by Billy Coffey
“I’ll be your fam’ly,” Taylor said. “It’ll be us. Us and this Holler, if it deems you worthy.”
Lucy went to his arms. Taylor held her in the same way he imagined her father should have—tight, so she’d never leave. He let her cry and watched the Hollow’s hard earth drink her tears like a desert drinks the rain.
“I want to be like you,” she said. “I want to be here with you. I’ll do anything.”
Taylor smiled. There was no hiding it. “You want to be like me?”
Lucy nodded.
“To be what I am means doing as I’ve done, lady. Nothing more or less. But you have to choose to be here. All we are is what’s left of the choices we made. This Holler’s no different. You want to call it home and me your family, all it asks of you is what it asked of me—a sacrifice.”
“I don’t understand,” Lucy said.
Taylor moved close. He put a hand to Lucy’s knee. “What I’m saying, Lucy Seekins, is you gotta Wake somebody.”
4
It was Tuesday, and Tuesdays meant a patrol through the hill country past the Devereaux farm. That’s what I called my drives when in the presence of Kate or Zach or any of the townspeople. Headin’ out to patrol, I’d say, as though that were some monumental task fraught with peril. All I really did was stop by Hollis’s and say hello, maybe have a glass of Edith’s sweet tea, then drive seven miles or so on to Boone’s Pond and see if the fish were biting. No better fishing in Mattingly than Boone’s Pond.
So when I told Kate I was going to patrol, I was only doing the normal thing. That’s what Big Jim wanted from all of us. And me heading north while Justus and his men headed south? No significance there at all. Such was what I told myself in the kindest, most convincing way possible. I’d do my job and my father would do his, which offered me little comfort. The rest? Well, I supposed the rest was up to God. That offered me little comfort as well.
I’d been raised to believe in the God of the New Testament, the God who became man and preached grace and forgiveness and died for my sins. It was a faith I never doubted until the day I met Phillip along the riverbank. Oh, I still went to church after. I still prayed and amened during Preacher Goggins’s sermons. Still ate the wafer and drank the grape juice each month. Still believed. But it was never Jesus I saw when I closed my eyes and folded my hands. From then on, it was Jehovah. The Holy Judge.
The road wound past the BP and Hollis’s farm, but I didn’t stop for a glass of tea that day. Four miles on and three miles from Boone’s Pond, I turned down a one-lane stretch of hardpan seldom traveled but for party-seeking teenagers. The road weaved through miles of hill country before ending in a sudden T.
It was only when I turned left for the mountains that I realized where I was heading, and it was only when the hardpan turned to a dark, packed clay and I made a left turn through a broken place in the oaks that I realized I could not turn back. And I remember thinking, Why not? Why not this place? Because the rusty gate had always called to me in much the same way that Phillip’s grave called to Kate. The only difference was that my fear had made me run from my past, while Kate’s had kept her there.
I sat for a long while, watching sunlight fall upon one side of the gate and gray fall upon the other. I reached for Bessie and stepped out to the iron piling on the left. It was taller than me and as thick as my own waist, fastened deep into the earth. I ran a tired hand along its flaking edge to the top and then over, where a series of ten horizontal bars ran a dozen feet or so to the piling on the right.
I don’t know who built that gate or when. The general consensus among the old-timers was that the gate was there before the town, and to ponder more was to waste your time. It was as good an answer as any.
The gate couldn’t keep anyone out, of course. All one had to do was step around either side and keep walking, right on to Indian Hill if they had a mind. But I don’t think the gate’s there to keep anyone out. I think it’s a warning.
I bent and studied the hundreds of names that had been scratched into the iron over the years. The oldest had been carved into the middle crossbar, and those etchings lay so faded they appeared as ancient runes. Outward toward the edges were names I knew—Hollis’s and Justus’s close together, Trevor’s and Bobby’s lower, near the bottom of the left piling. I found Andy Sommerville’s name and Timmy’s as well, along with a frantic scrawl that spelled out JIM. I guess the mayor had not been so big the day he’d carved those three letters. He’d been too afraid to linger even long enough to add Wallis on the end.
There was no carving that spelled out Taylor Hathcock. I thought that meant little. My own name was missing, after all. And not only had I faced the gate, I’d walked on. Then I’d been a boy intent to prove himself a man. Now I stood there a man who understood he’d always be a boy.
I brought Bessie forward and ran her curved head along the gate’s upper bar, watched as sunlight glinted off the blade. In a way it had been my daddy’s tomahawk that had brought me there at seventeen, or at least the promise of her. Back then Bessie held a place of distinction on the mantle, flanked by a picture of her in my grandfather’s hand against the backdrop of some Pacific island and a picture of her in Justus’s hand in the middle of some Vietnamese jungle. There’d been a spot reserved there for me as well—holding her in the Iraqi sand, perhaps. But that had been Joey and Frankie’s war, not mine. By then I’d seen enough blood.
Justus had already thought me weak. Staying behind while a war was on only cemented that idea. My momma got the cancer when I was ten, died when I was eleven. I always felt there was more of her and less of Justus in me, and a part of my heart went soft when she passed. Still, I couldn’t bear knowing my father thought of me that way. Justus thought that way still when he handed Bessie to me the day he left for Crawford’s Gap. I took her anyway. It was the closest he’d ever come to saying he loved me.
Daddy, he never shed a tear when Momma passed. I cried for months and cried more when he called me a boy and said that’s all I’d ever be. That’s why I went to the Hollow that day after school. I wanted to carve my name and show Justus I was a man. Then I decided mere carving wasn’t enough, instead I’d walk those woods all the way to the top of Indian Hill. I’d see if the end of the world truly lay on the other side, and then I’d etch my name. Generations of boys would bear witness to that deed. JAKE BARNETT would be the name darkest and deepest in the gate.
I stepped into the Hollow that day with my chin high and my shoulders back, just the way Justus walked into the VFW. I returned shaken and bloody. And in between . . .
Forgive me. Such things are hard to tell. The scar on my arm? I got that scar along the riverbank that day. And just like the scar, that day was imprinted on me. I carried it and always would. Kate had asked me at the kitchen table what happened the day I walked into the Hollow. I could not answer her. But if I had, I would have said what happened was I found more than the end of the world atop Indian Hill, I found the river and I found Phillip. What happened was I found him just after Kate played her trick and the white butterflies were there and there was blood on my clothes and I ran home knowing my life was over because what happened was Phillip died and I had killed him.
Years later townspeople would still gather on porches and at storefronts to speak of weather or crops, and if their meeting drifted from mere passing by to getting comfortable, their talk meandered to how Phillip McBride’s body was found. They would puzzle over the strange phone call Sheriff John David Houser received three days into the search and a week before Phillip’s death was declared a suicide. They would describe the masked voice on the other end that said Phillip’s body lay along the riverbank in Happy Hollow. Some said that voice was Phillip’s own, a reaching out from the grave. But that was not so. That voice was mine, and even as I’d spoken the words I’d felt the first head winds of a remorse that would grow to a gale as the years went on.
Standing at the rusty gate so many years later, I vowed Phillip would be a
secret I took to the grave. No matter how that secret rotted my insides and no matter how he haunted my dreams. No matter, even, the threat to my town. I knew it was selfish. And yet I knew I would rather let Taylor Hathcock run unfettered than glimpse the disappointment in my family’s eyes if they ever found the truth. Especially Kate’s. For her to know what I did would not only bring her rage, it would make her doubt I’d ever loved her at all. Because Kate had always laid Phillip’s death upon herself, but that debt was mine.
And Taylor knew that as well, and Taylor was close.
I stood at the gate for a long while before making the drive back to town. Had my mind been in the now, I would have no doubt seen that someone had been there, and recent. Taylor had erased the tracks made by Lucy’s car, but I would have seen the evidence of the pine boughs he’d used. I would have followed that faint trail and found the black BMW they’d left hidden in the trees for the forest to swallow.
But I was not in the now. I was in the then, where I’d been all along.
5
What Zach told the school secretary was that he’d forgotten his homework and needed to call his momma. Rachel Fleming saw through the lie at once (especially after spying what Zach had written on the piece of paper clutched in his hand), but she slid the phone to him anyway and decided the papers on the other side of the office really should be filed. Rachel smiled as Zach curled his hand around the receiver and waited for Kate to answer.
Kate never wanted any attention for the help she provided the needy. She took great pains to let God see in private what she thought people couldn’t see in public. But there are few secrets in a small town, and Kate’s was almost as universally known as why Hollis spent so much time in his backwoods. Yet no one spoke of what Kate did, simply because they knew why she did it. That included Rachel Fleming, whose name could be found in the middle of page 74 in Kate’s notebook and who, some ten years prior, had woken one morning to find a box of clothes and three Barbie dolls on her crumbling front porch.
Zach told Kate that Harley Ruskin wasn’t in school that day, but Harley’s teacher (that would be Bobbi Jo Creech, whose name could be found halfway down page 52 of that very same shabby binder) had been more than happy to provide him with the necessary information. Kate wrote it all down in her notebook—estimated clothing size, toy preferences, and the Ruskins’ address. She told Zach he was a good boy and that God would forgive his fib about the homework. Zach hoped both were true.
Most of Kate’s business was transacted at the Family Dollar, which was located a block from the sheriff’s office next to Wenger’s Pharmacy. The Super Mart in Camden offered a larger selection of wares, and Kate would likely have gone there over the years had it not been for Elmer Cohron, the Dollar’s owner. Like everyone, Elmer knew what Kate did with all those clothes and toys. Unlike everyone, he wasn’t shy about letting Kate know in his own way. He rung everything she purchased for the poor at cost, then would always slide the receipt across the counter, offer Kate a sly wink, and say, “You’re a good woman, Kate.” Elmer held fast to tradition that morning. As did Kate, who held fast to a tradition of her own and drank Elmer’s words as one dying of thirst.
6
She was on her way back to the sheriff’s office when Bobby Barnes’s red Dodge turned up Main Street. Justus rode with him. Kate wasn’t surprised the truck’s bed was empty of their quarry. In her mind, if Jake said Taylor had fled, then fled he had. The rest of Justus’s convoy trailed behind. They scattered for parking spaces along Main Street near the diner.
Kate had just decided to cross the street and avoid them when Justus raised his hand. He made his way over, stopping on the sidewalk before coming too close. A wide grin, which Kate translated as either arrogance or spite, crossed his face.
He pointed to the box in her arms and said, “That for my grandson?”
Kate shook her head. “You gave up your rights to a grandson when you left, Justus. You know that.”
Justus’s smile disappeared. He ran his tongue over his lips. “Ain’t found’m yet. We’ll regroup over dinner, then swing west to Hilltown. They’ll likely spot an interloper.”
“If there’s an interloper to be found,” Kate said. “Jake says he’s gone, Justus.”
“You believe him?”
“He’s never lied to me.”
Justus seemed to take that as truth, though he said, “Jake had a weight on him at that meetin’. He’s worn, Katelyn. ’Twas plain.”
“That had nothing to do with Taylor Hathcock.”
“Then what’s it to do with?”
“That’s family business,” Kate said, aware that she’d just stung him again. She waved at the trucks around them and the men walking into the diner. “And it’s made worse by all that, if it matters to you. You being here just makes Jake’s job harder. Can’t you see that? Why don’t you just go back to where you came from?”
“I’m settlin’ accounts,” Justus said. “Jake wants me gone, there’s an easy way. All he’s gotta do’s bring me in. And afore you say else, I’ll say it’s been as easy for him to find me all these years as it is right now. Jacob always knew where I was, just as he knows where I am now.”
“Turn your own self in, then,” Kate said.
Justus shook his head. “Gotta be Jacob.”
“Why?” she asked, and in a voice so loud that those near them paused in their coming and going to turn their heads. The box shook in Kate’s arms. She was happy it was there, and not only because delivering it would count toward redemption. If her hands had been empty, Kate was sure they would ball into fists and wail upon Justus’s barrel chest. She would do it, and she would bear the consequences. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?”
“Jacob’s soft, Katelyn. That’s why. Because that man’s still out there, I feel it in my bones, an’ because my boy’s no good man t’catch him.”
“You’ve a nerve to speak of good men,” Kate said. “Jake never raised a gun in anger. He’s kind.”
Justus boiled. “We Barnetts owned that farm for generations, girl. We worked it, sweat and bled in it, prayed over it, ’til Big Jim cast his eye there and seen dollar signs. I knew the black in his heart. He wanted that land hisself. To develop it. An’ he knew about the note I took out when the crops failed. Miss two payments, that’s enough for him to make the bank call the loan, knowin’ I couldn’t pay. That’s when he sent those men out. They came on my land, Katelyn. Jake’s land. Zach’s land. To take it. You ask anyone in this town, they’ll say I was justified in what I done. All I wanted was my own blood to stand with me, but he refused. You say Jacob is kind, I say his kindness is panic without teeth.”
“Those men were just doing their jobs,” Kate screamed, and now everyone stopped. “You could’ve killed them.”
“If that was my aim. But it wasn’t.”
“But it was close enough. And what did all that cost you, Justus? You ran away when Jake begged you to stay and face what you did. You lost the farm anyway. You lost your freedom. You lost your family.”
“I ran because I had to,” Justus said. His voice cracked. “John David Houser called and said he had a warrant his heart wouldn’t allow him to serve. Said he was sworn by the law to do his duty as sheriff, but he was sworn by the man he was not to arrest a man for something he’d have done hisself. I knew his mind. He was tellin’ me to go afore he got there. Jacob was the only one who said I was in the wrong then; Jacob should be the one to bring me in now. Because that’s his place. He wears the badge, Katelyn. That’s how it should be.”
“No, Justus,” Kate said. “How it should be is that you go. You go before it’s too late.”
Kate stepped around him. Her shoulders stooped under the weight in her arms. She turned when Justus called her name.
“Bernard Wilcox, husband of one, father of two. Harvey Lewis, divorced, father of three. Clancy Townsend, husband of two, father of four, grandfather of six.”
“What?” Kate asked.
“Those are the men I shot that day. I expect no one remembers them now, just as you. But know well I remember them, Katelyn. I see their faces in my dreams and I speak their names when I wake, an’ they’ll follow me until I stand in judgment from man and God. I’m sorry for what I done. That’s why I call. That’s why I’m here. I’m tired of runnin’. I pray for grace but I’ll abide by punishment, if that’s what it takes for me to move on. Do you understand?”
Kate hefted the box and walked away. She said nothing, but she understood. Kate understood well.
7
This time Lucy didn’t tell Taylor where she was going, and there was no bear at the edge of the meadow to greet her. There were eyes, though, always those eyes. Watching her the way neighbors will when strangers move in down the street—keeping distance, waiting to see how things will go and if there will be trouble. Yet Lucy walked on unafraid and unbothered past the boulders that littered the dead ground and through the trees to the stonelined path. To the grove and to the Hole.
She sat cross-legged and watched that perfect black sphere, her pupils swelling and her breaths low and soft. It was a terror and a wonder, and both held a beauty. Lucy had been obsessed with many things over her short life—boys, love, attention. A dead mother. But now she understood that the Hole was no obsession. It consumed her. No, it completed her. In a way she had never thought possible. She felt a wetness on her leg and looked to find drool staining her jeans. Lucy wiped her mouth, understanding the hunger she felt.
One day, what consumed Lucy would be hers alone. One day, her own mark would be put upon the wall.
Her world in town had been snatched away by her father and Johnny Adkins. Lucy had once mourned that loss, but no longer. Now she understood that life had been taken away because a better life was coming, and she wanted nothing more than to see that life flourish. To do that, she would have to kill. She would have to kill like Taylor killed that boy.