Yesterday when I went to leave the farm with Wildflower in tow, I noted some police cars at the road, just down from our entrance. We used to have wrecks there all the time so I figured someone had had a fender bender and I said a quick thank you to the man upstairs that I was heading the opposite direction and wouldn’t have to go through the wrecked area.
As I was driving down the highway towards Johnston County, I received a phone call. The guy asked for Dan, but then said he had the wrong number and hung up. Weird. Oh well.
Then Miguel texted me. The Sheriff was going to call me, they’d found a body on our property?
What? A body of what? Water? A dead deer? Huh? So I called Mr. Wrong Number back and said who I was. “Oh yeah, this is Deputy SoandSo. We’ve got a body here and we wondered if it was yours.”
Or something to that effect. I don’t really remember what he said exactly but it was pretty matter of fact. At that particular moment they didn’t have a lot to go on. I asked what the description was. White male, mid 30s, lots of tattoos. I assured the Deputy we weren’t missing any white men currently but if we came up short I’d let him know, and hung up. (No my sense of humor isn’t only for the internet.)
Lots of my friends are in law enforcement. I went to college to be in law enforcement. I know what a dead body on the ground means. It means no traffic moves for 4-6 hours. Lucy had already opened the store and before I could even get to JoCo, I had customers texting me asking if we were open, could they come tomorrow instead, etc. After finally getting all the texts answered, texting back and forth to the Mrs, the neighbors, customers, Lucy, Miguel, and actually doing what I went to JoCo for, I texted Lucy to just close up shop and put a note on the door. The day was over for us.
Until it wasn’t. You see, SWMBO and the older two rugrats were in Cary at a school thing. I was in Johnston County with the wee one. It was now 5pm meaning traffic is a mess regardless. Add a blocked off Old Stage Road to the mix and it would be a disaster. Some more texting to SWMBO and we elected to eat out and let the craziness die down.
We made it home about 7pm, to peace and quiet. I still have no idea who the guy was or what happened. Or even where the body was found on our property. They had to look twice before they found it, which tells me it wasn’t just on the side of the road. Since my fence line is pretty much on the side of the road that means it was actually inside of our boundary, I assume. I’ll get the skinny from Miguel today when he arrives (he was here) and update any pertinent details. I’m also linking the WRAL article about what was going on. I assume they’ll update that as information comes out.
So after all of that. To our customers. Sorry we were closed yesterday. To say it was events out of our control would be an understatement.
Man, they never wrote about this in the “Learning to Farm” coloring book I used for my farming education.