by Billy Coffey
He thought of the footprints and how he’d found them Friday night on one of his rare trips to the grove. How he’d followed them all the way to the rusty gate. It was Taylor’s obsession with Kate that had made him believe those prints would lead to town and to her. That was why he’d convinced Charlie to take him to Mattingly in the first place.
But then everything changed. Charlie was gone, for one. Where exactly Charlie had gone was a question Taylor had tried to ignore until Lucy had spoken of it earlier.
Dying or waking, people do it every day. People like my mom and Charlie. So how can you be doing it?
Taylor had no answer for that because Lucy had been right. He’d been in the Hollow so long that the workings of the world below had slipped him by. Of course people left. He’d known that himself once upon a time, had he not? What did that mean, then?
He sat with his book in his lap and the tip of his pencil hovering, wanting answers but finding none. Taylor never wrote down how it was that people could Wake without him in their presence. He only scrawled at the bottom of a page that was written on and erased and written on again hundreds of times over the course of twenty years:
All’s still a dreem.
Yes. Because Taylor’s book said so and that was his Bible, and when the Word clashes with the world, the Word must always win out.
Yet not even this contradiction was enough to sway Taylor’s mind from the higher things he pondered.
Lucy had saved him from a fate that would have mirrored Charlie’s own, and in the course of their days since, Taylor had come to think he’d saved her as well. He’d shown her as much of the truth as he dared. He had told her of the dream and taken her to the Hole. Taylor thought that well enough. Maybe even too much, given the depths of Lucy’s pining to redden her hand upon the grove’s wall. There were wonders in the Hollow more powerful—more holy—but Taylor had believed exposing Lucy to those would imperil her. If the lady had been consumed by the sight of a mere puddle, what would the sight of an ocean bring?
So he was content to keep the farther reaches of his kingdom a secret, knowing it was for Lucy’s own good. To show her more would mean Taylor opening his heart, and the gate at that entrance was just as rusted and unused as the one that guarded the Hollow.
And yet that had now changed as well, and for one simple reason.
Lucy loved him.
Taylor Hathcock did not know how old he was. Time, like death, was a notion that slipped away in the Hollow. He only knew that in the long days stretching behind him, no one had ever voiced those words. Not his pa or his ma, not his grandpappy. Nor even his aunt, who had taken him in not out of tenderness but duty and, as far as Taylor knew, had never bothered to raise a call when he disappeared. But now he was loved, and Taylor had never known how much he’d craved those words until he heard them. The prospect of sharing his life with someone—of sharing everything—struck him silent.
Taylor stopped at that thought—sharing everything. That was it, wasn’t it? That was why those prints had led to Lucy Seekins instead of Kate Griffith. That was why Lucy had said maybe Taylor wasn’t supposed to find the one who’d risen from the grove, but the one who’d risen was supposed to find him. Taylor had thought that notion wrong at first. Now he felt it right. That’s why the Hollow had drawn the lady to him. Because Lucy would love Taylor and Taylor would love her back, but he would have to share everything with her first. He would have to take her to the riverbank. That was where his aid would come, to make an end at the beginning.
He turned, meaning to perhaps say those words back for the first time, but found himself alone. Taylor turned and found the camp empty but for a few piles of junk and the shrill sound of the breeze through the aluminum chimes hanging from the cabin. Lucy was gone, cast out by a silence she’d taken as judgment. Taylor called her name in a loud, anguished cry that was as close to prayer as he’d ever managed. And when Lucy appeared from the door of the cabin, he felt the rusted gate upon his heart swing open.
He went to her, mindful that his steps had quickened to a run. Lucy’s look was one of shock and confusion that melted away when he held her tight to his chest. Taylor put a hand to the back of Lucy’s head and stroked hair that looked like the dark fronds of a flowerless plant. He put his lips there. She smelled of pine and earth and wind.
“You’re the only one that’s ever known me as a good man, Lucy Seekins,” he said. “If at the end of our path you’d still have my heart, it’ll be yours.”
He felt Lucy’s arms wrap his waist, as though she were cradling a newborn. The Hollow stilled. There was only them, and there was only now.
Taylor released her and said, “Gather supplies. Food and water. And bring my scatter-gun, but mind it’s still loaded.”
Lucy gazed up at him with eyes like two black diamonds, and Taylor loved them. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Far beyond the grove,” he said. “To where the river and the dream begins. If you would love me, lady, you would love not just some of me, but all.”
14
Parker, West Virginia, wasn’t really a town at all, at least not in the way Mattingly was a town. There was no square or clock tower, no blocks of clean streets that led to places of trade. It was instead a wasted space that looked ready to fall off the world’s edge. What buildings I passed were only ramshackle collections of fading wood and brick behind sidewalks overrun by wire grass.
The lone school was a cinder-blocked rectangle with Parker Elementary wood-burned into the sign out front. A Baptist church with a similar sign (this one reading a simple Jesus Saves) stood just down the road. Its white spire reached into the sky like a beacon summoning the lost. Beside that stood the Parker post office. I stopped there and spoke with the postman, a thin, frail old man with yellowing teeth and stale breath. He directed me eight miles on to a dilapidated trailer park named Jollyview, which seemed to me as ironic as calling a dead and mountainous land Happy Hollow.
I parked behind a blue Ford wagon and made my way up a path of river rock to the small, shaky porch of Charlene Patterson’s single-wide. A television blared inside. I heard the shrill yap of a dog. I knocked three times and turned to the narrow street that connected the fifty or so homes to the main road out front. A boy Zach’s age ran from the door of the trailer across the way, clothed only in a soiled pair of underwear. A woman’s voice called out, demanding his return. The boy screamed back an obscenity. A mother carrying a baby walked past oblivious to the scene, as if such sights were common. The babe in her arms sucked at a bottle filled with what looked like soda. Music blared from an open window farther down. Far away, someone screamed. I took this all in as I waited for Taylor’s aunt to decide whether or not to answer the door, and the word that came to my mind was the one Phillip had used to explain where the world lies.
“Eventide,” I whispered.
I turned when the door cracked open. The woman on the other side of the broken screen wore brown pants and a white T-shirt, hanging from a body that was all bones. Her sunken eyes stared out from beneath hair the color of dried glue.
She raised a cigarette to her mouth and exhaled a long stream of smoke through her nose. “Who’re you?”
“Sheriff Jake Barnett, ma’am, of Mattingly, Virginia. Would you be Charlene Patterson?”
The dog barked again. Two small paws rose up from the bottom of the door, revealing the scraggly face of a malnourished Pomeranian. Inside, a TV preacher yelled.
“Only if I got no choice.” She inhaled deep through her mouth, then blew out through a pair of wide nostrils. “Mattingly, you say?”
“Yes’m. Need to talk to you about Taylor Hathcock.”
She nodded. “Which is it? You find’m, or you find what’s left of’m?”
“Neither,” I said. “But I am looking.”
“He ain’t here,” Charlene said.
“Thought as much, but I was wondering if I could come inside and sit a spell, ask you some questions. It’s been a lon
g ride.”
Charlene waved her cigarette. I thought that gesture was meant for me to go, but the sagging door opened. The dog, no higher than my knee but twice my size in its own mind, leaped forward.
Charlene screamed, “Mitzi, git back here, you mangy beast,” and kicked the dog with her foot, sending the animal deep into the home. “Confounded stray’s what she is. Fed her once an’ she never left.”
I removed my hat and stepped inside. The dim living room was bare but for an easy chair, a crumbling sofa, and the blaring television. A layer of yellow nicotine stained the walls. Two framed pictures graced the space above the sofa. The first was of an angel standing over two frightened children as they crossed a buckling bridge at night. In the other, two ball-capped boys with hands stuffed into overalls stood in deep conversation along a dirt road. A caption in the middle read, You been farming long?
“Sit if you want,” Charlene said. “Got nothin’ to offer but instant coffee in dirty water.”
“I’m fine.” I settled myself at the edge of the sofa and pulled up my sagging pants, wishing I hadn’t left Bessie in the truck. “Sorry to bother you, ma’am, and to bear you bad news. I’m afraid Taylor’s killed a boy.”
Charlene sat in the chair and smoked. The preacher on the television expounded upon how the richness that God promises extends to the pocketbook as well as the soul. It was a sentiment I thought believed easily enough by a man in a thousand-dollar suit. Not so much by a poverty-stricken old woman in Parker, West Virginia.
I spoke up: “We had fingerprints, but they turned up nothing. The only way we know it was Taylor was because his partner confessed. Man by the name of Charlie Givens.”
“Don’t know’m,” Charlene said.
“I was more interested in why Taylor doesn’t seem to exist, at least according to the Commonwealth. And for reasons more personal than you understand, I need to know his past.”
“Ain’t much t’say,” Charlene told me. She snuffed out her cigarette and traded it for a fresh one she pulled from a pack by her chair. “Other’n Taylor’s no-count. Guess you good Mattingly folk done found that out, though. His pa’s a drunk what killed hisself thirty year ago. Misstook the barrel of a gun for a smoke, or so they say. Me, I know better. Sometimes a body gets tired of livin’. S’pose you seen summa that, Sheriff, you bein’ a lawman. That tired can get so bad you’d rather see hellfire than another day of the same ole. Taylor’s got that same blood, I always knowed it. Somethin’ in that boy broke off. It was bound to happen and cain’t blame his pa for it. As I judge things, what broke in that boy got bent in the womb.
“His ma was my sister, and as I am, I can say she was a harlot outright. What time she didn’t spend in the Camden bars was spent at the abortion mill up Stanley way, lettin’ doctor men reap what life the no-counts she fell in with sowed. Taylor grew up and fell away.” She took a long drag and blew out slowly. “His ma fell in with a drugger when he’s sixteen. Man wanted her for his own use but had no use for Taylor. Since he was givin’ her the poison she needed, that choice was simple in his momma’s mind. She dropped Taylor at my door an’ left. I never saw her again.”
She paused to flick her ashes into a small bowl. The TV preacher said the reason we all weren’t happy was because we didn’t believe enough.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said.
The woman either didn’t hear me or chose not to. “Brought’m up best I could, but he’s lost by then. World put Taylor ’neath its boot. I sorrowed over’m until I learnt under a heel’s where he belonged. Truth is, I always knew there’d be blood if that boy was set loose. He’d disappear to the woods for long stretches and come home only t’eat. Schoolin’ did him no good. Got kicked out one after another.”
“And you don’t know where he is now?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Thought he’s dead.”
I nodded. A dead end. I’d expected as much (and despite finding the mettle to arrest Justus, I’d hoped for as much too), but at least I could go back to town and tell Kate and Trevor that I’d tried. I reached into my back pocket for a small notebook and pen.
“I appreciate your time, Ms. Patterson. You think of anything else, you give me a call.”
I ripped the page and handed it to her. Charlene didn’t say if she would or wouldn’t, she only showed me the door.
15
Lucy suffered no illusion that she’d seen the whole of Happy Hollow in the past five days. Still, she could not believe how far that land stretched. They’d walked for hours, and Taylor said there were hours to go. As big a world as the space between the cabin, the grove, and the gate seemed, it was only a sliver of that great and dying wood. Lucy felt a sense of wonder and of being swallowed alive. Thick, gray branches hid much of what was to be seen. The hills and dips were endless, all carpeted with dry leaves that covered jutting roots like laid traps. Several times she heard the distant sound of rushing water seeking the path of least resistance. Lucy thought that would be a difficult task in such a place as this. In the Hollow, resistance seemed the rule.
Taylor led the way, the shotgun resting in the crook of his arm and his flint knife ready. He had walked beside her while the sun stood rising and bright, even held her hand as they traveled. But he had gone on ahead as midday came and the first shadows of afternoon fell. Not much, only a step or two, but enough for Lucy to think he was nervous of having her near.
“How much farther?” she asked.
“Yon,” is what he said.
It was a distance Lucy didn’t know how to measure. “I can carry the gun for a while. I don’t know why you brought that anyway. Haven’t seen the bear at all. Or anything, for that matter.”
“Believe I’ll hang on to it,” Taylor said. “Where we’re going, lady, one can never be too restrained.”
“And where are we going?”
Taylor stopped along a path that Lucy believed existed more in his mind than in the dense woods around them. He turned and hefted the shotgun to his shoulder.
“No one’s ever told me they loved me, Lucy Seekins, nor have those words ever moved over my lips. Yet I do love you, and I say it true. You say I’m a good man, and so I am. But you cannot rightly love me, because you adore what you do not know.”
“I don’t understand,” Lucy said.
“You will. At the end of this path lies my beginning.” He moved a hand behind his back and brought out his book. “Where this was given me.”
“Is it far?” she asked. “I want to see the Hole again.”
“Where we go counts more than the Hole, lady. Does your treasure lie in red upon the walls of the grove, or does it lie in me?”
He turned and walked on. Lucy followed, drawing herself farther into the Hollow’s waning light. She remained close and did not turn back, conscious that she had not answered his question.
16
There was one last stop before returning home, one I wasn’t aware I was making until I’d geared the Blazer into park in the south lot of the Stanley hospital. I walked into the patient entrance and tipped my hat to the elderly woman at the desk, then took the elevator to Andy Sommerville’s third-story room. I was near his door when my phone rang. I reached for it and stepped aside. The number wasn’t one I recognized.
“Sheriff, this is Charlene Patterson.”
“Ms. Patterson. Everything okay?”
“Well as can be.” She coughed. The sound was thick with phlegm. “I remembered somethin’ after you left. About Taylor.”
“What’s that?”
“His schoolin’. Told you he bounced around an’ never could stay in one for long. He always had a rage in him. They put him in Camden and Stanley both. I forgot they put’m in Mattingly for a spell too.”
Something that felt like a bubble formed deep in my stomach.
“He was at Mattingly?” I asked. “What year?”
Charlene fell quiet. “Ninety, I s’pose it was. Taylor started in the fall, then quit. They were gonna put’m o
ut and I begged them not. It was his last chance, you see. We wrangled until they let him come back. Springtime that was, if I recollect right. Went two weeks, then one morning he left and never came back.”
That bubble burst with a pop I could swear was audible. Whatever emotion that filled it—I couldn’t tell exactly, but there seemed equal parts worry, despair, and panic—leaked out in sweat.
Ninety, she’d said.
“Are you sure that was the year?” I asked. “I graduated in ’90, and I don’t remember him.”
“Why would you?” she asked. “Boy like that, only there three weeks?”
I found myself standing in front of Andy’s door. He looked at me from the bed and waved.
“You didn’t report him missing?” I asked.
Her voice was cold—“He’s a man then, an’ I was tired. I couldn’t wrangle him no more, Sheriff.”
I supposed that was true enough. I thought it also true that Charlene Patterson had never seen Taylor as her blood at all. He’d been more a stray like Mitzi, one she would feed only when it barked and kick away when it barked too much.
“They called, a’course,” Charlene said. “Principal first, then the sheriff. Wantin’ to know if somethin’ happened to’m. Don’t know why they bothered since no one ever bothered before. I told both of ’em Taylor’d just had enough. They said there’s been some trouble and had to check.”
Some trouble, she’d said, and at those two words all feeling left my body. It couldn’t have been Taylor, I thought. And yet in that same thought I knew it could have been. It could have been anyone. Phillip was the only one people remembered.
It explained how Taylor knew me. Most of all, it explained how he knew Kate.
Andy will tell you we visited that day. He’ll say I sat in the chair at his bedside and asked him questions that he answered as best he could. He’ll also say I acted mighty strange the whole time. I guess that’s true. Fact is, I don’t remember any of it. Not a word. I suppose it’s just the same as when I’d passed him that last Saturday morning and forgot to wave. My mind had been full of Justus that day on the road, but there in Andy’s bed it was full of 1990 and Mattingly High School. Nineteen ninety in the spring, and that warm Friday afternoon when Kate had played her trick and I had gone to prove myself a man.
