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We went into the back room where one entire wall was covered with a map of Burney and the surrounding area. It wasn’t a working map, more an homage to Ken’s former business partner who’d passed away. Ken was high-tech.
He turned on the computer and a projector. He scrolled through and found the map he was looking for. “This is a survey done in 1946 by the county. Whoever was doing the map was meticulous. Walked down every path he found because most of these aren’t really roads. More dirt tracks cut through the forest.”
Ken zoomed into Over-the-Hill. We both stepped up close without standing in front of the projected light. “I’ll start from town and work out. You work in.”
I quickly discovered that Deaf Goat wasn’t the strangest name. There was Hanging Rooster Way (a long and sad story there, I imagined), Hardscrabble Trail (which reminded me of U.S. Grant’s nickname for his failed farm), Dirt Road (which showed realism over imagination), Lost Gulch (yet it was on the map), Butchered Bear (a short and bloody tale no doubt), and more. They mostly came off a county road and dead-ended in a holler or on the side of a ridge. Some split out even farther, like branches on a dying tree. There were unnamed tracks that the survey had simply labeled with a number. Sort of like Liz’s place, I realized. Her street address was the mailbox on the numbered county road, but it was a good two-hundred-meter drive up a dirt road to the lane to the house itself. And no one else lived on it. I looked for her house and found it. The dirt/gravel road had no name. At least in 1946.
“Did people just make up their own names for these roads?” I asked Ken.
“Looks like,” he said.
I filed that away.
“Here,” Ken said, tapping the wall.
Deaf Goat Lane was handwritten in very small fine letters on a thin line coming off another dirt road. Which came off a third dirt road. I knew the area and could understand why I’d never heard of it or gone there. Unless you knew it existed and had a need, you’d never think there was anything there. Or anyone.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Looking for someplace in particular? Or someone?”
“Where Mickey Pitts grew up.”
“Deaf Goat Lane seems appropriate,” Ken said.
I turned to leave but stopped. “Hey, Ken?”
“Yeah?”
“I ran into Cash last night at JB’s.”
“I heard.”
I’d almost forgotten it was Burney and rumors and gossip went faster than the speed of sound. “Cash looked high to me. Coked up.”
Ken closed his eyes briefly. “Yeah. Cash had to go to rehab his first year of college. Mom paid for it and Cash has sworn he’s been clean since, but there were times I thought he was using again.”
“Running with the Wolves didn’t help.”
“I know Cash was being an ass the other night,” Ken said, “but a lot of people are grateful that you and George took the Wolves down.”
“Did Kitty ever get any money back from Cash for the mortgages?”
Ken shook his head. “Cash is a one-way street. He takes but never gives back. Patsy, Will, and I are taking care of it.”
“Like Liz used to clean up after Cash’s fuck-ups?”
“No,” Ken said, sounding grim. “Like kids do for the mothers they love. Cash can go to hell. We’re done with him.”
“Good,” I said, and went to find Deaf Goat Lane.
* * *
I had to stop before the final turnoff onto Deaf Goat. It was, of course, unmarked. Actually, the two washed out dirt roads getting to this turnoff had been unmarked and barely navigable in the Gladiator. If I hadn’t known where they were, I would have missed them. But from here, the track narrowed to preclude a car or truck. It might have been wider years ago, but the forest had encroached.
But there was a single track in the center, plenty wide for a motorcycle and it looked used recently. Recently being in the past six months. Since Mickey Pitts got out of prison. I exited the Gladiator and drew the forty-five. Mickey and Jim were dead, but who knew?
I walked down the track for almost a quarter mile, the land on either side rising up and getting closer. I noted there were no poles for a power line. Some of these places had stayed primitive into the 21st century. The holler narrowed to less than a hundred feet when I came into a small clearing. In the center, draped with ivy and vines, was, as Faye had said, a one-room shack. About twenty feet away was an outhouse. Faye and Mickey Pitts had grown up the way people had a hundred years ago.
