Chapter Twenty-two

Jesse did not head straight home after work. Instead, he made a detour toward the mountains. Serena would soon understand if he was late for supper. His route took him up into familiar ground. Too familiar, he guessed. He’d been looking at the forests all his life. Trees grew, but slowly. Unless you made an effort, you didn’t notice how much. Now, he took notice. Serena was right. The acreage that had its timber harvested in the nineties and even earlier, had grown back. Loblolly pine, he knew, grew fast. Some of the trees stood nearly ninety feet tall and were more than ready to be harvested again. Since the area had been clear-cut and back then, there’d been no real effort or intention to reseed or replant, he reckoned it a near miracle that the timber had made such an impressive comeback. Serena was onto something. Come the weekend, he’d make another foray up in the mountains and do something about “trading in futures,” only this crop was ready to harvest right now.

He spent an hour walking the slope of the Buffalo measuring the timber by eye and guessing the sellable board feet each might produce. He thought he heard an automobile down on the road near where he’d parked, but couldn’t be sure.

What he was sure he heard was the bolt action of an Lee-Enfield rifle.

He dropped to the ground. A sliver of bark from the tree next to him flew away at the same time he heard the report. Jesse had no time to think. Someone was shooting at him and it surely was the same person who’d shot Elroy. How many Lee-Enfield rifles could there be?

Then he remembered Manikin the pawnbroker. There could be several.

He waited four heartbeats and rose to his feet and stepped off in one smooth, simultaneous motion. He dodged between the trees and zigzagged his way down the hill toward his car.

Two, three, four. He counted the reports. Assuming the shooter had one in the breech and five in the clip, he needed to hear two more before he could run in a straight line while whoever was up there shooting at him reloaded. Five, six.

Jesse bolted straight downhill to his car and managed to get it started and rolling when the next shot punched a hole in the safety glass in the right rear window. Another put a hole in the roof. He pressed the accelerator to the floorboards as hard as he could. The old Piedmont sedan had not been designed for the race circuit, but on this rutted dirt road, it practically flew. Jesse had a momentary thought of finishing what the shooter could not by rolling the car off the road and down the hillside.

He didn’t take the time to check out the car parked a quarter mile down the road. If it had a license plate he might have been able to trace its owner. On the other hand, if he stopped, he might be dead.

The next time he went up to look at trees, he would be carrying.

When he reported the shooting, Privette had been impressed at the damage to the car. He shook his head when he saw the bullet holes. “Whoo-ee, that was a close one. You say he was shooting a Lee-Enfield? How’d you know that?”

“I spent some quality time in the French mud listening to them being fired. Ask anybody who was there. It ain’t something you forget.”

“But you have no idea who might have been taking potshots at you?”

“Nope. I reckon it is somebody who is worried about me asking around about my pa’s murder. I went to see that pawnbroker you found. Maybe he tipped off the shooter. He said there was a man—”

“Jesse, you sound like you been at the moonshine a mite too hard. Ain’t it more likely that wandering around on the slope of the Buffalo like that, you came too close to somebody’s still? You know how this is these days. Federal men busting up stills, folks shooting. It’s dangerous up there. I think you just crossed paths with a moonshiner with an itchy trigger finger.”

“Sheriff, that don’t make any sense at all. First, everybody on the mountain knows me and knows I ain’t about to rat them out to the government. Second, nobody sets up a still on a slope and in the open like that. You need to be near a source of water and cover. An open forest like that for a still? No way.”

“If you say so, Jesse. You’d know all about that, I guess. All I’m saying is what’s the likelihood that after all this time anybody is interested in a ten-year-old murder where there ain’t no clues?”

“I got me a busted window and a bullet hole in my car’s roof that says sure’n hell there must be.”

There would be no convincing the sheriff. He’d closed his mind on finding a killer. Maybe he’d help recover the watch, which by now could have changed hands a dozen times, but solve the murder? Not going to happen.

Jesse parked the car around the back of the house. There was no sense in getting Serena all riled up. Somehow, Jesse needed to get the car’s window repaired before Sunday. The bullet hole in the roof he thought he could cover up with a dab of putty and paint. Who had the parts to repair a window of a nineteen-twenty Piedmont sedan? Did they even still make them? He’d have to check at Mort’s garage and fuel stop.

Jesse climbed the steps to the kitchen door and pushed his way in.

“Jesse,” Serena said, “what happened?”

“I’m not that late, am I?”

“No. What have you been up to?”

“Up to? What do you mean?”

“Jess, I have known you all my life. We have been married for eight years. There isn’t anything about you I can’t see. You have been in a scrape. I’m right, aren’t I? What happened? You look awful.”

“Well, thank you kindly for that compliment. You’re looking fine your own self.”

“Stop it, Jess. This isn’t funny. What happened?”

Jesse considered his choices and decided that under the circumstances, a lie would serve him better than the truth. Besides, maybe the sheriff had it right after all.

“I was up on the Buffalo checking out the timber, like you said. I guess I must have stirred up someone sitting on a still, ’cause the next thing I know, someone is taking potshots at me. I hightailed out of there quick as I could, but one of the bullets must have strayed a mite and put a hole in the car’s window.”

Serena studied Jesse’s face the whole time he spun his story. She sighed. “Okay, you aren’t going to tell me what happened right now, I can see that. I just wish you’d remember we are married and we face things together. If someone wants you dead, Jesse, I need to know who and why. Go wash up for supper.”

There were some clear drawbacks to being married to a smart woman, he knew. So, how much should he tell her?