In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  She followed them to the door. Snow fell silent and steady, powdering the dull grass. Marshall and Bobby faded beyond the porch light’s arc and brightened again once they fell into the three soft glows coming from the Nativity. Sam pressed his nose against the glass door, watching them go.

  Marshall stood there, staring, saying something to Bobby, who leaned back and laughed in his usual way. The sound of that drunken cackle seeped into the living room, turning Allie’s cheeks red and stinging the corners of her eyes. Marshall shrugged and shook his head. He accepted the can Bobby pulled from his coat pocket.

  Allie believed neither of them would take care of what needed to be done—what her daddy had promised would be done—and that stung her eyes even more. She bit down on the soft gum of her cheek, hoping the pain would keep her tears at bay. That tactic had worked often since everything ended. Now it failed her. Of all the horrid things the day had brought to Allie Granderson, the feeling of those tears welling in her eyes frightened her most of all.

  It was Bobby who saved her in that final moment, the town drunk who’d taken up with her father because they shared nothing more than a love of drink and a hole in their hearts. Bobby was the one who leaned in and put a hand to the Mary’s shoulder, rocking her back and forth. He rested his beer atop her head, nudged Marshall’s shoulder, then moved his hand toward the Mary’s chest. Allie found the anger that surged through her did what the pain in her mouth could not. Those tears melted away by the heat flooding her cheeks.

  She burst from the door and onto the porch. “Bobby Barnes, you get away from there.”

  Marshall turned and began to speak. Allie cut him off.

  “You hear me? You get away. You, too, Daddy. I don’t want y’all near—”

  (my momma, she almost said, and those two words caught in Allie’s throat such that she nearly choked)

  “—there. I’ll do it myself.”

  Bobby laughed. “Girl, what you saying? Get on back inside afore you catch a cold.”

  Wind gusted. Allie heard the clacking of the gauge on the porch and felt the snow against her bare feet. Marshall looked as though he wasn’t sure what was happening.

  “You get away,” she said again. “I’ll tend to her. You two just go back to goin’ to hell.”

  “Allie,” her father yelled.

  “Get away.”

  She wanted nothing more than to go back inside. The snow stung her toes and the wind was cold and blowing harder, snatching her anger and replacing it with fear. And her stomach hurt, her blessed stomach, and how had she walked around for eleven years with all those woman parts, and why hadn’t her momma told her it was going to be this way?

  Marshall was the first to go. Bobby trudged off behind him. They fell into the darkness around the side of the house and were gone. Allie remained on the porch, shaking from more than the cold. She found that not even rage could keep her eyes from stinging.

  6

  Allie went inside long enough to put on her pink Chucks and checkered scarf. She took another scarf from her bedroom as well, this one thicker and striped with orange and blue. That and an extra rock should be enough; there was no sense in going overboard. The neighbors had loved Mary Granderson just as much as everyone else in town had loved her. As such, Allie and her father remained in the street’s finest graces. Marshall called them all Good Folk. Allie thought that true enough in the sense that they kept their sins locked up in their houses rather than showing them off in their yards. She vowed to do the same. It wouldn’t do well for the neighborhood to look out the next morning and find proof that Little Orphan Allie had officially fallen off her rocker.

  Sam appeared to understand the seriousness of his master’s undertaking. He waited at the back door and did not so much as wag his tail when Allie came around the corner into the hallway. She considered telling him to stay, then thought better of it when she remembered Bobby Barnes was out there and likely now as drunk as her father. If it came to it, Allie greatly preferred Bobby looking at Sam’s bared teeth than at her.

  “You gotta be quiet, though,” she told him. “That’s the only way I’ll let you come, Samwise.”

  Sam offered a short, high whine and laid his ears down.

  “All right, then.” Allie faced the door. The wind rattled the glass, making her shiver already. “Come on. Sometimes you gotta do for others what pains for yourself. It means more that way. You stay close, Sam. I don’t love you, but I don’t care to lose you, neither.”

  She turned the knob. The wind seemed waiting for just that and pushed against the door, wanting to keep Allie there. She pushed back harder and stepped onto the tiny back porch. The snow came heavy now, nearly driven sideways by the gusts. If there was one blessing in all those flakes, it was that they reflected the puny light on the wall beside her. The backyard held the look of fuzzy evening, laying the path to the shed clear.

  Sam followed her out. His nose tilted to the wind, catching faraway smells. Allie put a finger to her lips, reminding him of his promise. Not that it mattered. Marshall had raised the shed’s bay door enough for the music inside to pour out. It wasn’t loud, but it would be plenty to drown out whatever racket the dog had a mind to make.

  She eased away from the porch and cut to the shed at an angle, stopping when they reached the edge of the blue tarp Marshall had laid over the woodpile. Beside it in the shape of a cairn were the rocks Allie and her daddy had gathered from the garden the summer before. One near the top felt heavy enough to do the job.

  Neither wrenches nor hammers sang out from inside the shed, nor did Allie expect to hear any. There was only the music along with Bobby’s muffled voice and the sound of her father saying, “I gotta get that thing outta the front yard, Bobby. Can’t let Allie run ever’thing. Dad-blamed house looks like white trash as it is.”

  Allie heard the hiss-pop of another can. Bobby said, “Know what you need? A good woman in the house.”

  “Don’t need no woman.”

  “Seems t’me you do. Allie’s gettin’ close to age. She could use another momma, Marshall. I hear Grace Howard calls on you regular. Wouldn’t mind takin’ a peek under all them pretty dresses she wears.”

  “You never mind Grace Howard,” Marshall said.

  “Mary’s gone, Marshall. She ain’t comin’ back. Best you get on with things.”

  Allie slunk off before she heard anything else. She carried the rock in one hand and the striped scarf in the other, whispering, “To me, Sam” so her dog wouldn’t stray. The light on the back porch ended at the side of the house, making for a long walk into darkness that chilled her more than the cold. The Nativity’s glow waited on the other side. Snow pecked the side of Allie’s face as they reached the driveway. She was well aware of how quick the cups were clicking on the wind gauge and did her best to set aside fear and embrace purpose. Sam must have sensed her unease. He remained close and matched Allie’s steps.

  She found the orange extension cord leading from the porch and lifted it out of the snow, looking for any frayed spots that could short out the wires inside. There were none, nor did Allie find any in the white plugs jutting from the backs of the plastic holy family. The wind rushed again, hurling tiny balls of ice against her face. Allie knelt behind the Mary and unscrewed the back with a thumbnail. She eased away the light bulb inside and peered through the opening. The rocks in the Mary’s base were stacked to the first fold of her painted blue dress.

  Normally, that would be fine. Tonight, however, “It’s gonna blow.”

  Sam snorted in agreement. Allie slipped the new rock down inside. It fell atop the others with a satisfying thunk.

  “That oughta do it.”

  A cold wet seeped through her jeans and tennis shoes. Allie rose, made a half circle in the snow, and faced the Nativity. The babe lay snuggled in a thick blanket of shining plastic straw. His eyes lay closed, giving the illusion of sleep, though the thin smile that crested Baby Jesus’s lips hinted that he wasn’t. Allie didn’t kno
w by whose hand the Nativity had been made (it had all come in two boxes from the Walmart, years before everything ended), but she thought whoever it was must have been possessed by genius. It would take no less than that to craft such a perfect expression of peace. And though she no longer cared to ponder such things, Allie paused there in the midst of the storm to consider that was likely just how Jesus had looked on that Christmas night long ago—not simply peaceful but happy, and not because He was God in a diaper. No, it was because His momma and daddy had knelt over Him in Bethlehem just as they knelt over him now in Allie’s front yard—arms folded in front of them not in prayer as much as adoration, heads tilted down to their child, forming a kind of heart shape between them.

  Allie took a step to her left and crouched down, not wanting to touch the ground and let the snow further soak her jeans. Snow and wind combined to make a plinking sound against the white plastic cloak. The shine from the light bulb inside sparked against the brown of paint of the hair. In all the months the Nativity had sat in the front yard, she had never spoken to the Mary. Doing so would be almost as ridiculous as her daddy talking to a buried shoe. And yet as Sam took his usual place beside her, Allie found the ache in her heart had parted her lips. Perhaps it was because Christmas was so near, and that was the season when everything seemed twice as sad. Or maybe it was simply that Allie was cold and alone in the dark, and this was the first time she’d crouched in front of the Nativity not as a girl, but as a woman.

  “Merry Christmas, Momma,” she said. “I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, but I hope you’re well. I hope you come home soon. If you can’t, send word. I’ll find you.”

  She wrapped the striped scarf around the Mary’s neck twice and knotted it. The wind played with the edges as it played with Allie’s pigtails. Sam whined. Allie agreed. She pulled off her own scarf and knotted that one around Mary’s neck too.

  “Love you, Momma,” she said, knowing those words were safe for a piece of plastic even if they were poison to anyone else. “You stay warm.”

  Sam growled. It was deep and low as before, signaling trouble rather than sadness. He rose up on all fours and stared out toward the far side of the house. Allie looked that way, biting back a wave of fear. The body that appeared from there looked too small and walked too straight to be Bobby Barnes, and the hat it wore looked much too large to be Bobby’s old trucker’s cap. She relaxed as Zach’s shape morphed in the Nativity’s light. He pushed his bike alongside him.

  “What’re you doin’ here?” Allie asked.

  He came around to the front of the Nativity and put the kickstand down, stooped to rub Sam’s ears. “Good t’see you too.”

  “You can’t be here, Zach. My daddy sees you, he’ll throw a conniption.”

  Zach said, “I ain’t scared of your daddy.” He tilted his head to the red truck in the driveway, letting the hat shield his face from the snow. “Bobby Barnes, neither. I’ll finish whatever trouble they’ve a mind to start. And that ain’t no way to talk to the man who snuck out his house and rode all the way down here in a blizzard to see if you’re still livin’. Gonna lose that.” He pointed to Allie’s wrist.

  She looked and pressed down on the clasp of her compass, then snugged her sleeve against it. Zach smiled as though he owned not just the night and the snow, but everything else too. Allie thought it the most stupid thing in the world, him riding all the way out there. Zach would face the wrath of God if his parents found out. He’d face far worse if Marshall caught him. Allie smiled anyway. Zach could have cracked his head open on the two miles he’d pedaled from his house to hers or frozen to death with a hat full of snow, but he’d risked it anyway, and for her alone.

  “I been peckin’ on your window so long my fingers hurt,” he said. “What you doing out here?”

  She pointed at the two scarves blowing in the breeze and said, “Tending to things.”

  Zach looked at the Mary and coughed hard into his sleeve. “What’d you come down with that made you leave school?”

  “Nothing. It’ll pass in a few days.”

  “You sure? People were talkin’.”

  “People always talk.”

  “Well, you missed it. Tommy got up to sharpen his pencil soon as you left and puked everywhere. Some of it splashed on Lisa Ann. Surprised you didn’t hear her bawling. She near knocked the tree over with all her gyratin’.”

  Allie beamed. Only Zach could make her smile like that, and at such a sad time.

  “Momma and Daddy gotta work tomorrow,” he said.

  “My daddy too.”

  “Wanna do something?”

  “Somebody’ll see. They’ll tell.”

  “Ain’t nobody gonna see,” Zach said. “And who cares if they do? Let’m tell your daddy if they want.”

  Allie said, “It ain’t you he hates, Zach. I’ll get in trouble.”

  Zach didn’t ask again. He was brave (Allie thought none were braver, not even Zach’s daddy, the sheriff), but he was not reckless.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Guess I’ll head back. Momma thinks the only thing keeping my cold from turning to the plague is her checking on me every fifteen minutes. Glad you’re okay.”

  He rubbed Sam again and mounted his bike. The snow wasn’t deep enough to catch in the tires, but Zach popped a wheelie anyway. Again, just for her. Allie watched as he pulled onto the road, hat tight over his ears and body leaning into the wind. He rode slow and easy like a cowboy on his steed, and Allie understood two things.

  One was that Zach Barnett was the best person she’d ever known.

  The other was that he was the only light left in her life.

  7

  Allie took Sam inside and dried both him and herself, then changed into a pair of flannel pajamas. Her stomach hurt again. She thought maybe it’d be best to take one last trip to the bathroom and dig out the two boxes of horrible things she’d hidden in the bowels of the cabinet beneath the sink. But no. She’d had enough of womanhood for one day.

  She shut her bedroom door and was making her way to bed when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Allie turned to the side and curled the back of her shirt in a fist, pulling it tight against her body. The two small bumps jutting out from her chest hadn’t gone unnoticed; they’d been there for quite some time. Allie had managed to hide them well enough from the people who mattered, namely Zach. That would likely be more difficult now.

  “’Cause I got the hormones,” she told Sam. “That means all kinds of bumps’ll be sprouting up on me, Sam. Not just on my front, neither. My face too. I seen it happen plenty from the eighth graders. Large pepperoni to go, extra cheese. That’ll be me.”

  Sam barked his sympathy. Allie sighed and faced the mirror again. She let go of her shirt and rolled her shoulders forward, hiding her chest. That was better.

  The framed picture stared from the dresser. The woman there was dark-haired and smiling, leaning against a fence post. She wore a pair of faded jeans and a white sweater. The trees behind her were thinning; what leaves remained had gone from green to bright yellows and oranges. A gold cross hung from a thin chain around her neck. The woman was smiling and happy and full of joy when that snapshot was taken, and had no idea she’d be gone a year later. That picture was the last thing Allie had seen before sleep every night for the past five hundred and forty-two days, but it was the first time she’d ever paused to notice Mary Granderson’s own bumps, and how big they were.

  Her stomach rolled again. Sam whined beside her.

  “You got that right. Next time the river swells in spring, Sam, you just cling to me. We’ll float on out of here together on my natural buoyancy.”

  Allie crawled into bed. She took one more look out the window to check the wind gauge and the Mary, then settled beneath her covers. Sam lay beside her, his head on Allie’s chest. She rubbed his ears.

  In a voice so quiet she barely heard it herself, she said, “I can’t grow up, Sam. I just can’t.”

  Sle
ep fell soon and deep. Allie didn’t hear her daddy stagger back inside the house an hour later and crawl into a bed far less crowded than it once was. Nor did she see him lying there, remembering the gentle curve of his wife’s hip and the way her hair would spill over her pillow, and how he would sometimes wake late in the night and move his hand over the smooth part of her stomach. Just to make sure Mary was okay. Just to make sure she was there. When the sobs began soon after, only Sam raised his head.

  Marshall was too drunk and the curtain pulled too tight for him to see Bobby Barnes standing in front of the three soft lights huddled in the front yard, believing it the perfect place to relieve himself of the twelve-pack he’d downed that night. He laughed as he did. He laughed more at the sight of the two scarves around the Mary’s plastic neck. When he finally backed his truck out and headed for downtown, Allie’s red-and-white checkered scarf hung around his neck.

  And no one, not Allie or Marshall or Bobby or Miss Grace Howard or Zach, no one at all, heard the single great roar of wind that came later. It swept down from the mountains violent and sudden, swirling through the deep places in the forests, raking the fragile neighborhoods just beyond town. It poured over Miller’s Bridge before racing along the empty streets of Mattingly, pulling wreaths and lights in tow. It gathered even more as it raced across the empty fields and ruined plots of land, swirling into mini funnels. By the time it reached Allie’s neighborhood, the roar had become a black train. It slammed against her bedroom window with a shudder that made her jerk and whimper in her sleep, then sheared away the wind gauge outside and swirled the last remnants of snow into a thick white blanket.

  The gust was gone as quickly as it had come. The night settled into silence. And in the Grandersons’ front yard, two plastic figures glowed where three had once been.

  December 20

  1