A faint noise beckoned from the buoys that had begun sloshing against the waves. Triangular flags on the dock started flapping in concert with flags on boats as the wind continued to build. The thin dark clouds that earlier slithered across the face of the moon had been replaced with thunderheads.
“Don’t like the looks of this one bit,” Tex complained.
Just then Sheriff Charlie Fields stepped out of his car. The popularly elected sheriff had been around Athens since he was a small boy and could tell stories of horses and buggies kicking up dust on the dirt roads surrounding the Henderson County Courthouse. The sheriff’s pointed-toe boots clicked on the concrete parking lot as he made his way to the dock to examine the boat. He shook his head as he checked out the broken motor and spilled medication. Then he eyed the dark clouds rolling in and said, “There’ll be no search tonight, boys, not with this storm brewing.”
Everyone agreed and promised to be back in the morning. One way or another, they’d find Jimmy Don Beets.
Betty drove herself home while the billowing clouds grew angrier by the second. When she pulled up to her property, she passed the wishing well located near her driveway.
She got out of her truck and fought the wind as it grabbed the door from her grasp. As the storm built with more intensity, she felt the wind blow her hair. She watched a flash of lightning crash and disappear into the water.
There was something fresh about a storm; a cleansing that shook all evil out of the air. She hurried to her house, still hearing the storm scream across the water, breaking against barrier walls.
THREE
VALOR
Valor . . . is the fire fighter entering a fire area or burning building to protect life or property. . . . Valor is a nebulous virtue. Sometimes it is observed and recognized; probably more often it is not—but make no mistake, it is the common bond that forms the foundation for the Dallas Fire Department. It is the heart of our emergency organization.
—1980 Medal of Valor Yearbook
At the first crack of daylight, a caravan of cars, pickups, and vans snaked its way down Highway 175 from Dallas. Over fifty fire fighters had learned of Captain Beets’s empty boat and were coming to search for him.
The firemen came because they were like family. Having spent twenty-four hours a day eating and sleeping together, they had myriad hours of conversation where they learned about each other’s families, the names of their children, and how they got along with their wives. So when one of the firemen died, a brother had died.
The one hundred boats of the bass fishing contest quickly turned into a search party for Jimmy Don. Overhead, wealthy residents in private planes crisscrossed the clear blue sky scanning the lake. Coast Guard and privately owned helicopters slowly hovered over the lake’s surface. Never had there been so many people on the lake at one time.
Captain James Blackburn of the Dallas Fire Department lived in Mabank, one of the lake-hugging towns, so he was chosen to set up tactical headquarters at the causeway between Seven Points and Gun Barrel City. Blackburn’s commander appointed him, knowing he had been friends with Beets since their rookie days on the fire department switchboard. Using maps of the lake, Blackburn penned a detailed grid—a framework that formed the basis of an organized, complete search. He initially calculated the acres of lake separating Jimmy Don’s home from the marina where his boat had been found—an awful lot of water to investigate, but if necessary he’d explore the entire lake.
He glanced from the map to the lake. Water stretched as far as the eye could see. The boundless reservoir was created by damming five creeks into one giant body. The largest, Cedar Creek, ran through terrain overlaid with large stands of cedar trees.
In coordination with the Coast Guard, boats were dispatched hourly to various parts of the lake. And hourly they returned with the same report—no sight of Captain Beets. The Red Cross parked a mobile food center by the search headquarters and busily dispensed cold drinks, sandwiches, and watermelon to the heat-exhausted volunteers throughout the day, a day that saw temperatures climb to over a hundred degrees with rarely a breeze to break the smothering warmth.
While they searched, the throng of local volunteers jabbered to each other about their church activities, and eagerly gloated over their children’s and grandchildren’s achievements. Family was a priority to these people. And the vast majority of them never doubted for a minute that Jimmy Don’s disappearance was anything but an accident. They accepted that one of their own had simply been out night fishing and encountered motor trouble, and the anxiety of trying to make repairs brought on a heart attack. Not even nitroglycerin had helped as Jimmy Don probably stumbled and fell overboard.
The old man sat in his red Chevrolet pickup watching the Coast Guard drag the lake. Every few minutes he’d reach up with a wrinkled handkerchief and blot a tear before it tumbled down his lined cheek. He stared at the dragging mechanism that looked like a big rake attached to a barge. The rake scooped down into the water, rumbled across the bottom, then picked up its findings and dumped them onto another barge. Pieces of old furniture, uprooted tree stumps, and all sorts of rubbish surfaced, but no body.
As the old man observed the Coast Guard’s efforts, he glanced toward Captain Blackburn’s search headquarters just as a red-and-white Silverado pulled up. His heart leaped when he saw Jimmy Don’s truck. He hurriedly sent up a prayer of thanks. Had Jimmy Don gone out of town without telling anyone? How would he explain his absence to all these people?
Then he saw a fluffed-up, perfumed Betty Beets open the driver’s door and place her foot on the curb. He doubled up his fist and hit the worn rim of his steering wheel.
“That damn woman,” he said aloud to the empty cab of his truck. “Jimmy Don ain’t in this lake. No, sir, that bitch of a woman has done something really bad to my son.”
As the frantic search continued, everyone had a constant reminder of Jimmy Don’s drowning. Motorists coming down Highway 175 from Dallas or Athens, or crossing the bridge on Highway 85 that spanned the blue waters could see the activity. Hordes of boats still cruised the lake while grappling hooks continued dragging the lake’s muddy depths.
Shorts- and T-shirt-clad parents loitered outside their houses, wringing their hands and staring at the water’s edge. They vowed not to let their children swim in the lake, even in water right by their own docks. Visions of a bloated corpse bobbing up around their offspring was a nightmare too horrible to contemplate.
JoAnn Blackburn wouldn’t soon forget the search. She had been planning a party for several friends and relatives to celebrate her twenty-five years of marriage to Captain Blackburn, but because of his role in the search, they had to cancel the party.
Officially, the search lasted thirteen days in the brain-burning heat. Captain Blackburn never missed one of those days, for his supervisor had relieved him of all his other duties to oversee the search personnel. He tried to put aside his personal feelings over the loss of a friend; however, he couldn’t help but experience a hollowness every time a boat crew returned with its report of finding nothing. The captain kept stuffing crafts with volunteers and the Red Cross mobile unit kept stuffing volunteers with nourishment.
With firemen working shifts of three days on, three off, Blackburn always had fresh recruits, and those who continued the quest were just as fervent to find Jimmy Don as everyone who had been there earlier.
Every now and then Betty Lou visited the search area to check on progress. Her presence particularly grated the tired, hardworking crews after they had finished probing their section of the lake. They’d drag their sunburned bodies ashore and see a cool-appearing, freshly dressed Betty Lou acting like she didn’t have a care in the world. The smile on her lips seemed out of place, and when she said, “I can’t thank y’all enough,” she sounded insincere.
Serious questions began bobbing to the surface like dead fish.
“This