by Billy Coffey
John David had left three years ago for war, against the Reverend’s wishes, only to return hard and distant. People said he’d killed too many heathens and lost his way. That was the only reason they could think to explain why he’d spurned his family and taken up with Chessie and Briar Hodge, running their moonshine and dope. True or not, I don’t know. But you better believe all that only added to Scarlett’s infatuation. John David hurt. John David had suffered. And so John David might understand if he saw Scarlett’s arms.
There’d been that Saturday night a few weeks before. Hays had thrown a party at Harper’s Field and everybody had been there, and John David had spent most of that night drinking Chessie’s moonshine and acting like he was blind and Scarlett was made out of Braille. The young being as they are, Scarlett had blown the whole thing into something akin to a marriage proposal. Cordelia had tried talking down her expectations. Even Naomi did, telling Scarlett the war had taken something from her brother that wasn’t coming back. But all that convincing did nothing to halt Scarlett’s pining neither then nor now, there at the edge of the mountain’s darkness. She bent for her makeup and did the best she could without being able to see, trying to remember the rough feel of John David’s hands and the softness that had been in his voice, asking Scarlett to go slow and stay close because he felt so cold. A drunken mumbling that could have been most anything, but that Scarlett had taken as love.
-4-
Now I doubt John David was thinking of Scarlett at all as he crawled the old Ford truck he’d bought off Briar Hodges up that hill past the gate, but I can near guarantee you this—he wanted to kill his sister. Was bad enough having to hear Naomi begging him for days to sneak some of Chessie’s good shine. It was a far worse thing that he got a text saying she wasn’t at Harper’s Field like she was supposed to be. But this? Friend, this was about the worst that could happen.
He could see the glow on the other side and shook his head, probably thinking that was Hays’s doing, that boy was always something of a firebug, and what better way to let everybody within two miles know you’re in the one place you ain’t supposed to be than build a huge blaze?
“Idiots,” he said to the windshield. Nothing but a bunch of idiot kids stuck out here in God’s wasteland, no idea what all was going on in the world. His eyes scanned the night to either side of the hill but could go no further than the thick black trees rising like tombstones to an empty sky. He reached for the volume on the radio, turned it down. No telling what might be out there. The way John David gripped the wheel hard with both hands and took a deep breath was enough to tell anybody weren’t no monsters he was thinking on just then but how good a spot that side of the hill made for an ambush, and he had to stop doing that because these were different mountains and he was home now, back in the Holler.
His headlights crested the hill and came down on the other side, right where Hays and Scarlett had parked. John David could see Hays and Cordelia huddled by the fire. Naomi stood farther away. Her feet were together and her hands were clasped in front like she was either cold or excited. She waved. No matter how mad he was, John David waved back.
He parked at an angle to the cars and left the engine running, making a safe perimeter around the fire to the edge of the meadow. Naomi ran and jumped, trusting he’d catch her. She squeezed her brother just as tight as she’d done the day he’d rolled off the back of a farmer’s truck in his uniform, shocking everyone at his return because John David had told no one he was coming. Feeling his back and his face, like Naomi still had to convince herself he was really there. She hardly ever got to see her brother anymore. Reverend wouldn’t allow it.
“Hey, you,” she said.
“Hey, little sis.”
She squeezed him harder. “Thanks for coming.”
“Didn’t have a choice, did I?” John David broke the embrace and held Naomi out at arm’s length, looking down at her. “Somebody had to come up here and tell y’all how stupid this is.”
He wouldn’t leave Naomi there, not exposed in all that open, and so grabbed her hand and guided her to the fire. Stepping slow and light like he’d been taught in basic, trying to see through the wall of brush and rock.
“Hey, John David,” Cordy said.
“What are y’all doing up here?” he asked. “You out of your minds? Your daddy catches you, Cordy, he’ll skin you alive.”
“Nice to see you too, John David,” Hays said.
“Shut up. You steal the key to the gate from Medric? This your idea of a good time, bringing Cordy and my sister up here?”
“It wasn’t Hays,” Naomi said.
But Hays didn’t care. He only grinned out from under that hood and pretended to whittle a bit more wood, flashing that Buck knife. “You bring our shine?” he asked.
“Sure, because stealing Chessie’s shine and bringing it to a bunch of kids is a brilliant idea.”
“It’s Scarlett’s birthday,” Naomi said. “She wanted you to come.”
John David looked at her, making his sister drop her eyes. “Only reason I come’s to make sure y’all leave. It ain’t safe here.”
“Hays is here,” Cordy said. “Ain’t nothing gonna happen, John David.”
“Hays?” John David asked, saying it like the name itself was a joke. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
He tugged at Naomi’s hand again. This time she planted herself firm.
“I can’t leave. It’s Scarlett’s birthday.”
“I said we’re leaving. I’m taking you home.”
Naomi wrenched herself free and stepped closer to the fire.
Hays laid the block of wood down but kept the knife in his hand. “You think you can take off three years and come back being the big shot you were?”
“I don’t want to be anything,” John David said. “I just want to be left alone.”
“So do we,” Naomi said. “Just go on, John David. Or stay, I don’t care. But I’m not leaving, and you can’t make me.”
“I can.”
“What are you gonna do, tell Daddy? You’d have to talk to him first.”
Hays snorted a laugh. Cordy tried to keep peace by telling Naomi that wasn’t fair, knowing as well as anybody that people dealt with their own problems in their own ways. It didn’t work. John David started yelling at Naomi and Naomi started yelling back, and there was nothing Cordelia could do about it because now another problem presented itself in the form of Scarlett, who must’ve decided this would be the perfect time to step out of the woods.
You’d have to be a fool not to feel how thick with strain the air around that campfire had grown since Scarlett had left to pretty herself up. And make no mistake, friend—that girl was plain, but she was no fool. She scratched at her arms and stepped into the brightness of the firelight near Naomi, flashing her chubby legs where that tight skirt ended and the curves under that sweater, trying on a smile as she gave a little wave to John David so he could see the sparkle off Angela’s bracelet, but John David didn’t so much as give her a glance.
“You can’t make me leave,” Naomi was saying. “You’re not Daddy.”
“It ain’t right, being up here,” he said.
“Hi, John David,” Scarlett said. She waved again. “Been waiting for you.”
Cordelia rolled her eyes, Scarlett trying to be coy and sexy but looking instead like she might as well have a bow on her head and a sign that read CONTENTS PERISHABLE, OPEN IMMEDIATELY hung around her neck.
“It ain’t right?” Naomi asked. “You got a nerve telling me what’s good and not, John David. When’d you grow a conscience? Chessie teach you?”
John David shot out a finger that ended near the tip of Naomi’s nose. “You leave Chessie out of this. You want to call what she does sin, that’s fine. But everybody knows it’s Chessie’s sin, not Daddy’s sermons, that keeps the Holler alive.”
He turned then, aiming for his truck, and finally saw Scarlett standing right there. He said to Hays, “Keep that fire bright. Som
ebody’s gotta stay up all night, it’s gonna be you. Something happens, boy? I’ll kill you. And Scarlett, you must be out of your mind to come up in the mountains dressed like that. You’re gonna freeze.”
Cordy and Naomi lowered their heads. Hays tried swallowing a grin.
John David climbed into the truck and revved the engine, shouting through the window as he grated the gears. “Any of you got the sense God gave a rock, you’d leave right now. I mean it.”
“John David,” Naomi said, but he didn’t hear. Didn’t hear, or didn’t want to.
Cordelia turned back to the fire, knowing what came next would be to try and talk Scarlett off whatever ledge John David had made her climb out on. But the place where Scarlett had stood was empty, and as the noise of John David’s truck faded in the distance, the only sounds left were the fire cracking and Hays asking if anybody had seen where his knife had gone.
-5-
Scarlett didn’t care where she ran so long as it was away.
She pushed through the trees and low branches in a darkness so thick it seemed a living thing, driven by the shame of how foolish she must’ve looked—all fancied up for a man who hadn’t even seen her and who’d never be interested in her without half a jar of moonshine in his belly. She ran, beating back limbs that groped for her arms and rocks that snagged her feet, wiping her tears with one hand and clawing at her sweater and skirt with the other, wanting them off, and in all that thrashing and crying out, Scarlett never felt the diamond bracelet slip free of her wrist.
When her lungs and legs could take no more, she collapsed upon the path, where she sobbed and wailed at the night. Despair gave way to anger, anger to rage. Scarlett began hurling what bits of the mountain she could grasp. Dirt. Rocks. Twigs. Launching them into the dimness and gloom. Aiming, I suppose, for the picture she had carried in her mind of that party just after John David had returned, his strong arms and slender bones, the memory of him drunk and leaning on her, the way his lips had moved as he’d whispered in her ear.
But that’s not near all I expect Scarlett railed at, covered in all that dirt and dust so far from her friends. I been in this world long enough to know how folk are and what they think, friend. That’s how I can say that girl raged against what she was as well, against her very name. She was Mayor Wilson Bickford’s Daughter and she was Her Daddy’s Child and Her Dead Momma’s Little Girl but she had never been merely Scarlett, and she had lived behind those high walls for so long that she believed her true self no longer existed and maybe never had. It is a pitiful thing, ain’t it? Wanting so much to love and be loved for who you are instead of what. Wanting that so bad you will reach for even the slimmest of hopes, only to draw back a fist of hurt and wrath that you shake at the world.
Her last throw hit upon something hollow. Scarlett swiped at her face and rose to her knees, sobbing as she peered over the faint outline of a wide clump of shrubs to what lay behind it. A tiny yelp, barely heard, fell from her lips as she took in the mouth of Number Four’s boarded entrance. I don’t think it was the sight of the mountain’s maw that frightened that poor girl so. I think what scared little Scarlett most was the knowing of just how far off she’d run, and the peculiar sense that she was no longer alone.
Now sure, Scarlett had no evidence of this. But you ain’t ever been to Campbell’s Mountain at nighttime, so you’ll trust me when I say it’s no place to be even in the day. I’m telling you, it’s a presence there. And Scarlett didn’t need to see it. She could feel it.
Behind her came the soft scrape of wood over stone. Quick, like something had stumbled.
Scarlett crept to her feet, never minding the dirt on her bare knees and the stains on her skirt. She backed away from the stand of pines that hid whatever had made the sound, easing closer to the mine.
“Hello?” she managed.
A rustle.
“John David?”
And then the trees came alive. Branches flew and limbs cracked, a body shooting out from the moonlight. The words “Don’t you wish?” piercing the air. Scarlett jumped, nearly falling into the scrub, as Cordelia shot forward and grabbed Scarlett’s hands. “Where’s it?” Cordy said.
Scarlett tried shrinking back. Cordelia wouldn’t let her.
“I’m not kidding, Scarlett. Where is it?”
“What?”
“Hays’s knife. Give it to me.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Give it to me now.”
“I don’t have it.”
Cordy let go long enough to shove the sleeves of Scarlett’s sweater up. Scarlett yanked herself away and shook her head no.
“I’m not kidding, Scarlett. You show me your arms, or I swear to God I’m gonna tell your daddy.”
Scarlett had backed so close to the mine that she could feel the cold wind whistling through the gaps between the boards, as though the mountain itself was breathing.
“Show me,” Cordelia said.
There was nowhere she could go, nothing Scarlett could do. She hung her head and, sobbing once more, raised her sleeves an inch at a time. The right first, then the left, revealing the jagged cuts that ran from just below her wrists to her bony elbows. All scarred and scabbed, but bloodless.
Cordelia’s glower melted to revulsion and then to a pity only love could bear. She stepped forward, ignoring Scarlett’s flinches, and wrapped her friend in her arms.
“I’m sorry. You ran off. Hays couldn’t find his knife. I thought—”
“It’s okay,” Scarlett said, and I believe it truly was despite her tears. Because the prettiest girl in Crow Holler had come looking for her, and I guess that made Scarlett feel . . . I don’t know, seen. “I heard something in the woods. Just scared me.”
“Just me, you big doofus. Traipsing all the way out here to make sure you’re not doing something you swore to me you’d stop, all because of some redneck Rambo. Now come on. I don’t like being here without Hays, and we have to figure out a way to have fun without any moonshine.”
“I’m so sorry,” Scarlett said.
“Save it for John David. He’s the one’s gonna be snoring in a bed all alone tonight.”
They laughed then—laughed as much as the mountain allowed—and left hand in hand, working their way back to the bonfire and listening for the sound of something following. Neither heard more than a hoot owl and the wind through the trees.
I’d like to tell you more about Scarlett Bickford’s eighteenth birthday, how her and her friends somehow managed to salvage things and have the night they’d all wanted. But I can’t do that, friend, because that’s not how it went. Cordy and Scarlett come back to find nothing but sullenness on the part of Naomi and Hays—Naomi because she’d managed to carve an even wider gulf between her and her brother, Hays because now there’d be nothing to do but listen to Cordelia until she fell asleep and then stare at the fire all night. He wouldn’t sleep, not now. And they all knew the truth—John David had scared him.
Know what it’s like, coming up in a town like this? Where everywhere you turn is mountains hemming you in, but you don’t care because you know there’s no use trying to get away? You grow up thinking the best you’ll ever do’s slide into a job with Hays’s daddy and Cordy’s momma down at the grocery, or at the dump like Cordy’s daddy, or maybe take up with Chessie and Briar Hodge like John David done. That’s all you got to choose from here, less you manage a way to suck off the government teat.
That’s the future waiting for all those kids come June graduation. That’s why they all wanted to party with some a Chessie Hodge’s shine. For one night they could forget their troubles. But now all that hope lay in the half dozen mason jars John David had never brought, and with it went the promise of any fun at all.
Hays found his knife sometime between Scarlett running off and Cordelia running off after her. He sat with Cordy on top of her sleeping bag, flicking open that lighter he always carried, snapping it shut. He wanted to try out one of the condoms he’d bought for Sca
rlett. Cordy answered with a stiff no. Seemed a fine time for that boy to get all conscientious about what they’d been taught of male and female relations in school, now that it was too late.
Scarlett sat alone. Naomi got lost in her smartphone, letting the others know of the crowd still waiting down in Harper’s Field. And in time their silence yielded to memories of the years that had already passed between them and years they hoped would pass between them still, all those long ones on the other side of high school. Naomi laughed. Cordy cried. Scarlett’s arms itched. They trailed off one by one that night, even Hays, though he would find the satisfaction that his knife remained tight in his hand as he slept. No one saw what moved about them in the deep woods. No one heard the soft scrape of wood over stone.
III
The tracks. The cabin. Alvaretta’s curse.
-1-
What woke Cordelia the next morning wasn’t the cold leaking into her sleeping bag but that the bag felt so empty. Sometime in the night Hays had left her to sleep alone, farther from the fire. He’d made a mat of pine boughs as long as he was tall and was now curled in a ball inside his own sleeping bag, snoring. Naomi poked her head out from her own bag. She fumbled with her phone to check the time.
“We gotta get, Cordy. Church starts in a few hours. Daddy’ll kill me.”
“Party’s not over,” Cordy said.
