Chapter 6

Patty Arrington chewed on another donut and could practically feel the tightening in the seams of her stylish new sky-blue pantsuit. She didn’t care. She was depressed, so she had decided she didn’t care about the derriere that kept spreading no matter how many butt machines she bought, or the thighs that kept rubbing together no matter how many steps she climbed on that damn stair-stepper. She took another bite of the donut, wiping the powdered sugar off her lip and stared gloomily out the window of her office at the misty grayness that seemed to reach inside to her.

The weather sucked. Business sucked. For that matter, she thought, her whole life right now sucked.

She was eyeing another donut when she heard the gravel crunching outside. Craning her neck, she could see a plain tan car pull up. A thin, tall man in a hat and overcoat got out. He popped open a large black umbrella against the mist.

Jumping up, she quickly brushed the crumbs from her pantsuit and skipped through an open door to her office. She was just settling down behind her desk, grabbing up the phone, when the door opened. On cue, she began talking into the phone: “Uh huh. Uh huh. Not a problem. We can close anytime you like.” Putting one hand over the mouthpiece, she leaned forward and shouted through the open door, “Be with you in a minute!”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said back into the phone. “O.K. I really have to go now. Bye.”

She hurried out of her cramped office to find the tall man examining his now rolled up umbrella. He seemed disappointed that the mist had not so much as dampened the instrument. “Hello. May I help you?” Patty switched on her smile.

The man turned to her and swept off his hat. He had thinning brown hair that he combed over the top in a desperate attempt to convince the public that he wasn’t almost bald. “Er, yes,” he said hesitantly. “I’m looking for some property.”

Patty turned up the wattage on her smile. She was starting to feel better.

“I’m from out of town,” he offered, as though this bit of news explained everything.

“Of course,” Patty replied, raising her thin eyebrows slightly to indicate surprise, although she had already pegged him not only as someone from off the mountain but from somewhere distant to the state. “Would you like some coffee? A donut, perhaps?” She waggled the box at him.

“No, no. Thank you.”

“Sorry for the way the office looks,” she said. “My secretary’s out right now.” She fluttered her hand vaguely, as though the secretary had dashed off on some important errand when in reality she had quit to go work at the Wal-Mart over in Proctorville three months ago.

“That’s O.K.” The man gripped his hat in his hands tightly.

“Won’t you sit down Mr. ...?”

“Peabody. Sylvester Peabody. Thank you.” He settled carefully into the orange chair facing the secretary’s desk.

Patty sat down behind the desk. New York, she decided. Her gloom was lifting. “You said you’re interested in some property? Not a house?”

“No, just property.”

“Um, well.” She drew out a sheet of paper from the desk and scrounged up a pen with PATTY ARRINGTON REALTY written on it in blue letters. She scratched a note on the paper. “How much property? Less than an acre? More?”

“Well, that depends. But probably several acres.”

“Several, hmmm?” Patty was careful to keep her expression neutral, as she jotted something else down on the paper. She was starting to feel much better. Much, much better.

“Up high.”

“Up high?”

“Yes. Very high. You know, like on a mountain.”

Patty frowned, as though finding a mountain would be difficult in the Appalachian chain. “A mountain? The whole mountain, or just part of one?”

“Well, to start with, the top. Of the mountain. And part of the, er, sides.”

“The sides, too.” She wrote that down.

“If that’s not a problem,” Peabody added helpfully, leaning forward.

“Oh, no,” Patty replied quickly, looking up from her notes. She flashed him another smile. “No problem. But it would help,” and she leaned forward conspiratorially, “if I had some notion of what, um, you needed the property for.”

Peabody looked across the desk at her. “Um, well, actually, I’m looking for a site to, well, um, build a, that is to say develop a, um, facility.”

“A facility?” Patty’s eyebrows arched again. “I see.” She looked troubled for a minute, then asked, “This wouldn’t be a development for some religious cult, would it? Not that I mind,” she added quickly, not wanting to scare off any sale, “but we’ve already got the Holy Order of Devout Entomology over to Locust Gap and the People United Against Underwear over toward Mineral Ridge. So if you’re one of those types, I’d try to locate you in another part of the county. They’re not so keen on competition.”

“Oh, no, no. Nothing like that. This is a more, um, scientific type facility.”

“I see.” Patty decided she wasn’t likely to get any more out of him. Now. “O.K. Fine. Let’s see what we’ve got. Um, one more question, first.” She licked her lips. This was the big one. “What, um, price range are we talking about here?”

Peabody chewed a lip, then produced a nervous laugh. “Well, actually, you see, price isn’t really a concern.”

Patty hadn’t felt so good in months.

***

“I say it’s some more of those bug worshipers. You know, the ones that think all insects is sacred?”

“Nah. I heard it was tree huggers, plain and simple. Hippy types.”

“Lloyd, you are so full of shit. Hippies ain’t got the money to buy nothing. And the way I hear it, these folks have got plenty.” Augustus “Gus” Singleton leaned back in his plastic chair at J.D.’s Eating Emporium with a satisfied smirk. Gus was 92 years old, but spry as a goat. He was lean and wiry, with a long face wrinkled and brown from countless years in the sun. He surveyed the table before pronouncing, “Boys, yore imagination is running aways with you again. It’s just some more of them Flor-Ons building their fancy houses.”

“Gus, you’uns is the one full of shit,” rasped Lloyd Tuttle. He reached for his coffee and slurped some down before continuing. “Hippies, I say. A bunch of rich kids who don’t know how to wipe the snot off their nose. So they get their daddy to buy them a mountain so’s they can go back to nature.” He peered at his older friend through thick glasses and chuckled. “They’ll be long gone ‘for winter’s half over.”

“It’s those bug people, I tell you. Or maybe something even weirder.” The third man at the table, Dalton Perry, scratched his nearly hairless head. He lowered his voice as he glanced around the diner, nearly empty in the lazy time after the breakfast crowd but before the early-lunch crowd started filtering in. “You know, deviant sexual practices.”

Gus slapped his thigh and guffawed. “Dalton, I declare, you are something else,” he snorted. “Whadda ya know about deviant sexual practices? Your pecker ain’t done no deviating in 25 years.”

Beside him, Lloyd snickered. Dalton colored. “Now hold on there, Gus...” he began, but Gus cut him off. “You’uns know what they say, Dalton, don’tcha? Use it or lose it.” He cackled at his own wit, and Lloyd tittered again. Dalton looked pained, but could think of no snappy riposte. After all, it was common knowledge that Gus Singleton not only was as spry as a goat, but as randy as one as well. He already had put four wives into the ground; plumb wore them out, if you believed the gossip, and had recently scandalized the Euphoria Reformed Christian Church by showing up at Archie Webster’s funeral with a bouquet of red carnations which he had promptly given to the Widow Webster, who was Gus’ junior by a good two decades but who still cut a fine figure, it was widely agreed.

“You know, fellas, it ain’t like the old days,” Lloyd offered, as the other two groaned. This was his favorite topic. “Folks stayed put, went to work, came home. They didn’t have time for none of this foolishness they got now. Putting up shopping centers everywhere, chopping down trees, bulldozing all the mountains flat. Why...”

“Lloyd, you old chucklehead,” Gus interjected. “You’uns is always goin’ on about the good ol’ days. She-it. I remember them days. Didn’t have no ‘lectricity. No TV. And the damn toilet was out the back door. Screw them days, Gus. Weren’t no Playboy Channel back then.”

“I don’t know, Gus,” Lloyd persisted, toying with his spoon. “You know how it is. Folks are different somehow. They ain’t like they used to be.”

“Lloyd, boy,” Gus said, “I got a news flash for ya. Ain’t none of us how we used to be.”

The three friends chuckled. They looked up as Winston pushed through the doors and peered around the diner, his eyes adjusting from the harsh glare of the sunshine outside. He spotted the three old men and made his way to them.

“Hey, Winston, what’s new?” Gus asked.

“Hello, Gus. Lloyd. Dalton. How’re you guys today?”

“Just fine, Winston, just fine,” Gus nodded back. “Say, Winston, we was just wonderin’ something. Thought you could help us.”

“Sure, Gus. What is it?”

“Well,” Gus shot a look at his two companions, “we was just wondering if we could take us a ride in that there spaceship of yours.” The three old coots collapsed with laughter, and Lloyd started coughing so hard Gus had to slap him on the back.

Winston chuckled despite himself. “Well, Gus, first off, it isn’t my spaceship. It’s Nell Fleck’s. And second, I’m not sure you’d want to hitch a ride on it.” He grinned wickedly. “I hear there aren’t any women aboard.”

Gus guffawed at that. “You right about that, Winston,” he said.

“You think that Nell really saw a UFO?” Lloyd asked.

“I don’t know,” Winston replied. “She sure thinks she saw something.”

“Swamp gas, that’s what I bet it was,” offered Dalton. “Folks all the time thinking they see flying saucers, and it turns out to be swamp gas.”

“Sure, Dalton, swamp gas in the mountains,” jeered Gus. “That makes sense.”

“Hey, it could happen,” Dalton said in an injured tone. “I knowed a feller down to ...”

“Say, boy, you heard about that new Floridiot development?” Gus interrupted, looking at Winston.

“Naw, Gus, I ain’t heard about it. But Floridians building houses in the mountains ain’t news anymore. Even around here.”

“I heard it was hippies,” said Lloyd. “Going to build one of them communes. You know, free love and all.” He leered at the other two at his table.

“Free love my butt,” Gus said. “You don’t know shit, Lloyd. Ain’t nothing about love that’s free. There’s a price for everything in this world.”

“It’s those bug worshipers, that’s the way I heard it,” volunteered Dalton, who had been nibbling on a cheese sandwich. “Bunch of those weirdos buying up a mountain to worship bugs.”

Winston swung back around to the trio at the table. “Who’s buying up what mountain?” he asked casually.

“That realtor woman been showing some Yankee feller around. Heard tell he’s got lots of money and is lookin’ to buy a mountain,” Gus said around slurps of his coffee.

“Oh, yeah?” Winston paused, affecting disinterest. “What’s Patty said about him?”

Gus eyed him from over the top of his coffee cup. “She ain’t said shit, ‘cept this boy was mighty particular about things. She been showing him the property over to Chestnut Mountain.”

“Is that right?” Winston swung back around and faced the counter. “Well, you’re probably right. Just another developer building a couple of summer homes. No story there.”

***

Winston called Patty Arrington as soon as he returned to his office. When she answered, the crackling at the other end told him she was in her car.

“Patty? Winston, from the newspaper. How’re you doing today? How’s business?”

“It’s lousy, Winston. Lousy. I need to find another line of work.” This was her standard line, particularly when talking to anyone with the local newspaper since she suspected that advertising rates would mysteriously rise if real estate sales boomed. “Whatcha want?”

“Look, Patty, I need a little information. I understand you’ve been showing property to some out-of-town guy. What’s the deal?”

“C’mon, Winston, honey, you know I can’t tell you. Realtor-client relations are confidential.”

“Patty, that’s attorney-client relations. Give me something to work with.”

There was a pause at the other end, then she said, “Well, really, all I can say is that he’s looking for a big piece. Of property. High up. Probably for single-family residential. Perhaps some multi-family. But that’s all I know.”

“Who’s he representing?”

“Winston, I can’t tell you that.”

That meant she didn’t know either, Winston guessed. “O.K., Patty. Thanks. One more thing. I need his name.”

He waited as the line popped and crackled. “Patty? C’mon. I need his name.”

“I’m not sure I can tell you that, Winston,” she said finally.

“All right, Patty. I’ll talk to Mavis about giving you a break on your next ad.”

“The name’s Peabody. Sylvester Peabody. I think probably New York.”

“Thanks, Patty. I appreciate it.”

“Sure, sure,” he heard as the line clicked dead.

Winston swiveled to his computer and logged on. He had work to do.