He was pulled over for speeding ten miles outside of Bale.
The officer – Denkins was his name – seemed a provincial sort, and Gordon was glad one of his books was conveniently and coincidentally resting on the passenger seat. The name Gordon Hawthorne could come in handy at times.
Denkins, however, was not impressed. He took Gordon’s license and insurance card and retreated casually to his own vehicle without words beyond those required to demand the documents.
Gordon looked at his watch, and up at the Sun, growing redder just above the horizon. He sighed. A glance into the rearview mirror showed that apparently Denkins, unlike Gordon, had nowhere to be in a hurry. When he finally left the patrol car and returned, Gordon was ready with his book innocuously in hand.
“Gordon… Hawthorne?” Denkins asked, his voice turning up slightly on the surname.
“That’s right,” Gordon answered, putting his book in his lap with the cover slightly facing Denkins.
“Where were you going in such a hurry, Mr. Hawthorne?”
“Well, I’m actually trying to make Bale by eight. I’ve just bought a house out there. I was hoping to see the place before dark.”
Denkins was stone faced; Gordon emphasized his comments with a wag of the book and, “I’ll be living out this way.”
“There’s nothing worth hurrying to in Bale, Mr. Hawthorne,” said Denkins. He handed Gordon back his identification, along with a ticket. “The speed limit on this stretch of road is 45. Keep it within the speed limit.”
“Thanks,” Gordon answered, tossing his book aside. He put his effects away, watching Denkins make a U-turn back in the direction he had driven from.
Gordon made it to the limits of Bale in another fifteen minutes. He slowed his car to read the town’s welcome sign.
“Bale – A stone’s throw from the lake,” it read. Gordon smirked, and continued to the center of town. He was late, after all. The Sun was below the horizon, and gloom was creeping over the city.
Gordon had left the Carolinas the day before and had spent the previous night in a motel in Ohio. He would have made better time on the second day except that some sort of chemical truck had crashed on the highway, forcing him to take a roundabout detour through a number of local towns. Gordon had not really thought his travel schedule through in detail, anyway, so his lateness was his own fault as much as the truck’s.
The center of Bale consisted of a stretch of businesses along the creatively-named Main Street. On the western end was an again movie theatre of a vintage style, built sometime after the eloquent theatres of the forties and fifties but before the bland cineplexes of the seventies and beyond. The two movies listed on the marquee had been out of the theatres in Charlotte for months.
Across from the theatre was Chester Burton’s apparently one of those bars that loosely considered itself a restaurant as well. A sign blocking pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk read, “Friday Fish Fry.” The windows of the bar were small, and the interior of the establishment indiscernible due to its dimness and the displayed neon signs. In all likelihood, there wasn’t much to see inside, anyway.
Several doors further down the strip the windows of a compact grocery store were tattooed with ads for cigarettes and the lottery. A cardboard sign had been taped within the window as well, advertising video rentals. In small towns such as Bale a small store could get away with being everything to everybody; the superstores apparently hadn’t penetrated this far from the cities, yet. Beyond those places, the main strip consisted of a scattering of eclectic shops that managed through some sort of supernatural or criminal means to stay in business. There were at least two antique stores, a bank branch, even a dress shop, for Christ’s sake! Gordon laughed sardonically at the wedding gown displayed prominently in the front window.
At the very edge of town, outside of the range of the downtown streetlights, was a small wooden church. It was apparently very old, because a historical marker sign was mounted facing the road. Gordon caught sight briefly of a bulletin sign near the doors of the church: “Super-Mega elimination BINGO.” Then he was passing out of the eastern edge of Bale’s main strip, and back into the trees and fields beyond.
“Whaddya know – he was right,” Gordon said to himself, referring to the comment of the loquacious officer Denkins.
Only a mile further down the road was Cherry Pit Lane, the street off of which was the realtor’s office. Gordon missed the turn off the first time by, owing to the smallness of the street and the overhanging trees blocking the street sign. The now set Sun also made it difficult to see. With a sigh, Gordon turned around in the circular gravel drive of a trailer home, and made the turn on the second try.
The real estate office had been established in a former farmhouse. The exterior was painted a happy light blue and a Century 21 sign was staked out in its front yard. The lights were on inside, and as Gordon pulled into the driveway a thin shadow came to the window and squinted through the glass. The realtor had waited for him, after all.
By the time Gordon was out of his car, the realtor was standing on the front porch, waving to him.
“Mr. Hawthorne, I presume?”
Gordon nodded, took his time strolling over to him, and shook his hand.
“Gordon Hawthorne, that’s me.”
The realtor beckoned him inside, looking at him with poorly-disguised enthusiasm.
“I was beginning to worry that you’d gotten lost on the way out here; Bale can be a hard place to find. Were the directions I faxed you okay?”
“The directions were fine,” Gordon said, looking about the office. The realtor had moved to his desk and taken a seat. The desk, a heavy oak monstrosity, no doubt an antique of some sort, seemed oddly too large for the man sitting behind it. One of those ubiquitous banker’s lamps, with the green half-cylinder shade and brass base, provided the only light in the room.
“You are Mr. Martin, I presume?” Gordon asked, sitting across from the realtor. Mr. Martin gave an absent-minded smirk, closing his eyes, and nodded.
“Yes, yes, Allan Martin,” he said, reaching out to shake Gordon’s hand again. “You can call me Allan. We spoke on the phone the few times it was necessary.”
“Now,” he said, turning to a heavy folder upon his desk, “There are a few final papers I need to give you, and I’ve taken the liberty of preparing you a bit of information about Bale and the surrounding area, so you know what’s what to do in the area. Have you eaten dinner yet?”
“Yes,” Gordon answered, after some careful thought.
“That’s a shame,” said Allan, “Because there’s a really good burger at Chester Burton’s in town. Did you see it when you passed through?”
“Yes, yes,” Gordon said, looking over the papers before him. “But I’m sure I’ll have time to eat there in the future, so it’s not a tragedy.”
“Of course not,” Allan agreed. “But while I’m on the subject of dinner, I’d like to invite you to dinner with my wife and I at our home a week from now, next Thursday. Just a sort of ‘Welcome to Bale’ dinner.”
“I see,” Gordon said. “That would be very nice, sure.”
“Would seven o’clock be an acceptable time for you?”
“That’s just super,” Gordon answered.
“Wonderful; I’ll let me wife know you’re coming, and she’ll prepare one of her special dishes. A real treat.”
Allan Martin was clearly on a roll now.
“I must say, this is one of the most unusual real estate deals I’ve ever brokered. Usually, of course, I do the shopping with the potential buyer himself, not that your brother is an unpleasant person to talk to, mind you. And usually the buyer likes to see the house himself before he buys it.”
“I trust my brother’s judgment,” Gordon said, closing the folder with finality.
“Of course; still, it is unusual. But it wasn’t a problem, and it is very nice to have someone as known and distinguished as yourself living in town, and I’m sure you’ll love the house. A stone’s throw from the lake, just like all of Bale, but in your case it’s a literally true statement. A very nice view. Should stimulate the writing of your next book, which is what I assume you are moving here to do. I was, of course, wondering why you chose our little out-of-the-way place.”
“I had a very big urge to kill myself for a long, long time,” Gordon answered without hesitation. “I waited and waited and waited for it to go away, but it didn’t.”
He shrugged.
“I figured that if I was going to keep on longing for death, I might as well spend my time in a place that’s halfway there.”
The office was very, very quiet. Allan was staring at him, visibly appalled. Gordon watched him with some satisfaction for nearly a minute, and just as Allan was going to attempt to speak again, he pre-empted it.
“Seven o’clock, you say?”
Allan looked taken aback.
“I… I’m sorry?”
“Dinner. At your place. Thursday. Seven o’clock, you said?”
Allan hesitated, then nodded.
“Great. I look forward to it. Now, if I could get the keys to the house, I’d still like to look at it tonight, and I’ve got a ways to go to get back to the hotel I’m staying at. I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.”