Holding Smoke

by Steph Post

  Sister Tulah stopped in the middle of one of the rutted tire tracks. An ugly Plymouth van, straight from the 1970s, was taking up space on the spread of pine needles just a little ways from Felton’s two campers, and a boy with straggly blond hair was sitting on the running board, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, a thin marijuana cigarette dangling from his slack fingers. Sister Tulah made a show of sniffing loudly at the smell seeping across the clearing. She was pretty sure the boy almost wet himself when he saw her standing there and that, at least, made her trek through the woods worthwhile.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  The boy nearly slipped off the running board as he scrambled to stand. His hair flopped around his face as he turned in circles, looking for some place to hide the cigarette. He finally ducked inside the open door of the van, and when he came out his hands were empty and he was furiously brushing off the front of his T-shirt and jeans while trying to control a spasm of coughing. Sister Tulah waited patiently before shooting him a dismissive gaze.

  “Not quite.”

  The boy only stared at her and Tulah folded her arms.

  “I’m not nearly so merciful as our blessed savior was. Now, where is Felton?”

  The boy’s watering, red eyes sprung wide.

  “Oh, shit. You’re her.”

  He twisted around on his heel as if to call over his shoulder, but the door to the newer of the two campers opened and another boy started down the rickety metal steps. Tulah frowned. So far, Felton had brought both a druggie and a thug onto her property. As the second boy, with a wary look on his face, came to join the first, yet another teenager emerged and stood in the doorway. They were spilling out everywhere like rats on a sinking ship. Sister Tulah screwed up her eye as the bile rose in her throat. A druggie, a thug, and a slut. It was too much. Tulah stomped past the two boys, both backing away nervously to give her a wide berth, and stood at the base of the steps, looking up at the girl. She had stringy red hair and was wearing some sort of gauzy, colorful dress with long sleeves, but bare shoulders, and Tulah could see far too much of the girl’s long, coltish legs.

  Concern marred the girl’s freckled face, but she raised her palm in a hesitant kind of wave.

  “Um, hi.”

  Tulah could have eaten her for breakfast.

  “Is he in there?”

  The girl frowned and looked over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, but…”

  She turned back to Sister Tulah and shrugged one shoulder noncommittally. Tulah gripped the skinny, wrought iron rail running up the sides of the steps with both hands and leaned forward slightly. Tulah’s voice was low and her words measured, spiced with threats she would not hesitate to carry out.

  “Get. Him.”

  The girl vanished back inside the camper and a moment later Felton appeared in her place. Sister Tulah scrutinized her nephew as he clumped down the steps to her. The top button of his polyester polo shirt was undone. His leather loafers had been replaced by tennis shoes sporting racing stripes. And his face. There was something different about his normally bucolic brown eyes. With a shock, Tulah realized that Felton was really looking at her. Not at the ground or her chin or his own twiddling fingers. He was staring straight at her without a shred of fear. Without a trace. Felton, trailed by the teenaged girl, stood in front of Sister Tulah, mirroring her crossed arms as if assuming they were equals. The ire kindling inside her made her skin crawl. She darted her eye away, fixing it on the girl still standing behind Felton on the steps.

  “Leave.”

  Tulah turned to the two boys slouched against the van.

  “Now.”

  Felton moved aside to let the girl pass. His voice was still high and wheezy, but there was an unsettling assuredness in the way he now spoke.

  “Juniper, why don’t you all take a walk down to that stream I was telling you about?”

  Juniper nodded cautiously and ducked her head as she scurried between them. Sister Tulah watched her grab one of the boys by the wrist and all three quickly disappeared into the pines. When Tulah turned to Felton, she let the back of her hand speak first.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Felton stumbled back from the slap, but just barely. He touched the flame of red on his cheek with two fingers, but continued to look her calmly in the eye. She raised her hand again, but Felton shook his head and the fortitude behind his voice stilled her arm in midair.

  “That’s enough, Aunt Tulah.”

  She opened her mouth, gaping, and dropped her hand. She was startled, and infuriated, and, most disconcertingly, she was having trouble controlling her emotions. Felton continued to shake his head as she squared herself and smacked her hands onto her hips.

  “How dare you. How dare you come back here after what you did, after what you…”

  Sister Tulah censured herself. She had decided earlier that she would not speak of the letter Felton had written to the ATF. To speak of it to him would only make it real. It would only give it and, by extension, Felton, validity. Tulah pursed her lips and brought her eyebrows down, glowering over her eyepatch.

  “After you just disappeared.”

  She waggled her fingers.

  “Like a little mouse, scampering away into a hidey-hole. Where did you go?”

  Felton’s gaze skimmed away from her face. He was looking off into the woods with a quixotic expression on his face that unnerved Tulah even more than his unabashed staring. It was as if he were looking at something she couldn’t see. Not a memory, but a revenant. There was the hint of a pitying smile on his lips.

  “I went into the wilderness. I wandered. I was lost. And then I was found.”

  His eyes floated back to her and Tulah sneered, refusing to give Felton the slightest indication of the ice trickling down her spine.

  “By a pack of underage degenerates? A girl in a skirt so short you could see to Christmas?”

  “They are my friends.”

  “You don’t have any friends.”

  A spark crackled in Felton’s eyes.

  “Yes. I do, Aunt Tulah. I have friends. And I have more. More to give and more to take. More to reap and more to sow.”

  Sister Tulah held up her hands; she was sick of it. Sick and shaken, but she kept her face a veneer of dispassion. She thought of the worm. Tiny pieces of worms. That’s what he was. That’s what he would be. All he would ever be. Felton was no true threat to her.

  “Enough. Stop babbling.”

  A sly, mocking note crept into her voice.

  “Did it not once occur to you that it might be foolish to return? You’ve been with me all your life. Have you ever known someone to betray me and come away unscathed?”

  She dropped her voice a note lower.

  “And mark my words, you betrayed me, Felton. Did you think you could come back to me and there would be no consequence for your transgressions? Did you think you could simply walk into my church, into my presence, and walk away safely again?”

  Felton smiled at her. It wasn’t vindictive or malicious, but it was redoubtable in an otherworldly way. Felton smiled as if he were carrying around a riddle only he could ever solve. He shook his head again.

  “I’m not walking away, Aunt Tulah. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Tulah hissed.

  “And what are you planning to do? Do you think you can assume your old place at my side? Do you think that I would let you?”

  He just kept shaking his head. For the first time, Sister Tulah noticed that he kept tilting it, just a slight cant, always to the left. Felton put his hand on the flimsy twist of iron climbing up the camper’s steps.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. It has not yet fully been revealed to me, though I have seen glimpses of the path. Corners, edges, a winding up into a red sky.”

  Tulah wanted to scream.

  “What does that nonsense even mean?”

  His eyes were sudde
nly riveted on her and Tulah almost tripped backward in unexplainable trepidation.

  “It means that I know now, Aunt Tulah.”

  Felton placed one foot on the bottom step. His grip tightened on the rail.

  “I know. You can’t hurt me. Anymore.”

  *

  Judah spent a long time just watching her. Ramey had to know he was behind her—there was no mistaking the sound of truck tires swishing and swerving down the rutted, sidewinder road to the Sampson River boat landing—but she hadn’t turned around to greet him. Even when they were teenagers, Ramey would do the same. Sit at the end of the derelict dock, waiting for him to come to her. Of course, when they were kids, he’d usually have a gauntlet of friends to make it through first. Gary offering him some pot, Alvin putting him in a headlock, wanting to relive Friday night’s game, some girl hanging on his arm, wanting to sneak back into the trees. But he’d always made it out to her in the end and the smile she gave him, sometimes with her lips, but if she’d been waiting long enough, just with her eyes, was worth whatever else he might have passed up along the way. He’d slide down next to her and they would kick their legs over the murky, torpid water, picking at splinters in the moldering wood, swatting at the hordes of mosquitos or deer flies, as one spoke, or the other, or they both just stayed silent and listened.

  “Thought I might find you here.”

  Judah wedged his hands out of his pockets as he quietly walked down the length of the dock, remembering to step over the missing plank a third of the way down, and feeling the mushy boards sag beneath his boots. Ramey was sitting at the end, in the same spot as always, her shoulders hiked up as she gripped the rotting wood, swinging her legs out over the river, as black and slow as tar in the burnished moonlight. She didn’t look up at him as he eased himself down beside her.

  “Why? I haven’t been out this way in ages.”

  Judah let his eyes drift across the water to the tree line, filigreed with a haze of lightning bugs, flitting in and out of the laurel oaks and sweetgums. He shrugged.

  “You just had that look when I left earlier.”

  “You mean when you cleaned us out completely and took every damn cent we had and gave it all to Sukey?”

  Judah felt his throat constrict. They had done nothing but fight since he’d gotten out of jail and he was tired of it. So tired. A weariness he could feel down to the quick and marrow of every bone. And he knew her bones ached as well.

  “I had to do something to buy us time. You know that.”

  She didn’t say anything. Ramey was drawing inward again, retreating into the labyrinth where she so often wandered alone, never spooling out a length of string for him to follow. The tightness in his throat dropped down into the hollow between his lungs and he reached out and grasped her hand. He was losing her. He didn’t know why, or how exactly, but he knew. It was as if the very air between them had cracked open and he’d glimpsed something visceral, beating its wings, frantic and desperate as it died. Judah curled his fingers up under her palm and dug his nails into her flesh. He had to craft an anchor.

  “Ramey.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. Judah wanted to shake her, to tear at her, throw her into the water, tumble in after her and gasp and thrash and hold her under until they both could explode up into the air and surface together. He had to look away from the long tendrils of hair falling down over her face. He couldn’t even see her eyes. Judah was crushing her hand, but she gave him nothing. Perhaps, had nothing to give.

  “I think something…”

  He licked his lips, looked down at his boots, and tried again.

  “Something is eating you up inside.”

  Judah was surprised to see her nodding as he stumbled through.

  “It’s tearing you to pieces. And I think…”

  He didn’t want to say it, to breathe life into it. But the words would not be damned.

  “I think you need to make a choice.”

  Ramey lifted her head, though her hair was still tumbled down over her face.

  “What do you mean?”

  Judah exhaled loudly, plunging ahead, his eyes on the water, slivers of light rippling as a fish broke through the inky rind.

  “I remember you talking about it all summer. To me. About me. About walking a razor’s edge, going back and forth, saying I was getting out of the game while I was just sinking in deeper. Saying I was one thing while I was acting like another. I felt all the time like…”

  It was almost too hard. Admitting his inconstancy would only lead to admitting how far he had fallen since those days when he’d still seen a different path before him. The one Ramey still hoped he might take. Judah released her hand.

  “Like I had a rope slung around my neck. And the more I struggled, the more I fought against it, the tighter it became, ’til I felt like I couldn’t hardly swallow.”

  “Until the rope became a noose and broke your neck and you died?”

  Judah risked a glance at Ramey. There was a slight, sardonic smile creeping at the edge of her lips.

  “Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best way to describe it.”

  Her smile disappeared.

  “Or maybe it was.”

  “Maybe.”

  Judah leaned back on his elbows and looked up into the wheel of stars above him. He felt raw, empty and heartsick, but he kept on.

  “I just think, hell, Ramey, I think you need to figure it out. Where you stand and who you want to be in all this. I think you need to make a decision. Are you with us or not? Do you want to live this life or not?”

  There was a tremor in his voice and he concentrated on the constellations. The only one he recognized was Pegasus, the winged horse, storming across the night.

  “Do you want to be a Cannon or not?”

  Ramey still hadn’t moved and he wondered if she was crying. Judah was glad he couldn’t see her face. He slid his hands across the rough boards, catching needles in his fingertips, and leaned all the way back.

  “Because this has to be about you, Ramey. Not about me, or being with me, or the long road I’ve chosen to walk. It’s you. Just you. Who you are and how you’re going to live with that person. What kind of light you’re going to carry when you’re all alone in the dark.”

  Judah felt her arm brush against his as she lay down beside him. He was terrified of what she was going to say, terrified she’d already made her choice without him. Judah listened to her ragged breathing, to the lapping of the water against the dock posts and the mournful call of a single whippoorwill, Ramey’s favorite bird, keening its loneliness, its fabled lamentation. Ramey whispered into the requiem.

  “I know.”

  9

  Felton stared; the terrarium was empty. Of course it was, he remembered now. He had set all of his snakes and turtles free before he’d left, ushering them into the woods and toward the little stream, hoping they would have a chance at survival. Felton slowly sank down to his haunches in the center of the claustrophobic camper that had housed his reptile friends for most of his life. In his absence, it had been ransacked and reaved, most likely by the Elders, at the orders of Sister Tulah. The prickly AstroTurf had been peeled back and flung into a corner, the plastic tubs of supplies opened and upended, one whole shelf along the back wall looked as though it had been karate chopped down the middle. Cardboard crates had been crushed and trampled, lights yanked down, cords whipped out of sockets and strewn across the plywood floor like streamers to match the confetti of scattered pine shavings and cricket husks crunching beneath his shoes. Felton frowned as he surveyed the ruin all around him. He wondered what they had been looking for. He wondered what Tulah had been hoping to find, or if the destruction was just another extension of her apoplexy. His larger camper next door, the one he had been so proud to buy, yet had only lived in for a few months over the sweltering summer, was in much the same condition. He had found his lumpy mattress dragged into the kitchen, its
top sliced open, stuffing and springs disgorged across the linoleum. Boxes of cereal and bags of potato chips had been flung from the cabinets, his few dishes had been smashed. It looked like someone had taken the claw end of a hammer to his transistor radio. And his countertops. And his walls. The kids had gasped when they’d seen the wreckage of Felton’s former life, but he had not been surprised. He had, in fact, assumed it would be much worse. The campers were still standing, at least.

  Felton peered into the shattered terrarium in front of him, the one that had housed the first snake to speak to him, a scarlet kingsnake he’d caught almost by accident. All night, swathed in the remnants of his flowered cotton bedsheets, he had writhed and thought of the snake, of its red, black, and yellow bands, and its unblinking eyes, and of the words it had spoken to him, entreating him to rise up, rise up. He had thought of the kingsnake and then the copperhead and the others who had found him in the wilds of the swamp, the rattlers and racers and cottonmouths and, of course, the alabaster Snake who appeared to him sometimes in the air, sometimes in the flames, its diamond tongue a herald of wonderment and woe. In his fever dreams, the snakes had flitted across the backs of Felton’s eyelids, mingling with the faces of Tulah’s followers, the congregation of the Last Steps of Deliverance Church of God, the men and women he had grown up with, the only people he’d known for all his life.

  Felton marveled now as he remembered the looks of astonishment on their faces when he had entered the church. They’d been so happy to see him. Happy to see he had returned. Felton tilted his head. Happy to see he had returned to them. Or, perhaps even, for them.

  Felton tried to focus. The front wall of the terrarium had been fractured, the glass split open, cracked in two like an egg. Even the branch that the kingsnake had loved to laze upon was displaced and broken. Felton’s mouth turned down and he reached carefully through the jagged edges of the glass to retrieve it. As he moved, Felton felt a ripple of pain snag down his arm and immediately jerked back his hand. Blood blossomed from the long slice running the length of his inner forearm, but Felton could only gape as a searing miasma engulfed him, assailed him. Red. So much red. The cut was red, his arm was red, the camper was red, the woods, the sky, and above.