The Hidden Truth: A Science Fiction Techno-Thriller Page 12

  That did sound awfully arrogant, although I had to chuckle at his brashness. “How did you two get together, then?”

  “I kept my eye on him. He didn’t seem to have any particular dance partner. He’d dance with one girl for a while, then another. He was very good at it, too. The more I watched him, the angrier I got at him blowing me off, turning around, and having a good time. It was silly of me, I suppose. I finally got angry enough that I went over to tell him off. I caught him between dances, and I told him he was the rudest man I’d ever met.

  “He just laughed and said, ‘Now on that subject, your judgement is somewhat better, given your own expertise.’

  “I asked him, ‘What do you mean?’

  “He explained, ‘I came over to make small talk and perhaps introduce myself and get to know you better, and all you could do was cut me off and tell me you’re not interested? Who was rude to whom?’

  “I thought about that a bit, and I realized that he might have a point. What’s more, he’d even used ‘whom’ correctly, so he wasn’t your run-of-the mill womanizer. So, I said, ‘I’m sorry if I were rude to you.’

  “He said, ‘No ‘if’ about it. You were. But, we can call it even if you’d like to join me for a late dinner at Waffle House.’ That was our first date. He and I went out dancing a lot. He was such a great dancer, and he loved dancing even more than I did.” Mom had quite a smile on her face.

  “So, you left grad school to marry Dad?” I asked.

  “More or less,” Mom answered. “Once I realized that humanity wasn't doomed and calamity wasn’t just around the corner, I lost most of my motivation. Without a great deal of motivation, it’s tough to get through a Ph.D. program. I just wanted to be happy, and being with your Dad made me happy in a way I’d never felt before.”

  “It wasn’t a tough decision to just walk away from a career like that? After all the time and effort you’d invested to get there?”

  “Not really,” Mom said matter-of-factly. “I had been lured to graduate school under false premises. Not only was I not going to save the world, the world didn’t need saving, after all. It wasn’t my professors’ fault, I suppose, although they ought to have known better. When you’ve built a career landing grants to figure out how to save the world, it’s difficult to be honest with yourself, and realize you’ve been living a lie and contributing to a fraud. Your whole livelihood becomes bound up in the lie, and you’d overlook almost anything to protect it. But I felt I was being pushed and controlled and used to meet other people’s agendas. I’d thrown off my father’s control only to fall under the control of professional pessimists and fear mongers, feeding me their lies and trying to use me as a tool to build their own little empires in a phony crusade that wasn’t worthy of my time and energy to fight.

  “You see by that point, I had a good idea who was actually saving the world. It was men like Borlaug coming up with ways to feed billions and men like Simon pointing out the fallacies of the doomsayers. I saw how I stood in the hierarchy. I was top of my class in high school, and still one of the top students in chemistry at Princeton. But by the time I got to Georgia Tech, I was in with all the other top chemistry students from all the other top schools. Perhaps I was a bit above average – I’d like to think so – but there were other students there who were absolute geniuses. It rubbed my nose in the fact that I was nothing special. That’s a hard pill to swallow. Perhaps if I worked very hard, I could carve out a little niche for myself, some small backwater area overlooked by the geniuses, where I could build my own career and make my own mark, but that’s not nearly as exciting as saving the world.

  “A century from now, the people who know and care about who we are and where we came from will still speak of heroes like Borlaug and Simon with respect and reverence. They’ll even remember a great villain like Ehrlich for the harm he caused and laugh at his ridiculous misconceptions. Making a great difference for good or for evil, building a lasting monument out of your career and life and performing work that actually has an impact on the course of humanity for better or worse – that’s extraordinarily rare.

  “A century from now your grandchildren will be telling their children about you and me and your father and our lives. They will be sharing family tales like this one. If you’ve raised them right and taught them well, just as your father and I have tried to do with you and your sister, then your grandchildren will have raised their children right and taught them well. And all of them will be going out to make their own marks on the world. That is a monument far more impressive and far more worthwhile than any modest contribution I might have made to the world of chemistry.”

  We drove in silence for a while, the hum of the road, the wind rushing past the car, the sound of Dad’s heaving breathing in the back of the car, and the lights of the reflectors zipping past. I sat doing nothing more and nothing less than just experiencing a moment in life’s great journey.

  “How did you and Dad decide to settle in Sherman?”

  “My father forbade the marriage, so your father and I eloped. I thought it made sense to stay in Atlanta, but your father had family in Sherman – his Aunt Molly had left Robber Dell by that point and was living in town. Your father was already working on a job in Chattanooga by then, so it wasn’t much different from commuting from Atlanta. I did want to be near my mother when Kira was born. I had concerns about my father, your Grandpa Jack, but your father insisted we should move to Sherman. It was a mistake. Your Grandpa Jack was used to getting his way. Always. Seeing me there with your father just set him off. Grandpa Jack was used to controlling everything, but he couldn’t control me, and he couldn’t control your father.

  “Your father and I were renting a small house off of Maple Street when the harassment started in earnest. Someone slashed the tires of his truck. A dead animal left in our front yard. A trash can upended in the bed of your father’s pick up. A rock through the window. I don’t know what Grandpa Jack was thinking. I suppose he thought he could scare off your father and have his daughter back. Somehow, he thought he could make everyone forget that I had defied him. I was pregnant and married to a man he’d forbidden to me. Bringing me back to Sherman – I suppose Grandpa Jack saw that as your father taunting him. Your father had to keep working to support us, but we were both afraid what might happen if the violence escalated further. That’s when your father and I both got pistols. When Rob had some leave, he stayed with me while your father was out working. Rob took me out to a range, and we practiced for hours on end. I simply couldn’t handle larger guns, but with a .22, I got proficient.

  “Then, one night your father and I were at home when we heard a noise on the front porch. We both got our guns. He walked to the door, to look through the peephole when BAM the door was kicked open in his face, knocking him down and sending his gun flying across the floor. Three men burst into the room: my brothers, Larry and Mike, and a big, burly Tolliver foreman. They grabbed your father. And then, in stepped Grandpa Jack. ‘You don’t seem to take hints very well,’ he said to your dad, ‘so we’re running you out of town. You don’t belong here.’

  “None of them noticed I was armed – they were too preoccupied with your father. The foreman and Mike held your father while Larry punched him. They discounted an obviously pregnant woman as a threat. I raised my gun and sighted between my father’s eyes. ‘Get out of my house now and leave my man alone or so help me I will shoot you.’

  “‘You put that toy…’ Grandpa Jack started to say, when I shifted my aim a bit to the side and interrupted him, BANG.

  He flinched as I shifted to cover the others. ‘Let my husband go.’ They did. Your dad retrieved his gun and fell back covering the others while I sighted down the barrel again right between my father’s eyes.

  “‘That last shot was three quarters of an inch from your right ear. This may be a toy, and I know you have a thick skull, Daddy,’ I told him, ‘but do you truly want to risk a .22 slug between the eyes? Get out now, don’t come
back, and if you, Larry, Mike, or any of your thugs lay a hand on my man again, I swear I will end you.”

  The look of astonishment and disbelief on my face must have been evident when Mom glanced over at me.

  “Well,” she said with a modest smile, “or words to that effect.”

  “So Grandpa Jack, Uncle Larry, Uncle Mike, and the foreman left?”

  “Not exactly,” Mom clarified. “Because some neighbor must have heard the commotion and the gunshot and called the police. I heard someone bark ‘What’s going on here?’ through the open door behind Grandpa Jack. It was Sheriff Gunn. Only, he was Deputy Gunn back then. It didn’t take him long to figure out what happened.

  “I told him ‘My father and his… associates were just leaving and have no intention of returning.’ I assured him there would be no further trouble.

  “Gunn looked at my father and asked him, ‘Is that so, sir?’

  “Grandpa Jack agreed. ‘You OK?’ he asked your father. ‘Our guests have overstayed their welcome,’ your father told Gunn, wiping the blood from his nose. ‘If they’re not coming back, and if they agree there will be no more trouble, I suppose there’s no need to press charges.’

  “Gunn said, ‘Well, if there’s no trouble, and if there’s not going to be any more trouble, I guess I don’t have to report this.’ So far as I know, Gunn never breathed a word of it.”

  “And that was the end of the harassment?” I asked.

  “Grandpa Jack, Larry, and Mike had been shamed in front of his foreman, me, your father, and Gunn,” Mom explained. “If they made any further trouble, there was Gunn as a witness to the standoff. That was the last time I ever saw my father. Even when he was dying he refused to see me, but he kept the peace. Larry has kept the peace as well. He’s not friendly, but he’s at least civil, and there’s been no other harassment. And Gunn… that man blusters about like some dumb hick. It’s an act. He’s clever, devious, and ambitious. I swear he parlayed his knowledge of that incident into getting my father’s support when he ran for sheriff a few years later.”

  “You think Sheriff Gunn blackmailed Grandpa Jack?” I asked.

  “I doubt he was that explicit,” Mom explained. “Grandpa Jack would never have stood for outright blackmail. I’m sure it was a matter of him pointing out how trustworthy he’d been and how Daddy needed a sheriff he could trust to keep his secrets, or something to that effect. I’m confident Larry and Mike don’t want to cross Gunn either. Mark my words. Sheriff Gunn knows all the local secrets and uses them to help himself. Never trust the man.”

  “I still have trouble imagining you staring down anyone with a gun,” I noted.

  Mom smiled. “You’ll find it easier to imagine when you have a family of your own to protect. When I was a girl, I’d hear news stories, like ‘Girl drowns at beach as she’s swept out to sea, parents try to save her despite not being able to swim, drown as well.’ And I thought to myself, ‘How stupid. Why would you drown yourself if you know there’s nothing you can do?’ But that was before I had children of my own.

  “You know, your father dragged me down to Alabama for the Huntsville Hamfest when Kira was a little girl. This was before you were born – Kira must have been two years old. They have a nice park there – Big Spring Park – with a sidewalk along the gently flowing water and brightly colored carp swimming in the water. The three of us were walking along side. Kira was fascinated by the fish swimming there. She stopped right on the edge and leaned over to get a better look. I remember your father saying, ‘Kira, step back...’ I guess that startled her because she lost her balance and went face first over the side. Before Kira could even hit the water, I was in motion, jumping in after her.

  “You pulled her out? Was she OK?”

  “She was fine, just wet and a little scared. But I didn’t pull her out.”

  “What?” I was confused.

  “I landed almost on top of your father,” Mom explained. “He’d been paying closer attention, I suppose, and he got in the water just a split second before me. He already had had Kira in one hand and was helping me get my balance with the other before I could do anything. It turned out the water was only waist deep, although it was so murky, I had no idea until my feet had touched bottom. Your father got Kira up on the bank. She just looked at us both, soaked, standing waist deep in the water and started giggling at us. And we joined in, too.

  “That’s just how it works when you’re a parent. You don’t stop to think, ‘What’s going on?’, ‘Will someone else do something?’, or ‘How deep is the water?’ You don’t always plan methodically what you’re going to do. You act. You do the best you can right then and right there and you do whatever it takes to save your family. In retrospect, it may not be the smartest thing you could have done. But you act. ‘Improvise, adapt, overcome, and drive on,’ your Uncle Rob is fond of saying.”

  By then, we were nearing Birmingham. We stayed the night at a Berkshire Inn, and we got a late start the next morning visiting the McWane Science Center, the Vulcan statue, and other sites around Birmingham. Friday afternoon, we stopped by the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville before checking into our hotel. On Saturday, Mom and Kira visited the Huntsville Botanical Garden and Burritt on the Mountain, an outdoor historical museum on a mountain just east of town. Dad and I hung out at the Huntsville Hamfest – browsing the vendor tables and sitting in on some interesting talks. I passed the test to upgrade my Technician Class Amateur Radio license to a General Class ticket. In a slow moment, I asked Dad about meeting Mom, to get his perspective. “So, was it love at first sight?”

  “No,” he snorted with a chuckle. “I thought she was an arrogant… well, I thought she was arrogant and full of herself.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” he assured me. “I was at this club where a lot of the girls I danced with tended to go. I saw her, not particularly enjoying herself, abandoned by her friends at the bar. I’d had my eye on her for a while, saw her turn away a bunch of guys, and thought I’d give it a try. I went over to hit on her, and she completely blew me off. So I helped myself to her drink – some fruity girly drink – and returned the favor by blowing her off.

  “How’d she take it?” I asked.

  “I think it wounded her pride a bit,” Dad speculated. “Of course, I didn’t realize at the time she was some sort of heiress. She was used to boys walking on eggshells around her. The fact I was a man who wouldn’t take nonsense from her, well I’m not sure if it bothered her or made me more attractive to her – probably a combination of the two. Then, I made a point of dancing with every cute girl I could, right in front of where she was. Half the girls in that bar I knew from the Dance Club on campus, and they all knew I was good for a whirl around the floor. All the while, I studiously ignored her. Finally, she came over to complain to me about how rude I was. I pointed out she’d started it and suggested we go out to dinner to make amends.”

  “So, that was your first date?” I asked.

  “It was almost our last date,” he said with a rueful smile. “I took her to the Varsity for a late dinner. It was only after we ordered that I caught her full name and realized she was one of those Tollivers. I nearly walked out on her. If she’d been a guy, I might have punched her then and there.”

  “Why?” That didn’t make sense to me. “I thought the running feud with the Tollivers came after you defied Grandpa Jack and married her.”

  There was a long pause as Dad appeared to be mulling something over. “I haven’t ever told you the whole story,” he began. “By the time you were old enough for me to tell you, Jack Tolliver died. Your mother was eager to try to mend fences with her mother. I didn’t want to rock the boat. It’s never just been about me marrying Mom. No, our family feud with the Tollivers goes way back – nearly a hundred years – long before I was born. For generations, my father’s family carved a farm and a living out of the wilderness up in the Great Smokies. They fought, bled, and died, some of them, to defend it from
Cherokee, and later, from Confederate raiders during the Civil War. And then ol’Tom Tolliver and his cronies came along, stole our land, and kicked us off it to starve in the middle of the Great Depression.

  “You see, back in the 1920s, folks began to recognize the scenic beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains was in danger. Huge tracts were being deforested or burned out. A movement started up to preserve that natural beauty by creating what would come to be known as Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The backers of the park included the Tollivers and other important Knoxville area business leaders. They thought – correctly – that a tourist destination like the Great Smokies would be a boon to the Knoxville economy. They brought congressmen, senators, and financial backers to lobby them to support the park idea. But, they didn’t show them the burned out and deforested slopes owned by the logging companies. No, they brought them right up to the Cove to show them our beautiful farm and the farms of our neighbors with our painstakingly cleared pastures and fields nestled up to the mountains.

  “It wasn’t just a local effort. Tom Tolliver was joined by outsiders like the Rockefellers and Civic Circle heavyweights who contributed a fortune toward the idea. They lobbied the state of Tennessee to assemble the land needed for the park and donate it to the federal government to manage.

  “The backers of the scheme up to and including the governor and our senator all swore up and down that no one’s property would be taken away from them. Cove folk were naïve enough to believe them. Then, the state started condemning and seizing farms using eminent domain. They tried to take Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, Townsend, all the small towns on the slopes, but there were enough folks there to raise a stink and make them back down. But our Cove? Nestled right in the heart of the most beautiful part of the Smokies with just a few hundred folks living there? Some folks fought as best they could through the courts, but they never stood a chance. The lumber companies like the Tolliver Corporation made out all right. They had the political pull to get paid well for their land. Small farmers and landowners? They got maybe 50 to 75 cents on the dollar. A whole community that had stood together against the worst that man and nature could throw at them was dispersed to the winds, just when a man and his neighbors most needed to help each other out. Because that was right as the Great Depression was starting.