Three Lives of Jury - Chapter 29
Life, the afterlife and a town called Jury. A 40-year saga of love, jealousy and murder.
See the forest, see the trees:
Three Lives of Jury - table of contents
Check out related bonus material at The Underworld Vents.
The Underworld Vents - table of contents.
They drove on through Lost Johnson Pass and burst out onto the Plains of Melancholy, where legends say the Wagon People staked out the hearts of their children to warn away raiders. Shutterstock photo
Everything old is made new
Chapter 29
They drove east along the old trails mapped by the Wagon People and the Indigenous people before that. The inside of the truck was tense with a self-conscious thickness to the air, like a first date. Music played softly from Whit’s phone and once in a while one would point to a sign on the side of road telling them how much farther.
They switched back and forth up the road through Lost Johnson Pass, through the Lost Johnson Mountains, and after an hour of close trees, they burst out onto the Plains of Melancholy a high sanctuary, where the Wagon People, according myth, staked out the hearts of their children to warn away raiders.
The crossing was smooth. They paused to gape at the orange motel at Big Forge, wondering what mind had dropped it in such a barren place. They pushed on, reached the Bonanza Ridge, where they dropped into a deep gorge and followed the highway into the Green Mountains.
The on-again, off-again rain was off for the moment. The highway was damp, yet bone dry in spots where the tree tops leaned over the pavement. The air reeked of compost.
They traversed the gorge until the rock walls on both sides fell away, leaving them exposed on a bog of tall grass.
Whit was feeling hopelessly lost, when they came upon a sign pointing them to the left. Spirit Waters Lodge and Spa, no distance offered.
He turned and followed a smaller paved road, crossed a towering trestle bridge that spanned a second deep ravine, and arrived at a treed countryside, like before, at the Lost Johnsons. But the route was more narrow here. The trees scratched at the side of the truck as they passed.
The road veered left and led northward. At 15 kilometres, a row of log-style buildings appeared in a clearing. Each three storeys high, arranged in a U-shape with a large empty parking lot in front. Like a ski village, Whit thought.
Frank pointed. “There it is.”
The Spirit Waters Lodge and Spa frowned like a troll on the precipice of a ridge.
The front of the lodge appeared like a flood had poured through and washed up a scruffy girdle of thorny vines and broken wood. A curtain facade hiding the stone wall behind it formed a thin wood of ancient trees and broken branches.
In the centre of the snarled forest, a broad passageway had been cut. Into here, Whit and Frank entered.
The glass door slid open with a whisper. A soft breeze of the air-conditioned interior wafted around them. Whit and Frank sniffed before moving toward the long front desk across the lobby.
The building was bigger inside than it should have been, Whit thought. An optical illusion created by the lodge being the sole object against a distant backdrop.
They secured their reservations and headed down the hall. Whit tapped Frank’s shoulder, pointing to lettering on a wall leading up a set of stairs.
Lucy Kloot Conference Room, it said, with an arrow pointing up the stairs. Lucy Kloot Meditation Room, said another, pointing in the same direction. A lodge employee was working at the letters with a putty knife and a bucket of soapy water, peeling them off.
As they turned to continue down the hall, Frank skipped away to an information kiosk, talked to the woman for a few minutes and returned flashing a piece of paper.
“I got the number. I’ll call Lucy from my room,” he said.
Lucy was surprised and irritated by Frank’s call. She really didn’t want guests right now. But no way out of it. They’re here already, so she agreed to meet them in the RV Park, after Whit and Frank had time to settle into their rooms.
She shoved the phone back into her front pocket of her jeans. Decent cell service was the only good thing the lodge and condos had brought to the valley.
The meet-up wasn’t for a couple of hours. Her nerves twitched, but she stuffed them down and resisted the urge to touch up her hair, make-up, or change her clothes.
Fifteen minutes later, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Maybe I’ll try to at least look presentable, she thought.
Fuck. She peered at the wrinkles forming around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes. Laugh lines, some people called them.
Well it’s an old face, but it’s not too bad, she conceded. She puffed her hair up, washed her face. Why should she care what Whit and Frank thought. She hadn’t seen either of them in 20 years. She didn’t have to prove herself to anyone.
She tossed through her closet and drawers and pulled on fresh jeans and a cleanish blue T-shirt. She told herself for the tenth time to relax.
Fucking Whit Alma and Frank Kappens. What were they doing together? Do they know each other still? Do they still hang out in Jury? Probably not, she decided. She was sure she’d heard Whit moved to Vancouver and Frank lived in Gold Rush.
Lucy phoned Sue after Frank’s call to see if she could dish more details. Sue, who worked at the lodge visitor centre in addition to her work with Lucy, could only tell her that one of them was tall with black hair, the other was stick-thin and short, with smooth, glistening white skin that looked like it belonged to a 15-year old. That fit. It sounded like them, Lucy thought.
The meeting time approached and Lucy rushed outside, slamming the screen door of the cabin as she left. She noticed a couple of new tents had appeared overnight. They were set up next to a camper Lucy had parked a few feet from the path to the mobile home park as a visitor greeting trailer.
A couple of Lucy’s volunteers sat at a picnic table beside the camper. Lucy spoke to them as she passed.
“Ask them to go get set up at the campsite. Then make an appointment.” She pointed toward the new campers.
An eager woman in her 20s jumped to her feet. “We’re on it. They came in very late last night and we didn’t have the heart to turn them out in the dark.”
“I know,” said Lucy. “It’s fine. Just look after it.”
Young travellers were most likely to turn up at her cabin unannounced: backpackers, transients and easy adventurers. Mostly, they were curious and wanted a story to tell friends.
Lucy sometimes went out and talked with them and if they seemed genuine, she’d let them stay a day or two, but long-term camping was not permitted.
She hated the ones who slunk up close to her cabin with long-winded justifications for why they should be allowed to stay. Many were salespeople and charlatans on a pilgrimage to get Lucy to endorse their ideas, or they were lazy men looking for a port in a storm.
Lucy ordered them off her property, and without exception, they complied. Lucy’s bad side was renowned.
She walked down the trail and came out at the mobile home site, drawing looks and waves as she passed. She’d heard Whit was knocking around Vancouver and was living there with a wife and a couple of kids but that was all she knew.
Frank though, she had heard stories about him, usually accompanied by people lowering their chins and shaking their heads. He was running a soup kitchen, or something? Others said he was a cop, or he worked with the police. There were stories he tried to kill his brother, Marco, in a public brawl at a party one night, but she dismissed those rumours. Frank was too frail, even back when she knew him. Marco would make mincemeat out of him.
As she hurried along, she felt a stitch of sympathy for Frank, being forced to live with a thing no person should have to suffer. But her sympathy was tempered by Frank’s unbearable behaviour. Maybe he’s changed, she thought.
She popped into the clearing around the hot springs pools. About 50 soakers relaxed in the water, many with their heads thrown back. Others lounged amid the rough nature of the hillside, on towels or lawn chairs.
The lodge supplied a line of chairs for its members, situated a few metres above the low escarpment that acted as a barrier between the lodge grounds and the hot springs below. A gate and trail were situated a few metres off to one side.
The dress code among soakers ranged from shorts and T-shirts, to bikinis and Speedos. There were naturalists, of course, every natural hot spring had them. They stuck to a grassy area on the side closest to the mobile home park.
Murmurs stirred and rose into noisy chatter as Lucy walked among them. Some pointed and waved, or clapped, as Lucy made her way up and around the pools. Two of them touched Lucy’s hair as though she were a child’s doll.
They slowly parted and let her pass.
Lucy breezed into the RV park where someone had vandalized the sign beside her 40-foot motorhome parked at the entry. With a black marker, someone had struck out the letter K from her last name.
“Lucy K loot appointments and registration” the amended sign read.
She couldn’t help but snicker.