The Goldsboro Curve

By William Campbell

Buck grew up in the hills of southern Ohio at the same time the automobile industry was adapting cars to large engines and big fins. A guy’s car said a lot about him. Most guys had a fast car with loud exhaust and stylish paint. They kept those cars immaculate and tuned up for maximum performance. Buck was no exception when it came to his car.
He was different from other guys, though. He got a college education and became a manager in a local automobile-parts manufacturer. He never let bullies shove him around. Bullying was a normal part of growing up in the hills, and most guys tolerated it. But not Buck. He sometimes viciously resisted the bullies, and he was unforgiving. If they got hurt, they deserved it.
When he was accused of killing a former bully, he got minimal public support, even though he thought himself the victim. His lawyer warned him to take the situation seriously. He faced an aggressive prosecutor and a good but unpredictable judge.
Twists, turns, and sloppy police work jeopardized everything Buck held dear. He prayed truth would prevail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481737661

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© 2013 by William Campbell. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/10/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3767-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3765-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3766-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906310

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter One Trial One

Chapter Two Potatoes

Chapter Three Rivet

Chapter Four Church

Chapter Five Court Two

Chapter Six Buck, Eddy Meeting

Chapter Seven Meat Loaf

Chapter Eight Breakfast Meeting

Chapter Nine Mole

Chapter Ten Getting Ready

Chapter Eleven Work

Chapter Twelve Bow

Chapter Thirteen Saturday Off

Chapter Fourteen Calm Down

Chapter Fifteen Buck, Cliff At Church

Chapter Sixteen Buck’s Boss

Chapter Seventeen Rusty Versus Ford

Chapter Eighteen Forgive Muff

Chapter Nineteen Art, Floyd In Detroit

Chapter Twenty Ashley And The Judge

About The Author

About The Book

To my wife, Nellie. Her constant encouragement and love made all things possible.

CHAPTER ONE

Trial One

Buck was told to pay attention while in court but found it almost impossible. He couldn’t imagine being convicted of such a ludicrous charge as manslaughter. Eddy, his lawyer, contended that if the court could get an indictment, then the court could get a conviction. Buck just couldn’t believe it, so his mind wandered more than usual.

Seeing so many of his school acquaintances and friends brought many memories to mind. Ike was here, of course, which meant he had at least one supporter in the court. Most of the others were there out of curiosity more than to judge Buck. The local paper had covered the indictment but hadn’t explained the prosecution’s case very well. The paper outlined the general charge but was less than specific about the evidence. The prosecutor, Joyce Windster, had a spotted record but usually managed to win the high-profile or well-publicized cases.

Ike gave Buck a nod of recognition, which caused Buck to reminisce.

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Wreck: 1955

August in southern Ohio is hot. This August evening was insufferably hot. The air was not moving at all. This time of year it rarely did, as it was too heavy and tired to make any kind of effort other than to just hang there. Likewise, any human effort that could be postponed was. People sat in their yards wearing no more than decency dictated they should. It was 1955. Summer dress wasn’t much different from winter dress; there was just less of it. Women wore cotton housedresses, and men wore their usual slacks and shirts, although this evening they were in their undershirts. (Men didn’t go shirtless outdoors. Even an undershirt was inappropriate if a neighbor, who lived at least the length of two football fields away, wandered by.) It was hot. It was an effort to exhale against the still, heavy air.

Buck was the exception. In this oven, he was cutting the grass. He had put it off, as usual, until it was long and ugly, and his mom demanded that it be cut, and now! So here he was, dripping with sweat, his T-shirt clinging to his back, his hair sticking to his head, looking generally a mess. But he didn’t seem to notice. Once in a while, he would bend forward and let the sweat drip off his nose, blow as hard as he could into it, and make a nice spray to walk into. Not much fun, but opportunities were limited. Plus, Buck was a pubescent thirteen-year-old boy that took little notice of anything. Unless it was marginally vulgar, teenage boys saw little use in wasting time on it. The fact barely registered that he was walking behind a power mower spewing exhaust, grass clippings, and dust, which when mixed with the humidity created nearly intolerable conditions. In addition to doing interesting things with his sweat, he pondered things he’d heard about females. He busily fantasized. Occasionally he also pondered what he would do with the two dollars he was earning for cutting the neighbor Hilda’s grass.

Growing up in the country educated one early in life about reproduction. Until lately, that’s all it seemed to be. Buck had once caught one of his dad’s hounds and put him in with an in-heat bitch. He heard plenty about that one. But what happened seemed just methodical; it didn’t explain what he heard from the older guys and what occupied his and his friends’ conversations. His friends, of course, didn’t have any experience, but they repeated what they heard as if they did.

It was early evening, hazy, and not cooling off much at all. The dust, grass, and noise put Buck in a trance, aiding his daydreaming.

Uh-oh, a wreck. That’s the only reason Ike and the guys would be running toward anything. Darkness was setting in, but Buck could almost feel the excitement of another wreck on the curve. He reached over and cut the throttle to idle and shoved the mower into the knee-high weeds close by, bordering his and all yards in the neighborhood. The weeds choked the engine, stopping it. He took off running down the hill, keeping Ike in sight. He had covered no more than a third of the five hundred yards to the curve when many other people came into view. Hey, life could be boring in August, so a wreck was exciting.

There were lots of wrecks on the curve. County speedsters considered it a challenge to take it as fast as possible. It was at the end of a two-mile straight, a real rarity in this part of southern Ohio. A normal driver would sometimes approach it a little fast, not anticipating the severity of the curve to the left; from the straight, it was a fooler. It was funny to see drivers suddenly realize their problem and brake and steer frantically, making their tires scream. At least it was funny to the adolescents usually sitting on one of the porches on either side of the curve.

The state blacktopped the highway this summer and upped the accident count significantly. They actually paved waves into the surface, so if a driver approached at a particular angle and speed, he could be flipped to the exterior of the curve, especially under wet conditions. The neighborhood’s residents were continuously entertained this summer.

Where’s the wreck? Buck called. Ike didn’t hear, or pretended not to hear. When absorbed in self-importance, Ike often did this to his older friend. Buck was winded and dripping with sweat and covered with grass clippings up to his forehead. Buck should have been as much of a spectacle as the wreck. No one noticed much, however, because Buck and his friends looked like this most of the time. They were cutting grass, hoeing and weeding their gardens, taking care of livestock, or doing some other chore most of the time.

It’s under the rail, Ike finally responded.

What d’ya mean, under the rail? I don’t see no car under the rail.

It’s not a car— Ike said, choking off the idiot at the end of the sentence. Ike liked Buck and respected him and knew Buck wouldn’t take advantage of him, but being two years Buck’s junior meant he automatically would get the back of his head swatted or his butt kicked if he gave a smart-aleck answer. Plus, he was interested in the goings-on and didn’t want a distraction. It’s a motorcycle, Ike continued.

You mean he slid under the rail?

Yup. Ike, now warming to the conversational advantage he had on Buck, added, Wait till you see his nose. It’s red, round like a baseball hat, and ’bout a foot long.

You seen him already?

Yeah, I was the first on the scene. Ike was always first on the scene. His house sat within fifteen feet of the north side of the curve at the end of the straight. I called the ambulance. Ike also always called the ambulance.

They looked straight down at the motorcycle. Who is it? Ya know? Buck asked.

Ike, now convinced he was the font of all knowledge, said, We think he’s Miss Threader’s son.

She sub teaches sometimes, doesn’t she?

Someone said he was soon to be drafted into the army. Ike liked knowing everything.

There were now about twenty people standing around talking about the young man under the rail as if they were watching a football game. They had seen so many gruesome sights at the curve that they’d become insensitive to the victims. Several independent conversations were going on; most repeated the same things Ike and Buck were saying.

Some idiots were smoking amid the smell of spilled gasoline. Ernie delighted in telling them to put their cigarettes out. What d’ya want to do, blow us all up? They put them out quickly. Ernie had the authority that came from running a successful auto dealership for thirty years.

Buck gave Ernie a nod of approval and noticed that Sadie was coming toward him. She and Buck were friends of the same age who had grown up together. They were the boy and girl next door, although they never thought in those terms. They were friends. They rode the same school bus, grew up watching Howdy Doody and seeing Saturday afternoon matinees featuring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the Three Stooges, and Tarzan. They played checkers and cards on rainy afternoons. They played unmerciful tricks on any of the younger kids who dared get into range.

Sadie was cute. Everyone liked her. She sang beautifully in church and even paid attention during the sermons, interminable as they seemed to Buck. Sadie got good grades in school, even if they were short of Buck’s great grades. They conversed often about things some adults didn’t know about. They were good friends and enjoyed each other. Neither Sadie nor Buck had outstanding looks or features. They both had brown hair, green eyes, and standard builds for thirteen-year-olds. What stood out were their smiles. Their faces emitted genuine good feelings when they smiled at someone. People therefore found them very pleasant to be around and would always invite them in for a Coke or milk and cookies.

Sadie made it to Buck, smiled, and asked all the questions necessary to be brought immediately up to date on the wreck. She had been working in the garden and had a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Some strands of hair hanging here and there and sticking to her face made her look adorable. Buck hardly noticed, but lately he had found that her presence made him self-conscious. Before she had bounced up he couldn’t have cared less about how sweaty, dirty, and disheveled he was. Now, with her standing so close, he was aware of everything. Buck thought if this was sexual awareness, then it changed everything and took up a lot of time. Buck liked to ponder things and wouldn’t suffer ordinary distractions such as social niceties and conversations. His friends had learned long ago to just wait when he was deep in thought.

Buck thought, Why are humans so preoccupied with sex? Animals seemed to just do it and get on with things. And they didn’t think it was wrong. Dogs might have been the exception since they were always smelling each other’s hind ends. Surely they wouldn’t do this unless there was a sexual benefit to it. At this, Buck smiled and came back to earth.

Sadie smiled also; she always did when he was around.

The ambulance arrived and the EMTs loaded the motorcyclist in. From twenty-five feet away, his nose was visible; it was swollen five times bigger than normal. He was still unconscious and bloody all over. That guardrail had really worked him over as he slid under it. He was lucky it hadn’t cut him in two. You couldn’t always tell by looking how severe someone’s injuries were, though. Just last month a young guy had been pulled from an overturned car without a scratch on him. But he had died before getting to the hospital. From what Buck could tell, the motorcycle didn’t appear harmed at all when it was tossed on the wrecker.

The crowd, which now numbered fifty to sixty, was breaking up, getting in their cars, and going home. The excitement was over. Buck, Sadie, and Ike sat on the rail of Ike’s front porch. A wreck on the curve meant a break for the neighborhood kids while the adults were distracted. Tonight was no exception. It was getting too late for a ball game, but the younger kids had a game of hide-and-go-seek in gear while the adolescents all gathered around Ike’s porch. The heat, though lessened, was still overwhelming, and it helped the older kids decide that maybe standing around was plenty of activity. By no means did the kids head home; they might still get stuck with a chore of some kind if they did. They’d wait till a half hour after dark when their folks would be in bed or asleep in their chairs.

Sadie was explaining to Ike how the motorcycle most likely had to slide to get under the guardrail undamaged. The guardrail was a strip of sheet metal about fifteen inches wide held perpendicular to the ground by wooden railway posts spaced every six feet. There was a ten-inch space between the rail and the ground. The rail was made to give on impact and cushion the crash; on this curve, it did that often. Many times the residents could hear the sickening sound of a car scraping the length of the rail. Of course, if a car hit it straight on, the rail did little to help. One drunk made no effort to brake for the curve and hit the rail pretty much straight on, taking out about thirty feet of steel and four posts. He then proceeded down an embankment and straight across a garden and flew over a three-foot creek. (This feat prompted a lot of study and discussion: this creek was three feet wide and three feet deep—the tracks clearly showed that the car had flown over it, but it didn’t seem possible). The car then went another one hundred feet, through a narrow gap between a concrete garage and a big apple tree. Still going, the drunk swerved and went another eighty feet into Cricker’s front porch, wiping it out. The drunk got out of his car, belched, and surveyed the damage to his car and the porch: both were totaled.

Cricker’s was the last porch to get zonked. The other six porches had been demolished at least once and damaged several times. Amazingly, no one was ever on a porch when a car hit it, and people were on these porches a lot. In memory, the closest any bystanders had come to being hurt was when Buck was going onto the highway with his lawnmower. A pickup truck lost control, made three complete revolutions, and slid through the gravel two feet in front of Buck before it straightened out and drove on. At the time Buck was plenty mad; on reflection, he marveled at being unhurt and witnessing such a trick maneuver up close and personal.

Sadie and Ike continued their analysis while Buck listened. He noticed how attentive Sadie was. This was probably why she was so popular. She genuinely enjoyed people and was interested in their lives. Buck also noticed she was maturing, growing a complete female inventory. But it didn’t seem right to view Sadie this way. This was another thing that confused Buck so much about this sexual thing going on in him. What could be wrong about sexual feelings toward Sadie that would make Buck embarrassed? Could he have sex with friends, or would sex ruin all that?

Sadie looked over, caught Buck staring, and looked incredulous. Buck opened his palm, slapped Sadie on the back of the head, and the race was on. No one ever won these races. There were too many places to hide, especially in the twilight. It was a graceful way to bow out of the evening.

The next morning was not as hot but still generally insufferable. Buck picked up where he left off cutting Hilda’s grass. She and her brother, the last of the clan, occupied a twelve-room home they inherited from their father. The house sat on a hill surrounded by walnut trees accessible by a drive ending in a circle at the front of the house, a majestic setting and one that was quite impressive at one time. But now it was run-down. Hilda’s father had owned some kind of business back in the heyday of the local coal mines. He must have been industrious, but the trait completely eluded his offspring. They lacked normal ambition and were perfectly happy to live on a meager income as the inheritance dwindled. They were both in their seventies now and probably figured the money would outlive them. And they were happy and amiable, generally pleasant to be around. Like Buck’s mom said, Why shouldn’t they be pleasant? They don’t move around enough to be in a bad mood.

Buck liked Hilda. He’d spent a lot of time exploring this old house when he was younger. In addition to the twelve rooms on the first two floors, there was an attic on the third floor that a grown man could stand in with his arms raised over his head. Hilda never complained when Buck, along with a friend or two, would traipse up and down one of the stairways or play a rowdy game of cops and robbers or some other boisterous kid stuff. Hilda had introduced him to baseball. She was an avid Cincinnati Reds fan and would provide the popcorn whenever a game was televised. Many a time they would erupt wildly when Big Ted, Wally Post, or Gus Bell would smack one. Many another time they would be depressed when the Reds lost again, the mood lasting well into the next day.

Buck and his mom took good care of Hilda. They’d pick up anything she needed from town in their next grocery trip. If she wandered by at suppertime, she usually stopped in and joined Buck’s family. She rode to church with them. Hilda had no kids, her husband was long deceased, and her brother mostly sat in his room doing nothing. In fact, Buck’s dad said her brother never had done anything and delighted in it. This arrangement was no more than what most people did at the time. It was called being neighborly.

Court Resumed:

Mrs. Primsley’s appearance snapped Buck’s attention back to court. What in the world was she doing here? Buck guessed his teachers might be interested or curious, although his relationship with her was weaker than his relationship with many of the other teachers. He and the men teachers could find something in common to talk about: sports, cars, or politics. The women teachers would only ask him how the family was doing or make other small talk. But Mrs. Primsley never discussed anything with him. In fact, she always seemed detached or preoccupied when around him, maybe a little tense.

Buck didn’t mind. He never wanted any extra attention from a teacher; it might involve more effort than he wished to give. Mrs. Primsley always had him sit at the front of the class; she was one of the few teachers who assigned seats. She taught seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade English. Buck excelled in English and put in no extra effort to get As. Mrs. Primsley sensed this and routinely tried to catch him daydreaming. She often asked him a tough question very quickly to try to get him. He always answered as if he could anticipate when she would ask him something and what she would ask. She found this irksome, although the girls that answered her spur-of-the-moment questions readily didn’t seem to bother her.

Other than dancing with Mrs. Primsley at one of the summer dances, Buck couldn’t remember having any discussion with her at all. And that dance wasn’t noteworthy, at least to Buck. Dancing with a teacher or two had been a tradition at the summer dances, which the school used as a means of raising cash for extracurricular activities throughout the school year. Teachers would volunteer to chaperone, and the boys and girls would dutifully dance with a teacher or two. So Buck had asked Mrs. Primsley to dance.

It was a slow dance, of course, but that didn’t mean you draped yourself all over your partner. Dancers, including Buck, maintained a respectable distance, especially with the teachers. Most of these country boys couldn’t tolerate much female contact anyhow without being embarrassed as they walked off the floor when