The Mulberry Tree

By this time, I didn’t have an assistant or a housekeeper, so I lived with dirty clothes and TV dinners—both of which made me think of my childhood. For weeks, I used every resource I had to try to find out about Jackie’s story. I went on the Internet. I called Malaprop’s in Asheville and had them send me a copy of every book they had on North Carolina legends. I called my publisher and she got me phone numbers of several North Carolina writers and I called them.

No one had heard of the devil story.

I called Mrs. Lady of the House (had to fish her invitation out of the garbage can where it was, of course, stuck to something wet and smelly) and asked her to please, pretty please, find out the name of the town in North Carolina where the story had happened, but not to tell Jackie or any of her friends I’d asked.

By the time I hung up I wanted to ask the woman to negotiate my next book contract—if/when, that is. She said she would get the name of the town, but only if I agreed to talk at one of her women’s club lunches (“a reading would be nice and an autographing afterward”). In the end she set me up for three whole hours, and I was to get my publishing house to “donate” thirty-five hardcovers. All this for the name of a town in North Carolina. Of course I agreed.

She called back ten minutes later and said in her best silly-me voice, “Oh, Mr. Newcombe, you’re not going to believe this but I don’t have to ask anyone anything. I just remembered that I already know the name of the town where Jackie’s story happened.”

I waited. Pen ready. Breath held.

Silence.

I continued waiting.

“Is the twenty-seventh of this month good for you?” she asked.

I gritted my teeth and clutched the pen. “Yes,” I said. “The twenty-seventh is fine.”

“And could you possibly donate forty books?”

It was my turn to be silent, but I bent the tip of my pen and had to grab another one from the holder.

I guess she knew she’d pushed me to my limit because she said in a normal voice, no ooey-gooey gush, “Cole Creek. It’s in the mountains and isolated.” Her voice changed back to little-girl. “See you on the twenty-seventh at eleven-thirty A.M. sharp,” she said, then hung up. I said the filthiest words I knew—some of them in Old English—before I hung up my end.

Three minutes later I had the number to the Cole Creek, North Carolina, public library and was calling them.

First, in order to impress the librarian, I gave my name. She was indeed properly impressed and gushed suitably.

With all the courtesy that I’d learned from Pat’s family, I asked her about the devil story and the pressing.

The librarian said, “That’s all a lie,” and slammed down the phone.

For a moment I was too stunned to move. I just sat there holding the phone and blinking. Big deal writers don’t have librarians or booksellers hang up on them. Never has happened; never will.

As I slowly put down the phone, my heart was beating fast. For the first time in years I felt excited about something. I’d hit a nerve in that woman. My editor once said that if I ran out of my own problems to write about, I should write about someone else’s. At long last I seemed to have found a “someone else’s problem” that interested me.

Five minutes later I called my publisher and asked a favor. “Anything,” she said. Anything to get another Ford Newcombe book is what she meant.

Next, I looked on the Internet, found a realtor who handled Cole Creek, called and asked to rent a house there for the summer.

“Have you ever been to Cole Creek?” the woman asked in a heavy Southern accent.

“No.”

“There’s nothing to do there. In fact, the place is little more than a ghost town.”

“It has a library,” I said.

The realtor snorted. “There’re a few hundred books in a falling-down old house. Now if you want—”

“Do you have any rentals in Cole Creek or not?” I snapped.

She got cool. “There’s a local agent there. Maybe you should call him.”

Knowing small towns, I figured that by now everyone in Cole Creek was aware that Ford Newcombe had called the library, so the local realtor would be on the alert. I said the magic words: “Money is no object.”

There was a hesitation. “You could always buy the old Belcher place. National Register. Two acres. Liveable. Barely liveable, anyway.”