Harvestman Lodge (32 page)

“They’re good pencils, too,” Melinda said. “I’ve probably bought fifty of them from you over the years.”

“I try to do good by my customers, ma’am.” He stopped and looked at Eli. “You going to write that play for Mr. Darwin, Eli?”

Eli replied, “It’s an honor to be asked, but I know nothing about writing a play. I’ve done a novel before, but that’s a whole different kind of storytelling.”

“You’d probably write it good, I think,” Curtis said.

“I think he would, too,” Melinda said, “even though he might be overburdening himself to take such a task on. That would be my concern if he agrees to the offer. Curtis, we’ve got to go on now. But I’m glad you said hello.”

“Miss, don’t go out there. Not yet.”

Eli and Melinda glanced at one another, surprised. Curtis had spoken his request more as a command.

“Beg pardon?”

Curtis grew edgy and nervous. “There’s somebody out there … well, I guess he’s still out there. He was when I came in.”

“Who?” asked Melinda, tone changing noticeably.

“It’s … I hate to say who because it ain’t somebody you’ll want to hear about.”

Melinda straightened her shoulders, stiffened her jaw, and swallowed hard. It was clear to Eli that she had some idea of whom Curtis probably was talking about. He himself was clueless.

“But that’s not possible, if it’s who I think you mean! He’s … you know where he is.” Eli picked up that there was something Melinda didn’t want to say with him standing there.

Curtis was shaking his head. “Not no more, he ain’t. I talked to him just a little while ago in the parking lot. He’s out now. And here.”

“But how could it be that nobody told me and my family? Wouldn’t we have been on a list for notification, or something?”

“I don’t know about them kinds of things, miss. All I know is that he was out in the parking lot before I came in the building, and he was talking about you. He’d seen you park your car out there. And he saw you come in here … holding Eli’s hand.” Curtis turned his attention to Eli. “He didn’t like you holding her hand,” he said. “He said he was going to find you.”

“Oh, Eli!” Melinda softly exclaimed.

“Find me?” Eli said. “Who are we talking about here?”

Melinda said, “I’ll tell you about him … just not right here.”

“You be careful, both of you,” said Curtis. “He sounded mighty scary to me. And I could see real easy that he don’t like you, Eli. He don’t like you being with Miss Melinda. He was talking all grim and dangerous, and he called you a name.”

Eli asked, “What’d he call me?”

“He said you was a … a ‘pant-load’.”

Eli paused, then had to chuckle. The whole situation – talking so earnestly to a local nutcase who spasmed when he passed through shadows and sneaked free snacks at public meetings and had a name locally synonymous with insanity – it all became so bizarre that it was funny. “A ‘pant-load.’ What? Is this guy in the third grade?” Eli’s chuckle became a full laugh.

Melinda wasn’t smiling. “Eli, don’t laugh. You don’t know what we’re talking about here.”

“Enlighten me, then.”

“I will. Later.”

Curtis Stokes, speaking very seriously, looked at Melinda and said, “Miss, I think maybe you should say something to your daddy, too. Because of what happened with him and … well, you know.”

“You’re probably right, Curtis. I’ll do that.”

Curtis nodded and went to a window. He peered out intently, tensely, then relaxed and said, “I don’t see him out there now. But don’t you two balk around once you go outside … get in your cars and get out fast as you can. Me, I’m leaving out of the far side of the building so I can dodge him. If he gets it in his head I’ve been talking to you about him … well, he’s been mean to me before. He was nice to me tonight, but he’s been mean before.”

“Be careful of him, Curtis. And thank you for warning us,” Melinda said. She reached out and grasped the man’s hand, which she pulled up toward her and lightly kissed.

Curtis Stokes made an awkward sound in his throat and stared at his hand. His lip trembled and he smiled at Melinda.

“You’re an angel, Miss Melinda. You’re an angel.”

“WHAT WAS THAT ALL about?” asked Eli as he crossed the street to the parking lot, Melinda’s hand clasped in his. “Who are we supposed to be looking out for? Bigfoot? The Wolfman? Spring-heeled Jack?”

“This is nothing to be joking about,” Melinda said, looking around nervously. “I’ll tell you about it once we’re in the car.”

“We’re in two different cars, remember?”

“Not now we aren’t. I’m riding with you, and you’re taking me with you to your place.”

“Not to your house?”

“No. If he’s got his eye on me again he’s probably watching us. I don’t want him seeing you drop me off and then drive off alone. He could follow you, and … “

Eli could see that she was authentically scared. It sobered him.

“Eli … ” Melinda had come to a stop and was pointing at the passenger side of Eli’s car. A long, deep key scratch ran down the car, front to back. Eli froze, unable to believe what he was seeing.

This person they were hiding from had keyed his car, all the way down to the metal. The bastard!

“Get in,” Melinda commanded. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I’ll kill him, whoever he is!” Eli said tightly. “This car came from my parents … it’s one of the few things I have left from them.”

“He’s dangerous, Eli. Believe me, I know.”

Eli started the car and they were half a mile from the parking lot, Eli’s knuckles white on the steering wheel, before either spoke another word.

“SO WHO IS THIS guy?” Eli said. “What’s this loser’s name?”

Over the next several minutes, Eli learned the name and story of Rawls Parvin and his unlikely and ill-fated relationship with Melinda Buckingham.

“Rawls comes from what most around here call a ‘bad family,’” she said after she’d laid out the basic names and details. “You know … rough, white trash kind of people. Rawls seemed to want to rise above the low expectations that were tied to the Parvin name. I think he felt held back by it. He had the potential to do better, you see. He was a good athlete, and smart enough at his studies when he took the trouble to apply himself. As I was around him it became obvious that he felt like his family reputation was holding him back, leaving him more or less trapped with them on the wrong side of the tracks.”

“How did you get together with him?”

“Long story short and simple, he asked me out and I said yes. And it made sense. He was a football hero and I was the Homecoming Queen. And he went about approaching me in a way that made it hard for me to say no to him.”

“Which was … ”

“He knew my reputation as a … well, a ‘good little church girl.’ You know, Polly Pureheart and all that. My public image. So he started asking if he might come to a Bible study group my church sponsored through its youth group. He said he was starting to ‘feel things inside’ he thought might have to do with God and his soul. He asked me to help him learn what he needed to know.”

“And of course you had to say yes.”

“I felt like I did, yes. Later on I was able to look back and see that I had been naïve. Rawls was running me like a smart football play. When you’re raised in the kind of home and church I was, you come to believe that you hold the key to the salvation of the world, and it’s up to you to use it. Rawls knew how to come at me from the angle I’d be least able to resist. He pretended to me he wanted to make things right between himself and the Lord. He really was wanting something a whole lot different than that.”

“I can guess what it was.”

“You’d be right. It took me too long to see it, but like I said, I was naïve. I truly was a ‘good little church girl’ and had spent most of my time growing up around people who were pretty much all the same way. I honestly thought Rawls had been sent to me so I could help him to … ”

“To see the light?” Eli suggested, with perhaps a trace of sarcasm.

“You’re making light of it, Eli. Don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just not the kind of thing I grew up much involved in. We more or less looked in on religion from a safe distance in my house. Church was something you did. Life was something you lived.”

Melinda looked at him with authentic concern. “Maybe it’s you I’m supposed to help ‘see the light’ rather than Rawls.”

“Where you lead, I’ll follow, Melinda. Even down the old hallelujah trail.”

“Eli, don’t be sarcastic. If you’re going to make light of the things that mean the most to me, I’m not going to feel obliged to keep your company while you do it.”

“I’m sorry. Honest. The last thing I’d want to do is push you away. Go on with your story.”

“Well, cutting to the chase, when Rawls finally figured out he was barking up the wrong tree if he was looking for a casual sex partner, he began to not do so good a job of pulling off his humble spiritual seeker act. He started behaving differently toward me, pressuring me to get closer to him in … physical ways. I resisted it … predictable for me, I guess. He became harsh toward me over it, mad at me for not ‘putting out,’ as he put it. And one time, when he was at the house and we were doing some innocent cuddling on the den couch, he got too aggressive with me, way too aggressive, and decided he’d had enough of innocence and restraint. He started to take things really far, really fast, and wouldn’t you know that would happen to be the time my father happened to come home unexpectedly and walk right in. He hadn’t even known Rawls was there … he didn’t much like me having boys around when he and Mom weren’t home, much less having myself in a position to be vulnerable. Well, he was able to figure out what Rawls was trying to do – it was pretty obvious – and the next thing you know, he’d grabbed a pistol out of a desk drawer and shot him.”

“
What?
”

Eli’s reaction was so intense that Melinda was startled briefly into silence. More calmly, Eli said, “Did you just say your father shot Rawls Parvin?” A past parking lot conversation with Jake Lundy sailed through his mind and suddenly made unnerving sense.

“He did. In the leg. In his mind he was saving me from being raped … and I think he was right. Rawls had me terrified out of my mind by that point … nothing seemed real. After the confrontation and the gunshot, I ran out of the house and hid back in the woods on our neighbor’s property. I was watching from there when I saw Rawls come limping out, all but dragging his leg, and Dad right behind him, still holding his gun. He was asking Rawls if he wanted him to drive him to the emergency room and Rawls, with blood all down his leg, told him to go to hell, and got in his car and drove off. Nobody at school saw Rawls for days. Football season was past so it didn’t matter so much that he was absent. I was afraid he’d gone off and bled to death or something, but finally he showed up again, limping and telling everyone a story about how he’d fallen from the barn loft and ran the tine of a pitchfork through his leg in the process. Later on I found out he’d not even gone home after my Dad shot him, just went to a cousin of his who had been an Army medic, and apparently was willing to help patch him up and come up with a cover story to explain how his leg was hurt. Rawls didn’t want it out that the father of the girl he was dating had shot him. Embarrassment, you know. Rawls told the coach his barn story and that he was getting regular treatment and physical therapy, but really it was just that cousin of his taking care of him. That leg wound ruined his football career, and he can’t walk quite right to this day. It was after that that Rawls really got into taking drugs, and selling them. He sold more than he used. He gave up trying to better himself and move up in the world and all that … he let that bad Parvin blood take him over. It was sad to see.”

“And you and he … “

“Over. Completely done with. After what Rawls had tried to do to me, and after what Dad did to him because of it, there was just no way. But I would still encounter him sometimes, just in the hall at school or out in the parking lot, you know, and I could tell from how he looked at me that he still was interested in me. But we didn’t do any real talking, and of course he gave up that sham of wanting to learn about spiritual things. I felt like the world’s biggest fool for having fallen for that.” She looked intently at Eli. “How could anybody be that way, Eli? How could somebody do something like that? Pretending to want to know God and all the time they’re just trying to take advantage of a girl?”

It wasn’t a time to speak honestly. Looking at the stunning beauty of the girl sharing his car seat, Eli could envision with the greatest of ease any number of deceptions and pretenses almost any man would be willing to pull off, if it brought the desired result with such an appealing lady. He would not, naturally, say such a thing to Melinda.

“It’s inconceivable,” he said, putting on his most righteous expression. He wasn’t sure he was convincing, because Melinda seemed to withdraw. She paused several moments before finishing her story.

“It was about the time I went off to the university that Rawls was arrested for selling drugs. He was into it much deeper than most people knew. His trial didn’t go well and he received a hard sentence. I was off at college and tried to forget about it all. I don’t think my father ever got past it, though. He couldn’t handle the fact his little angel had been running around with a drug dealer, and a Parvin on top of that. I think he still worries about my safety from the Parvins, and his own. The Parvins aren’t people to be taken lightly. And in spite of the cover story Rawls used about how his leg got hurt, you can bet there are at least some Parvins who know it was really a gunshot wound, and who caused it. That’s why my father carries a pistol all the time now. Because of
Rawls and his kin.”