by Jaye Wells
Never.
She turned left and marched with her head held high even as she ignored the pleading cries of the bear, which sounded a little too much like the pitiful thing was crying, “Stay! Stay!”
By the time she made it to Peter’s cabin, the sun was busy burning dew off the high grasses. The steamy air ruined her carefully curled hair, and made her dress wrinkle and cling in awkward places.
She paused on the bend of the road just before the cabin and took a deep breath. The humid air intensified the perfume of wood poppies and wet leaves. She closed her eyes and listened to the morning song of birds and the chatter of squirrels. She even listened extra hard for a song from the trees or the nearby creek, some mountain melody to bless her journey. When she heard nothing, she sighed and opened her eyes. The mountain had passed on its last chance to ask her to stay.
She stepped off the road and onto the gravel drive leading to the cabin and stopped. She’d expected to see Peter’s trunk open and his bags tucked inside waiting to snuggle hers on the long ride. Instead, the doors and trunk were closed tight, and a quick peek into the back window confirmed her worry that he hadn’t started loading the car at all.
She dropped her bag by the front fender. On her way to the front door, she resisted the urge to panic. Maybe he’d overslept. Or maybe he was excited too and wanted to wait for her so the packing of the car was an event. By the time her knuckles made contact with the door, she decided she was just being silly. Peter had made a promise. He knew how important it was for her to get out of Moon Hollow. He wouldn’t go back on his word. He was an author—their words weighed more than most people’s did.
She had to knock three times before he answered. When the door opened, her stomach dropped. His hair stood in tufts as if he’d just gotten out of bed, and, though he wore a pair of jeans, his T-shirt was on backwards, like he’d thrown it on just to answer the door.
“Hey, Ruby.” He didn’t sound disappointed to see her so much as disappointed in himself.
Gravity doubled. She struggled not let it pull her down.
“Why aren’t you ready?” She had no choice but to be direct with her question. Her plan was unraveling between her fingers.
“There’s been a change of plan.” His expression remained the same, but his body turned away from hers, as if he didn’t want her to see all of him as he lied.
“What do you mean?” Her voice sounded foreign, harder, betrayed. “We are leaving this morning. Right now. We’re leaving right now.” She stepped toward the door with a hand outstretched to … what? Grab him? Slap him? Anything, she realized. She’d do anything to make him stop looking at her like a stranger and admit that he was just fooling around and of course they were leaving. “Peter?”
He flinched as if she had really slapped him instead of letting her hand fall, useless, by her side. “Relax. We’re still leaving.”
She looked him right in his lying eyes. “When?”
“This afternoon.”
The remaining threads of the plan slipped from her fingertips. “No. It has to be now.”
He frowned at her, as if she’d spoken an alien language. “Relax, it’ll be fine. We’ll leave right after the Decoration.”
She shook her head slowly. Some internal knowledge she couldn’t explain told her that if they waited all would be lost. “It has to be now.” The naked desperation in her voice came from a deep place. It was the same place inside that had heard the mountain’s song before Mama died. The place where Ruby stopped being Ruby and became a part of something more.
“I don’t see why it’s such a big deal to wait a couple of hours.”
She couldn’t explain it to him. Not the truth, anyway. She didn’t understand it herself. Instead, she said, “If Daddy shows up he’ll never let me go.”
Peter smiled that smile he used when he took on his role of wise old man advising the dumb little girl. But he didn’t know as much as he wanted to believe. “It’ll be a miracle if your father shows up. And even if he does, he’ll be so drunk he won’t notice if we sneak off after.”
“Maybe so,” she admitted, “but Deacon Fry will definitely be there.”
He pulled back a fraction, as if the deacon’s name was a sudden, strong wind. “Granted, he could be a problem,” he said. “But you’re an adult, Ruby. No one can stop you if you really want to leave. You know that, right?”
Granny’s words came back to haunt her: The mountain won’t let you leave.
“Please, Peter. Let’s go. Okay? Let’s just go.”
He stepped forward and placed a hand on her arm. He looked annoyed, as if she were being unreasonable. It made her so mad she was half tempted to kick him in the shins, steal his keys, drive off in his car, and never look back. Let Peter stay and deal with whatever was coming.
“Something bad is going to happen,” she whispered. The words felt as if they came from something separate from herself.
He squeezed her arm. “No, it’s not. You’re just scared of change. It’s totally natural.”
She pulled away. “You don’t understand. This place—it holds on to people. If we don’t go now—”
“What?” he interrupted. “We’ll never go? That’s crazy.” He took a breath and when he continued his voice had softened. “I’m finally making some progress on my book. I need to stay to see the ceremony so I can put it in my story.”
“I’ve been to Decorations every year of my entire life. I’ll tell you what happens.”
“That’s not how it works. I need to see it for myself—the smells, the sounds. How the characters behave, what they say and don’t say.”
“The characters?”
He laughed a little. “The people, I mean.”
Her mama always told her that in every woman’s life there comes a time when she has to make the decision to be an adult. For Ruby, watching Peter, the man she’d pinned all her hopes on, casually toss aside his promise in order to use her family and neighbors as characters in a dumb book, she realized that time had come for her. Instead of arguing with him further, she marched down the steps.
“Ruby?”
She dipped down to pick up her bag, a souvenir of the time her mama had made her own escape.
“Come on. Don’t throw a tantrum,” Peter called. “I said we’d leave in a couple of hours.”
She stopped and turned to look at Peter, really look at him. “You are a liar, Peter West.”
He threw up his hands. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to get in the car and leave.”
“Jesus, I already told you, I will. I just need a little more material for the book. Just one more hour, okay?”
Why did people always do that? How many times had she heard her father say he just needed one more drink? Or her mama swear that she’d give Daddy one more chance after he’d left marks on her ribs?
The thing she figured out standing on that gravel drive watching Peter lie to her and himself was that “just one more” was the universal adult code for “I ain’t fooling nobody but myself.”
Just like her daddy was addicted to whiskey and her mama was addicted to being punished for her sins, Peter was addicted to pretending the world wasn’t real.
“I hope you get what you’re looking for,” she said. To herself she added, I hope I find what I need, too.
“Fine!” he shouted toward her retreating back. “But you’re not going to get very far without money.”
She smiled a secret smile he couldn’t see. Weighing down the right pocket of her coat was the money she’d taken from the bottom of the coffee tin. Over the years, she’d seen Mama stash a few dollars in there every now and then. Mama would always turn to her and put a finger over her lips. “It’s our secret.” She’d even taught Ruby how to cross her heart and hope to die, stick a needle in her eye. She’d never understood why the needle thing was added at the end since you’d already be dead.
It wasn’t much. The night before, she’d counted each cof
fee-scented bill three times, coming up with three hundred and seven dollars each time. If she hitchhiked all the way to Asheville, she would have enough left over to rent a small room and eat Cup O’ Noodles until she found a job waiting tables or something. Despite what Granny Maypearl had claimed when she warned Ruby not to run off with Peter, Ruby’s intention had never been to depend on him for money.
Back behind her, Peter cursed and slammed the cabin’s screen door. After the slam, more cursing followed, but they were muffled enough for her to know he’d retreated inside instead of following her. Still, she pumped her arms a little faster and turned her indignant march into a speed walk. She wasn’t really worried Peter would force her to stay for the Decoration.
He was more worried about his damned story than about her, anyway.
She did have one problem, though. The road from Peter’s cabin led straight down into town. If she stayed her course, she’d pass plenty of townsfolk on their way up to the cemetery. Even if she avoided Daddy and Granny Maypearl, there’d still be all those busy bodies that would report to Deacon Fry if they saw her sneaking out before the celebration began.
It was a generally accepted fact that every resident of Moon Hollow was required to attend the Decoration, barring grave illness. Over the years, she’d watched old men in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks attached pushed up Cemetery Hill by a handful of red-faced men, who sweated through their Sunday best before the sermons began. There was even one time when Mrs. Honeycutt made the climb the day after giving birth to that pest Darrell, who liked to look up girls’ dresses when he got older. She remembered the women whispering about how poor Mrs. Honeycutt had “torn real bad” during birth because Doc Fortenbury over in Big Stone Gap didn’t believe in peas otomies. At the time, Ruby couldn’t blame the doc since she’d never a big fan of peas, either, but she never could figure out what they had to do with giving birth. But Mrs. Honeycutt sure did look uncomfortable all day, and, once, after Mr. Honeycutt helped her stand up for prayer, Ruby saw a large dark spot on the back of her blue dress. That morning, Deacon Fry’s sermon had been about the blood of Christ washing away the sins of the world.
As she stomped down the road, a new plan popped into her head. It wasn’t the first time she’d considered doing it, but after her chat with Peter, things had changed, hadn’t they? She checked her watch. The church leaders always arrived at that cemetery early to help set up the stage and set out tables for the food. She’d have plenty of time to do it and no one would find out until the Decoration was done and she was already long gone from the mountain.
Peter might have broken his promise to her, but she’d damned sure wouldn’t leave before she fulfilled her own vow.
40
Bad Dreams
Deacon Fry
The morning of the Decoration, Deacon Fry woke up with the sun. He went downstairs to make some coffee, but on his way he found Sarah Jane sitting by a window in the living room. She didn’t move when he approached or respond when he softly called her name. She just stared out as if mesmerized.
The window faced west, and the morning mist still coated the peaks and ridges in the moody color that gave the Blue Ridge Mountains their name.
He didn’t want to startle her. Her moods had been so fragile lately. But just as he started to back out of the room, she spoke.
“Jack came to me in a dream last night.” She didn’t turn to look at him, and the words were spoken so softly that they sounded like a secret.
His hand reached for the back of a chair for support. His own dreams had featured Jack, too, but he didn’t dare tell her that. “Oh?”
“He looked terrible.” She let out a long shuddering breath and rubbed her arms, as if chilled. “And he told me terrible things, Daddy.”
The distance between them felt farther than just a few feet. He’d never known how to relate to his little girl. She had always been sort of like a living doll—pretty but best kept up on a shelf. Since Jack died, her porcelain had cracked and what was exposed wasn’t pretty or easy to ignore.
“It was just a dream, sweetheart.” Hadn’t he told himself that a dozen times for the last week? He hoped she believed it more than he had.
The back of her head shook back and forth. “He said you did a bad thing, Daddy.”
A cold burst of panic exploded in his gut. “Just a dream,” he said.
She didn’t hear him. “He said you killed your brother.”
“Sarah Jane—”
“Did you, Daddy? Did you kill Isaac?”
He closed his eyes and swallowed the icy gorge of panic. “That’s enough, Sarah Jane.”
“The time has come for revelation, Daddy.”
Every hair on his body stood at attention. This time the voice was not Sarah Jane’s but a deeper voice, a masculine one that seemed to come from some other place. His eyes flew open.
The chair was empty.
41
Jailbreak
Ruby
The dogs were restless. Instead of snapping at her through the cages when she walked past, they whined and paced. It should have been a relief, but it made her skin tingle like she’d been coated with the salve Mama used to use on her when she got the croup. The dogs might be acting odd, but across the yard, the bear was in the same corner it had been when she and Peter visited.
The backyard smelled of piss and dried shit. She didn’t recall that from last time, which meant Junior had been neglecting his cleanup duties. She gripped the bolt cutters tighter. She’d stolen them from Junior’s own storage shed. He never locked it because he said the hounds scared off anyone stupid enough to trespass on his property.
She struggled to get the cutters in place, but they kept banging against the cage door. The bear didn’t move or look up. She worried she was too late and the poor baby had already died from neglect … or fear. She stared hard at the ball of black fur. She held her breath and waited for the slightest movement, praying all the while that she wasn’t too late. Finally, the bear’s side rose a little and fell. She’d never been so relieved in her life.
“Hang tight, little one.” Even though Junior wasn’t home, this felt like whispering work, like prayer.
She tried again to seat the edges of the bolt cutter in the right spot. This time, it landed true. Luckily the door was low and she could brace herself against the side of the cage. Even with the good leverage, her muscles strained and her palms ached with the effort pushing the handles together. On her third try, the cutters slipped off the lock.
“Damn it,” she hissed.
The racket of metal on metal had not gotten a reaction from the bear, but for some reason her hissed curse caused it to raise its head. Its eyes seemed to have gotten larger since her last visit. “Poor baby,” she said. “You ain’t been eatin’ have you. Can’t say I blame you.” She eyed the dead flies floating in the pan of formula.
The bear just kept looking at her with that hopeless stare.
Were bears capable of hope? She knew they experienced other emotions, like anger. She’d heard lots of stories of mother bears tearing up people and property after someone harmed her cubs. Surely that meant mama bears—and their cubs—experienced love, too.
If Deacon Fry ever heard her talking that way he’d have a stroke.
“He’d tell me I was going to hell,” she confided in Bear. “But I don’t know why it’s wrong to think animals have feelings. My science teacher, Mrs. Price, told us all about how we came from monkeys and stuff. That means we’re animals, too.”
Bear continued to watch her.
“Anyway,” she said, “I think you can feel things. Don’t be mad at all people just because Junior is an asshole.” She glanced around to make sure no one heard her curse, but she realized that where she was going, people could probably curse whenever they wanted. Ruby had seen lots of TV shows where girls like her said all sorts of curses and were never dragged in front of a church deacon to confess their sins. “Shit,” she whispered. “Damn.” Then, “G
od damn it!”
One of the hounds bayed in response. That riled the rest of them up until they were all barking like fools.
Ruby got back to work. “I’ll have you out in no time, Bear.”
It took three more tries before the clippers finally broke through the lock. The instant it hit the ground, the dogs stopped barking. Just like that. One second they were carrying on and then next, nothing. The hounds lined up along the front of their cages watching her. A sound in the cage behind her brought her attention back to Bear.
The cub’s claws scratched at the concrete slab. She realized that it couldn’t stand on its own. She debated going in to help it, but hesitated. It was one thing to open a gate door so it could run off. It was something else altogether to enter the bear’s den and touch it. She’d lived in the mountains long enough to understand that a scared bear was dangerous, and this cub had lived in a constant state of terror most of its short life.
“Come on, now.” She pulled the cage door open. “You can do it.”
Bear pawed at the concrete again, but didn’t manage to gain any traction. A low whine escaped its small mouth. Ruby’s ribs felt too tight to contain her heart.
“All right,” she said, “I’m coming in but you behave yourself, you hear?”
Another bleat.
She propped the bolt cutters against the open door. She had to stoop down low to fit inside, but the cage was wide and deep enough to accommodate both her and the cub. Inside, the ammonia scent nearly overpowered her. Breathing through her mouth, she shuffled toward her charge. As she moved, she prayed the bear was just weak from lack of food and not permanently injured. She had no idea what she’d do if it couldn’t walk on its own. She couldn’t take the poor thing with her when she left.