Star Flight Read online

  “Who is Natalie?” I asked.

  “She’s a very talented artist. I’m showing several of her paintings in my shop, but they’re hard to sell, since she picks such wild, disturbing subjects. They’re uncomfortable to live with. Of course, what’s happening in this painting is straight out of Lake Lure legend, of which we have many. That’s not a plane that’s about to crash. Look again.”

  I studied the tilted shape and smiled. “Not a UFO?”

  “Right out of history.”

  “You mean that people around here really saw such a thing?”

  “Or thought they did. A few were absolutely positive, even though they were doubted and pooh-poohed. Natalie’s father—a teenaged boy at the time—and her grandfather are positive about what they saw. Because of the storm, they couldn’t get to the top that night. This was in the fifties, when such sightings were popping up frequently.”

  “Did they go back to investigate?”

  “They tried to the next day, but army intelligence was already on the job, brought in by helicopter. So no one was allowed to go up. Because of army maneuvers, they were told. Days later, when a party of the curious climbed the mountain, the government men were gone and the whole episode—if anything did happen—was swept under the rug. There was nothing to be seen except a circle of scorched earth. But Roger and Justyn are convinced that a spaceship came down that night.”

  “Roger?” I couldn’t help echoing the name.

  “Roger Brandt, Natalie’s grandfather. Though she doesn’t like to use the name Brandt, since she’s determined to make it as an artist under her own steam. I think that shows a lot of good sense; she doesn’t need any of that old baggage hanging around her neck. I suppose you know about Roger Brandt and Victoria Frazer?”

  “I’ve already met Gretchen Frazer at the lodge,” I said evasively.

  “Gretchen’s a remarkable lady. I like the title Natalie has given to this painting: Star Flight. Perfect, don’t you think?”

  I stood up and began to move about the shop. I still hadn’t introduced myself and I didn’t want her to see my face. Natalie Brandt? It might make a weird sort of sense if she had been the one to send me that note. She would have no idea that Roger Brandt was also my grandfather. Jim had promised me that he would tell no one. Only Gordon Heath had known back in San Francisco. In any case, I realized that I must meet Natalie Brandt as soon as possible. First, however, I still had to talk to Gordon.

  I continued wandering about the shop, busy with my own thoughts. One corner of the large main area had been partitioned into a small separate room, and I walked over to the door to investigate. A sign read: COME IN AND MEET KUDZU, THE FRIENDLY VINE.

  I looked back at Finella. “Friendly kudzu?”

  She stood up, stretched widely, and came toward me. I had seen only the back of her jacket and pants as she knelt before the painting, but now I received the full effect of bright patches of green and rose set into the denim jacket that fell smartly from her shoulders. Big square pockets vibrated with yellow and green. Vivid color suited her, bringing a sparkle to lively blue eyes that matched the denim.

  “Kudzu isn’t appreciated,” Finella told me. “Some of us are trying to change that. Nobody is using the vine as it should be used. Go inside and look around.”

  I was interested, but now wasn’t the right time. I had postponed introducing myself to Gordon’s mother long enough—perhaps because I couldn’t turn back once she knew who I was.

  “I’m Lauren Castle,” I said, walking toward her. “Jim Castle’s wife.”

  She came at once to shake my hand warmly. “Gordon said you might be coming, but we didn’t know when.”

  “I was able to leave suddenly,” I said.

  “We were very fond of Jim. As you know, he and my son were old friends. The accident shocked us terribly. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Castle, but I’m glad you’ve come. I don’t know why, but I always felt you should.”

  Nothing in her words suggested that her son had told her how well he had known me out in California. Jim had told me that Gordon had married and then divorced, but that was all I knew about what he had done over the past eleven years. Most of the time, Jim and I had an unspoken agreement not to discuss Gordon.

  “Where can I find your son?” I asked.

  Finella shook her head and her glossy red hair swirled again. “I can’t tell you offhand. He works for Chimney Rock Park, but he’s taken ten days off, and when he’s not working, I never know where he’s likely to be during the day. However, we share a house on the lake, so I’ll see him tonight, if not before.”

  “Then perhaps you can tell him I’m here and staying at Rumbling Mountain Lodge.”

  “Of course. I know he’ll want to see you as soon as he can.”

  “When Gordon wrote to me, he mentioned a movie village as the place where Jim died. I’d like to go there, if you can tell me how to find it.”

  “That’s easy enough. It’s only a short drive from here, though the road up is rough and bumpy. Just follow the gorge beside the river to the next little village of Chimney Rock. Watch for the small chamber of commerce building up an embankment on your right. If you drive around behind it, you’ll find a dirt road leading up the mountain. Keep going until you come out at the Indian village. The movie trucks used to bump over that road with all their heavy equipment, and the ruts are still there.”

  She accompanied me to the door and touched my arm in a reassuring gesture. I thanked her and said I’d like to come back to explore her shop later.

  “I’ll tell Gordon you’re here as soon as I can, and do come back whenever you like.”

  I went out to my car, feeling slightly dazed. Everything was happening faster than I expected. I felt excited about the discovery that N probably stood for Natalie Brandt, to whom I was related through our mutual grandfather. My first cousin! I cared very little about the man who had betrayed Victoria Frazer, aside from a natural curiosity. According to my mother, he was the villain of this piece. And her prejudice, naturally, had become mine.

  Once I’d driven past the end of the lake, the gorge lived up to its name: Steep mountains crowded each side of the narrow road. The Rocky Broad River tumbled over huge boulders below the highway, making this a road that could never be widened. This must make a fine bottleneck in the tourist season. I watched for the chamber of commerce sign and turned off, making my way behind the small building to where the dirt road started.

  It was as rough and jarring as Finella had warned. The car rattled as it climbed around twists and turns, until the road came out at a large, flat, cleared area that stretched ahead. A steep mountain rose on one side and a drop-off that looked out over a valley descended on the other. There were ten or more structures of various sizes rising from bare, dusty white earth edged by the remains of crops that had been planted here and there—to lend authenticity, I supposed. A wide path led straight ahead past very real log and bark structures that had weathered to gray.

  I left my car, walked twenty feet, and passed into another time and culture. These were not the wigwams of the western plains, but the traditional Huron longhouses of the North. Several were truly long and covered with strips of bark over sapling frames bent to form rounded tops. Trapdoors used to let out smoke were propped open in the roofs. During inclement weather, they could be closed against rain, but now they stood open, oblivious of the elements. The movie company had come and gone, carelessly abandoning the historical details they had so carefully constructed.

  One structure, still unfinished—perhaps for the purposes of the movie—showed the open basketwork of the walls which normally would have been covered by bark. Whole tree trunks had been split and laid side by side to form a floor that was set a foot or so up from the ground.

  Several buildings were smaller than the longhouses—more like huts with rounded domes. One large structure caught my attention. It was disguised as a longhouse on the side that would face a camera, but behind that facade it was bui
lt with the anachronism of two-by-fours. Looking in, I could see that its big central room was large enough for tables that would serve the crew, with a proper roof to shelter them. It still housed an abandoned refrigerator.

  Outside, in the realm of the cameras, the hide of a deer had been stretched against logs for drying. On an open porch, I glimpsed a weathered pile of skins left behind, having served their purpose as props. Here and there, all about the village, were round cribs built of intertwined branches and still holding dry cobs of corn that looked as though they had been stripped long ago by foraging mice. Meticulous attention seemed to have been given to details. Later, when I saw The Last of the Mohicans, I discovered, sadly, how little of all this had been used. As I stood looking about this deserted place, a curious sense of having entered another time possessed me. As though, just out of sight, Indian women were busy with their cooking fires, awaiting the return of their men from the hunt. Strangely, I felt as if I were part of some play that had yet to begin. I had no idea of my role, but soon the curtain would go up and I would find myself onstage. Would I know my lines when the time came?

  I shook myself free of such fantasies and walked on. In the center of the village, I saw a circle of white stones on the ground. Tall poles had been set in the center of the circle and lashed together, reaching more than seven feet into the air. A stake, perhaps, for burning an enemy? This seemed a little too real for my taste. A weatherworn blanket had been tied around the poles—perhaps to spare an actor’s back from discomfort during long filming? I had no idea how the illusion would be managed in the movie, but I recalled such a scene in my long-ago reading of The Last of the Mohicans. Curiously, placed a little ways in front of the stake, there was a second, smaller circle of stones, with evidence of hardened ashes at its center. At a loss to explain any of this, I kept walking.

  The thickly forested mountain towered above the village, creating a magnificent backdrop on one side. On the opposite side, where the village looked out toward other mountains, a cliff dropped off steeply to the valley below. Only an occasional bird broke the deep, peaceful silence—a silence empty of any human intruder except myself. Hickory Nut Gorge was out of sight here, though I could look out to see the high, jutting pillar of granite that was Chimney Rock. Directly across from the village, a waterfall streamed down a steep mountain.

  Certainly all this must have made a marvelous setting for actors in a movie, but for me it was frighteningly real. This was the place where my husband had died—where some malevolence might have touched him, if the note from N had any truth to it.

  I discovered a long, thin tree trunk, supported at either end by the crotch of a growing tree. I perched myself on the rough bark of the makeshift bench to rest and wait. Though for what, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps for the play to begin, so I could discover the part intended for me. Or had this play begun eleven years ago in the city of San Francisco?

  I found myself returning in memory to a time when I was nineteen and engaged to marry Jim Castle. He was nearly ten years older than I was and already successfully established as a creator of documentary films. I aspired to scriptwriting and he had become a mentor when I took some special courses that he was teaching at Berkeley.

  Jim had seemed to be all the safe things my mother wanted for me. His attention was flattering and he was fun to be with. We had common interests and I thought I was falling in love. When he asked me to marry him, I agreed. My mother met him and approved, assuring me that he was nothing like my father, who had taken off on his own when I was small, and had died in a car accident.

  My life had seemed comfortably settled, and then Jim had introduced me to another instructor, a graduate student who had become a good friend of his. I still don’t know exactly what happened. An immediate recognition seemed to strike fire between Gordon and me. The attraction was immediate, and it was more than physical. This was something I’d never experienced before. What I felt for Jim paled beside this shattering new emotion.

  Jim was going to Los Angeles for two weeks to meet a producer about a new project he was planning. He relegated the task of looking out for me to Gordon, never dreaming of the spark that had lighted between us—something we were both trying to resist. That was the most devastating part—the way Jim had trusted us. Gordon was finishing up a harried year of graduate work and teaching that had left him little time to see the fascinating city across the bay. We agreed that I would show him San Francisco, since he’d be leaving the area in six weeks.

  In so many ways, Gordon was Jim’s opposite—more rugged, yet not nearly so good-looking or easy to be with. Gordon was unsettled and unsettling. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. In fact, life seemed to him something to taste, to savor, to experiment with. Nothing about him seemed “safe.” But for me everything seemed exactly right and as it should be. His face, wide at the cheekbones, had a serious cast, with a lot of determination in the chin. His eyes could dance with a secret amusement—not laughing at me, but delighting in me and what we had every time we were together. My first feeling was one of alarm and then denial. I wasn’t brave enough, or wise enough at nineteen, to deal with what was happening to me, so I convinced myself that Gordon and I were destined to be good friends and nothing more.

  I could still remember the words Gordon said to me the first time we were alone. “I’ve known you somewhere, Lauren—I’m sure of it.” I hadn’t yet experienced the mystical side of him, but even as I said I didn’t think so, I felt the same way. I knew this man very well indeed.

  The sense of recognition continued between us. Sometimes each knew what the other was going to say. We liked the same books, movies, causes. We both loved animals and the outdoors. Gordon read some of my writing and thought it was promising—but told me that I still had a lot to learn.

  For nearly two weeks, we went about together—innocently at first. We explored not only San Francisco but the wonders we found in each other. I don’t think we forgot Jim Castle as we wandered the streets and picnicked in the park. Except for clasping hands as we walked, or Gordon’s arm draped casually around my shoulders, there was no physical contact in the beginning. Perhaps we both knew, without conscious awareness, that when we took that step, there would be no turning back.

  I suppose we moved for a while in a dream, not fully accepting the significance of what was happening. When Gordon told me he was from North Carolina and that his home was at Lake Lure, I was thoroughly shaken. The hand of some mysterious destiny seemed to be at work and it was too strong to be ignored. I told him who my grandparents were and we marveled together. He had actually met Roger Brandt, though he didn’t know him well.

  I couldn’t bear to remember what had happened next. When Jim came home, reality had to be faced. Gordon, who was going home to North Carolina shortly, wanted me to break up with Jim and go with him. He insisted that we tell Jim what had happened and ask him to understand that I couldn’t possibly marry him now.

  This frightened me, woke me up to my safe, everyday world—to what my mother had instilled in me. I was too young and confused to accept such ruthlessness. It seemed impossible to wound someone so deeply whom I’d thought I loved. What Gordon saw in a future together was surely an illusion, to be dispelled by reality and good sense. And never mind a broken heart or two along the way. At that point, I didn’t know what a broken heart was going to feel like. I hadn’t lived long enough to find out who I was.

  For the first time, Gordon was cruel, and I saw a side to him that I hadn’t known and that frightened me further. I still remember his words. “What you mean, Lauren, is that you lack the courage to tell Jim. Hard for me to say and probably harder for you to hear, but right nevertheless. Neither of us meant for this to happen, but it has, and we need to tell Jim and get on with our lives.”

  “I can’t,” I said miserably.

  “I expected more of you; you haven’t discovered your own strength yet.”

  “You don’t know me—not really!”

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nbsp; I never forgot the cool gray of his eyes at that moment. “I’m beginning to and I don’t think I like what I see,” he said, and walked away.

  He went back to Lake Lure the next day, abandoning his classes and leaving Jim puzzled but ignorant. Though he wrote to my husband now and then, I never heard from him again—until the letter came informing me of Jim’s death.

  I’d been sure that Jim was my best friend and that marrying him would keep me safe forever. At nineteen, one could use foolish words like forever.

  Of course I didn’t know Jim Castle any better than I knew myself. He had seemed to dote on me and all that affection had even lasted for a year or two after we married. But it was his nature to love other women with equal enthusiasm, while still wanting to keep me as his wife and friend. This was the way he was, he told me, and I was foolish to think one woman was enough for any man.

  I’d hated it that Jim’s interest in Roger Brandt had grown since our marriage and was leading him toward Lake Lure. North Carolina had come to mean Gordon Heath to me and that felt like very dangerous ground indeed. Jim had entertained a fantasy of my going there with him and meeting my grandfather. I refused point-blank, and when he decided to go ahead with his documentary, having already won Roger Brandt’s consent, I made him promise not to reveal my identity. All my mother’s prejudice against her father had been instilled in me. It was my grandmother I wanted to know more about, but I never expected to have an opportunity to learn.

  Jim might never have come here if it hadn’t been for me. The guilt I had felt ever since his death never left me. Afterward, there had been no point at all in coming to this place—not until the cryptic note from N forced my hand.

  The sun was climbing higher now, warming me where I sat on the log above the open space that looked out toward the waterfall. Later, when I saw the movie, I realized that this was the very log on which the chief had sat near the end of the picture.