by Billy Coffey
He should have gone with her, should have at least waited at the gate until Lucy returned. Not to help (that would be cheating, and while Taylor considered himself to be a great many things, he’d never been a double-dealer like Kate), but to be there for support. Yet there was no way Taylor could approach the rusty gate again, not with men looking for him in every place but where he was. And Lucy had insisted she leave the cabin alone.
And so there was only this. Only the waiting.
Taylor picked his book up from the log and brought it to his nose. He inhaled age and water. The riverbank, he remembered. That’s where he’d found it. After Kate had played her trick and Taylor had found the boy and Jake had run screaming over Indian Hill. The boy was gone by then
(No not gone he was Awake that boy was AWAKE)
and there was nothing Taylor could do but watch the butterflies. He sniffed the book again and remembered there had been so many butterflies. White ones. He remembered thinking they were feeding on the boy’s bloody places until he’d gotten closer and seen they weren’t. It was almost as if they were protecting the boy, sheltering him from the Hollow’s grasp.
Setting him free.
Waking him.
Taylor had remained in the Hollow since that day, had trekked its every corner but for where the sign read WARE—NO FARTHER. And in all that time and all that going, he had seen brown butterflies and black ones and ones mixed with both, but he had never seen another white one.
He remembered thinking that men from town would come. He knew Jake would confess nothing, but he didn’t think that would matter. Something would lead the men to the riverbank. They would find the boy and they would find Taylor and they would call him guilty and take him away.
“I was acquitted,” he said to the night. But those words plucked at that in-between place connecting Taylor’s heart to his mind, telling him that he was wrong, that not only was he guilty, he was also damned, and in a brief but terrifying moment the sepia lenses through which he viewed his yesterday fell away. He saw the cliffs above the riverbank and the roiling waters below. Taylor remembered reaching behind himself as the boy reached out, remembered the boy tumbling backward, and there in the shadow of the rotten log with the deep night pressing around him, Taylor Hathcock heard four whispered words:
I’m coming for you.
He spun, reaching for the flint knife beside him, and called the spirit forward. But by then Taylor’s memory had stopped, and the veil between worlds lowered once more.
A clacking noise from among the trees turned Taylor to the cabin. The sound grew closer. But it was not a spirit that breasted the small rise ahead. It was Lucy.
She tripped when she saw him and cried out, stopping her fall with the shotgun she held as a cane. Taylor ran. The shotgun skittered across the hard soil. Lucy dug her fingernails into Taylor’s back, pulling him to herself, and held on with what strength she had left.
“It’s done now,” Taylor whispered. He laid his hand to the back of her shorn hair. Each wave of tears sank Lucy deeper into his arms. It was as though all that held her together was her hurt, and as that pain was expelled, so too was her will. “I know it’s a terrible sense. I won’t say it gets better. Nothing noble’s easy. Such is the dream we live, lady.”
Lucy’s head shook against his chest. She clenched her hands into fists and struck Taylor there twice, then held him again. Taylor walked her to the cabin and took her inside. Lucy slumped at the table just as she had those four long nights ago.
He brought water and took her hand as he crossed to the opposite chair. Lucy did not drink. Her body trembled beneath a cold Taylor could not feel and the flame in the hearth could not chase.
Taylor squeezed her hand and whispered, “Tell me how it was for you, Lucy Seekins. It’ll ease your affliction if you open your heart to me.”
Lucy opened her mouth to speak. What came out was too soft for Taylor to hear.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I couldn’t.”
Taylor released her hand. “What you couldn’t?”
“I couldn’t wake him up. I tried, Taylor. I wanted to more than anything. I told him I was going to do it and he just stood there waiting like he wanted me to but I couldn’t.” The crying grew until the power behind the wails robbed Lucy of breath. She reached for Taylor’s hand. He was too shocked to offer it. “Please say something,” she said. “Please don’t be mad.”
Taylor said nothing. His hand moved across the table and stroked her fingers but he said nothing, and then he watched as Lucy’s hope gave way.
Lucy stood and moved to the cot. Taylor watched as she turned to him. Her shoulders convulsed beneath the weight of her tears as she lifted her shirt over her head. She let it dangle in her hand before dropping it to the soiled floor. She reached for the top of her shorts and let them fall. Her smallclothes came next. Lucy fumbled with them as her body shook, turning the act into an awkward act of seduction. Firelight licked along her curves, making the paunch of her stomach glow.
“You can have me,” she said, and Taylor heard in that voice a want and a need and something he could only think was love. “I’ll let you do anything you want, just please don’t make me leave.”
A bright heat rushed through Taylor. His lungs drew in deep, savoring breaths as that primal Other inside him was made drunk on her weakness. He went to her. Lucy did not shrink back but reached out, meaning to pull Taylor to the bed. Taylor took her wrists instead and kept her standing. He removed his black T-shirt and drew it over Lucy’s head, guiding her arms through the sleeves. He closed his eyes as he pulled the shirt down until it reached her knees.
“There will be none of that, lady,” he whispered. “I will not defile you, this night or another.”
He sat Lucy at the edge of the cot and kissed the wetness from her cheeks. Taylor’s breath smelled dank and rotten, yet to Lucy there was nothing but the tenderness of his lips.
“I can stay?” she asked.
“Your home’s here.” He let go of Lucy’s hand and reached behind her for the mandolin against the wall. “I never knew what this was for. The cabin, the spyglasses, the log, all them I knew. Not this. But now I think I do. I’ve heard you hum often, Lucy Seekins. Your voice is fair.” Taylor strummed the strings, not knowing how they worked. The sound he produced was stilted and garbled. “My grandpappy, he liked the banjo. He tried to learn me, but I never picked up on it. He always liked to play this old mountain church song. Drove me near crazy as I remember it, but those words stuck. I believe they were a herald of the life I’d find here.”
He strummed again, moving his fingers up and down the neck. Trying to remember the tune. Trying to remember things that once were.
“Sing with me, lady,” he said. “It’ll be our song.”
Lucy sniffed. “I don’t know the words.”
“I’ll learn you.”
Taylor’s fingers worked. He sang the first verse and the chorus, trying to lilt his voice to hold the notes, and then began again—
“Sadly we sing and with tremulous breath, As we stand by the mystical stream, In the valley and by the dark river of death, And yet ’tis no more than a dream. Only a dream, only a dream, Of glory beyond the dark stream, How peaceful the slumber, how happy the waking, Where death is only a dream.”
Taylor sang that first verse and chorus over, not remembering more. Lucy joined him. The notes from the old mandolin were rough and their voices rougher, but it was music just the same. They remained at the edge of the cot as the light between them beat back a building darkness. And for a few hours since time immemorial, song filled the Hollow.
7
You’re dead, Jake. There’s nothing you can do about it. Can’t you see that?
I aim the stone in my arms at Phillip’s sneakers. He lifts his feet as I place the rock there and sets them back down, thanking me for the footrest.
“You’re going to kill me,” I say. “You’re going to kill me because I killed
you.”
Did you? Who really killed me, Jake?
“You can’t blame Kate. Kate was just a girl. Please just leave us alone.”
You were just a boy, Phillip says. I was just a boy. Does that matter? I’m not going to leave you alone, Jake. Do you know why? Because heaven isn’t without the past.
“What do you know of heaven?” I ask. “You say you’re coming back, and Kate and I are dead when you do. You’re more demon than angel.”
I lift the next stone and try to cover Phillip’s feet again. If I can just get his feet—if I can pin him there—maybe the rest will be easier. But as I set the rock down, Phillip’s sneaker shoots out. He punts the stone like a football, and in a brief moment the motion eases the hood of his sweatshirt back just enough for me to see the scar on his neck. The rock gathers momentum as it topples down the pile, bouncing twice along the bank until it splashes into the river. And my first thought (if you can even call those sleepy rambles “thoughts”) is I’ll pick up the stone that’s appeared at my feet and start over. But there is no new stone when I bend down, there is only the pile upon which Phillip and I stand.
Lift one of those, he says, you’ll collapse the pile. Do you want to do that, Jake? Remember the cut you got when you fell in your dream? It followed you when you woke. What do you think will follow you if you’re crushed by all these rocks?
“I want to go back,” I tell him.
There is no back, Jake. There is no back, and heaven’s not without the past. They didn’t teach me that in Sunday school, but it’s true. God wipes our tears, but not our memories. Our yesterdays remain. The bad ones especially.
He stands before me, blocking out the sun, and I am too tired to shrink back.
Seems strange, doesn’t it? But remember, our tears are gone on the other side. Wiped clean by the very hand of love. Memories haunt you on your side of the veil, Jake, but on mine there is only their beauty. On my side, you see every life is magic. You see you were led even as you thought you wandered, and there was a light even in your darkness. And sometimes you are even given the grace to come back. To set things right.
“I don’t understand,” I tell him.
That’s why I’m coming, Jake. To make you understand. Phillip lifts an upturned fist. To settle accounts and give you this.
“I don’t want it,” I say. “I just want you to go. I just want to rest.”
Then you have to remember true. It’s the only way. You’re hanging on too tight, Jake. Time to let go. You have to tell Kate what you did.
“No,” I scream. “I won’t.”
Is she a good woman, Jake?
“Yes. Kate’s changed. She isn’t the girl—”
—who killed me? he finishes. Do you know how it felt for me that day, Jake? Do you know how many days I passed Kate in the hallways between classes and watched her? How many lunch periods I spent longing to sit at her table, even the seat next to hers? Do you know how many nights I spent alone in a bare bed, feeling the sting of my father’s fists and listening to the scrapes of mice in dark corners? I found my peace only when I closed my eyes and thought of Kate’s face. But what could I do, Jake? Share my heart with her? Do you remember what everyone called me?
I did.
You say she’s a good woman despite what she did? Phillip asks. Are you then a good man despite what you did? Are you not all equal, Jake? Kate suffers. You suffer. Taylor suffers. That’s why I bring you here. That’s why I’m coming for you all.
“How do you know Taylor?” I ask. “How does he know what I did?”
Soon, Phillip promises. Soon, if you all remember true. Look around you, Jake. What do you see?
Phillip lowers his hand and raises his head up and around. I follow his gaze. Yellows and oranges fall from the sky like water spilled onto a painter’s palette. The broken woods around us glow an almost golden color. The air is stale but for a warm, sweet breeze. To me, it seems that everything around us, every sharp rock and gnarled branch, has been placed exactly as it should. And I understand this was how the riverbank looked that day, and I remember what I’d thought as I made my way to Indian Hill:
The Hollow is ugly. The Hollow is beautiful.
Do you know what the old ones call it? Phillip asks. That time between sun and moon, when the world is neither bright nor dim?
I do. And when I speak, I feel a power attached to that word and a kind of magic—“Eventide.”
Yes, Phillip says, and though the hood is drawn over his face, I feel a smile on his lips.
It lasts only moments when you care to see it. But there are other eyes, Jake, and those eyes see hard. They see the beauty that infuses every life, and how that beauty is twisted to ugliness. They see children singing and hands clasped in prayer and a babe’s first steps, and they see old ones despairing and fists clenched and death before its time.
Do you know why I died, Jake? Why Kate keeps her notebook? Do you wonder how it can be that some like you cling to your When and others deny theirs so much that they fashion their remorse into virtue? Because to those great watching eyes, the world is always neither bright nor dim. Because there is darkness in man and also a light, and by their mingling the world lies at eventide.
Phillip holds his fist out again. I see his fingers moving, struggling to hold in what wants to come out.
The door comes first, he says. The preacher will find the door, and then the town. That’s when you must choose to be the man you are or the boy you were.
“What door?” I ask.
The father comes next. Then the book. The book will be last, Jake. That will be the beginning of your end. That will be what brings you back here.
“I’m never coming back here.”
I feel another smile from beneath Phillip’s hood, and then, He laughs at what we say we’ll never do.
“Who?”
HE. Phillip raises his fist for the last time. You will all remember true, Jake. Then I’ll come. I’ll come for you all, and I’ll have an end.
He steps to me, fist outstretched, and I run. I make for Indian Hill and the rusty gate beyond. I scream that I want nothing, that I will never come back to the river’s edge, but Phillip calls back that I will. It is eventide, he says. And though it is not bright, it is also not yet dark.
8
Kate struggled in a blackness so thick it suffocated. Lucy called, but there was no way to tell from which direction. In that black, left was right and behind was ahead and right side up was upside down. Kate only knew Lucy was fading. The echo told her that. It was dim and frightened and so far away that her name reached her in two syllables.
KA . . . te.
Kate tried to call out, but the black flooded her open mouth like oil. She gagged, coughing out clouds of white flickers that looked like butterflies.
She woke lying on her left side, knees drawn into a fetal position. The first rays of sun leaked through the open window. Robins and sparrows called out in song. The clock on her bedside table read 6:27. Kate slid back the small switch on the side, silencing the alarm before it could go off. She thought of Lucy. She thought of seeing her on the street in front of the sheriff’s office sheared and bedraggled and how she said it had been a fight with her dad.
Getting even, she’d said—Do you ever think there’s a better place, not like heaven but maybe? Do you ever feel like everything’s broken and the pieces won’t fit together again?
And there was something else as well, something Kate had found the day before in Lucy’s living room that she’d not mentioned to Jake or Clay Seekins or Trevor, something in the carpet with Safe and Effective! written in purple on the front. A part of Kate had known even then that Lucy had run away. She’d sat with Kate and Zach at the meeting, not with Johnny Adkins and his parents. The only reason boyfriend and girlfriend would avoid each other at a time like that was if they were boyfriend and girlfriend no more.
And yet Kate had lied and said otherwise. She’d put all the blame on Jake and said nothing t
o the contrary when Trevor took the leap of connecting Lucy to Taylor. She’d kept still even when she knew Trevor would write a story that would end both her husband’s career and their life in Mattingly. Lying there in the midst of another almost perfect morning in what was once an almost perfect life, Kate realized she had harmed her marriage more than any lie Jake could tell. She had sacrificed his reputation for fear of what Lucy’s disappearance truly meant—that Kate had not done enough, and now another child was gone because of her.
In Kate’s mind life was a scale upon which all stood. People were born in the middle and spent their lives drifting to one side or the other—teetering as their faith and love grew, tottering when they gave in to sin and hate. Kate’s own scale had tottered the day she played her trick on Phillip, and there it had stuck. It did not move when Sheriff Houser got that anonymous call and Phillip’s body was found, nor even when Phillip’s death was ruled a suicide. Kate knew she’d taken Phillip McBride’s life even before he could take it himself, as did all of those who’d peered and laughed from the bleachers that day. And though those same classmates greeted Kate each day with genuine love—and though she’d begged for and received God’s forgiveness every day since—still Kate had not felt that scale evened. Only the penance of serving children like Phillip would shift that balance. Kate had known all along it would take more than one notebook to gain freedom from her past. Now she knew there wouldn’t be enough want in the world for her to be free of both Phillip and Lucy.
She felt Jake’s hand touch her hip and turned. His face appeared drawn and thin in the morning light. Thick stubble filled in the shallow craters where cheeks had once been. The drawn skin over his stomach rose and fell against pajama pants that barely covered his hips. She and Zach had given those pants to Jake the Christmas before—blue ones with white pinstripes and World’s Greatest Dad stenciled on the right thigh. They’d been so tight that the drawstring had disappeared into the waistband, but he had refused to let Kate return them. Now a full three inches of that drawstring had been dug out and knotted just to keep the pants from falling to his ankles.
