Holding Smoke

by Steph Post

  “We could go back-and-forth all night, Sister Tulah. We could go back-and-forth for the rest of our lives. Taking hits at one another, chalking down the sins, bodies piling up in the wake, until one of us finally finishes the other or we manage to finish ourselves.”

  Judah nodded toward the spread of cash.

  “But instead we’re going to do this.”

  Judah leaned back in his chair and rested his fingertips on the edge of the table. He had no idea what Sister Tulah was thinking, her face now immobile, intentions unintelligible. Perhaps she was considering his proposition, perhaps she was plotting ways to have him killed before he could step off the front porch. But then her eye drifted and Judah realized Tulah wasn’t even looking at him, but at the grandfather clock in the corner behind him. She frowned, still distracted, her attention divided.

  “So, if this isn’t a bribe or a way of protecting yourself against me, then what exactly is it?”

  “Restitution. And no more.”

  Judah stood up. Sister Tulah could take the money, or she could not, but either way, he was leaving it behind.

  “I’m going now, Sister Tulah. Do you understand me? It’s over. You and I are through.”

  Tulah stood up as well.

  “For now, at least.”

  Judah nodded. It was enough. Enough to let it all go. Enough to walk away.

  *

  Both the 9mm and .45 were digging into Ramey’s lower back, but she didn’t want to have the guns in hand while she waited for Judah to emerge from the lion’s den. She kept her hands on her hips, though, ready for action if need be, and her eyes on the three old men who, she supposed, were staring back at her in return. It was disconcerting not to be able to see their eyes behind the dark sunglasses, not to have them speak so much as word or give her so much as a nod, but Ramey forced herself to keep her cool as she slowly paced. She would have given anything for a cigarette. She would have given more to know what was going on inside.

  Ramey stalked to the edge of the front porch and chewed on her bottom lip. Night had fallen quickly, and though the porch was lit a sickly yellow, and across the scrubby yard and driveway the church windows were visible, glowing with an eerie warmness, the no man’s land in-between was shrouded. Ramey listened. Moths buzzing and bashing into the porch light. Tree frogs chirping on the windows behind her. Crickets singing. The wheeze of old men’s breath. And then, footsteps, coming out of the woods. Ramey tensed, reaching for both guns, waiting to see who would enter the pool of light spilling out into the yard.

  The man froze when he saw Ramey with her hands behind her back. He was dressed oddly, in an ill-fitting maroon suit paired with bright white Adidas, and though Ramey couldn’t be certain, he looked to be unarmed. The men guarding the front door barely turned their heads to see who had approached the house. He looked even more confused to see Ramey than she was to see him.

  “Hello.”

  Confused, but not concerned. His voice was serene and his head was tilted slightly, as if he, too, were listening to the night waking up all around them. He climbed the porch steps and Ramey, finally recognizing him, backed away and let him pass. Both Judah and Shelia had mentioned Sister Tulah’s nephew and she’d seen a brief clip on TV once—a balding man with bovine eyes and flabby cheeks, blurry in the background behind his imposing aunt—but in person, Felton appeared very different. He stood straight and tall, his eyes scintillant, brimming with strange fire. Ramey leaned back against the porch railing to give him some room, and after glancing briefly at the barricade in front of the door, he turned around to face her. His eyes drifted across the top of her head and over her shoulders, as if tracing an unseen aura. Felton didn’t ask her name, didn’t ask anything of her, and Ramey, unsure of what to do now with Judah still inside, offered him only caution. He moved to stand beside her and they stood silently, staring ahead as if waiting together for a bus that might never come.

  Until the door finally opened.

  “Oh, thank God.”

  The old men stepped aside to let him pass. Judah had only been gone a few minutes, but he looked haggard, more world-weary than she’d ever seen him. But the bag was no longer at his side. He didn’t look at her.

  “Let’s go.”

  Ramey wordlessly handed him his .45. At the sight of Judah with a gun, the men surged around them, but Judah pointedly slipped the .45 into the waistband of his jeans. He took Ramey’s hand, gripping it tightly, painfully, and started to lead her off the porch. He stiffened, though, when his eyes fell on the man who had moved a little ways down the railing. Ramey wanted to pull on Judah’s arm, to drag him away now that they had their chance, but Judah was staring intently.

  “You must be Brother Felton.”

  Felton nodded, his head still tilted, and came forward, looking at Judah with a clinical curiosity. Judah pointed to himself.

  “Judah Cannon.”

  “Ah.”

  If Felton was at all disturbed by finally meeting Judah, he wasn’t showing it. There was nothing in his voice.

  “Judah Cannon. Yes. What are you doing here?”

  Everything, however, was in Judah’s.

  “Atoning for both our sins.”

  Felton dipped his head low, almost in a bow, most certainly in acknowledgment, but said no more. Behind Ramey, the front door swung open again and Felton slipped past them, disappearing quietly inside the house. Judah didn’t look back. He pulled her down the steps, practically running with her, though it was toward something and not away. It was only then, halfway down the long driveway, stumbling along in the dark, that she remembered. Before Judah had even been released from prison, and taken those first fated steps south toward Silas, Felton had come to Sherwood Cannon with a plan to rob the Scorpions, carrying Sister Tulah’s money. The money Sherwood had stolen and died for. The money Judah had just returned. It had been Felton then who had provided the spark. Brother Felton who had started it all.

  19

  Judah Cannon. Sister Tulah could hardly believe it. The presumption. The audacity. The sheer imbecilic arrogance of a man who thought he could bully his way into her dining room and buy absolution with a bag of cash. The gall. Tulah put her hands on her hips and glared at the offending bills fanned out across the table. She would see it was his undoing. And she would make him suffer for such hubris first. Sister Tulah scowled and turned as her front door opened and closed once more. But such a reprisal would have to wait for another day. Felton had finally arrived.

  Tulah made no move to clear the table when Felton entered the dining room, walking a little stiffly, she thought, with his shoulders thrown back and his chin held high, his maroon jacket unbuttoned, hanging untidily at his sides. Yet another man who had grown so proud he was myopic. It was a wonder they didn’t all run into the sea like lemmings. This was fortuitous, though. She hadn’t been sure Felton would actually heed her call after he’d dared to stand up to her in church. Any man with even half his wits still about him would have been terrified of the repercussions, but when had Felton ever been anything but feebleminded? Yes, he might have had his dalliance with ATF and his little walk in the woods. He might have made some new friends and acquired some new shoes, but at his core he was still the same pathetic, sniveling little brat her sister had begged her to take.

  Tulah dimmed the lights again and squeezed past the chair Judah had pulled out—and not bothered to push back in—as Felton stood in the doorway, staring at the dining room table.

  “What is all that?”

  Tulah wedged past him.

  “None of your concern.”

  Felton turned and followed her into the foyer, though taking his sweet time. He was looking around the house with interest, dipping his head into the dark living room, backing up to glance over the swinging door into the kitchen. When Sister Tulah reached the bottom of the stairs, Felton was still lagging behind, poking around her house as if he hadn’t lived there for all of his life.
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  “Where’s Dinah? I thought you wanted to talk to both of us.”

  Elah was still standing guard at the front door and Tulah waved her hand, indicating that he should leave. When the door closed behind him, she locked it.

  “I do. Dinah’s upstairs, in your old bedroom. She arrived early and asked to see it, so I let her. I suppose we can just talk up there.”

  Tulah slapped her arm against her side, as if in irritation at having to climb the stairs, and gestured for Felton to lead the way. His steps were measured, laborious and plodding, as he slowly took each carpeted step. She resisted the urge to speak, enjoying the mounting silence, broken only by their heavy footfalls and their breath, his wheezing slightly, Tulah puffing heavily through her nose. The narrow hallway at the top of the stairs was lit by the newly risen moon’s lucent glow streaming in through the window and a spike of light slicing through the half-cracked door of Felton’s room. Tulah paused with her hand still on the bannister as Felton took the steps to the door, so trusting, so docile, and pushed it open. Her whole body was strung taut as she waited for a sound. The slobbery moan that finally reached her ears was the Holy Grail she’d been waiting for.

  “What have you done?”

  Tulah entered the bedroom. The scene was just as she’d imagined, so much so that it almost startled her. Felton on his knees, hovering over Dinah, trying to lift her head onto his lap, it sliding off gracelessly, Felton pushing the hair back from her dull, unseeing eyes, wiping at the strings of blood and saliva and then, realizing the truth, fluttering his doughy hands about her head, her shoulders, not knowing where to touch her now that she was dead. It was picture perfect. Felton wailed again, only able to repeat himself, his voice curdling in his throat.

  “What have you done?”

  Sister Tulah walked to the bookcase against the wall, shaking her head.

  “Oh, Felton, no. It is what you have done.”

  Felton’s head was still bowed over Dinah’s mangled body. Tulah gazed down at him pitilessly as he struggled with snatches of words.

  “What? How? Why?”

  Tulah ran a finger lightly over some of the oddments decorating the top of the bookcase. A tangled ball of twine. Half a cracked geode. Two short pencils with erasers chewed down to the nubs. The dried shell of an armadillo. Boys’ things. His things. She wished Felton would turn around and look up at her. She wanted to see his face.

  “You know, Felton. As long as we’ve been together, you’ve probably heard me preach every single verse of the Gospel. Every single one.”

  Felton’s hunched shoulders were heaving, his hands still flapping aimlessly about him like wings. Sister Tulah could see his fingers in the lamp light, sticky with tendrils of pale-pink blood.

  “But I don’t think I’ve ever told you my favorite verse from the Bible. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone, come to think of it. Why would I? But now, I think I’d like you to know.”

  She slipped her hand underneath the armadillo shell. Felton had fallen to his heels and begun to rock back and forth, childlike, holding his knees to his chest.

  “It’s from the Book of Deuteronomy, which should come as no surprise to you. Chapter thirty-two, verse forty-two. Shall I recite it? It reads, I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.”

  Felton only stammered.

  “Why? Why?”

  Tulah grasped the bone handle of the short, sickle knife, being careful not to let her fingers graze any part of the blade. All the poison needed was a pinprick.

  “Because she wanted to save your life. Dinah was weak, just like you. She was craven, just like you. Now, Rowena was many things, but a coward she was not. How you two were delivered of her, I cannot say.”

  Tulah dropped her hand to her side, holding the knife down low. She tried to think of something else to say, something else to goad Felton, to spur him into anger. She needed him to turn around. She needed him to see it coming.

  “So do not ask me what I have done. Ask it of yourself.”

  Tulah waited as Felton continued to rock. His voice was changing, from confused mutterings to a measured, singsong cadence. With his head still down, his face mashed into his knees, Sister Tulah could barely make out what he was saying.

  “Red…of Jack…yellow…fellow.”

  She was shuddering with impatience. This was it. This was the time. His time. Felton had risen up against her and now he would fall. Now he would be no more.

  “Red on…friend of Jack…on yellow…a fellow.”

  The bone handle was sweating against Sister Tulah’s palm. Her fingers twitched and she opened her mouth, her breath coming in heavy, yawning gulps. Turn around. Turn around. Turn around.

  “Red on black, friend of Jack. Red on yellow, kill a fellow.”

  Felton was rocking faster and faster, his voice manic, almost rabid. Sawing, like the screech of a crow.

  “Red on black, friend of Jack. Red on yellow, kill a fellow.”

  His right hand slid down to his jacket pocket.

  “Red on black.”

  Tulah caught the movement and edged forward.

  “Friend of Jack.”

  Felton’s hand was withdrawing.

  “Red on yellow.”

  A glint of something metal between his fingers. And something else.

  “Kill a fellow.”

  Sister Tulah bared her teeth and lunged.

  *

  Felton had known what he was walking into. He had not known about the jar of poison on the desk or the knife on the bookcase or what would befall Dinah, but he had seen the crooked path, the lowering skies of crimson and amber, the branches and the talons and the ash. The white Snake in the sky had shown him, the Lord had shown him, and when the rare coral snake had wound its way through the dirt in front of Felton’s camper that afternoon, its red, yellow, and black bands flashing in the sunlight, he had known then, too. The tree, the snake, the cross, the crow. Felton had walked into Tulah’s house unafraid and he was unafraid even now. Keening, yes, ripped apart, his mouth forming words he couldn’t hear himself, but unafraid, still.

  Felton threw himself backward against the leg of the desk and kicked out at Tulah, just as she brought the knife down. She stumbled, narrowly missing his shoulder as he twisted away and kicked again at her shins, throwing her off balance. Felton scrambled to get his legs underneath him, smashing his back into the wobbly bookcase. The desk chair had fallen between them, curbing Tulah’s reach as she swung wildly again. She thrust the chair to the side and started to lunge once more, but by then Felton was on his feet, his hand fully out of his pocket, his arm outstretched, the tiny brass cross Juniper had given him clutched between his fingers, and the coral snake coiling over it and around his wrist. Felton knew it would not harm him. Sister Tulah froze, her arm mid-strike. She was terrified of snakes. And this one bore bands of death.

  Felton had only one word for Tulah.

  “No.”

  They stared at one another, panting. Tulah’s eye was lurid with hysteria and horror. The snake’s head dipped down and slithered over Felton’s thumb. Tulah suddenly screamed an unearthly howl and leapt to Felton’s left side, trying simultaneously to get away from the snake and slash at him with the knife. Felton pivoted around her, still holding out his arm, warding her off, as he backed out the door. She came at him again, stabbing erratically, trying to rush him, but Felton stayed always just out of reach, keeping Sister Tulah at arm’s length with the snake and the cross. They circled one another in the dark hallway, the moonlight glinting off steel and brass, until Felton felt his foot slip backward off the top stair.

  As he stumbled and swung his arm out to regain his balance, Sister Tulah saw her opportunity and smashed her full weight into Felton’s left side, trying to send him crashing down the stairs. Felton wheeled, grappling with her, the
bulk of her body pinning him against the wall, her right arm raised, straining crosswise against his, the coral snake hissing and snapping in the air between them. Her eye, so close to his, was a lake of pale fire, and Felton knew that she was stronger than him, knew that she had bested him. Knew it was over. He felt his bandaged arm weakening, saw the knife coming down, and he closed his eyes against it.

  There was nothing left. Felton threw himself against her with all his might and filled the night with glass.

  *

  It wasn’t until the key was swinging in the ignition and the Cutlass cranked that Ramey finally felt she could breathe. She rested her hand on the gearshift.

  “You think we’re safe?”

  Beside her in the rumbling car, Judah frowned. He was staring straight ahead with unfocused eyes.

  “She took the money. And I said what needed to be said.”

  “Do you think she’ll still come after us?”

  “I don’t know. I think she may want to. That doesn’t change things for us, though.”

  Judah slid forward in his seat and craned his neck to look high up out the windshield. Ramey leaned over the steering wheel to follow his gaze. The blood-tinged Hunter’s Moon was above the tree line now. Judah turned to her and shot her a crooked smile; the one she loved so much.

  “It ain’t the sunset. But we’re riding off anyhow.”

  Ramey smiled back. They were doing it. They were really and truly doing it. She shifted the Cutlass into reverse and glanced over her shoulder to back out onto the highway. Ramey wasn’t looking when the crash, and the scream, pierced the darkness.

  “What the…”

  She spun around and flipped on the headlights. The sudden, dazzling beam illuminated Sister’s Tulah church, her house, and—Ramey almost screamed herself—her body, back arched, arms flung out, a wrought iron spike from the graveyard fence rising up from the center of her chest. They were too far away her to see her face, but as the Elders rushed down from the front porch, Ramey watched Tulah’s wrists flap feebly once before her head slumped to the side. The Elders gathered around, blocking her view, and Ramey looked upward.