Фэнни Флэгг - The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop

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CAROLYN WAS STILL upset with her about her selling her house, and Ruthie dreaded having to tell her that the project in Whistle Stop was now off. When she arrived back in Atlanta, all Martha Lee had said was, “Well, look what the cat just drug in.” Maybe she had been too hasty in selling her house. She should have just stayed where she was. All her big plans had gone up in smoke, and she was right back where she’d started. Only now she didn’t have a place to live.

The very last thing on earth she wanted to do now was to look for an apartment and move all her things into some cold, impersonal storage bin. But that’s just what she had to do. The following weeks were busy from morning to night, packing up the house and trying to find a decent place to rent. And at the end of each day she’d be exhausted. She soon began to wonder if she shouldn’t just throw in the towel and go ahead and move into Briarwood herself. It was a bit early she knew, but she was probably going to wind up there anyway. Why wait?

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND

2002

PEGGY WAS IN the back room of the clinic when she heard her cellphone tweet.

She looked and saw an email from Opal Butts in Birmingham. After she read it, she said to Bud, “Oh, honey, it’s from Opal. Dot Weems died.”

Bud had been looking at X-rays and turned to her.

“Oh no, what happened?”

“Opal said she had a stroke.”

“Oh God, I hate to hear that. How old was she?”

“I’m sure she was in her early nineties, at least.”

“She’d have to be. Or maybe older. She was a grown woman when we were little.” Bud sighed. “My gosh. Dot Weems is gone. It’s hard to believe. Well, it’s certainly the end of an era.”

Peggy said, “I agree, and now with Grady and Gladys Kilgore both gone, too, pretty soon we’re going to run out of people who knew us when.”

Dot Weems had lived to be 101, and was still volunteering at the Fairhope Library three days a week until the day she died. She would be missed. It was a long life, and one that had kept so many people connected.

TWO LITTLE RATTY-LOOKING twelve-year-old Gate City boys named Cooter and Lucas were up to no good this morning. They’d been over at the trailer park and had just raided Cooter’s big brother’s marijuana stash. They’d quickly stuffed it in their pockets, jumped on their bikes, took off, and rode out of town as fast as they could. The big brother had been to jail once and was mean. They knew if he caught them he would beat the living hell out of them.

After they had ridden far enough away, they pulled off the side of the road, hid their bikes behind some bushes, and walked down into the woods. Once they felt it was safe, they found a small clearing, sat down behind a tree, and emptied everything out of their pockets. They’d come away with at least ten hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes, a lighter, and three plastic bags of pills.

The bigger one, Cooter, who thought he was a tough guy, said, “Hot damn. I’m gonna smoke me two of these cigarettes and maybe three.” But Lucas was nervous and kept looking around. “You don’t reckon your brother saw us and followed us out here, do you?”

“Naw. Sling me over that lighter.” Lucas threw the red plastic lighter over to Cooter, and it landed just behind him. When Cooter reached back to get it, he noticed something white sticking up in the leaves. As he looked closer, he suddenly jumped up. “Jesus Christ…it’s a damn arm! Oh, shit, there’s a goddamn dead body here! Let’s get out of here!” And they both took off running as fast as they could. When they reached the road, they were both out of breath and white as sheets. They waved their arms and flagged down the next car that came down the road. When it stopped, they ran over to the driver and said, “There’s a dead body down there, mister! We just found a dead body!”

The car’s driver called 911.

—

THAT AFTERNOON, LIEUTENANT Geena Hornbeck walked into the snack room at the fire station and found two friends of hers from Search and Rescue sitting at the table laughing about something.

“What’s so funny, guys?”

“Oh, Geena, you missed all the fun. This morning me and Harry got an emergency call, and when we got out to the location, these two skinny kids came running up to us screaming and hollering that they’d just found a dead body, that someone had been murdered and chopped up into pieces. They said there were arms and legs and blood everywhere. One kid was so scared he’d peed his pants.”

Geena said, “Was there a dead body?”

“Wait, this is what’s so funny. So we go down there to where they said the body was, and we see what they’d found. It was some old false arm somebody had thrown down there, laying under a tree.”

“No…”

“Yeah, anyhow we dug all around real good to see if there was anything else down there, but we didn’t find anything but some dope the kids left, and an old mason jar with some papers inside.”

“Where was this?” asked Geena

“Out toward Gate City, down below the tracks. Maybe somebody threw it off the train, or something. I don’t know. How in the hell do you lose a false arm?”

Geena said, “Guys, you’re not going to believe this, but I happen to know somebody who lost his prosthetic arm a couple years ago. And it sounds like it was about in the same location.”

The two guys were surprised. “You’re kidding.”

“No, my husband met him on the train. We even went to visit him at the hospital. Do you still have the arm?”

“Yeah, it’s still out there on the table. Do you remember the man’s name?”

“Yes, his name is Bud Threadgoode, and he lives over in Atlanta.”

“Threadgoode?” Harry looked at his friend and said, “Wasn’t that the name on that paper we found in the jar?”

“Yes. But it wasn’t Bud Threadgoode. It was a woman’s name, like Irene or something like that.”

Geena was curious. “What kind of paper was it?”

“Some old land deed from the thirties. Maybe he had been carrying it with him at the time, who knows?”

“Do you still have it?”

“No. The chief said it looked pretty official, so he sent it over to the records department at the courthouse.”

Geena said, “Oh. Okay. But in the meantime, I’ll try and hunt down his phone number and let him know that we found his arm. I can’t wait to tell Billy. He’s not going to believe it.”

—

AFTER GEENA LEFT the room, Harry said, “All I can say is this Threadgoode guy must be one strange dude, losing an entire arm and carrying his family papers around in a mason jar.”

“You’re still new on the job. Stick around. Last year, I had to get a guy off the top of a tree who thought he was an eagle. You ain’t seen nothing yet. There’s a lot of wackos out there.”

RUTHIE WAS OVER in Atlanta when her cellphone rang. The call was from Birmingham but it wasn’t Evelyn’s number.

She picked up. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Caldwell, this is Jim Carder, and I’m calling with what I hope is some good news. I haven’t been able to reach Mrs. Couch as yet, but I just received a call from the county courthouse, and they have somehow just located a deed that states the name of the owner of that tract of land. And it isn’t Ligget.”

“What?”

“No, it was a quitclaim deed that was signed over to another party on August 11, 1935. It was signed over to a Miss Imogene Threadgoode, now deceased, so if we can negotiate a sale or an easement with her heirs, we might be able to pull the project off after all. Isn’t that great news?”

Ruthie was stunned. “You have no idea just how great.”

“So we’ll have to try and locate the current owner.”