In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  “Ten. Ten ain’t much, is it, Samwise?”

  Sam didn’t know.

  “Nope. Ten ain’t much more’n a puff.”

  It would be a little while before school and work ended. For the moment, the smattering of ranches and Cape Cods along the street stood quiet. All of them bore signs of the season—candles in the windows, bulbs on the trees, lighted icicles hanging from the gutters. Pretty enough, Allie thought, but nothing more than the same-old.

  Still, the neighborhood had turned itself into a veritable winter wonderland compared to the Granderson house. The only sign of Christmas there was the leaning pine Allie’s father had brought home the week before and plunked down in front of the living room window. The two of them had decorated it in silence; only Sam had commented on the finished product. It was a horrible thing for Allie to endure, having to put all those memories on the tree. That her daddy had to endure it as well only made Allie feel worse. She kept waiting for him to say maybe they should just skip Christmas again, like the town had the year before. But Marshall Granderson had only sat in front of a pile of knotted lights and tinsel, drowning in all that quiet. There in front of the window, Allie considered for the first time that maybe her daddy had been thinking that very same thing. He’d just been wanting Allie to suggest it first—to say that maybe treating Christmas like any other day would make it not hurt so bad.

  The only evidence of peace on earth and goodwill to men outside was the Nativity in the front yard. Marshall had hauled the Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus out from the shed the previous Christmas, just before the mayor had announced that everyone’s heart was still too heavy for joy. Allie had refused to let him box them up ever since. Her father had bucked about the Nativity still being out there when the new year arrived and the season of the not-Christmas was over. He hollered about it again when the grass turned from brown to green and the church folk went from singing about Jesus being born in a cave to Him walking out of one. But Allie had held fast—the Nativity was going to stay put. The last time Marshall had protested (this the summer just past, right at the time of the first anniversary), Allie told him it wasn’t right for a family to be boxed up and separated from each other eleven months of the year. Her father hadn’t said much after that.

  Sam snorted in her face, wanting to trade melancholy for playtime.

  “No, Sam. You just sit.”

  He did, settling on his haunches beside her. They both stared out at the plastic Mary. Allie felt Sam’s tail thump her side. She rubbed his neck, making one of his back paws jitter.

  She smiled despite herself and said, “You’re a stupid dog, and I don’t love you at all.”

  There came a knock at the door, followed by a tired voice: “Allie, can I come in?”

  “Sure, Daddy.”

  The bedroom door eased open. For a brief moment, Allie thought Marshall Granderson had just woken from a long nap. The front of his work shirt hung free of a waist that had withered to the point where he’d had to poke new holes in his belt. His beard had turned more gray than brown in the past year, but Allie thought her daddy still held the handsome look of a brave man trying to shoulder the burdens upon him. He looked from a pair of red eyes at the picture on her dresser and made his way to the bed.

  He sat between Allie and Sam and put a hand to her forehead. Two Life Savers clicked in his mouth. “Don’t think you got the fever. You feeling better?”

  “Some.” Allie tried not to curl her nose at the smell. It was like something had crawled down her daddy’s throat and died eating an orange and a cherry. “Stomach’s settling a bit. It was Salisbury steak day.”

  Marshall cringed. “I recall those days myself.”

  “Sorry you had to leave work and come get me.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “You getting hungry?”

  Allie knew what that meant. She shook her head no but said, “I’m fine to get something up for you, though.”

  “Only if you’re able. Better do it soon, though. Bobby’s coming over to help with the car. I do believe we almost got that old heap running.”

  Allie gazed back out the window. “I don’t like Bobby,” she said. “He looks at me wrong.”

  “I wouldn’t lay too much on that, Allie. Bobby looks at most everybody that way.”

  She nodded and kept her eyes to the Nativity. Her father’s friends had fallen away in the last five hundred and forty-three days (five forty-four almost, Allie thought). For reasons Allie could not understand, the hole left by all that loneliness had been filled by the town drunk. Bobby Barnes was at their home at least twice a week, all in the guise of helping to fix the old Camaro Marshall kept in the shed out back. Allie knew better. Bobby and her daddy did more tearing themselves apart than putting a car back together.

  “We gotta be in town before dark,” Marshall said.

  “I don’t really want to go tonight, Daddy. It being so cold out. And me unwell.”

  “You just said you felt better.”

  “Comes and goes, I guess.” She shrugged, needing to change the subject. “Weatherman says snow tonight. We’ll have to keep her warm, Daddy.”

  Marshall looked outside and crunched down on his Life Savers, letting the juice wash over his gums. He still tasted beer. “We’ll keep her plenty warm. Tend to it when we get back from town. I promise.”

  “Wind’s gonna blow.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  Marshall craned his neck against the window. Allie followed his gaze. Far down the street, a blue Honda turned onto the block.

  “Oh no,” she said.

  Marshall held his gaze as the car came closer. He crunched Life Savers more and swallowed, gripped by a sudden thirst.

  “Now don’t be like that,” he said. “Miss Grace is just heading home’s all.”

  “Plenty of other ways for her to get there than this’n.”

  She was right—they both knew it, but it didn’t matter. Miss Howard’s car slowed and turned into the driveway. Sam barked when the tall woman got out. Marshall swallowed. Allie moaned.

  “She just wants to check on you,” Marshall said.

  “Don’t need nobody checking on me, and her especially.” Allie took her father’s sleeve. When he didn’t turn, she pulled his face to hers, taking the full brunt of the dead thing in his throat. “She’s got wiles, Daddy.”

  “What you know about wiles?”

  Miss Howard reached the porch. She carried a large plastic bag in her hand.

  “Nothing,” Allie said. “Only that she’s got’m.”

  “You stay here with Sam. I’ll go.”

  The doorbell rang. Marshall patted Allie’s leg as he rose and left the door open. She thought maybe that was her daddy’s way of asking her to please come out and give Grace a chance. Really, closing the door had been the furthest thing from Marshall’s mind. He’d been too busy trying to figure out how many Life Savers it would take to bury the smell of beer.

  3

  Allie told Sam to stay and crept into the hall, where she heard Marshall say, “Hello, Grace” and “Come in” and “What brings you by?” and heard Miss Howard say something about Allie maybe needing some supplies. Though no longer a praying girl, Allie sent a silent plea into the ether that supplies didn’t mean what she feared.

  She reached a spot at the end of the hallway close to the living room and sank to her stomach, crawling the rest of the way. Miss Howard was sitting on the sofa much too close to her daddy. The bag lay on the coffee table in front of them. She’d folded her overcoat and placed it in her lap, meaning to stay awhile. And she was smiling. That in itself wasn’t so strange—Miss Howard was always doing that, always acting like she was just the happiest person in the whole big world—but it was the way she was smiling that struck Allie just then. Maybe it was the way the lights from the Christmas tree bounced off her hair or how she looked so fine in her red skirt and white sweater. Maybe it was just the way she was looking at Marshall just then, and how pe
aceful she seemed. Whatever it was, in that moment Miss Howard looked like she’d just fallen out of heaven. Allie hated her more than ever.

  “Went by the pharmacy,” Grace said. “Got Allie some things she’s going to need.”

  Marshall rubbed his beard and said, “Well, I appreciate that, Grace, but Allie’s feeling some better. Guess the cafeteria ladies decided to clear out any suspect fare before shuttering up for Christmas. I gave her some aspirin a while ago. She’ll be fine come morning.”

  He cleared his throat and swallowed, tasting more candy than beer. Allie’s teacher had been inside the Granderson home often over the years, though each time in the past year and a half had been just as awkward and confusing as the last. Miss Grace couldn’t so much as have a glass of tea without leaving Marshall convinced he was doing something wrong. He was often sweating by the time she left. What little bit of Marshall that still pondered the condition of his soul believed that particular sensation was the fires of hell already claiming him. He fingered the wedding band on his left hand, twisting it as a reminder even if one was not needed.

  “You gave her aspirin?” Grace asked. “You’re not supposed to do that, Marshall. Aspirin’s a blood thinner.”

  “What’s that got to do with a stomachache?”

  “A stomachache?” Grace looked at the bag and pulled her lips inward. They came back red and full, like a blooming rose.

  Claws pattered up the hallway. Allie looked back to see Sam coming toward her. He whined, turning Marshall’s eyes toward the hall. Allie pulled her dog close, shushing him.

  “You didn’t talk to the nurse when you picked Allie up?”

  “No. Allie came out soon as I pulled up. I didn’t even go in.”

  Allie eased her head out a little more, wanting to see.

  “Marshall, you have to go in and sign her out. It’s the law. You didn’t know that?”

  A long pause, then: “I was never the one who’d pick Allie up from school, Grace.”

  “Oh. Right.” Grace kept her eyes away—to Allie, it was as though she’d gotten turned around in a bad place and couldn’t find her way out—and smoothed the hem of her skirt. She reached for the plastic bag and moved it away, then reconsidered and moved it closer. “Marshall, you know I care for Allie.”

  “I do,” he said.

  “And”—still looking away—“I believe you to be a good friend, always have. So since the three of us have that familiarity, I’d like to say I’m happy to . . . help. However I can. Times like this, it’s really nice to have a woman close.”

  Marshall shook his head, saying, “I don’t . . .” and looked back to the hall just as Allie’s head disappeared.

  “Allie’s changing, Marshall.”

  Allie peeked again as her daddy’s attention turned away. Grace had found courage enough to raise her chin. That brief meeting of their eyes was enough not only for both of them to look away, but Allie as well.

  “I know she is,” he said. “’Course she is. You show me one person in town who’s the same as they were a year and a half ago.”

  Grace shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. Marshall, Allie got her period today. In school. That’s why she had to come home.”

  Allie uttered a low moan and buried her head into Sam’s back. Marshall opened his mouth to speak, closed it, opened it again. He looked like a fish that had been plucked from the water.

  “That’s crazy,” he said. “Allie’s only eleven. She’s just a little girl.”

  “Happens more than you think,” Grace said. “I go through it every year with at least one of my students. I know it’s scary. For you, for her especially. But she’s growing up, and that’s a fine thing. Allie’s becoming a woman.”

  For a long while there was only silence. Marshall sat there swallowing and getting all sweaty. Then he muttered, “The tree.”

  Allie’s presents had already been wrapped and placed there. Dolls and stuffed animals mostly, along with a scooter she’d coveted since summer—all child’s toys. She’d picked them all herself, had even stood with Marshall in line at the Walmart watching them make their way down the conveyer. What last vestiges of faith Allie had placed in Santa or magic or everything working out in the end had fallen away since everything ended. Marshall couldn’t blame his daughter for that. One look at the bottles stashed in his bedroom closet was all the proof needed to show that much of what he had once believed was gone now too.

  “There was a class back in the fall,” Grace said. “Family Life is what they call it. All the female students get together with a guidance counselor to discuss this sort of thing. Allie didn’t go?”

  Marshall shook his head. “I don’t remember nothing of that.”

  “Allie would’ve had to get you to sign a form saying it was okay for her to attend.”

  Marshall looked to the hallway again. This time Allie didn’t bother ducking away. He said more to Allie than to Grace, “Didn’t get no paper to sign.”

  “Here,” Grace said. She slid the bag toward him. “There’s plenty to get Allie through the next few months. They were on sale, and I don’t want any money. I have something else too.” She slipped a hand into her coat. “We were making these in class when Allie had to leave. Thought she might like to hang it on the tree.”

  She handed Marshall the ornament. Allie watched as Marshall rubbed her picture. He smiled.

  “My little elf. Thank you, Grace. That was kind.”

  “You’re welcome. I’d like to talk about what Allie wrote at the bottom.”

  Allie shook her head. Leave it to Miss Howard to bring that out, all in the grand cause of Talking Things Over.

  “I don’t think it’s healthy for Allie to be writing such things about her mother,” Grace said. “I know it’s not my place, Marshall, and forgive me if I’ve overstepped. But Mary’s gone. She’s been gone for a while now. Pretending she isn’t won’t make anything better. Allie has to start healing, and before she can do that, she has to grieve.”

  “We all grieve in our own way,” Marshall said. He swallowed again, gripped by that thirst, and thought of the bedroom closet. “We all tell ourselves truth and call that good, and we say the lies we’re tricked into believing are bad. I don’t think that’s right at all, Grace. Whatever carries us through the day, that’s what’s right and good.”

  He rose from the couch and placed the ornament high on the front of the tree, just beneath the blinking star. Allie knew her teacher wasn’t convinced by anything her father just said. Miss Howard could speak of healing up and moving on as much as anyone else in Mattingly, but they’d all been spared much of the hell that God had set upon the Grandersons. Marshall opened the drawer on the end table. He returned to the sofa with a stack of cards held together by a thick, rotting rubber band and handed them to Grace.

  “Christmas. Birthdays. Valentine’s. Easter. Mother’s Day. That one especially.”

  “Why?” Grace asked.

  “Because Allie wants to hold on. It’s why she sets an extra place at the table each night and why that Nativity’s still out in the front yard. Same reason she won’t take that compass off her wrist. That was the last thing her momma gave her before she left, and Allie swears she’ll still have it on when her momma comes back. And if that’s what it takes to get her through, then I say fine. It’s good to have a hope, however false that hope may be.” He looked at Allie and gritted his teeth, regretting his choice of words. “And who knows, maybe her momma’ll do just that someday. Maybe she’ll just come on home.”

  Allie sank her head back into the hallway and stroked Sam’s head.

  “I understand,” Grace said. “It just breaks my heart to see her like this, Marshall. Allie’s broken inside. She never smiles, never speaks. I’m worried about her. I know she loves her mother. I know you do too, Marshall. So did I. Mary was a friend.”

  Allie saw Miss Howard dip her head.

  “Allie’s gonna be fine,” Marshall said. “It’s just been a rough afte
rnoon.”

  Grace wiped her eyes and said, “If you like, I can stay long enough to whip up some supper.”

  “I appreciate it. But we got company comin’, and we gotta head to town first.”

  “Could use some things from the grocery,” Grace said. “I could ride along.”

  “Sort of a private thing. Apologies.”

  Allie let Sam go and pushed herself back down the hallway, stopping when the squeaking sounds her belly made on the floor became too loud. She’d never liked their trips to town (and never would), but this trip was enough to get Miss Howard away. Sam followed her back as Marshall showed Grace out. Allie thought her daddy would probably come back to her bedroom and Talk Things Over, all the time holding that bag in his hand. Then she thought no, he’d go to his bedroom closet first. He’d have to go get himself a bottle of courage. Sometimes life was better faced when you were numb. That way, nothing hurt at all.

  4

  The ride was quiet and broken only by Sam, who sat in the middle of the truck’s bench seat and yipped at what little of the world he saw above the dash. His tail slapped against the plastic wrapping around the flowers between him and Marshall. Sam always enjoyed their rides to town, much more than Allie enjoyed having him along. To her, the spot where her dog sat still belonged to someone else.

  She shoved her hands into her coat pockets and shivered as heat from the vent sprouted goose bumps on her legs. The sun disappeared behind a bank of gray clouds easing over the mountains.

  “Snow’s comin’,” she said.

  Marshall looked out the side window and nodded.

  “We’re gonna keep her warm, right?”

  “Said we would,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “It’ll blow.”

  “We’ll take care of that too.”

  Marshall’s old Ford crept on. Allie stared at the encroaching sky. She was rarely mistaken in her weather predictions. She pored over the back page of each morning’s Gazette and never missed an evening forecast on the TV. Even some of the teachers at school would ask her when the next snow day would be, or the last frost. Marshall listened with feigned interest as Allie slipped into a lecture concerning cold fronts and northwesterly winds and low pressures. He would take his eyes off the road and nod, seeing not a pig-tailed little girl