by Billy Coffey
Kate said nothing to this, though she thought that sort of thinking could do more damage to a young lady than any half-naked boy could manage. She also thought things could be going worse, but she didn’t know how.
“I just wanted to introduce myself,” Kate said, “tell you a little about what I do.” Her eyes found the pictures on the mantel again. Mother, father, Lucy. Or at least a younger version of her. “I know you and your family are still new to town. I work out of the sheriff’s office. Jake’s my husband—”
“You mean the cowboy who thinks he’s an Indian?”
Kate bristled at the way Lucy asked that, as though it were the punch line of some joke. Lucy crossed the room and sat on the sofa. She spread her arms along the cushions, massaging them like a memory.
“Yes,” Kate said. “Jake. I work in an unofficial capacity. I guess you could say I tend to the needs of folk in and around town in sort of a . . . spiritual way.”
“Isn’t that like a violation of church and state or something?” Lucy asked.
“Well, I don’t know, honey, politics doesn’t count for much here. Mayor Wallis doesn’t seem to mind, and I don’t get paid for what I do.”
“You work for free?” Lucy shook her head, but there was something in that quick turn that was more than disbelief. Kate thought it may have been admiration. “My father’d call you crazy.”
“It isn’t work,” Kate said. “I see it more as fate. It’s my destiny.”
“What’s that like?”
“Not working?”
“No,” Lucy said. “Having a destiny.”
The question caught Kate by surprise, and for a moment she thought Lucy had asked it in the same tone she’d asked Kate if her husband was the cowboy who pretended to be an Indian. But then Kate realized Lucy had stopped massaging the couch cushions and that wry smile she’d been sporting was gone. She truly wanted an answer, and the thought humbled Kate. No one had ever asked her what it felt like to do the things she did, not even Jake. And though she expected Lucy wanted to hear something else besides the truth, the truth was what Kate would give her.
“It’s like being trapped in a room without windows and wondering if it’s day or still night.”
Lucy nodded as though she understood. “Well, I really don’t get why you’re here, Mrs. Barnett. As you can see, I’m not in need, spiritual or otherwise.”
Kate almost told Lucy she was in need of both, that girls stuck alone in big houses who give themselves away to boys weren’t just wanting, they were reaching. The problem was she knew Lucy didn’t realize it yet, couldn’t.
“My brother asked me to come. Timmy Griffith? He owns the Texaco down the hill.”
Lucy sniggered. “That guy’s your brother? Then I’m afraid you’re just wasting your time. All that man wants to do is get me in trouble and take Johnny away. So now I’m thinking maybe you should just leave, if you don’t mind. My dad will be home soon, and he won’t be here long. I should get ready.”
“I understand,” Kate said. She rose from the chair, her mind divided between sadness over not being able to help Lucy after all and relief that her visit was over. “But Timmy doesn’t want to get you in trouble, Lucy. If he did, he’d have called my husband instead of me.” She tore a piece of paper from the back of her notebook and wrote Jake’s cell number. “I don’t have a phone myself, but the town thinks Jake should have one. Take this. Sometimes people need more than clothes and food. If you ever do, call me. Jake and I would love to have you and your parents over for supper. Welcome you to Mattingly proper, even if it’s a little late.”
Kate held the paper out. Lucy rose from the sofa and took it. She folded the page and put it in the front pocket of her shorts.
“When my father’s here, I’d rather keep him to myself,” she said. “And my mom died a long time ago. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
Kate didn’t wait for Lucy Seekins to show her out. She said her good-bye and left, but not before casting a final look at the mantel. There were pictures of Lucy at various ages, pictures of the man Kate took to be Lucy’s occasional father and the young woman who must have borne her, pictures of Lucy and her father and her father with his wife. But none of the fourteen photos on the mantelpiece was of Lucy and her mother.
That small observation told Kate much. No wonder the couch cushions were slanted.
3
The idea of calling on Jenny had come to me late the night before, sometime after I’d awakened terrified and bleeding and before the first rays of the sun eased their way over the mountains. That idea should have been dismissed outright, but in the darkness of early morning even the worst notion can take on a sheen of good common sense. I left before Kate or Zach woke (wanting to avoid the lie of telling them I was going to do anything but break the very law I’d been sworn to uphold) and drove out to Hollis and Edith Devereaux’s farm, just down from the hill country on Route 664. I parked behind their old barn and made the long slog up to where a plowed line marked the boundary of field and forest.
Standing there, I was confronted by the foolishness of my coming unannounced. A warning at least would have been prudent, maybe even necessary. Tromping through Hollis’s woods was akin to taking your own life into your hands. After all, this wasn’t the Devereauxs’ front porch. This was Jenny’s place.
I stood there trying to blink away the tired from my eyes and thought, Tomorrow. If I dreamed again tonight, I’d come back tomorrow. Then I thought of the white butterflies and the stones piled upon stones. I thought of Phillip’s words and his dead hand upon me and looked at the bandage on my arm. What kind of dream opens an old scar? Makes you bleed again? I didn’t know, but I knew it was the sort of dream I didn’t want to endure again. I looked back toward the farmhouse to make sure Edith wasn’t hanging clothes or feeding the chickens and slipped through the trees.
A worn path stood just inside. I followed it deeper into the thick woods and slowed myself, stepping only when a bird sang or a squirrel chirred and only to where the ground was hard and leafless, reaching out with my eyes and ears for anything that might be skulking about.
Not that it did any good. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, every part of me had dulled by then. That’s what happens when you get two, maybe three hours of sleep every night for a month. I didn’t hear the movement to my right until it was almost on top of me. I crouched close to a dark boulder to my left and took off my hat, clutching it as Zach had his blanket the night before. Sweat poured from my face and arms. My heart jackhammered.
“Hollis?” I called. “That you in there?”
The answer was a shotgun round chambered. I dove behind the boulder as the woods exploded around me in a shower of limbs and leaves. Fear charged forward like a wild animal finally broken free of its cage. I sank into the earth and gritted my teeth, fighting to hold my bladder.
A voice boomed, “Get off’a my land,” followed by another spray of buckshot that nearly grazed my ear. I reached to the small of my back, felt nothing. Now a deeper panic set in, one in which being shot at played only a small part. Of all the things I could have been thinking then, only one gripped me—I’d left Bessie in the truck, and wouldn’t Daddy have given me an earful for that?
I screamed, “Hollis, you put that scatter-gun down.”
The woods stilled. Cautious footsteps from among the trees, then fast, then a pause. And then came what may well have been the sweetest words I’d ever heard:
“Jake? That you?”
I raised my hands and then myself from behind the rock, pulling my fingers into my palms and squeezing them still. I much preferred the smell of gunpowder and the taste of earth than Hollis seeing me scared. I spoke deep and even: “I don’t want no trouble, Hollis.”
It was easy to see how the old man in front of me could have snuck up on me so easy. A morning’s worth of farming had left Hollis’s blue overalls a smudgy brown that blended his potbelly with the woods. A faded black Dale Earnhardt cap was pulled down ove
r his ears. Even the nicotine-stained whiskers around his mouth were a kind of camouflage. The rest of his face turned three shades whiter when he saw me.
“Lord have mercy,” he said.
Hollis lowered the shotgun and jogged to me in a herky-jerky old-man way. I dropped my arms and bent for my hat, aware that my legs were about to give way. Thankfully, Hollis picked it up for me. He handed it over as though it were his very life. I breathed easier. Not because of his show of respect, but because Hollis’s own trembling body meant he was not aware of my own.
“You could’ve kilt me, Jake. Could’ve shorn my head clean off.”
I spoke the truth: “Bessie’s in the truck.” Then the lie: “Didn’t think I’d need her.”
Hollis pulled a red bandana from the front pocket of his overalls and wiped his brow. He exhaled a laugh. “Ain’t nobody supposed to be up here for ’nother hour. I thought you was the law.”
“I am the law, Hollis.”
“Oh, I know, I know y’are.” Eager to make things right. “I mean the real law. You know”—he pointed a finger skyward and made three tight circles—“the ones with the hellycopters. Not like you, Jake. You unnerstand the way of things.”
I smiled—smiling seemed best, as it was the furthest thing from how I felt—and said, “No harm. Just thought I’d come by and see what Jenny has.”
Hollis flinched. It was small and quick but noticeable. He scratched at his beard. “How you know about Jenny, Jake?”
“Been in this town all my life, Hollis. Everybody but Edith knows about Jenny.”
The old man’s body went limp. The boulder caught him just before I did. Blood left his face despite the morning heat, leaving ashen patches of skin on his cheeks.
“You ain’t fixing to take me in, are ya, Jake? I know keeping Jenny ain’t Christlike, but I lost near all our crop in the drought last year. An’ beef prices . . .” Hollis shook his head, pleading. “Jenny gets us through.”
“Ain’t here to take you in, Hollis.” My next words came out a syllable at a time in the hope that I could tell him what I needed without actually saying it. “I just wanted to see what Jenny . . . has.”
The dimmer switch in Hollis’s brain went from soft to bright. “You old dog.” He smiled and poked me with an elbow. I tried smiling back but found I was fresh out. “Foller me. Jenny’s right up yonder.”
He led me on through the pines beyond, which opened to a small clearing where countless footsteps had mashed the fallen needles into wispy dust. Three large copper pots sat beneath a moldy gray tarp along the far edge. The first and third pots were large, the second smaller. Each was connected to the others by a series of copper piping. A fire burned beneath the first pot, fed by stacks of nearby oak. A filtered bucket sat beneath a tap on the last, ready for dispensing.
Hollis beamed like a proud papa. He led me to four wooden crates stacked beside a small pile of paisley dish towels.
“Best moonshine in the valley, Jake. Guaranteed to put you more at ease than anythin’ you’ll get down to the Texaco. Got some peach here. Good vintage too.”
“What’s the vintage?”
Hollis grinned. “Yest’day. How many you need?”
I started to ask how much moonshine it would take to chase away a dead boy and an army of white butterflies. I settled on, “One’ll do.”
Hollis fetched a jar from the top crate and wrapped it in one of the dish towels. He handed the bundle over and said, “That’s ten bucks.”
I dug into my pocket and fished out a small wad of folded bills, then promptly dropped it at my feet. I bent to pick it up and wobbled as I stood. Hollis watched, biting his bottom lip.
“What?” I asked.
“Don’t mean to pry, Jake. It’s just that you ain’t looking so good. If you don’t mind me saying. Seen your bandage there.”
I followed his eyes to my left arm. “Just a scratch.”
“Everything all right with Katie an’ Zach?”
I handed over the money and said, “Yep.”
“Cain’t be work. Nothin’ ever happens in Mattingly.”
“Work’s fine too.”
“Must be your daddy, then,” Hollis said, and then his eyes widened as he realized it couldn’t be unsaid. For the past seven years there seemed to have been a silent agreement within the town that the subject of my father would never be discussed, at least in the presence of me or Kate, and especially with Zach. Hollis kicked a small rock by his feet. “Sorry for your loss, Jake. Don’t think I ever tole you that. Your daddy near ran this town. His leavin’ was hard on a lotta folk, but I reckon on you an’ Kate especially. Weren’t a better man. If you don’t mind me saying.”
I did mind. I said I didn’t. Hollis was a good man, and I just wanted to go. Get some coffee somewhere. Try to wake up from another night’s sleep that Phillip hadn’t allowed.
I raised the jar and walked for the trees. “Thanks, Hollis. I’ll see you.”
“Hey, Jake? Always ask my customers if their jar’s for rememberin’ or forgettin’.”
Phillip echoed in my head
(You’re a dead man and he’s coming and you’ll remember true, because I want an end)
and I tried to push him away, tried clinging to the belief those dreams were no different from any others, mere ramblings of an unsettled mind. I tried to tell myself there was no he coming, I was in no danger, and that the end Phillip spoke of was merely a deep-seated desire to lay down my own guilt.
I tried. And I may have even believed it. But I didn’t believe it much.
What I did believe was that Phillip had been wrong about one thing. There was no need for me to “remember,” because I’d never forgotten what I did to him along the riverbank that day and never would. I wore that memory like a heavy chain around my heart. I pressed on it as one would press on a bruise to see if it still hurt.
I turned and said, “Forgetting.”
Hollis nodded as though mine was the usual answer.
4
Few people knew of Charlie Givens. Those who did agreed that not only was he born to trouble, but the sole purpose of his head was to keep rain out of his neck. Yet even Charlie’s leaden mind understood the dangers involved in his monthly trips to visit Taylor Hathcock in Happy Hollow.
It wasn’t so much that most all of the Hollow was either lifeless or empty, or even that everyone in the county knew every inch of that dark wood was accursed. It was the eyes. Charlie could never step past the rusty gate without feeling those eyes on him. Watching. Waiting. He didn’t know exactly what that steady gaze watched or waited for (nor did Charlie ever ponder what devilry lay behind it), but there was a certain comfort in those unanswerables. Ignorance may not have equaled bliss down in the world, but it certainly counted for protection in the Hollow as far as Charlie Givens was concerned.
And sometimes it was worse. Sometimes those eyes were accompanied by shadows that danced among the dead trees and whispers that sounded like tired groans in the stale wind. Charlie softened his fears in such circumstances by tipping into the beer he brought along. There had been occasions when two cans would be missing by the time he reached the cabin. That day Charlie was on his fourth. That’s how bad the eyes were.
Nor was the going easy. Taylor once told him eight miles stretched between the gate that marked the Hollow’s entrance and the ridgetop where he lived. Charlie believed that distance closer to twelve. Add the groceries he carried to the steep hills, thick patches of briar and thistle, and rocks that could either cut a man to the bone or snap him all together (not to mention the added burden of Charlie’s own 230 pounds, most of which currently swung free and easy from the top of his camouflage shorts), and the result was nearly three hours of travel into hell itself.
But travel he would and always had, because Taylor was a friend. Even in Charlie Givens’s world, that counted for something.
By the time he crested the final hill, Charlie was sure if the eyes didn’t kill him, his overtaxed heart
would. Brittle oaks withering in the dusty ground yielded to the camp, which amounted to little more than a one-room shack surrounded by an ever increasing pile of scavenged junk. Here in the Hollow’s heights, the eyes fell away and turned their gaze elsewhere. A gentle breeze fell through a set of wind chimes fashioned from empty beer cans, filling the air with eerie clicks. Aside from those, the world was silent. It reminded Charlie of how death must be—not an end of something bad and certainly not the start of something better, just an always with the sound turned down.
He paused to drink from a barrel of water. A small path led from there to a high place along the ridge. Charlie followed it and found Taylor sitting on a large rotting log, scanning the valley below with a broken pair of binoculars. The spring sun had already bronzed his thick shoulders, turning them near the color of the ponytail hanging to the middle of his back. The edges of a wild-man’s beard, full and frayed, poked out from the sides of his jaw. Beside him on the log lay the tattered book he always kept near.
He said without turning, “Knew you was close, Charlie Givens.”
Charlie stopped. When he spoke, his words were colored with the slow drawl of the Virginia mountains. “Now, Taylor, that ain’t true. I’s quiet as a church mouse the whole way.”
“That may be your mind, but I know better.” Still with his back to Charlie, still scanning below. “You spooked a hawk when you crossed the gate. Hawk spooked a rabbit. Rabbit spooked a deer. Deer told the bear.”
“How you know that?”
“Bear told me.”
Charlie offered no response. Taylor spoke often of the monster that dwelled in the Hollow, which may nor may not have been a bear and may or may not have existed only in the dark labyrinth of Taylor Hathcock’s muddled mind. Charlie didn’t much care either way. He had more pressing issues.
“Well, I appreciate the lesson, Taylor, but I done bore your groceries all this way, an’ if I don’t go pay the water bill I’m gonna float.”
“Time’s drawn too short for that,” Taylor said. “Set those rations down here and perch yourself. We need a word.”