The Evening Hour

by A. Carter Sickels

“You’re a good nurse.”

  “I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t look after you.”

  “I gotta get out of this place,” Reese mumbled.

  “You could have not said anything,” Cole said. “You could have shut your fucking trap.”

  Reese’s eyes were black and swollen, his entire face one big cut and bruise, but still Cole could see the trace of a grin. “I ain’t afraid of punks like that,” he said. “I’ll never shut up.”

  “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

  Reese started to say something, but the pills and drink overcame him, and like a child, he was suddenly sleeping. Cole looked around at the mess. He was not going to clean it up. He was tired of cleaning up messes. Tired of taking care of people. Tired of sitting next to the dying and the sick and the broken. He switched off the light so he wouldn’t have to look at any of it. “He’s gonna get himself killed,” he said to the dark, then he said, “I’m gonna get myself killed.” He wanted someone to sit next to him, to watch over him through the night. He wanted a hand on his brow, someone to hold him. Maybe he could have had that. But he did not know how to start over, he did not know.

  Chapter 14

  Reese looked even worse in the morning light, his face swollen twice its size and bruised lilac and velvety blue. His puffy eyes were blackened, nearly sealed shut. He told Cole he wanted to see what he looked like.

  “You sure?”

  He said he was. Cole found a broken piece of mirror and held it up and Reese studied himself. “It’s bad,” he finally said, “but I’ve looked worse.”

  Cole had to go to work. He showered and tried to clean the specks of blood off his uniform. He left Reese pain pills, a pack of cigarettes. “I don’t have time to clean up.”

  “Hell no, you’ve done enough.”

  As Cole started out the door, Reese called him back. “I was bad to her in the end.”

  “No, you were all right.”

  “Not in the end.” He sighed. “I’m gonna change. I’m not going to be like this anymore.”

  “Just rest.” Cole locked the door behind him and stepped into the golden daylight and felt like he was going to be sick.

  But he wasn’t. He went to work and somehow got through the day, and afterward, he drove to Lacy’s. He had nothing in his hands to offer her. He rang the bell and after a minute she let him in. They sat on the sofa, a noticeable space between them. The room was dimly lit, one weak lamp and a few candles, the flames flickering and throwing shadows across the walls. He wished she’d turn on more lights so he could see her eyes.

  “Where’s Sara Jean?”

  “Over at Blue’s, with Michael.”

  He told her he was sorry that he didn’t come over last night.

  “I was waiting for you.”

  He said that he’d been tied up at work and she stared at him and saw right through him and said to tell her the truth.

  “I was at a friend’s. He was in trouble.”

  “Who?”

  “Nobody you know.”

  “Who?” she said again, her tone sharp.

  He picked up one of the candles and watched the flame dance. “Reese Campbell.”

  “We went to school together,” she said.

  He put the candle down and turned and faced her.

  “I know who he is,” she continued. “Faggot drug dealer.”

  He was surprised by the meanness in her voice and he shook a cigarette from the pack and tipped it to the candle. “What about the faggots you hang out with?”

  “Who?”

  “Michael.”

  “Cole, Christ. Michael’s not gay.”

  “Trip is.”

  “That’s not even the point. I’m talking about Reese. The dealer.”

  “He’s not really a dealer.”

  “Addict, whatever. You’re one too, aren’t you? A dealer?”

  He leaned back into the cushions and felt her waiting. He was tired of all the pretend. “I don’t use,” he said.

  “What do you deal?”

  “Prescriptions, nothing big.”

  For a long time they were quiet. He did not know what else to say. He reached out his hand and touched her leg. “Turn on that light so I can see you.”

  The overhead came on and the magic of the candles disappeared. Her eyes were sad and scared, and he was sorry he’d done this to her.

  “I’m a mother. I got a kid to worry about. I can’t do this,” she said.

  “I know it.”

  “You’ve got a different life than me.”

  He did not try to tell her that he could change, it seemed too far gone for that. He touched her face with the palm of his hand, and she jumped, as if it were on fire. “It’s not your fault. I suspected a long time ago. I liked it, in a way, that you were so different,” she said. “But it’s not right.”

  “I don’t think you ever really wanted me,” he said. “You just want Denny back.”

  She looked at him with steady eyes. “You’re wrong,” she said. “I think I could have loved you, but you don’t want it. You really don’t want it.”

  For the next three days Cole hid in his trailer, calling in sick to work and turning down the volume on the answering machine. He listened to the blasting and the rumble of the coal trucks; he smoked; he ate stale bread smeared with strawberry jelly. Every day it rained. He did not answer the phone. He opened the safe and the Christmas tin and stared at the cash and the stolen jewelry and heirlooms and postcards. He sorted photographs. One of his mother, one of his grandparents. He pinned them on the wall with thumbtacks. He found a picture of Charlotte; naked and tattooed and smiling seductively. He pinned that one up too. He looked at the one of Lacy laughing and the one of him sleeping like someone innocent and young and the one where he had his arm slung around Terry Rose, and he pinned all of them to the wall next to his bed. On the third day he rose and went into the kitchen and scraped the last of the coffee into a filter and he looked at the nursing books and brochures on the table and he could not stand to look at them anymore. He carried them outside to the trash pit, and standing naked in the cold morning, he lit a match and watched as the pages curled into black snakes and the flames flickered, and then shivering and empty, he went back inside and crawled under the blankets and closed his eyes.

  Someone was knocking. He waited, but it didn’t stop.

  “Cole, you in there?”

  He pulled on a pair of Levi’s and a musty-smelling flannel shirt and went to the door. His grandmother and mother were standing in the rain.

  “What’s wrong? Where have you been?” his mother asked.

  “Here.”

  “We tried calling,” his grandmother said.

  “I haven’t been feeling well.”

  She put her hand on his forehead and said he did feel a little warm. He asked them to sit down, embarrassed by the messiness.

  “Tomorrow’s the big church meeting,” his grandmother said.

  He looked at her blankly, then recalled her telling him something about it a few weeks ago. “The one in Bucks County?”

  “We’ll have to leave bright and early. You’re still gonna take me, right?”

  He looked at his mother. “Can’t you do it?”

  “I want you both to come with me.”

  “She’s got her mind made up,” Ruby said.

  “I’m not feeling well,” Cole tried. “I’ve got a fever.”

  “All the more reason to go, where the Holy Ghost can work on you. Anyway, I don’t think you’ve taken ill. It’s something else.” His grandmother said the preacher would be able to look at him and see what plagued him. “It may be that God is trying to tell you something.”

  His insides felt scraped raw. “Grandma, it’s been a long time.”

  “That don’t matter. Listen, I got a good feeling,” she said. “I think the Lord is going tell us what to do about the land.”

  Cole sighed, but said nothing. Come spring, Heritage would begin wor
king on the ridge behind them, taking it down even lower. Lacy had told him that there were more permits in the works. “We’ll get it on all sides. They won’t stop till they get every last bit,” she’d warned, telling him this one night, just after sex. He already missed the sound of her hard-edged voice, a fighting voice.

  “I’m gonna pray on it and we’re gonna see what God tells us,” his grandmother said. “Then everything will be clear.”

  When Cole stood up, the room curved out of perspective, the floor tilting, and he held on to the chair for balance.

  “Good Lord, what’s wrong with you?”

  He sat down, thinking how he hadn’t eaten anything but bread for three days. “I guess I just got up too quick.”

  “Well, you’re coming with us,” his grandmother said. “I’ll make you something to eat. I want you to be in good shape for tomorrow.”

  He did not argue. Before he left, he checked his messages. Lacy had not called, but there were messages from Reese and customers and work. He erased them all.

  At his grandmother’s he ate chicken stew and biscuits, and took a long hot bath. After he was dry and warm, he went into his childhood room and lay in the bed and looked up at the ceiling and felt that he had nothing inside of him and that this was good: he was empty and untouched.

  He waited for them outside, sipping steaming coffee from a travel mug, while his pickup idled, spitting out white plumes of exhaust. It would be long trip, two hours at least. His fever was gone, but he still felt shaky. He cracked the front door, yelled that they’d better hurry up. The rain had stopped, but the creek looked swollen. He worried about the roads turning icy.

  “Y’all ready?”

  “Heavens, I think so,” his grandmother said.

  “We could have been out of here an hour ago, if Mama wasn’t trying to tell me how to dress.” Ruby smoothed down the front of her below-the-knee skirt. “If they don’t let me in, I’ll just find a place that will. Hopefully somewhere where I can shoot a game of pool.”

  She sat in the middle, her knee jostling the gearshift, and his grandmother sat in the passenger seat. The heat vents blew warm air over their faces, but it was still drafty and Cole wished he would have brought a blanket for his grandmother. He’d tried to block the hole in the floorboard, but a stream of air pushed its way through.

  At the halfway point, he pulled over at a Sunoco station and filled up the tank and bought a few candy bars. While his grandmother was in the bathroom, he and his mother smoked furtively like teenagers; his grandmother did not want them smoking on this special day.

  “You still seeing that guy?” Cole asked. “The Heritage dude?”

  For a second, Ruby looked surprised, as if she had forgotten that he was there. She shook her head. “No, that didn’t work out.”

  “Oh.”

  “You still seeing that woman?”

  “Didn’t work out.”

  “Well, someone else will come along for you.” She looked away, distracted. Smoking. Thinking about something. “Listen, Cole,” she finally said. “Remember what I told you, about leaving?” She paused. “Well, I’m going to be heading out. Day after tomorrow. This time I mean it, I’m going.”

  Cole took a long pull on his smoke. “Where you headed? Back to Pennsylvania?”

  “No, hell no. I’m not sure yet. I got some friends in Michigan. There’s maybe some factory work, I don’t know.” She looked like she was about to say more, then sighed. “I can’t believe I agreed to this. I never thought I’d step foot in a church again.”

  “Maybe you’ll get saved.”

  “I’ve already been saved, I sure as hell don’t need any more of it.” She nudged him. “What about you? You hoping to get saved?”

  He flicked the cigarette across the asphalt. “I never even once spoke in tongues, and granddaddy said if you never spoke in tongues, then you ain’t carried your faith far enough.”

  “Damn, that old man messed you up pretty good, didn’t he?”

  As they got closer to Wildcat Run, Cole’s stomach tightened and he let his foot up on the gas. Mountains rose up all around them, and the hollow was dark and cavernous.

  “Turn right. Go on. Turn right.” His grandmother directed him the rest of the way, sending him on back roads until they reached an overgrown pasture that was already filling up with cars and pickups. Up on the hill, butted against forest, stood a rectangular whitewashed building with a yellow cross painted on the door.

  Ruby patted him on the leg. “Come on, backslider.”

  A crowd of about thirty congregated outside, shivering and blowing on their hands. The women wore dresses, long skirts; not a smudge of makeup touched their plain faces. The men dressed in jeans or khakis, long-sleeved shirts; hair short, faces shaved. Cole touched the ends of his bleached hair, pushed it out of his eyes. The majority were over fifty, but there were a few young families and a string of kids running around. He was surprised to see a black couple. The man saw Cole looking at him and smiled. “Hey brother.” Cole returned the greeting.

  A guy who could not have been over twenty-five approached Cole. “You’re Clyde Freeman’s grandson.” He clapped him on the back. “When I was just a wee thing, I went to one of your grandpa’s services. Brother, he could lay it down.” He paused. “I’m sorry to hear he passed on. But you know he’s happy now. He’s probably up there talking to my daddy.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Carl Cutter,” he said, smiling. “I’m Luke Cutter.”

  Cole remembered hearing that Carl Cutter, an old-time preacher from Pikeville, Kentucky, had died last year. Throat cancer. Their church followed the signs, but did not mess with serpents.

  “Sorry about your dad.”

  Luke took Cole’s hand in his own, the warm suede of his glove pressed soft against Cole’s bare skin. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Cole sat with his mother and grandmother toward the back of the church. Now even his grandmother looked out of place, with her short hair. The organist began pounding the keys, and Cole mouthed the words to an old hymn about meeting in the sweet by-and-by. A boy with an electric guitar led them through another song. His grandmother had said she missed loud churches, and Cole knew what she meant. In Charleston, he’d gone once to a church where the minister spoke in a gentle voice and the congregation was polite and quiet. He did not know how people could feel God that way, without the sweat and tears and shouting.

  Luke Cutter ran up to the pulpit. He was dressed in jeans and a cowboy shirt with pearly snaps. “I’m so happy to see y’all here,” he started, flashing a wide, toothy grin. “Are you all happy?”

  “Je-sus!” the old woman in front of Cole called.

  “The Holy Ghost is here today. Do you feel the Holy Ghost?”

  When Cole was a teenager, he’d wanted so badly to be saved. He’d think about Jesus, how they pounded nails through his hands, forced him to wear a crown of thorns. He had wanted forgiveness, goodness. The guitarist began strumming, and little kids jumped and danced. The congregation found its rhythm, raising arms and swaying. Cole had forgotten this, those times when his grandfather did not speak of burning but of happiness, when love dripped off of him, a deep and abiding love, which was here in this room, right now.

  Preaching, praying, and testifying filled up the first hour and a half, and then they took a break, congregating outside to shake off the heat and sweat. A tent was set up with a couple of card tables and the women had put out thermoses of coffee, doughnuts, and cookies. Cole had never been to a big service like this in the winter—usually, they happened in the summer, revivals or homecomings that drew people from all over. But today was the anniversary of Cutter’s father’s death; he wanted to be with his people.

  “I wish Clyde was here,” his grandmother said. “He’d be so happy to see you two.” Ruby’s face was pale and drawn, and for a second Cole felt sorry for her.

  Luke Cutter waved him over. He was standing next to the organist, who held a fat baby
in her arms. He introduced them as his wife and daughter, and pointed out three young boys chasing each other, his sons. “We’re happy to have you, Brother Cole,” the wife said. Her face was smooth and guileless, and he guessed she could not have been a day over twenty-one.

  Cutter looked at Cole. “You ever think of following in your grandpa’s footsteps?”

  “What, preaching? No. I don’t have it in me.”

  It started to snow and the snowflakes caught in Cutter’s lashes. “You oughtta come up, do a little testifying.”

  The snow had rejuvenated the crowd, and Cutter’s sermons grew more thunderous, more like the way Cole’s grandfather used to preach. People were calling out praises. Cole’s grandmother moved past him and walked up the aisle. He swallowed the hotness in his mouth as she lifted her arms. She started by praying softly, then her words began to transform, her mouth spitting garbled and strange syllables that set everyone off in a frenzy.

  “Oh, yes, Sister Dorothy, listen to Sister Dorothy,” shouted Cutter.

  Cole held onto the back of a pew so hard that his fingertips turned a dark pink. He was afraid to look at his grandmother. But when the noises finally stopped, he glanced over. She seemed suddenly exhausted, head drooping, hands limp at her sides.

  An old woman led a boy out to the center aisle. He was six or seven. Pale as rice, sickly looking. People placed their hands on him. The first time hands had ever been laid on Cole, he was four years old and his grandfather asked God to heal his tongue, give him a voice, and he’d touched Cole on the head and Cole felt something jolt from his grandfather’s hand into him and he stumbled back into his grandmother’s arms, and then it was not only his grandfather’s hands, but the hands of everyone. When the stutter stayed, he knew he must be full of wickedness.

  “We are all sinners, all of us,” Cutter said. “And I am the biggest sinner of all.” He told them how he’d lost his way with women and drink, but God forgave him. “It don’t matter how bad you been, you can be good.” He seemed to be looking right at Cole. His eyes kind and earnest and truthful. “God will forget everything that you did.”

  A man about Cole’s age stood up. He didn’t look like he belonged in church. He wore dirty jeans and a T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up, revealing a faded barbed wire tattoo. “When I was living in Lexington, I strayed.” He swallowed. “I did bad things.” It was an old story: a person went off to the big city, what his granddaddy called the devil’s playground, lived a life of sin, and then came home to repent. But Cole lost his way here in Dove Creek, at his grandfather’s side. He lost God among the mountains and the blue sky and the honeysuckle.