by Billy Coffey
It was too late. Angela never answered.
-8-
“No.”
The mayor took a hand off the wheel and placed it over what Scarlett had taken from her purse.
“No, just . . . let’s leave that alone for now. Okay? Please?”
Scarlett barely gave her daddy a glance before easing his hand away and turning the phone upside down on her knee.
“Mine’s off too,” Wilson said. “In my jacket pocket right here, and here’s where I mean to leave it.” He tapped at his chest and tried to smile. I know that was a hard thing for that man to do, shutting that phone off without knowing what Bucky had found down at the clinic. If Wilson had taken just a moment to reach for his phone and flip it on, he’d’ve found plenty of messages waiting for him—Chessie and Raleigh and Ruth Mitchell, along with four texts from Bucky begging the mayor not to go home just yet. “I just thought . . . you know, long ride and all, we could . . .”
Talk. That was supposed to be Wilson’s next word. But then Scarlett couldn’t do that now, could she? No, all the talking she could do was chained to the pen and pad sitting on her other knee, a tongue made of cheap plastic and lips of thin paper with Stanley Medical Center, Where the Patient Comes First! written acrost the top. That was how Scarlett would talk for now and maybe forever, thanks to Alvaretta Graves.
“. . . we could just be together for a while,” he finished. “You know, just us. We don’t do that near often enough, Scarlett.”
We don’t do that ever, Scarlett’s eyes said. She tugged her sleeves down, like that would do any good at all now.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, pumpkin.”
He winced before the words were out, but too late to pull them back. Why’s it so hard to talk to your kids sometimes? Pick up your room or Take out the trash or Cut the grass can roll off a parent’s tongue, but anything deeper comes out like trying to describe color to a blind man.
“You’re not,” Wilson said. “Okay, I mean. You’re not okay. I mean, you are, but there’s still a ways to go.”
Wincing again. And now Scarlett winced too.
“I’m sorry, Scarlett. I just can’t say anything.”
He took his eyes off the road. It was the interstate and those slow hours just after the morning rush. Traffic wasn’t bad. Scarlett tried smiling and gave a little shrug—I can’t say anything either.
“Why’d you do that, Scarlett? Not go up to the mines, though I’ve always told you to keep far away from that place. But why take off through the woods like that? Why keep going when you and the rest said how things got so weird? You should’ve turned and run soon as you knew that was Alvaretta’s place down there. That was just so stupid.”
The words came so fast that the sun caught the little drops of spit flying from Wilson’s mouth, forming a shiny rain. Scarlett reached for her pen. She wrote two words and held the page where Wilson could see it:
I’m sorry
Wilson bit the inside of his lip, blinking away tears that made everything look foggy. A rig blew past them, washing the inside of the car with diesel and exhaust.
“No,” he said. “I’m the one who’s sorry. This is all because of me.” He looked at Scarlett’s arms, covered with the long sleeves of the denim shirt she’d left the house wearing the day before. “Do you do that because of me? I need to know, Scarlett. I promise I won’t get mad.”
He kept staring at that pad of paper, wanting so much for the pen to start moving and for those words to come. Words to prove Wilson’s innocence, some far-fetched explanation of why his daughter would ever think such a thing as maiming herself would be necessary, would think it good. It would be school or friends or the godforsaken hole in the mountains where they’d all been fated to spend their lives. Anything but himself. Please, don’t let it be himself.
Scarlett shook her head. Not her daddy. She ran a finger over her shirt, down by her wrist where the newest scar was healing (new meaning months old; Scarlett had promised Cordelia she would stop and she’d meant it). For the first time, she looked to wonder just how close to something important that cut had gone. Were there arteries in that place, right above her forearm? Were there veins or tendons?
“You sure?” her daddy asked.
She nodded and held the pen over the page, unsure what to write. And you know what, friend? I don’t blame her. Not a bit. Because it would’ve taken more pens and paper pads than Scarlett could ever get hold of to explain the real reason she cut herself, and even then I doubt she thought it would all come out right. How can you explain such a thing? How can you attach to something like that any sort of rational meaning?
How could Scarlett ever tell her daddy that the reason she’d taken a blade to her own skin was to get the bad out?
-9-
Wilson and Scarlett Bickford weren’t the only ones knee-deep in silence just then. Six miles up ahead on that same stretch of Interstate 64, Angela and Cordelia were mired in an awkward conversation of a different sort, one that had grown quiet after miles upon miles of screaming. Cordy had known they couldn’t put off forever talking about the baby growing inside her, had known Angela would ask exactly where and why it had been that her daughter had opened her legs for Hays Foster.
For her part, Angela weren’t exactly looking forward to that conversation herself. But she had fired the first salvo, a sharp How could you? that made the healthy side of Cordelia’s face slump to match the sick one. It didn’t help when Cordy responded there really wasn’t much her momma could say, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Or, as it had come out of Cordy’s numbed face, “Peefle in gass howfes fuldn’t fow phones.”
Angela had looked to be ready for that, saying times were different back when her and Bucky had been in high school. And even if times weren’t, Cordy had no idea how hard it had been for the two of them, how many dreams had to be put on hold or die altogether, and couldn’t she see that? Couldn’t Cordelia see what a mistake that had all been?
“Tho I’m a mithtake?” Cordy had said. “Wow. Fanks.”
So sure, friend. It had all gone downhill from there. Miles of silence after that, until the same rig that had blown by the mayor and Scarlett now blew by Angela and Cordelia, washing enough diesel smell through the open window to mask the stench of trash caught in the upholstery.
“You’re keeping this baby,” Angela now said.
Cordy looked at her in horror, as though any alternative had never been considered.
“We’re keeping it, even if it’s part Foster,” her momma said. “We’ll make this right, even if it’s all so terribly wrong. I don’t know how I’ll face them. Does Hays know?”
“No.”
“Then you won’t tell him. Not yet. Not until your father and I can wrap our heads around this. Do you understand me?”
“I wu—l . . . uhve him,” Cordelia said, even as I imagine she remembered the way Hays had looked at her the day before, the frantic look of fear in church that withered along with the side of her face to a look of near disgust; the way he’d leaned his body away as Doc Sullivan had bent over her; how Hays’s mouth had hung open and his tongue had pushed against his teeth when he’d visited Cordelia’s hospital bed that morning. You can’t blame that boy, acting as such. Was a horrible sight to look upon Cordelia and see what the witch had done.
“You don’t know what love is,” Angela said. “And you didn’t answer my question. Do you understand?”
“Yethum.”
Angela reached under her sunglasses to wipe her eyes. “Why did you go up there, Cordelia? Why did you have to spend the night at the mines? Spreading your legs for a boy like Hays Foster is one thing—a stupid thing, and one you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting—but crossing Alvaretta Graves? That’s even worse.”
“I had to get your bwacelet back.”
And so that was it. That was when Angela understood that none of what had happened was the fault of Alvaretta Graves. Wasn’t some curse. It was Angela
herself. It was the way she’d thought of her daughter all those years, like Cordelia was less a light for Angela’s future than she was a broken and tilted signpost in Angela’s past, forever marking the spot where her life had gone astray. Cordelia had grown up, learned to crawl and then stumble and finally walk, sprouting the dark hair of the Vests and that perfect face that had once been her mother’s. A quiet child, always in need of touching and holding hands, always so scared to be alone. Like she had been born into the world knowing how thin the bond between her and her momma was, and that it was up to her to make it stronger.
And all that while, Angela had believed those thoughts were locked away and hidden. They were buried in a suffering part of her that had been kept covered over by smiles and I love yous, and she was either unable or unwilling to see that all of our secrets are bound to leak out through the cracks in the walls we build to hide them. She could blame her daughter for what had happened with Hays, but what had happened with the witch could be placed only upon Angela’s shoulders. Because in the end, Cordelia had decided that facing the witch was a better choice than facing her own mother’s wrath.
Angela stared through the windshield and set her sunglasses closer to her face, not wanting Cordelia to see her hurt. A car passed in the next lane. Husband and wife in front, three kids in the back. All of them smiling and, it looked, singing.
They passed the Celebrity and snuck into Angela’s lane. The wife had her left hand to the back of her husband’s head, rubbing his hair in soft, tiny circles; the kids laughing and playing, parents smiling and touching, a family content, happy in the company they kept, joyful because they were going in the same direction and going together, and I do believe for the first time Angela Vest looked upon that sight and thought not What Could Have Been in another life with Landis Foster, but What Could Be in her own life now.
“I love you,” she said. “I’ve always loved you, Cordelia. How could I not? You’re smart and beautiful and so many things I thought I could be but found I couldn’t. I know sometimes I haven’t been a good mother. I haven’t been a good wife. I try. But sometimes it’s like I’ve spent my whole life trying to dig a hole deep enough to put all my troubles in and instead I keep throwing my own self into it. I know that’s hard for you to understand.”
Angela looked at her daughter and didn’t look away until the right tires skirted the rumble strip on the side of the road. She corrected. The husband in the car ahead stared through his rearview mirror.
“I . . . l-ove you,” Cordelia said.
And so Angela promised it would all be okay now, things would be different. No more silent meals at the supper table and awkward meetings in the hallway, even no more TV stories. (“Unless you want to watch with me,” Angela said, and that coaxed a smile.) The Vests would make a new start, fix what had been broken for so long, and I don’t doubt Angela and Cordelia both wondered why it’d taken something like the witch to make it happen.
They would go home, tell Bucky everything. Schedule appointments with baby doctors. And there was a psychologist in Mattingly. Norcross was his name. Yes. Cordelia could go see him. All of them could go.
It was a fine plan the two of them had worked out by the time Angela reached Crow Holler. And like all good plans, this one fell apart as soon as it met up with reality. Because people were scared, friend, because word of what the witch had done had gotten out.
And though everybody might’ve known deep down it was all Alvaretta’s doing—her and her demon, playing with those kids like they was toys to toss away once the shine wore off—they also knew the danger of lashing out at her. But those kids? That was different. They were people we went to church with, people we saw every day. Scarlett and Cordy and Naomi and Hays weren’t scary. They were just stupid.
And maybe it would’ve been okay had it ended there, with three girls in the hospital. But now the curse had spread to the Holler itself, and what started as a stupid decision by four kids had turned to danger for us all. All it took for Angela to understand that was one turn up the driveway to the double-wide, one glance at the sight of Bucky standing in the flower beds.
His hands were full of rosebush stems and thick roots that looked like tiny upside-down trees. His mouth was stuck in a wide O.
Every plant was uprooted and smashed. Dug up and thrown into the yard and onto the porch and against the trailer’s front deck. Others had been mashed flat, run over by whoever had left the tire tracks through the beds and down the yard to the road.
Years of work, gone. Angela’s hands went to her chest. It was like she herself had been violated.
“I tried to call you,” Bucky said. “They’re after us, Angie. Whole town’s after us.”
-10-
It’s a boy
That’s what Scarlett finally wrote, and only because that was the only way her daddy would feel better and because a boy was partly true. She didn’t say who, and Wilson didn’t press. He was happy enough to know Scarlett wasn’t thinking of him whenever she stuck a knife under her skin.
A boy was why Scarlett had asked Cordelia to take her momma’s bracelet that night. That’s the reason she’d worn those skimpy clothes—to impress some “him” and make sure she was seen. Wilson took it all in with a bunch of slow nods and Poor Dears and pats to Scarlett’s hand. Boy trouble. In the grand scheme of things, that was no trouble at all.
Nosir, the real trouble for Wilson and Scarlett lay back in town, once they got home and he decided it was okay to turn his phone back on. He started out standing by the front door as he listened to Chessie say kids were getting sick; Raleigh wanting to know why Wilson had lied about the flu or the water; then Bucky, telling him not to bring Scarlett home just yet. By the time he’d listened to Bucky again (this time describing the horrible scene in Angela’s flower beds), Wilson was closer to the sofa. When he got the message from a frantic Landis, saying Kayann and Hays had come home from seeing Cordelia off at the hospital that morning to find a cinderblock through Hays’s bedroom window, Wilson collapsed onto the cushion.
But the worst of it had come to Medric Johnston when he arrived back at the funeral parlor. His message to Wilson had been the longest, told in a voice far too calm to have really been truly calm. Telling the mayor of the thick stench of rotting meat that had greeted him first, and then the buzzing sound of all those flies. Telling of the long-dead raccoon nailed to his back door.
Hit by a truck, was Medric’s guess, found and then scooped up from somewhere along the road. The sign underneath had been scrawled in an illegible hand, but the sentiment was clear enough. Die . . . well, I won’t say what that last word was, friend. You look smart enough to figure it out.
By the time Wilson finished listening to all the people who’d called since that morning, he realized two things: his town was falling apart, and the only person who hadn’t seemed to have suffered any trouble at all was the Reverend. And to that, I say why not? Weren’t nobody gonna strike the family of the one man who’d been brave enough to speak out on exactly what was going on.
Wilson had no choice then but to leave and try to put out as many a those fires he could. He was our mayor, after all, and he’d been brought up holding fast to the idea that Crow Holler might’ve been a town full of people, but it all belonged to the Bickfords and no one else. He couldn’t take Scarlett with him and place her in danger, nor did he want to leave her there alone. Couldn’t take her to Bucky’s or Landis’s; they had troubles of their own. I do believe for a brief moment Wilson considered the possibility of calling Chessie and asking a favor, but that notion quickly faded. No direness in the world warranted being in debt to a Hodge. Such was what Wilson believed, though not for much longer.
In the end he had no choice but to tell Scarlett he had to go out for a bit, see to some things, and then ask that she shut the blinds and the doors and not let anybody in. To make sure you get your rest is what he said. Scarlett, she was simple enough to believe.
She watched him go through
the edge of the curtain drawn over the living room window. A single tear fell from her eye as her daddy backed out and sped off without even a glance back. Scarlett let the tear fall free. No one was there to see anyway.
She’d walked from the window and made it halfway to the kitchen when the knock came. Scarlett turned, thinking her daddy had changed his mind. All the warnings Wilson had given about keeping the house shut up tight left her thinking, and she flung the front door open with a smile that faded when she saw Tully Wiseman standing there about as drunk as a man could be and still remain upright. He wobbled on the small wooden porch, grabbing the rail to steady himself, then wiped his mouth with a hand that held Chessie’s jar.
“Knew you’s here,” he said. “Watched you from acrost the way till your daddy gone. How you feelin, Scarlett?”
She stepped back (already knowing, I guess, that this visit wasn’t the social kind) and nodded.
“What’s matter? Cat got your tongue?”
Scarlett reached into her back pocket for the pad and pen the doctors had given her. She scribbled something and held it up. Took Tully a few minutes to read it all. Not because that man was filled to the gills, but because he was so stupid.
“Know it?” he snorted. “Course I know it. Whole dad-blamed town knows it, girl. Witch got y’all. You tempted her and she got you and now she’s got us all. Now you step on back and let me in.”
Scarlett shook her head. I expect right about then was when she figured out exactly why Wilson had told her to keep the door shut.
Tully sipped at his jar. “You know my Daisy, don’t you? My Flower?”
She nodded.
“She’s sick. Brought on by Alvaretta. By you. Let me in.”
No.
“Let me in that house, Scarlett. Let me talk to you up close.”
Tully threw the jar before Scarlett could shake her head once more. It bounced off the screen and landed with a thud on the porch, spraying her eyes with moonshine. She fell backward, clawing for a hold on the doorjamb and the drywall, blind now as well as mute. Tully tore the screen away and walked inside. He grabbed the back of Scarlett’s hair. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream as Tully bent her head back, smacking her with open hands that turned to fists, yelling, “How bout I roon you altogether, girl?” as his fists rained down. Screaming, “Roon you like you rooned my daughter, like you rooned us all. Make you all the way ugly,” and all Scarlett could do was suffer it in silence.
