Category: The Applegate Trail

Follow the Applegate Trail

Naming the Worm

Miss Applegate,” Rita began and Faith held up one long bony hand stopping her.  “Rita, I know it’s a Southern mannerism, but I just can’t let you call me Miss Applegate. It makes me feel like a hundred year-old white matriarch surveying the plantation. Not a feeling I care to cultivate.”  Rita hesitated for only a moment. “Faith, at the risk of being rude,” a small smile played around her lips, “let’s just get right down to brass tacks. Who do you think killed my uncle Charlie?”  Shaherazade and I exchanged a quick look before we settled our eyes on Faith who didn’t seem at all offended. Just sad.  She ran that same bony hand across the waves of her white hair and looked off out the window as if the past could be found on the street outside. “I have a pretty good idea who it was. Proving it…

Lunch with the Ladies

here are only a couple of places in town to get lunch, if you don’t count The Germaine Cafe, which carries pre-packaged sandwiches and burritos. They’re not so bad, but it’s hardly the kind of place you gather a group of women for a private gab session. That leaves the Old Paiute Pub and Brewery and the stodgy Hotel Germaine, where one might run into Vanessa Van Bibber, or the prying ears of Thelma Louise McCoy. So, the only actual choice is the brew-pub. Shaherazade would be with us, of course, but minors are permitted during the daylight hours, and she would be with her mom.  The gathering was Shaherazade’s idea. She thought that getting her mother and Faith Chastity together might generate some clues, or at least help us fill in the story of Charles Sevigny LaFontaine. She also knew that Rita would appreciate the opportunity to talk to…

Cousin Rochelle

Guest post by Shaherazade Budreau   ‘m Shaherazade Budreau and I’m going to tell you what Faith told me and Susie Applegate about how Rochelle was born and how she died and some of the stuff in between.  Faith said Rochelle was born early in the morning. Two o’clock. She said she was looking at the clock at just that moment. Rochelle was easy being born and that always seemed ironical to Faith how a child could get into this world so easy and go out so hard.  People were already talking about who the daddy might be long before Rochelle was born even though Faith just wouldn’t say. She didn’t tell anyone not even her parents or her brother Tim or her sister Susan. The only one she told, the one she thought she could trust was her best friend, Geena McCoy.  Charlie disappeared from room 17 at the…

Them Bones, part 2

haherazade said, “Shoot, ain’t that much changed. Just living in the wrong place can get you killed if you’re living where somebody else wants to be.” She lifted her chin up a little higher and sat up straight, as tall as she could. “Where some white folks want to live.”  Neither Faith nor I made a motion to disagree with her. You can’t disagree with the weight of history without sounding like a fool or being one.  Faith nodded. “Charlie showed up here in Germaine about three months after V-J day. We’d seen our share of strangers coming through and we had our share of war brides from other parts of the country and the world. But when Charlie turned up, he wasn’t just another stranger. There were some uneasy from the start. But he knew how to turn that. How to make people feel at ease and he had…