by Billy Coffey
Zach asked, “What’s goin’ on, Daddy?”
“Not too sure.”
We parked along the walk. Kate opened the passenger door and stepped out, meaning to ask the people Zach’s question. “What’s—” was all she managed. Those waiting pressed in and spoke at once. She looked at me through the open window and mouthed, Help.
I got out of the Blazer and flipped up the seat. Zach scooted into my arms just as those who couldn’t get to Kate got to us. There were shouts and outstretched hands grabbing for my shirt and hat. Zach’s thin arms closed tight around my neck. I wormed my way through the people, trying to get to Kate, and demanded quiet in a deep voice that surprised me.
“What in the world’s goin’ on here?” I asked.
The crowd started up again, each person with his or her own answer, none of which was clear. Bodies jiggled to the right and left as someone cleaved a path through the crowd. A polite but firm voice said, “Excuse me” and “Pardon me” and, once, “Move it now,” until Big Jim stood at the forefront of them all.
“Jake,” he said, “I need a word.”
“Well, you gonna hafta get in line, Mayor,” Hollis told him. “We’s here first.”
A chorus of support rose that pulled Big Jim back into the crowd. Across the street, shop owners and customers alike paused in their dealings to watch the drama unfold. Kate pulled at my shirt, wanting me to do something.
I yelled, “Now wait, y’all just quiet down,” and held up my hand until everyone had either heard me or tired of shouting. “I don’t know what’s gotten into y’all, but I’ll say it’s a sad sight. Now let me and Kate get our boy inside. I’ll tend to each of you in turn. But I expect I’ll start with Widow Cash there, as she seems to be the only one with any sense at all.”
I led the way up the stairs. Zach still clutched at my neck. Kate walked beside me, telling everyone whatever it was would be fine. She touched the dignified old lady who waited at the door on the elbow and said, “Come on now, Dorothea. I’ll sit you in Jake’s office.”
The foyer filled to near capacity. Someone (I think it was Bobby, but some memories fade) knocked over what was left of the gallon of paint I’d used on the door, spilling dribbles of gray onto the floor. Zach climbed down off me and watched with growing amazement, no doubt thinking this was the very sort of thing he’d never be privy to if stuck in school. I settled them all as best I could and walked to my office. Kate stood just outside the door.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“You come on with me. I’ve no idea what’s going on, but I know enough that I’ll need you.”
I took the chair, Kate sat on the corner of the desk. Dorothea Cash—Widow Cash since her husband, Hubert, met his reward in the summer of ’04—sat erect and still in the vinyl seat across from us. A worn leather pocketbook sat on her lap. Her yellow dress clashed with the blue in her thinning hair. A thick string of pearls hung from her wrinkled neck.
I said, “Now, Widow Cash, what can I do for you today? Aside from your grocery shopping, of course, which I promise to tend to as soon as I get these people out of here.”
“There won’t be any shopping today, Jacob,” she said. Her tone was clipped and to the point, with a hardness that raised my eyebrows.
“Why’s that?” Kate asked.
The old woman looked at us with lips stuck in a pucker from years of sucking on the same cigarettes that had done in Hubert. She set her jaw, said, “I’m here to turn m’self in,” and held out two fists that looked no bigger than plums. “Go on, Sheriff. Do your duty.”
Kate’s hand moved to her chin. She scrunched her eyebrows and turned her head to me.
“Well now, ma’am,” I said, “before I go and cuff you, maybe you should tell me what it is you’re turning yourself in for.”
“Murder.”
The hand that held Kate’s chin dropped to her lap. “Dorothea, you couldn’t so much as hurt a bug.”
“Nonetheless,” the widow said, “killin’s what I did. I killed that boy. Hurt good old Andy too. And your poor brother, Kate.” She leaned forward and put a hand to Kate’s leg. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Dorothea,” I said, “we know who did that.”
“Them boys mighta, but ’twas done in my name. ’Cause of my sin, as the paper said.” Dorothea Cash’s shoulders slumped. She reached for the pearls around her neck and felt them like worry stones. “My heart overflows with the stench of iniquity.”
I rubbed the stubble on my jaw and felt my hand tremble against the skin, made a fist, and shook out my fingers. The tremble was still there. Tiredness, I supposed. And Taylor, whom I thought may well have been watching me even then to see if I’d call Alan Martin. I looked out the window at all those people in the foyer who’d been brought there by Trevor and his article. I saw no strangers.
Dorothea rubbed her pearls and looked at me. “I miss Hubert. Miss him terrible. I can drive, Jacob. Never do, but I can. And even if I didn’t, it’s only a short walk to market. But I like you chauffeuring me, because it’s nice to have a man around. I didn’t think it was a sin.” She leaned forward, voice cracking. “I don’t regard you in the carnal way, Jacob. I need you to know that. And I need you to know that too, Kate.”
Kate’s eyes bulged. I opened my mouth to speak, but all that came out was a long exhale that melted into a whistle halfway through. I thought of all those Monday trips to the market, of how Dorothea had always worn her best dresses and how much she said she appreciated me holding the door open for her and carrying her groceries inside. How I would often enjoy a glass of lemonade on her porch after. I never thought a thing of it—who would?—but now I found I couldn’t look the Widow Cash in the eye.
“Well, I can’t speak for Jake,” Kate said, “but I’m fair certain you’ve nothing at all to worry about, Dorothea. Now why don’t you go on home and rest awhile, okay?”
“You know where to find me,” she said. “I throw myself on your mercy, Jacob. Just mind that’s all I’ll throw on you.”
She left. Kate and I looked at one another with a mixture of veiled amusement and outright shock. Hollis tipped his hat to Dorothea and replaced her in the chair, saying how horrible he felt about Eric and Andy and Timmy because it was all his fault—his and Jenny’s. To Hollis’s reckoning, he’d not only transgressed but had enabled others to transgress as well, and that was even worse. The Good Book frowned upon a great many things, but on being a stumbling block most of all. Then it was Mayor Wallis, who confessed how awful he felt about that whole mess with Justus and then railed against Trevor, telling us he was going to wring his nephew’s scrawny neck for writing that stupid article.
By then more people had trickled in, souls heavy with burdens real and imagined, all more than willing to confess their wrongdoings if it meant the devil would walk in Mattingly no more. I pleaded for them to leave, but the crowd held fast.
Kate volunteered to take over. I let her. When I left the office and strolled out back, Bobby Barnes was sitting in the vinyl chair that had become a confessional, blubbering on about how it was all his fault. I didn’t know if Bobby blamed the town’s troubles on his drinking or that time he’d peeked under Kate’s dress in the second grade. I didn’t much care.
I suppose you know why I got out of there and what I did next. There’s no easy way to say it. I will say the call to Alan Martin didn’t go as badly as I’d feared. There had been no sightings of Taylor Hathcock in town or elsewhere, and Alan thought keeping a steady rotation of troopers in the area no longer made sense. I agreed, and the little boy in me felt a weight lifted. The man in me kept wanting to push that weight down until it forced me to do something. The little boy won.
It’s our desire to be left alone that causes evil to flourish in this world. I understood I was being a coward, but in many ways I’d always been such. Besides, shame has no weight against fear. And I was afraid. I was afraid because Taylor was watching and Taylor knew, and
how either was possible was something I couldn’t understand but believed with all my heart. And just as Phillip said, there was power in believing.
12
The bear had first come to the wood when the earth was still rough and magic yet spilled over its brim. He had remained there since, as both guard and witness to a thin place in the world that marked the boundary between light and dark.
The Hollow had called to many beyond its borders in the bear’s long years, ones who stood on their hind legs and dressed in fur they themselves could not grow. He’d always found the Two-Legs puzzling creatures, easily pitied were it not for a pride that convinced them to mock what their minds could not comprehend.
He beheld the coming of the Old Ones when they first crossed into this valley and those who came after—Two-Legs who called the valley home by felling the forest and scoring the earth. They tamed the wild land even as wildness raged in themselves, and called the bear’s home accursed even as they drowned in their own foulness. They crafted a barrier to stand as warning where the Hollow bordered their lands, yet their twisted nature turned warning to invitation. The Hollow always called. The Two-Legs always answered. They came to the bear’s wood seeking power and truth and found their own end.
The bear had watched them all with the same detachment he would employ when inspecting the crawlies that scurried along the barren ground. They were beneath him, unworthy of effort and attention. The Two-Leg that denned atop the ridge and claimed the Hollow as its own was no different. The bear tolerated that one as much as he had the others who’d come before and the many who would come yet.
Yet the bear’s patience for the mate the Two-Leg had brought into the forest grew thin. That one had not been drawn. And now he studied them both with increasing interest. Because a new thing had come to the wood with them, and the bear knew not what it meant.
He had trailed the Two-Leg’s mate since it left its den. He kept its scent close and moved among the trees with a silent grace that belied his massive weight. He watched it tug and tuck at the thin pieces of raiment that covered its nakedness.
Where the Two-Leg was going held much less interest than what it had brought along—something neither beast nor spirit, but Other. And while the bear could perceive that the Two-Leg knew only that the Hollow’s eyes were upon it, he perceived the Other knew more.
It was only when they reached the field of stones that the bear understood where it meant to venture. All the Two-Legs drawn to the Hollow found the hidden place. He let them move into the center of the field before letting himself be made known. The bear pushed against the nearest tree, an oak that had sprouted and grown beyond his height until the dead soil had strangled its life. The tree gave way and exploded into the field, stopping the Two-Leg in its tracks. It spun toward him, paws held out in shock. The Other turned as well and watched as the bear moved into the field, facing them. He brought his snout up and sniffed, rising on his hind legs, at once engorging himself on the Two-Leg’s fear and choking on the Other’s indifference.
The frail creature shook, its eyes wide. The bear lowered itself onto its four paws and drew closer. He sniffed at the air and found only one scent, putrid with fear. The Two-Leg stumbled back, groveling and shaking its head, and then spoke its language: “I have no quarrel.”
The bear moved closer as the hard earth sank against its paws. He rose up again and bellowed its call into the long, wide expanse of the Hollow, raging over the insolence of this tiny thing in front of him and its unworthiness to tread upon the Hollow’s sacred places, wanting to water the brittle grass with the Two-Leg’s blood. But then the Other stepped between them and froze the bear in place with a power not even the Hollow could summon. The bear snorted, filling the air with long streams of mist and snot that showered its prey. The Two-Leg cowered in a ball of bone and flesh upon the field, crying as though wounded. The bear looked deep into the Other’s eyes. His mind came open with the sound of flapping wings and rushing water. The bear remembered. He remembered true.
He settled his front paws into the earth and lowered his head to the hard ground, feeling the Other’s light upon him. He turned and made his way back through the field as the Two-Leg raised its head, speaking its words.
“I have no quarrel,” it said, again and again, repeating them with a greater voice each time as though believing those empty words held power. The bear turned back as it neared the trees. The Two-Leg stood finally and tugged at its raiment, ignorant of the Other that remained at its side. Such was the curse of all lower life, the bear believed—they adorned themselves in fur they could not grow to prance and preen before all they could see, and yet they lay naked before all they could not.
13
It was no mere bear that meant to devour Lucy Seekins. That, she knew well. No mere bear could outweigh her by a ton and wield a paw larger than her own head. No mere bear could have eyes like that. The monster of the Hollow drifted to the edge of the field as she spoke Taylor’s incantation once more. When it paused, what flooded her was a fear more alive and deep than any Lucy had ever known. If the beast had a mind to finish what it had started, there was nothing she could do.
It reached the edge of the woods and turned a final time. One of its eyes was white, piercing, the other red and deep. Both seemed filled with a kind of wisdom Lucy could not comprehend. The red eye settled on her with a grip that stole her breath. The white one stared not at Lucy, but at a place just beside her. She rose and looked at that place, saw nothing.
“I have no quarrel,” she whispered.
The bear regarded her. Its fur was a deep brown that soaked the sunlight that shone upon it. It lifted a snout that had gone gray with age and sniffed once more. When it turned to disappear into the trees, Lucy felt the very ground beneath her shake.
She placed her hands upon the dead grass, squeezing it through her fingers. For the first time, Lucy Seekins found she was thankful to be alive. It had been Johnny who’d told her to play dead if she ever found herself confronted by a bear. She’d laughed at the notion, telling Johnny the only wilderness she ever planned on seeing was whatever farmer’s field the next party was in. Yet Johnny’s wisdom had saved her, and in that moment Lucy loved him again.
She looked to the thick oaks over her shoulder. The path lay inside. Lucy had never been good with directions, yet she had quickly found that didn’t matter in the Hollow. She thought she could leave Taylor’s cabin and start out for the rusty gate or the river—could even wander through those thousands of acres of mountain land with her eyes closed—and still arrive at this field. It was as though her body were a compass and the grove her north, a positive tugging at her negative self. Now she felt that same pull again. She rose and turned into the trees, matching her steps with wary looks behind.
The grove called in a siren’s song. Lucy came to the Hole.
It was wondrous, that floating halo of black so pure and serene it could only have been dug by gods. The pull on Lucy gave way. Her strength went with it, leaving her prostrate on the bare earth like a pilgrim in front of a shrine. She remained there, mouth agape, wondering how it was that she could be made so whole by such nothingness.
She rose when her strength returned and twice circled the Hole, watching it fade and reappear again. Lucy examined the small, gnarled bush and the red berries growing upon it, then walked to a section of the horseshoe-shaped wall that surrounded the grove like a womb. The vines covering it were thick and gray. Lucy reached for the nearest one and eased it to the side. She drew back when a shock of red peeked out, as though the limestone beneath bled. Her hands moved forward again despite her mind’s pleas and pulled a section of the vines aside.
Seared into the face of the rock was the upper part of a handprint. Lucy pulled back more and found another, this one small, and yet another, larger one. She tore at the vines, reaching as high as she could, ripping at them as sweat gathered in her scraggly hair. Her chest heaved. Her fingers came back raw and bloodied.
H
ours passed before she could pull no more. The three sides of the grove had been stripped bare of vines in a wavy pattern that more or less corresponded to Lucy’s height, revealing hundreds of red handprints. Some bore the length and width of a man’s hand, fingers splayed as if tearing into the rock itself. Others were thinner and smaller, bearing the gentle touch of a woman. Still others bore the tiny handmarks of a child.
It was a sight that struck no dread in her. There was no sudden wave of horror as when the bear had exploded through the trees, no urge to run. Lucy felt instead the strong call of familiarity, as though a thread had been tied through each of those souls and now through her own self, binding them together.
Like a family, she thought.
It was an understanding that consumed her. Lucy could do no more than fall into the soft pillow of gray dirt and be filled. She was thankful that Taylor found her later, thankful that he did not scold her for her tardiness or remind her the Hollow was no place for noisemakers. He only eased her into his arms and let her wails carry. He let her give voice to her joy.
14
Mattingly’s chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars occupied a one-story brick building on the outskirts of town. Aside from the occasional gatherings to plan parades and funerals and talk of old war stories (many of which were inflated by jars of Hollis’s moonshine), the meeting hall sat empty and forgotten. But not that night. The smell of ancient cigars might linger like ghosts and the pine floors may have been bowed and dull, but the VFW was still the only place large enough to hold everyone who arrived with one singular purpose on their minds—to decide how best to drive the devil back to hell.
Kate didn’t mind that Jake wanted to arrive early. Being there to welcome people inside, pat their arms and give them hugs and say how well they all looked, would go a long way toward easing simmering fears.
