Fannie and the Back Fence Gang 2

Bad Feelings and Indian Ghosts

In Episode 1, radio talk show host Fannie Couch (Fannie’s Back Fence) is interviewing Pecan Springs mayor, Pauline Perkins, who is looking for support for the annexation of a planned residential development on Sycamore Creek. But Fannie’s first caller—a driver on his car phone who claims to have some kind of inside information about the project—is interrupted by an ear-splitting crash. Shaken, Fannie cuts to a commercial break. Reading time for Episode 2: about 11 minutes.

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When she heard the commercial come on, Fannie motioned to Pauline to stay put and slipped into the control room next door. Henry was already on the phone.

“Henry Morris at KPST. I’m reporting an accident. At least that’s what I think it was. One of our mobile phone callers—”  He paused, listening. “Yeah, right. Half-Mile Road, just south of Lookout Corner.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Fannie. “The dispatcher was listening to the show. She heard what we all heard. She’s talking to the sheriff right now.”

A moment later, the dispatcher was back on the line.  “Hey, no kidding?” Henry grinned briefly. “Well, tell him to keep us posted on what they find. We’d like to get the word out. Half of central Texas is probably wondering what happened out there.”

Henry put the phone down. “Sheriff Blackwell was listening, too. He said it sounded to him like maybe somebody sideswiped that caller and knocked him off the road. He’s sending the nearest deputy to check it out.”

Fannie wondered if the sheriff considered the Back Fence a good source of community intelligence or just an entertaining midday diversion. She had known Blackie Blackwell since he was a kid and used to ride shotgun with his father, who had been sheriff for over a quarter of a century until he died of emphysema. That was back when she and Claude lived on the ranch, before Claude sold the cows and horses and they moved into town and he retired to watching the Cowboys and the Oilers on TV.

Retired! Fannie snorted. She had told Claude that he could be a Couch potato if he wanted to. It wasn’t in her game plan.

The commercial break ending, Fannie returned to the sound studio, put on her headset, and pulled the mike down. Pauline leaned forward to say something, but Fannie frowned and shook her head.

“Well, here we are again, folks,” she said into the mike. “Fannie Couch, on one the side of the Back Fence, with our mayor, Pauline Perkins. Today, we are having a conversation about the pros and cons of annexing Oak Hills Estates. If you’ve got an opinion on the subject, now’s your time to speak up. The Back Fence is open for bid-ness.” She said the word the way Claude and his cronies always said it, with an exaggerated d.

The incoming line was blinking. Fannie toggled the switch and moved her hand to the VU meter, ready to adjust the output. “Mornin,’ caller. You’re on the Back Fence.”

“Mornin’ to you, too, Fannie.” The raspy voice was familiar. “This here is Charlie Stubbs.”

Charlie was a regular. He had retired from the bank ten years ago, but he still had his eyes and ears, some of his hair, and most of his memory. Back in his banking days, he had learned a lot about certain prominent people in Pecan Springs—probably more than they realized—and he wasn’t above dropping a hint about it from time to time, especially after the person had passed on.

For instance, he remembered old Mrs. Peterson, who ran a boarding house on the block behind the bank after World War Two and kept a thousand dollars in a savings account, which was a lot of money for Pecan Springs in the 1940s. Mrs. Peterson also had a long memory. She remembered when Roosevelt closed the banks in ‘33, and she was the type to worry. So she would come into the bank every once in a while and ask to see her money. Charlie would sit her down in the president’s office and tell Prissy to bring her a cup of tea while he went to the vault and counted out enough tens to make a thousand. Then he’d put them in an envelope with Mrs. Peterson’s name on it and invite her to count it. He always put a crisp new ten on top, so she wouldn’t suspect they weren’t the same bills she’d counted the last time. He said he was just glad she didn’t write down the serial numbers.

Thinking about Mrs. Peterson and her money, Fannie smiled. The only trouble with Charlie was that sometimes he remembered too much. He would wander from his story like a calf who’d get interested in a waterhole when he was supposed to be heading home with his mama. “Well, hello there, Charlie,” she said. “What’ve you got on your mind this morning?”

“I got a bad feeling, that’s what,” Charlie said somberly. “The last fella, the one who called in before the break? I think he bought it.”

“Bought what?” Fannie asked.

“You know, bought it,” Charlie said. “Bought the farm, way we used to say in the Navy. I was a fighter pilot in the Pacific, with Chester Nimitz, y’know. I was on the Yorktown, before she got sunk at Midway.” He paused, reminiscently. “You been down to Fredericksburg, I reckon. That’s Nimitz’s house there. Looks like a ship about to sail across the street. They made it into a museum.”

Fannie prodded Charlie gently back to the subject. “You were tellin’ us about that bad feeling?”

“Yeah. Well, like I was sayin’, I was a fighter pilot. And it would happen just like that, same way we heard it happen to that caller of yours. We’d be mixin’ it up with a buncha Zeros up in the clouds, y’know, and you’d be hearin’ your buddy shoutin’ into the radio and then all of a sudden he wouldn’t be there. He’d be on the radio one minute and gone on the next, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Anyway, that’s what it was like for me, hearin’ that guy just now. One minute he was there, next he wasn’t. Ask me, somebody hit him, knocked him clean off the road. The driver who did it probably has some serious front-end damage, maybe right front. And our guy bought it.”

 “I think it’s early to count anybody out,” Fannie replied cautiously. “The sheriff’s got a deputy on the way. We’ll let you know what he turns up. Thanks, Charlie. You call again, you hear? Always good to talk to you.” She flipped the toggle. “Caller, good morning. You’re on the Back Fence.”

The next two callers didn’t have anything to say about the accident, but plenty to say, mostly negative, about growth. They tried to argue Pauline into a corner, but she swung back bravely while Fannie listened, wondering what was going on out there on Half-Mile Road and what the caller had wanted to tell them. The next caller was Genevieve Powell, the president of the Northwest Middle School PTA, who was in favor of the annexation because it would mean that they’d need a new school building out there, which in her opinion was long overdue.

It was the fourth caller, a woman whose voice was cracked and gritty with age, who got them back to the subject.

“Fannie, this is Miss Ima Mason.  Miss Irma is right here, too. She’s got something to say about that man who got cut off before he could spill the beans on Sycamore Creek. She’s got a theory.”

Miss Ima and Miss Irma were in their early eighties. They were twins, although Fannie doubted that anybody would know that now, after the years had done their work. Frail and waifish, Miss Irma got around with a walker, murmuring vaguely to herself as she slid the contraption along in front of her, colliding with this and that. Miss Ima, on the other hand, was still astonishingly nimble, with a quick temper, sharp eyes, and a fascinating past. She had spent the last months of World War Two as a WAC stationed in Paris, where she was rumored to have Fallen into Sin with a Frenchman, although Fannie refused to believe that Miss Ima had ever fallen into anything, including Sin. Jumped into it, more likely, with both feet. Enthusiastically.

 “A theory, huh? Well, good,” Fannie said. “What is it?” She was glad Ima had was interpreting. When Irma called, it took all day to get anything out of her.

“Irma says she believes that fella was going to tell us about that old Indian burial ground up there in Sycamore Canyon.”

“Burial ground?” Fannie asked. “Is Miss Irma thinking about that rock midden at the spring—up there by the old gravel pit?” The Hill Country was littered with heaps of heat-fractured limestone rocks, where ancient peoples had constructed rock-lined pit ovens to bake prickly pear pads and camas and cattail and greenbriar roots.

“Yes,” Ima said. “It’s where the Indians had their campground. Papa did a lot of digging up there when he was a boy. He and his brother, Pete. They’d ride their horses up the canyon and poke around the midden. Papa said they were looking for some Spanish gold they’d heard was buried up there. They never found that, but they’d sometimes find old human bones and every now and then an arrow point. Once they even found a skull, but their mama made them put it back because of spirits. Ghosts, you know. Well, that’s what Irma is worried about. She says there may be some of those old Indian ghosts still lingering in that canyon, and they don’t like the idea of houses anywhere near. She says that if they took it into their heads to be troublesome, they might cause all kinds of mischief.”

“Well, I suppose,” Fannie said doubtfully. “If you believe in that sort of thing.” She herself didn’t, but she knew she’d get a call or two from people who did.

There was a brief flurry of whispers and then Ima’s voice again. “Irma is saying floods, for instance. They could cause floods down that canyon. And maybe car wrecks.”

“Floods are something to think about,” Fannie agreed. Tactfully, she added, “I don’t know about it being ghosts that cause a flood, though. When it rains up there in the Hill Country, water can come down a dry creek five, ten feet high.” This was no exaggeration. Claude had lost a calf the year they moved to town. It drowned when a flash flood caught it on the wrong side of the creek from its mama.

Pauline leaned forward to speak into her mike. “Miss Ima, you tell Miss Irma that the developer says they’ve got a plan for flood control. They’re going to build a check dam on Sycamore Canyon just below the old gravel pit. It will impound the water and allow it to settle into the substrate, so it will replenish the aquifer instead of flooding the houses down below.”

            There was a moment’s pause and more murmured conversation. “Irma says she’s not too sure about substrates and aquifers,” Miss Ima announced. “But she says to definitely mind those spirits.”

“Thanks,” Fannie said. “We’ll pass that word along.” She checked the clock. It was almost time for Henry to do a news summary. “Let’s take another break,” she said. “Maybe Henry’s got an update on that crash. But don’t you go too far away. There’s more in store on the Back Fence, just for you.”

She signaled to Henry, flipped off her mike, and cut Pauline’s as well. “That’s it for now,” she said, stretching.

“Ghosts,” Pauline said scornfully. “Indian ghosts causing car wrecks and floods. Can you beat that?”

“Ima and Irma are sweet old ladies,” Fannie said. “And they always have something interesting to say. I’d forgotten all about that old gravel pit.” She smiled a little, remembering that she and Claude used to park up there when they were dating and he could wangle the keys to his dad’s Chevy for an evening. They’d been too busy doing what they were doing—making out, they used to call it—to worry about ghosts. And anyway . . .

Her smile faded. In her opinion, the supernatural had nothing to do with flash floods or car crashes. But something was going on.

What was it?

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Stay tuned for Episode Three, coming next Wednesday, Nov. 8. And if you’re in Central Texas, you’re invited to join me at BookWoman in Austin, 3 pm on Sunday, Nov. 5. I’ll be talking about Someone Always Nearby—my only scheduled appearance for this book.