If Catfish Had Nine Lives(22)

            And he and I had not only hit it off well, but quickly, too. We’d been able to work together without needing to discuss much—we knew what had to be done and somehow we both knew what abilities we could each contribute, so we made a good team. This had begun the day before the poets even came to town. Since our initial connection, Orly had sought me out when something needed doing. I’d become his sidekick of sorts, and though I hadn’t expected such responsibility, I had enjoyed it.

            However, I didn’t really know him. And there’d been a murder. And he was asking me to get into his truck.

            “Sure, but Gram is probably wondering where I am. Let me text her that I’ll be with you for the next little bit.”

            “Thanks.”

            The truck’s engine revved a little rich as Orly waited patiently. I sensed that I was overreacting and being silly, but sending the text seemed like a smart and harmless move.

            “Okay, what’s up?” I asked after I hit send, and then hoisted myself onto the passenger side of the bench seat.

            “I want to show you something at the campsite.”

            “Okay.”

            “Good.”

            Both my parents work at Broken Rope High School. My dad is the principal and my mom is the auto shop teacher, so even long after finishing high school I still spent plenty of time in the building, where the typical scents of floor cleaner and Tater Tots greeted visitors each time they walked through the front doors.

            The high school had been built in the late 1800s, but the powers that had been had decided to forgo the typical brick building design of most American high schools of the time. Instead, Broken Rope High School resembled the Alamo. Jake knew the whole story much better than I did, but someone on the town’s planning commission thought Spanish baroque would be an interesting design for the building that sat on the edge of town and served not only residents of Broken Rope but also those from other small towns throughout the county. It was wide, one story, the front facade rising with an ornate rounded peak in the middle above the front doors. The front lawn was also wide, and mostly tree-filled, giving the entire setting some terrific curb appeal.

            The timing of spring break had been helpful when it came to scheduling the convention. Gram had always scheduled the cooking school’s break at the same time as the rest of the area schools’, so fortunately we’d both been available to help, and the high school was also void of students, who couldn’t wait to get as far away from there as they could for a week. School staff were still working if they wanted to; very few wanted to, though, so there was little traffic to be disturbed by the influx of visitors who camped in the big field behind the school.

            The field had been deemed a perfect setup for the poets. It sat beyond the school building, a soccer field, and a football stadium. Another structure stood at one far corner of the field; a big shed had been constructed and placed there only a couple months earlier for the school district to use as a storage facility. Though the walls of the shed were made of aluminum, my dad had asked for a design that wasn’t as cold and utilitarian as a typical storage shed. The district had built a big red aluminum barn. It wasn’t exactly what Dad had had in mind, but he’d decided to like it. It wasn’t all that bad, and it sat back far enough that you could only see it once you got past the football stadium.

            At the other corner of the campsite, a good fifty yards away, and across what used to be a heavily used stagecoach trail—if you looked hard or just happened to catch one with your toe, you could still find wheel ruts in the mostly overgrown ground—sat the reproduced Pony Express station. The stable in St. Joseph was different than our station; different than any of the reproduced stations through the western United States. The stable in St. Joseph was bigger and had housed more horses and men than the smaller, more simply built stations. Our station was ramped up with a little extra technology and a real door, which I’d heard wasn’t typical of most of the other modern incarnations. Also, in our station, small podiums with plaques telling the story of the Pony Express lined three of the four inside walls. Electricity had been added so that track lighting attached to the wooden ceiling beams could be used to illuminate the plaques. Jake had told me that a solid door had been needed to protect the modern-day additions, but that the typical station back in the day didn’t have a door, just a large opening. Behind the station was more Missouri woods—lots and lots of Missouri woods.