by John McManus
Figuring he was making fun of her, she said nothing.
“My name’s Austin. You a Christian?”
Betsy had never set foot in church, but Floyd was a Methodist, Ma a Baptist, and Jimmy Church of God. “I ain’t anything.”
“Your dog died so I could meet you. You scared of Satanists?”
“Guess not,” said Betsy, ready for anything that saved her from walking home.
“Then how about our date?”
“Okay,” she said, bringing Austin trotting around the counter. He propped her chin in his finger. She clenched up, but to her surprise it felt nice. He tasted of clove smoke. As he breathed heat into her body, she trembled at the energy amassing inside her. She didn’t worry about the cops nabbing her, not even as Austin drove them over into Letcher County, to a brick ranch house at the foot of a ridge.
In the den of that place lay two black-haired girls, one fat and one thin, playing a shoot’em-up video game. “My new friend from Pike County,” Austin said to them.
A boy on the couch, thirteen or so, his hair also black, turned to look, but the girls didn’t budge from their bean bag. “What makes you a Satanist?” asked the fat one, facing the TV.
“Ain’t sure,” Betsy said.
“Are you one? Tell the truth.”
“I’m one cause of the men around here, and Helen too,” said the skinny girl, pausing her game so she could indicate the fat girl.
“I’ll do what you say.”
“Listen,” the skinny girl said, now scrutinizing Betsy. “Five dudes from my stepdad’s road crew up in Beefhide. Afterward he wouldn’t quit the job, my mom wouldn’t leave, and they all go to the Church of God. Who’s God’s enemy?”
Betsy understood to reply, “Satan.”
“So what makes you a Satanist?”
“He lives with me. His name’s Jimmy.”
“We’ll add him to our list. I’m Wendy.”
“I’m Zacky,” the couch boy said.
“Pleasure,” Betsy said, and it was. They wouldn’t be telling their names if she couldn’t stay. Hopeful that the worst had passed, she hugged Austin’s neck. He squeezed her back. And when Wendy said, “You’re safe,” she nearly sobbed aloud at how easily she and the Satanists might never have met.
They fed Betsy ice cream, then got out a legal pad and read out some names. There were schoolkids, teachers, cousins, doctors, cops, an Exxon clerk who’d banned them from his store. Get your nasty asses out, that man had said, for which he would die. Was Betsy okay with it? She nodded. “Prove it,” the fat girl said.
“That’s Helen,” Wendy said again.
“The dog I put to sleep today wasn’t mine.”
“At Austin’s vet?”
“It wasn’t even sick. It had three legs, but I was stealing the shot to use on Jimmy.”
“Listen, I said you’re safe here, but only if we’re safe. Cops want us gone.”
“I don’t mind,” Betsy said, without stopping to think.
“Then you can be one of us,” Wendy said. “Prepare for your ceremony.”
Betsy let herself be led outside. The others gathered in a circle. Night was falling on the hollow. Austin and Zacky lit lighters whose flames obscured the ground, giving Betsy a sense of hovering in space. “In the name of Satan,” they all intoned, as she shook with relief, “ruler of earth, chief of the serfs, I command the dark to bestow its power,” and so forth, straight on into Lucifer’s vow, growing louder, while up the valley a coyote screamed back at them like some organic siren.
The next day Wendy drove Betsy to the Save-A-Lot in Whitesburg for hair dye. Back at the house she applied it to Betsy’s hair during her soap operas. She lent Betsy one of her black shirts and one of Austin’s. Betsy was hoping to learn more chants, but there weren’t any. Zacky showed her how to play Tomb Raider. When Austin got home, he snuggled up to her on the carpet. Breathing to match his breath, she tried her best not to move until dinner, frozen pizza, which they ate on the couch during Buffy.
“What’s the plan for tomorrow?” Betsy asked after a while.
“What do you mean?” Austin said.
“Like what will we do?”
“I’ve got my work.”
“I mean long-term. Tomorrow, but also in general.”
“If you want,” said Wendy, “you can fly to the moon, but we’re staying put.”
Later, in his room, Austin let Betsy keep her clothes on and even slept in his own clothes, “So I won’t have to bother with it in the morning.”
“Do you like your job?” she asked.
“I wish I were a girl so I could stay home for All My Children.”
“So you’re saving up money?”
“Saving for what?”
“I’m asking you. Like for school?”
“No, I’m thinking I’ll just hop trains.” His words were slow and measured, as if he’d weighed the merits of trains against the merits of school.
“Can you still do that?”
“No law against it. How do you have fun?”
“Hang out, mostly.”
“I’d quit, but Wendy won’t let me. She and Helen watch Days of Our Lives.”
All night under the covers Austin never unclasped her bra. It was the same on the nights after. A few times he pressed Betsy’s palm to the blond fuzz on his belly, but mostly they just cuddled. She came to feel safe with him, and she liked the faraway burn of his wide eyes; still, it wasn’t long after she’d denied Jesus the deceiver that she decided her new boyfriend was stupid.
He didn’t know who the president was. Nor did he know his own parents’ names or their ages. What bothered Betsy was how he didn’t even mind. She’d dropped out herself, but she still wondered stuff, like what came before the beginning of time? Austin said he’d never considered that. He thought Tennessee was a part of Kentucky. There used to be Indian cities where you could ride around on mammoths; he didn’t care. He tried to suck milk out of her breasts, complained when there was none. “Can I ask you something?” he said one morning in bed.
“Shoot,” said Betsy.
“How often do you think. . .” He seemed to trail off.
“How often do I think what?”
“No, how often do you think?”
“Like per minute?”
“Like how many times.”
“It’s hard to count.”
“For real?” he asked, which was when Betsy began to fall out of love. Not just with Austin. Back when Wendy had first spoken about the road crew, she’d struck Betsy as wise. Now, after days on end of her pulling Helen’s hair over nothing, smacking her for winning video games, she seemed compulsively violent. Every dinner was frozen pizza. Never was there a prayer to Lucifer. Afraid that the Satanists might sense her disdain and banish her to Jimmy, she devised plans for mass killings, like gassing the shaft of the Leary Mine.
“Cops?” Wendy retorted.
“We’ll kill them too.”
“Don’t be a moron.”
“But the list.”
“Satan ain’t about killing, it’s about power.”
“He,” said Helen, as if they had a stake in Satan’s gender.
“So the list was some joke?”
“If we kill in Kentucky,” said Wendy, maneuvering her avatar across a chasm, “we’ll get stuck in Kentucky.”
“How about Florida?”
“Thousands of miles away,” said Austin, reaching his stupid hand toward her. She had only wanted to seem useful. She’d sworn to have her heart torn out should she betray the oath, but no one needed her. She excused herself, not that they cared, and went wandering onto an old goat trail. It climbed to a high meadow where azaleas bloomed red-orange against the green hills. She paused there to take in the vista. Half the men on their list were down below, in a coal mine. A methane explosion could end their lives, but the Satanists were just kids, scared kids without imagination. To worship somebody, even Satan, Betsy believed, you needed a range of imagination.
As if the cops had read her mind, a siren came slicing through the valley, its wail alien to a landscape whose only manmade sight was their house. It slowed, became stationary. Run and hide, she was thinking when the house burst into flame.
Perplexed, she sat down on a rock. It was spreading quickly. Do something, she thought, poking at a skin of clay coating the rock, but she couldn’t remember how you prayed to Satan. Were her friends burning alive?
When the siren fell silent, she heard only crackling flames, tree limbs in the wind.
It occurred to her why the fire had metastasized so fast: the cops had arrested the Satanists for arson, and only then had they doused the place in gasoline.
Strangely empty of fear, Betsy hiked down the opposite side of the ridge. In the valley, where the trail met the road, she came to a place called Beech’s Store.
“Seeking a ride to Florida,” she told the Mayfield Dairy man.
“Anything for you,” the milkman said, letting her into his truck. He drove them onto the highway. “Hear about that fire?” he said.
“Ain’t from these parts.”
“Devil worshipers burned their house to a crisp.”
They were coming into a steep gorge. “Why do they worship the devil?” Betsy asked, keeping watch on the man’s reflection while her eyes followed the river.
“Who knows, but those kids have been lurking for years. Fire was God’s blessing.”
“Huh.” A blessing, thought Betsy, taking stock of his hanging cross, his Jesus fish, his John 3:16 sticker. Red dots on the radar detector were blinking as if in code. Something didn’t seem right. “Why’s the river going upstream?” she asked, reorienting herself to realize they were traveling north into the Kentucky hills again.
“Like I’m driving to Florida with a truck of milk,” said her driver, chuckling as if Betsy was a holy fool.
“Stop,” she demanded, right at the Pike County line, so that when he did coast to a halt, it was at the foot of the drive leading to the Daniel Boone Trailers.
•
Gazing up that eroded slope, Betsy could see the bench swing, her bedroom window, and Jimmy’s Dodge Daytona. Full of the adrenal fear that had been wearing her down ever since her pa had split, she decided to steal that car from Jimmy. Upon her vow, the dread didn’t recede. I’ll never return, she swore, standing in place, but still it surged. I’ll be just a few minutes. I’ll shoot Jimmy with his rifle, and that did it; now she could wend her way uphill, recalling memories of Pa. Turnip had been his name. He spoke Québécois French, assembled clocks for fun, worked at the hardware store until one day he up and quit. Could it be he’d grown tired of missing his soaps? There was one in particular; had it been All My Children? “You’re mocking me,” Irene had replied, reaching for the cast-iron skillet, which she hefted and swung into Turnip. He slumped over, blood trickling out of his temple onto one of his clocks. “I’ll do worse,” Irene threatened while Betsy ran to the crawlspace, where she hid while her father staggered off toward Canada.
At the top of the hill Betsy found Jimmy squinting at her from beneath the Daytona. His shirt was drenched in oil. “Know what you did to Alpha,” he said.
Betsy froze. “That dog had cancer,” she said, vibrating with fear as Jimmy scooted out from under the car.
“I could send you to prison.”
“I’ll find you a new dog.”
“No, Betsy, take a load off. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
To call her by her name worked like a voodoo spell. She took a seat on the swing. “I don’t like black hair,” Jimmy said.
“Sorry,” she said.
“It’s all right. We’ve missed each other.”
He sat down next to her and leaned in. The scent of his deodorant, along with the pattern of the electric lines, sent Betsy to the brink of breakthrough after breakthrough. The timing increased along with Jimmy’s little kisses. It was her first spell of what the prison nurse would call a form of epilepsy. The déjà vu was the prodrome; the seizure was when her memories vanished entirely. Afterward she awoke in Jimmy’s arms as if the Satanists had been a colossal dream. In some valley there’d been a fire, but when; why?
Jimmy was hugging her. “Tired of Pop-Tarts. Fix me breakfast.”
At the window, frying sausage, Betsy found no eyes meeting hers from the windows of other trailers. No one was out there. “If I betray my oath,” she murmured, “bury me in ocean sand in an eternity of oblivion,” but this already felt like oblivion. The trailer court was called Daniel Boone because its residents had died in the 1800s and the remains were a fool’s daydream. She shook off that uncanny fear and thought, Jimmy calls me pretty, wants me near. Was it selfish not to love him back? Had she confused him with something else? I’ll flee tomorrow, but not today, and not today, and not today, until day thirty, when a judge released the Satanists from detention. Betsy was frying the morning meat again when she saw them climbing the drive to fetch her: Austin, Wendy, Helen, Zacky, the neighbors’ pit bulls roaring at them as they took in the squalor.
Before they could knock, she opened the door. “We’re going to Florida,” said Wendy, skinnier than ever. Helen had gained ten pounds.
“We’re in trouble and so are you,” Helen added, crowding onto the little porch beside Wendy and holding her hand.
“How’s your ma?” said Austin, as Betsy backed inside, ashamed of her home.
“Ma lives in Frankfort.”
“With Jimmy?” asked Wendy, following her in.
“You remember Jimmy’s name?”
“Those cops read us our list a thousand times.”
“That could be any Jimmy,” Betsy said, suddenly afraid. The heading had read MEN WE WILL KILL SOON.
“Is that him?” said Zacky, pointing to the woods, where Jimmy was emerging holding a rabbit by its ears. A bullseye of blood stained its puffy cottontail.
“We don’t want any,” he told the Satanists, pushing past them into the trailer.
“Betsy’s leaving with us,” said Wendy, as Jimmy kissed Betsy on the mouth.
“Oh, you’re the ones burned your house down.”
“Sheriff burned it in case we turned him in,” said Helen.
“I know you by your hair. Turn him in why?”
“For touching me, for starters.”
“Wouldn’t touch you for all the gold in Fort Knox.”
“Your bunny pooped,” said Zacky.
They all glanced to see turd pellets dripping out of the rabbit. “What gun you shoot it with?” said Wendy, as she drew a revolver out of her jeans pocket.
She aimed the weapon at Jimmy’s chest. He stepped closer. “Look, shithead, I pay for her ma’s hospital,” he said, as if Irene didn’t belong to the indigents’ ward. As if Betsy should care one way or the other. She should feel no fonder of her ma than of Jimmy; still, she listened to the oil boiling and pictured a blind man clawing at his eyes. The notion grew into a scene: oil on fire, trailers on fire, her friends falling to their knees in admiration. With heat in her heart, she crossed to the stove, singing, Good-bye, Pike County, farewell for a while. We’ll come back again when we’ve panned out our pile.
“Your voice is lovely,” Austin said.
Startled out of her will, she backed away from the skillet. The song had seemed a proper thing for Jimmy to ponder in his last moments of sight, but a glimpse of Austin’s naïve face reminded her there were others casting their lot with her. Let sleeping dogs lie.
“Breakfast done yet? I’m starved.”
Betsy extinguished the flame. “Have at it,” she told Jimmy, heading for the door.
“You do construction?” Wendy asked.
“Disability,” she heard Jimmy reply as she walked outside.
“But you worked the Beefhide crew?”
“Wasn’t gonna say in front of your friends.”
“So you know me by my hair.”
“Be calm,” said Jimmy, just before the shot rang out.
&nbs
p; There was a ghostly echo as Betsy spun around. From the porch she could see only a toppling silhouette, but she knew Jimmy was dead before he thumped to the carpet. What if he really had been paying for the hospital? What if they shoved Irene into an alley?
Make it okay, Betsy prayed, choking on a scream, because what if Jimmy had been her soul mate?
“We vowed to kill or tear our hearts out,” Wendy said, as if to explain it.
“You told us that was just words,” Austin said.
“Everything’s just words. What was that song?”
“Jimmy wrote it about me,” she managed to reply. “It’s called ‘Sweet Betsy from Pike.’”
“I like it,” Wendy said, leading the way outside. “It’s got a nice melody. Maybe you can teach it to me on our way to Florida.”
•
In the Daytona they coasted downhill into Letcher County, Helen at the wheel. She braked in every curve. No one spoke. They siphoned gas near the old train depot. It didn’t feel to Betsy like Austin was sitting next to her. She felt prohibited from asking how the group had found her, or how they’d gotten to Pike County. The Satanists weren’t people you asked questions of—which was why, when she’d seen them coming, she’d planned to join them only as far as the state line. How to admit, now that they were passing Cumberland High, that she’d decided to return to school? She wanted curious friends. Pull over, she thought. Let me out on the left. It had happened before. She tried to recall how it had turned out then, or was it several times, speeding into the Cumberland Gap Tunnel, blinking, wishing, clasping Austin’s hand, wishing again, holding her breath through the tunnel so the wish would come true.
Did they take 25E? Did she sing again? Had Wendy meant her praise of the song? Where had they found the gun? Who else did they admit to killing? She would be asked and asked, but the drive through Tennessee was one long blank spell; her only memory was of a memory, along with the church marquee that jogged it. Submission to God is your softest pillow. In the induction ceremony, that first night, she’d lowered herself onto dewy grass while the Satanists held their lighters high. To lie under those flames had felt like floating in space. She’d flinched for pain that never came. Peace as she thanked her new god by all his names. “Finally, I swear to kill,” she’d said at the oath’s end, noticing a shift in diction, as if Wendy had penned that last line but copied the rest from a book.