Thistle and Twigg: A Mystery

One

Jane Thistle Arrives

I knew from the first there was something odd about Tullulah, knew it even before I saw the town itself. The feeling struck and traveled deeply into memories I’d not thought of in years, something vague and hard to discern, like an overgrown path found at last with a little searching. Oh, yes, I felt it immediately, as soon as I entered the forest that surrounds it, guards it like a secret treasure, and it was this, you see, that drew me in.

My first day as an official citizen of Tullulah began with a spectacular omen of things to come. A monstrous brown snake, at least eight feet long and several inches thick, slithered across the threshold of my front door. Naturally, the men from the moving company had left the door open all morning as they moved furniture and boxes inside. It didn’t occur to any of us this might be seen as an open invitation to the local wildlife.

The snake zigzagged across the wood parquet and down the hall, then turned right into the living room as if he’d dropped by for tea. He meant us no harm and came to none himself, although I must say I’m not at all squeamish and would certainly have shot the trespassing beast if necessary.

One of the men screamed. The others laughed at the poor fellow, but if the truth were told, we all had a good scare. The snake sidled with frightening quickness, its sideways movement making it difficult for us to predict the direction of its intended course. One of the movers grabbed a wide push broom then scooted the snake, a nonpoisonous one I was assured, out the door and off the porch.

The incident, though surprising, was also strangely calming, I thought, as I watched the snake swish across my yard into the tall grass that bordered Anisidi Wildlife Refuge next door. The snake’s ancestors, as well as those of the other animals here, had survived on this piece of land for centuries, longer actually. As the newcomer, I intended to live peacefully with my neighbors, even those of the reptilian persuasion. Within reason, of course.

This, after all, was why I came to this place of special beauty after discovering it completely by accident. Do you believe in chance? I’m not altogether sure I do anymore. For now, let us say that it was, in fact, chance that brought me here.

Almost twenty years ago, I was driving from Florida where my late husband, Colonel John Bradford Thistle, and I lived. In the fall of that year, he’d received a transfer to a facility in the Midwest and had already flown there to begin his new assignment. It fell to me to stay behind, pack our belongings, and arrange for the moving company, just as I had done many times since our marriage years earlier when he was a dapper young officer and I was his English bride.

My leisurely drive northwest from Florida was, for the most part, uneventful until an hour or so past Birmingham where, on a whim, I decided to take an alternate route, away from the interstate, for a more scenic drive.

And scenic it was. I had not seen such beautiful valleys and farmlands since I’d left England, perhaps earlier when as a child I’d visited my grandparents in Wales. The thought of their home, the surrounding countryside, the mysterious look of the land, the play of light and color all came back to me, stirring memories.

That’s when it began, the odd sensation. At first, it was only that, just a hint of something fresh and new in the air, like the scent of pine that blew in my open windows. A large highway sign indicated I could enter Bankhead National Forest at the next exit, and I could see a great expanse of green ahead as I topped hills.

Trees grew thicker on either side of the road as the car traveled steadily upward. The air was heavy with the sound of birds’ wings rustling in and out of branches. I had the sense of going back in time, as if I were returning rather than arriving, something I couldn’t define.

I crested a small hill and slowed as I passed a little clearing with a neatly painted white board sign that bore three lines of text in pretty script: Welcome to Tullulah, Population 9,523, or Thereabouts. A lattice trellis framed it, twined with ivy and a beautiful yellow climbing rose. Below me, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, I could see a quaint town square that echoed the neatness of the welcome sign. Beyond the buildings, a vast green backdrop of forest stretched to the horizon, with occasional rock-face cliffs jutting out of tree-covered mountains in the distance.

While I waited at the first stoplight just outside of town, I had a lovely personal welcome. A mockingbird lit on my car door’s rearview mirror and cocked an eye, studying me, then sang a melodious greeting. He trilled through quite a repertoire, looking at me all the while. One gray wing was a bit damaged on its white stripe, yet the bird was able to hop into the air and fly for a short distance as it sang a three-note farewell.

I drove around the square to look for a place to eat and parked near the City Grill. And there, as I walked down the quiet sidewalk, was where I first saw the girl.

She waved coyly to me, smiling as if she had a secret, then ran quickly around the side of a building. I’d say she was about seven years old and had long dark hair in ringlets falling past the shoulders of her white lace dress.

I looked down the alleyway as I walked by it, but she was nowhere in sight. I wondered at the time if perhaps she wasn’t being naughty, playing outside in her fancy dress when I was sure her mother would have forbidden it.

I thought no more of it, had my meal, and drove slowly about the little town before leaving, trying to put my finger on why the area brought back memories of my childhood. Not even memories really; there was no certain place that reminded me of another specific location from that time. Yet there was a connection, I was certain of it.

And then a strange thing happened. As I drove out of town, I glanced at the welcome sign again, this time at its reverse side. To my eyes, the sign said, Come Back, Jane, as I passed it. I would have sworn it.

I braked instantly. Fortunately, there was no one behind me. At the next opportunity, I turned the car around and drove past the sign once more. It clearly said, Come Back Again. I attributed misreading it the first time to being distracted, perhaps a little disoriented by driving in a new place, or to driver’s fatigue. However, deep down, something disturbed me. I didn’t know why.

It would be another year before I figured it out. Tullulah haunted me all that time. I took to studying the area and its history, searching for books of which there were precious few. That scarcity may have been the great attraction to studying it. It was a new and exotic place of which I had no knowledge.

So, when I had to drive through Alabama to Florida again a year later, I made a point of visiting Tullulah. I rolled down my windows, breathed in the pine scent, and drove past the welcome sign toward the town square to park near the City Grill, just as before. And just as before, there was the little girl, waving coyly, standing in her white lace dress, running shyly away and disappearing behind the same building. She hadn’t aged a day.

I must say I was a bit shocked. After I thought about it awhile, everything fell into place. I understood the connection to my past, why I’d experienced the déjà vu. My childhood had been filled with such images, ones dismissed by my parents and siblings, so much so that I pushed them all away and had forgotten them. But now, after years of denial, they’d come back to me. I could see ghosts.

Something about Tullulah must have made them visible once again. I had no such visions elsewhere. After my return home, I began more intense study of the national park and the other woodland areas of northern Alabama. I dreamed of it, of the deep tranquility I’d felt while in the midst of the forest, and of returning one day. Not for the ghosts, certainly, but for the serenity and the indefinable quality in the air that, once breathed in, possessed me with a great longing for its peace. Years later, when my husband passed away, there was no question what I would do. When his estate was settled, I packed a bag and spent a week in Tullulah looking at property.

There was really only one choice. One place had a strong sense of connection, and of peace. The old house beside the wildlife refuge, far outside the town limits, seemed to call to me and welcome me in.

It’s just what I’ve always wanted, to live in a beautiful place where I can relax and never have to move again. The Colonel and I had a deal, you see. Traveling from base to base had been necessary for his work. I knew that when I married him. Since his job required constant travel, he promised our retirement years would be spent wherever I wished. After so many years of having no roots, I realized my home was wherever he was happy. He liked Florida, so I told him that’s where I wanted to retire. We were content there, but when his health began to fail, I knew I would not stay after he was gone.

Through the years, Tullulah had been my secret, the one thing I didn’t share with my husband. I knew he wouldn’t be happy in a small town, this one in particular. It was much too quiet and sleepy of a place. His personality craved movement, excitement, lots of goings-on around him. He was a city man, accustomed to the bases filled with likeminded men who had also seen the world and conquered it.

No, I knew he wouldn’t care for Tullulah, not at all. For me, it represented everything I’d missed. Beautiful countryside, a slow pace of living. But most of all, a different sort of community from those we were used to. No flat utilitarian, ugly buildings of blocks painted white, or worse, service gray or green. Here the houses and even the businesses surrounding the courthouse square all had personalities to match the people—open, friendly, and beautifully devoid of the harsh, sarcastic atmosphere of cramped city life.

After that second visit to Tullulah, I became restless, obsessed even. I’d always been a student of history and of the natural world; those things fascinated me and led me to the love of archaeology and ancient civilizations. Learning about the first inhabitants of the area, several native tribes and all new to me, and the array of wild species and their habitats sparked my mind as it had not been stimulated in many years. And so, when the Colonel was gone, I sold our house in Florida, hired a moving company, and set off for my new life.

After the snake incident that first day, I thought it wise to have a pistol handy. My new house was, after all, bordered by the wildlife refuge on one side and a privately owned forest on another, both of which surely harbored many a wild animal. I found a pistol easily in my old antique trunk, but had no luck in locating the proper bullets among the packing boxes. With the thought that it could be days, weeks even, before I had everything unpacked, I determined to get a box of bullets when I stepped out to pick up lunch for the movers and myself.

That was how I came to meet Phoebe Twigg, a lifetime resident of Tullulah, who has become my closest friend. I’m sixty-seven and she is sixty-five, although she looks much younger. Her most prominent feature is her flaming red hair, of which she is understandably quite proud. Her clothes reflect her flair for the dramatic with wild color combinations. She makes me feel quite pale and small in comparison.

Phoebe is a perfect dear. She makes me laugh. There’s nothing she loves more than to entertain with a good story. Facts are of minimal importance and serve only as a springboard for great leaps of imagination and elongated stretches of the truth.

Unfortunately, someone unfamiliar with Phoebe’s tendency to embroider reality overheard one such fantasy and came to believe Phoebe knew more than she actually did. Although she didn’t mean to, Phoebe put us both in great danger. I have absolutely no doubt, however, she’d tell a much different story.

Two

Phoebe Twigg Sets Things Straight

Don’t you believe a single word Jane Thistle tells you. She means well, bless her heart, and she’s sweet as can be. She just doesn’t always understand what’s going on down here like I do.

It’s not her fault. Jane is about the smartest person, man or woman, I’ve ever known. She can tell one Shakespeare play from another. Operas and symphonies, too. All that hard stuff. I want you to know she can tell which modern psycho artist painted what, even with nothing but dots and splatters to go on.

And those artsy things aren’t even her strongest subjects. History and archaeology are what she loves because she has worked on dig sites ever since she was a teenager. And trees, Lord have mercy, how she loves plain old ugly trees and plants. Knows their Latin names and everything. Anything green, old, or dead and gone for centuries, Jane knows about it.

I bet she didn’t tell you any of that, did she? That’s because Thistle is a real lady and she don’t go around tooting her own horn like a brazen heifer. She’s a bona fide proper Englishwoman, even though she says she’s completely American now after living in the States for nearly fifty years.

Yes, ma’am, I tell you what, Jane Thistle is sharp as a hound’s tooth and is a saint on top of that. She’d have to be to put up with that Colonel Board-Up-His-Backside husband of hers for so many years. I never actually met him, you understand, but I’ve seen his pictures. From the way she carries on about him, you’d think he hung the moon or invented chewing gum or something.

She really is so naive about people. Her husband probably made her that way, always barking orders at her, I bet you. Now, she wouldn’t say that in so many words. But I can tell he must have been an ornery old cuss from the way he’s glowering out of every single one of them pictures in her house like a mean bulldog.

Oh, I know he was a colonel, but titles don’t mean zip to me. And I’m not saying he didn’t have one or two redeeming qualities. He had at least one I know of: He taught Jane to shoot. Now that I think about it, if it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have met her that first day she moved to town.

She was standing in line at the back counter of Harvel Wriggle’s Sporting Goods Store. My brother Eugene was having a birthday, and I had gone into Wriggle’s to buy him a new tackle box since fishing takes up the better part of his mind.

Pardon me, sir, Jane said, and I knew right away she was English. I grabbed the closest tackle box, a plastic lime green see-through number, and hustled over to stand in line behind her. I just love British accents and I didn’t want to miss a single word.

Harvel Wriggle noticed her accent, too, which only confirmed what I’ve always known about him—he’s not as dumb as he looks. He slicked his hair back with one hand, flattening his cowlick down.

Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you? he said, with the cowlick springing up at the end of his sentence like a question mark on top of his head. I couldn’t help but laugh which, from the look he gave me, Harvel did not appreciate one bit.

He turned his attention back to Jane, all cute and silver-haired and hardly big as a minute. I wondered if she fixed her own hair. It waved and curled just perfect around her ears. Very classy. Jane has what I call a high-class face, with her little turned-up nose and high cheekbones. She’s got real black eyes that sparkle, and she’s always smiling. The beige and camel outfit she wore that day also showed what good taste she has and how subdued and genteel she is. I wouldn’t be caught dead in beige myself, way too drab, but it looked good on her.

Yes, thank you, she said to Harvel. I’d like to purchase a small box of 9-millimeter bullets and another of 12-gauge shotgun shells, if I may please.

Well, let me tell you what. You could have knocked me and Harvel both over with a chicken feather. I knew right then Jane and I were going to be close friends.

Harvel just stood there, staring at her with his mouth hanging open.

What’s the matter? I asked him. You look like you never heard a lady ask for bullets before.

Well, he said and cleared his throat. It is mighty unusual. I believe it’s a first, around here anyway. Some old retired guys, who hang out there at the store because their wives can’t stand them in the house all day, chuckled like it was the funniest thing in the world.

Believe me, I’ve been around here a long time, and I know exactly how these men think. I could read Harvel’s mind like his forehead was made out of Cling Wrap. He might be laughing but inside he was scared. Men around here like their women docile as old cows, and don’t want to face the fact that one might get trigger-happy. I tell you, it was a real treat to see old Harvel squirm.

I tapped Jane on the shoulder. Thank goodness ‘unusual’ ain’t the same thing as ‘illegal,’ right, hon?

I winked at her and nodded at Harvel, who hadn’t moved an inch and still had his hands flat on the counter. I said, Harvel. I said, "Women are citizens just like you men. We’ve got the right to bear arms just like y’all, don’t we? Unless you boys have gone and changed the Constitution of the United States of America when I wasn’t paying attention. It is legal for a woman to buy bullets, isn’t it?" I jerked my head toward the boxes behind him.

Yes, oh yes, he said, finally turning around to the shelves behind him to pick out the two boxes Jane had asked for.

Meanwhile, I introduced myself. Jane and I had a nice little chat. She told me she had picked up some lunch for herself and the men from the moving company. After she got her bullets, she had one more stop, to buy an electric blanket. Jane had seen the weather forecast for chilly nights later in the week and realized the little thin blankets she’d used in Florida weren’t going to be enough in Tullulah, especially with fall coming on.

She told me she’d only been for a couple of short visits before deciding to buy a house here. It struck me as being a strange thing, to move someplace where you don’t have any relatives or friends. Don’t you think that’s strange? I mean, especially at Jane’s age. But that was really none of my business, so I didn’t pry.

I told her I already knew where she lived. Everybody knew. The old Hardwick place out Anisidi Road had been empty and on the market for at least a year due to its remote location and high price.

Jane told us about a big snake coming in her house that morning; that’s why she thought she better come get some bullets. One of the old geezers in the corner said, I reckon that ain’t gonna be much help against some other things in that house. His buddies all giggled and shook like a bunch of little girls.

Don’t pay them any mind, Jane. They’re only here because the mental hospital ain’t got room for all of them right now.

The Hardwick place is kind of famous around here. It sits on the edge of the refuge, way out there by itself in the sticks, and is over a hundred and fifty years old. The Daughters of Historical Southern Heritage got it designated as an official historic site some time back. This was because the house was used as a hospital for Civil War soldiers wounded at the Battle of Cokers Branch, which happened not too far away. Bullet holes are still all over the old brick fireplaces. So, naturally, that made the house’s asking price pretty steep, too high for most folks in town.

Jane said she liked it being out by itself and planned to take long walks everyday on the refuge trails that are right close to her property. Since I like to get out and walk, too, I told her I might go with her someday.

Let’s get together sometime soon, I said.

I’d enjoy that very much, she said as she turned to go. Please stop by anytime. So nice to meet you, Phoebe.

I told you she was a lady. Hey, listen. Hang on just a minute, Jane. Let me pay for this and then let’s walk out together.

While Harvel was ringing up the tackle box, I said to him, Before you total that up, I’d also like to purchase a box of bullets, if I may please. I smiled at him. Mind you, I had no need of bullets myself and had never even touched a gun in all my sixty-five years. But when Jane stood up to the regime like she did, even if she didn’t know she was doing it, it was a star-spangled moment for me.

Not long before, I’d seen that home-decorating show DiDi Moody’s House of Beauty, which comes out of Florence on Wednesday mornings. DiDi said that the best room accessories are ones that have special meaning to you personally.

It was like a light went on. I went straight upstairs and got in my cedar chest where I kept such things, stuff that represented important days in my life. I took a small tablecloth that had been a wedding gift and covered a little table my granddaddy made. On top, I set my most special treasures. So see, I wanted those bullets for my table, so I’d remember Jane standing up to the Man for her rights, right here in Tullulah, Alabama, where I was an eyewitness. I had no intention to actually use the bullets. Although, when Harvel piped up, I admit a good use for them did cross my mind.

Aw, Phoebe, come on now, he said, snickering. "That’s ridiculous. You don’t have a gun. And wouldn’t know what to do with one if you did. Snick snick snick."

Harvel Wriggle. I blew out some steam and bit my tongue rather than give him a piece of my mind. Just give me a box of bullets like I asked you, please. Sometimes a lady has to get a little mean before a man will listen, although I pride myself in having a soft voice and kind manner at least ninety-five percent of the time.

Well, you have to tell me what kind, he said and winked at the old geezers. Do you want .45 caliber? .357? How about some .44 Magnums so you and Dirty Harry can go out and blow away some street punks? More guffaws from the eejit corner.

Ha. Ha. You’re just as funny as you were in junior high.

I looked around on the shelves. Right there, I said pointing. The blue box with the little picture on it. I like that one. I looked closer when he handed it to me to see what the picture was on top. A sword and an olive branch?

Harvel plopped his hands on the counter. Yep. Made in Israel.

Oo-wee. Now that’s what I’m talking about, I said. Serious high quality.

He gave the old guys another look but I didn’t care. I left thinking about more important things, like a little gift for Jane and where on my memento table I’d display my pretty new box of Israeli bullets.

Three

Jane Goes to Phoebe’s House

Now then,"