The Devil Walks in Mattingly

by Billy Coffey

  “I knew there was more,” Trevor said. “Hathcock hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still here. He took her.”

  Old floorboards creaked above their heads. Kate looked to the ceiling and wondered when Lucy’s father and Jake had left. Trevor said it again—“He took her”—and Kate understood it was not so much for her benefit as his own. He’d left just enough room for her to contradict him, but she couldn’t. Trevor was right. And Kate knew it wouldn’t be long until the same newspaperman who’d found Taylor Hathcock’s long-lost Aunt Charlene would find that her husband had been lying to them all.

  Clay Seekins walked down the steps. Jake trailed behind. Lucy’s daddy looked as though he wanted to panic but his body wouldn’t allow it. His suit jacket was gone, revealing a long curve of sweat that angled down from his chest. They reached the landing and made their way into the living room, where Kate and Trevor waited.

  “There’s no sign of her,” Clay said. “I came home and found it like this, Sheriff, just like this. I called for her, but she wasn’t here.”

  Kate didn’t think it was possible for anyone to talk himself out of a dream (if so, she believed Jake would have done that long ago), but Lucy’s father was trying to do just that. “I’ve been away on business. Didn’t know what happened until I got back. I heard about that man and how he got away. He’s got her, doesn’t he? Sheriff? That man’s got my little girl.”

  “We don’t know that, sir,” Jake said.

  Trevor chuckled and shook his head. “Are you serious?”

  Jake looked at him. “Thought I told you to stay on the porch.”

  “I got a right to be here, Sheriff. Unless this is a crime scene, of course.” Trevor grinned, realizing he’d just set a rather nice trap. “You calling this a crime scene, Jake?”

  Jake said, “No.”

  Kate’s eyes bulged and caught fire. “Jake, you can’t honestly stand there and tell us this isn’t anything other than what we all know it is.”

  Jake moved farther inside the room and took off his hat, rolled it in his hands. Bessie bulged from the small of his back.

  “Something’s off, Kate,” he said.

  “Something’s off?” Clay asked. He crossed the room to where I stood. “My daughter has been taken. Who knows how long?”

  “Wait,” Trevor said. “When did you leave town, Mr. Seekins?”

  “Saturday,” he said, “if that’s any of your business.”

  “Sat . . .” was all Trevor got out, though Kate could guess what he thought. Saturday had been four days ago, when Taylor and Charlie came to town. Taylor must have gotten Lucy while Jake was bringing Charlie in, maybe before Jake had even gotten to the Texaco.

  Kate looked at the writing on the carpet and said, “Lucy was still here on Saturday. Sunday and Monday too. She sat with me at the meeting.”

  Trevor asked, “That true, Jake?”

  “I remember seeing a girl sitting with Kate, yes.”

  Trevor took out his notebook and pen. His hand struggled to keep time with his thoughts. Kate didn’t think Trevor would have to worry about deciphering what he scribbled when he got back to the office. This was a story that would write itself. She only hoped the town would believe Jake had simply been wrong about Taylor being gone and not that he’d lied.

  Jake moved into the kitchen and toed a pile of smashed mason jars. “You’ve occasion to find yourself up on 664 very often, Mr. Seekins?”

  The man bristled. “What’s that have to do with anything?”

  Jake shrugged and toed the pile more, turned to the open cabinet doors beneath the sink. “Man with a habit’s apt to keep that habit a secret. Most folk who visit Hollis Devereaux keep their jars hidden until they turn them back in. Hollis, he offers a discount if you do. Kind of funny that someone’d come in here and take your girl, but not before rooting around in the one place where you keep your empties and taking the time to smash ’em.”

  Kate made her way to Jake. She remembered something Lucy had said Sunday afternoon, about the world being broken and the pieces not fitting. About her and her father getting into an argument. Lucy getting even.

  “She cut her hair,” Kate said.

  “It’s still on the bathroom floor upstairs,” Jake told her. Then, quieter, “You should have told me that girl’s troubles, Kate.”

  She whispered back, “You should have told me some things too, Jake. She’s gone. It doesn’t matter what happened with her and her father, she wouldn’t run off. I was helping her. You kept that man near town and didn’t do a thing about it, and now everyone’s going to know.”

  “What are we going to do, Sheriff?” Clay asked. “You have to find her. That killer took my daughter.”

  “I don’t think that’s what happened.” Jake pointed at what was left of the mason jars first, then to the destruction in the living room. “This doesn’t look like a struggle to me. Looks more like a lashing out.”

  “You’re saying Taylor Hathcock didn’t have a hand in this?” Trevor asked. He looked up from his notebook, pen poised on the paper, ready to write either way. “That it, Jake?”

  Kate looked into her husband’s eyes. They’d spent a lifetime together and had called themselves blessed because of it, thankful they had found warmth next to each other in a cold world. But he had lied to her. There was no way around that, nor was there any way Kate could help but wonder what else Jake had lied about. She knew what Trevor would write if Jake answered no. She knew how the town would react. And yet none of this mattered. All Kate wanted at that moment was to see a glimpse of the Jake Barnett that had been hers before the nightmares and before Taylor, before she felt the world had left her and moved on.

  Jake kept his hat in his hands. His jaws clenched and loosed into a look of surrender. “No, Trevor. I can’t say Taylor Hathcock wasn’t involved.”

  Trevor smiled. When he said, “Thanks, Sheriff,” he was already halfway out the door, leaving Lucy’s father with Kate.

  3

  He couldn’t hold his silence until the next day’s paper. Trevor told everyone he met between the Kingman house and the Gazette what had happened. More importantly, he told them what it meant. He told the lunch crowd at the diner and the loafers on the courthouse steps. He told Justus and his men, who’d just gotten back from another fruitless search in the hills. He told his uncle, the mayor.

  And by the time Lucy left with Taylor’s shotgun for the rusty gate and the Devereaux farm, nearly everyone in town had reached a common accord.

  Jake Barnett was no longer fit to serve as sheriff of Mattingly.

  4

  Hollis Devereaux had remained close to the farm since Mattingly began its slow unraveling. The town meeting had been enough for Edith, who said she’d never witnessed such Christ-less behavior from people who supposed themselves washed in the blood. And poor Jake, she’d added, that good man had to stand there and be turned to a boy again by his no-count daddy. Shameful is what it was. So Edith had said on the drive home that night, and so Hollis had agreed. It was shameful, and in more ways than one.

  They’d kept up with the news, of course. The newspaper box at the end of the Devereauxs’ lane was dutifully filled every morning, and though Trevor Morgan had failed to match the impact of Sunday’s editorial, it had not been for lack of trying. Hollis read Edith the day’s misery each morning from the front porch, about how the Hathcock boy was still running around somewhere above ground and the Givens boy was still dead below it, how people were stocking up on everything from food to bullets. How Justus’s roving posse was inciting more fear than comfort. Each morning Edith would wave a tired hand and proclaim she could stand no more. She begged Hollis to stay away from town. That suited him just fine. There was more than enough on the farm to worry about.

  He did not share his wife’s opinion that Justus Barnett was, in her words, “no-count.” Many in Mattingly had never forgotten how Mayor Wallis had tried to take the Barnett homeplace (for the good of the town, Big Jim always said,
though everyone but Trevor Morgan knew it was really for the good of Jim Wallis’s own pockets). As such, Justus had become a loveable rogue over the years—a countrified Robin Hood who’d stood up to the powers that be.

  It was Hollis who’d run groceries and moonshine up to Crawford’s Gap every so often, and it had been Hollis who had given Jake’s cell phone number to Justus along with a prepaid cell phone he’d bought in Camden, all in the hope that father and son could reconcile. But the bonds of friendship the Barnetts and Devereauxs had shared through the generations could only stretch so far. Hollis had no interest in joining Justus in the search for Taylor. He knew how that search would end if Justus should turn Taylor up. Evil had come to Mattingly, but repaying evil with its own kind would solve nothing.

  Besides, Hollis didn’t think Taylor was blameworthy at all. Yes, Hathcock had killed that boy. And he’d put dear old Andy Sommerville near the grave and had given Timmy Griffith the whupping of his life. But charging Taylor Hathcock for that would be like charging a strike of lightning for arson. Everyone in town knew the devil was behind it all, just as Trevor had said. Lucifer himself had been loosed.

  And it was all because of Hollis. Because of Jenny.

  He’d known all along judgment would come. That the money Jenny provided was the only thing keeping Hollis and Edith afloat didn’t matter. Hollis had chosen sin over faith, and that was his undoing.

  By that Wednesday night, Jenny had been almost completely stripped. The boiler fire had been snuffed, the copper pots and piping dismantled. Hollis had considered selling the scrap (there was money in copper, not moonshine money but money all the same) and then thought no, the Lord wouldn’t approve. He would instead haul Jenny to a corner of the north field the next morning and bury her there. It would be a solemn ceremony, but perhaps a redemptive one.

  He was collecting the remnants by lantern light when he heard the first twig snap. Hollis looked in that direction and saw nothing but the night. He stood silent for a moment, listening. His shotgun lay propped against a tall stump by the flickering light. There was a time when such a sound would send Hollis grabbing for that scatter-gun, but not that night. It was likely nothing but a skunk or a possum. And anyway, Hollis was no longer afraid of the lawmen or their hellycopters. He’d already been caught.

  He’d resumed his work when another snap echoed from among the trees, this one closer and loud enough to quiet the crickets. Movement came from beyond the arc of his light. Hollis straightened as a figure broke into the clearing. The lantern was too weak for him to make out who it was.

  “Who’s it?” he asked.

  The figure said nothing and took a step close enough for Hollis to see the barrel pointed at his chest. Hollis looked to where his own shotgun rested—too far. He spoke in a voice that sounded much older than his seventy-eight years. “You mind steppin’ a little closer, fella? I’d like to see who aims to end me.”

  The figure obliged, inching itself into the pale circle of light and then holding steady. Hollis could think of nothing more to say. He didn’t know whom he’d expected—Bobby Barnes, maybe, there to beg for one more jar of peach because manhunting was such thirsty work, or maybe that fella in the suit who’d come by earlier—but it certainly wasn’t the girl who stood in front of him. Her jeans were muddy, her shirt crumpled. Wild hate burned in her eyes. Tears stained her cheeks.

  “What you doin’ out here, little girl?” Hollis asked. He pointed to the shotgun. “An’ with that, of all things?”

  Her lips trembled against emotion and the weight of the iron in her hands. She said, “I have to wake you up.”

  Hollis looked at the gun against the stump. He was not surprised to find it had moved no closer. He looked back to the girl and said, “I expect you’ve done that. I’m many things, but at the moment sleepy ain’t among ’em.”

  He took a small step forward and froze when the girl racked the shotgun’s slide. She raised the barrel from Hollis’s chest to his head.

  “Don’t you move,” she said. “You peddle poison, Hollis Devereaux. You peddle poison that ruins lives.”

  A pain wormed its way down Hollis’s left arm to his fingers, rendering him dizzy. He motioned to the pile of metal beyond them and said, “I tore her down. I ain’t doin’ that no more.”

  “You can’t undo what’s been done. You throw all that away, I’m still here. My dad’s still here. You’re still here.” She shook her head. “What’s been done always comes back to haunt. You brought all of this on us, and I’m going to end it. I’m going to end it and find my peace.”

  Hollis knew that was true—he had brought it upon them. He didn’t know this girl or who among his many customers (some of which came all the way from Stanley) was her daddy, but he knew it was true. He thought of the money handed to him over the years and how it had fixed the truck and the tractor and put a new roof on the barn and kept the lights on when the sun scorched the fields. He thought of Edith sitting up in bed, waiting for him to lie down and tell her the day was over but another would come, and it would be fair because they would face it together. And then the girl’s hand went to the trigger and Hollis thought if this was to be his judgment, then that would be fair as well. He would be set free in the place of his own sin and raised up in glory.

  5

  “I love you, son, and I’m proud of you.”

  Zach stared at me. My smile was thin but there, peeking out from behind stubble that grew grayer by the day. I would hold that smile forever if that’s what it took to show him nothing was wrong.

  He didn’t add his part. There came no “Love you and proud too” from my son, no hint that he was about to say anything. Only that stare. It was as if Zach looked at me as he always had but was seeing me for the first time. I leaned in toward him. My stomach growled.

  “You hungry, Daddy?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Just supper settling.”

  “You dint eat nothing.”

  That was true enough. Supper that night had been prepared by three teenagers tasked with the night shift at the Dairy Queen. After spending most of the day helping Clay Seekins clean up the mess Lucy (or, I had to admit, Taylor) made of his house, Kate wasn’t much interested in cooking. Nor was I much interested in asking her to do so. The gulf between us had widened considerably in that time. Kate was still convinced Taylor Hathcock had struck again. So, too, was Lucy’s father, who was also convinced that throwing away a single shard of glass was tantamount to destroying evidence. I’d tried telling both of them that the only thing Lucy had been a victim of was her own teenage hormones, but my words sounded false. For Clay, believing his daughter had been kidnapped was better than believing some part of her had simply buckled. And as far as Kate was concerned, there was no longer much I could say that she would believe.

  Most of the town held that same sentiment by then. Trevor would have another story for the next day’s Gazette, but it would be one everyone already knew. Mayor Wallis’s Cadillac had raced up the Seekins’s lane not thirty minutes after Trevor left, followed closely by Bobby Barnes and Justus in Bobby’s red Dodge and Preacher Goggins. I’d turned them all away. Crime scene, I’d told them. It was all I could do.

  “Daddy?” Zach said. “I said you dint eat nothing.”

  “Had half a burger.”

  “But then you got up and went to the bathroom.” He lowered his voice. “I heard you pukin’. You sick, Daddy?”

  I patted his knee and tried smiling again. “I think maybe. But not the flu or anything bad.”

  “Heartsick,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’re sick in your heart. Momma too. She’s been in your bedroom all night lookin’ at her book.”

  “Where’d you come up with that word?” I asked.

  “The angel told me. He said you and Mommy got bad things in your hearts that you won’t let out.”

  “And what angel is this?”

  “The one I saw comin’ outta your room last night,” he sai
d.

  I chuckled and patted his knee again. “You saw an angel in the bedroom?”

  “’Course not. He was in the hall. I’m not scared anymore, Daddy. You shouldn’t be scared either.”

  “Must be nice,” I said, “having angels and seeing them. What’d he look like?”

  “He had a costume on.”

  “Like Superman?”

  Zach pursed his lips. He moved his arms from under the covers and crossed them. “I’m bein’ for real, Daddy. He’s protectin’ us.”

  “Well, good then. I imagine we could all use some protecting right now.” I leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “You get some sleep. That angel comes back, you tell him to stay close.”

  “He said he’s always close. That’s why I’m not scared.”

  I nodded and stood, thinking how wonderful that would be. I was about to tell Zach I was proud of him and loved him again but didn’t. The threat of his silence was larger than the hope he’d keep his part in our nightly ritual. I realized then just how important those words had become over the years. Not only for my son, but for me. Standing there in his room, I couldn’t remember ever wanting to hear “Love you and proud too” more.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  Zach’s eyes were nearly shut. His words sounded spoken through a thick curtain. “You’re gonna go back. You have to.”

  “Back to where?”

  “Where it got started.”

  “Okay, son. Get some sleep now.”

  I walked from the room and glanced at the light switch and smiled. Hanging on the peg beside it were Zach’s cowboy hat, plastic badge, and holster. Poking up from the latter was the plastic handle of his cap gun.

  That night I lay awake beside Kate and wished for angels.

  6

  Lucy had been gone too long. It was a slow walk from the gate and Taylor didn’t know how far into town she had to go, but it was still too long.

  He wondered if the bear would come to bring news of where she was, as it often did when Charlie visited. Taylor thought no. The bear had gone missing since meeting Lucy at the grove. Retreated, perhaps, into the deepest parts of the Hollow, where an ancient sign warning WARE—NO FARTHER led to places even Taylor refused to tread. He was sure the bear would remain there until the end. Taylor knew this but did not know how, just as he knew the end was drawing close.