Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller Page 11

  Hal stopped, realizing that he had been talking nonstop, and wanting to extend an opportunity to Ozzie if he had something to say. Ozzie’s eyes were sealed as the moonshine had coaxed his pain away and his body to sleep.

  Hal continued ranting, half drunk now.

  “Hey...I’m a quarter Cherokee, you know. Yep, Skinner, you can look the name up on the Dawes Roll of 1906, it’s right there. My ancestors were run off this land, did you know that?”

  Drool oozed from Ozzie’s mouth as he lay on the porch.

  “Back in 1838,” Hal continued. “Made to march on foot about a thousand frigging miles, you believe that? White men like the other three quarters of me imprisoned them and took their land. A frigging crime!” Hal took a stick and stirred the fire as he continued his rant. “Then again, the Cherokee ended up keeping some slaves of their own, so I guess we’re all either captor or captive depending on what day it is. Can’t just let every creature live freely I reckon.” Hal exhaled as he concluded his rant and stopped talking, realizing that he had put his first audience in five years to sleep.

  Hal walked over to Ozzie and checked on his blanket. He had been badly hurt and would need time to heal, but for the first time in a very long time, Hal felt a twinge of purpose. For so long his life had no meaning and he wanted only for his body and soul to fade into the forest soil, becoming lost amidst the winter leaf litter. To just end it all already. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and all that.

  In Hal’s barren field of despair a lone seed of hope now germinated, and its name was Ozzie. He had nurtured it for days, nursing it to its next phase of recovery, and he would continue nursing it. Hoping for it the happiness that eluded him and perhaps tasting a bit of happiness for himself once more.

  Chapter 12

  “Want me to freshen that coffee, sugar?” The Clayton Cafe waitress gave Blake a warm, Tuesday morning smile.

  “Sure, thanks,” Blake said. He felt calmer than he had in weeks, but was staring at a tough week ahead. With only four days until Nick’s 50-Forks dinner he and Terry had plenty of work cut out to do. Blake cut into a biscuit smothered with sausage gravy.

  “When?” A man’s voice from the next table asked the waitress loudly as she relayed a story.

  “About...3-4 weeks ago,” she said. “Just flat out disappeared. Two boys that lived down on Warwoman just up and vanished, two best friends.” Blake turned his head to listen. The waitress caught his gaze and turned her body to include him in the gossip group.

  “How old were they?” The man at the table next to Blake asked the waitress, as if she had nothing to do other than relay the local gossip, which was probably true.

  “20 and 22.”

  “Well heck, they probably just went a hoboing,” the man seated said. He gave Blake a wink and added, “That’s a good age to take off exploring.”

  “Maybe, but they didn’t take a dab blasted thing with them,” she said. “Not one thing missing from their house according to their folks, and not one word mentioned to nobody.”

  Blake tried to smile at the man as he turned to his breakfast, but he had lost his appetite. The discussion brought Blake back to the two boys who were possibly dead because of him somewhere on the mountain. Blake didn’t want to believe it, but he did find Jesse’s bloody jacket the day after he and Terry had found them missing. He didn’t look much further out of fear of getting lost himself, and he didn’t know what to do or say, or who to say it to. So Blake did nothing. He just swallowed the secret, piling it on top of the other lies that were beginning to poison his soul, and let the day pass. And then the next day passed. Then a week passed, then a few. As time ticked on, thoughts of the boys just slipped away from his consciousness as he came to rely on Terry to help get everything set for Nick’s upcoming launch.

  Blake threw a ten dollar bill on the table and left.

  ***

  Terry was already on the mountain when Blake pulled up just before 8:00 a.m., having driven the F-100 that Blake now let him use. Terry hadn’t asked one question about Shane or Jesse in three weeks. Blake couldn’t decide if it was ignorance or apathy, but as the saying goes, he didn’t know and he didn’t care. Terry had been working hard and was thrilled that Blake let him drive the truck. He was even more thrilled with the fact that Blake said he would now earn $5,000 if all went well, since Jesse and Shane had run off and Terry had a lot more work to do. Terry celebrated real hard the night he heard that.

  “Everything going okay this morning?” Blake asked as he stepped out of the truck.

  “Yeah I ’spose, but a lot of these fellas are gettin’ a might ill.”

  “Ill?” Blake snapped. “What do you mean ill?”

  Terry waved his arm for Blake to follow and gave Blake the tour. “Looky there at that ’un,” Terry said, pointing to Felipe, lying in his shed. Felipe rested on his side as blood slowly oozed from his nose and his mouth.

  “Let’s go in and take a look,” Blake said as he walked through the entrance. Blake approached Felipe and got down for an inspection. He traced his fingers over his shoulders, which had swollen considerably. Just below Felipe’s right shoulder Blake touched his right hand to a black, squishy ulcer and pushed it in and out, as he grimaced with disgust.

  “What the hell is that?” Blake asked. Flies were already swarming around, more than usual. Blake lifted his hand from Felipe to scratch one off the back of his neck.

  “Beat’s me, but a bunch of ’em got it.” Terry said. Terry took Blake around showing him the breadth of the illness that had popped up in the past twenty-four hours.

  “Just came out of nowhere,” Terry said. “Like the air is poisoned or something.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Terry,” Blake said as he dismissed the simplicity of the kid’s mountain logic.

  “I’m telling ya, that’s what it is,” Terry said. “Looky over here by this tree.” Terry walked Blake to a huge twisted oak tree beside Blake’s truck and pointed to two dead squirrels and one dead skunk on the ground within thirty feet of one another.

  “See?” Terry said. “Just up and died, not a scratch on ’em.”

  “Jesus!” Blake said, being careful to steer clear of the skunk.

  They walked back in and passed Felipe. Blake had never seen anything like it. Body after body was hemorrhaging blood from the nose and mouth. Some had hideous black ulcers and severe swelling in the lower neck, chest, and shoulders. A few showed none of those symptoms, but just staggered around as if they were intoxicated. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew enough to know it wasn’t good.

  “Some of ’em done died,” Terry said. “Three of them real fat sumbitches.”

  “WHAT!” Blake said, staring firmly at Terry. “Where?”

  Terry led him behind the sheds to see the three huge bodies that were so round they looked bloated to Blake.

  “Jesus Christ!” Blake exclaimed. A stream of thoughts, all of them bad, washed over Blake, but his primary thought was of how much less money he would make if he didn’t do something quickly to salvage what he could.

  “Terry, I gotta go make a call but I’ll be back to help you clean all this mess up when I’m done. You’re gonna need it.” Blake drove down the mountain and headed back toward Clayton. He stopped in the parking lot of the Sandy Creek Baptist Church once he picked up a good cell signal.

  “Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Nick Vegas. Please leave—”

  “Damn it!” Blake exhaled as he slammed the phone against the steering wheel. He looked up at the huge cross above the steeple, gathered his thoughts and listened to the rest of the message.

  “—a message and I’ll get back to you.” BEEP!

  “Nick, it’s Blake. Need to talk to you about this weekend. I have a special treat for your dinner this weekend that I think you’ll love. Give me a call.”

  ***

  Nick Vegas pulled into the parking lot of the Fox News Atlanta bureau on 14th Street at 8:20 a.m. The associate producer of the Fox & Friends show tol
d Nick to be there by 8:30 for a segment on the morning show. It was an easy autumn morning ride, only taking eighteen minutes in traffic from his Buckhead home.

  The cell phone in Nick’s pocket rang. He looked to see that it was Blake calling, thought for a second, and sent it to voice mail. He left the phone in his black BMW 550i and walked inside the studios.

  Nick was no stranger to the media. He had done countless magazine and newspaper interviews. He had even done several local TV interviews in addition to The Food Channel episodes, but this was his first live national television interview. The associate producer had asked Nick to appear in a panel that would discuss underground supper clubs, but when Nick explained his concept for 50-Forks and said it was launching that very week, the Fox & Friends team decided to do a full segment on it. Nick couldn’t refuse, even though all 500 memberships were already sold out.

  When Nick walked through the doors he expected to see a full studio. Of course he knew that the hosts of the show, Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy, were located in New York and wouldn’t actually be there, but he expected to see producers, camera sets, camera crews with headsets receiving silent instructions. Instead, a young woman greeted him and walked him around a corner to a small studio with gray carpet, a single stool, and a camera on one end facing a wall with an image of Atlanta’s skyline. She escorted Nick to the stool in front of the skyline mural, and began fitting him with the microphone and earpiece as he sat.

  At once, Nick felt the fluttering of a butterfly in the hollow cavern below his heart, a rare and unwelcome feeling for him. He looked ahead at the camera and saw only a tunnel of darkness. He had expected that he would see a monitor of sorts—a flat screen showing what the home viewers saw so that he could see his hosts and, more importantly, see how he looked. There was only a solitary, uncaring camera.

  “Morning Nick, this is Rachel in New York,” a voice in his right ear said with crystal clarity. “I’m one of the producers and we’ll go live to you in about two minutes.” Nick’s pulse quickened, alarming him. He smiled on the outside and disciplined himself on the inside, commanding himself to calm down the way he commanded excellence from his staff. He widened his smile, remembering that one is always supposed to smile on television, then tried to determine if his smile was too wide, too awkward. He raised and lowered his lips as he gave his smile the full range of motion until he found what he hoped was the perfect personification of success.

  “Hi Nick, this is Steve Doocy.” Nick instinctively looked around the room for the voice before he spoke into his lapel. “Hi Steve, this is Nick,” he said, rolling his eyes at the obvious.

  “Ten seconds, Nick.” Nick stared into the camera as if waiting for it to attack. He realized that the smile had slumped so he scolded it to respond. The intro jingle began playing in Nick’s ear, indicating the show was returning from commercial break.

  “Welcome back.” Nick could hear Gretchen speaking as he stared at the faceless camera. “We’ve got a great guest this morning. Nick Vegas, acclaimed chef and restaurateur, is with us from our Atlanta studio. Good morning Nick.”

  ***

  As Clint Justice drove north on I-85 past spaghetti junction, he visualized an aerial view of the overlapping intersection of two major Atlanta highways resembling a bowl of Ramen noodles. He hadn’t eaten Ramen noodles in years, but as Senior Compliance Investigator for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, he knew they were safe.

  It wasn’t Ramen noodles that kept him awake at night. It wasn’t even the gross violations the FSIS had detected and, for the most part, kept quiet. The fecal-coated intestines that were shoved into sausage grinders, the deep fried rats on fried chicken plates, the burgers at county fairs that were alive with more pathogens and harmful bacteria than they could count. For the most part, those violations were caught before they entered the food chain. For the most part. No, what worried Clint was pathogens that weren’t identified at inspection or, worst of all, animal products that somehow entered the food supply without undergoing inspection.

  Clint tuned his car’s satellite radio to Fox News to keep up on news while he drove to interview an anonymous tipster about a meat processing violation in Gainesville. She had agreed to meet privately with an FSIS investigator and Clint got the call.

  “We’ve got a great guest this morning. Nick Vegas, acclaimed chef and restaurateur, is with us from our Atlanta studio. Good morning Nick.”

  Clint used the buttons on his steering wheel to increase the volume.

  “One of the hottest trends in the restaurant business is the concept of underground supper clubs,” Gretchen began, “or secret dinners. You can find them happening in pretty much every city at this point and the routine is always the same. You sign up for an email list, the chef sends out an email announcing precisely when registrations will begin and diners have only seconds to secure a spot. The day of the event, those who are lucky enough to get a spot receive an email with the address of the secret location, usually a house or a farm.”

  None of this was news to Clint. He was well aware of these clubs operating all over the country, popping up in every little town as a way to operate restaurants without calling them restaurants and therefore not needing licenses or inspections. He didn’t like it one bit, but it was out of his jurisdiction. That was the territory of local and state health departments. Silos, he thought.

  “But Nick Vegas has introduced a new concept that takes these underground supper clubs to a new level. It’s a membership only club called 50-Forks that combines supper clubs with executive-level networking. Can you tell us about it, Nick?”

  Nick had been told moments before that this would be his first question. He knew he had thirty seconds or less to answer and had no idea what the questions would be beyond that. “50-Forks is about relationships,” Nick began. “Each group is open to fifty high-level business executives, and each group focuses on a different area. For example, one group is called 50 Pharma, another is 50 Financial, there’s 50 CEOs, and so on. Membership is by invitation-only and the goal is to encourage private conversations among business leaders, with exquisite dining experiences as the backdrop to facilitate the discussions.”

  “So when you say exquisite dining experiences as the backdrop, what do you mean? Are these held at your restaurants?” The question had come from Steve Doocy.

  Nick smiled broadly, confidently at the camera. “No. Given our clientele and the objective of these business events they are held in private locations, not in restaurants. They—”

  Gretchen interrupted. “Do underground supper clubs hold their events in private residences purposefully so that they can operate without the oversight of the health department or inspectors?” Clint thumbed the volume up a little more. Nick didn’t care for the question. He agreed to the interview to discuss the concept of 50-Forks, not to get trapped in a made-for-TV news drama.

  “No, of course not. In our case we operate ten restaurants, all in full compliance with all regulatory bodies. We’re very comfortable operating that way. 50-Forks operates outside of that because it’s a business club, not a restaurant.”

  “Nick, my understanding is that members pay $75,000 per year for membership. Just doing quick math on the napkin here, fifty members at $75,000 times ten clubs, that’s closing in on $40 million per year in revenue.” Steve Doocy had brought up numbers that Nick wanted people to hear, but didn’t want to confess. Clint’s eyes grew wide as he heard the number and veered left on I-985 toward Gainesville.

  “We don’t publish details about 50-Forks,” Nick began, “but as I said, it’s an exclusive club with fantastic benefits to everyone involved.”

  Gretchen took the lead again. “Nick, we know you’re a very successful businessman, but that you’re a chef at heart. Can you tell us about anything special you’ll have...cooked up for your guests?” Both Gretchen and Nick smiled at the pun.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to give away the surprises for our guests, but let’s just say I
’ve been preparing one of the dishes for two years now.”

  Nick couldn’t see Gretchen and Steve look at each other with puzzled bewilderment on camera. Finally, Gretchen closed by saying, “There you have it, folks. A new twist on the world of underground dining.”

  Steve added, “And a new twist on the phrase slow-food! I can’t imagine what the members of 50-Forks will get that took two years to cook up.”

  Clint stared ahead at the road that meandered north toward the Georgia mountains and wondered the same thing.

  Chapter 13

  POP! POP! Thumpa-thumpa-THUMP! Pop! Pop! It wasn’t a smell that woke Ozzie from his nap. It was the rhythmic thumping that came on gradually as Hal’s thumper keg began to heat up, like popcorn starting to pop. Ozzie peeled his eyes open and rolled his head to the right. Hal took a swig from his cup and began dancing to the beat of the thumper keg.

  “Hey Ozzie,” Hal said as he caught glimpse of Ozzie’s eyes. “Watch and I’ll teach you how to do the old thump keg waltz.” Hal continued clogging like a man who was hoping to audition for a remake of the movie Deliverance. Ozzie noticed the lumpy shape draped over Hal’s shoulders, but couldn’t make it out in the darkness. “If this world goes to hell in a hand basket all I need is a bit of grain and this here moonshine still, Ozzie, and I can keep us fed.”

  Hal took another slug right off the worm of his moonshine still.

  “Back in the old days, every village had themselves a preacher, a carpenter, a well-witcher, and a moonshiner. Hell, that’s all you need for a community right there.” Hal said, before adding the obvious. “I’d be the moonshiner. I figure Rex here would be the preacher. Which one would you be Ozzie? The well-witcher?”

  Hal walked over and took a seat in the glow of the fire. Ozzie twitched his head and made out the lump on Hal’s shoulders. Hal saw Ozzie’s gaze and looked to his shoulder at Rex’s head. “This here’s Rex,” Hal said, nodding toward the opossum that sat on his left shoulder with its tail draped around Hal’s neck. “Hell, Rex here LOVES the ’shine! Sometimes Bambi comes up and drinks the shine. I done told you Ozzie, this here’s all you need to feed your family. Just ask these critters. They could eat anything in the woods, but they keep on coming back when they hear that thumper keg a’going.”