bringing my babies home to a house where you could see clean through the floorboards.”
The house would have made a beautifully evocative black-and-white photo, Conley thought as they passed, but she had to agree with Margie’s housing preferences.
The Ranger rumbled along the dirt road, and then they were approaching a tidy concrete-block house. It was painted pale turquoise and had an abbreviated front porch with a pair of rocking chairs and hanging baskets of ferns. A tabby cat scampered away into the yard at the sound of the approaching vehicle. The house stood in a patch of carefully tended green lawn, with beds of red, white and blue annuals.
Margie parked the Ranger and tenderly lifted the old dog and set him on the grass. “Sport’s almost fourteen years old. He doesn’t move around so good anymore. Like me. Come on inside, and I’ll get us a couple of Cokes.”
Conley settled on a sofa in a wood-paneled living room whose walls were dotted with family photos. The furniture was maple, reproduction early American. There was a worn brown vinyl recliner facing a flat-screen television. Sport parked himself on the green shag carpet near her feet.
“Here we go,” Margie said, handing her a glass. She set a small bowl of water in front of the dog, but he was already dozing.
“About last Thursday morning,” Conley said, easing her notebook out of the pocket of her jeans. “I was asking you if you saw or heard anything?”
Margie reached down and absentmindedly scratched the old dog’s ears. “Sport here is about blind, but his hearing is still pretty sharp. He got me up way after midnight. I’m not sure of the time, but I know I’d fallen asleep in the recliner, watching TV. I took him outside to pee, but after a while, he was pacing and kinda growling and yipping to be let off the leash. I usually keep him leashed outside at night ’cause I’m scared he might hear something and take off running. Blind as he is, and old as I am, I might never find him again.” She chuckled and patted the dog’s head. “We can’t have you getting lost, can we, Sport?”
“Did he hear something?” Conley asked.
Margie nodded. “At first, I thought it was probably just a possum or a raccoon, but then I heard it myself. Voices. Coming from up the road by the highway.”
She pointed to a large picture window that looked out on the field. Conley could just barely see the gleaming metal roof of her car in the distance.
“Folks, especially townsfolk, don’t realize how far voices carry out here in the country. But once I got Sport quieted down, I heard two men’s voices. They were arguing, and it was pretty loud.”
Intrigued, Conley leaned closer, her pen poised over her notebook. “Could you make out what they were saying?”
“Not really, but I could tell from the tone that they were spittin’ mad. After a while, I heard a woman’s voice too. Now I could hear her a little better, because she was screeching. Something like ‘Stop! Just stop it!’ Then the voices got a little lower. Not too long after that, I heard car doors slamming.”
“How many?”
“Two? Three? I’m not really sure. At least two, anyway. Then I heard a car tear off outta there. Peeling rubber, my boys used to call it when they were teenagers.”
“Huh.” Conley thought about it for a moment, wondering if the fight had anything to do with Symmes Robinette’s wreck.
“Could have been just some old drunks pulling off the road to settle a score,” Margie observed. “There’s a juke joint bar up the road, and we get our share of drunk drivers coming from there late at night. Couple of years ago, I heard a commotion and found a fella had driven clear off the road, through my fence, and into the pasture.”
“I know the place. The American Legion bar,” Conley said. “My friend and I were there that night, headed home when we came up on the wreck.”
“I’ll be,” Margie said.
“You didn’t hear the wreck yourself?” Conley asked.
“Guess not. I got Sport back inside and went on to bed. My room’s at the back of the house, and I’ve got a window air conditioner that kind of drowns out everything else. I fell back asleep, and at some point—maybe an hour later?—Sport heard all the sirens from the fire trucks and ambulances, and he woke me up yowling at ’em.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything at all?” Conley repeated.
“Not until the fire trucks got there,” Margie said. “After that, I got dressed and took the Ranger up to the road to see what had happened.” She shuddered. “I wish I hadn’t seen what I did. That poor man. Did the police ever say what happened?”
“Not so far,” Conley said. “Have you told the sheriff’s office about hearing those voices, and the fight, earlier in the evening?”
Margie shrugged. “Hadn’t even thought about it ’til just now. They sent somebody the next day—a deputy—to ask if I’d seen anything that night, and I said I hadn’t.”
“What did the deputy look like?”
“Big ol’ fella. A white boy,” Margie said.
Conley was fairly sure she’d met that deputy the night of the crash and afterward too.
She scribbled her name and phone number on a page of her notebook, ripped it out, and handed it to her hostess. “I was on my way to the sheriff’s office when I stopped here earlier. Guess I’d better get going. If you think of anything else from that night, anything at all, could you give me a call?”
“Be glad to,” Margie said. “I’ll take you on back to your car now.”
As the Ranger bumped along the dirt track road, Conley spotted a pair of huge black birds hovering over something up ahead among the green stalks of sunflowers. Sport, again sprawled on the floor of the vehicle, raised his grizzled snout, sniffed, then went back to sleep.
“Ugh,” Margie said, pointing at the birds. “There’s a big ol’ dead deer over there. I’ll be glad when those buzzards pick that poor thing clean.”
Conley stared at the birds in mute horror. As the Ranger approached, she saw a lumpy brown form sprawled on its side. Two buzzards hopped on the ground, tearing at the corpse, while two more circled closer and closer in the air above.
She turned her head and averted her eyes. True, she’d been raised in a small Southern town, had seen her share of roadkill—although not since she’d moved to Atlanta—but the sight still filled her with revulsion.
Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her jeans. She took it out and glanced at the caller ID. The area code was local, but she didn’t recognize the number, so she disconnected and put the phone away.
“Here we go,” Margie said, pulling alongside the Subaru.
“Thanks for the ride and the cold drink,” Conley said, stepping down. She leaned over and scratched the old dog’s ears. “Bye, Sport.”