Point Hollow

by Rio Youers

  Beneath shelves of rock and over matchstick trees, through brittle flora and across streams. The mountain was like the domed back of some Greek god. It spoke to him in furious tones and he went to it meekly, naked in body and prejudice. He tore the soles of his feet on the rocks and they bled, but he continued climbing, leaving red petals behind him. There was a deadfall close to the mouth of the cave and Oliver paused here to get the one man-made thing he couldn’t do without. If only I could see in the dark, he thought, like an owl or a cat. He had stashed it here some time ago and used it often. He pulled aside sticks and small rocks and found it, as he had left it, in a Ziploc bag swaddled in sackcloth. An LED flashlight. He flicked it on, cupped his hand around the lens to test the batteries (there were spares in the Ziploc) and, satisfied, continued up the mountain. He soon came to the mouth of the cave, concealed with rocks and boulders, looking like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

  The sun pressed hard on his shoulders and sweat dripped from the tip of his nose as he dislodged nineteen rocks—always the same nineteen—and placed them to one side. He slipped through the opening and dropped down. The flashlight illuminated the cave’s slick throat and he followed its familiar curves deep into the mountain. On it went, contorted, swallowing him. His breath was amplified in the narrow space, but the sound changed as it widened and he stepped into the cavern. The walls sloped away and the light splashed upon pale columns and stalactites, spars and bones. So many bones. He moved forward, slightly hunched, waiting for this great god to boom and spit him back into the outside world. The cavern stretched and echoed. A child’s corpse regarded him with hollow eyes, rimmed with calcite.

  “I’m here,” Oliver said. His throat was dry. He hadn’t spoken since removing the .45 from his mouth. “I come to you pure and naked. A vessel for you to fill. Tell me what you want from me. Once and for all, tell me what you want me to do.”

  He dropped to his knees and curled one arm over his head, but the mountain didn’t rumble. Oliver wasn’t sure that it even replied at all, although an incredibly clear image formed in his mind: a boy with curly brown hair playing in sprinkler spray that arced in the sunlight like a rainbow made up of dots. Oliver saw fine droplets of water on his chest. There was another flash, equally clear: more water spilling through small, cupped hands.

  So cold.

  Matthew Bridge. Was he linked to the mountain in some way? Or to the man in the grainy old photograph he’d copied from the Internet, with his wicked smile and terrified children? Was it simply coincidence that the mountain had resumed roaring—no, booming, the most strident peals that Oliver had ever known—upon Matthew’s return to Point Hollow?

  Matthew.

  Water dripped in the vastness. And something else. Hitching breaths. Sobbing. Oliver unfurled like some strange, subterranean flower. He rolled the flashlight’s beam from right to left, and that was when he heard Matthew say:

  “Want . . . go home.”

  Except it wasn’t Matthew. Oliver crawled toward the voice on his hands and knees, heart clashing, his teeth bared and clotted with dirt. And there, huddled among bones, were the children. They’d cut through their binds, using a rock or the points of one of the stalagmites.

  “Please,” the girl said.

  They flinched from the flashlight’s powerful glare, as if it would burn them. The boy’s skin was stretched over his skull, almost translucent. His small hand clenched and opened, reaching for help. The girl held him. Snow-pale, thin as a leaf. Oliver saw the tears on her face as she turned toward him, and wondered if she had been crying all this time.

  “Please . . .” she croaked again. “Please let us go.”

  Her red hair burned like the cardinal’s feathers.

  From Oliver Wray’s Journal (II)

  Point Hollow, NY.

  January 19, 2005.

  The sign at the edge of town reads THE PEOPLE OF POINT HOLLOW WELCOME YOU. STAY A WHILE, which is somewhat misleading, given that the people of Point Hollow neither welcome you, nor want you to stay a while. The sign beyond this is less friendly, and more in keeping with the town spirit: DRIVE SLOWLY, SEE THE BEAUTY. DRIVE FAST, SEE THE JUDGE. A third sign proclaims Point Hollow’s population to be 850. (“ALL GODS CHILDREN” is stenciled below the number—the missing apostrophe throwing the amount of gods into question.) This latter sign is faded and out of date. The population is actually closer to 1,100 now. The gods have been busy, I guess.

  Point Hollow is the largest of six towns that make up Hollow County. The smallest is Shane (population: 16), although “town” is too glamourous a word for what amounts to a chicken farm and a tiny Presbyterian church. The remaining four towns fall somewhere between the two. Hollow County itself is a mere freckle on New York State’s schmekel. According to some maps I have seen, it doesn’t even exist—the fifty-nine square miles of leaf-shaped land having been consumed by one of its bullish neighbours.

  It all runs smoothly, with a sense of place and community. The county is united, but the towns are proudly individual (with the exception of Shane, which piggybacks neighbouring Indigo, not big enough to be much of anything). There are several churches and schools, two fire departments, two small hospitals, and three police departments, with state cops buzzing through every now and again. There’s never much trouble, though—the occasional drunken dust-up or domestic dispute. Such incidents are always handled quickly and efficiently. Mayor Woolens credits the low crime rate and peace-loving way of life to pure American grit, and an unwavering faith in the good Lord Himself. I know for a fact (because he told me) that he personally appealed to every business in the county to hire only God-loving Republicans, and to politely dismiss any atheists, Democrats, or ethnic minorities (except he called them “spics and woggies”). When I pointed out that there are laws against employment discrimination, he made a shooing gesture with his hand, as if the mayor’s office of Point Hollow was bigger and more powerful than the federal government of the United States.

  The people in charge brandish their power colourfully and ostentatiously, mistaking ignorance for patriotism. Take Sheriff Tansy, an asshole of the very highest order, who rolls through Hollow County like General Patton. God knows what would happen if he were ever called upon to apprehend a felon. Get on the radio and call for backup, I suppose. He’s not capable of much more. I rode with him a few times, for something to do. I knew it wouldn’t be thrilling (I was right), but thought it might be interesting (I was wrong). We did a lot of driving the first time I went out with him. We drank a lot of coffee. We talked to the boys at Redline Auto in Oak Creek about whether or not it was time for Joe Torre to manage in pastures new. Then—wouldn’t you know it?—we had the same conversation with a couple of the afternoon regulars at 100 Diner in Indigo. The most exciting thing that happened was issuing a ticket to an out-of-towner with an expired inspection sticker. At one point the radio squawked at Tansy and he made a dismissive gesture at it, similar to the shooing gesture Mayor Woolens had made. When it squawked a second time he picked it up, squeezed the button, and said (I swear this is true): “Breaker one-nine, we got some God-awful recep-sheyonn. We’ll emulate at base. Over and out.” Subsequent day trips have proved equally unexciting, but I have gone along to maintain pretense. Always smiling, right?

  Sheriff Tansy looks like a cop. He’s got the Stetson, the badge, and the gun. But at the end of the day he’s only a scarecrow. Hollow County loves him because he’s one of their own, and they’ll continue to elect him until he either hangs up his hat, or drops dead of a heart attack. The law is enforced by the sheriff’s deputies, and by the respective town and state cops. This arrangement suits everybody, including the sheriff. Especially the sheriff.

  I rode with him again two days ago, not because I have any interest in Tansy or his joke of a day job, but because I thought it would give me an opportunity to ask him about Point Hollow’s history.

  “I’m thinking about writing
a book,” I said. “Non-fiction. Point Hollow: From Past to Present. That’s a working title.”

  We were on Boulder Pass, one of the few straight roads in the county, and a favourite hidey-spot for police to snare speeders. We were running at a good clip and I felt the cruiser give a little wiggle as the sheriff’s knuckles tightened on the wheel.

  “Say that again.” He tried to smile. “A book?”

  I smiled wide enough for both of us. “Sure. We live in the most beautiful part of the world and I want to share it with people, let them know all about our wonderful town. I went on Amazon, I looked in bookstores and libraries, and do you know there’s not one book—not even one—about Point Hollow?”

  “That so?”

  “I mean, it’s never going to make the New York Times Best Seller list, but I figured I could vanity-publish and sell it in local bookstores. Tourists would snap it up, and I’m sure the library would stock it, maybe even Rising Pine—”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Tansy cut in. The skin just above his collar had turned blotchy and the vein in his temple was ticking. “I mean, you’d be throwing away time and money, which is exactly why no one has done it before. Nah, you should forget that idea, Oliver. Not one of your better ones.”

  “I don’t agree,” I said colourfully. His expression was all rain and thunder. Mine was the middle of July. “The money doesn’t bother me, and time . . . well you make time, don’t you? It will be a project, like restoring a classic car or building a boat. And at the end of it, I hope to have a comprehensive reference book that will be enjoyed for many years to come. It’s all about giving back to the community.”

  “You give plenty,” Tansy grumbled.

  We were going even faster now, and had to brake hard for the bend that swooped into Wharton. The tires moaned and I grabbed the door handle to keep from sliding into the sheriff’s lap.

  “Christ jumped up,” he said, clearly ruffled.

  “Of course, there’d be lots of research,” I pressed, and wondered if the vein in Tansy’s temple would explode if I didn’t let up. “I’ll have to dig real deep into Point Hollow’s history—hunt through endless New York State books for any interesting town facts, talk to the old timers, and ride the Information Superhighway.”

  Sheriff Tansy isn’t exactly au fait with the Internet, and I thought I could scare him by calling it the Information Superhighway. It worked.

  “Get this damn idea out of your head, Oliver,” he snapped. “You know how we are in Point Hollow. We’re a small and private community—always have been, and that’s exactly how we want to keep it. Bad enough we have to put up with the summer folk and the goddamn weekend warriors, kayaking down Gray Rock River and taking pictures of leaves.”

  “They bring good money into town,” I said. “They don’t think twice about spending six bucks on an ice cream, or twenty bucks on one of those stupid baseball caps with the moose antlers sticking from the sides. Jesus, Tommy Whipple’s store would have—”

  “That’s why we tolerate them,” Tansy interrupted. A line of sweat trickled out of his wiry sideburn and he turned down the heater (I saw how badly his hand trembled in the three seconds it was off the wheel), despite the fact that it was eighteen Fahrenheit outside. “It doesn’t mean we have to like them. And we sure as hell don’t want you publishing a book and throwing a goddamn spotlight on the town.”

  We stopped at an all-way and the sheriff looked at me. There was more sweat clustered amid the stubble on his upper lip. His grey eyes softened and he gave his head a little shake, as if pitying me. “We fly under the radar, Oliver. Mostly unnoticed. And that’s just the way we like it.”

  Small-town horseshit, but everyone in Point Hollow feels the same way.

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “What about you?” Tansy jerked the cruiser forward and turned onto First Street, a strip of ramshackle businesses that make Point Hollow’s Main Street look like Times Square.

  “Forget the book for a moment,” I said, not that there ever had been a book, of course. “What if I want to learn more about my hometown? What if I want to learn its history . . . find out where I came from . . . why I’m here?”

  And why I do the things I do, I almost added.

  Tansy nodded, waved to someone on the sidewalk, and said, “For an imaginative fellow, you’ve got one hell of a dull mind.”

  I clenched my teeth and felt the vein in my own temple ticking. “Hasn’t my contribution to the community earned me a few answers?”

  “You got questions, Oliver?” His eyes flicked my way, challenging me, and I came close to showing my hand. Yeah, I want you to tell me about that mountain full of dead children. I bit my tongue; the sheriff has never beaten me at poker, and that wasn’t about to change.

  “No questions,” I said, shrugging, smiling. “Just curious, is all.”

  It’s entirely possible, of course, that no one in Point Hollow, including Sheriff Tansy, knows anything about the mountain. Maybe the dead children are all out-of-towners, taken there by another out-of-towner: The Pied Piper of New York City, perhaps. It’s a stellar hiding place, after all.

  Possible, but it doesn’t tango with me. I could tell from Tansy’s expression that he knows something—that he’s protecting something. It’s the same with Kip Sawyer and all the other high muckety-mucks I’ve spoken to. Normally, I wouldn’t give a shit. Let them get on with it. Only problem: whatever they’re protecting, it’s taken my soul. It’s making me evil.

  “It’s not like we live in London or Rome,” Tansy said, and I could tell he was fighting to keep his voice steady. He smiled, and it wasn’t a bad effort, but the vein in his temple was still ticking. “It’s only Point Hollow, Oliver. We came, we built, we stayed. There’s your history lesson.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell the sheriff that I’d already clocked some mileage on the Information Superhighway, and that I’d discovered some things about Point Hollow’s history that he hadn’t included in his lesson, and were likewise absent from the library’s (sparse) local archives.

  So you don’t know anything about the shooting in 1953? Jack Braum, twenty-eight years old, grabs his Winchester and a fistful of double-ought, and goes for a walk down Main Street. He kills six people before finally being restrained, and is found dead in his holding cell that evening. You’d have been in short pants at the time, Sheriff, but incidents like this leave a huge hole—particularly in such a small town—and create an echo that would be heard for a long time afterward. I’m sure it was all neatly swept under the small-town rug and never spoken of again. But tongues wag, people move away, and things get written down, and fifty-some years later this incident creeps from under the rug and pastes itself on a blog called Gun Crimes of America. And what do you know, Point Hollow is on the list. You have to scroll down a little way to get to us, but we’re there. Fame at last.

  We pulled up outside Poppy’s Coffee & Donut. Tansy let the engine run a while, looking straight ahead, his hands still gripping the wheel.

  My lips trembled.

  And maybe your police records don’t go as far back as the hazy, crazy days of 1971. You were out of the country at the time, counting corpses in the Mekong Delta, perhaps, but there were plenty of corpses back at the homestead, too. Thirteen of them, in fact, discovered hanging in the woods just west of Rainy Creek. Mass suicide. One of the victims/participants (whatever you call them) left a note that read: “It watches us. It remembers.” Again, swept under the rug. Forget it ever happened and move along. One of the blessings of living under the radar, right? But the graves are still there, Sheriff. I’ve seen them—checked the names on the markers against the stories I read on the Internet. Silent, flowerless graves. These are the victims of whatever secret you’re trying to keep. And guess what . . . so am I.

  Sheriff Tansy sighed, then slapped me on the thigh all chummy
-like, and said, “I don’t know about you, Oliver, but I could use a sugar rush. Strong coffee, triple-dose the sweet stuff, with a Boston Cream on the side. Whaddya say?”

  I smiled (of course) and returned the chummy thigh-slap. “Now we’re talking the same language, Sheriff.”

  Poppy’s is small and in need of a makeover, but the smell of fresh coffee and pastries is as close to heaven as you’ll find in Wharton, especially on such a cold day. Tansy clapped warmth into his hands and grabbed his regular seat at the counter, and Poppy was right over with the coffee. A small TV was tuned to CNN, with Daryn Kagan telling Live Today viewers about the increased security for President Bush’s upcoming second inauguration.

  “Should give that man a third and fourth inauguration,” Tansy said. His shoulders rolled as he chuckled. “He’s a true patriot. I’ll take one of those Boston Creams, Poppy. The one on the left. No, my left.” He chuckled again. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  “He’s a hero,” the man sitting two stools over from Tansy said. “He’s all-guns blazin’. That’s what this country needs.”

  “Amen,” Tansy agreed.

  “He oughta turn those guns on some of the sand niggers we got over here.”

  “Amen,” Tansy said again—somewhat disconcerting from a man (an elected official, no less) with a Glock 20 strapped to his waist.

  I drank my coffee and chatted idly to Poppy, but most of my attention was centred on Tansy. Less than five minutes ago he had been in a perturbed state, sweating hard, with that squiggly vein in his right temple thumping. Now—chatting to his new best friend and fellow fuckwit—he was happy as a pup with two tails. He had moved on from the conversation we’d had in the cruiser. That was history, done and dusted, forgotten about. He’d swept it under his own très convenient little rug. Microcosm of the way his precious town operates.