by Billy Coffey
“Your daddy’s gonna want you at church in the morning.”
“We’ll be there. Promise.”
“No drinking?”
“I’m not old enough.” Answering, but not really.
Angela’s thumb twitched over the Play button on the remote, no doubt torn between what she feared would happen should she let Cordelia go traipsing off with a boy like Hays Foster for the night and how to continue on with that Nikki-sized hole now in her own heart. I do believe Cordelia felt a pang worse than sadness, having to stand there and watch.
Couldn’t be easy for a woman like her momma, working five and sometimes six days a week for the man she’d meant to marry, having to deal with the woman he’d married instead, and now knowing the boy the two of them had brought into the world was sweet on her own daughter. Running the register and stocking the shelves, filling in back at the meat department when Tully Wiseman was too drunk to come in. You think about all that, I guess it wasn’t a wonder Angela pined so for her soaps.
“Okay,” she said. “Since it’s Scarlett and her birthday, and since you’re promising me there’ll be no skin slapping.”
“That’s gross.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” Cordelia told her. “Love you, Momma.”
“Love you back. You tell Scarlett me and your daddy wish her well.”
They kissed cheeks, Cordelia tilting her hips away as she did, not wanting her momma to feel what she had in her pocket. Angela took her place in the recliner and fumbled with the remote as Cordelia bounded out the door and off the front porch, skirting the beds of rosebushes Angela kept (prizewinners those roses were, blue ribbons eight straight years at the county fair down in Mattingly). She held the sleeping bag tight against her chest. Inside the shiny new Volkswagen revving in the drive, Scarlett Bickford leaned over and pushed the passenger door open. A pale set of hands belonging to Naomi Ramsay reached from the backseat through the window, waving.
And there, friend, is where it all started. Right there in the Vests’ drive. I can see Cordy right now with that diamond bracelet in her pocket, those three girls so happy and full of life, blind to the hell just ahead. Even now, I can see them smiling.
-2-
Scarlett Bickford’s eighteenth birthday had been at the front of every teenaged mind round here on account of who she was. Every kid whose folks’d let them stay out past nine planned to be at Harper’s Field that Saturday night, if only to be able to show up for school Monday morning and say they’d been. I guess that’s the sort of fame only possible in a little place like this, where the fastest way to teenaged popularity is to come up with your daddy not only mayor, but pretty much the richest man in town. Had to be the reason everybody thought Scarlett been born of sweet dreams and magic, cause that girl was homely as a barn owl and twice as awkward. And there was that awful thing with Scarlett’s arms, too.
She pulled her sleeves tight against the palms of her hands as Cordy flung herself into the brand-new Beetle the mayor had gifted her that same morning. Bright yellow with a black ragtop, looked like a giant bumblebee.
Scarlett threw the car into reverse and flashed a crooked smile as she raced for the road. “You get it?”
Cordy dug in her jeans. She pulled out her fist and opened it soft and careful like a secret, making Scarlett squeal.
“He’s gonna love it, I know he is.”
“He better,” Cordy said. “I did so much sneaking around today, I’m afraid of my own shadow. Momma’ll kill me if she decides to go looking.” She handed the bracelet to Scarlett, who tucked it into the pocket of her shirt. “Hope that brings you luck.”
“I need all the luck I can get. Ain’t like I can fall back on my good looks.”
“Shut up. That’s not so.”
Scarlett didn’t bother arguing the point, knowing it was true. I believe some part of her suspected Cordy knew it as well. “How much you lie about tonight?”
“Didn’t lie at all, if you got to know.”
From the backseat came, “Then why you come busting out that door like your trailer’s on fire?”
That’d be Naomi Ramsay. Now you may recognize her last name as that of our fair preacher. One of two children by David and Belle Ramsay, the other of which I’ll get to soon enough. Naomi was—is—a kind enough girl, nearly as popular as Scarlett and just as pretty as Cordelia. Prettier, if you ask me. She kept her head down to her phone.
“Cordy’s got forty-seven shout-outs on her MeTime post. Holy cow. Everybody’s gonna be at the field tonight.”
Scarlett smiled—just the way she’d planned things.
“What’d you bring?” Cordy asked.
Scarlett pointed behind them to the mound of supplies next to Naomi. “Black skirt, that red sweater you like, so much makeup it’d make a TV preacher’s wife break the tenth commandment, and a sleeping bag big enough for two.”
“Yeah, well, don’t you—”
“Don’t worry, got that covered too,” Scarlett said. “Hays was good enough to buy some for me a couple days ago. He’ll be waiting up there.”
Cordy’s eyes widened. “He didn’t get them from the grocery, did he?”
“Yes, Cordelia, your teenaged boyfriend bought condoms from his daddy’s store and got your momma to ring them up. Are you nuts?”
“Can we please stop talking about this?” Naomi said. She held her hands over her ears, feigning embarrassment. “You two realize who you’re trying not to talk about and who’s in the backseat, right?”
“Sorry,” Scarlett said. She chuckled anyway.
Naomi shook her head and rummaged through the clothes Scarlett had brought for the night. “You’re gonna freeze in these things,” she said.
Scarlett chuckled again. “Doesn’t matter. I won’t be in them long.”
“Stop it!” Naomi was screaming it now, making Scarlett double over, forcing the little car to veer toward the middle of the lane-and-a-half road.
When she got the Beetle back where it needed to be, Scarlett looked at Naomi in the rearview. “Seriously, is he coming?”
“Said he would,” Naomi said. “He’s just waiting for me to text him so he can sneak y’all’s moonshine from Chessie.”
“Y’all’s?” Cordy asked.
Naomi smirked and studied her phone. “You remember prom? No way I’m drinking that stuff again. Couldn’t control myself.”
“You could stand to lose a little control,” Scarlett said.
Naomi shook her head. “Don’t you say that. It scared me. But you better be careful tonight. You know how my brother is now. You can get as dolled up as you want, Scarlett, it might not matter. John David ain’t like he was.”
“Tonight’s the night. I can feel it. I’m a woman now.” Scarlett leaned back in the seat and let the wind play with her hair through the window.
Cordy rolled her eyes. “Did Hays get the key?”
“Snuck it from Medric yesterday morning when he was helping get Henrietta Slaybaugh ready for burying. Which is gross, Cordy. I mean, you know that, right? Hays hangs out in Medric’s basement more than he does at his daddy’s grocery.”
“Hays is complicated,” Cordy said. “Says it’s an honor, caring for the dead.”
Scarlet mumbled under her breath, something about hoping Hays washed good before he got all handsy with Cordy that night, else he’d be smelling like Henrietta’s dead old body. He might’ve gotten Scarlett what she hoped she would need that night, but it didn’t change the fact she never had liked that boy. “Anyway, he’s got the key. Said he’d meet us up there.”
“What key?” Naomi asked.
And then silence. Scarlett gripped the steering wheel hard with both hands. She winced like her arms had gotten to itching.
“Hey? I said what key? Hays is up where right now? Y’all tell me what’s going on.”
Scarlett looked at Cordelia, who said, “You better tell her.”
“Tell me what?”
“Pa
rty’s not at the field,” Scarlett said. “We’re going to the mines.”
That was, so far as I can tell, the only thing Naomi Ramsay could’ve heard that would make her drop her phone. It fell straight off her lap and thudded on the floor, and she never once reached down to pick it up.
“The mines? No way. No way, Scarlett. Nobody’s supposed to go up there. Did you know about this, Cordelia?”
Cordy only said, “It’s her birthday, Naomi.”
“You think I’m going to spend my eighteenth with a bunch of underclassmen?” Scarlett asked. “No, thank you. Your brother don’t want to hang around a bunch of kids either. We’ll be alone up there, have the whole place to ourselves, and all the while everybody else’ll be down in Harper’s Field wondering what’s going on. It’ll be epic.”
“Daddy’ll kill me,” Naomi said. “Your daddy’ll kill you. And I don’t even want to guess what Bucky will say, Cordelia. He’s the town constable.”
“Nobody will know,” Scarlett said. “We’ll go and we’ll have fun and we’ll be in church tomorrow morning and nobody’ll know different. So relax, okay?”
But Naomi couldn’t. And Cordy didn’t look to be relaxing much either. I don’t know what goes through the mind of a young person, friend; they are wholly different creatures from ourselves. It’s that peculiar sense of invincibility that blossoms in a heart not yet tested, and an arrogance to believe the world they frolic in has already been tamed. How else can you explain why Scarlett Bickford decided to take her friends to a place as black as any you’ll find in this world? Ain’t a soul in these parts who don’t know the mines at Campbell’s Mountain is haunted. They belong to no man and no family. That mountain belongs only to the witch.
-3-
What we in Crow Holler call “the mines” ain’t really mines at all. They’re more five deep gashes cut out of the bottom of Campbell’s Mountain in some forgotten time by some forgotten people for some forgotten reason. Scarlett’s daddy based his entire political life on the idea it was his olden kin who first dug those holes, under the orders of President Washington himself, who held there was enough gold hereabouts to fund a new and God-ordained country. Believe that as you will. Others had their own stories.
Cordelia had been raised on her daddy’s tales of how it was his people who’d first come to the Holler and found the Indians here using the mines to sacrifice their own to gods of stone and earth. All that come to an end when Cordy’s kin showed them savages the love of the Lord by killing them all.
And then a course you had Naomi’s version. To this day, Reverend Ramsay will use the mines in his sermons, telling folk they’re a doorway to the underworld and how every soul alive is just a breath away from hell. That’s the thing about them Christians, ain’t it? They see the devil everywhere.
Everybody agrees on one thing though. At some point, an evil inside that mountain got loosed. Whether that’s the truth or it was for some other reason, the mines got boarded up and the land around them fenced and gated sometime when Bucky Vest was a mere glimmer in his great-great-granddaddy’s eyes. Not a soul lived near Campbell’s Mountain for generations until Stu Graves come along in the fifties and claimed seventy acres of rock and trees a few miles east of the fence for farming. Not even Bucky drove up there on his constabling duties to check the padlocks. He didn’t much have to. It was the legends that kept everyone away from that place. It was the fear and not the fence.
The sun had sunk behind the ridges by the time Scarlett arrived. Hays had left the gate open. Scarlett drove past big black signs with orange letters that spelled NO TRESPASSING and DANGER and WARNING: NO ENTRY UPON PENALTY OF LAW. Cordy made a joke that nobody found funny about how her daddy would have to arrest them all.
Over a hill past the fence sits Number Four, the biggest of the holes in the mountain. Just past there rests a small meadow. That’s where Hays Foster had parked his old Camaro, in a space of windless air where a bonfire burned. He kept his mop of black hair hidden under the hood of his sweatshirt and waved.
Scarlett stopped next to Hays’s car and put the shifter into Park. None of the three girls moved. The world beyond lay covered in ancient oaks and spruces that sagged, either out of tiredness or the weight of where they’d been cursed to grow. Tangles of briars and weeds littered the area around the meadow, which itself looked more dead than alive.
No part a Crow Holler’s ever been what you call picturesque. This town’ll never show up on a postcard of the Blue Ridge. But those mines? They look more than ugly. They look . . . I don’t know, friend . . . taken.
“I don’t like this,” Naomi said.
Scarlett turned around. “Stop. Please, Naomi? It’s my birthday, and we’re going to have fun. Okay? You know why we’re doing this, right?”
Naomi looked at her phone again, turned it over. “Right,” she whispered.
“Naomi? Why are we doing this?”
She couldn’t say it, no matter how much Scarlett wanted to hear the words, and so Cordy said it for them both.
“Because there’s an end coming,” she said. “That’s why it’s just us tonight, Naomi. Me and you and Scarlett and Hays, because that’s the way it’s always been. Because graduation’s coming and the fun times will be gone, and all that’ll be left is to marry and grow old and hard. To be what our parents are now and what our kids will be after, because that’s how it is here. Right?”
“Right,” Naomi said.
Cordelia opened the door and grabbed her sleeping bag, smiling as Hays stepped away from the fire. He moved toward her and let his hood slip down, revealing a chin sharp enough to cut should you rub up against it. Their embrace was an awkward one, as if the two of them had not practiced it enough. He kissed her cheek. She took his hand.
Scarlett caught only a small glimpse of that meeting, though it looked more than enough to shine a bright light over the lonely place inside her. Well, John David would be there soon.
“Let me out,” Naomi said. “I need to get by the fire.”
“Don’t be mad at me, Naomi. Please?”
“Too late. Let me out.”
Scarlett sighed and opened the door, flipping up the seat as she stood from the car. Naomi gathered her own sleeping bag and walked past like Scarlett was a shadow. I can’t blame her for acting so. Sure, it was Scarlett’s birthday. And sure, she was the most popular girl in town. But that didn’t excuse her from dragging her friends all the way up there just so she’d have a chance at Naomi’s own brother.
“You’ll still text him?” Scarlett asked.
Naomi kept walking, didn’t turn around. Through Cordelia’s laughter Scarlett heard, “I don’t have a choice now. Only way I’m getting through a night up here’s drunk out of my mind.”
Scarlett reached into the backseat for her things and bundled them all in her arms as Naomi and Cordelia checked in on MeTime to see how many kids had already made it to Harper’s Field. Hays had returned to his spot by the fire. Near enough to Cordelia but not with her, which pretty well sums up the way they’d always been, except for those five minutes in the back of Hays’s Camaro two months before, which Scarlett knew was about to upend his life. Hadn’t been a week since Scarlett and Cordy had been locked inside one of the stalls in the school bathroom, both of them kneeling over the toilet, a pregnancy test in Cordelia’s trembling hands. Cordelia was crying. Scarlett, having nowhere else to turn, suggested prayer while they waited. And just as He had all the other prayers that ever come out of Crow Holler, the Lord answered with a single word—Sorry.
No one but Scarlett knew. Cordelia had promised she’d tell Hays soon, then her parents. If there was any consolation, she said, it was that Angela couldn’t really say much. She’d gotten pregnant at seventeen too. Ain’t only sins of the father that come to visit in these parts, friend. The sins of the mother will get you just the same.
Scarlett skirted the fire and said, “Hey there, Hays. What’s up?”
He shrugged and waved the lighter i
n his hand. “Made the fire,” he said, then tucked the lighter away. A knife lay on the ground beside him, along with a chunk of fallen pine he’d begun to whittle.
“It’s a nice one. Really warm. You did great.” Great meaning Scarlett had nothing else to say.
He pointed to the bundle in her arms. “Where you going?”
“Gotta go change. John David’s coming. He’s bringing some of Chessie’s moonshine.”
“Oh, right.” He reached into his back pocket and tossed two condoms at Scarlett, who flinched as though they were diseased. She picked them up with her fingertips and hid them among the clothes in her arms. “There’s a path back there to the mines,” Hays said, and then waved over his shoulder. “Just don’t get off it. These woods’ll turn you around quick.”
“I won’t.”
Scarlett stood there long enough to be socially acceptable. At the far edge of the fire by the cars, Cordelia and Naomi were making a video. Naomi laughed. That was good. Hays had picked up his knife again, sharpening the hunk of wood in his hand to a point.
“Okay,” she said. “Well, I’ll be back.”
She’d stepped onto the path when Hays said, “Hey, Scarlett? Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.” Barely meaning it. “I’m glad you could come, Hays.” Not meaning it at all.
He shrugged again. “Cordy wanted to. I didn’t want her up here by herself. Without me, you know.”
“Gotta keep the monsters away, right?”
Hays stopped carving. He turned and looked with a seriousness that melted Scarlett’s expression. “That’s right exactly.”
“Hey,” Naomi called. She waved her phone. “He’s close.”
Scarlett grinned and moved on, leaving Hays with his knife and lighter. She went far enough down the path that he wouldn’t be tempted to sneak a peek. She didn’t think he would. Hays had Cordelia, after all. Once you seen a body like that, you wouldn’t care to see another.
Night pressed against her like cold fingers. She rushed as much as she could, pushing off her shoes and letting her jeans fall, snugging her plump thighs and wide hips—hips her momma had once said would someday be good for bearing grandchildren—into that tight little skirt. Even alone, she did not tarry in changing her shirt. Angela’s bracelet went on atop the sleeve of her sweater, and then Scarlett felt a shudder when she heard the grumbling engine coming up the hill because that meant he was there, John David was there, and I’d wager that thought brought all manner of others to her mind. John David and that look of faraway places in his eyes; those tattoos on his chest and forearms, eagles and globes and anchors and the strange straight lines everybody talked about; the buzz cut he’d kept even though he’d been back in the Holler a good three months by then.