The Evening Hour

by A. Carter Sickels

  Cutter held out his arms. “Come on up here, son.”

  “This boy’s got demons inside him,” Cutter said, and he held the man in his arms, and people shouted, Praise God.

  Cole’s grandfather had once said the same thing to him. Cole was a few months shy of turning eighteen and his granddaddy called him out in the middle of the service and said it was time for him to be truthful. “We’ll get the demons out,” he said. “All you have to do is ask for forgiveness.”

  The man raised his hands in the air, and as Cole watched him, his face began to morph into Reese’s. The blood, the bruises. Reese had called for him and Cole had walked away. Fists against flesh. Walked away like a coward. He heard crying now. Heard from somewhere the echo of his granddad’s tremulous voice. Heard his own name. He wanted it to stop. Everything was too loud and bright, and he wanted it to stop. He stepped into the aisle. Cutter smiled at him. It was a beautiful smile.

  Tears sprang to Luke Cutter’s eyes. “I love you, brother.”

  Nobody had ever looked at Cole with such understanding. He could hear the other man weeping. He could hear Cutter.

  “It does not matter what you’ve done, Cole. You can be new.”

  He started to walk up the aisle. One foot in front of the other. When he reached the pulpit, he could not speak. His tongue was heavy, everything was heavy. He dropped to his knees and felt the hardness of the floor. He looked up at Cutter, who smiled at him through tears.

  “Look at this boy. Too much despair. He needs to be loved.”

  Cole closed his eyes and felt Cutter’s hand on his forehead and he thought about everyone who was gone from his life, his grandfather, Charlotte, Lacy, Terry Rose. Soon his mother would be leaving him too. Just like before. His grandfather had said being saved was like being filled with a golden light. He said after you were saved, God would talk to you. In a quiet voice, he said. You have to be still and the voice will speak to you.

  Cole tried to hear what was beyond Cutter’s words, beyond the music, the shouts, the prayers, to hear that voice of God, to hear it inside his heart. He’d had this described to him a hundred times, what it felt like to be consumed by the Holy Spirit, how you couldn’t breathe and then suddenly just when you thought you couldn’t go any lower, you were lifted. Cutter’s hand on his head, the hard floor beneath him. Hadn’t he gone low enough? He pressed his hands to his face. Wasn’t it time to be lifted up? Everything quieted. He opened his eyes.

  Cutter was crouched next to him, his face so close that Cole could see the stubble on his chin. His bright and holy eyes. He whispered, “Pray with me, my brother.”

  But they were not brothers. Cole pulled his eyes away and looked behind him at the people praying. Strangers. They did not know him. When he stood up, Cutter’s hand dropped away. He felt shaky and sick. He stepped back. Cutter said, “Don’t go,” but Cole turned and walked out of the church, and once he was outside, he kneeled in the snow and pushed his hands into the cold. He rolled over on his back and the snowflakes stung his face. He could stay here forever. Nothing inside of him, not darkness nor light. No small voice talking to him. Nothing.

  “Baby, come on, you’ll catch a cold.”

  An angel leaned over him, brushing the snowflakes from his hair and face. For a moment, he didn’t know who she was or how she’d found him. Then she helped him stand and led him over to a picnic table. He took the cigarette she offered. They sat for a long time, snow-covered and shivering. He wanted to tell her things. The story of himself. But he didn’t even know what that was, or how to tell it, or where to start. He once had a mother who did not want him. A grandfather who thought he was bad and tried to save him. And he once had a brother, or someone who was like a brother but not that exactly.

  He said nothing. She held his face in the palm of her hand. “He sure messed you up, didn’t he?” she said quietly. “He sure messed you up.”

  Chapter 15

  The next morning Cole helped his grandmother sort through his grandfather’s things. Throwing out his yellowed toothbrush and gnarly socks and such, and donating the clothes, what wasn’t worn through the elbows and knees, to Goodwill. He only had a few personal items worth holding on to: a couple of antique knives and guns that must have belonged to his own granddad, a worry rock that he used to carry around, the King James, and a stack of sermons. There wasn’t much else. They’d been talking about doing this for months now, but it was only today that his grandmother said she felt ready.

  Every so often she went to the window, nervous. Yesterday’s snow had turned to rain and the creek was rising. “When it rains like this, all I can do is walk the floor,” she murmured.

  She had asked for the members of Luke Cutter’s church to pray over her family because the coal company was destroying their home, but Luke Cutter told her that the only home she needed to worry about was her home in heaven. She had left shortly after, found Cole and Ruby outside, smoking, watching the snow. They took a box of doughnuts and three cups of coffee for the drive. Last night she had gone to bed without supper and prayed for a long time. She had dreams and visions, but when Cole asked her to describe them, she wouldn’t.

  Ruby lounged on the sofa, channel surfing. Tomorrow, weather permitting, she would be on her way. She’d been helping sort through the boxes until she came across a red tie that her father used to wear to revivals, and she picked it up and held it out in front of her like an old shed snakeskin. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about that man.” Cole didn’t know either. But looking through his granddaddy’s things felt like an ending, and that was what he wanted.

  He glanced at the sermons, scrawled in nearly illegible writing on a yellow legal pad. His grandfather’s education had stopped at fourteen. Although Cole had never actually seen him read from any sermon in church, he occasionally wrote them out, more a random collection of thoughts, snippets of scripture and hymns than actual sermons. No more tears. No more sorrow or fear. God promises all of that will go away. Had tears flowed from his grandfather’s eyes? What was his sorrow? His fear? Yesterday Cole had had a chance to be lifted up to God. This was who he was, a small, unsaved man.

  “Look at your granddad’s watch, still ticking.”

  His grandmother dropped the watch in the palm of Cole’s hand and he lifted it to his ear and heard the tick. He thought of all the spouses and sons and daughters and grandchildren who had searched for some kind of reminder, some memento like this, which he had stolen.

  “I don’t want it,” he said.

  “It’s a nice watch. I think Rebecca got it for him—”

  A loud explosion tore away his grandmother’s words. The noise was enormous, not like a blast, but bigger, deeper, echoing down the mountain.

  Ruby sat up. “What was that?”

  Cole pulled on his boots and went out and stood in the drizzle. He automatically looked up to see if there were clouds of dust or smoke spraying from behind the ridge where they’d been mining, but nothing looked any different. It wasn’t a blast. What was that? The rain splattered his face and he pulled up his hood and walked around the house, toward the creek, and when he saw it, he stopped. The creek was black and thick and churning, and spilling over into the yard and into the road. He felt confused by the color and the crazy movement, and he tried to think of what he’d been told by Lacy and Sara Jean. Then a rocking chair came bobbing along, and he felt his stomach drop. He looked back at the house, which suddenly appeared so old and breakable.

  “What is it?” His grandmother met him at the door, his mother behind her.

  “I don’t know. Something happened. The creek is black.”

  “Should we leave?” Ruby asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sons of bitches,” she said.

  “We should report this,” his grandmother started, and then there was a second explosion, this time even louder, causing all of them to jump. Cole looked up and saw a tidal wave of black sludge.

  “We got to go,
we got to get out of here.”

  But for a second they just stood there and watched. Twenty feet high, the sludge thundered down the mountain and across the ridge, carrying tree limbs and rocks and furniture and what looked like part of a pickup.

  “Come on,” Cole yelled.

  They scrambled up the hillside behind the house. Cole grabbed his grandmother’s arm, pulling on her, as mud slid under their shoes, the ground disappearing beneath them. The black stuff came faster, splashing at the backs of their legs. His grandmother was having a hard time, and Cole pulled her closer, practically lifted her. Just keep moving. Finally they got to a place, about twenty feet up, where they stopped and looked back. His grandmother murmured about dreams and prophecy and the end, getting down on her knees even, but Cole and Ruby stood still, their shock holding them up.

  The noise of it was incredible, like thousands of trees falling and freight trains crashing into each other at once. The way a dozer must sound to a terrified squirrel hiding in its nest, while all around it, the earth is split open. The roiling creek spit out trees, boulders, a mangled car. A house trailer rocked along like a boat. Were there people inside of it? A cold sweat broke out across Cole’s chest, his hands and face clammy with fear. The trailer smashed into his mother’s Camry and there was an explosion of metal and blue sparks. Ruby stood there with her hand over her mouth, speechless.

  “Dear Lord,” his grandmother said.

  As the wave followed the twists and turns of the creek, eventually the roaring grew farther away, but they could still hear the echoes. It had washed by them, just barely. But anyone who was under it would not survive.

  Gathered below them like a gigantic moat, the mix of black water and gunk pooled around his grandmother’s house and had completely submerged his mother’s car. There were tires, TVs, computers, and mattresses still moving downstream and getting tangled in trees. Cole thought of the lay of the land, the little creeks and streams and hollows and homes. He felt hot, then cold. Lacy Cooper. He drew a sharp breath. Lacy.

  “The people up at Thorny Creek,” he said. “I got to get up there.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I got to,” he said. “I got to.”

  But at this moment he couldn’t see any way to get down. He sat on the hillside and drew his knees to his chest and felt his heart pounding. Rain fell softly. It trickled down the back of his neck. The sudden quiet felt strange and spooky. He thought he still heard faint echoes, or maybe his ears were just ringing. He tried to comfort himself by thinking of those who lived out of range—Charlotte, Reese, his cousins and aunts and uncles, some of his suppliers. But what about Lacy? What about all of the others?

  “We’re gonna freeze to death,” his mother said.

  She had lost her shoes and her sock feet were wet and black. Cole tried to give her his boots, but she wouldn’t take them. His grandmother was wearing only a housecoat, and her Keds were useless, cemented in sludge. Cole insisted she put on his sweatshirt; he pretended to be fine in his T-shirt, even as goose bumps prickled his arms.

  If they were to learn they were the only survivors, Cole would not be surprised. He closed his eyes, trying to stop the hammering in his head. Rain drizzled from the gray and empty sky. For a long time, nothing was said. Then his grandmother checked her watch, which Cole realized was his grandfather’s, the one she’d tried to give to him.

  “Why it’s not even been forty minutes that we’ve been up here.”

  Cole stood up. “It looks like the water’s going down.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I’m gonna see if there is a way to get out of here.”

  “Cole, you be careful,” his mother called.

  He found a branch to help him along and went over toward the trailer that had smashed against his mother’s car. As the sludge sank, cold black water rose to his knees. He got as close as he could and looked for any sign of a person, but all he found were swollen books and floating T-shirts and underwear and a bag of potato chips that had risen to the surface. He then maneuvered his way down the hillside, using the branch to measure how deep the water was before he stepped. The front of his grandmother’s house was caved in. Piles of splintered boards and shattered glass. He wanted to get them warm clothes, but he could not see any way to enter.

  He walked along a high part of the land toward his trailer and was surprised to see it was still standing. His truck was there too. The mix of water and sludge was low enough here that he could wade through it. He grabbed the door handle to his trailer, but it didn’t budge, so he went over to his bedroom and smashed the window with a rock. He stripped off his T-shirt and folded it over the sill, and shimmied through. Stomping through the mushy liquid mess in his room, he managed to find a dry sweatshirt, and a few hats and pairs of socks, a pair of boots. Then he pulled the bed out from the wall. The safe was submerged. Fuck. He fished a flashlight out of the closet. It wasn’t very deep in the kitchen, at least not yet, and he grabbed a trash bag from under the sink. Back in his room, he crouched, holding the end of the flashlight in his mouth and the bag open with his free hand. He wiped off the lock, but still could barely see the numbers. It took three tries, him cursing and shaking from the cold. The lock popped. As soon as he opened the lid, the lava-like water rushed in, and he worked as fast as he could, grabbing the money and pills and jewelry, and dropping them into the bag. After he emptied the safe, he reached under the bed, nauseated, disgusted. Then his hands pressed upon metal, and he pulled the cookie tin out of the mire.

  He carried all of it outside and climbed in the back of his truck and opened the cross-bed toolbox, pushing aside random tools and a fishing pole and tackle that he hadn’t used in years. He stuffed the garbage bag and cookie tin inside, and then he studied his truck. The tires were sinking. He got a snow shovel out of the back and started digging. Then he saw his mother and grandmother making their way toward him, arms hooked together, taking slow, careful steps. He gave them hats and socks, and Ruby slipped her feet into his boots, which were gigantic on her. “They’ll do,” she said, shivering.

  Cole got behind the wheel, his grandmother and mother squeezed in beside him. A half-empty pack of cigarettes lay on the dash. He quickly shook one out, but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t get the lighter to catch. His mother took it, lit the cigarette for him. He inhaled and exhaled, focusing. Now that he had something to do, the panic began to fade. He concentrated on what he knew. Started the truck. Shifted into four-wheel drive. Steer, shift. The wheels finally spun out. He drove wildly along the hillside, dodging felled trees and boulders. Trailers that had stood vacant for years were now busted up or buried.

  “We were lucky,” his grandmother said.

  At Floyd Mitchell’s, Cole left the engine running and sprinted toward the half-sunk shack, calling for Floyd, and finally he came to the door, wild-eyed and wearing a tattered bathrobe.

  “It took Sugar,” he shouted. “She was outside and the creek washed her away. It took my Sugar.” Cole stared at him blankly, then remembered the old crippled dog.

  “You got to come with us.”

  He would not budge. When Cole took his arm, he fought him off, yelling, cursing. “All right, Floyd,” he said. “All right.”

  “It’s what he wants,” his grandmother said as they drove away, leaving the tiny man alone on his porch.

  On their way out, they saw a man trying to dig out his truck with a garden shovel. Cole knew who he was, but had never talked to him before. Glenn Kincaid, a miner. He was a part of all this, but now he looked scared and dirty like the rest of them.

  Cole leaned out the window. “You want a ride?”

  He stopped and dropped the shovel. His face and hands were blackened like the stereotypical old-timey coal miner. After he climbed in back, Cole drove farther up the hillside, the ground sliding, the truck tilting.

  The main road was washed out. He turned sharply to the left and they went along a rough path until he reac
hed a place where the road looked safe. He yanked the emergency brake, then slid open the divider window between the cab and the back, and told Glenn that he was going to Thorny Creek.

  He looked at Cole like he was crazy. “Won’t be nothing up there.”

  Cole told Ruby to drive his grandmother and Glenn down to Stillwell, that he was getting out here. But she stubbornly refused, as did his grandmother. Cole asked Glenn if he wanted to get out, but he said, “Hell, just go where you want.”

  Cole turned the truck up an old logging road that looped toward Thorny Creek, and drove until he could not go any farther.

  He looked at his grandmother. “We’re going to have to do some walking. I think you should wait here in the truck. Is that all right?”

  She stared ahead, not answering. But she didn’t make any move to get out, either.

  Cole took the snow shovel from the back and led the way, his mother and Glenn behind him. They hiked up the backside of the hollow, over slides and piles of rocks and debris. The rain continued to fall steadily. It took them a good forty minutes, maybe longer. And then they stopped. Cole closed his eyes for a second, trying to remember the layout of the hollow, the little houses that had been up close to the road. Now they were flattened, overturned, or just gone altogether. He opened his eyes and saw a trailer flipped onto its side. Broken furniture and cars and shredded clothing. His knees buckled.

  “Lacy,” he said. “Everyone …”

  They trudged along a small ridge, then went down to where the people were scattered on the hillsides and staring at the destruction like they did not know where they were. Some were only half dressed, others had no shoes or socks. The sludge had engulfed the creek, flooded the valley. Cole knew whoever hadn’t run up the hillsides was dead.