by Billy Coffey
Kate holds her hands aloft, reaching for the sound of acceptance—of glorious worship—and drinks until she’s full. She laughs (oh, how she laughs!), yet even as she does, Kate remembers the look on Phillip’s face, and even now there is a dark knowing in her mind that something more has happened here, something far worse than she could have ever intended, and that her laughter will end in tears.
5
“I tore off,” Taylor said.
Lucy’s hand had slipped into his sometime during the telling. It was an act that stood in contrast to the hate on her face. Taylor hoped the girl’s rage would stay on Kate and not veer to him. The story was near its end, and though Taylor was still sure what had happened after he ran from the football field that day was true—was good—he remembered he had not woken Charlie or Lucy’s momma and yet they were gone still.
“I have my Aunt Charlene’s car—she lets me have it on schoolin’ days and hoofs it to her own job down at the laundrymat in Camden—and I go’s fast as I can. But no matter how much gas I give that old Ford, I cain’t outrun the memory of that boy’s kiss. I’m past the Mattingly line and I can still hear them cackling at me, saying ‘Stupid redneck’ and calling me a boy lover. And I see Kate too. Oh yes, I see her well, and I know that memory of her I feared would slip my mind will now be there always.
“Charlene, she’s got beer in the fridge. She sips and swallows and then cusses my ma for the drugs she takes. I drink until the heat I feel from Kate turns cold, and then I go to the only place that gives me comfort. It’s this Holler that takes me. I’m not laughed at here, and I’m not made sport of. Here, I’m a king.
“I walk on ’til the sun’s low on the mountaintops. Hours, I reckon it was, up from the lowlands to these cliffs right above us. That’s when I hear a sound of mourning that buckles me. I been in this wood many a’time afore then. Seen things. Heard things. But I never saw or heard no sound like that. I turn to run off, but that sound gets closer, callin’-me like. I reach to my pocket for my stone knife. There’s a stand of rock up there and a small path for game, and when that noise comes around those rocks, I see it’s the boy.
“It’s the boy. The one Kate tricked me with. He starts sayin’ he’s lost, that he cain’t go home wailing to his folks and so he parked his truck and now he’s lost, but I know it’s deceit. He followed me. I know that more than I’ve ever known anything. How else would we both’ve gotten to this same place at this same time?
“I tole him to get goin’, but he didn’t. He’s wailing and walking to me, saying to me, ‘I’m lost, I don’t want to be lost,’ and then he reaches out his arms to give me a hug, aiming to touch me, and in my head I see Kate and I hear that cackle rising louder, calling me hillbilly and boy lover, and then . . .”
Taylor reached into his back pocket. He felt the flint knife there but drew out his old book instead. His eyes grow wide at something he’d never considered before. “’Twas not out of love, lady. Not at all. I hated him.”
6
I turned from the Hollow and faced Kate. Her shoulders were hunched and she held her arms folded across her chest, as though holding herself against a cold only she could feel. Her eyes were fully on me. She had left whatever place her mind had visited on our way to the gate, and the long trip back had left her looking tired and worn. My heart broke for her.
We were bound together, Kate and I. Not simply by love or duty to our son, but because of Phillip. Because of what had happened on a day that to most of the billions of people in this sad world came and went no different from any other, filled with the same trifles to endure and worries to dwell upon. That day had been long forgotten to them, and yet for Kate and me it came to define not just the lives we would live from then forward but the people we would become. Standing there watching the moonlight glint off the tears pooling in her eyes, I knew she had suffered more. Kate was loved and accepted by our town. Yet she was still held responsible for Phillip’s death in everyone’s eyes but my own, no matter how many boxes she delivered to the doorsteps of Mattingly’s poor.
Yes, she had suffered more. I understood that. But I also understood I had borne more. Kate had carried regret all those years, a mourning for what she’d done. I carried a remorse for what I hadn’t, and that burden is heavy and hard to lay down. But there at the rusty gate with the peak of Indian Hill looming far, I knew that was what I had to do. And I prayed that if I couldn’t find the courage to lay that weight down, I could at least find the strength to loosen my grip.
I turned away and set my hands upon the gate. My words were soft and slow.
“I saw Phillip after he ran off that day. I saw him here. And then I killed him.”
I couldn’t face her. Nor could I look ahead to all those miles of dead trees soaked in a moon that only made everything frighten me more. I could only be silent now and steel myself against whatever might come.
What came was a soft and broken voice carried by the breeze: “What did you say?”
“I saw him here,” I said. “I didn’t know anything of what had happened. I saw everybody up in the bleachers for Field Day and I remember hearing them laughing, but I didn’t know what it was about. I was down on the field, showing off. Being the man. I had eyes for you then, Kate. I’ve loved you ever since I can remember. Couldn’t believe it when we started dating. I thought you were just too pretty and too good for me. I still think that.”
I heard Kate’s feet shuffle. The way she spoke my name shamed me. It reminded me of the way I’d spoken Phillip’s name when he first entered my dreams. It was a plea. I could only face the gate and shake my head.
“I decided that morning I’d come up here after school was out,” I said. “It wasn’t so much I was graduating as I was getting ready to turn eighteen. You leave off school and get that age, people start calling you a man. I didn’t feel much like a man, though. Momma was long passed, and it was just me and Justus. Hard, living under that shadow. He always wanted to make me into him, and I always wanted it. But it wasn’t in me, Kate. My heart was too soft to let me be a hard man. That made me weak. In his eyes, and my own.
“Never put much stock in coming up here and scrawling my name, but I decided to do it anyway. I figured it would be the kind of thing Justus would approve of. And I guess I thought I’d have at least that to lean on—I could say I came here to the gate, just like all those men in all those years. I know it sounds stupid, but it felt like doing that would make me part of something. Like I belonged.
“So when Field Day was over, I climbed in the truck and drove here. Parked right there where the Blazer is. And let me tell you, Kate, I felt then what I feel right now. This place births a fear in you like none other. I just sat there behind the wheel, half of me saying go ahead and get it over with, the other half telling me to turn tail and run before whatever hell lives here gets hungry. It was Justus’s face that settled things. He was all I saw, and that’s why I got out.
“All I had was my old Buck knife. Justus still had Bessie then, and whether he’d pass her on to me was still a subject of question.” I touched the steel at the small of my back, reminding myself that that issue, at least, had been settled. “My hand was shaking like you wouldn’t believe when I took that knife out. Every boy’s heard stories of the Holler. You hear them growing up. The good ones’ll put a fright in you, but none of them match being here. You can feel it. It’s like a blade dangling over your head, getting ready to drop.
“I don’t know what made me look up. Maybe it was my fear looking out or maybe I heard something back in the trees. I saw Indian Hill up there. It was day still, but it was closing in on . . .” I paused. “Eventide. I could see the pines atop it, the only green things for miles. And I got this idea then, crazy as it was—nobody’s probably set foot on that hill in all of history. I still think maybe that was true. Who’d go all that way up there through this wood? Who’d have that kind of guts? No one. Not even my daddy had gone past the gate.
“I lit out before
I could talk myself out of it. Turned my back probably a hundred times in the first hundred steps, just to make sure the gate was still here and I hadn’t been swallowed up. My heart beat so hard I could feel it in my throat. But I kept walking. All the way to the hill. All the way, Kate.”
I turned. It was just for a moment and just to see where Kate was. She’d taken two steps closer and was holding herself tighter. I looked back to the gate. To the hill.
“Made it up there just as the sun was going down. I saw no devils and heard no ghosts. There was just an empty quiet. And you know what? It’s beautiful up on that hill, at least as beautiful as anything in the Holler can be. It’s dead land out there, but it’s untouched. There’s a magic to it. The river’s on the other side. It comes down through some cliffs and winds on down. To town eventually, I guess.
“And I thought, Coming this way wasn’t so bad. If I hoof it down to the river, I’ll be back before night.
“If I’d do anything over in my life, Kate, it’d be that. It doesn’t seem right that a life can turn on one choice, but it can. I walked down the other side and came to the river. Followed it around the bend to where the cliffs lay. I thought I’d pushed my luck far enough and started to turn back when I saw something lying on the bank just a-ways ahead. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it wasn’t driftwood and I knew it didn’t belong. There were butterflies all around it. White ones. They’d light on whatever it was and flit away, circle around and land again. I got closer and saw it was a boy—it was Phillip. His glasses were lying near, all broken. His body was broken worse. His blood was all over the rocks. The butterflies were feeding on it.” I shook my head. “It was like bees to honey.”
Kate began to cry. I wanted to go to her but didn’t. I’d started this tale, and I meant to have its end.
“I didn’t know what to do, seeing him that way. I looked up and guessed he must’ve tumbled from the cliffs, but I couldn’t understand how he’d gotten up there and so deep in the Holler. That drop, it had to be thirty feet at least. Phillip’s lying there and his arms and legs are at these angles that aren’t possible, and I’m shaking as I stare at him and I feel eyes on me, like something’s watching. And then all of a sudden he reaches out for me. He’s trying to talk but he can’t because he’s so banged up. He’s just wiggling his fingers like, and he’s making these noises like a hurt animal and I just screamed. I screamed, Kate, and then I ran. I turned and took three steps and stumbled on the rocks. Landed on my arm”—I pointed to my scar—“right here. Then I got up and ran harder than I’ve ever run in my life. Back over the hill and on through the Holler and I don’t care what devils I see or what ghosts reach up for me from the dirt, all I want to do is run. All the way back to the gate and my truck. I’m shaking so bad and crying so hard when I get there, I can’t even turn the engine over. Once I do, I’m gone. I flew, Kate. Wonder I didn’t run off the road.”
Far away, Kate spoke. “You didn’t tell anyone?”
I shook my head. “Meant to a thousand times. Justus asked about the gash on my arm. I couldn’t tell him the truth. I knew he’d ask why I didn’t bring Phillip out or why I didn’t go straight to Sheriff Houser, anything other than run away and leave that boy to die. And then I got to thinking maybe Phillip hadn’t been in that bad of shape, maybe it was the Holler playing tricks or maybe Phillip was playing a trick himself. Maybe he’d just picked himself up after I ran off and walked back home with a big laugh. That’s what I told myself—that if I told Justus and he’d got the sheriff out there and Phillip was nowhere to be seen, it would be worse. I figured I’d keep quiet and wait. Just one day, just to make sure. But that was my shame talking.
“Saturday morning came and went. There was no word. Then Justus came home from town that evening and gathered Bessie and a light, asking me if I knew a boy named Phillip McBride. I told Justus I didn’t really, Phillip was just a kid at school and everybody called him Phil the Fairy. Justus told me the boy was gone. They’d found his daddy’s truck along a switchback in the hill country, and Sheriff Houser believed he’d either gotten himself lost in the woods or been taken by a sex pervert. It was too late for me then. If I ’fessed to what I saw, Justus and the sheriff both would’ve condemned me as a murderer. And that was true, what I deserved.
“I was in hell for another day, trying to find a way to go. I called Sheriff Houser Monday before school and hid my voice. He found Phillip that afternoon. Went into the Holler alone. No one dared go with him, not even Justus. Sheriff Houser said it was his duty. I thought about that often when they said I was the new sheriff. I think about it still.
“By then, what’d happened at school got out. So did the stuff about how Phillip’s daddy always beat on him and his momma. They figured Phillip was upset and didn’t feel like he could go home, so he got out of that truck and started walking. I knew you’d take all that blame, Kate. Even when they called it suicide, I knew you’d put Phillip’s death on yourself.”
Kate’s words were a knife that sank deep—“You never told me otherwise!” she screamed. “Even when we started dating, Jake? Even when we were married? All these years, and you never told me?”
“I loved you,” I said. I turned so she could see my face, and though I spoke with a desperation that neared anger, I kept my voice even. “I love you still. All I ever wanted was for you to think of me as a good man, Kate. What Justus thinks and Trevor and Bobby Barnes and the mayor, what the whole town thinks, doesn’t matter. What matters is you and Zach.”
I gripped my head, aiming to jerk the words out that my tongue couldn’t carry.
“The burden I’ve carried, Kate. All that weight on me. I know the load you carry. I won’t say mine is heavier, only that it’s different. All a man has is his honor. It’s the one thing that’s his and the world can’t take, and the only way you lose it is if you give it away. But once you do it’s like you’re walking around naked and cold, and you can have the love of God and the help of Jesus, but you live in hell just the same. I wish you could understand that, Kate. With all my heart, I do. But you can’t. You can’t know why I never told you, I can only hope you’ll try and understand.”
Kate took a step to me. The smooth skin where her jaws met bulged, and her eyes were two hard coals. All I had just confessed had been met with everything I’d always feared—Kate’s love crumbled beneath her tears, spilled away, and I would never have it again.
“Don’t you dare think only a man is saddled with honor, Jake Barnett,” she said, “and don’t you dare tell me only a man can suffer at its passing.”
“I just wanted you to love me. I just wanted to protect what we have.”
She shook her head. “What we have, Jake? What do we have? Everything we’ve built together is a lie.”
“Don’t say that, Kate,” I said. “Please don’t. Please just try to understand.”
Kate offered no such consolation, nor did I deserve one. She only stood there, looking not into my eyes—I didn’t think Kate could, and I didn’t blame her—but at a spot over my right shoulder. Her eyes widened.
She reached for my arm and asked, “What’s that?”
I turned back to the gate. Far beyond, a single white light burst from among the pines atop Indian Hill. It held steady and did not move, pressing back against the night like a beacon.
Phillip McBride had vowed to me that he would return for an end once we all had remembered true. Standing there staring at that speck of brightness, I knew I’d done just that. No less than I knew Kate had on our long ride to the Hollow. No less, perhaps, than Taylor Hathcock, who lay waiting for me somewhere in the endless miles of wilderness on the other side of the gate. And at the very moment Big Jim Wallis declared his emergency meeting to order (and put it on record that I was too cowardly to appear), I understood an end had come.
I stepped alongside Kate and took her hand. She allowed it.
7
“That’s Lucy,” Kate said. “That has to be Lucy, Jake.”
She stared at the faraway light (a pinprick from the distance between the hill and the gate, and yet that pinprick shone brighter than the moon) and gripped Jake with both hands. Kate moved only when she felt his hand feeling for Bessie. His face had drained of all color. He looked like one of the Hollow’s ghosts.
“We should go back,” Jake said. “Let me call Alan. Call everybody. Get some men up here.”
Kate stepped away toward the gate and said, “No, Jake. Lucy’s up there now. Go or stay or do whatever you want, but I’m going up there.”
“There’s worse things in the Holler than Taylor Hathcock, Kate. It isn’t safe.”
“I don’t care about me and I don’t care about you, I care about what I did to him, Jake. I care about what I drove that man to do. I care about Lucy. She’s in trouble, and you’d know that if you’d spent your life doing anything other than hiding behind your lies.”
Kate regretted those words as soon as she said them, though not enough to apologize. Jake’s confession still stung. Yet the pain on his face hiding behind a pair of sunken eyes and graying stubble, the way his uniform hung from a pair of wiry shoulders, the thickening of his words as though spoken through a curtain of weariness, those things stung her even more. She could almost excuse Jake for running from Phillip that day. He was only a scared boy, after all. That Jake had made the phone call to Sheriff Houser didn’t excuse his silence, but wasn’t it something? Kate wanted to believe yes. She wanted to believe it if only because she had sought to prove one thing since that day behind the bleachers—people didn’t have to remain what they were. They could change. They could become better. And wasn’t she? Wasn’t Jake?
And there was one last point, one Kate refused to let surface while Jake had told his story but one that shoved its way forward now: it wouldn’t have mattered if Jake Barnett had brought the world upon the Hollow to save Phillip that day. To Kate, the one unchangeable fact was that Phillip McBride would have never pulled his daddy’s truck over and taken a walk that ended in his death if she’d not driven him to do so. The truth would have changed nothing. Kate would still have carried the weight of what she’d done in a notebook full of good deeds the same way her husband carried the weight of what he would never become in Bessie. They would hold those things so close that even the smallest movement would be a reminder that neither of them could ever have the peace that comes from a conscience free of regret. Jake may have let Phillip die, but Kate would always believe she killed him.
