Dismayberry

By Stephen Peet

On his first day at the dream job he lied like crazy to get, greenhorn Mike Otter meets his one-eyed boss, a sharp-tongued grandma office manager, a geeky genius co-worker and a splattered body thrown from a 500-foot cliff. Then things get weird.

 

This ain't Aunt Bee's Mayberry.

In this fast, funny mystery / adventure / romance, bartender-turned-reporter Mike Otter leaves Washington, DC, to start a new life in the high country of Appalachia. Just beginning to fall under the spell of the beauty — both geographic and human — he finds the hills, hollows and his love interest hide secrets that make his own secrets look like amateur hour. 

 

The latest in PEET.ink's collection of "snackable fiction" is the best yet. The author's love letter to Western NC in the time of Reagan delivers unforgettable characters, a plot twistier than a corkscrew, storytelling that rips along at a breakneck pace with an ending you won't see coming until it lands like a body thrown from towering cliff.  In short, this ain't Aunt Bee's Mayberry. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: PEETink Communications Corp.
• Release date: Oct 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215948606

Book preview

… the stranger put down a fresh hundred dollar bill to pay for nabs a milkey way and a nu-grape. Cherrie said she could not break a bill of that magnitude. The stranger said I guess theys free then. Cherrie said no they aint free. The stranger said dis mayberry aint it? Wheres the motherfucking kindness for strangers? Cherrie said she did not respond to his nasty remark but she was sure he caught the stink-eye she threw at him. He give a snort and fake surprise face and pulled a wadded five dollar bill from his back pocket and told Cherrie to keep the change. Leaving the store he said something to the effect of see you down at wallys for pop and he laughed. He drove off in a silver oldsmobile that looked fairly new. She guessed a cutlass. It had antena at the wheel wells. These would have been curb feelers (my conclusion not Cherries). She could not give a tag number or a state. When shown a photo of the deceased she could not varify it was the stranger but said the purple shirt looked familiar. What was left of it. She got a look that she might faint or take sick and I ended the interview and let her go.

— from Sheriff Ball’s interview notes

Chapter 1

He wasn’t the kind of guy to blow off a friend but, damn, it was time to go, get out of there, get on the road. The feeling of exposure and vulnerability had him shifting from one foot to the other, doing an anxious little bounce on the balls of his feet, the dance of the nervous. His fingertips tapped out an impatient percussion on the roof of his car, double-parked in front of her Glover Park townhouse.

Just swing past to say bye-bye, she said. I have a going away present, she said.

A round gray lady in a housedress gone gauzy waddled by with a bug-eyed chihuahua on a leash. He watched them come to a small patch of grass between the curb and sidewalk. The pooch sniffed briefly then tap-danced itself into the shape of a comma. The lady looked up and stared into the eyes of the impatient man in a way that said, I won’t be picking up that turd and I dare you to say something.

Like he cared. At that moment Mike Otter was officially an ex-resident and in his own way walking away from the poop. He made a point of maintaining eye contact with the old broad as he reached into the car and tapped the car horn again.

The storm door creaked open and out padded Fleishman in sweatpants and an oversized Carolina In My Mind t-shirt, braless underneath and chilled by the morning air, it appeared. She cocked a hip, snaked one arm over the other. Smoke ribbons from the Virginia Slims scissored in her long fingers undulated around her head like a warped halo.

She took a moment to take in her visitor and the scene, blew a plume of smoke. Wagon ho, she said.

Nice shirt.

She smiled and curtsied. Then did a little head-jerk thing toward his lopsided car. Can you see out of that piece of shit to drive? Looks hazardous.

Everything Otter owned was stuffed in plastic garbage bags and shoved into and lashed upon his rust-speckled Datsun. He plucked at the lashings, let his eyes drift up and connect with hers.

Is that concern I detect? You want me to stay? Bag this whole thing?

Oh, please. After all you’ve put me through? I gotta see how this plays out. Off you go, adventure boy.

A beat of quiet; and another. Otter broke the awkward silence. Hey, who knows, maybe you’ll visit, decide to move down, give a different life a shot.

She looked skyward pretending to contemplate the idea. Bren Fleishman, jewess of Appalachia. She gave Otter a blank stare, flicked the cigarette to the sidewalk. Ain’t happening, kiddo. But you’re going to pull this off, I know it. They’re going to love you. Don’t forget your parting gift.

With that she peeled the t-shirt over her head, tossed it to him, posed briefly with hands on hips, proud of her assets. And if you bomb, back to D.C. you’ll come. There are worse places. Maybe Reagan will spruce up the joint. She spun on her heels and swished into the townhouse.

He caught the shirt and her scent it dragged along, Windsong and cigarette smoke. Staring at the stoop she vacated he wondered what that performance was, some kind of metaphor? Her shedding responsibility for whatever lay ahead? It was that kind of inner life that made Otter think he might be a writer. He erased the thought with a shake of his head and off he drove, the Datsun burping blue smoke that enveloped the old lady and her dog.

Crossing Key Bridge he stole glances in the sideview mirror to watch the city and the only life he knew shrink away — Marie, The Pub, unpaid debts, good decisions and bad. Out ahead of him was a long drive into an opportunity he had told many lies to make possible. He inhaled deeply, exhaled contentedly, eyed his handsome reflection.

In the age-old script young men follow he was answering the call of the unknown, abandoning the familiar, chasing a dream, testing himself. His calm, to his mind, was borne of confidence, resourcefulness and ambition rather than what it really was: ignorance. Otter had no clue what he had gotten himself into.

He was six hours into the drive and growing weary when he exited the Interstate for a skinny blacktop that in short order tunneled into a dense forest. Boughs of great hardwood trees and towering evergreens muted the sunshine and chilled the early summer breeze cascading through the open window. The road seemed scarcely wide enough for two cars.

An hour later the Datsun was climbing, climbing, climbing. Turns grew sharper until he faced switchback after switchback. His squeeze on the steering wheel tightened, then went full white knuckle when a truck like a sudden locomotive appeared around the curve ahead, over the double line, its tower of fat logs straining against chain restraints. Heart thumping his sternum, Otter veered onto the scant shoulder beyond which he saw nothing but tree tops. Gravel pinged the Datsun’s undercarriage like machine-gun fire. He pictured the car airborne in a spray of dirt and splintered evergreen boughs, the roar sucker punching his ear drums and then fading quickly away leaving acrid diesel fumes behind as the truck rumbled on. Otter muscled all four tires back onto the blacktop and rounded the curve that had produced the homicidal log truck to find his view filled by the tail end of a slow-moving school bus. He stomped the brake pedal, fishtailing the Datsun, its front bumper inches from the bus’s. Jesus! Fuck! he shouted into the windshield.

The tires grabbed with a bark. Collision avoided. Fuck, he hissed.

Along they crept, the Datsun and the bus, his breathing and pulse beginning to match the bus’s slow pace. His death grip on the steering wheel relaxed.

As the steep grade flattened the landscape opened up. Otter became aware again of the cool, clean wind rushing in. And the view; an amazing view. Layer upon layer of blue-tinted mountains fading off to the horizon. Along the road, rolling emerald pastures and porch-wrapped farmhouses shaded by enormous maple and oak trees. A farmer in overalls, bent to his hoeing in the dark loam of a freshly tilled garden, straightened to wave as Otter passed. Even the odd shack and cluster of mobile homes tucked in the hollows were softened by the lushness and natural beauty that surrounded them.

Then Otter came upon a wide gravel parking lot fronting a massive metal warehouse. Grubb Forest Products read the huge black lettering above wide doorways revealing an armory of trucks and machinery within. Surrounding hillsides held legions of identical cone-shaped trees in tidy rows, obedient Christmas soldiers.

Low-lying fog blanketed one area of trees near the roadside where laborers shouldering canvas bags marched down the rows. Each tree was doused with a fistful of white powder that hung in the air and drifted into the road. Otter cranked up the window against the pungent chemical smell.

Movement in the back of the bus caught his eye. A lone girl framed in one of the rear windows. Her dull blonde hair fell straight and limp around a face a year or two beyond childhood pudginess. A middle schooler, Otter guessed. He smiled and ventured a wave. Her blank expression didn't change.

Beyond the Christmas tree plantation the landscape gave way to plain houses and clutches of trailers, the occasional convenience store and filling station. Otter cranked down the window to a fresh rush of bracing air just as he approached a large, all-white billboard with black lettering that read: Welcome To Dewey. A string of logos from various civic organizations and churches lined the bottom of the billboard.

He’d arrived. A mixture of relief and excitement stirred Otter to another attempt at connecting with his first acquaintance in his new home. He smiled and trilled his fingers. This time the girl’s hand slowly rose. She rolled her fingers and thumb into a claw, formed her mouth into an O and mimed a blowjob.

Chapter 2

The Dewey Democrat overlooked the intersection of the town's two main roads, Main Street and Hemlock. Across the street sat First Northwestern Bank. Kitty-corner was Pearl’s Department Store. Ham’s Hardware occupied the other corner. Radiating from these anchor businesses for several blocks in each direction stood low-slung brick-and-mortar enterprises — insurance agency, cafe, law offices, auto parts store, florist, pharmacy, art shop, stationery store and so on. Some neat and tidy, most wearing a coat of decades-old soot.

Otter eased the Datsun into a slanted parking spot in front of the newspaper office. The engine gurgled a few times before quivering and falling silent. Blue smoke rolled out from the undercarriage. From this cloud the town’s newest citizen emerged as though conjured, given the curious looks of passersby.

Plate glass wavy with age flanked oak-framed glass doors. Stenciled on each door, the newspaper’s name in gold lettering arched over an eagle whose talons gripped quilled pens. There was no tinkling of a bell when Otter entered. Silence and a vacant receptionist’s desk were his only greeting.

The space was cleaved length-wise by a floor-to-ceiling wall. A large machine with keyboard attached dominated the left side of the partition; this would be the typesetter similar to the ones Fleishman pointed out during his training. The lighted, slant-top tables would be used for paste-up. Pegboards loaded with rulers, t-squares, brayers and cascading sheets of advertisements and photographic prints lined every available inch of wall space. Production. Otter pictured Fleishman explaining each tool and element.

She had waltzed Otter through The Washington Harbinger operation two Saturdays in a row; his crash course in newspapering, she called it. He identified the right half of the room as editorial (Fleishman: Don't say newsroom) where two ceiling fans lazily stirred dust motes floating in a slash of sunlight. There were three desks, each mounted with a typewriter. The hall in the back of editorial likely led to the darkroom. He surmised the heavy presses were housed in the basement where a concrete foundation could handle their mass and vibrations.

He approached the forward-most desk. Arranged on the desktop with an Underwood typewriter sat a cup of sharpened pencils and pens, a stapler, a stack of crisp copy paper, fresh reporters’ notebooks and, something that provoked a thin smile, a sheet of copy paper creased into a tent on which someone had printed: Mike Otter, reporter.

Hello? he called, eyes wandering about his new workplace. To his right a dark walnut door was ajar. He nudged it open. Hello?

Puddled behind a desk with lion’s paw feet and fluted columns sat a gray haired man wearing a blue Oxford cloth shirt and a striped tie loosened at his wattled neck. He seemed to be melting into the oak office chair. His right elbow drilled into the chair’s padded arm, a huge paw of a hand cradled the whole half of his face, right eye lost in the loose folds. His left eye, though, was wide open, sharp, gray and