In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  Her book bag would have to come along. Allie emptied it of papers and pencils and carried it in one hand to the bathroom, where she pulled her hair into pigtails. Sam called from the front porch as she rummaged through the closet under the sink. She brought out both packages Miss Howard had brought over the night before. Two pads were missing from the package on top. Allie couldn’t decide if two was a usual amount or not—even if her stomach didn’t hurt much, for all she knew what was going on Down There would get worse before it got better. She shoved both packages into the bag. Better safe than sorry.

  The kitchen was last. Allie scrounged for all the nourishment for a day of searching, which amounted to little more than four candy bars and two juice boxes. There was more food, of course—a lot more, since Miss Howard had been “happening by” the week before and “just wanted to drop a few things off”—but Allie had given her better judgment over to the excitement bursting inside her. No more than five minutes had passed since she had run into the house. Every choice regarding her clothes and provisions was weighed in haste by an eleven-year-old girl who believed a miracle had just brushed against her. She was too busy looking at the compass, and the compass still held east, but there was no telling how long that would last.

  She shouldered her bag and ran back through the living room. Her daddy’s note still lay on the television stand, along with the pencil Allie supposed he’d used to write it. She didn’t think Marshall Granderson deserved a response, not after what he’d done, but she paused long enough to scrawl four words beneath what he’d written and slap the note back where she’d found it.

  Sam backed away as Allie opened the door, easing himself to the edge of the porch.

  “Come on, Samwise,” she said. “I gotta go somewhere.”

  Sam didn’t move.

  “Sam, to me. I ain’t got time to wrestle with you. You can stay on my bed till I get back.”

  She reached through the door and took hold of the dog’s collar. Sam shifted his weight back, trying to pull Allie outside as she tried pulling him in. Her free hand reached for his stomach. He growled and nipped at her fingers. Allie cried out and let go, flinging herself back inside. She landed on the living room floor with a thud. The glass door shut between them. Allie lay there, flailing like a turned turtle to right herself against the overstuffed pack beneath her.

  “Fine,” she huffed.

  The back door, then. Sam peered through the door and ambled around the side of the house when he saw Allie disappear. Allie retrieved her bike from the shed, holding her breath as she did. Her daddy’s outbuilding once smelled of sawdust and garden dirt. Now it reeked of beer and sadness. When she turned around, her dog was waiting.

  “You can’t come, Sam,” she said. “I’m bound for east, and I don’t know how far that is. So you just stay here, okay? You wait for Daddy; then you bite him like you tried to bite me.”

  She mounted the bike and pedaled past, wanting to put some quick distance between them. The snow wouldn’t let her. It bunched in her tires, spinning them against the grass and allowing Sam to keep up. At the edge of the driveway, Allie braked and turned around.

  “Go back, Samwise,” she said. “I mean it. This here’s people work.”

  Sam sat on the blacktop and perked his ears. The run from the shed to the road was short, but it was long enough to make his brown fur ripple in deep breaths and his tongue hang low.

  “See? That’s what I mean. You can’t keep up, so you be a good dog and stay here.”

  He lowered his belly to the driveway. Allie nodded and turned right, aiming for the Stop sign at the end of the street. She looked down to make sure the compass still pointed to the sun.

  “You just hang on,” she whispered. “Allie’s comin’.”

  There was little wind (that would come hours later, and in a world much different from the one Allie pedaled through at the moment), and that silence allowed the sound of panting to come to her once more. Allie looked over her shoulder. Sam was following, not ten feet behind.

  She braked again and made a slow half loop back. Sam sat in the middle of the road. The compass had been pointing for fifteen minutes now. That was fifteen minutes Allie should have spent on the road.

  “You’re a dumb dog.”

  Sam’s tail thumped.

  “I don’t love you at all.”

  A bark, low and long, like a moaning.

  Allie pedaled to him and bent, lifting the dog into her arms. Sam was heavy, twelve pounds at least, but she managed to settle him against her legs well enough.

  “You stay put now,” she said, “or you’ll wreck us both.”

  The seat felt strange against her, and Allie realized she’d been so concerned with figuring out how many pads to take along that she’d forgotten to change the one she had. She decided that could wait.

  “Ain’t got time to grow up today,” she told him. “We’re off on a quest. And since it’s that sorta thing, we’ll need help from somebody who won’t think I’m crazy. And I know just the one, Samwise.”

  The compass guided them east. Toward the mountains, toward town.

  3

  Less than two miles separated the Granderson house from downtown Mattingly. Aside from the big hill just beyond the neighborhood, the going lay straight and easy. Puddles lined the shoulders on either side of the road, releasing tiny rivulets of melted snow across the asphalt. Allie took these head-on and was unbothered by the cold mist that splashed her shoes and jeans. Sam remained on her lap, pinned there by Allie’s left arm. Aside from his flapping ears, he did his part in remaining still and shifted his body only when Allie checked the compass. The smattering of houses she passed were quiet and in various stages of disrepair. Some were boarded, some walled but missing roofs, some roofed but missing walls. All empty shells. All victims of what everyone within a dozen miles of town had come to simply call The Storm.

  Allie’s quick pace lessened as she rode past the iron gates of Oak Lawn. She didn’t look toward the base of the knoll beyond. By then her legs were burning from the constant pumping, and her right shoulder ached from having to steer on its own. The sun had cleared the mountains, leaving a layer of sweat beneath her sweatshirt and jean jacket despite the cool air. Allie considered walking the rest of the way but decided that would take too long. Besides, she couldn’t push her bike and hold her dog at the same time.

  So Allie rode on, past the cemetery and over the train tracks, until she reached downtown—what Mayor Wallis insisted on calling New Mattingly. Few people approved of the name, Allie included. It seemed wrong to let go of the former things just yet, especially when the old was all you’d ever known and the new held everything you ever feared. And there was still plenty of fear downtown. It may have been covered over by the strings of lights suspended over Main Street and the pretty wreaths on the lampposts and the garlands hanging from all the store windows, but it was still there. Buildings could be covered to make them look happier; the sad in people always shone through.

  That sadness had been so great the previous year that Christmas had been all but canceled. All the decorations stayed down; there was no caroling in the neighborhoods. Santa still came, albeit quietly. It was a sad time, as all the times had become. The town’s preachers and newspaper lamented that the people of Mattingly had become less a family and more strangers trapped in their own despair. That’s when the idea of a New Mattingly was born. Big Jim delivered a proclamation sealed by the power of his office a week before Thanksgiving, announcing to all that the time of troubles was officially over.

  Allie remembered Marshall reading Big Jim’s words in the Gazette and shaking his head, saying it was all typical politician talk. Allie didn’t know what that meant exactly, but she understood the feeling behind it. Just calling a thing gone wasn’t enough to make it go away.

  She could still feel that dread as she rode the sidewalks toward the town square. It bubbled just beneath the surface of the people milling about, their eyes drooped to th
eir shoes and the worry lines dark on their faces, passing one another as though they weren’t neighbors at all. What few of them bothered to look at Allie did so only as reflex. They smiled through thin lips and their hellos were drenched in a kind of sadness, and Allie imagined their thoughts. There goes Little Orphan Allie, so good to see her out and about instead of cooped up in that lonely house, too scared to go anywhere because she never knows when another big blow’s gonna take away the little she’s got left.

  None stopped long enough to ask Allie how she was. Nor would Allie stop to ask them, even if it was mannerly. Because even if the answer she’d receive was “I’m doing just fine, thanks,” that sadness would still lie beneath the sentiment—things were not fine for anyone, nor would they be for some time. The people of Mattingly had found it much easier to rebuild their town than themselves.

  The compass still pointed. Allie and Sam moved along new sidewalks that fronted empty lots and half buildings. Much of downtown had been reconstructed in the last year—the city hall and the pharmacy, the market, the diner. Many more were near complete. The great elms and maples that had once lined the streets were gone. In their place grew saplings donated by the nearby cities of Stanley and Camden. The Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches had all been replaced by buildings larger and fancier (at least in Allie’s estimation). Their construction had come first, even before many of the homes, and by common accord. Everyone wanted to make it plain that faith took precedence over anything else, especially in the midst of such ruin. Allie’s father had said that was only people’s shock talking, that soon enough shock would yield to grief and grief to anger.

  He was right. Many of Mattingly’s faithful had since realized they might have loved the God Who Gave, but it was the God Who Took they’d been bowing down to all those years. Zach said the churches were struggling now. The Methodist one especially because the new preacher was a woman, and everybody knew preachers were supposed to be men. Allie couldn’t see how a woman preacher made any difference at all, but she thought all those empty pews constituted the real damage left by The Storm. It had taken homes and businesses and families and her own momma, but it had also taken people’s hope, and that was the one thing the heart couldn’t bear to be without. In that regard, Allie thought she and Marshall hadn’t been the only ones in town who’d gotten marked.

  The crowds of last-minute shoppers thinned near the town square. There Allie braked and sat Sam down. He stretched and sniffed at the snow as Allie leaned her bike against a bench. To her left stood the big bronze statue of Barney Moore, whose bravery had saved Allie on Carnival Day and whose love had rebuilt the town after. Just beyond stood the town Christmas tree. Rows of lights ringed the twelve-foot spruce. A wide star sat at its top. Aside from those, the only decorations were the fiftyseven wooden crosses hanging from the branches, each carved with a name to match one of the new tombstones in Oak Lawn. Allie’s daddy wanted there to be fifty-eight crosses on that tree. Allie had told him that if he wanted his clothes washed and his macaroni on the table, it’d better stay at fifty-seven.

  She looked from the tree to her compass, then to the building across the street. The sigh Allie gave Sam had nothing at all to do with how tired the ride had left her.

  “I ain’t come to town by myself in a long time, Sam, and I ain’t been in there for longer. You with me?”

  Sam plopped himself down and put his chin on his front paws.

  “Figured. You stay here and keep my bike. Maybe in the meantime you’ll lose your bark and start clucking.”

  She adjusted her pack and got as far as the sidewalk before Sam caught up. Allie carried him across the street and up the stone steps, then stopped with her hand on the knob of the big wooden door. With any luck, the sheriff would be out riding around, and Miss Kate would be with him. Maybe Zach was sitting in there all alone, twiddling his thumbs and wishing his best friend would drop by. That’s how it would work in a perfect world.

  Allie wasn’t surprised at all when she opened the door of the sheriff’s office to find the exact opposite of what she wanted.

  Zach wasn’t there, but Kate Barnett was staring up from behind her desk. The pencil in her hand stopped its twirling and nearly fell atop the Gazette’s daily crossword. Allie turned to the glass window on her left. Jake was leaning back in his chair with his boots on the corner of his desk. He had a cup of coffee in his hand and a look of shock on his face.

  “Allie?” Kate asked.

  She slid her chair back and made her way across the open foyer. Her arms were out before she even cleared the Christmas tree in the middle of the room. When she reached Allie, those arms closed tight. Allie bristled at that touch and didn’t know why, other than her awareness that her father would skin her alive if he knew she was there. But those arms felt so warm around her, and Kate’s perfume smelled so good, and for one fleeting but precious tick of her life’s clock, everything that had happened to Allie in the last year and a half fell away. She had not been hugged by a woman since her momma left. This new thing felt old and good. The two of them settled into a slow rock.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Miss Kate.”

  Sam’s tail turned on. He rose and placed his front paws on Kate’s leg, hungry for a crumb of attention.

  Allie pressed her head deep into the warmth. Her hands slipped between Kate’s arms and settled against the back of her sweater, the left rubbing in small circles, the right settling into a series of quiet pats—just as Allie had once hugged her momma. Kate broke the embrace. Allie hung on for a second longer.

  “What brings you here?” Kate asked.

  “I’m looking for Zach,” Allie said. “There’s been some unpleasantness, I’m afraid.”

  Another voice asked, “What unpleasantness is that?”

  Allie leaned her head around Kate’s shoulder. The sheriff stood leaning against the corner of the wall, quiet and easy in a pair of faded jeans and a brown shirt that matched the scruff on his face. Allie couldn’t help but smile at the thought of that being how Zach would look someday, all grown-up and handsome because he’d tried to be neither.

  “Hey there, Sheriff Jake,” she said.

  “Hey yourself, little Allie. Good to see you here. You say something’s going on?”

  “Yessir. There’s been a heist.”

  Kate turned to her husband, who asked, “What got stolen?”

  “My Mary,” Allie said. Then she added, “The one that sits in my yard.”

  She glanced up at Kate, whose mouth had fallen open and whose eyes had grown moist. Allie loved her for it. Jake moved from the wall to the door. He bent and rubbed Sam’s ears.

  “Who’d want to do something like that?” he asked.

  Allie stared at her Chucks. She shrugged. “Wouldn’t want to say, really.”

  “Anything else missing?”

  “Nosir.”

  Jake nodded. “Kate, why don’t you fetch Zach. Believe he’s still out back studying up on his dinosaurs. I’ll sit here and have a little talk with Allie.”

  Kate tugged at one of Allie’s pigtails and smiled. Sam went with her to the door that led out back of the sheriff’s office.

  Jake waited until his wife was gone before he asked, “Your daddy know you’re here?”

  “Nosir.”

  He nodded. “I don’t expect he’d like it much.”

  “Well, right now I don’t like him much,” Allie said. “Guess that makes us even.”

  “He doing okay?”

  “Well as anyone. Sometimes things are all right; sometimes they ain’t.” Allie tugged her sleeve down over the compass. “He still thinks you killed my momma.”

  This time it was the sheriff who looked down. It was only for a blink, but long enough for Allie to know she’d stung him and to feel sorry about it. Her stomach cramped. She didn’t know if it was guilt or womanhood.

  “Kate and I loved your momma very much, Allie. Everyone did. We all know how you hurt.”


  “All respect, Sheriff Jake, but you don’t. Everybody loved my momma. I still do. Don’t think ill—you helped save us. You saved me. And even if sometimes I wish you hadn’t and even if my daddy hates you, I don’t.”

  Jake tried to smile. “That’s a pretty big thing for such a little girl to say.”

  “Maybe ’cause I ain’t little no more.”

  The back door opened. Zach and his hat came through first. Sam and Kate followed. Zach’s cheeks were red and his eyes looked tired (he’d been reading his book just like Jake said, the one with the mammoth on the cover), but Allie thought the smile on her friend’s face was well worth her long ride. She told him most of what had happened, saving the important parts for when his parents weren’t around. There was no embellishment to her tale; none was necessary. The only sugar Allie bothered to add was the way she moved her arms when describing the important points of the spilled wood and how the Joseph and Baby Jesus had looked so sad. She knew then the jean jacket had been the way to go.

  Zach listened to it all and crossed his arms over his skinny chest. He looked at his mother and said, “I gotta go with her. I’ll find it.”

  “What you need to do is stay here,” Kate said. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather Christmas get here without you in bed with a cold.”

  “Won’t take us long if we look together, Miss Kate,” Allie said. “And to be honest, I’d rather not go gallivanting around with only Sam at my side.” She pursed her lips, trying to decide if she should say more. “Sometimes I tend toward nervousness.”