Writer / Observer / Builder — Presence, clarity, and living without a script
Author: Richard L. Fricks
Writer. Observer. Builder. I write from a life shaped by attention, simplicity, and living without a script—through reflective essays, long-form inquiry, and fiction rooted in ordinary lives. I live in rural Alabama, where writing, walking, and building small, intentional spaces are part of the same practice.
It was 3:00 PM Saturday afternoon before Spectrum’s serviceman arrived. He was thirty minutes late but had called Ted to let him know. “Sorry, last night’s storm has us scrambling.” The fireplug shaped woman surprised Ted as she exited her pickup. Terrie had sounded like a man over the phone.
The temperature was hovering at freezing, so Ted went inside the cabin. Terrie wanted to check the panel first. She walked to the side of the house and quickly noticed the incoming cable had been severed.
“That was easy to diagnose.” Terrie said, joining Ted in the great room.
“How so?”
“Someone clipped your line; cut it in half.” Terrie pulled her right hand across her throat to dramatize her words.
“Damn. Probably the same person who took my whiskey. And left the front door unlocked.” The service lady gave both affirmative and negative nods, one after the other.
“Well, I can’t help you there, but I can splice your incoming and have you going in fifteen minutes.” Terrie exited the cabin while Ted watched, confused. He wondered if the Spectrum rep was a trans: a male trying to become a female, or the opposite.
Ted shook his head and walked to the rear of the cabin. He opened the blinds and looked through the sliding glass door across the porch and to the over-sized and barren fire pit. He closed his eyes and recalled the many times he and his buddies had drank beer and delivered bullshit stories of their female conquests. But, what he’d truly love is to return to younger days, a simple life with Julie, even if they didn’t have an extra dime.
The suction from the front storm door and a triple ding from his iPhone startled Ted. He turned. “Done already?”
“Yep. You should be good to go, but let’s check.” Terrie walked in front of the giant screen TV and picked up the remote sitting atop the entertainment center. After a few seconds, Ted watched Alabama’s quarterback Mac Jones complete a thirty-yard pass against Auburn. “Just in time to watch the massacre.” Terrie flipped a few channels before activating Netflix. It wouldn’t connect. “Where’s your router?” Ted pointed to the master bedroom and waited for a quick minute. “That should do it.”
Ted walked Terrie outside and watched him, her, drive away, waving an Alabama hat outside the driver’s side window. Back inside, Ted removed his iPhone and sat on the couch, intent on watching at least the first half. What he heard changed everything.
The break in Wi-Fi service had delayed his cell notifications. When Julie had left him and before she moved into the cabin, Ted had hired a friend from Atlanta to install two devices. One was a video camera hidden inside a smoke alarm. The second was an audio recorder secluded inside a largemouth bass mounted next to an eight-point buck above the front door.
Ted would have to remove the memory card from the video device and insert it into a PC before reviewing its contents. However, the audio was already on his phone, sent via email after Terri restored his Internet service. Ted opened the clip and pressed PLAY. The voices were clear but unfamiliar. One was a female; one was a male. Ted replayed the recording three times:
Female: “I see you like playing in the mud.” Long pause.
Male: “Don’t we need to remove the recorders?” Minimal pause.
Female: “Done. Now, come on. I can’t wait to weigh our catch.”
“Oh shit,” was all Ted could say. He stood and pulled a dining room chair to the doorway leading to the master bedroom. He climbed up, reached for the smoke detector, and opened its outer door. Inside was another door. Ted removed the memory card and stepped off the chair, nearly falling as he questioned and doubted whether the female voice was Julie’s, and whether she had found a new playmate.
During the return drive to his house, he concluded it was unlikely his former lover knew about the recorders. So, what was the man’s voice referring to?
All Ted could say as he parked in front of his sprawling mansion was, “shit, shit, shit, if it’s not Julie, who the hell could it be?”
***
Ted was more confused after watching the video. The woman inside his cabin could be Julie. The two were the same or similar height. But something was off. The woman on the screen was too thick. Ted admitted the camouflaged outfit could be the difference, especially if it was double or triple layered. Of course, identification would have been easier if the woman hadn’t blackened her face. Woman? Ted questioned his gender analysis; maybe the figure was a man.
After an unsuccessful attempt to call Ray, Ted had driven to Julie’s house. Her car was missing. He thought about calling but decided against it. Instead, he checked Julie’s Facebook Page. Last night, contemporaneous with the date/time stamp on both the audio and video recordings, Julie was enjoying a meal at Cotton Row in Huntsville. Somewhat tentatively, Ted concluded his estranged wife wasn’t the intruder. Maybe Ray would know.
It was 5:30 PM when Ted parked outside the Lodge’s triple-car garage. Ray was unloading groceries. “We need to talk. Now.”
“Why didn’t you call?” Ray said, motioning for Ted to grab some Walmart bags from the back of the Suburban.
“I did. Both your cell and your land line.”
“I don’t enjoy talking when I’m in such a public place. Too many eavesdroppers around.”
After two more trips each, Ted sat at the breakfast bar while Ray put away the groceries. “You hit the nail on the head.”
“Uh?” Ray glanced at Ted before shoving a box of dishwasher detergent underneath the sink.
“Someone was inside the cabin last night, both before and after we arrived.”
“Holy shit. How do you know?”
Over the next hour, Ted and Ray reviewed and discussed the two recordings. According to Ray, there was little doubt the woman on the video was Lillian. The main giveaway was the knitted Deerhunter toboggan he had given her for Christmas two years ago. The second giveaway was the female voice from the audio recording. “I’d know that voice anywhere.”
“Then, who’s the man?” Ted asked, accepting a Budweiser from Ray.
“Now that I’ve spoken to Jane, I think I know. It’s Lee Harding.” Ray removed his iPhone from his shirt pocket, clicked a couple of buttons, and laid it on the counter next to the sink. “Listen to what she said.”
Jane had reported that Lee had called her this morning. He relayed that he had found several of Rachel’s diaries. Lee had asked two questions. One concerned Jane’s knowledge of what happened the night Kyle had gone missing, particularly whether Ray and Rachel had dropped Jane off at her house while Kyle was still in Ray’s truck. The second concerned Rachel’s pregnancy and abortion. Jane had been certain of both her responses. She had sworn that Ray had first dropped Kyle at the end of his driveway before driving to her house further down King Street. She had also sworn that Rachel had her abortion before she and her family returned to China in the middle of tenth grade.
“It’s good to hear Jane is still on your side but what I don’t understand is why Lee and Lillian would come to my cabin.” Ted said, shaking his head.
“We have to assume they heard every word uttered after we arrived, including my argument with Buddy.” Ray paused and took two long draws of his beer. “Thank God there was no mention of the Hunt House.”
Ted stood and pushed the bar stool back under the counter. “Ray, promise you’ll protect me. From the recordings, I’m just along for the ride. I had nothing to do with you and Buddy.”
“You dumb fuck. It was your place. You were there. You’re guilty by association.” Ray’s declaration spurred Ted to stand, walk toward the giant fireplace in the den, and return to the kitchen. Ted was clearly worried.
“I think we better protect each other. We both are at risk of going to prison. You for the fiasco with your Albertville cheerleader and the Hunt House fire, among a long list of other things, and me for financial corruption.”
“And you for arson.” Ray added.
“The hell you say. All I did was manipulate the police.” Ted had placed an anonymous call to the Boaz dispatcher who’d sent three patrol cars to a domestic violence inspired shooting outside Barry’s Barbecue south of town. This had provided safe passage for Buddy and Eric’s visit to Thomas Avenue and the Hunt House.
“That’s conspiracy to commit a crime you dumb ass.” Ray hated lawyers but had always been fascinated by the law.
“Come on, let’s go to The Shack and eat a steak. While we can.” Ray nodded, flipped off the kitchen lights, and followed Ted outside.
***
Lillian’s iPhone vibrated. For the past two hours, she had napped on her couch under a throw. She reached for the coffee table and read the text notification. Device A triggered an hour ago. She tossed her heavy Afghan aside and sat up.
She pressed PLAY. Lillian didn’t recognize the voice who said, “You hit the nail on the head.” The second voice was clearly Ray.
Lillian stood after the third statement. “Damn, that has to be Ted King.”
She rewound and replayed the words that scared her to death: “Someone was inside the cabin last night, both before and after we arrived.” Lillian listened and re-listened for thirty minutes, alternately rewinding and fast-forwarding at critical spots. Finally, she stood and walked through the kitchen, across the back porch, and toward the pond, dreading and postponing her call to Lee. “What a fucking mess I’ve made. I’ve just given Ray the motivation to kill Lee and me.
Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.
Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.
Americans are overworked and overly devoted to the hustle, but that’s not why organized religion is declining. Church apologists trying to explain their decline always look outward, never inward at themselves.
Christianity in America is suffering an unprecedented decline.
Once-thriving congregations are shrinking and graying. Parishes are being consolidated. Closed-down churches are being reborn as bookstores and breweries, concert halls and apartments.
Surveys find that nonreligious Americans—or “nones”—now constitute about 30% of the population, outnumbering every single Christian denomination. If current trends continue, nones could be a majority by 2070.
The decline has become so obvious that even Christian propagandists can’t sweep it under the carpet. So they’re in search of explanations, preferably explanations that absolve them of blame. In the Atlantic, orthodox apologist Jake Meador proposes one:
Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.“The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church.” Jake Meador, The Atlantic, 29 July 2023.
Meador paints a picture of a society that worships work above all else. He argues that high-stress jobs, inflexible schedules, and the capitalist drive to use every moment “productively” have severed the bonds of community. People are isolated, stressed, and exhausted. They’re so immersed in the hustle mindset that they drift away from religion because they can’t conceive of spending time on something that doesn’t make money.
To the churches and their defenders, this is a comforting story. It allows them to tell themselves that they haven’t been rejected. They’ve merely been pushed aside by the hustle and bustle of modern life. It holds out the promise that, if they can cut through the noise and make themselves heard, they can persuade young people to come back.
However, this face-saving explanation has a flaw.
The evidence, drawn from polls and interviews, paints a different picture. It’s not the case that young people have drifted away from church because they’re too busy with their side hustles and their TikToks. Rather, millions have chosen to cut ties with organized religion because they have stark disagreements with its moral teachings—and because the churches allow no room for dissent or difference of opinion.
The churches’ problem isn’t that they’re drowned out in the din and can’t make themselves heard. On the contrary, we hear them loud and clear.
A case in point is Charles Chaput, the archbishop of Philadelphia. In 2016, he urged liberal Catholics to quit the church. According to Chaput, people who call themselves Catholic but support abortion, contraception or LGBTQ rights are faithless liars. He declared that the church would be better off without them. Like other conservatives, he prefers a smaller, more ideologically pure church to a larger one with more diversity of opinion.
And young people are taking him at his word. According to a Pew survey, two-thirds of former Catholics left the church, not because they’re too busy, but because they stopped believing in its teachings.
Sixty years behind the times and going backward
On issue after issue, the pattern is the same. The churches’ problem isn’t that they’re drowned out in the din and can’t make themselves heard. On the contrary, we hear them loud and clear. The problem is that they’ve doubled down on moral stances that are the polar opposite of what young people believe and care about.
The second wave of feminism was more than sixty years ago, yet many churches still reject the most basic notions of gender equality. America’s two largest Christian denominations, Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist, refuse to allow women to take any leadership role. Just this year, the Southern Baptist Convention expelled two churches—including Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church—for the sin of hiring women as pastors. Women who speak out against this gross inequality have been flooded with harassment and hate mail.
To appease the religious minority that believes this, Christian churches have set themselves against the vast majority.
Above all else is the question of abortion. The repeal of Roe was a painful wake-up call, jolting women with the realization that their right to control their own bodies is slipping away. Young people recognize that opposition to abortion is motivated by religion. The churches have been loud and proud in their support of abortion bans, whereas nonbelievers are almost unanimously pro-choice.
And the religious right isn’t planning to stop there. They’re pushing for even more radical restrictions of women’s rights. Their next frontier is trying to scrap no-fault divorce, which would keep people trapped in abusive or unhappy marriages. Almost 70% of divorces are initiated by women, so this is another anti-feminist idea in thin disguise.
Putting people back in boxes
You can tell a similar story about LGBTQ rights. Millennials like me, who came of age in the early 2000s, remember the Christian crusade against gay and lesbian rights, especially same-sex marriage. The Nashville Statement, signed by more than 150 evangelical leaders, declared their eternal opposition to LGBTQ rights in every form.
Of course, they didn’t win that battle. Marriage equality is a reality, delivered by the Supreme Court and reinforced by Congressional legislation. Americans support LGBTQ rights by enormous majorities. More than two-thirds of Americans support marriage equality, including majorities in 47 of 50 states. Three-quarters say LGBTQ people should be protected from discrimination.
However, anti-gay Christians haven’t given up. They’re still fighting a rearguard action, claiming a religious right to discriminate against LGBTQ people. In red states, Christian legislators are banning books with gay characters and passing Don’t Say Gay laws.
In fact, the Christian opposition to gay rights has only grown more vicious. A tragic example was Urban Christian Academy, a private Christian school in Kansas City that provided underprivileged children with a tuition-free education. When the school updated its mission statement to affirm LGBTQ rights, angry religious donors pulled their support. The school lost nearly all its funding and was forced to close its doors.
Transgender people face even more brutal persecution. Wherever they have power, religious conservatives want to police their bathroom use; deny them access to gender-affirming medical care; even take away children from transgender families. So virulent is their opposition to anything and everything that smacks of weakening the gender binary, a Christian university fired two (cisgender) employees merely for putting their pronouns in their e-mail signatures.
As with women’s rights and gay rights, attacks on transgender people are rooted in a religious belief that sex and gender are strictly binary and fixed at birth, and for people to want to break out of these boxes goes against the will of God. However, to appease the religious minority that believes this, Christian churches have set themselves against the vast majority. An April 2023 poll—by Fox News, no less!—finds that 86% of Americans say political attacks on transgender kids are a serious problem.
Insular and hostile
The root cause of these culture-war clashes is that most churches, especially evangelical churches, have turned insular and hostile. They’re dens of conservatism—and not traditional small-government conservatism, but radical, norm-breaking Trumpian conservatism.
Russell Moore, a former top official of the Southern Baptist Congregation, made waves recently when he spoke about pastors whose congregants scorn the literal teachings of Jesus as “liberal talking points” and “weak”.
As churches grow more fanatical, they’re also receding further from objective reality. Many pastors complain that QAnon and other noxious conspiracy theories are swallowing up their congregations. Surveys find that as many as 50% of white evangelicals are QAnon believers.
Most churches, especially evangelical churches, have turned insular and hostile.
The few prominent Christians who aren’t caught up in the tide of conspiracies have lamented how gullible their fellow believers are. Evangelical author Ed Stetzer said in 2017 that “the spreading of these conspiracies are hurting our witness and making Christians look, yet again, foolish.”
However, no one heeded him. The plague of conspiracy beliefs only got worse—so much so that by 2020, he was pleading, “If you still insist on spreading such misinformation, would you please consider taking Christian off your bio so the rest of us don’t have to share in the embarrassment?”
Looking in the mirror
Is hustle culture a real problem? Yes. Have some people stopped attending church because they’re too busy? Almost certainly.
However, Christian apologists use this as a way to avoid looking in the mirror. They want to believe that Christianity’s decline isn’t their fault. That way, they don’t have to do anything differently. Or, at worst, the problem is that they haven’t been faithful enough—so they need to do what they’ve always been doing, just more and harder. (In his column, Meador follows suit: “[A] vibrant, life-giving church requires more, not less, time and energy from its members.”)
This inability to introspect is a widespread problem in institutional Christianity. The arrow of causality is fixed pointing outward; they never turn it back upon themselves. For all they talk about repentance, they’re consistently unwilling to consider that they might have made any mistakes of their own that they need to atone for.
None of this means that there aren’t any other problems in American society. As a culture, we do work too much—some of us by choice, others very much not by choice—and overvalue wealth and success at the expense of everything that makes life meaningful.
If Christians are serious about resisting hustle culture, their help would be welcome. They could join atheists in calling for a stronger safety net, an expanded sense of mutuality, and more guarantees for workers’ rights and leisure time. It would go a long way to repair their reputation; it might even reverse their decline.
But for the churches to truly commit to this goal, rather than merely using it to shift the blame, would require real change on their part. It would require more compassion, more tolerance, and a greater willingness to reconsider long-held dogmas than they’ve displayed until now.
Lillian located the cabin’s key without trouble or fanfare. It hung on a nail six feet above the creek on a tree whose roots splayed into the rushing water like a web of miniature piers. Thankfully, someone had strategically placed flat rocks to use as steppingstones to cross the creek. Lillian executed the ten-foot walk flawlessly. My right foot slipped into the cold water halfway across. I somehow avoided a complete dunk in the fast moving but shallow water. Without ridicule or sympathy, Lillian led us to the front side of a log cabin, sitting dark, silent, and lifeless. “Walk three hundred feet and hide.” She pointed away from the cabin along a tree-lined narrow gravel road. “Use this to warn me if you need to.” She unzipped her fanny pack and removed a set of walkie-talkies, something I hadn’t seen in half a century. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Wonder Woman had spent a career in the military.
I paused at the road’s edge and wanted to ask a dozen questions. Like, where are you going to put the recorders? What if they bugged the house with motion detectors, cameras, alarms? “Message me when you’re done.” Lillian nodded and shushed me away.
A football field’s walk brought alarm. I had just rounded a curve and saw lights in the distance. It took me a minute, but I finally figured it out. The three corners of Ted King’s house had floodlights, and they were on. I eased into a ditch and struggled to climb what, in my youth, would be a shallow embankment. I used a smaller tree to pull myself up. The pain from my hurt shoulder was the second thing that reminded me of my age. I found a large tree to hide behind and messaged Lillian. “Base to Alpha. Are you okay?”
“Damn, you scared me. Is something wrong?” I hoped she had already completed the mission and was making her way to her post across the road from the cabin’s front porch.
“Just checking to make sure we’re connected.” I rolled my eyes as I repeated my statement to myself.
“We are. Believe me.” I think I heard her sigh. “Okay, I’m finished. You can come back. We need to take our position and get ready to snap some photos.”
“Roger over and out.” I did not know why I was acting so silly. It made me wonder whether the Vicodin had a long-term effect.
I used the same sapling to return to the ditch and road. Ten steps toward Lillian I heard a sound, like distant thunder, but that seemed unlikely given the weather. Instead, a slow-moving vehicle came to mind. After making a 180-degree turn, I saw a dim, expansive light filtering through an ocean of trees. I removed my walkie-talkie and announced. “I think we’ve got company.”
“Hide. Now. Don’t come any further.” Lillian’s order matched my intent.
I jammed the walkie-talkie into my pocket and hustled back to my first hideout. By now, I could see a pair of headlights coming my way. I grabbed the sapling and pulled. A thin layer of ice had formed where I’d last gripped my hands. This time, I slipped and fell to my knees. When I regained my footing. I removed a bandanna from my back pocket and wrapped it tightly around the small tree. This time I made it up the embankment, but my walkie-talkie didn’t. It fell out of my pants pocket and tumbled into the ditch when I stood. I was out of time. I reached my hiding spot as a red Corvette rounded a curve a hundred feet from where I squatted. Damn, Lillian is on her own.
It felt like an hour before the second vehicle arrived. Although I couldn’t see the rear bumper and tag, I knew it was the same jacked-up blue Chevrolet that had tried to kill me. For the first time since the red car passed, I stood. I was the coldest I had ever been. Thankfully, the rain, now sleet, hadn’t penetrated my clothes. But only because of my windbreaker jacket and the pair of rain-pants Lillian had insisted I slip on before backing out of her garage.
I worried about Lillian but didn’t know what to do. So, I did nothing but follow orders, the last one being, ‘Hide. Now. Don’t come any further.’
Fortunately, Ray and Buddy opposed chattering. In less than ten minutes, I heard the blue truck rumble and figured the money exchange was over. I painfully eased to the other side of the tree and waited. The sound grew louder, and the truck picked up speed. I stayed put another ten minutes until the red Corvette crawled by. Hopefully, it was my imagination, but it seemed to slow down when passing my spot.
I waited another two minutes before repelling the embankment and mentally punishing myself for leaving my red bandanna wrapped around the sapling. I grabbed the walkie-talkie from the ditch and jogged the best I could toward Lillian.
Wonder Woman was sitting on the cabin’s front porch steps when I ended my sprint. “I thought you’d left me,” she said, standing and throwing her backpack across her shoulder.
“No, just a little clumsy these days.”
Lillian gave me a quick head-to-toe inspection. “I see you like playing in the mud.” At least she smiled.
I wanted to explain, but she waved me off and onward. I read her action as ‘shut up and follow me.’ “Don’t we need to remove the recorders?”
“Done. Now, come on. I can’t wait to weigh our catch.” Her last phrase gained clarity during our twenty-minute return trek to the Clausen’s. The sleet was now mixed with snow, and I was still freezing.
Ray had arrived first. In a red Corvette. He had brought a friend. None other than Mayor King himself. Lillian had taken a dozen photos before the two had gone inside the cabin. Buddy had arrived in the blue truck ten minutes later. More photos. The money exchange had taken longer than expected. The second surprise arrived when Buddy exited the cabin and walked to the passenger side of his truck. Through a lowered window, a hand and half an arm emerged to secure a thick envelope and pull it inside the cab. More photos. Ray and the Mayor had ridden away a few minutes later. More photos.
It was nine-thirty before we arrived at Lillian’s. She’d insisted we buy coffee. I hadn’t resisted but was glad she removed her black face before entering McDonald’s drive-through. I’d kept a low profile in the passenger seat, semi-concealed under an overly stretched hoodie.
After the two of us changed out of our combat uniforms, we again settled around the kitchen table. Lillian removed the two recording devices from her backpack and shared how the two she’d concealed at the Lodge sent her updates because of Wi-Fi, something Ted’s cabin didn’t have.
It pleased Lillian that both recorders matched conversations. The extra cost had proved valuable. With one secured on a front porch beam and the other hidden inside on a bookshelf, the captured words were identical.
Ray: “Damn, it’s freezing out here. Let’s get inside.”
Ted: “No shit.” Pause. “That’s weird.”
Ray: “What?”
Ted: “The door’s unlocked.”
Ray: “You probably forgot.”
Ted: “I doubt it, but it has been weeks since I’ve been here. I’m calling Julie.”
Ray: “Forget it, just open the damn door.”
Rustling noises, including cabinet doors slamming.
Ted: “Shit. No Jack. Somebody’s been here.”
Ray: “Probably teenagers. Stole your booze. Forgot to lock up.” Thunderous laughter.
Ted: “I’m headed to the bedroom. Buddy can’t see me.”
Long pause. Minutes pass.
Ray (louder this time): “He’s here.”
Ted (faintly): “Roger.”
Lillian and I listened to the money-exchange scene three times. The conversation was as expected. Except for one part. There, through an angry back and forth, we learned the name of the tall man whose charred body was now lying on a cold stainless-steel table in Birmingham at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. Eric Snyder was from Guntersville, and, like Buddy, an ex-con experienced in sophisticated detonation methodologies. Ray accused Buddy of being stupid and incompetent.
Buddy shared his theory, a hypothesis. A few minutes before eleven, Eric, as instructed, had reentered the Hunt House for one last inspection. Although the gas explosion was scheduled for midnight, something went wrong. Buddy blamed Eric and his steel-toed boots. Ray had repeated his demeaning accusation. A money argument ensued, with Ray threatening to pay only half. Buddy countered with his own threat, “You and me both will rot in jail if you don’t pay every fucking cent you promised.”
For the next two hours, Lillian and I bantered back and forth about the best course of action to pursue. We settled on a presentation of our evidence to Micaden and Connor with hopes one or both would connect the last and most vital link in the chain, from Ray and Buddy’s arson and murder to the halls of justice.
***
At midnight, I remained chilled from the night’s activities. Lillian’s central heat sucked. “I’ve got to go. Kyla’s propane heater is beckoning me home.” I stood, walked to the back door and reached for my duffel. When I turned back toward the table, Lillian was standing less than a foot away.
“Before you go, I have to say thanks. Unless something drastic happens, I’m on the quick road to my ultimate freedom. And I owe it all to you.” She stepped closer and placed her hands, palms out, on my chest. Our eyes met.
“Truth is, you didn’t need me. You’re a one-woman platoon. I just got in the way.” She laughed and shook her head, shifting strands of still-tousled hair away from her eyes. She laid the left side of her face against my cheek and slid her hands around my waist. Her lavender scent was mesmerizing. I almost put my hands in my pants pocket but connected them around her back slightly above her hips.
“Lee, I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?” I knew what she was thinking and subconsciously I’d waited for some arrangement of these words for over half a century. She pressed her body against mine.
“I can. And I do, but next time, I get to use the Nikon.” She raised and cocked her head sideways. Smiled. Her forehead creased.
“You dufus.” She released her grip slightly. “You don’t know what I’m talking about.”
My body wanted to disconnect my hands, slide one up her back to the base of her neck, and pull her lips toward mine. But my mind questioned whether I was ready. “You retard, I know, and yes, I forgive you.”
Unlike me, Lillian responded to her body’s desire. She laid her palms across my cheeks, pulled me forward, and planted a soft kiss on my lips. When I didn’t immediately respond, she said, “Lee, I love you. I always have.”
My mind flashed forward to Lillian’s bed and her naked body. I was losing my struggle with temptation. But I knew I’d hate myself in the morning. I admitted to Lillian my lustful thoughts and ended our night with, “I’m just not ready.”
With that, I retreated through the back door, and across the porch and yard to the Hyundai. I drove home aching for Wonder Woman’s soft kisses, sexy words, and sensuous touches.
Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.
Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.
When President Donald J. Trump’s eldest son took the stage outside the Georgia Republican Party headquarters two days after the 2020 election, he likened what lay ahead to mortal combat.
“Americans need to know this is not a banana republic!” Donald Trump Jr. shouted, claiming that Georgia and other swing states had been overrun by wild electoral shenanigans. He described tens of thousands of ballots that had “magically” shown up around the country, all marked for Joseph R. Biden Jr., and others dumped by Democratic officials into “one big box” so their authenticity could not be verified.
Mr. Trump told his father’s supporters at the news conference — who broke into chants of “Stop the steal!” and “Fraud! Fraud!” — that “the number one thing that Donald Trump can do in this election is fight each and every one of these battles, to the death!”
Over the two months that followed, a vast effort unfolded on behalf of the lame-duck president to overturn the election results in swing states across the country. But perhaps nowhere were there as many attempts to intervene as in Georgia, where Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, is now poised to bring an indictment for a series of brazen moves made on behalf of Mr. Trump in the state after his loss and for lies that the president and his allies circulated about the election there.
Mr. Trump has already been indicted three times this year, most recently in a federal case brought by the special prosecutor Jack Smith that is also related to election interference. But the Georgia case may prove the most expansive legal challenge to Mr. Trump’s attempts to cling to power, with nearly 20 people informed that they could face charges.
It could also prove the most enduring: While Mr. Trump could try to pardon himself from a federal conviction if he were re-elected, presidents cannot pardon state crimes.
Perhaps above all, the Georgia case assembled by Ms. Willis offers a vivid reminder of the extraordinary lengths taken by Mr. Trump and his allies to exert pressure on local officials to overturn the election — an up-close portrait of American democracy tested to its limits.
There was the infamous call that the former president made to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, during which Mr. Trump said he wanted to “find” nearly 12,000 votes, or enough to overturn his narrow loss there. Mr. Trump and his allies harassed and defamed rank-and-file election workers with false accusations of ballot stuffing, leading to so many vicious threats against one of them that she was forced into hiding.
They deployed fake local electors to certify that Mr. Trump had won the election. Within even the Justice Department, an obscure government lawyer secretly plotted with the president to help him overturn the state’s results.
And on the same day that Mr. Biden’s victory was certified by Congress, Trump allies infiltrated a rural Georgia county’s election office, copying sensitive software used in voting machines throughout the state in their fruitless hunt for ballot fraud.
The Georgia investigation has encompassed an array of high-profile allies, from the lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman, to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time of the election. But it has also scrutinized lesser-known players like a Georgia bail bondsman and a publicist who once worked for Kanye West.
As soon as Monday, there could be charges from a Fulton County grand jury after Ms. Willis presents her case to them. The number of people indicted could be large: A separate special grand jury that investigated the matter in an advisory capacity last year recommended more than a dozen people for indictment, and the forewoman of the grand jury has strongly hinted that the former president was among them.
If an indictment lands and the case goes to trial, a regular jury and the American public will hear a story that centers on nine critical weeks from Election Day through early January in which a host of people all tried to push one lie: that Mr. Trump had secured victory in Georgia. The question before the jurors would be whether some of those accused went so far that they broke the law.
A recording of Mr. Trump talking to Brad Raffensperger, secretary of state of Georgia, was played during a hearing by the Jan. 6 Committee last October. Credit…Alex Wong/Getty Images
Unleashing ‘Hate and Fury’
It did not take long for the gloves to come off.
During the Nov. 5 visit by Donald Trump Jr., the Georgia Republican Party was already fracturing. Some officials believed they should focus on defending the seats of the state’s two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who were weeks away from runoff elections, rather than fighting a losing presidential candidate’s battles.
But according to testimony before the Jan. 6 committee by one of the Trump campaign’s local staffers, Mr. Trump’s son was threatening to “tank” those Senate races if there was not total support for his father’s effort. (A spokesman for Donald Trump Jr. disputed that characterization, noting that the former president’s son later appeared in ads for the Senate candidates.)
Four days later, the two senators called for Mr. Raffensperger’s resignation. The Raffensperger family was soon barraged with threats, leading his wife, Tricia, to confront Ms. Loeffler in a text message: “Never did I think you were the kind of person to unleash such hate and fury.”
Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election Interference
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A legal threat to Trump. Fani Willis, the Atlanta area district attorney, has been investigating whether former President Donald Trump and his allies interfered with the 2020 election in Georgia. The case could be one of the most perilous legal problems for Trump. Here’s what to know:
What are prosecutors looking at? In addition to Trump’s call to Raffensperger, Willis has homed in on a plot by Trump allies to send fake Georgia electors to Washington and misstatements about the election results made before the state legislature by Rudy Giuliani, who spearheaded efforts to keep Trump in power as his personal lawyer. An election data breach in Coffee County, Ga., is also part of the investigation.
The potential charges. Experts say that Willis appears to be building a case that could target multiple defendants with charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud or racketeering-related charges for engaging in a coordinated scheme to undermine the election. The grand jury, which recently concluded its work, recommended indictments for multiple people, the forewoman of the jury said.
Four other battleground states had also flipped to Mr. Biden, but losing Georgia, the only Deep South state among them, seemed particularly untenable for Mr. Trump. His margin of defeat there was one of the smallest in the nation. Republicans controlled the state, and as he would note repeatedly in the aftermath, his campaign rallies in Georgia had drawn big, boisterous crowds.
By the end of November, Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed had become a font of misinformation. “Everybody knows it was Rigged” he wrote in a tweet on Nov. 29. And on Dec. 1: “Do something @BrianKempGA,” he wrote, referring to Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican. “You allowed your state to be scammed.”
But these efforts were not gaining traction. Mr. Raffensperger and Mr. Kemp were not bending. And on Dec. 1, Mr. Trump’s attorney general, William P. Barr, announced that the Department of Justice had found no evidence of voting fraud “on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
A Show for Lawmakers
It was time to turn up the volume.
Mr. Giuliani was on the road, traveling to Phoenix and Lansing, Mich., to meet with lawmakers to convince them of fraud in their states, both lost by Mr. Trump. Now, he was in Atlanta.
Even though Mr. Trump’s loss in Georgia had been upheld by a state audit, Mr. Giuliani made fantastical claims at a hearing in front of the State Senate, the first of three legislative hearings in December 2020.
Rudolph Giuliani at a legislative hearing at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta in December 2020.Credit…Rebecca Wright/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated Press
He repeatedly asserted that machines made by Dominion Voting Systems had flipped votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden and changed the election outcome — false claims that became part of Dominion defamation suits against Fox News, Mr. Giuliani and a number of others.
Mr. Giuliani, then Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, also played a video that he said showed election workers pulling suitcases of suspicious ballots from under a table to be secretly counted after Republican poll watchers had left for the night.
He accused two workers, a Black mother and daughter named Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss, of passing a suspicious USB drive between them “like vials of heroin or cocaine.” Investigators later determined that they were passing a mint; Mr. Giuliani recently admitted in a civil suit that he had made false statements about the two women.
Other Trump allies also made false claims at the hearing with no evidence to back them up, including that thousands of convicted felons, dead people and others unqualified to vote in Georgia had done so.
John Eastman, a lawyer advising the Trump campaign, claimed that “the number of underage individuals who were allowed to register” in the state “amounts allegedly up to approximately 66,000 people.”
That was not remotely true. During an interview last year, Mr. Eastman said that he had relied on a consultant who had made an error, and there were in fact about 2,000 voters who “were only 16 when they registered.”
But a review of the data he was using found that Mr. Eastman was referring to the total number of Georgians since the 1920s who were recorded as having registered before they were allowed. Even that number was heavily inflated due to data-entry errors common in large government databases.
The truth: Only about a dozen Georgia residents were recorded as being 16 when they registered to vote in 2020, and those appeared to be another data-entry glitch.
Trump supporters protesting election results at State Farm Arena in Atlanta in the days following the 2020 election.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York Times
The President Calling
In the meantime, Mr. Trump was working the phones, trying to directly persuade Georgia Republican leaders to reject Mr. Biden’s win.
He called Governor Kemp on Dec. 5, a day after the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit seeking to have the state’s election results overturned. Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Kemp to compel lawmakers to come back into session and brush aside the will of the state’s voters.
Mr. Kemp, who during his campaign for governor had toted a rifle and threatened to “round up illegals” in an ad that seemed an homage to Mr. Trump, rebuffed the idea.
Two days later, Mr. Trump called David Ralston, the speaker of the Georgia House, with a similar pitch. But Mr. Ralston, who died last year, “basically cut the president off,” a member of the special grand jury in Atlanta who heard his testimony later told The Atlanta Journal Constitution. “He just basically took the wind out of the sails.”
By Dec. 7, Georgia had completed its third vote count, yet again affirming Mr. Biden’s victory. But Trump allies in the legislature were hatching a new plan to defy the election laws that have long been pillars of American democracy: They wanted to call a special session and pick new electors who would cast votes for Mr. Trump.
Never mind that Georgia lawmakers had already approved representatives to the Electoral College reflecting Biden’s win in the state, part of the constitutionally prescribed process for formalizing the election of a new president. The Trump allies hoped that the fake electors and the votes they cast would be used to pressure Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the election results on Jan. 6.
Mr. Kemp issued a statement warning them off: “Doing this in order to select a separate slate of presidential electors is not an option that is allowed under state or federal law.”
The Fake Electors Meet
Rather than back down, Mr. Trump was deeply involved in the emerging plan to enlist slates of bogus electors.
Mr. Trump called Ronna McDaniel, the head of the Republican National Committee, to enlist her help, according to Ms. McDaniel’s House testimony. By Dec. 13, as the Supreme Court of Georgia rejected an election challenge from the Trump campaign, Robert Sinners, the Trump campaign’s local director of Election Day operations, emailed the 16 fake electors, directing them to quietly meet in the capitol building in Atlanta the next day.
Mr. Trump’s top campaign lawyers were so troubled by the plan that they refused to take part. Still, the president tried to keep up the pressure using his Twitter account. “What a fool Governor @BrianKempGA of Georgia is,” he wrote in a post just after midnight on Dec. 14, adding, “Demand this clown call a Special Session.”
Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, at a news conference following the election in 2020.Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times
Later that day, the bogus electors met at the Statehouse. They signed documents that claimed they were Georgia’s “duly elected and qualified electors,” even though they were not.
In the end, their effort was rebuffed by Mr. Pence.
In his testimony to House investigators, Mr. Sinners later reflected on what took place: “I felt ashamed,” he said.
A Guide to the Various Trump Investigations
Confused about the inquiries and legal cases involving former President Donald Trump? We’re here to help.
Key Cases and Inquiries: The former president faces several investigations at both the state and the federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers. Here is a close look at each.
What if Trump Is Convicted?: Will any of the proceedings hinder Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign? Can a convicted felon even run for office? Here is what we know, and what we don’t know.
Moves in the White House
With other efforts failing, the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, got personally involved. Just before Christmas, he traveled to suburban Cobb County, Ga., during its audit of signatures on mail-in absentee ballots, which had been requested by Mr. Kemp.
Mr. Meadows tried to get into the room where state investigators were verifying the signatures. He was turned away. But he did meet with Jordan Fuchs, Georgia’s deputy secretary of state, to discuss the audit process.
During the visit, Mr. Meadows put Mr. Trump on the phone with the lead investigator for the secretary of state’s office, Frances Watson. “I won Georgia by a lot, and the people know it,” Mr. Trump told her. “Something bad happened.”
Byung J. Pak, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta at the time, believed that Mr. Meadows’s visit was “highly unusual,” adding in his House testimony, “I don’t recall that ever happening in the history of the U.S.”
In Washington, meanwhile, a strange plot was emerging within the Justice Department to help Mr. Trump.
Mr. Barr, one of the most senior administration officials to dismiss the claims of fraud, had stepped down as attorney general, and jockeying for power began. Jeffrey Clark, an unassuming lawyer who had been running the Justice Department’s environmental division, attempted to go around the department’s leadership by meeting with Mr. Trump and pitching a plan to help keep him in office.
Mr. Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, leaving the White House en route to Georgia in January 2021.Credit…Pool photo by Erin Scott
Mr. Clark drafted a letter to lawmakers in Georgia, dated Dec. 28, falsely claiming that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” regarding the state’s election results. He urged the lawmakers to convene a special session — a dramatic intervention.
Richard Donoghue, who was serving as acting deputy attorney general, later testified that he was so alarmed when he saw the draft letter that he had to read it “twice to make sure I really understood what he was proposing, because it was so extreme.”
The letter was never sent.
One Last Call
Still, Mr. Trump refused to give up. It was time to reach the man who was in charge of election oversight: Mr. Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state.
On Jan. 2, he called Mr. Raffensperger and asked him to recalculate the vote. It was the call that he would later repeatedly defend as “perfect,” an hourlong mostly one-sided conversation during which Mr. Raffensperger politely but firmly rejected his entreaties.
“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president warned, adding, “you know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you.”
Mr. Raffensperger was staggered. He later wrote that “for the office of the secretary of state to ‘recalculate’ would mean we would somehow have to fudge the numbers. The president was asking me to do something that I knew was wrong, and I was not going to do that.”
Mr. Trump seemed particularly intent on incriminating the Black women working for the county elections office, telling Mr. Raffensperger that Ruby Freeman — whom he mentioned 18 times during the call — was “a professional vote-scammer and hustler.”
“She’s one of the hot items on the internet, Brad,” Mr. Trump said of the viral misinformation circulating about Ms. Freeman, which had already been debunked by Mr. Raffensperger’s aides and federal investigators.
Trump-fueled conspiracy theories about Ms. Freeman and her daughter, Ms. Moss, were indeed proliferating. In testimony to the Jan. 6 committee last year, Ms. Moss recounted Trump supporters forcing their way into her grandmother’s home, claiming they were there to make a citizen’s arrest of her granddaughter; Ms. Freeman said that she no longer went to the grocery store.
Then, on Jan. 4, Ms. Freeman received an unusual overture.
Trevian Kutti, a Trump supporter from Chicago who had once worked as a publicist for Kanye West, persuaded Ms. Freeman to meet her at a police station outside Atlanta. Ms. Freeman later said that Ms. Kutti — who told her that “crisis is my thing,” according to a video of the encounter — had tried to pressure her into saying she had committed voter fraud.
“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere,” Ms. Freeman said in her testimony, adding, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”
Cathy Latham, center, in a light blue shirt, in the elections office in Coffee County, Ga., while a team working on Mr. Trump’s behalf made copies of voting equipment data in January 2021.Credit…Coffee County, Georgia, via Associated Press
‘Every Freaking Ballot’
On Jan. 7, despite the fake electors and the rest of the pressure campaign, Mr. Pence certified the election results for Mr. Biden. The bloody, chaotic attack on the Capitol the day before did not stop the final certification of Biden’s victory, but in Georgia, the machinations continued.
In a quiet, rural county in the southeastern part of the state, Trump allies gave their mission one more extraordinary try.
A few hours after the certification, a small group working on Mr. Trump’s behalf traveled to Coffee County, about 200 miles from Atlanta. A lawyer advising Mr. Trump had hired a company called SullivanStrickler to scour voting systems in Georgia and other states for evidence of fraud or miscounts; some of its employees joined several Trump allies on the expedition.
“We scanned every freaking ballot,” Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area Trump supporter and bail bondsman who traveled to Coffee County with employees of the company on Jan. 7, recalled in a recorded phone conversation. Mr. Hall said that with the blessing of the Coffee County elections board, the team had “scanned all the equipment” and “imaged all the hard drives” that had been used on Election Day.
A law firm hired by SullivanStrickler would later release a statement saying of the company, “Knowing everything they know now, they would not take on any further work of this kind.”
Others would have their regrets, too. While Mr. Trump still pushes his conspiracy theories, some of those who worked for him now reject the claims of rigged voting machines and mysterious ballot-stuffed suitcases. As Mr. Sinners, the Trump campaign official, put it in his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee last summer, “It was just complete hot garbage.”
By then, Ms. Willis’s investigation was well underway.
“An investigation is like an onion,” she said in an interview soon after her inquiry began. “You never know. You pull something back, and then you find something else.”
Danny Hakim is an investigative reporter. He has been a European economics correspondent and bureau chief in Albany and Detroit. He was also a lead reporter on the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. More about Danny Hakim
Richard Fausset is a correspondent based in Atlanta. He mainly writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice. He previously worked at The Los Angeles Times, including as a foreign correspondent in Mexico City. More about Richard Fausset
My iPhone beeped an email alert. I exited the Hardee’s restroom in Springville, where I’d relieved myself for the second time in twenty-five minutes. My frequent bathroom breaks should be an ongoing reminder I needed to see a urologist.
The email was from Bert Stallings. I settled into my Hyundai and read his response to the one I’d sent before leaving the airport. “The committee has approved your request for emergency leave.” Bert’s terseness reminded me of Micaden. Thankfully, my law school colleague’s words were more forthcoming when dealing with personal matters. Bert’s P.S. expression of care and sympathy for Rob’s health, and for speed and effectiveness in dealing with the Hunt House fire, was heartfelt and welcomed.
So far, the timing has been perfect. The last day of classes and the beginning of the Thanksgiving recess had been the 20th, a week ago today. Beginning next Monday, the students begin a seven-day reading period to prepare for their fall exams. The testing period will end December the 18th.
Thankfully, two of my colleagues, Lea Doherty and Steve Cunningham, had agreed to proctor my exams in Torts I, Appellate Advocacy, and Legal Writing, and overnight them to me for grading. I entered Reminders in Evernote to buy Lea and Steve a delightful Christmas gift, and to book a return flight that will put me in New Haven no later than Friday, January 29th, three days before the beginning of Spring term.
I started the Hyundai and exited Hardee’s parking lot. I’d always favored a tight schedule, knowing it helped occupy my mind and control my curiosity. However, two months seemed laughingly inadequate to alter the trajectory of Ray Archer’s life. In fact, it felt like a noose around my neck. And this said nothing about the time and effort required to grade a hundred and ten bluebooks, and prep for my Spring-term classes.
I called Lillian when I took the Highway 77 exit. She would know the answer to my question. “Hey.”
“Hi, it’s Lee.”
She didn’t pause. “I figured you were over Virginia by now.” Before Lillian finished her statement, I heard three bleats in unison. The goats. I doubted my former girlfriend had twisted into a tomboy and purchased her own Nubians. She had to be at Harding Hillside.
“Are you with Kyla? Outside?” My second question was unnecessary.
“Yes. Kind of. She’s in the barn.” Clear and cohesive speech is rare.
“Lillian, please don’t tell her it’s me. I’m in Attalla and need your help. I’ll tell sis later.”
“Okay. What do you need?” I heard Kyla ask Lillian to turn on a faucet.
“Can you meet at your house in thirty minutes?” I couldn’t imagine a scenario where Kyla didn’t sense it was me. Lillian wasn’t a good liar.
“I can. You didn’t tell me what this is about.”
“A stakeout. Tonight. Ray and Buddy. You know.”
Lillian ended our call with a “Thanks Justin for calling me back so soon. I’ll see you in half an hour.” I didn’t know Justin, but I suspected Lillian did, probably a plumber, an electrician, or a heating and air guy.
***
Lillian was sitting at her kitchen table staring at her open laptop when I walked in. Five minutes ago, she had sent a text telling me where to park and to enter through the back porch.
“Hey. Sit here.” Without greeting, she patted the extra chair positioned next to her own. I sat my duffel on the floor and did as instructed. With barely a glance, Lillian asked, “Do you know Barry and Vanessa Clausen?”
I craned my neck toward the laptop and Google Maps. “No. Never heard of them.” Lillian magnified Google Maps’ satellite view and used a number two pencil to point at a large house with an in-ground swimming pool nestled among a forest of trees. I gave her a confused look: cocked head and squinting eyebrows with creased forehead. I even held both hands palm up.
“Doesn’t matter, but I do. We’ll use their place to access Ted’s cabin.”
“Okay.” After half a century, I’d forgotten Lillian’s take-charge nature. If, and only if, it concerned a mystery. Normal stuff, like ‘the barn’s on fire’ (the girl loved candles in the barn loft) were boring and others (mostly me) could take care of them.
“Vanessa is CEO of Colormasters in Albertville. Her and Barry left Wednesday for Gatlinburg.” I didn’t need to ask how Lillian knew this. I wondered what Barry did for work.
Over the next several minutes, Lillian provided all the context I needed. She started with geography. Bruce Road was the only access to Ted King’s estate. The arched brick entrance and paved driveway led to his grand, sprawling home with two turrets. A gravel road started just beyond an Olympic-sized pool and red metal lawn mower shed and led a quarter mile through a forest of trees to a log cabin Ted had built ten years ago as a ‘boys-night’ hangout. The gravel road ended at the cabin, but the forest continued another half mile to include and surround the Clausen’s home. Access to their place was via a long private driveway off Simpson Road to the north. From Lillian’s pencil pointing, I concluded there was no workable way for us to drive to Ted’s cabin, hide a vehicle, and make a safe getaway if needed. The only logical way for the two of us to witness the midnight meeting was to park at the Clausen’s and hike southward through the woods to the backside of Ted’s cabin. It didn’t sound fun, given the drizzling rain and the declining temperature.
Lillian next introduced me to Julie King, the current principal of Boaz High School. She is Mayor King’s wife. Sort of. Like Lillian, Julie is estranged from her husband. In fact, she is distraught over a failed relationship with a man named Carl Stallings, who married a woman thirty years his junior. They now live in Knoxville, Tennessee. I considered introducing Lillian to Bert Stallings but recognized she had already sidelined our conversation. “Julie lived at the cabin before she shacked up with Carl.”
“That’s helpful.” Lillian’s eyeroll told me to be quiet and listen. The laptop said it was approaching 9:00 p.m.
“Two years ago. Julie’s party became a sleepover. Just us five girls. She showed the hidden key in case any of us ever needed a safe house.” I kept quiet. If Lillian’s words were a book, she’d need an excellent editor. “We need to go inside and hide these.” Lillian reached to her left for two boxes lying on a chair tucked underneath the table. ‘Spyware’ was written across each black and gold box.
The smaller print said they were voice-activated recording and transmission devices. “Leftovers from the Lodge?”
Lillian laid one box on the table and started opening the other. “These came today. Pricier but longer reach.” At that moment, I realized the woman without a college degree had thought out our mission better than me, the seasoned attorney and law professor.
After reading the box, I offered an opinion and a fact: “Those will record voices and sounds, but not visuals, and the only camera I have is my iPhone.” Lillian scooted her chair backwards and whispered, “hold on.” She left the kitchen and returned with an expensive-looking camera.
“Nikon D7500 with a 70-200mm lens. The lens cost more than the camera.” Lillian shared, laying the expensive-looking camera in front of me for my inspection. I knew nothing about photography. My iPhone’s pointing and shooting didn’t count.
“Hobby?” Kyla had said Lillian never finished college. That apparently hadn’t stopped her education or curiosity.
“Mostly.” She then cut short my inspection and moved the Nikon with attached lens next to the Spyware. She untied the rubber band that was holding up her hair and asked, “You want coffee?” I pinched my leg to divert my attention and avoid an instant trip to 1971. Rachel said nothing.
“Not now, maybe later. Do you have a thermos?” I was visualizing cops on stakeouts. They always had coffee.
“I do.” Lillian walked to a pantry in the corner, opened the door, and grabbed a stainless-steel Yeti from an upper shelf. “Here it is.” Women are graceful creatures.
While she made a pot of coffee for the thermos, we discussed Connor Ford. I shared my unsuccessful efforts to reach him and learned he and his wife were also in Gatlinburg.
“Woman,” Lillian corrected me and provided a quick rundown. Connor’s female companion, Camilla, was the best hairdresser at Serenity Salon. She and the private investigator had lived together for several years. Although they were engaged, they’d never officially tied the knot.
“You realize Connor is the one who should conduct this stakeout?” As an attorney, I knew depositing myself inside a case was a thousand times worse than ideal. The legal community frowned upon the lawyer as a boots-on-ground investigator, at least in the United States. Becoming a witness in my case was clearly a duty-divider, as Professor Goff, my law school ethics instructor, had called it. Worse still, it could be dangerous.
“Yeah, probably, but he’s unavailable. What choice do we have?”
Lillian was correct. In a way. “One choice is to do nothing, let the criminal justice system do its thing.” I was back in the classroom with my theoretical argument.
“Like it’s done for Kyle these past fifty years?”
“You have a point. ‘The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow.’ I think this came from Longfellow, the poet.”
Again, Lillian surprised me. “I think it was Plutarch. In the first century, he said, ‘The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.’ It’s about divine justice.”
As she stood and backed to the kitchen sink, we engaged in a softball argument about God, the afterlife, and the likelihood that evil was ever truly punished. In the end, I learned Lillian was an active reader and had grave doubts about the divine or anything else that could be supernatural. In my experience, those who read broadly, especially fiction, are more open-minded and empathetic.
I was glad she suggested we get going. “You can have the bathroom,” she said, glancing at my duffel. I grabbed my bag and followed her to the short hallway connecting the cabin’s two bedrooms. The bath was squeezed into the middle. For a few seconds, it was like she lost her way. Finally, she turned and walked to the front room containing an oversized bed. I entered the bathroom and closed the door. As I stripped down and climbed into an unmatched insulated bottom and top, a pair of camouflaged pants, and a sweatshirt, my thoughts returned to New Year’s Day 1971 and seeing Lillian naked inside Kyla’s bedroom. The knock on the door confused me. I didn’t remember putting on my boots, my windbreaker, or my toboggan.
“I’m coming.”
***
We left Lillian’s SUV a few minutes before 10:00. Hopefully, this would give us plenty of time to prepare for Ray and Buddy’s arrival.
The Clausen’s place was ultra-secluded, including a quarter-mile gravel driveway off Simpson Road. After our ten-minute trip, I felt I could recognize Barry at a party or at Walmart. However, striking up a conversation wouldn’t be easy. According to Lillian, Barry wasn’t homegrown, but Vanessa was.
Barry was from Dothan, short, bald, and a good forty pounds overweight. He wore thick glasses and had trouble mowing the lawn. He’d retired from the Alabama Department of Revenue and now preferred sitting at his computer, trading stocks, bonds, options, and commodities.
Vanessa was only a year younger than Lillian and me. I couldn’t spin-up a memory. The voluptuous freshman clarinet player was Ray’s first girlfriend after Rachel left town in the middle of tenth grade. The two were on and off during Ray’s senior year but shut down completely when the jock moved to Tuscaloosa. It was several years later that Lillian learned Vanessa and Ray had carried on a torrid affair after he had proposed and during their married-student days. The sex exchange had ended when Ray graduated. Apparently, Barry was Vanessa’s rebound, and after long careers as accountants in Montgomery, the odd couple had returned to her hometown and built this colossal home.
Lillian followed the circular driveway to the rear and pulled into a three-car carport next to a like-new red Alfa Romeo. I was dying to ask how in heck she and Vanessa had become friends. I stayed silent, convincing myself the common denominator had to be Ray Archer. Sergeant Bryant ordered me out of the Aviator and to follow her, pausing briefly to smear black paint on my cheeks. The toboggan-hidden, silky-haired commander had to be a clone of my sister.
We crossed the side yard and were ten feet inside a grove of pines when Lillian stopped me for the second time. She removed her backpack, knelt, and removed two pairs of sophisticated goggles. “Here, wear these.” I bit my lip and did as told.
Although I’d seen Lillian place two flashlights in her bag, she was smart enough to recognize the danger. I wondered how often she used the night vision goggles and why she had two pairs. Again, I chose silence.
The pelting rain and plunging temperature made our long hike through the woods triply difficult. Tracking Lillian was demanding, given her pace, but it still gave me time to ponder the weather and its effect on our plans.
When we reached the creek behind the cabin, I removed my iPhone and checked the time. I’d never seen Lillian move so fast. It was like an attack. She lunged at me, using both hands to engulf my cell. “Lee, think.” I quickly realized what I’d done and jammed the iPhone back inside my pocket. She continued clutching my left hand and stared into my eyes. Hers were bright green, distorted by the goggles. I smelled a luscious lavender as she reached up and touched my cheek, exclaiming via whisper, “this is not a game. Remember who you are dealing with.” At that moment, I thought about Ray and the fact he was a murderer. However, what consumed me was the radical new feelings Lillian had triggered. I accepted them as a portal into a whole new world.
Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.
Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.
by 
Richard L. Fricks 