by Hank Early
Granny was the only thing I had here anyway, and she’d be gone very soon.
5
Mary was a small woman like her grandmother. Her skin was lighter, and she had a smattering of freckles on either side of her nose. When the light hit her hair right, it was reddish brown instead of black. She was dressed in faded blue jeans and a top that hung down past her hips. She was barefoot, and each toenail was painted a vivid pink. If she hadn’t already introduced herself in the letter as a sheriff’s deputy, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible.
But then she approached me, upright, sure of herself, a large smile that held just enough in reserve, and I could see it. I could also see—with very little doubt—she was a good cop, something that made it even more unusual that she’d end up here in this hillbilly cluster of . . . whatever it was that was here.
“I’m Mary,” she said. “Granny is so glad you came.”
“Earl,” I grunted and took her hand in mine.
“She’s in the kitchen. She can’t wait to see you.”
“The kitchen?”
“That’s right.”
“I thought she’d be in bed.”
“Wait, you are Earl Marcus, right?”
“I already told you—”
“Because Earl Marcus would know Granny doesn’t stay in bed for anything.”
I smiled. She had me there. The woman was a special breed. She never sat still or slept in. Or went to bed early. It simply wasn’t in her DNA.
I followed her into the old kitchen. Granny was seated at the same oak table she’d had when I’d lived here so many years ago. I felt my heart catch in my chest when I realized how old she looked. And it wasn’t even the age. I’d expected that. It was the way she looked, her whole aura. She was feeble, beaten down at long last by all those years. Still, when she met my eyes, she brightened, and for a moment, the years fell away, and her gaze was the same I’d always known.
She tried to get up, but I moved quickly across the room and leaned over to embrace her. She smelled just like she always had—a combination of rosewater and old mahogany.
“I’m so glad to see you again,” she said, patting my head. “So glad.”
“Me too,” I said. “Me too.”
* * *
The three of us sat at the table and sipped moonshine. Granny had sworn by the stuff since she was a young woman and often drank three or four fingers before bed each night. Mary shook her head when her grandmother asked her to get it out, but Granny quickly admonished her, saying it was a special occasion, and besides, moonshine was “good for you of an evening.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Granny had so many things that were good for a person if taken of a morning or evening. Coffee or even just hot water of a morning would cure constipation. Spinach of a morning could cure a hangover quick. And a dose of honey straight of an afternoon could make a person happy—at least that was always how it worked for her. As far as I could tell, “of” was her shorthand way of saying “every.” I still don’t know if this was something she’d heard before or just her own distinctive kind of dialect.
She asked me to tell her what I remembered about the good times. “Don’t think nothing about the time before, when you were messed up with that church,” she said. “Now’s a moment for good things. We’ll have a talk later about the ugly stuff.”
That was foreboding, but I took her advice and put the thoughts of Daddy and everything that had happened after the cottonmouth out of my mind.
I told stories well into the afternoon and into the early evening, recounting the time the black bear had tried to climb through the kitchen window to steal one of Granny’s pies and she’d had to fend it off with nothing but a broom and frying pan. I told about the time Granny had fallen and sprained her ankle on her way back from delivering a baby over on Possible, and I stayed up all night worrying about her. Eventually, I’d grabbed a flashlight and taken off down the mountain, doing my damnedest to guess the route she would have taken. I searched the mountainside for nearly five hours when I heard a dog barking over beside a little creek.
Granny interrupted this one to explain that the dog—“a mongrel sent straight from God’s right hand side if there ever had been one”—found her and sat there beside her for the whole night until it heard me “clanging around through the woods like a parade.”
“He barked and barked trying to get Earl’s attention. I wasn’t so sure I wanted whoever it was to come down and find me. But that dog sure knew.” She smiled at Mary. “Look at him. He’s still a nice-looking man, but thirty years ago, he was stout enough to carry me home in his big old arms.”
“And that dog,” I said, eager to get the spotlight off my looks, “never would leave her side until the day he died.”
Granny shook her head. “Died by my side. Didn’t leave me until he was in the ground.”
We went on and on, and it was the best feeling I’d had in a very long time.
* * *
At some point, Mary said she was going to cook some supper, and Granny asked if I’d help her out to the yard. “I like to watch the sunset these days.”
She held onto me, and I helped her out to the cast-iron rocker that faced the west. We sank into it, and she put her hand over mine.
“Mary is a good girl,” she said. “She moved her whole life up here to be with me. Left a good detective job in Atlanta to come take care of me. That ain’t ordinary for today’s world.”
I agreed. It was more than just an average sacrifice. To come here, to live among these people, this insular environment. “Has it gotten better?” I asked.
“You mean the racism?”
I nodded.
“It’s always getting better, but it’s still there, and really a little racism can hurt just as much as a lot. But she’s uncommon strong. She’ll do all right. Besides”—Granny smiled weakly—“they say it’ll only be another few weeks.”
My hand found hers, and I squeezed gently.
“You got the letter?” she asked.
“I got it.”
“I don’t know the man who brought it. Must have never had children, or if he did, he must not have stuck around long enough to see me deliver them.”
“I’m pretty sure it was a man named Bryant McCauley. And no, I don’t believe he ever had kids. His wife died when she was very young, and he wasn’t the kind of man to remarry.”
Granny nodded. “You still having those sightings?”
I thought about my reluctance to open the envelope from McCauley, the dream of the well that had restarted right after Daddy died. Granny would have called both of those examples the “sight.”
“No,” I lied.
She said nothing, and I knew she didn’t believe me. After a moment, she gestured to the setting sun. “You don’t miss that?”
I wanted to but couldn’t bring myself to lie this time. “Yeah, I absolutely do.”
“I still have the sight,” she said.
I waited, not surprised by where the conversation was going but feeling a slight chill nonetheless.
“I saw that man come before he showed up. I saw trouble all over him. It’s why I almost didn’t send you the letter.” She sighed, or maybe it was a grunt. I looked at her face, and it was tight, her eyes distant. The moment passed, and she grinned again. “Pain is always there, but sometimes it bears down a little.”
“Let me get you some medicine.”
She waved me off. “You can bring me another glass of that shine, but first tell me you’ll be careful.”
“Careful?”
“When you go looking for that man.”
I shook my head. “I’m going to pay him a visit tomorrow and tell him I’m not buying what he’s selling. Then I’m heading back to Carolina.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. Her hand tightened over mine. “Just promise me one thing, okay?”
“Sure, Granny. Anything.”
“Be careful. Nothing is like it seems.”
I scratched my beard. “I’ll be careful, but tomorrow night, I’ll be back in North Carolina.”
She nodded. “Okay. Sit with me for a while. Let’s watch the sun disappear. It’s something I won’t see too many times again.”
That was what we did until Mary called us in for supper.
6
It was nearly one in the morning when we put Granny to bed. Mary kissed her on the forehead, and together we walked back into the kitchen.
“You have a place to stay?” she asked.
“Well, I’d planned to get a motel room down in Riley, but it might be a little late for that now.” I looked around. “I reckon the sofa is still as comfortable as it used to be. Will that work?”
“Sure. I’ve got to work in the morning, but Leigh Ann should be by at around eight. I’ll text her and let her know you’ll be here.”
“Leigh Ann?”
“You didn’t think you were the only person Granny ever helped, did you? Leigh Ann Mears. Sometime in the early nineties, Granny went down to the valley to help deliver her baby. The husband was drunk when she showed up. Drunk and abusive. Granny called the police, something Leigh Ann hadn’t had the guts to do. Turned out, the husband was connected in this area, and the police let him go the same night. Granny—you know about the way she sees things—felt like that might happen, and she waited at the home with Leigh Ann and the newborn boy. When the husband showed up later that evening, drunk as usual, Granny met him at the front door with his own .22. She didn’t waste any words before squeezing off two shots. She didn’t hit him, but they must have been close because he took off running and didn’t come back for a few weeks. Served the asshole right.”
“Wait,” I said, “he didn’t come back for a few weeks? Does that mean he did eventually come back?”
“They always come back, yeah. He decided he wanted the kid. And he got him too. According to Granny, knowing the right people in these mountains is far more productive than being in the right.”
“I wouldn’t disagree with that. Unfortunately.”
“Anyway, Leigh Ann was devastated. But Granny took her in, saw her through the depression.”
“And the kid?”
Mary smiled, and it was something to see. The dark den seemed to brighten with her face. “It ain’t all bad in these mountains. The father fell off the side of the mountain. That’s no joke. He literally lost his balance while being an asshole in front of some of his friends and fell to his death. The woman he was seeing at the time didn’t want any part of the little boy. She dropped him off at Granny’s doorstep.”
I nodded, amazed again at the life Granny had lived.
“Well,” Mary said, holding out her hand, “it was really nice to meet you. I enjoyed the stories. It felt like I was there. I’ll be in touch when she passes. I’m sure you’ll want to come to the funeral.”
I shook my head. “No. I’m not coming back.”
Mary looked disconcerted. “Okay. I just thought . . .”
“It’s personal. This place don’t hold the best memories.”
“Sure, I understand,” she said, but her face told a different story. I couldn’t help but think I’d disappointed her.
“Before you go,” I said, “could you help me find someone?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“His name is Bryant McCauley.”
Mary’s eyes grew large. “Did you say McCauley?”
“Yeah, you know him?”
“Bryant McCauley, the nutcase from Pointer Mountain?”
“Yeah, that’d be the one. He sent me the letter, and I wanted—”
“Let me see the letter.”
“Excuse me?”
“I need to see the letter.”
“I don’t have it. I left it in North Carolina. Actually, I burned it and put it in the trash.”
Mary’s wide eyes got wider, and her mouth dropped open. “You did what?”
“I burned it. Why do you care?”
“Why do I care? That letter could mean everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
She sat down on the couch. “Bryant McCauley’s been missing since late June.”
7
Daddy always preached that being lukewarm about God was worse than full rebellion, but like a lot of things he said, his actions didn’t back it up. Before the snake had bitten me, I’d been unsure of nearly everything, but after I woke up from my five-day sleep, I possessed a clarity I’d never known before or, frankly, since: I wanted no part of my father or his church. I’d burn in hell before I let myself follow his God.
At the time, it was pure rebellion. I lacked the insight and experience time would offer, the wisdom to see that the Holy Flame was the kind of crippling religion that nearly always lifted up one person, and it wasn’t Jesus Christ—it was my father. Was it a cult? I wasn’t sure. Was it poison to the soul? Absolutely.
Yet in his own twisted way, my father was able to convince himself that everything he did was noble and right. After all, nothing could be worse than the hell he believed in. And he really did believe in it. It wasn’t abstract with Daddy. It wasn’t some metaphysical argument. It was a physical one. Daddy believed hell—all that burning and damnation and eternal suffering—was always just a breath away. Over the years, as I thought about him with the benefit of some distance, I determined there was nothing Daddy wouldn’t try in order to save a soul. There was a strange nobility in that.
But there was also a kind of wicked arrogance, a world view that was so stunningly close-minded, it bordered on outright disdain.
When I finally woke from my five-day slumber, my brother Lester was there beside me. He smiled and thanked God I was alive.
“You made it,” he said. “God saved you. He brought you through the dark valley, Earl.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. I was dried out, my lips nearly stuck together. Lester fetched a pail of water and dipped a rag in it.
“Take it slow,” he said. I sucked hard on the rag. The water brought me alive, brought me to my senses.
“How long?” I managed to say.
Lester was still grinning. “You were in the valley for five days.”
“Five days? Why didn’t anyone take me to town? To the hospital?”
Lester’s smile wavered. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. I already knew the answer. Daddy didn’t believe in doctors. “My faith is in the great physician,” he’d say. “Not some heathen college student.” Daddy held college students in great disdain, not because they were intelligent—Daddy always liked to surround himself with smart people—but because they put their faith in science and books instead of God’s word. I never knew Daddy to waver on this point, and at least once, his reluctance to seek medical treatment had been fatal.
“He doesn’t love me,” I said, suddenly able to give voice to the festering sorrow I’d felt in my gut for a very long time. “If he did, he’d have taken me to the doctor.”
“No, no, no,” Lester said, and there was something like desperation in his voice. He wanted badly for me and Daddy to reconcile, for me to cross that threshold and become a man of God like he was. “Daddy did it out of love. Don’t you see? He loved you so much, he did whatever it took to make you see God. Don’t let this work lay fallow, Earl. Accept this gift.”
“Gift? You call this a gift? He handed me a cottonmouth, and then when it bit me, he left me exactly where I landed. For five days, Lester.”
“He did it for you, Earl. To prove God’s power to you. So you’d finally accept him. Can’t you see the beauty in that?”
Before I could tell him no, the sanctuary door swung open, and my father strode in, flanked by his closest advisors, three men who all aspired to his glory but fell short in different ways. One of them, his older brother, Otis, was cursed with a nearly identical physical appearance as my father, but he possessed none of his charisma. I’d always found it fascinating how he deferred to my father despit
e being nearly four years older. But what choice did he have? Daddy’s influence stretched throughout the Fingers, and to create conflict with him was to lose. No, not just lose—it was to be destroyed. Daddy didn’t have enemies because he annihilated them. Otis was smart enough to know this, and he submitted to my father begrudgingly, making their relationship a fascinating one that, throughout the years, would prove nearly as complicated as mine and Lester’s.
The other two men were friends. There was Hank Shaw, a man who’d never seemed particularly religious but was a crucial ally for my father because he was—at the time—on the fast track to being sheriff in Coulee County. Daddy coveted friendships with powerful men because it helped legitimize his church, which was frequently seen as a fringe branch of the Pentecostal Church. In some ways, Shaw and my daddy were like two sides of the same coin. Shaw needed a religious friend, someone who could make him feel better about himself, and he found a willing ally in my father.
Billy Thrash was more complicated. He and Daddy had grown up together, and their bond was deep. Thrash was a gregarious man, quick to smile and slow to anger. When Daddy pushed people away with snap judgments and unconsidered pronouncements, Billy was always there to pull them back into the fold. And it almost always worked.
My father held up his hand, signaling for the other men to stay at the rear of the sanctuary. He nodded at Lester, who rose immediately and left without a word. Daddy sat down on the front pew, a few feet away from the pallet where I lay.
I tried a weak smile, but Daddy didn’t return it. He hardly seemed to look at me at all. Instead, he knelt beside my makeshift bed and bowed his head. He was silent for a moment before looking back up. I’d never seen my father pray silently before, and I knew it was done on purpose. Everything Daddy did was for some effect.
After the prayer, he looked at me again. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I had no idea what he wanted, so I remained silent, feeling something like irritation beginning to build toward actual anger, which was a feeling I’d long harbored toward my father but also one I hadn’t allowed myself to ever show in his presence.
