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Chapter 10: Things Fall Apart

A Northwoods sky is seldom black
and rarely can you see
the stars against the cloak of night
when lit by flames of green.
-the author

Thursday, March 24th, 1988

With a frustrated sob, Daisy fell back onto her pillows and yanked the covers over her shoulders. Sleep had become a precious commodity, as unreliable as the Appalachian weather. Though not yet dawn, she knew at any minute the robins would start their early morning soliloquy, and she would not be able to drown them out. As the days marched blithely into spring, Daisy wasn't sure how many more nights of no sleep she could take before she ceased to function.

A 'chirp! chirp!' came from the tree outside her window, and she pulled her extra pillow over her head with a groan. After a brief pause, the chirps continued, adding variations before settling down into a monotonous 'tweet, tweet, chirp, chirp, chirp, tweet, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp...'

She chucked the pillow at the window where it smacked the glass before dropping to the floor, then dragged herself out of bed, pulled on her robe and slippers, and went to start breakfast.

Both of her cousins having a knack for burning things meant that, unless she wanted to eat Cheerios and All Bran every morning, the hot meals were up to her. Uncle Jesse could cook, but he got a pass on account of he did more work than the three of them put together before the sun had fully risen.

She opened the cabinet to the right of the sink to take down the heavy mixing bowl for biscuits. It wasn't there, and it took her a moment to remember that it was now stored in the cabinet on the other side of the room. Finding things in the kitchen was a daily irritation, as nothing was in the right place. She reminded herself that the measuring cups were no longer in the drawer to the right of the sink but now on the left.

Grabbing the cup, it caught on the hook of the can opener which in turn caught a wire whisk. Half a dozen utensils spilled out onto the floor.

"That's it!" she fumed, slinging the cup across the room. "I'm done with this ding-dang kitchen!"

She scooped up the fallen utensils and slammed them down beside the mixing bowl, then pulled the offending drawer out of the frame and upended it onto the table. Other drawers followed and then the cabinets, and by the time Uncle Jesse came in to start his day every drawer and cabinet stood open and bare. The countertops were littered with stacks of casserole dishes, plates, crockery, and tupperware.

He stopped short at the mess, and she tried to wipe her eyes and turn towards the window before he saw her tears. A chair scraped against the floor behind her.

"Daisy, honey, come sit down a minute."

She didn't want a lecture. How many times could she listen to everyone assure her that it would be okay, to just 'keep going and things would get better'? She stared out across the road, wishing she was somewhere else.

"I'm fine, Uncle Jesse."

"I know that," he said, unperturbed. "Still, I reckon you could use a break. Come sit down."

Another chair scraped back from the table, and she sighed and walked over to it, plopping down as though she was a child taken to task for misbehaving. That, at least, would feel familiar - and warranted. Just the other day, she'd found a garter snake beside the chicken coop, and had had the overwhelming desire to put it in the General Lee to see what the boys would do. The memory made her grin.

It would have been a red flag that she'd been skipping her anxiety medication, though. While Xanax eased the trauma of her amnesia and helped her sleep, it made her feel flat, like nothing mattered anymore. She supposed that was the point, but she hated it almost as much as the feeling of helplessness.

"You know," he began, "Lavinia had a love for this kitchen that neither me nor the boys could appreciate. She was forever taking us to task for putting things in the wrong places."

She looked up and they shared a sad smile. "Yeah, I remember."

He nodded. "None of us did a very good job of keeping it up after she was gone. Then it passed on to you, and that wasn't fair at your age, but you helped keep us together that next year." He reached over and brushed the tears off her cheek. "I think you were the strongest of all of us."

"I sure don't feel strong anymore, Uncle Jesse." That was the biggest understatement of all.

"Well now, I don't reckon being strong means you'll never feel weak, it just means there's somethin' in here-" he tapped above her heart, "-that won't let you give up. I've seen you pull yourself up time after time, dust the dirt off and try again."

"Was this how I felt after L.D. left me?" She still had a hard time believing she had married such a no-account loser. It was chance she'd found out about him at all, but her insurance still had him listed as her next of kin. Uncle Jesse had told her everything he knew about her ex-husband, though there were parts he could only speculate about.

She thought her ex would explain some of her emotional memories, but L.D. seemed as worthless as a lump of moldy bread, and the only feeling she got was a sense of relief that he was gone. He was just a name on a piece of paper. A mistake.

"For a while," he said. "Then you decided to put it all behind you and go back to school."

She considered the future she had planned for herself. "Was I happy? About going to college?"

"At first you just wanted to get away from Hazzard and start over somewhere new. That first semester was hard; you didn't know anyone and it had been a long time since you had been in school. But you settled in and started to figure out what you wanted, and not what everyone expected you to want."

She wondered what had made her leave Hazzard when she did. It wasn't as if L.D. was lurking around - by all accounts he hadn't been seen in town since he'd left her high and dry. "I wish I could be as sure I'll get through this as you seem to be, Uncle Jesse."

"You're that same Daisy," he said, patting her hand. "And no matter what you decide to do, we'll always be here for you.

"I know. I just..," she hesitated, thinking of how to phrase her other concern. "Don't take this wrong, Uncle Jesse, but I'm gonna go stir crazy staying cooped up here all day. I need a job. Ain't there anything I can do other than work at the Boar's Nest?"

Last week, she'd overheard the boys and Uncle Jesse discussing how they were going to scrape by without her working. She had made it half a day at the Boar's Nest in January before she realized, no matter how good of a waitress or bartender she had been before, it was not where she belonged now. She couldn't do the math for the register in her head anymore, nor could she keep drink orders straight without writing it all down.

"I figured you might ask about that some time," he said. "So I did some thinking on it. There was a job you held for a little while that you seemed to love, but you just didn't have time for it."

She sat up straighter, intrigued. "What was it?"

"You wrote some articles for the Hazzard Gazette now and then."

"The paper?" She felt a flicker of excitement and wondered why she hadn't done that full time. Surely it was a better job than the Boar's Nest? "You think I might be able to get a job there again?"

"Actually, Mr. Amos came to me about it," he chuckled. "He's been thinking of doing a column on some of the citizens of Hazzard, and wondered if you would be interested in doing the interviews and writing it. He said he thought it might help you feel like you were part of the community again."

"But, Uncle Jesse, I don't remember anyone. How would I..," she stopped herself, understanding dawning and bringing a lump to her throat. "He's giving me a way to meet people, isn't he?"

"Everyone knows what happened to you and wants to help, but they don't know how. He's hoping you'll say 'yes'."

For the first time since the accident, she felt hope for the days ahead. It was hard to go to town. People would come up and ask how she was doing or wish her well, but they were all strangers to her, and she was too embarrassed to ask them who they were. Maybe if she met more people - if she found her place in Hazzard again, it would counteract the terrible loneliness which colored her days.

"Tell him that I'll do it, Uncle Jesse," she decided, right then and there. "In fact, it sounds perfect."

Uncle Jesse looked around at the mess in the room. "I'll tell Bo and Luke to help you put things where you want them to go," he said. "And you let them climb that ladder."

Lake Superior lay like a flat, blue stone stretched out beneath the wool-gray sky. Waves rocked in and out, like an overfull bowl tipping gently back and forth, sending water gurgling among the eddies. Further away down the beach, the gulls were fighting over fish thrown up by the tide.

The late-March day was unseasonably warm in the mid-60s with the sun somewhere high above that grayness, but the wind, which blew perpetually here on the headland, carried with it the crisp smell of coming snow. Enos had adapted to the long, harsh winters sooner than he had thought possible, but the bitter cold still gave him a ripple of uncertain terror. He was an anomaly here - like the sea glass thrown up by the tides, and part of him wondered if a southern boy, who had only seen real snow a handful out of his 36 years, should tempt fate so readily.

Then the nights would come, and he would be blown away - forgetting his fears and everything he'd left behind. If the Pacific had no memory, then Superior was oblivion.

"You should've come to the Locks with me for Opening Day," said the woman next to him, interrupting his thoughts in her peculiar accent. "The Algoma Central freighters were the first five upbound and downbound. Not surprising since they were already lined up two days early."

He glanced at the striking figure standing on the rocks in the shadow of the whitewashed lighthouse. Her jet black hair streamed in the wind and around her ankles billowed a skirt in the colors of fall leaves. He wondered if she knew how attractive she looked, and if she had known he was coming to the Point today. Probably. Melinda, while not the gossiping type, seemed to know all things at all times where he was concerned.

He suspected several of the townsfolk were matchmaking.

Midnight on the second Tuesday in March had been Opening Day at the Sault Ste Marie Locks. It was a popular event, drawing hundreds of locals each year to see which ship would gain the honor of having the first run between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. "The Soo's a long way off by land," he reminded her. "I couldn't get away. Maybe next year."

She smiled at him, knowingly, as though his words implied more than their face value. "Next year, then." She turned her face back into the wind, looking off into the distance at the rolling waves, and Enos wondered if Melinda Zagadka was thinking of her homeland - what little she could remember of it. Some tiny seaport town in Russia called Baltiysk. "I should get back," she sighed, at last. "The museum has been busy this week."

She gathered her skirt as she stepped off the rocks and back onto the narrow plank boardwalk. Her fingers pressed lightly against his shoulder as she passed him, in a gesture of what could be taken as a friendly good-bye. People were very huggy and touchy-feeling up here in the North, and he tried not to read more into it, making a conscious effort not to look behind him as the specter of her touch lingered. Something about the way she always looked at him and touched him made Enos feel as though he was already caught and just hadn't realized it, yet.

He didn't hear the deputy behind him until he cleared his throat.

"Sheriff? Do you want I should go back and check the construction over on Highway 123, yet?"

Five years ago, the state had repaved a half mile stretch of 123 with a new form of asphalt. It hadn't stood up well against the U.P.'s freeze-thaw cycle and had resulted in a pothole filled section of their otherwise pristine concrete roads. Enos was rapidly understanding why Yoopers had little patience for downstate law makers who treated the UP as their litter box. Why couldn't they use their own shoddy roads for test pavement?

"No, that's alright Pete. Rodney says there ain't been any traffic out there for hardly an hour, and it's late. Why don't you go down to Paradise and have Buster fill out a report on that abandoned car at the motel. It's probably just someone who got himself drunk out in the woods looking for turkeys and ain't found his way back, yet, but we still oughta check in out."

"Yes, sir." said Pete. He turned a quick eye out across the bay. "Feels like snow soon. Be a late summer this year, I'll wager."

An involuntary shiver crept up Enos' spine. Pete's family had been here for four generations and, like most other locals, he spoke of snow like it was manna from Heaven. Guys like Pete got a kick out of those stragglers from warmer climates who needed to wear heavy coats in 40 degree weather.

"Just so summer doesn't abandon us altogether."

Pete wasn't fooled. "Oh doncha worry now, Sheriff, you'll get used to it," he assured. "Give it another few years and you'll be thinking thirty-five degrees is downright balmy. Gotta have the cold to appreciate the hot, my granddaddy always said, God rest his soul. Heck, my sis moved down to Florida, and she says they only have two seasons; hot and rainy. She never thought she'd miss it up here, but she does."

Monday, March 28th, 1988

"So, what can I do for you, Miss Reporter?" joked Cooter, tipping precariously back against the wall of his shop on two legs of a plastic chair.

"You're gonna fall flat on your backside if you don't sit in that chair right," Daisy scolded. "I ain't getting paid to report on injuries and accidents."

"Fair enough," he said, sitting his chair on four legs. He brushed a greasy conglomeration of springs and screws off a box on the table next to him and opened it up. "You want a donut? I still got a few left from the other day."

She watched, horrified, as he brushed one off and bit into it. It crunched. "How long ago was 'the other day'!?"

"Clyde brought them down from Knoxville when he dropped off some parts on Monday."

She gagged as he took another bite. "It's Thursday!"

"Suit yourself," he shrugged, shoving the last half into his mouth. "So, what can I tell you about yours truly that everyone wants to hear?"

"Just start at the beginning and tell me about your family. I'm especially interested in how you're not in prison, since you were such a rotten kid. Did you know that every time you came to the farm, our cows dried up?" She thought about Christmas and how her uncle didn't view him as family. "I don't think Uncle Jesse's forgiven you, yet."

"Oh now, we've smoothed things out considerably over the years," he assured her, brushing away her concern. "Say, did Bo and Luke ever tell you about the time I stole the President's limousine and took if for a joyride? That's a good story."

"If you're thinking about running for Congress, I'd leave that one out."

"True enough, Daisy-girl. You know, I don't know if Mr. Amos is taking suggestions, but I know who you oughta go talk to after me. Someone who everyone in Hazzard's heard of, but they don't know anything about him."

"Who's that?"

"Nice old-timer named Arthur Sills who lives up in the hills off Cedar Point. He's always going around town picking up people's junk, but no one's really sure what he does with it."

"Thanks for the heads up, I'll ask Mr. Amos about him." She scribbled the name down in her notebook and then switched the tape player to record. "So, Cooter, tell me about how you got started fixing cars."

Cooter's eyes grew dreamy. "Well, it all started when I was eight and wanted a car of my very own..."

Enos peeked into the white paper bag, took a deep breath, and smiled serenely. "Thanks, Joy!"

She shrugged off her jacket and tossed it over the chair at the dispatch desk. "You're lucky," she grinned. "There was only one steak pasty left and the road crews was coming in just behind me. Julie says if you call her next time, she'll save you one."

"That's awfully nice of her," he said, taking the warm pasty out of the bag, "but with my luck, she'd save one for me and then I'd get called out somewhere." He bit into the flaky crust before setting it down on its wax paper wrapper. "Oh, the school called while you were out. Wanted to know if we can send a deputy over to talk to the kids about shoreline safety next month."

"Oh geez," she complained. "Kids around here have been around the lake all their lives, what do they need a safety class for? The school'd be better off calling in one of them freighter captains to recruit for summer jobs." She stopped short, and looked up at him, worried. "No, never mind. Please don't tell them I said that."

He shook his head. "Don't worry, I know you're just jawing." Working on a Great Lakes freighter was a respectable job, but memories were long and still too fresh for ships to start recruiting here, especially not at the high school. Maybe when this generation was older, but there were still too many people here who remembered the fall of 1939. "I never knew what I was missing back in Georgia," he said, switching the topic back to lunch and the huge lump of flaky bread stuffed with potatoes, steak, and rutabagas. "I'm starting to believe you people who say this is God's country."

"You're fitting in just fine up here, Enos," she laughed. "You should try-"

"Unit 3 to dispatch, please respond. I've got a...a situation out here."

Joy grabbed the headset. "Copy Unit 3, go ahead."

"There's a 10-35 DOS out near the junction of Genes Road and North Goddard, out by the tracks."

Enos grabbed his jacket and ran out the door.

"Copy Unit 3, Unit 1 in route. Unit 2 please respond to dispatch for backup."

Enos climbed into his truck and flipped on the lights as he pulled out of the parking lot, glad he had required everyone to learn the Michigan State Police 10-codes. The last thing they needed was every local in the county driving out to the middle of nowhere to see a dead body. He wondered about the 10-35, though. Finding dead bodies in the woods, while unusual, unfortunately wasn't unheard of. More often than not a "DOS" or "dead on scene" turned out to be a deer hunter who had gotten drunk and frozen to death out in his tree stand, but deer season was long over. The lnighttime temperatures had been up in the 40's lately and 10-35 meant homicide/major crime.

"Unit 3 to Unit 1, please respond."

"Copy Unit 3, go ahead."

"Sheriff, I'm not sure what to do." The deputy's voice was shaky, which concerned Enos even more. Rodney Treado was 6'1" and built like Paul Bunyan and not scared of anything. Both of his deputies were rookies, however, with only four years on the force between them. Enos had seen a lot more than they had. "I've got a witness out here that's pretty shaken up."

"Go ahead and block off both roads and rope off the area. Unit 2 is in route to help, and I'm about 15 minutes out. Let the witness sit in your car."

"Copy Unit 1."

More and more, Enos felt this wasn't going to be the usual DOS scenario. He drove another mile, and then thumbed the radio back on. "Unit 1 to dispatch."

"Go ahead, Sheriff."

"Where's your better half at today, Joy? Anywhere close?"

"He was checking fishing licenses out at Tahquamenon Falls today. You want I should call him?"

"Yeah, go ahead. If it's on state land, he should be there. And call out the rest of the team, this seems kind of prickly. Unit 1 out."

Anything out of the ordinary would be easier with another experienced officer on the scene. Senior conservation officers with Michigan's DNR had the same training as police with jurisdiction over all state land and natural areas. Sergeant Bruce Yergen was one of the best, and he and Enos had become fast friends.

As his truck sped down the bleached, salt-stained roads, he prepared himself for what he might find. But the reality turned out to be worse than he could imagine.

Rodney and Pete had angled both of their patrol cars to block off the narrow roads leading into the intersection, but there was already a small gaggle of locals congregating beside the signpost, some with beer cans in hand. He rolled his eyes and tried not to think about them driving. He pulled up perpendicular to Rodney's car and climbed out as Pete came out of the woods to meet him. The deputy's face was ashen.

"Sheriff -"

"Not here," Enos interrupted him, nodding towards the onlookers. "Just let me follow you."

The deputy nodded and walked back into the cover of trees with Enos trailing him. Just inside the wood line he spoke again. "Sheriff, I don't know what the ever-loving hell we've got here," he said. "Nothing like this happens up here in the UP, at least not that I ever heard of. Rodney's talking to the old guy who found him. He was just checking on his bait pile for deer and there he was, he said. Poor guy's pretty messed up. Heck, I feel pretty messed up!"

Enos watched his feet as Pete spoke, not wanting to trip and fall. The snow, which had melted off in open areas, was still six inches to a foot deep under the shade of the forest. The wind picked up, rustling the boughs of the white pines. He stopped, listening. Across the wind came the soft creak of a rope rubbing against a tree branch.

They crossed the last rise, and now he could see what had overwhelmed his deputies and the witness.

"Did anyone touch anything?"

"No sir, we just left it all like it is."

He nodded and took out a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of his tactical belt. Snapping them on, he approached the victim, taking care not to walk on the blood soaked snow underneath. "Sergeant Yergen's on his way," he said. "And Joy already called the coroner and photographer. Would you go wait for them and bring them down when they get here? It shouldn't be long."

"Yes, sir!"

Enos stood back and surveyed the body, trying to decide the correct way to go about processing the scene.

The man hung freely by one leg in a noose, and the rope creaked under the weight as the wind caught and swung the body. His hands were tied behind his back. Strips of flesh had been peeled off from his cheeks and arms with almost surgical precision, leaving dried rivulets of blood around them. That wasn't the cause of death though. His disemboweled intestines hung like fat, gray worms from a slice across his abdomen.

The snow below him bore testimony to the torture he endured before he was gutted. Trails of blood, frozen bright red against the white, showed where he had been pushed to swing while he was bleeding, leaving strange looping patterns in the snow, reminding Enos of a tracing from an old Spirograph.

Gingerly, he removed the wallet from the man's back pocket and opened it up. There was no driver's license, but there was a Merchant Mariner Credential card for Gino Spione, age 26, from Chicago, Illinois, with a place of birth listed as Budapest, Hungary.

"That's a bad way to go out, Gino," Enos murmured to the corpse.

Behind him, twigs crunched and he turned to see Sergeant Yergen, followed by the the coroner and his photographer.

"Well damn," said Bruce looking at the corpse. "And to think I was complaining about being bored earlier. I take it back." He turned to Enos. "You got an ID?"

Enos handed him the Merchant Mariner Credentials. "If he's got credentials, you'd think some freighter would be missing him right about now. Guess he missed his ride." He looked through the rest of the wallet, hoping for more information as the photographer took pictures of the scene. Behind a McDonald's coupon was a post-it note with a name, date, and time.

Elcid Barrett
December 15
4:30AM

He stared at it, then looked back up at the dead man, recalling another strange, unexplained death in the county, not so long ago.

"Remember that guy who we found in the wreck out on 123?" he asked Bruce. "The one who died from anti-freeze poisoning?"

"Sure do. What's got you thinking about him?"

Enos handed him the post-it note. "He worked on the Elcid Barrett, too."

The two shared a grim look. "If there's someone with a vendetta on that ship, we're a little late," said Bruce. "The Elcid Barrett's not in port anymore."