High Lonesome Sound

by Jaye Wells

  Silence reigned for a tense moment. Dread hung heavy over the graves despite the cheerful paper flowers decorating each headstone.

  “All right,” the deacon said, taking back control, “split up. Everyone grab a buddy and search the town until you find him.” He prayed that the reverend had just got into his spirits and was waiting for someone to come retrieve him from his office in the church. If not, well, if not wasn’t something he was ready to think about just yet.

  Still, as people started pairing up, he couldn’t ignore the cold sensation of doom looming in his chest.

  46

  Fallow

  Ruby

  She and Peter decided to check the reverend’s house. Well, she’d decided to check the house. Peter had followed her without asking if she minded.

  She was really worried about Reverend Peale. He’d never shown up late to anything. He often showed up drunk, but never tardy.

  “He’ll be there,” Peter said between gulps of air behind her.

  She didn’t answer because she still wasn’t talking to him. Instead, she threw open the garden gate. She veered right, which would take her through the garden and around to the back door.

  “I’ll try the front,” Peter said.

  Before continuing into the garden, she looked over to see Deacon Fry running toward the church’s front doors. He didn’t see her, which allowed her a rare moment to see Deacon Fry unguarded. His cheeks were flushed and his white hair was matted with sweat. His panic was so naked and raw that she had to look away. She plunged ahead into the side yard, hoping to find some comfort in her old kingdom.

  When she had been a little girl, Mama often stopped by Reverend Peale’s house to drop off pies or supper. While Mama and the reverend chatted over coffee, Ruby would play in the garden. Back then, it was a magical place filled with dragonflies and sweet-smelling flowers. She’d spent hours digging in the rich soil to find earthworms or roly-polies.

  After chatting with the reverend, Mama would gather her gardening supplies from the old shed and pull weeds and tend to the plants like they were her own children. Reverend Peale used to joke that Mama didn’t have a green thumb—she had a green hand.

  While Mama worked in the dirt, Ruby would stage elaborate plays where she was a faery queen and the little creatures were her subjects. She’d always hated visiting in the winter because Mama would tell her it was too cold and make her to sit quietly on a chair in the corner while she and the Reverend talked about boring adult stuff.

  On those days, she’d stare out the window at her kingdom, which had retreated under the dirt for a winter’s rest. Back then, her favorite story had been about a boy named James who got to go on a big adventure in a giant peach, and in the winter, she imagined that her earthworm and insect friends had parties down there without her.

  That morning, as she turned left into the narrow space between the stone wall and the garden, she stumbled on the first paver. The garden she’d once cherished was now a weed-choked rectangle filled with dry, brown leaves and the bruised petals of flowers that had long since died. It hit her like a cold January wind that without her mother around to pull weeds or water, the garden had simply died from neglect. She imagined her little kingdom below the dirt dying, too, without juicy leaves to eat or their queen there to shower them with water and love.

  She also realized that she’d failed to notice all of this the other night when she’d snuck into Reverend Peale’s shed to steal his trowel. She would have been better off using that tool to dig up weeds instead of doing magic spells in the cemetery.

  “Ruby!” Peter’s voice cut through her haze of memory and guilt. “He’s not answering the door.”

  “I’m in the garden.” She hadn’t forgotten that she wasn’t talking to him. She’d just ignored that fact because she suddenly felt very alone.

  The space between the wall and the garden was barely wide enough for her shoulders. On her right, thorns from the climbing rose vines scratched her shoulders. To her left, the withered stalks of dead sunflowers brushed her cheeks with papery brown leaves. Her mama had always loved sunflowers and had planted a new patch each spring. Each spring until this one, she corrected. That year, Mama had died before she could clear out the winter-dead stalks and replace them with the promise of new seeds.

  Up ahead, overgrown grass had transformed the yard into wild place. Before Jack had died, he’d come every week to mow. She’d once heard Sarah Jane brag about how she’d always be sure to stop by Reverend Peale’s house on those days so she could see Jack working with his shirt off. She’d wax poetic about his muscles while she stared dreamily out the library window.

  One day, Ruby had wandered by when Jack was working. He’d stopped his work to wave at her, but seeing all his muscles hadn’t made her feel poetic so much as embarrassed and sweaty.

  As she exited the narrow passage, she felt as if weeds were choking her like they choked the life out of the sunflowers. Were Mama and Jack down in the dirt kingdom with her former subjects? The thought gave her a little bit of comfort. The idea that they might be going on adventures along the dormant roots of the plants felt a lot better than the idea that they might no longer exist at all.

  The passage ended where the wall veered sharply right to the side yard. The old shed where garden supplies were stored stood ahead of her now. The doors weren’t quite closed. The grass tickled her ankles as she moved toward the doors. Her head told her there was nothing to worry about. She’d visited that shed just a few days ago. Maybe she’d just forgotten to close the door all the way.

  Built from wood, the structure was shaped like a small barn with chipped red paint and white accents. Black metal hinges and simple latches on the doors were the only decorations. When the garden had been alive, the shed added a whimsical touch to the yard. She shouldn’t have had any reason to give it a second thought. But her instincts had a different idea, and her heart, which fluttered like a black crow’s wings, agreed.

  A rustling sound behind her announced Peter’s arrival. Instead of using the walkway, as she had, he tromped through the dead garden.

  She decided to ignore his lack of respect since he didn’t know he was trampling over her kingdom. Instead, she pointed at the shed in the corner of the yard. They both stared at it for a few moments. Finally, Peter whispered, “What’s wrong?

  “Something feels … off.” She’d whispered too, as if they both worried that talking any louder would set off something terrible.

  “Only one way to find out.” Peter moved toward the shed, but Ruby grabbed his arm. He looked back over his shoulder with a reassuring smile that wasn’t at all convincing. But she released him anyway because she wanted the unbearable tension of not knowing to ease up.

  As he made his way to the shed, she stayed close because suddenly the entire garden felt threatening.

  The tall grass tickled her shins and calves. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple but the base of her neck felt cold. She grabbed Peter’s shirt, and his hand came back around, as if to shield her—or pull her closer for his own safety.

  Over his shoulder, the thin line of black between the shed’s frame and the slightly open door felt as wide as a chasm. Was something watching their approach?

  Peter’s muscles bunched under her hand as he reached out for the handle. The door opened with the sound of metal scraping against the concrete pad. The scent of grass clippings and gasoline mixed with the stink of her own fear sweat and Peter’s aftershave. She peeked around his shoulder into the darkness inside the shed. At first, all she saw was a lawnmower, a red gas can, and a bag of potting soil.

  “Oh no, no, no.” Peter lunged inside. The fabric of his shirt ripped from her hand. “No!”

  She stumbled after him. The fear in his voice should have stopped her, but she needed to see the truth for herself.

  Inside, the air was thick with dust and the biting perfume of fertilizer. Peter was kneeling near the back corner, his shoulder blocking her view.

/>   “Get out, Ruby—you don’t need to see this.”

  “What—” Her words cut off as a new detail emerged from the dark.

  The bare foot glowed pale against the shadows.

  She pushed Peter out of the way.

  Reverend Peale’s hands were clasped in prayer on his stomach. He wore his black robe and the traditional green stole he’d worn every Decoration Day since she could remember. His chin sat heavily on his chest. She tried to convince herself he’d somehow fallen asleep in the shed. But her lie was rejected by the caved-in skull and the blood.

  Peter regained his balance and grabbed her arm even as a scream crawled up her throat. He jerked her away from the body—the body, no Reverend Peale, oh my God, oh my God—and he pushed her until she fell out of the shed. There in the tall grass, with the scent of death and fertilizer strong in her nose—she vomited. At some point the tears began to fall but she wasn’t aware of them until the sounds of her own sobs broke through her shock.

  “Was—is he—” The words crashed into a new sob and tangled with it until she choked on them.

  Peter knelt in front of her and grabbed her chin. It hurt, but she didn’t care because that pain was real. It was real and it didn’t hurt as much as her chest, which felt like her ribs would crack open and her heart would simply flee to escape the pain she was subjecting it to.

  “We need to go,” he was saying. “We have to tell Deacon Fry. Need to call the sheriff.”

  She shook her head slowly back and forth. Her gaze kept straying toward the wide-open mouth of the shed and the grisly surprise it held on its tongue. If they left him, he would be swallowed completely, until it was as if he never existed.

  This town will consume all of us, one by one.

  Hard hands shook her shoulders. She watched the gaping mouth. Her own tongue felt dry. Dryer than the dust in the shed, certainly dryer than the blood on—

  No, don’t think of that. It will be real then.

  “Ruby? Listen to me.” He shook her again. Forced her gaze to turn toward him. “We have to leave.”

  Peter pulled her up, wrapping his arm around her shoulders to guide her and force her through the tall grass toward the dead garden.

  Mama, are you there? Jack? Is Reverend Peale with you? Are you having a party without me?

  Peter had to push her in front of him to get through the narrow passage. She stumbled forward, barely noticing the bite of the thorns or the crackle of her mama’s dead sunflowers.

  47

  Signs & Portents

  Granny Maypearl

  As they approached town that morning, Jinny skipped on ahead. The basket in her right hand swung in time with the nursery rhyme she was singing. The older girl, Sissy, held Granny’s hand and asked never-ending questions about how to make love potions. That girl would be trouble once she hit puberty. The boys in town wouldn’t know what hit them.

  Granny smiled and squeezed Sissy’s hand, but part of her felt awful bitter. Damn that Cotton for depriving her of the simple happiness of spending time with these girls. At least with Ruby, she’d had a few years before he got wise to Rose’s sneaking around. It was later that Sissy and Jinny were born, and now they were virtually strangers to her—precious strangers who wanted to hear stories about their mama.

  Although, if she were being honest, maybe she deserved some of the blame. Her own mama always said she had a stubborn streak that made a mule look reasonable. If she were going to be honest, she’d admit that she never got over the fact that Rose chose Cotton over her. She’d aimed to make her girl learn her lesson by leaving her to deal with that man on her own. She always figured that one day Rose, who’d inherited her own healthy dose of pride, would come crawling back to admit that her mama was right.

  But, Lord, how time loved to make fools of the stubborn.

  “Granny—”

  Muted shouts interrupted Sissy’s next question. Granny put her arms out and pushed the girls behind her, like she used to do with Rose when they were driving and she had to hit the brakes. She was halfway down the hill into town, and as she looked down toward the church, she saw the deacon run across the street from the church and into the reverend’s front yard. That writer fella met him and they shared a brief but frantic conversation before they both disappeared back around the house.

  Her first thought was relief at seeing Peter still in Moon Hollow. It meant he’d taken her advice after all. Ever since Ruby told her that foolish plan to convince Peter to take her away, Granny had known it would never work. But if the writer was still there it meant Ruby was still in town, too.

  She started walking again. She’d soon find out what had Virgil and Peter so worried, but for now she wanted to enjoy these moments with her granddaughters. However, she’d barely taken two more steps when she spotted Ruby.

  The girl stumbled into Reverend Peale’s yard, fell to her knees, and covered her face. Even from the hill, Granny could see how hard the girl was shaking.

  She grabbed both of the girls’ hands and took off down the hill.

  Fifteen minutes later, she’d deposited the girls with Edna, who’d opened her diner to serve refreshments to the search party. Naturally, she’d had to hear an earful about what was happening before Edna allowed her to leave. Apparently, a handful of the menfolk had taken off for Reverend Peale’s house a few moments before Granny arrived and everyone else had been told to sit tight.

  Walking up the street toward the rectory, Granny’s intuition arced like a lightning bolt in her midsection. But it wouldn’t have taken a mountain witch reading the signs to know something bad happened to Reverend Peale.

  Who on earth could hurt that sweet man? He was one of the few people in town she could stand. They’d spent many a pleasant afternoon drinking tea laced with bourbon on his front porch. He might be a drunk, but he was real.

  She swung open the gate. She didn’t wonder why something bad happened, though. It was Decoration Day, and given all the bad signs lately, it wouldn’t be an easy one. She feared whatever happened to the reverend was just the beginning of the trouble.

  Instead of turning right toward the garden, where she could hear the raised voices of several men, she went straight up the front walk to the porch. She was already at the top step when she noticed Ruby in one of the wicker chairs.

  “Ruby?”

  The girl looked like she’d seen a haint. Her eyes were wide as doorknobs and seemed to be looking into the middle distance instead of focusing on any one thing.

  Granny considered trying to coax her out of her shock, but she knew from experience that the numbness could be a blessing compared to the desperate pain of feeling too much, too soon. Besides, what she needed to do would only take a moment.

  The front door was unlocked. She paused at the threshold and was relieved not to hear any footsteps or voices inside. The only thing that greeted her was the metallic stink of blood. Lots and lots of blood.

  She walked through the entrance and down the central hall. Past the office, where she and the reverend had debated everything from religion to the best recipe for cornbread.

  Best not to think too much about that now, though. She needed to do what needed doing.

  At the end of the hall, a long smear of blood went from the bedroom door to the back door further down the hall. Whoever killed him had done it in the bedroom and then, instead of letting the dead rest, dragged the poor man’s body out into the elements. That explained why everyone was in the backyard. She blew out a breath as a parade of images swam through her head.

  “Enough.” She whispered the word, but her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the empty home that used to be filled with Reverend Peale’s booming laughter.

  She stepped over the wide smear of blood in the doorway. Inside the room, the blood wasn’t as polite. The room looked like one of them modern artists had gone hog-wild with a paintbrush. The walls, the floor, the bedspread, even the ceiling were covered in millions of flecks of deep red blood.


  She fancied herself a steady woman. She’d given birth and helped dozens of other children enter this world. She’d buried one man and one daughter. She’d cleaned game and euthanized animals that needed mercy. But she had never in her living life witnessed the aftermath of such savage violence. The air vibrated with it, like just after a lightning strike. The energy was so dark and chaotic that it nauseated her. Her gorge rose in the back of her throat, and cold sweat bloomed across her stomach.

  Breathing through her nose wasn’t an option because here the air smelled not just of blood, but of voided bowels and flop sweat and death itself. She opened her mouth and managed a couple of deep breaths, but stopped when the scents became flavors on her tongue.

  She turned her back on the bloody walls and faced the bed, but it was worse than the rest. The quilts that had been made by good Christian women and white cotton sheets that had been washed by hand and hung out in the sun were now stiff with dried blood. Despite the obvious signs of struggle, the Reverend Peale’s pillows remained at the top of the mattress. The head-shaped indention in the bloody pillow unsettled her more than everything else.

  Swallowing hard, she reached for it, but hesitated. That soft spot was the last bit of comfort Reverend Peale had experienced on God’s blue earth. Emotion threatened to bubble up and drown every bit of her resolve. She snatched the pillow off the bed. Kneading it with her fingers, she felt for lumps. When she encountered a hard disk, she froze. “Have mercy,” she whispered.

  She removed the pocketknife from her skirt pocket. After tossing aside the stiff cotton case, she stabbed the knife into the seam and ripped open the pillow. Blood had dyed the feathery intestines pink. She plunged her hand inside and pulled out a disk of matted feathers nearly as large as her palm. Each of the quills had turned inward and the feathers curled around the central axis to create a firm puck-shaped item.