by Alex Bledsoe
“Whoa, what are you two up to?” Thorn asked.
“We’re going back to the chapel,” C.C. said. “Matt’s bound and determined to find out what’s buried there.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she asked seriously.
“Not really,” I said.
“I think it’s stupid as hell,” C.C. said. “But damn it, now I’m curious, too.”
“Even if someone gets hurt?” She looked from C.C. to me.
“No one’s going to get hurt,” I said.
“Except a few Durants,” Thorn said with a sly smile. “Right?”
“No, not even them,” C.C. said. “They’re already mad at us; we don’t need a real feud after all this time.” He looked at me. “We have to live here after you’re gone, you know.”
“I’m not arguing with you,” I said.
“Okay. See you soon.”
I watched him walk away. Thorn leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, then took her computer and guitar inside. I took out my phone and looked at it, expecting the NO SERVICE notification. Yet to my surprise, I saw that I actually got a solid signal.
I didn’t hesitate. I dialed Emily first, but got her voice mail. Then I called Neil.
“Hello, Matt,” he said seriously when he answered. “How are you?”
“Okay.”
“Still coming back tomorrow?”
“Yes. I’m going out tonight to resolve our little mystery once and for all. I have some locals helping me.”
“That’s good.” He paused a long moment, and I got a sinking feeling, the way you do when your subconscious knows that bad news is coming. My first thought was that the show had been canceled for some reason, possibly some legal snag since the writer/composer was dead. But I turned out to be totally wrong.
“I’m guessing you don’t know this,” he said. “Remember Ray’s girlfriend, Emily? Well, she’s dead. She killed herself yesterday.”
My legs grew weak, just like the cliché. I sat down on the porch steps. “What happened?”
“She jumped out her window. Note said she couldn’t live without Ray. I had no idea they were so serious, they’d only been dating a little while.”
I recalled the way she’d behaved that day in his apartment. “Oh my God.”
“The cast took this hard. They really need you to come through for them, Matt. They need to know this secret.”
“You said it wasn’t important.”
“It wasn’t before. It is now. They’ll see it as a sign from Ray that he’s watching over them.”
“If he’s doing any watching, it hasn’t been very much help so far.”
“That is true enough. Any more tragedy, and we’ll be the new Scottish play.”
He meant the superstition that all productions of Macbeth were cursed, especially if you said the play’s title anywhere but onstage. Although we were all professionals, I knew how the cast felt, and how it could affect the show. Even after the ecstatic reviews, bad word of mouth from the first paying audiences could end our run as easily as bad press, and a sad, depressed cast couldn’t help but be disappointing.
“Like I said, I’m going tonight,” I told him. “By tomorrow morning, I’ll know. I’ll send you pictures.”
“Thanks. And I’m very sorry, Matt. I know she was your friend even before she started dating Ray.”
“I appreciate it, Neil.”
I hung up and sat there, staring at the ground. First Ray, then Emily …
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” I whispered, hoping Emily’s spirit could hear me.
Ray had said, “Women who fall in love with Tufa men have a very hard time if we go away.” Was this what he meant?
I was too cried out to muster fresh tears, but I sat for a long time, letting the emotions roll through me. C.C. wasn’t sure if our budding relationship would send me into such despair, but did I dare take the chance? Or hell, was this how it manifested, with this almost unbearable compulsion to find out what was buried in the chapel? Deep down, was it all just to stay near C.C.?
I still had my phone in my hand, and I opened the photography app, intending to call up pictures I had of Emily. Yet the first one that came up was one I’d taken at the cemetery, near Byrda Fowler’s grave.
I stared at it. Something was there, but I couldn’t quite see it. I turned the camera around, tilted it, squinted at it.
And then I saw it.
It was made from the patterns of light hitting the ground through the trees. A woman’s shape, in a long dress that appeared white because it was made of sunlight. There was her arm, and her shoulders, and her head with long shadowy Tufa hair. Her high forehead was one bright patch, and pits of darkness made her eyes. There was only one person it could be.
Byrda.
She hadn’t let me take a picture of her headstone, because she wanted me to see her.
That, of course, made no sense in the real world. But here in Cloud County, it seemed entirely possible.
I put my camera away. Then I went inside and helped Ladonna get dinner ready.
24
As good as his word, C.C. showed up just as the sun slid behind the mountains. Only he wasn’t alone. Another truck followed his, and from it emerged a big man with sandy hair, the first Tufa I’d seen without the jet-black locks. I realized he might not be a Tufa at all.
I sat on the porch swing with Ladonna, sipping iced tea and swatting away mosquitoes that braved the creosote fumes from the candles. The tea was so sweet, I worried that I’d either be diabetic or running around like a wired toddler before I finished it. Thorn sat on the steps, noodling on her guitar.
Fireflies sparkled in the yard; I’d seen them very seldom growing up, and not in the numbers they seemed to be here. Ladonna had just sung a song about a little girl in her nightgown chasing after fireflies, and when I asked about it told me it was by someone named Caroline Herring.
C.C. came up onto the porch and said, “I bet I missed a good dinner, didn’t I?”
“Pork chops and homemade applesauce,” Ladonna said. “There’s leftovers if you’re still hungry.”
“No, I grabbed a sandwich at home.”
“Bologna and cheese ain’t no substitute for good home cooking, young man.”
“Why, Miz Parrish, you been spying on me?”
Ladonna laughed, then looked at the other man, who stayed in the yard, hands in his jeans pockets. “Doyle, how are you doing?”
“Fine, Miz Parrish,” he said. “Sorry to hear about Rayford.”
“I appreciate that, Doyle. And how’s Berklee and that new little baby?”
“Fat and happy. Both of ’em,” he added with a grin.
To me, C.C. said, “Matt Johansson, this is Doyle Collins. He’s been a friend since high school. He’s gonna help us out tonight.”
We shook hands. “Pleasure to meet you, Matt.”
“Likewise.”
“I hear you’re an actor.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you know Keanu Reeves?”
“Uh … no. I work in New York, mainly onstage.”
“So do you know Liam Neeson?”
“I’ve met him.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s tall. Really tall.”
Doyle nodded sagely, as if I’d confirmed his deepest suspicion.
C.C. looked up at the sky. “Reckon we should get going. Matt, you ready?”
“I am,” I said. “What’s the plan?”
He cut his eyes at the Parrishes. “I’ll tell you on the way.”
“Plausible deniability,” Thorn said.
“I better not get a call from nobody official telling me to come pick you boys up,” Ladonna said.
“No, ma’am,” Doyle said. “I wouldn’t want my wife to get that call, either.”
I followed C.C. to his truck. Doyle got into his own vehicle and left before we did. I said, “So what’s he going to do?”
“He’s the Bandit.”
>
“I beg your pardon?”
“You ever see Smokey and the Bandit?”
I had a vague mental image of Burt Reynolds in a black car. “No.”
“Doyle’s going to run interference for us, and try to get the Durants to chase him. That way they won’t be expecting us.”
“You hope.”
“I do. But just in case, look in that box.”
He indicated the shoe box between us on the bench seat. I opened it, and saw two handguns: one a revolver, the other an automatic. He added, “There’s also a shovel so we don’t have to dig with our bare hands, and a heavy gear bag in the back, in case we find anything.”
I was still staring at the weapons.
“You ever shot a gun before?” he asked.
“Just onstage. And it was loaded with blanks.”
“Well, these ain’t.”
“I don’t know, C.C.”
“Do you remember what happened to Gerald? The Durants will shoot us if they can. They’ve got rifles and shotguns. And if we get a hole blown in us on top of their mountain, there’s no song strong enough to save us.”
I still shook my head. “Not for me, man. Take one for yourself.”
“You think your muay buay stuff will help you?” he almost shouted.
I realized he was scared to death of what we were doing; he was doing it only because I wanted him to. I felt a fresh rush of affection and tenderness for him. Calmly, I said, “I think we’ll be in and out before they even know we’re there, right?”
“That’s the plan,” he agreed through clenched teeth.
I stroked his cheek with the back of my hand. “Thank you, C.C. This means a lot.”
“I hope it’s worth it.”
“So do I.”
* * *
The wind blew more intensely than I’d yet seen it, bending the pine treetops. I wondered if a storm might be coming, but the stars and moon shone unobstructed above us. I felt the presence of the guns even more than I did the wind, their cold metal weight absorbing the night’s fear and uncertainty. I began to really understand their appeal; certainly one in my hand right now would go a long way toward making me feel more secure. But it would be a false security. In a land where fairies flew and ghosts stopped by to chat, I couldn’t imagine a gun would be a real defense.
We took a different route to the Durants’ land this time. The road seemed rougher and more convoluted. C.C. drove in silence, the light from the dashboard casting his grim face in a greenish-blue pallor. Since I could see only what the headlight beams showed, there was no scenery to absorb, just the bit of road constantly ahead of us.
Finally we reached a crossroads. The moonlight lit it up, and we slowed as we approached, even though there was no stop sign. C.C. stopped in the middle, and we sat in silence.
At last he said, “Right on the other side of this crossroads, that’s where the Durant land starts.”
The headlights illuminated a sign nailed to a tree that read, PRIVATE PROPERTY. KEEP OUT UNDER PAIN OF ASS-KICKING. It was painted in red ink on a ragged piece of board, and whoever did it misspelled “pain” as “pane.”
I thought again about the guns in the box between us, and said nothing.
“I hope you won’t think less of me for this,” he said, and reached under the seat. He pulled out a bundle of cloth and unraveled it to reveal a small jar wrapped in a towel. The fluid inside was clear like water. He asked, “A little liquid courage. You ever had moonshine?”
“People still make that?” I said. It seemed impossibly quaint, something from The Beverly Hillbillies.
“Oh yes, indeedy,” he said, and unscrewed the lid. He took a small sip and closed his eyes. Then he said, “Want a snort?”
“A ‘snort’?”
“That’s what we call it. Or a slug. Or a swallow.” The last word came out swaller.
I took the jar and sniffed. It didn’t really smell like anything, so I took an experimental sip. It burned all the way down.
“Wow,” I sputtered as I handed back the jar. “And you enjoy that feeling, huh?”
“I enjoy the feeling that comes after that.”
I coughed a couple of times. We had alcohol and firearms; now all we needed was tobacco. I wondered if I should ask for a cigar. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
“So they say.”
“Another sip of that, and I’ll be Superman. So you know the people who made that?”
“Oh yeah. My cousins. They inherited the business from their parents, and their grandparents before that.” He took a bigger swallow, and fought to keep it down. He choked out, “That’s why it’s so smooth.”
“I thought it was illegal.”
“It is.”
“Oh, that’s right—you don’t have law in this county.”
“Sometimes the Feds come in, snooping around. But it usually doesn’t work out too well. Back in the ’60s or ’70s, a revenue man came up in here, and stopped at my cousin’s house. His daddy, my uncle, was just a little boy then, and he was the only one home. Revenue man asked my uncle where his daddy was, and he said, ‘Up in the holler, makin’.’ Revenue man said, ‘I’ll give you ten dollars to take me up there.’ My uncle held out his hand, and the revenue man said, ‘Naw, you get it when I come back.’ My uncle said, ‘I’ll take it up front, ’cause if I take you up there, you ain’t comin’ back.’”
I laughed, but declined a second swallow. I was too fond of a working esophagus.
C.C. took one more drink, then put the lid back on, carefully rewrapped the jar, and put it back under his seat. His phone dinged with a text. “Looks like Doyle’s where he needs to be.”
I checked my own phone: no bars. “Why do you get a signal out here and I don’t?”
“I’m holding my mouth just right. You ready?”
My eyes were still watering as he put the truck in gear. “Not going to get any readier.”
“Then here we go. Faugh a Ballagh.”
“What does that mean?”
He laughed. “‘Get outta the way.’”
* * *
We met no traffic, nor saw any other sign of civilization. The road followed the terrain, which isn’t always the best thing for a road to do. I’d never gotten motion sickness in my life, but after the third or fourth hill that we topped, only to drop over the other side, that little swallow of moonshine threatened to come back up with projectile urgency.
Then C.C. switched off the headlights. The moonlight was bright and strong, but it was still a little unnerving to drive this way.
We reached the top of a hill and pulled off the road into the woods, along a little path that led to a small, straggly cornfield. The plants were barely up to my waist. We got out, and C.C. said softly, “Quiet closing the door.”
He took the shovel from the bed and tossed the bag to me. I wondered if he also had one of the guns. “Be as quiet as you can,” he whispered. “There’s a lot of Durants, and they have a lot of dogs.”
“Wait, I thought they were supposed to be busy chasing Doyle.”
C.C. looked at the time on his phone. “Not yet. And if they know we’re here, they’ll know exactly what Doyle’s up to. And we’ll be screwed.”
So he’d white-lied to me about how safe this was. Great. Oh, who was I kidding? I wouldn’t have changed my mind. The desire to dig into that ground and see what was there was stronger than anything I’d ever experienced. If he’d said Freddy, Jason, and the guy from Halloween were all on the prowl, I would’ve still insisted.
“Where’s the chapel from here?” I asked.
He pointed across the field, into the dark forest. “About a mile that way. You up to it?”
“I am. And thank you.”
He kissed me. “You can do that later. Come on.”
We moved through the corn as quietly as we could, which truthfully wasn’t all that quiet. The leaves brushed against me, their sharp edges nicking my bare hands. When we reached the forest,
C.C. signaled for us to stop. He listened for a long time, but all I heard were insects and a distant owl.
He turned to me. “I’m going to do something that’ll seem stupid.” Then he peeled off his T-shirt and handed it to me. “Turn that inside out for me.”
I looked from the shirt to his bare, sweaty torso. “I’m sorry … what?”
“Turn my shirt inside out. It’s good luck to wear it that way, but only if somebody else turns it for you.”
“Seriously?”
“Does that sound like something I’d make up on the spur of the moment?”
I did as he asked, handed the shirt back, and he pulled it back on. The white tag on the collar seemed to glow. He said, “Do you want yours turned out?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Well, I always want to get your shirt off you. But this time, it’s for a whole different reason.”
I smiled back at him, took off my shirt, and handed it to him. He flicked it inside out and passed it back. I pulled it on, and when I finished, I felt his hands at my waist and his lips on mine. We kissed in the moonlight until the wind suddenly picked up, at which point he broke away and said, “We better get going. Another couple of minutes, and I’m liable to forget what we came here for.”
We moved on into the woods, which didn’t have the courtesy to grow in neat rows like the cornfield. The terrain rose, and grew rockier, and before long I was sweating and breathing hard. We stopped at the top of a ridge, and C.C. looked over at me. I could see his grin in the moonlight.
“I thought you dancers were in great shape,” he teased.
“Yeah, for dancing,” I wheezed back. It hadn’t occurred to me to stretch out, but now I wished I had. My thighs and calves were killing me.
I followed him down the ridge and back into the woods. We passed by a small clearing with a strange stone tower in it. I whispered, “What’s that?”
“That? It’s the old Geesey place.”
“What’s the tower for?”
“That’s a chimney. It’s the only part made out of stone, so it’s all that’s left.”
Once he said it, I saw the outline, and spotted the grate, and hearth.
“He’s one of the reasons the chapel is there,” C.C. continued.
“Did he build it?”