The Harvest Read online

  "It's a free country," Robert said, sucking smoke into his lungs. Betty tucked a cigarette between her rose-painted lips and leaned forward, expecting a light. Her red bouffant wiggled slightly as she shook her shoulders.

  It was the first time Robert had ever seen her hair actually move. Well, except for that one time, but it had been dark then. And he was positive he'd be reminded of that for the rest of his career at WRNC.

  Robert fumbled in his pockets and drew out a Bic and put fire to the end of Betty's Virginia Slim. She puffed, making caves in her hollow jaws, and exhaled a curling gray pillar of smoke. Robert looked at her. Her hazel irises clashed miserably with her aqua eye shadow, and the blush on her cheekbones looked as if it had been applied with a putty knife. She drew the cigarette away from her mouth and tiny clumps of lipstick clung to the butt. The sight made the coffee in his stomach gurgle and roil.

  She jutted her tiny chin toward him and smiled. The aroma of her Elizabeth Taylor perfume hung around the doorway despite the brisk wind. Robert guessed the fragrance was probably heavier than air, and didn't drift away so much as sag to the ground.

  "Got to go," he muttered, flipping his half-finished cigarette into a mud puddle. "Melvin would scream bloody murder if we had a second of dead air.”

  "Bye, Bobby. Come up and see me sometime."

  Mae West in Minnie Pearl's body. No, thank you, darlin’. Once was one time too many.

  Robert rushed into the studio just as the tag on the last commercial trailed away. He slipped on the headphones and opened the mic.

  "And Billy Buck Dodge-Jeep-Chrysler would like to congratulate Edna Massey for winning this month's gingerbread bake-off," Robert said, settling into the control room’s swivel chair. "Well, the weather word for today is rain, and I'd say fifty percent chance is as good a guess as any, starting this afternoon and tapering off around midnight. Highs will be in the fifties and lows in the upper thirties."

  He started the CD player and finished speaking over the instrumental opening bars of "Hotel California." "Up next, it's the Eagles on AM 1220, WRNC."

  Robert leaned back in the chair and put his hands behind his head. He'd bounced around a half-dozen little AM stations in his fifteen-year career, but this one had to be the runt of the litter. You were supposed to get better and better jobs as you gained experience in your field, especially when you were talented. But other than that brief spot on an FM Country morning show, he'd been about as hot a property as a broken Ninja Turtle doll.

  "A Ham-It-Up Breakfast," the FM show had been called. That dip into big-market FM had lasted about two months, and his show had been slowly climbing up the Charlotte ratings charts. He'd had Garth Brooks and Jeff Foxworthy on as guests, and seemed primed to make a run at syndication. He knew it was his break, his one shot that would bring him everything he deserved. But the station was sold out from under him, or rather, over his head, and converted to a conservative talk format faster than he could say “hallelujah.”

  Instead of the wit and wisdom of Bobby Lee, the listening audience was treated to the bombast of Rush Limbaugh and Reverend Floyd Hardwick. The damnedest blow of all had been the fact that the station’s ratings had doubled within the week.

  He'd lucked into a midday drive-time job and bounced around a little, and now here he was again, right back where he'd been ten years ago. But at least he was eating, he thought, as he patted the basketball that had somehow grown in his stomach over the course of his middle age. And being an announcer beat the heck out of working for a living.

  The Eagles were winding down, and Elton John was in and cued, ready to tell everybody why they called it the blues.

  As if old Eltie knew, with his stretch limousines and feather boas.

  Robert fired off the song without an intro and walked up front to get another cup of coffee. He peeked around the corner and saw Melvin Patterson sitting behind his mahogany desk. Patterson was always bitching about how the station was about to go under, but his desk and cream-colored leather chair must have cost a few hundred reps of that Billy Buck Dodge-Jeep-Chrysler spot.

  Betty's desk was by the front door, and she had her back to him. Despite himself, his eyes fell to her bottom. Her rump was spread out like a water balloon, quivery yet shapeless at the same time.

  Robert filled his cup and went back to the studio. He turned down the monitor speakers so he wouldn't have to absorb any more adult contemporary rhythms than he'd already been bombarded with. He was sure that they caused cancer, or at least made you lose your hair and start voting Republican. But he didn't care if the manager told him to play the greatest hits of Boxcar Willie over and over, as long as the numbers added up on the paycheck every Friday morning.

  He killed the next half hour with meatless banter and hits from Whitney Houston, Madonna, Celine Dion, and Lionel Richie. Before he knew it, it was two minutes until noon and Dennis Thorne, WRNC's answer to Walter Cronkite, or at least Les Nessman, but slightly taller than both, was standing behind him ready to take over the chair for the twelve-o'clock news.

  "What's your lead, Dennis?" Robert asked him.

  Dennis smoothed his gel-thick black hair as if he were going in front of a camera. "Chemical spill at Bryson's Feed Supply."

  "Damn, man, you got some hard-hitting stuff today. Did you check with Melvin?"

  "Check? What for?"

  "Bryson's been a sponsor since you were sticking boogers under the desk in journalism school, my friend. I don't think that will pass the censors.”

  "It's okay. It was the delivery driver's fault. She was filling in, wasn't very experienced. She forgot to latch the back of the trailer and a couple of barrels of pesticide bounced around in the parking lot as she was pulling away. Some experimental stuff called Acrobat M-Z, supposed to kill blue mold on tobacco."

  "Emergency Response team situation?"

  "Yeah. They just hosed the stuff into the ditch."

  “Maybe we’ll get some weird mutant life forms to go with the green lights.”

  “Green lights?” Dennis adjusted his tie as Robert got up and gave him the chair.

  "Long story,” Robert said, waving to the sound console. “If you want the UFO beat, let me know."

  Dennis waved him away and spread his news copy out on the desk. As the "On Air" sign lit up, Robert went out back. The rain had started as a soft trickle. A spasm of lightning lashed across the murk of the horizon. A couple of seconds later, it was followed by a booming bass line of thunder.

  Robert worked his way through a Camel Light. Tamara would soon be heading down the mountain for her afternoon classes. He shouldn’t have been such a jerk last night. But she was driving him crazy lately. At first her little premonitions had been cute and quirky, because she was quick to search for rational explanations based on her knowledge of psychology. But lately she had become obsessed, taking them seriously, growing distracted and distant.

  Gloomies. What a bunch of crap.

  Still, her skin had felt wonderful last night. He should have kept his mouth shut and his hands busy and maybe—

  Robert’s pulse sped up. Then he heard Betty’s brittle laughter erupt from the far end of the building and his mood crash-landed like the Hindenburg, only without the climactic explosion.

  For the hundredth time, he cursed himself for his moment of weakness, the one blotch on his marital record. It had occurred at the station Christmas party three months ago. Tamara had to give a final exam to her night class and hadn't been able to make it, so Robert endured the party alone, chumming around with people he already saw too much of at work. They stood around the catered buffet spread trying to make conversation over the roast beef and rye, but shoptalk seemed to be the only thing they had in common.

  After Melvin and his frosty-haired trophy wife left, Jack Ashley, the morning man, brought a couple of bottles of Wild Turkey from under the seat of his truck and started them around the room. Robert hadn’t been much of a drinker since becoming a family man, but he thought a few sip
s might keep him from dying of boredom. He had intended to have only enough to get warm faced, because he knew what would happen if he got the old ball rolling.

  Warm faced came and went, and then he was starting to get a little thick lipped. Drink just enough to chuck up that clam dip, he'd told himself, then you've had enough.

  But the clam dip stayed down, and so did a good pint of eighty-proof whiskey. Somewhere along the way to getting wobbly headed, damned if Betty Turnbill didn't start looking good. If Robert squinted just a little bit, she resembled a younger, if slightly seedier Reba McIntyre.

  And those wrinkles in her pink wool sweater just might have been breasts, and there could have been a real smile beneath her painted one. She corralled him in a corner after most of the staff had left, her whiskey-and-Cheez Whiz breath on his neck and her hands roving over his ample flesh. And the next thing he knew, they were in the backseat of his car, bumping like a couple of awkward high schoolers.

  More than once, if he remembered correctly, but he couldn't be sure.

  He'd driven home at three in the morning with a fuzzy tongue and his clothes smelling like a French whorehouse. Tamara was already in bed, snoring gently. He peeked into the kids' rooms. Kevin had been fast asleep under the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on his ceiling and Ginger was somewhere in the middle of a pile of stuffed bears and aardvarks and frogs. Betrayal cut through the alcohol haze like a scythe.

  He crept into the bathroom and took a shower, trying to wash Betty's raw scent off his skin. By the time he'd lathered up, he'd almost convinced himself the night had never happened. But then he looked down at the traitorous piece of meat dangling between his legs and knew that he'd lost something he'd never regain.

  Now Betty was always flirting with him, teasing him about that night, and jokingly threatening to tell Tamara. He had promised himself he'd never stray again, and, so far, he'd been as true as an encyclopedia. But sometimes he wondered if his little inner demon, as the rednecks liked to say about the South, was going to rise again.

  But maybe it was all Tamara’s fault. If she hadn’t been going on about those damned Gloomies all the time, driving him nuts, not understanding the pressure he was under—

  Yeah. Her fault. That works.

  He blew smoke into the hallway as he made his way back to the studio. Through the monitor speakers, he heard Dennis heading into the break with a whimsical feature about the woolly worm's weather predictions. The official woolly worm had two dark rings at the end of its body, heralding two more weeks of snowy weather. Dennis told the audience that the woolly worm was eighty-three percent accurate, which beat the predictions of the National Weather Service all to hell.

  They've even broken mountain folklore down to a scientific formula. Mysterious green lights and Gloomies, maybe everybody wants to believe in magic. So why the hell can’t I?

  Robert looked through the large plate glass into the control room. Dennis held up two fingers. Two minutes left before the wrap-up. Time enough to check the entertainment wire.

  Patterson was in the hall, blocking it with his chubby elbows angled out at his sides, the requisite scowl on his face.

  Christ, why didn't he ditch those acrylic sweater vests? They make him look even more like one of Willy Wonka’s Oompah Loompahs than usual.

  "You were late again, Robert," Patterson said in the gravelly voice the old ladies in WRNC's audience swooned over. At least those who didn’t know him personally.

  "Yeah. Couldn't find the car keys this morning. Won't happen again."

  "Better not. By the way, we've got a remote this weekend for Blossomfest, and I'm volunteering the on-air staff to emcee it. So don't make any plans."

  "Fine," Robert said, aching for the cup of coffee that was waiting in the storeroom that passed for a lounge. "You're the boss."

  He sidestepped to the right, and Patterson yielded, letting him pass. Patterson’s scowl drifted into a smug smile, an expression Robert wouldn't mind feeding to him with a shovel one day.

  "One more thing," Patterson said to his back. "You've got to re-cut that Petty Pleasures spot. Dawn Petty called and said the voiceover wasn't exciting enough."

  How do you work up a good phlegm ball of enthusiasm over a craft and knickknack shop? What did she want, Glen Beck on uppers, telling the world what a "special, special place" it was?

  "Aye-aye, Commander. I'll get right on it.” Robert turned the corner and Betty was standing there, batting her thick waxy eyelashes.

  "When you going to get right on this?" she whispered, jutting her chest at him.

  "Not now, Betty," he said. In fact, not ever again.

  He hoped.

  When Dennis turned the console back over to Robert, the mic smelled of cologne and breath mints. It was time to read the daily obituaries. Robert had a healthy respect for the dead, especially because he didn't want to be among their number. But for some reason, reading the daily obituaries always made him want to snicker.

  Perhaps it was due to trying to maintain the appropriate blend of gravity and pep. Maybe it was because of the odd local names. It could be because of his off-beat sense of humor. Or maybe it was what Tamara called his "inappropriate emotional response disorder." Whatever it was, he sometimes had to flip the mic off for a second to cover his snickers.

  He opened the folder and looked at the name of the first dearly departed. It was Dooley R. Klutz.

  Robert felt as if he could really use a drink.

  ###

  Sylvester Mull cradled his .30-06 in the crook of his left elbow, his trigger hand gripping the wooden stock. He ducked under a low pine branch, one of the few scraps of greenery in the mountains this time of year. He was hunting out of season and wore brown camouflage coveralls, but still felt as exposed as a peacock in a turkey pen. The damned deer seemed to be getting smarter and smarter, or maybe he was just getting dumber.

  Last year, he'd only bagged a couple of bucks, a four-pointer and a six-pointer. Not even worth hanging those scraggly-assed sets of horns on the wall down at the Moose Lodge. But he didn't hunt for the glory of it, like a lot of those beer-bellied Moosers did. He liked to put meat on the table cheap, or free if possible. Of course, they weren’t exactly giving away ammunition these days, what with them damn liberals putting the pressure on the gun industry.

  But hunting was only half the reason he lurked in the woods. The joy was in getting away out here on the back side of Bear Claw, where the car exhaust didn't burn your eyes and the only noise was the northwest wind tangling with the treetops.

  Blow on, wind. Just push the ass end of winter right on out of these parts.

  The last snows had been late and deep. It might only be his imagination, but he couldn't remember the weather ever being so bad. Seemed to have gotten worse over the last few years. And them damned geniuses on the news kept on about global warming when any fool could plainly tell it was getting colder.

  Used to be, by this time of the year, red buds would be hanging on the tips of the oak and hickory trees and the briars would have little sprigs of bright green leaves up and down their spines. But today, everything was the color of mud and barn stalls, dreary from the rainstorm that had hit the mountains last night. The wind had pushed the storm away, though another sprinkle had started around noon. The first stubborn flowers had poked through the dead leaves, bloodroot, trout lilies, and slim, pale stalks of chickweed. In the protected hollows, mist hung like gun smoke over a battlefield. The mist was easy to hide in, and maybe, if he was lucky, a buck or doe might just pass right under his nose.

  Sylvester had built this stand last fall, when the hunting season had about petered out. Dead pine branches stacked against each other, a few logs strung together with twine to hold the mess up, and a little leaf-covered tarp tied overhead to keep him dry. With his brown clothes and hair, he blended with the environment. And he ought to, as many years as he'd hoofed through these woods trying to rustle up some meat. He didn't wear one of those flaming orange hats that the
y sold in the sporting goods section down at the Kmart.

  That was one of the dumbest things Sylvester had ever heard of. Might as well carry a neon sign that said, Hey, deer, come over here and get blown to hell. Prevented accidents, they said. Well, if a fellow couldn't tell a man from an animal, he had no business in the woods with a gun anyway.

  Sylvester crouched in the stand, his feet hot in his boots, and listened to the forest. Nothing but wind and the soft splash of the rain, but that was okay. Plenty of time to think. Because hunting was timeless, the past pretty much like the present, whether in season or out. He could just as easily have been a brainless caveman waiting to spear a hairy elephant or a space alien with a zapper ray-gun, like in the movies. The hunter and the hunted, that’s what it all came down to.

  A bad day of hunting beat the hell out of the best day of work. He'd called in sick down at Bryson's Feed where he drove a delivery truck, and it wasn't the first time he'd skipped to go after deer or pheasant or squirrels.

  Hell, he had been sick, in a way. Sick of that yackitty-assed wife of his, Peggy, and those snot-nosed brats she'd laid on him, who sat on their sorry asses all day staring bug eyed at them video games. All crowded in the nasty trailer that Peggy was too lazy to clean. Who wouldn’t want to escape from that?

  He didn't escape in beer the way most of his fellow Moosers did, even though the thought was mighty tempting. He only had to look around on a Friday night at those sad-eyed middle-aged losers to remind himself how fast it all went away. Their last good years were draining through their livers, the alcohol fogging their fat heads and blurring their eyesight. He wasn't even sure why he had joined the Lodge. Probably because you had to own a necktie to get into the Lion's Club.

  Most of his friends belonged to the Lodge. Billy Ray Silas, for one. They'd gone hunting and fishing together for the last twenty years, and once every six months they packed up and headed to the top of Blackstone Mountain for a week-long camping trip. Of course, they spent three days of pump’n’pay at a whorehouse in Titusville before they even unloaded the truck. But Sylvester always brought something back, a good twenty-inch rainbow trout or a ten-point buck, and, once, a black bear.