The Hush

by John Hart

  You sweet man …

  Colson couldn’t see her.

  Come to me.…

  The words were in his head, and the swamp was a mist that swirled and faded. He stood on green grass, and Jenny was on her back beneath him, the round arms up, a knowing smile on her face.

  You poor man …

  She drew him down, and put his head on her chest. He was crying, and didn’t know why. It was all so big. The world, its expectations …

  Just breathe, honey. Just breathe …

  The grass was strange and formless and wet, but she was his Jenny, and she smelled of things he loved: his house and his yard, the garden and the memories, the lilac on her skin. She held him tightly down, and Colson had never known such completeness and bliss. In his arms was the embodiment of everything he’d ever wanted, so Colson breathed deep, and did not think it strange that his wife was so wet or that the smell of her was thick as water. He dug his fingers into the soft richness that was Jenny. He drew her into his lungs, and was as joyful as a man could be, warm and fulfilled and drowning in the things he adored.

  * * *

  Luana turned the car around and parked a mile away. When she was ready to go, she slipped into the woods like a runaway child, home at last. The trails were roads that welcomed. The trees made rooms, and she remembered them from those long and lonesome years. She’d had little enough in childhood, and the forest had been her life: the long walks and silent halls, the yellow light that walked beside her. When the dreams began, only the forest had time for her tears. Her mother wanted the details, to hammer out every little thing in hopes of enlightenment or understanding. Grandmother had been worse, and that was the curse that came from eighty years of dreaming. The need for an ending consumed her. Was it any wonder Luana ran or that, even now, the hate walked with her, too? She considered herself an abandoner, a recreant to a twisted faith, yet she followed the same trails and heard people far off in the swamp. Staying clear of them was not difficult. The cemetery lay south of the old church—a half mile through the trees—and she moved heel to toe, knees bent. At the stone wall, she climbed over and knelt beside a marker to stare across the garden of her people. It was quiet in the clearing, and only the blackbirds moved. They lined high branches at the hanging tree, and watched as Luana neared. At the trunk, she wasted no time.

  “This is for Aina.”

  She used the blade to open her palm.

  “Give me your courage, your will to survive.”

  Luana was supposed to offer her courage and her will, but her people were gone and the world had changed. Did that make her choices wrong? Luana knew only that, homeless in a cold world, she’d returned to close the circle. Her hand was on the tree, and so was her blood.

  It glistened wetly, then dulled.

  She watched as the tree drank it down.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Johnny woke in the pages of another man’s life. He felt the brush of them in his mind: an image, a word, the memory of a wife. He saw her on the pages, the way she’d held the boy and lifted him from the bed as if to say, This is us, our life. Johnny held that memory closest because the other pages were so terribly dark. Ten days after the baby’s birth, Marion neither moved nor spoke. She didn’t know John’s face; didn’t know their son. How many months had she stared at the same spot on the ceiling? A lifetime, it seemed. Forever.

  Johnny tried to stay in that happy place, but remembered other trips into the swamp, the way he’d begged and crawled and, finally, threatened. Aina had dismissed him each time, refusing even to speak.

  Maybe next time, Isaac had said.

  Maybe next month.

  Johnny understood Isaac’s fear of Aina. Marion didn’t eat or sleep. She barely breathed, yet did not fade. She was perfect in every way but the one that mattered.

  What have you done with my wife’s soul?

  That was the darkest page of all, an echo of screams. She was alive but dead. Dead but alive.

  Johnny rolled onto his elbows and knees, not yet himself or in the present. He saw Aina’s eyes as her life spilled into the mossy earth. He felt her anger and fear, her closeness to death.

  Bring me a shovel, he’d said to Isaac. And then go to your daughter.

  Isaac left and returned. After that, Johnny knew the weight of her body, the place she was buried.

  “Dear God—”

  He sat up on the floor. It was dim in the cabin, and he was sick down in his soul.

  “Who’s Marion?”

  Johnny peered out from bruised eyes. Jack was on a chair at the narrow table. No one else was inside.

  “What are you doing here?” Johnny asked.

  “You were calling out in your sleep.”

  “The others?”

  “I wouldn’t let them come inside.”

  Johnny dragged himself up and took the second chair. “How long was I asleep?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Johnny touched his face. The bones were his, not John’s.

  “What’s going on, Johnny? What is all this? Why are we here? Really?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I said you were calling out before. That was a lie. You were screaming bloody murder.”

  “Jack—”

  “Leon stopped me the first time I tried to come inside. The old woman said what you were doing had to run its course, that if I woke you, it would be for nothing. I threatened to call the police. It’s the only reason she agreed.”

  Johnny leaned back in the chair. Lifting an edge of the curtain, he saw Verdine and Cree and Leon. Only Verdine looked happy.

  “She said if I woke you, she’d kill me. I believed her, Johnny. I think she’s dangerous.”

  “She wants something from me. That’s all. I’m watching her.”

  “Have you looked in her eyes? Watching’s not enough.”

  “Just bring her in, all right.”

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then I want to go home.”

  Johnny understood. Jack was a creature of logic and rules, an educated man bound to a system Johnny no longer trusted. Could he accept the truth, were Johnny to share? Not a chance. He’d see risk where Johnny saw beauty, danger rather than something glorious and grand. It didn’t matter that the past was troubled and grim. They were his people, his beginnings. “Go if you want to, Jack. I understand.”

  “Damn it, Johnny. Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “That calm acceptance thing you always do. Can’t you be needful, just once? Just once, can’t you admit that we’re the same?”

  The hurt was so obvious in Jack’s face that Johnny didn’t need to think about it at all. “Of course we’re the same,” he said. “Like brothers.”

  “Do you really want my help?”

  “You’re my best friend, Jack. Who else is there?”

  “The two of us, then?”

  “Like old times.”

  “All right, then.” Jack rose to his feet, grim but satisfied. “Was that so damn hard?”

  * * *

  When Verdine came inside, she moved sideways and slow, and looked to Johnny like a bottom-feeder searching for the scent of something dead. She wanted what he knew. She wanted to sink her teeth into it, consume it. That energy lit her face so the dark eyes shone. “Well, boy? We all heard you screaming.”

  “I know where she is.”

  The old woman shifted above the cane. Nothing else moved, but the change was hard to miss. “Tell me.”

  “Why do you want to find her so badly?”

  “That wasn’t our deal.”

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “Leon.” The old woman stepped aside, and Leon shouldered through the narrow door. “How did I raise you to handle deal breakers?”

  “I’d rather not get involved,” Leon said. “Johnny’s a
friend.”

  “I don’t care about your friendships or your druthers. Do it like I told you.” He hesitated. “Don’t pretend to understand me, boy, and don’t presume to know better. I told you what I want. Now, do it.”

  Leon met Johnny’s gaze. “I’m sorry about this.” He lifted his shirt to show a revolver wedged behind the belt. It was large and, in places, rubbed silver.

  “Does that even work?” Johnny asked.

  “I shot it twice twenty years ago. I’m thinking it still works fine.”

  “What if I don’t tell her? You going to shoot me?”

  “This doesn’t have to be complicated, Johnny. You answer her questions. She answers yours. Everybody gets what they want. We all go home.”

  “All right.” Johnny glanced at Jack, then shrugged because he’d known all along he’d take her to Aina’s grave. He’d wanted a better read on Verdine, though, and now he had it.

  Dangerous, Jack had said.

  Jack was right.

  * * *

  They rode in the same truck under the same tarp, and for Cree it was all about the breathing: in and out, looking for the calm. She knew the difference between Johnny and John, but they were so alike. Looking at Johnny’s face, she saw betrayal and pain, the black eyes as dirt rained down. She concentrated on Verdine instead. She’d come into the village once when Cree was only seven. There’d been shouting and anger. Cree had watched from the door—too young to understand the anger and movement—but the old women had talked about it that night.

  Her wants are impure. That was Grandmother, at the stove.

  Lustful? Great-grandmother asked.

  Not just lustful, no.

  Wanton?

  Yes, that’s the word. Grandmother’s hands moved, and grease popped in the skillet. The woman is shameless and lustful and wanton.

  Cree had been too young to understand the words, but she never forgot the disapproval in those lined, old faces.

  Wanton …

  Cree had looked up the word once. It meant many things.

  Dissolute.

  Malicious.

  Unrestrained.

  * * *

  Luana knelt in the dirt by the hanging tree, humbled by the same religious awe that had terrified her as a child. The bark was dry where she’d touched it, and she felt the spread of branches above, the twine of them and the deep, cool shade. The tree was so damaged and massive, she couldn’t believe it was still alive. It had been ancient when she was a child, and older than most when men were hanged from its lowest branch. It was failing at last, but was still the tree of her childhood; it still held up the clouds.

  Luana wrapped her palm in a scrap of cloth, thinking of that childhood and the small knife and the dreams they’d said would come. From an early age, they’d told her: We feel Aina as few others do, the women of our line. The dreams are our burden and our gift.

  If lives of poverty, misery, and thankless commitment were gifts, then, yes, the old women had been blessed indeed. But had they ever been happy? They’d had each other, of course, and men on occasion. Luana remembered smiles and kind looks and a million conversations by the stove. Were it not for the tree, she’d argue that they’d been benignly crazy, just crazy old women, forgotten in the swamp.

  But the tree was hard to ignore.

  The tree and the dreams.

  Leaving it behind her, Luana sought out her mother’s grave. It lay in a sunny place near the eastern wall, and the inscription carved into it was simple. A CHILD OF DARK EARTH, it read, and few would understand just how many chords those simple words struck. They spoke of Africa and Aina, of long struggles and the muds of Hush Arbor. It was too much for Luana: the sweep of time and family and endings.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to say goodbye.”

  She touched the stone, then spread out on the grass and lay like that for a long time. The sun set and night fell, but Luana didn’t care. She was in the garden with the mothers and daughters who’d gone before. Now the line was at an end. There was just her and Cree, and they were leaving.

  “Where are you, baby girl?”

  Rising at last, she climbed the wall and made her way back into the woods. She thought of Verdine, who’d been driven out. That’s where Cree would be, with the taker, the untrusted. Luana left the cemetery behind and turned for darker trails. She walked for five minutes, then saw it, far out in the trees.

  A whisper of movement.

  A flicker of light.

  * * *

  Hunt was on the roadside when the sun settled, and still there when something fundamental changed. A vehicle emerged from the swamp, then another, then seven more in a ragged, mud-spattered line. The men inside wore sour expressions, and looked neither left nor right as they rolled past reporters who shouted questions and trailed them with cameras. Hunt made a mental inventory as they passed. Woodsmen, volunteers, retired cops. He waited until he recognized one of the drivers, then flagged the truck down.

  “Brinson. Hey.”

  The truck rocked onto the verge, and stopped. In the fading light the driver looked grim. They all did.

  “Detective.”

  Brinson was a retired drill instructor who’d moved up from Fort Benning ten years earlier. Early seventies, he was still one of the toughest men Hunt had ever known. Two other men were in the truck, both younger and clean-cut. Hunt didn’t recognize them.

  “What’s happening?” Hunt asked. “Why are you pulling out?”

  “Nobody’s seen your son yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It’s not, but I appreciate the information.” Brinson kept his eyes straight ahead. Beneath the weather-beaten face, he was pale. Hunt would swear he was pale all the way down to his soul. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I lost a man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Brinson showed the eyes at last. “I mean he’s dead.”

  “Who? How?”

  “A sheriff’s deputy named Colson Hightower. Young guy. Married. You know him?”

  Hunt pictured a deputy in his early thirties. A little overweight. A little lazy. “I’ve met him, yeah.”

  “He was part of my group, and got separated. When I went looking, I found him facedown in eighteen inches of water.”

  “Drowned?”

  “Captain Lee thinks he had help.”

  “Not Johnny—”

  “That’s how the cops are calling it, but I saw Hightower’s body up close. I pulled him out, and he looked as soft and peaceful as a baby in its mother’s arms. I swear to God, Clyde, he didn’t have a mark on him. Poor bastard was almost smiling.”

  Hunt strung that image into the movie playing in his head. How many dead? How many wounded? “Why is everyone leaving?”

  “They’ve ordered out all nonessential personnel. State police are involved now, and they plan to go tactical first thing tomorrow. More helicopters. More men. Three cops are dead. You see it.”

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “Listen, Clyde. You’ve always been a straight shooter, and I appreciate that, but all those men there, all those hunters and hard men—” He pointed at the line of trucks far down the road. “—not one of them was sad to leave. A good hunt, a fair fight—they love it. Hell, I do, too. But the rest of it—grown men disappearing, choppers crashing on windless days. It’s not right, what’s happening here, and those fellas there—” He pointed again. “—most of them are smart enough to know it.”

  “Come on, Brinson—”

  “Eighteen inches, Clyde. You tell me how the hell that happens.”

  * * *

  They were back in the truck, and Johnny—under the tarp—watched the light turn orange and then red. The sun was going down. “This is it.” He banged three times on the side of the bed, and the truck slowed. Rising to his knees, Johnny leaned over Cree and stuck his head into the open window at the back of the cab. “There’s a trailhead on the left. You can pull the truc
k in and get it out of sight. That’s it, right there.” There was not much ditch line, so Leon powered through the cut and up into the trees. Branches scraped the metal, but he pushed in deep. No one had any illusions. They’d passed three police cars already. “This’ll do.”

  Johnny stripped off the tarp and dropped from the truck. He was in the Hush, and opening so fast, it made him dizzy. Feeling his way along the bed, he pushed off into the green, stumbling a bit as his mind tried to catch up with the sudden flood of awareness.

  Life, he thought.

  So much life he was choking.

  “Johnny-man, you okay?”

  “Yeah, buddy. All good. Come on.” At the truck, Johnny propped his forearms on the ledge of Verdine’s open window. “You ready?”

  “Are you telling me this is the place?”

  “From here on, we walk.”

  “No roads?”

  “Not without cops.”

  “Do you know that or just think it?”

  Johnny studied the lines around her eyes, and wondered exactly what she knew about his life in the Hush. The question felt intimate. She was watching too closely. “Come on.”

  He opened the door, and she descended from the truck. “Leon.” She gestured at the bed, and Leon heaved out a pickax and shovel.

  Jack said, “Are you serious?”

  “Lantern, too.” Verdine nodded at the backseat, and Leon reached in for the lantern. “All right, then, young Merrimon. Start walking.”

  “Can you keep up?” Johnny asked.

  “Try me.”

  Johnny took the long route, keeping the cops to the northwest. When Verdine lagged, he eased up. He didn’t trust her, but he didn’t want her to drop dead, either. “You may have to carry her.”

  “I’m watching her,” Leon said.