Chapter 25 - The Midnight Convoy
By eight o’clock that night, an impenetrable, freezing mist had rolled off the swamp, wrapping the Pigeon River valley in a shroud of white blindness.
Inside the small kitchen of our farmhouse, Aunt Clara sat at the oilcloth-covered table, methodically buttering slices of cold sourdough bread. Her hands, usually twitching with nervous palsy, were strangely calm now that the secret was out in the open.
"Your grandfather Sanford was a coward, Abigail," Aunt Clara said quietly, staring at the dark windowpanes where river fog condensed into crawling beads of water. "He couldn't stand up to Raymond. When Raymond took the iron bar from the shed that night, Sanford saw him leave. He saw him come back with red on his cuffs. Sanford spent the rest of his life writing checks to churches and building libraries, trying to buy Donald Miller back from the bottom of the river."
Ivy, our neighbor's daughter who had been helping us keep watch over Clara, stood near the stove, clutching a heavy iron skillet as if expecting Raymond Vance to burst through the door at any second.
"The phone line is dead, Abby," Ellis announced, stepping in from the back mudroom. He was wearing his heavy canvas hunting coat, his shotgun broken open over his forearm, two brass-cased shells gleaming in the chamber. "They cut the line at the pole down by the culvert ten minutes ago."
"It's starting," I said, picking up the leather satchel containing Sanford’s original timber survey, the walnut box, and the red-wax confession.
"We take the back trail through the cedar swamp," Ellis said, his eyes scanning the pitch-black perimeter outside. "Raymond's men will be watching the main gate at County Line Road. But the old logging spur along the creek bed comes out behind Judge Morrison’s farm in Middleville. If we reach Morrison before Raymond reaches the county sheriff, we can get an emergency protective injunction filed in the federal district registry."
"Morrison?" Aunt Clara suddenly laughed—a dry, brittle sound that raised the hair on my neck. "Judge Morrison was Raymond's roommate at Ann Arbor, child. Morrison took forty percent of the pine leases in '72. If you go to Morrison, you're walking into the slaughterhouse with the cattle."
The room went deathly silent. Outside, somewhere down by the water wheel, a branch snapped with the sharp crack of a rifle shot.
Ellis killed the kerosene lamp on the table with a quick pinch of his fingers. The kitchen plunged into instant darkness, illuminated only by the faint, orange glow of the woodstove grate.
"Who do we go to, Clara?" Ellis whispered in the dark, kneeling beside the old woman's chair. "Tell me. Who in this godforsaken county hasn't Raymond bought?"
May you like
Clara reached out, her gnarled, liver-spotted fingers finding Ellis’s collar. She pulled his face close to hers.
"The widow," Clara whispered. "Donald Miller's younger sister, Maeve. She’s ninety-two years old, living in the stone gatehouse behind the old Catholic cemetery on the hill. She’s kept Donald’s original surveying journals under her bed since the day he didn't come home. And she’s been waiting sixty years for Sanford Vance’s granddaughter to pay the debt."
