High Lonesome Sound

by Jaye Wells

  Once she was closer, she realized the problem. Junior had clipped a collar around the bear’s neck and the lead that connected it to the cage was too short to give it enough room to move.

  “Bastard.” She unhooked the collar from around the bear’s neck and stood back. Up close, she realized just how small the little thing was—maybe twelve pounds, fourteen at the most.

  Now that the collar was off, it managed to get its paws under its legs and stand. After wobbling for a moment, it took an experimental step toward Ruby.

  “That’s real good,” she whispered. “Good bear.”

  The dogs tuned up again. The sound spooked Ruby, who thought Junior might have come home. All thoughts of patiently waiting for Bear to walk out on its own four feet disappeared. She snatched its little body up and pressed it to her chest.

  The bear didn’t fight her or wriggle in her arms at all. As she ran through the yard, she was vaguely aware of the bundle snuggling into her chest. She held on tight and somehow managed to scale Junior’s fence without dropping her burden.

  Once she cleared the boundary of his land, she ran through the forest. She wanted to get as far from Junior’s place as she could before she set her friend free. She couldn’t raise it, but she could try to make sure to release it somewhere that it might have a better chance of surviving on its own.

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed since she started running, but eventually she reached her destination. The ruins of her great-great granny’s house seemed like a good spot for the cub. The ruins provided a little bit of shelter and it wasn’t too close to the river or the road, either of which could spell disaster for a tiny bear.

  She set it down inside the three partial walls that remained. The bear managed to stand on its own, but it looked up at her and made a noise like a fussy baby. “You’ll be safer here.”

  The bear wobbled forward and pawed her shoe.

  “Now, look, I can’t take you with me. Where I’m going there won’t be any bears allowed. You’re gonna have to be brave and make it on your own.”

  It rose on its two shaking hind legs and wrapped its paws around her leg. It cried again.

  “No, stop that,” she scolded, gently removing the paws. She kneeled down to look it in the eyes. “You’re a bear. These woods are your home.”

  It whined again and tried to climb up into her lap. She pushed it down. “No, bad bear.” Her temper started heating up. “You can’t come with me.”

  She reached into her bag and removed a baggie filled with peanuts and raisins she’d packed for her journey. She dumped the snack on a flat topped rock. Soon, the bear lost interest in her and went to investigate the food. It took an experimental nibble and then it made the first happy sound she’d ever heard from it.

  While the bear dug into its food, Ruby petted its back.

  The bear looked up to make sure she was still there. She pulled her hand away. It went back to eating.

  She backed away a couple of steps. The bear kept eating. “Bye, little friend,” she whispered. Then she turned and ran as fast as she could before she could lose her nerve.

  42

  Different Paths

  Peter

  By the time he’d climbed Cemetery Hill, the fire of Peter’s anger had dulled into a smolder. Small wooden crosses and American flags lined the path just in case anyone forgot that the separation of church and state didn’t exist in Deacon Fry’s Moon Hollow. The ornaments didn’t help his mood, but the climb gave him time to sort through what happened with Ruby.

  He refused to feel guilty. Hadn’t he told her they could leave right after the Decoration? All that urgency was just immaturity. She wanted to go and so they had to go right that moment. She was too young to understand that being an adult meant things had to be prioritized. His book was more important than her quest for self-discovery or whatever bullshit she wanted to call it.

  He remembered being eighteen. Back then his only priorities were getting laid and rebelling against his father’s plans for him.

  The path was little more than a dirt trail forged by decades of feet trampling the ground until it surrendered and stopped growing green things. He barely noticed his steps as his memory lapsed back twenty years earlier. Like Ruby, he’d been eager to leave his home. But he hadn’t grown up in a town as small as Moon Hollow. Unlike Ruby, he hadn’t tried to leave a place where everyone in town knew who he was. He’d grown up in Chapel Hill, where his father was a business professor at the university. The college town’s population was mostly transient—students coming in droves every fall and deserting the place every summer.

  The summer of his eighteenth year, after graduating high school, he dreaded the fall term at UNC. Professors got free tuition for their kids. Not only would he be trapped in Chapel Hill, but his father refused to pay for room and board. The idea of staying in that house for four more years had made his skin feel too tight.

  But that summer, he’d been too young and selfish to appreciate the benefits of free tuition or having his mom do his laundry. All he wanted was to escape that stifling house and his father’s perpetually disappointed stare. So he took all the money he’d saved up from working at the local bookstore, got in his old Nissan Sentra, and took off for an epic summer road trip. He’d left a note for his parents on the kitchen counter.

  As he drove out of town, the road lay before him like a promise. Like every white male aspiring writer, he’d read his Kerouac. He was headed to New York, not California, but he sure felt like a beat poet smoking his American Spirits and speeding up I-85 at ninety miles per hour.

  It was a good plan. He’d crash with his friend at NYU and take a couple of weeks to decide if he really wanted to be the man his father wanted him to be or if he’d build a life with his own two hands.

  His right rear tire blew just outside of Richmond. Towing the car and replacing the tire decimated his nest egg. He’d barely had enough money for gas to get back home.

  He rolled into his driveway around suppertime. His dad had been waiting at the table with his note.

  That night, Peter finally hit back.

  He’d spent the rest of the summer working a construction job his father arranged. By the time he started school that fall, he had a farmer’s tan and more muscles than he’d ever gotten from reading books. His freshman year was a blur of cheap keg beer, drunken hookups, and occasional classes. His dad threatened to kick him out if he didn’t get his grades up.

  One month later, his dad dropped dead from a heart attack while screwing his mistress. Peter’s mother had a mental breakdown and Peter’s long-dormant sense of duty kicked in. Between taking his mom to therapy and running the house, he still managed to make the Dean’s List.

  The following spring, he met Renee.

  He finally made it to New York ten years later after his first book got picked up. He’d traveled lots of places since. None of those trips had that aching wildness he’d longed for in his youth. Now he was middle aged and divorced, and he had a hole in his center he worried would never be filled. He wasn’t like Ruby. He knew that aborted road trip wasn’t the root of his problems.

  But sometimes he still wondered if he’d missed out on his real life.

  He stopped walking. He’d reached the top of Cemetery Hill and the iron gates were about ten feet ahead of him. Inside, people dressed in their Sunday best milled around. Even before he realized Ruby was not among them, he knew he wouldn’t see her there. When she’d marched off after their argument, it had been with the timeless posture of a teenager bent on rebellion. Part of him had been glad to see it. When he’d first met her, she seemed totally detached from reality. She’d had the moony look of someone who believed that fiction’s common miracles could actually happen in real life. She’d also been waiting for her Prince Charming, and beyond all reason or logic, she’d decided he was the man for the role.

  He wanted to scorn her for being so innocent. But a surprising emotion bubbled to the surface: pity. When he’d
done his own disappearing act, he’d had his own car—piece of shit that it was—and money, but he also knew that if he failed he could always come back home. If, when, Ruby failed, would she be able to come back? The little he’d seen of Cotton Barrett didn’t give him much faith in the man’s capacity for forgiveness. Maybe Granny Maypearl would take her in.

  “Peter?” Bunk stood by the cemetery gate. “You comin’?”

  He looked over his shoulder, back down the hill. A beat-up Dodge was tearing up the road away from the church. He frowned, wondering who was in such a hurry. The Decoration wouldn’t start for another thirty minutes, according to his watch.

  “Peter?” Bunk, more concerned than impatient.

  Dismissing the truck, he turned back toward Bunk. It wasn’t until he took a couple of steps that he realized he hadn’t seen Ruby marching up the hill out of town. Either she’d changed her mind and was licking her wounds at home or she’d managed to make her escape and was already well on her way down the mountain. Either way, she wasn’t his concern any more.

  All he had to do was walk into the cemetery and take notes as the good people of Moon Hollow did their thing. Then he could head back to Raleigh and start writing his masterpiece.

  “Coming!” he called to Bunk. He jogged toward the gate. He couldn’t wait to see what this Decoration was all about so he could get the hell out of town.

  43

  Storming The Hill

  Ruby

  Fifteen minutes after she left Bear, Ruby stopped to rest on a log. The cool morning mists were already turning into humidity that would settle over the valley like warm clouds all afternoon. Since going through town hadn’t been an option, she’d followed the paths that ran through the forest behind the buildings on the south side of town. Once she got closer to the hill out of town, she’d leave the forest cover to walk on the road.

  Sitting was a mistake because it allowed what she’d done to catch up with her. Tears formed and spilled onto her cheeks. Was the bear better off out of that cage? At least at Junior’s place it had food and wasn’t having to fend for itself in the wilderness.

  A gray catbird mewed from a nearby bush, and a cedar waxwing trilled in response. But the mountain didn’t sing to her.

  She clasped her hands together over her heart. Granny Maypearl said that the mountain’s song couldn’t be heard with the ears. You gotta listen with your heart, girl.

  Ruby blocked out the sound of the birds and focused inward. Sing to me, Mama.

  Tears stung the inside of her lids and slipped between her lashes to land on her cheeks.

  Why did you leave me? Please come back. Just once, before I go. Please?

  But her heart just continued its same old rhythm. The mountain didn’t sing for her and her mama didn’t say goodbye.

  She sniffed and swiped at her cheeks. She was being a baby. The mountain had stopped singing to her because it was time to go. Maybe that’s why Mama left, too.

  She’d worry about the cub, of course, but she knew she’d done the right thing. Bears were meant to be wild. Staying chained up was no way to live. And wasn’t that why she was leaving? Because she was too wild to stay penned up in Moon Hollow?

  She rose and continued through the woods until she reached the place where the hill out of town rose in front of her. The going would be easier on the road.

  Once she left the cover of the woods, she looked back toward town. Downtown Moon Hollow spread out behind her. The road pointed like an arrow toward Christ the Redeemer. From where she stood, the warped steeple seemed to point right at her, like an accusing finger. Like God himself knew what she was up to and definitely did not approve.

  Well, that was too damned bad. She turned her back on the steeple and the town. This time, when she took a step her foot struck the asphalt with a determined smack. The sun was higher and the heat made little beads of sweat roll down her back. She welcomed the sweat because it came from the honest work of taking her life into her own hands.

  Stupid Peter West might be a liar, but she knew now that she didn’t need him. In fact, the closer she got to the top of the hill leading out of town, the more she understood that it was only right that she walked out of town under her own steam. It was the act of a woman, walking out on her own two feet. Little girls needed big men to help them do things. As of that day, Ruby resolved to never be a little girl again.

  She was almost at the crest of the hill when the sound of an engine reached her ears. She turned to look over her shoulder, fully expecting to see Peter’s car. Before she’d even turned around she knew exactly how she’d tell him off—

  But it wasn’t Peter’s car roaring up the hill. It was Junior Jessup’s truck.

  She started running before she made the conscious decision to flee. But in the end, her resolve and the thin soles of her tennis shoes weren’t enough to outrun the horsepower of Junior’s truck or his anger.

  As he drew closer, the sound of his curses rose over the rumble of the engine and the blood and wind rushing through her ears. She pivoted left to try to reach the woods, but her ankle revolted. Her palms scraped across the road, then her left knee. The impact made her teeth slam together and the concussion rocketed behind her eyes. Through the shock and pain, she was vaguely aware of the truck’s tires screeching and the slam of a heavy door.

  Before she could recover enough to resume her escape, hard fingers grabbed her shoulder and lifted her clear off the ground. “God damn, girl! If you aren’t the biggest pain in my ass.” At the end of each sentence, he shook her as punctuation. “Just you wait till yer daddy hears what you been up to.”

  As he continued to curse and shake her, she looked over his shoulder at the space where the road curved into the shadows. At the end of that dark tunnel, the road would hit the highway. Freedom. That shadow meant freedom.

  “… what the fuck you were thinkin’ let my bear—”

  She slammed the toe of her shoe into his shin. Pain ricocheted up her foot. It should have slowed her, but she took off like a bullet up the hill. The instant she realized the window for her escape was closing, she’d gone numb. Her sole focus was that sliver of shadow that represented the shaded road out of town and her freedom.

  “Little bitch.” Junior’s voice had gone from mad to enraged. She hadn’t really hurt his shin, but she’d learned from living with her daddy that the most vulnerable part of a man’s body was his pride.

  Her legs burned and blood pounded behind her eyes. The shadow grew closer, closer—almost there. She raised a hand to reach for it. Pain exploded between her shoulder blades. Heavy weight slammed her into the unforgiving asphalt.

  Junior’s big body and the unyielding road crushed her like a fly caught between a swatter and granite. After an agonizing moment, the weight on her back lifted. He didn’t give her a chance to take stock of every source of pain. Didn’t matter much. Her entire body felt like a throbbing wound.

  As she lay on the hard gravel with the scent of tar and blood hot in her nostrils, her eyes sought and found the sliver of shadow. Closer now, she realized that the shadow was not black, but deep green from the tree canopy arching over the road. She imagined the air there would feel cooler and a light breeze would act like a balm on her scrapes. But even as she longed to be enveloped by the deep green like a thirsty person longs for cool water, she knew she’d lost her chance at that benediction.

  The looming mass of Jessup kneeling in front of her blocked her view. “Now,” he said, his voice low and mean, “if you try running again, I’ll lock you in the cage with my dogs, and they’re hungry. You understand me, girl?”

  She swallowed the blood and bile clogging her throat. She tried to speak, but that didn’t work. So she just nodded her scraped cheek against the hot asphalt.

  “That’s a good girl.” His breath smelled of pickled eggs and stale cigarettes. The bile she’d swallowed threatened to come back up, but before it gained any traction, he jerked her to her feet. She stumbled against him, hating her
self for not having enough strength to stand on her own. But something was wrong with her right arm and the right side of her face felt like someone had gone after it with a cheese grater.

  He pulled her toward the truck. “First, we’re gonna find your daddy. Then we’ll see about teaching you a lesson for trespassing on a man’s private property.”

  He shoved her into the passenger seat of the truck. The cracked vinyl seat whined and pinched her like a cranky aunt.

  Before he closed the door, she rasped, “What happened to the bear?”

  The predatory smile on his thin lips faded into a hard line. “Gone.”

  That one word, clipped off like a curse, entered her ears and lit up her whole body with a mixture of relief and jealousy. She’d never known that gone could sound so much like free.

  44

  Damsel’s Distressed

  Peter

  As they approached the cemetery gate, Bunk pulled Peter to the side.

  “Just thought I’d let you know that Junior and Earl are still making noises about how maybe you were the one put your book in the cemetery.”

  Peter cursed under his breath. “Didn’t Deacon Fry confirm he saw me the night it happened?”

  Bunk scratched the side of his head with his metal pincer. “That’s the thing. When he got here that day, he was real distracted. Told them to just clean up the mess and we’d deal with it after the Decoration. Kind of strange, too. When he first started talking about doing the ceremony this year he sounded like it was the last thing he wanted to do, but then he got here and was real insistent about making sure everything went right.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “That’s not all.” Bunk looked around and scooted closer. “He was talking to himself. Kept going on about a potato.”