by Billy Coffey
-11-
It took Bucky most of the evening to decide a fortified position would be best. He went out before sunset and moved the Celebrity closer to the porch steps, so anybody who wanted to break in would either have to climb over the car or go through it. And just in case they did decide to go through, Bucky went on and locked the car doors too. Angela told Cordelia she saw so many holes in Bucky’s grand design that she couldn’t decide which one to start with, and so said nothing. It would work, Bucky promised. Ain’t nobody gonna come up in here.
I don’t reckon Angela thought anybody would. She’d spent more of her life around the people of Crow Holler than even Bucky had, first going to school with them and now ringing up their groceries down at Foster’s. She knew who was sick by the medicine they bought and who was coming up on a birthday by the cards and frozen cakes. Don’t nothing tell folk who you are more’n what you spend on, especially if it’s at the grocery. Especially if that grocery’s all there is in town.
Yessir, Angela Vest might’ve been a failed woman in the eyes of some hereabouts, but she kept her finger on the heartbeat of this town, however faint that pulse had grown. And what Angela knew was this: weren’t nobody gonna come after them that night. She’d said the same over the phone when Chessie called to check on things, this after the best, most peaceable, most loving family supper the Vests had enjoyed in years. Oh sure, Angela still smarted over her roses and Bucky still hurt over the way the Reverend had gone back on his word. Cordy still had to eat with one hand holding a fork and the other moving the dead muscles on one side of her jaw. But it was hot food under a sturdy roof with the ones that mattered most circled together, and really, is there more warmth than that to be found in this cold life?
Once the plates were washed and put away, they all went outside to clean up the yard. Angela treated it as a kind of burial. She picked up each broken stem with gloved hands and stared like she was trying to remember when she’d set them in the ground and what the weather was, and how whatever day that had been was likely a better one than this. Cordelia helped. Her face looked dead but her strength remained. She threw her hands to work and sank them into the soft dirt, kneading the soil through her fingers. I think the labor made her feel some better.
Bucky paced the front porch through it all, and Angela had the good sense to let him. The old her would’ve asked for her husband’s help to bag her most prized possessions before taking them to work and throwing them under the dozer the next day. But this was the new Angela, one born from the calamitous realization of her own selfish ways, and she knew Bucky wasn’t loafing. He was up there pacing on the porch with a pistol so big the kick would break your shoulder. Looking out toward the empty road, praying it’d stay that way.
It took seven bags. Bucky jumped down from his lookout long enough to stuff them all in the trunk before ushering his two girls back inside. All the porch lights went on for the night.
Belle Ramsay called to check on everyone. She said she’d just got off the phone with Kayann and everything there was quiet, though Kayann was scared because Hays’s bedroom window was now a Glad trash bag Landis had brought home from work. Naomi still had the tremors. Scarlett had been attacked but wouldn’t write down who’d done it, and Wilson had vowed vengeance on whoever it had been. The thing with Scarlett was the worst, Belle and Angela both agreed on that, though the sordidness of what had greeted Medric when he got home came in a close second.
“David feels awful,” Belle said.
“He should,” Angela told her.
When the phone rang again an hour later, Cordelia had crawled into bed with her momma. Bucky picked up and heard Wilson’s voice on the other end. He was staying up all night, too, watching over Scarlett.
“Heard what happened,” Bucky said. “I’m sorry, Wilson.”
“Scarlett wrote she was blindsided. Never even seen who hit her. I don’t know how that can be, but I’d rather believe that than have to wonder why she’d like to protect the one who beat on her. But I’m trying to set that aside for now. Danny called me with the day’s numbers. Sixteen girls sick, Bucky. And that’s just today. No telling what tomorrow’s gonna bring, so you stay sharp. Hear me?”
Bucky nodded into the phone and hung up. He pulled a chair from the kitchen table and sat it in front of the living room window. There he sat all night, surrounded by the darkness, with his daddy’s old .44 on his lap, thinking of the bad man that had busted into his childhood home, remembering what that man had done to his momma and what he himself had not done at all.
Would be an awful thing, facing a night like that. Feeling that heavy night pressing down, knowing the waxing moon couldn’t show you everything moving in the shadows. But Bucky remained straight-backed and steady without fear—not welcoming danger, but maybe expecting it. In the next room, Cordelia rolled over in her sleep and backed herself into the warmth of her momma’s body. Angela drew her child in closer. And they were all happy, friend. Truly so. I’d say that night held every bit of peace and purpose the three of them had always wanted.
VI
Bucky loses his job. Chessie and Scarlett. Medric has a secret. Bucky to the mines.
-1-
Bucky toasted dawn with a fresh cup of coffee. It was the first time all night he’d left his post, and he winced at the knots in his back and legs. His hand had gotten stuck in a claw around the grip of his pistol. Not a cap gun, that firearm. Not as fancy as the pearl-handled piece Briar kept tucked beneath his roll of belly fat, but bigger. A lot bigger. Looked like one a them you’d see Clint Eastwood carrying around in the movies. Dirty Bucky, that was him.
There’d been no problems in the night. Twice Bucky had shot forward in his chair, thinking something had moved in the dark. One of those times, he’d decided it’d been his tired mind playing tricks. But that other time something really had been out there, inching its way up from the road to a place near the porch. Too little to be a man. Coulda been a dog. Don’t you think that particular thought didn’t cross Bucky’s mind—it was a dog, one of Alvaretta’s—and don’t you bother wondering if he’d been close to going out on the porch and killing whatever it was, because he nearly did.
He never heard a peep from Cordelia. Angela had gotten up once, roused from a restless sleep by her aging bladder. When she peeked around the corner into the living room and found him wide-eyed and watchful, she’d smiled and said to Bucky that he was a good man. Hearing that had been enough to get him through the rest of the night.
But now it was morning, and with it came the very sense of nervous hope that had greeted Raleigh Jennings the day before. There had been no trouble at the Vest place, and as the phone had yet to ring, Bucky and Angela allowed themselves to believe none of the other families had met misfortune in the night either. And in fact they hadn’t. Wilson Bickford had spent the night in his own chair in front of his own window and witnessed nothing more than a few passing trucks that slowed before moving on. Scarlett sat up with him, unable or unwilling to sleep. They shared more in those hours than they had in all the long years since Tonya Bickford passed. Wilson paid attention as his daughter went on and on about school and the future. There was a sorrow to his eyes as Scarlett gently rocked in the recliner, offering up all those parts of herself she’d kept hidden. I expect Wilson considered it another part of Alvaretta’s curse—Scarlett was finally talking to him, and yet he couldn’t hear it and had to read it instead.
Medric had sat up with his shotgun at the ready. Landis too. They stood guard over their properties and kept hope that nothing would happen because, deep down, each worried he wasn’t man enough to pull a trigger should things come to it. David Ramsay was the only one a them girls’ fathers who’d gone on to bed, yet even he found no sleep. He spent the night with Belle snoring softly beside him, staring up at a dark ceiling and wondering what his God was trying to tell him. Come day, he still had no idea. Had any in Crow Holler taken the time to gaze upon the gathering clouds that morning and seen how
bloodshot they looked coming up over the mountain, maybe they woulda paused to consider the old saying of sailors taking warning from a red sky. Because a storm was coming, and as it happened the Vests got the first dose.
They was all up, Cordelia too, and sitting for breakfast when the phone finally rang. Bucky jerked the receiver up before he knew what he did. Angela hunched her shoulders. Cordy drooped her head. Bucky just looked at them as a slow dawning spread across his face that what waited on the other end might well be the end of their peaceful morning.
He smiled and said “Hello?” as if it were nothing more than a normal day stacked in front of all the ones come before.
“Constable? It’s Homer.”
“Hey there, Homer.” Bucky mouthed that same word—Homer—across the table, putting his family to ease, because the only news from Homer Pruitt would be the day’s duties at the dump. “I’s just sitting down to breakfast, getting ready to leave. Everything okay?”
“Everything ain’t okay,” Homer said. “You know ain’t everything okay, Buck.”
Bucky kept his smile. “Yeah,” he said, “I know it. So what’s going on?” Rolling his eyes, making Angela giggle.
“What’s going on is me an Helen are taking our Maddie down to the doc’s, Buck. That’s what’s going on. What’s going on is our little girl woke up and can’t talk no more.”
And now Bucky’s smile vanished. “That so?”
“It is. Called Maris a bit ago and she tole me rest and stayin’ away from other folk’s what’s best. Like my little girl’s got the chicken pox or something. But I’m taking my girl in anyway, because we both know ain’t the chicken pox. Don’t we, Buck? We both know where this comes from and who it was brought it to town.”
Bucky looked down at his plate and pushed his eggs with his fork. “Uh-huh. Well, yeah, Homer. But things will come out. They always have.”
“Does Cordy know what she’s done, Bucky? What she’s wrought?”
Cordelia stopped eating her breakfast. A drip of milk oozed down the side of her face, unfelt and unnoticed.
“No doubt about it,” Bucky said. “But we can cover all that when I come in, Homer.”
“No we can’t, Buck. I can’t keep you on knowing my girl’s gone dumb on account of your daughter being fool enough to cross Alvaretta Graves. I won’t have it.”
“You . . .” Bucky cleared his throat. Wasn’t his eggs that got stuck there, but his fear. “What you telling me, Homer?”
“I’m saying you’re fired, Bucky. You been a good worker, and I ’preciate it. But your kid’s put us all in danger now, and having you work for me might put me in worse than I already am. And right now, I just don’t think I can look at you.”
“Homer—”
“I’ll clean your locker out, have somebody bring your stuff by. I’ll be praying for you.”
The line cracked and then clicked off. Bucky sat there like Homer was still talking, nodding his head and trying to smile. But by then Angela and Cordy knew something horrible had happened, because by then Bucky looked ready to cry.
-2-
The plan that morning had been for Angela to stay home with Cordy, but that was all shot now. Weren’t no choice but to take her shift at the grocery. Somebody in the family had to be bringing money in.
Course it wouldn’t do for Bucky to spend all that day at home neither. Sulking is what he would’ve done, and that wouldn’t be good for him or Cordelia neither. That poor girl took news of her daddy’s job harder than any of them. Bucky’d left off the part about it all being because of her, said it was a slow time and Homer had to cut back or some such, but Cordy knew. Didn’t nobody get laid off from the dump. Hard times or not, everybody’s got trash to get rid of.
A man’s whole self is tied to his work. You take that work away, you cast him off with neither wind nor current and there he remains adrift, purposeless. So when Bucky told Angela he had to get to town, Angela knew why. And maybe he really did have it in his mind to go scare up more work. But maybe the real reason was that Bucky couldn’t bring himself to spend all those hours alone with a daughter he’d just found was pregnant, and whose poor judgment the day before had now come to cost him near everything.
There was nothing for Angela to do but call Kayann and ask if Cordy could spend the day with Hays. The three of them piled into the Celebrity just before seven that morning. Bucky kept looking through the rearview at that bulging trunk full of dead rosebushes he’d never get to bury with his bulldozer, unsure now what to do with them. He tried saying the car might not stink so much no more, so maybe it was all for the best. Angela let him have his moment by chuckling and tapping him on the arm.
She kissed him hard when he dropped her at the grocery. “Don’t you worry none, Bucky Vest,” Angela said. “We’re a family. We been knocked down before, and we’ll stand again.” She turned around in the seat and pulled her daughter close, nuzzling the bad side of Cordelia’s face. “Now listen to me, little lady. You’re gonna go to Hays’s and you’re gonna make sure Kayann locks that front door. Don’t nobody get in and don’t y’all go out. If there’s trouble, the first call you make is to your daddy. The next one is to me. Okay?”
“Yethum.”
“And you will not worry about any of this, no matter what. Hard times is a fact of life. We been through plenty before, and we’ll get through this one here. We’ll do it together. And there ain’t nothing brightens a dark world like the light of new life.”
Angela only turned back when Cordelia offered a tiny smile. She said, “I love you, Cordelia,” and then, “I love you, Buck,” and climbed from the car. She stood as regal as a person could be while wearing an ugly-colored smock from a two-bit store in a two-bit town. Back straight, chest out, eyes bright and determined.
Bucky looked at her as he backed away and said to Cordelia, “You just look at that woman. You ever seen a prettier thing?”
Angela offered a final wave as Bucky pulled from the lot onto the road, bound for the Fosters’ home. Only then did she let that hand fall limp at her side. She walked away from the front doors to the side of the store where no one could see and pulled a tissue from her purse. There against a Dumpster full of trash, Angela shook and mourned and cursed her Lord, because she knew her life was done.
-3-
Landis was waiting once Angela had collected herself enough to clock in. She cried all over again after she said Bucky had lost his job. Landis stood there awkward, looking like he wanted to hug her, and don’t you think Angela wouldn’t have let him if he tried. People don’t change much, that’s my experience.
“I’m so sorry about this, Angela,” he told her. “Bucky was never much, but all I’ve heard is he did his job well. Maybe Wilson can talk to Homer.”
Angela sniffled and tried to throw out a brave smile. “I expect that’s where Bucky’s gonna head first. Him and Wilson’s always been close. But all the talking in the world isn’t gonna make a difference, Landis, even if it’s the mayor doing it. Homer meant it. His Maddie’s come down with the curse, and he’s put that burden straight on Cordelia. Maybe if all this passes and the girls get better . . .” She shrugged, shook her head.
“I wish I could do something,” Landis said.
“I know.”
She moved to the register as she did every day, taking out the rag to wipe everything down. It was always a weight for Angela to have to work, not just at the grocery but anywhere. She’d always fancied herself whiling the days by lunching with the likes of Belle Ramsay and shopping at the mall down in Stanley, where the stores smelled new and the clothes were sold off wooden hangers. Places where Kayann shopped. I tell you, friend, it wasn’t fair. Wasn’t none of it ever fair.
“You have trouble last night?” he asked.
“Bucky stayed up to watch over things,” Angela said. She turned and saw the grin Landis tried to hide. Them two had sometimes made a game of that over the years when the bills were past due and tempers got short, Landis po
king fun at Bucky and Angela pitching in to do her share, but I think time for that was gone now.
“I stayed up,” Landis said. “Guess everybody decided what they did yesterday afternoon was enough for one day. Least nothing happened here.”
Angela turned around and went back to wiping the counter. “Anyone heard from Wilson or David?”
“Wilson called this morning. Said he had to go into work. Scarlett was going to Chessie’s house.”
“Chessie’s?” Angela asked. “He’d have to swallow his pride to do something like that.”
“Pride or not, anybody who’s got it out for Scarlett wouldn’t go to the Hodge place to do it. Don’t you worry about Cordelia, though. She’s with Hays.”
“Hays,” Angela said. The back of her head shook. Landis couldn’t see the sneer she made. Thinking, maybe, of Cordy in back of Hays’s car, those windows all steamed. Thinking of what Hays had done to her little girl.
“She’ll be fine,” Landis said.
“Like she was fine Sunday morning?”
She kept right on wiping down the counter. I don’t even know if Angela realized those words had passed her lips until she turned around to see Landis’s face had gone red. But she had to lash out at somebody, you understand? She couldn’t blame Bucky, not the way he was now, all broken over his job. And she could no more scream her hurts and frustrations at her daughter than watch the whole of Cordelia’s face slump again.
