The Devil Walks in Mattingly

by Billy Coffey

  But was it killing?

  Was it really?

  Taylor didn’t think it was. If anything, he thought what he did to Eric Thayer was the opposite of killing. Taylor said he’d given life to that boy, and if that was a sin it was okay because it let God forgive, and forgiving was what God did best. Lucy didn’t know about all of that. She’d grown up placing her faith in Nothing rather than Something, and the books she’d left shredded and ripped on her living room floor didn’t say much about a deity, except that there probably wasn’t one. But when she beheld the Hole’s solemn gaze, Lucy knew everything she’d believed and all that those dead old men wrote was wrong. So very wrong.

  Yet not so wrong that the question of whether she was about to become a murderer mattered to Lucy in the least. That she would do such an act was not questioned. People did horrible things every day in the name of love. They lied and killed to belong. She would be no different.

  In the end Lucy saw it best to believe whatever would make the going easier. She would Wake, then. Not kill. The only thing left was deciding who it would be. And that was where Lucy faltered.

  Whom among the town did she love enough to set free? Was there one whom she believed should be spared from further years? Someone whose heart hurt even worse than her own? Lucy thought no. She had loved many people in many ways, but she found that love did not extend to mercy.

  Her eyes fell from the Hole to the footprint in the dirt that Taylor had shown her. Left, he said, by a magical some(thing?) one who had breached the line between the real and the not. Lucy leaned over and traced the outline of the shoe with a small rock she found at her feet.

  Would a thing wear a shoe? Would a spirit? No, of course not.

  Only a person.

  She faced the Hole again and turned the pebble over in her hand. Taylor had said the Hollow’s few living things dared not approach the grove (Lucy took that as true, had seen the bear turn away herself), because it was holy and all else was soiled. And yet if one thing could breach that blackness, couldn’t another? What if that Hole wasn’t a hole at all? What if it was a gate? A door? And if that door swung open to this side of the world, could it not swing open to the side of another?

  Yes, she thought. Maybe.

  Maybe and let’s see.

  And with the same amount of thought Lucy had given when she’d told Taylor Hathcock to get into her car, she let the rock in her hand fly.

  She reached to pull the pebble back, but it was too late. It sailed true, spanning the ten feet between her and the Hole in seconds. What came next was not the vengeful wrath of a bothered god nor the shattering of reality. The rock was simply there and then not. Lucy leaned forward, listening for perhaps the splash of the stone hitting water or a faint thud as it rolled and stopped. No sound came, but that changed nothing in Lucy’s mind. The pebble had gone somewhere.

  She decided the mystery in front of her would be hers alone. And if Lucy Seekins would not secure her place in the Hollow by waking someone she loved, she would do so by killing someone she hated. Really, what difference did it make in the end?

  Lucy wiped the drip from the corner of her mouth and smiled.

  8

  Standing once more at the rusty gate had rattled me. Seeing Justus and his men when I returned to town rattled me more. But walking into the office and finding what was on Kate’s desk? That nearly did me in. Because that could mean only one thing, and with Taylor Hathcock still about, there was no way I was going to let Kate go anywhere alone.

  I heard the faucet running in the bathroom and walked to the box. Inside were three pairs of jeans, four T-shirts, a handful of candy bars, and a small toy tractor.

  A boy, then.

  Kate and I were no different than most in Mattingly. Sheriffing didn’t pay much and never had. We kept two months’ pay in the bank for emergencies and a few twenties in an old coffee can in the kitchen cupboard. We got by. But even if Elmer Cohron had always sold to Kate at cost, I figured there were seventy dollars in that box. I couldn’t help but ponder just how much money I’d handed to that notebook over the years. All spread out, of course, which made the sting more a dull hurt. Plenty for a new truck for her or a new motor for the Blazer or something extra for Zach under the tree come Christmas.

  But to ask her to stop would be to deny Kate the hope of making amends, and I held that hope as precious even if I believed it impossible for myself. Phillip was dead. There would be no second chance for either of us. All we had was the penance of names scrawled in her binder and rocks stacked along a riverbank in my dreams. I had resigned myself to both, even forged a kind of peace with them. But then Taylor Hathcock had turned the life I lived when awake into something far more frightening than the life I lived when asleep, and he had done so with five simple words:

  I know what you did.

  “Jake.”

  I turned as Kate slipped her arms around me.

  “Hey, you,” she said. When she kissed me, my lips were pursed and cold. “How’s your ride?”

  “Fine.” I tried to smile. “Saw Justus and the boys over at the diner. They decide to call it quits?”

  “No. I ran into him a little while ago. He said they didn’t find anything and were going to swing west this afternoon.”

  My face relaxed a bit, though not enough for Kate to see. Justus hadn’t found Taylor. I knew I should see that as a bad thing for the town, but that was all set aside for the good thing it was for me. It was a horrible thing to think. And while I wanted to believe much of it was because I felt so tired and stretched inside, I knew it was not.

  “I don’t think they really want to find anyone,” Kate said. “They just want an excuse to load their guns and hunt for something other than deer and bear. You know men, Jake.” She flipped the brim of my hat up with a playful flick of her hand and smiled. “They always wanna play cowboy.”

  “What else did Justus say?” I asked.

  Kate’s grin held but flickered. “Not much. I had to get back.” She motioned at the box. “Had my hands full.”

  “So I see. Who’s that for?”

  “A boy named Harley Ruskin.”

  “Don’t believe I know any Ruskins,” I said.

  “I didn’t either until the meeting. They were the family on the front row along the wall. Guess you didn’t see them.” She rummaged through the box on her desk, making sure everything was there and nothing had been left out. “Can’t blame you, what with Justus and all. I got Zach to find out a few things for me and went down to the Dollar while you were gone. I’m gonna run it out there now.”

  “Where’s he live?”

  “North of 664,” she said.

  North. Justus and his men had searched south and west. I’d started up 664 on my morning drive but had swung east instead. That meant north had gone unsearched.

  I know what you did, Jake. You tell Kate?

  I scratched an itch on my lower lip that wasn’t there. My fingers shook. It reminded me of how Bobby Barnes looked the day I’d come upon him in Hollis’s woods.

  “Why don’t you wait a couple days, Kate.”

  Kate’s brow ridged. She cocked her head to the side as though I’d started a joke in the middle. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Everything’s just so . . . bad. Right now.”

  “You got that right,” she said, closing the box. “That’s why I’m going. That boy needs some sunshine in his life, Jake. We all do. Giving him some will give me some too.”

  “I think you should just wait.”

  Kate reached for her notebook and looked at me. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just think it’s best if you stay close to town.”

  “Well, I think it’s best if I go.”

  She stepped around me and gathered the box from her desk. The notebook went atop it. I blocked her path when she turned.

  “How about I go with you?” I asked. “Everything’s been so crazy that we haven’t really spent any time
together. Be nice, taking a ride.”

  Kate finished the smile she’d begun earlier, as though she’d taken that to be the rest of my joke. “Jake, you know I have to do this by myself. Always have. It’s my burden and my pleasure. Besides, someone has to pick up Zach after school.”

  “We’ll be back in time,” I said. “Don’t go today. Please, Kate.”

  The box tugged on Kate’s arms. This load was heavy. All of them were, I supposed, regardless of how old she’d been when she lifted them or what they carried inside.

  “I’ve been thinking about him,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Phillip.”

  I shifted my weight, holding my right elbow with my left hand. The room grew smaller, brighter, and the soft yellow of sunlight through the shades turned brilliant. I licked my lips, suddenly thirsty.

  “I guess it was Eric Thayer,” Kate said. “He was so young, Jake. Like Phillip was.”

  “Kate . . .”

  She shook her head and wiped her eyes on her shoulder. “That’s why I have to go, Jake. I have to help Harley because I didn’t help Phillip. And I have to do it alone.”

  Kate raised her heels and kissed my cheek, then stepped aside. I searched for anything that would keep her there, any lie or excuse. But every step she took away from me was one step she may have been taking toward Taylor, and with such thinking, only the truth would do.

  She’d just shifted the box to her hip to open the door when I said, “Taylor’s not gone.”

  Kate looked at me. “What?”

  “Taylor Hathcock isn’t gone. He’s here. Close to town.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I gritted my teeth. The thirst had turned into a sharp pain in the back of my throat that I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t look at her.

  “Because he called me.”

  Kate sat the box down. “When did he call you? Did you tell Alan?”

  I shook my head. “Called me Sunday night. You were asleep.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That he was close. Always has been. Told me to pull the county police out of town.”

  “And you did?” Her tone was a blade that cut through me. “You did what he told you to do?”

  “He knew you, Kate. He knew Zach.”

  “How can he know us?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think someone other than Charlie Givens was helping him. He said if I didn’t call the police away, there’d be more trouble.”

  Kate screamed, “More trouble? What were you thinking, Jake? That man killed a boy. He hurt Andy and my brother.”

  She fell silent, her mind tumbling, and then her eyes bulged and her mouth fell open as she stumbled on yet another terrible truth.

  “He called you Sunday night, and the next day you not only call off Alan’s men, you stand in front of the whole town and say Taylor’s gone? How could you do that, Jake? You lied to them.” Another pause. “You lied to me.”

  And after this, after it all, I could only say, “I had to.”

  She picked up the box again and twisted it to her hip as she reached for the knob. “No, Jake, you didn’t.”

  “Kate, you can’t tell anyone. Please. For me.”

  She stopped but would not turn. Could not face me. “Don’t burden me with your sins, Jake. My own are heavy enough. Justus said you were weak. Soft, he called it. He said that’s why you have to be the one to bring him in and why you never will. I told him he was wrong on both counts. I guess I’m the one who was wrong.”

  And then she was gone.

  9

  In a strange way, Kate supposed her anger was the only reason Harley Ruskin would get his blessing that day. Had she not been so mad at Jake, her mind would have centered on the fact she was driving into the hill country alone with a killer on the loose. A killer who knew her name.

  The Ruskin home place was neither home nor place, but a leaning wooden structure sitting off a dirt road behind a set of thick pines. The steps leading from the rotting porch had long crumbled, leaving a gap between there and the ground small enough to manage but large enough to snap an ankle. A mongrel dog sought refuge there from the sun, its pink tongue lolling in the dirt. Kate thought it was either near sleep or death and did not dwell long on which. Her thoughts focused instead on her own sinking heart.

  Evidently Pa Ruskin put little stock in lawn maintenance. A sea of dandelions stretched between where Kate hid and the front porch she meant to reach. There was no way to navigate around, no alternate route she could take. The weeds sprouted even in the gravel driveway, which was empty but for a rusted station wagon. The family vehicle, she supposed. And that was another, though less pressing problem.

  The Ruskins were home.

  The house windows were propped open with whatever had been handy—a wooden potstick, a broken branch from the oak just outside, a tennis shoe propped on its heel. What shingles remained on the roof huddled in small patches near the edges. To the side of the house, a sagging clothesline held four pairs of overalls in various sizes, one pair each of men’s and boy’s boxer shorts, and two enormous bras. Behind the house was a large garden. A barn stood in the backyard, which seemed in so much better shape than the house that Kate thought it would do the Ruskins well to make their home there instead.

  She watched all of this from just inside the stand of pines along the road. Harley’s box sat in front of her. She waited with a patience that was almost saintly, trusting the same God who had never forgiven her to offer the grace of a moment. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, as it always was when she delivered her packages. Kate had always told Jake that wearing her hair that way made it easier for her to sneak and spy. That was close enough to the truth, but not all the way there. Kate wore her hair such because that had been the way she’d worn it the day she killed Phillip McBride.

  The screen door opened. Kate sank farther into the trees as Harley Ruskin’s father walked out. He paused where the steps should have been and turned back to say something (Kate thought it was either “Bye” or “Love you,” she couldn’t be sure) and stepped down into the yard. The dog did not move. Pa Ruskin went for the station wagon and tried the ignition four times before it caught. Kate held her breath at the thought of him taking a right out of the driveway and seeing the Blazer parked just down the road. She breathed when he turned left instead.

  One down.

  Ten minutes later another door screeched, this from the back of the house. The slow-moving image of Harley and his mother appeared around the side where the clothes hung. There was no telling why the boy had been allowed to stay home from school. He certainly didn’t look sick, which left only the possibility of the Ruskins wanting to stay clear of the devil. Harley swung the clothes basket from his right hand, holding it high so it wouldn’t touch the ground. He gestured with his left. His mother nodded. She placed a hand to his back and patted it in much the same way Kate would pat Zach. It was the touch of a mother to her child, a brief but not unnoticed transmittal of love. They plucked the clothes from the line, leaving the pins to dangle in the breeze, and left the basket there as they walked hand in hand toward the barn. Kate eyed them. She eyed the way to the Ruskins’ front porch as well. And the dandelions. So many dandelions.

  As soon as Harley and his momma disappeared inside the barn, Kate sprang from the trees. The box shifted in her arms with each footfall, threatening to throw her off balance. She raced across the front yard, grimacing as she trampled one yellow weed after another, fighting back the nausea building in her stomach. The dog lifted his head and offered a tired bark. Kate bounded over him and onto the porch, setting the box by the door. She spun and galloped back over the dandelions, forcing that welling sense of revulsion down until it lurched forward with more power than she could fight. Kate did not so much run back into the trees as dive. She kicked off her shoes as she landed. Sweat gathered on her brow. That sick feeling, a notion that she’d just been poisoned, swept over her. She leaned for
ward and vomited into the soft bed of pine needles.

  Harley reappeared minutes later and gathered the hamper. His momma followed, carrying a basket of eggs. The smile on her face was a temporary cosmetic that smoothed out the dark lines and deep wrinkles of a hard life. The two of them disappeared behind the house. Kate heard another screech. Five minutes later Harley Ruskin walked past the front door.

  He saw the box and stood there, not knowing what to make of it, then walked out onto the porch with his hands in his pockets. He toed the package with a bare foot and looked out over the yard, then back inside. He inquired of his dog and received no reply. Only then did Harley bend down and open his blessing.

  The quiet day in Mattingly’s hills was broken by a shout of joy that was part Christmas morning and part summer vacation. Harley leaped and bounded inside, not even thinking of taking the box with him. He pulled his momma through the door and showed her everything, the jeans and the shirts and the treats, even the plastic toy tractor that had found its way to the bottom of the box. Ma Ruskin’s face held a mix of shame and wonder. She turned and gazed out to the scrabbling dirt road beyond.

  It was a beautiful moment. It was magic and hope and love. And yet Kate showed no satisfaction for the joy she’d brought. There were only the wet eyes and trembling lips of someone weary of trying.

  She left soon after, skirting past the Ruskins’ home before Harley’s pa could return. The drive back to town was quiet and hard. It was two o’clock when Kate reached the town limits. By then Harley’s face had left her memory. What replaced it was Jake—Jake and his lies. But before Kate could tend to that, she had to finish what she’d begun.

  She pulled through the open gate of Oak Lawn and left the Blazer idling atop the knoll. The day was quiet, bright. It was springtime, that season when life rises again. Kate took her notebook from the seat and walked the rows of headstones until she reached the spot where Phillip’s body lay. She plucked the twigs and leaves that had fallen onto his marker, tossing them absently onto the grave beside (KENNETH WELCHER, that stone said, DEC 12, 1904 – JUN 22, 1967 A GOOD MAN GONE FROM A HARD WORLD). Kate had never known Kenneth, nor if he had been a good man, but the truth of that last part was plain. She sat in the grass and opened her book to the top of page 212.