by Billy Coffey
“Don’t you stand there glaring at me. I know you are. It’s the truth, and you know it. Hays left them girls to fend for themselves. Cordy told me he even ran off first without a care for anyone’s skin but his own.”
“Angela,” Landis said. He straightened his glasses. “That’s not fair.”
“Not fair? You’re one to tell me what’s fair. My husband’s out of a job, Landis. We got nothing but fifty dollars in our savings, and that won’t last a week. I ain’t like your wife just like Bucky ain’t like you. I can’t go to him and complain until he shoves a handful of money at me.”
“You’ll watch your mouth, Angela.” Landis was shaking, he was so mad. Looked like Naomi in a way. “Kayann and Hays are my family.”
“Oh, and how proud you must be,” she mocked. “Half a man’s what you got for a son, and that’s on a good day.”
“We are not your concern here.”
“It’s all my concern, Landis. It’s all Bucky’s concern. The whole town’s breathing down our necks now, and none of this would’ve happened if Hays had just taken them girls back home.”
Landis said, “Hays is a good boy.”
“Hays isn’t sick.”
That last word bounced off the shelves and walls as Angela screamed it, and she said it again in a whisper that sounded just as damning. “He isn’t sick, Landis. You thought on that? My child is sick. Wilson’s. David and Belle’s. Their kids are cursed just the same, but not Hays. Hays is fine. You want to tell me how that is?”
Landis tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “That doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “What’s that prove? Maybe it just hasn’t taken hold of him yet”—saying it like he wanted his boy cursed, so Hays could fit in for once—“or maybe Alvaretta spared him.”
Angela jumped on that. “And why would the witch spare your boy, Landis?” And what took off from there was hollering and screaming the likes of which you’ve never heard from grown folk. It was a row, friend, one so fiery that none of them heard Tully Wiseman dragging himself in half sopped for his morning shift in the meat section. His apron hung in his hand. He stood there, watching and smiling.
“Ain’t thissa sight,” he said. “What we got here, trouble in paradise? Measurin’ your sins to see who’s the longest? Well then, let me help y’all out.” He pointed a shaking finger at Landis first, then to Angela. “It’s the whole lot of ya. Alvaretta Graves got her hand round the necks of us all, and it’s all on you. You and your sorry kids.”
Tully waited for someone to speak. No one did.
“I hope to see you all in hell.” He said it with all the sincerity he could muster, which was quite a bit. Nobody never took much of what Tully Wiseman said as anything near to truth, but in that statement, truth’s all there was. “I hope the Lord grants me grace to watch y’all burn. I want to see you writhe. I’ll hear your screams as song, and I’ll be thinking of my Daisy as I listen.”
He lumbered off then, stumbling toward the back as he tried to remember how to put on his apron, and the only thing Angela and Landis could do was stare.
-4-
I’ll say this about Landis Foster—that man may have uttered some truly questionable things in his life, but it had been nothing but the truth when he’d said Scarlett Bickford was in safe hands that day. Chessie and Briar’s house was a port in the storm and the mayor knew it, which was why he’d gotten in debt and sent his little girl there.
Chessie sent Briar to fetch her in that tall white Ford of his—the truck everybody in town knew was his, so nobody’d even consider trying something awful—with orders that Briar show Scarlett all the charm and courtesy she deserved. He showed up on the front porch with his hat in his hand and a smile on his face, even offered to carry Scarlett’s pen and pad to the truck. I wouldn’t say that girl particularly wanted to go, other than she knew she’d come acrost John David at some point. I guess that’s why she spent much of that morning slathering makeup on her face to cover up where Tully’d wailed on her. Love’s a crazy thing, is it not? One day you’re throwing rocks you’re so mad, the next you’re pining once more for the very thing that riled you.
Wilson watched his daughter leave and made Briar promise nothing would happen and Scarlett promise she was okay with it all. He said he’d be back from work early as he could, right soon as he had a little talk with some people. Mayor went on to work after that, right about the time Briar went to work on Scarlett. All smiles and kind words was that man, putting the girl at ease, telling her of the old days when the witch knew her place. By the time they got out at the Hodge farm, Scarlett looked to be thinking Briar Hodge was just about the kindest, sweetest man she’d ever known.
Chessie waited at a table set up on the screened back porch next to a kerosene heater that glowed a soft red. Breakfast covered the table—milk, juice, a plate of sausage and eggs. She herself opted for coffee alone. Briar pushed in both their seats as she told Scarlett, “Always break my fast out here if weather allows. Cool air does you good. That and my coffee’s only things get this old body moving. You’re still a young filly, but you’ll find that out soon enough, girl.”
She smiled and then Scarlett smiled, and Briar excused himself for the morning’s work. Scarlett watched him go, off toward where the barn stood, waiting to see who else might be there.
“John David’s gone,” Chessie said, and when Scarlett looked at her, the woman smiled. “Way I figger things, that’s the only reason you’d try so hard to cover up your face. You crushing on him, girl?” She laughed when Scarlett bent her head and blushed. It was a hard chuckle, deep like a man’s and full of feeling. “I don’t miss much round here, Miss Scarlett. Nosir, not much at all. You be careful of John David, now. That’s the only warning I’ll give you, because I know warning’s something the heart won’t heed. He said he had an errand, so I sent him on his way. He sends his regards, though. John David took it hard, what happened to y’all. Thinks some of it’s his own fault, and maybe it is. I took things plenty hard myself.”
Scarlett looked at her full plate and the pad and pen beside it. She picked up the pen and wrote:
You didn’t do anything
Chessie bent over the table and squinted her eyes, letting the morning breeze play in a shock of her red hair. “No,” she said. “No, I didn’t. But that don’t mean I’m innocent here, Scarlett, nor Briar. All darkness needs to spread is for a bunch of people to stand around and do nothing. You know that. Go on, eat. Fixed it special.”
I don’t know if it was the food or the fear, but something made Scarlett pick up that fork. Once she did, there weren’t no putting it down. Chessie sipped at her coffee and glanced behind her to the barn. Briar stood in the loft, looking out the narrow window.
“I hear from your daddy you won’t say who beat on you.”
Scarlett stopped chewing. She didn’t lay her fork down and trade it for her pen, only shook her head in a slow No.
“You tell me why that is?” Chessie asked. “You got my number, Scarlett. Coulda texted me soon as your daddy left, I’d’ve come right over myself to sit with you. Coulda avoided this whole mess. Don’t make no sense you didn’t.” Her eyebrows scrunched. She leaned forward and in a quiet voice asked, “Weren’t your daddy, was it? Punishing you for crossing the witch?”
No.
“Wilson ever beat on you before?”
This time Scarlett wouldn’t answer.
Chessie leaned back in her chair. A cloud seemed to pass over her face. “Let me tell you something, girl. Ain’t no woman deserves that. Ain’t nobody. You think Briar’d raise a hand to me?” She chuckled. “Man’s got a temper like a hungry bear, but he knows he’d wake in the night with a blade in his throat if he ever touched me. You don’t believe me, you ask him.”
Scarlett didn’t have to ask, friend. She knew.
“So it was somebody else this time? Somebody from town?”
A nod.
“You knew this man? Because I’d have to think it was
a man. They the ones who got violence in their bones.”
Another nod.
“I’d have you tell me who it was, Scarlett. And I’d have you say why you’re protecting him.”
Scarlett picked up the pen again. She wrote as the wind played with the edges of the paper, fluttering it and the clothes that hung from the line behind them, Chessie’s big dresses and Briar’s bib-alls, John David’s jeans and shirts and underwear.
His daughter is sick because of me
Chessie leaned forward again. When she was done reading, she said, “That what you think?”
Scarlett nodded.
“People say you and your friends brought all this on, let’m. There’s no changing a mind once it’s been made up. But that don’t mean you got to suffer more’n you do. You screwed up going to the mines, I won’t sit here and tell you different, but you were looking out for Cordelia in going after that bracelet.”
That thing stole her bracelet. Her demon
“It was a demon, then?” Chessie asked. “You sure?”
Scarlett bobbed her chin.
“I’d have the truth here, Scarlett.”
Another bob.
Chessie looked over her shoulder toward the barn. “Then it’s worse than we all know. Whatever the witch cast on you’s come home with you, girl, and here it’ll spread like stink on the wind. This town’s had to live with Alvaretta Graves ever since the Lord struck down her husband. And don’t you think it was anybody else, Scarlett. Wasn’t. Lord Hisself took Stu Graves from this world, laying judgment on the crone he bedded. You’ll hear your daddy say it wasn’t till Stu’s death that Alvaretta found the evil in the mountain, but I’ll tell you that ain’t so. She’s always that way. You’re lucky to get away from her alive.”
Scarlett’s hand shook—But it’s my fault
“Don’t you say—” Chessie started, but Scarlett was already shaking her head no, scribbling out what she’d written before to write I hit her.
“You did what?”
Scarlett underlined that. And then she wrote She was going to hurt us so I had to and then she cursed us
Chessie didn’t know what to say to that; she’d never heard of such a thing as anybody crossing the witch, much less laying a hand to her. “Don’t you speak a word of that to anyone else, Scarlett. You hear me?”
Scarlett nodded before Chessie could finish talking.
“Might mean more then, the four of you making it outta there. You remember that. You faced down the witch, girl, and you come out on the other end of it. You stood up. Not like that worthless pansy Hays Foster. You got a fight in you. I like that.” She sipped from her cup. “Your daddy didn’t care for you coming down here for the day, did he?”
Scarlett shook her head.
“Your daddy and the Hodges ain’t never seen eye to eye, Scarlett, just like us and the Reverend. You know that. Everybody in the Holler does. You’ll hear it’s because what me and Briar do up here. How we earn our wage. But that ain’t the reason. Goes deeper. Guess you could say it goes to the heart of everything. There’s a darkness to the Holler, Scarlett. You come up here long enough, you know it’s there. Stalks you. You understand?”
Scarlett did.
“This a hard place to spend your days, stuck between these mountains. We get along best we can because that’s what we always done, but there’s a suffering to life here. An evil just under the surface, beating like a black heart. It was here long before Alvaretta Graves. Maybe it’ll be here long after she’s gone. We all take up stakes and move? Well, that darkness will only follow. We’re as much a part of this holler as the trees and hills. It is who we are. No, Scarlett. We got to deal with it here, because this here’s our home.
“Now you take a man like your daddy. He buries his head in the sand and just ignores it, says ain’t no such a thing as that darkness at all. Naomi’s daddy? He says the evil here’s no different than all the evil in all the world, and it’s here because we let it in and gave it aid. Constable?” She chuckled. “Well, old Bucky’s a good enough man, but you think good enough will get us through what’s coming now? You think Bucky Vest will stand in the end?”
Scarlett wanted to say yes, friend. Shoot, everybody did. Like I told you, Bucky Vest was long loved in the Holler despite his lack of aspirations. But she said no such thing, nor was such a thing written on her pad. That girl only looked.
“That’s right,” Chessie said. “People here? They’ll like a Vest and a Bickford and a Ramsay. Shoot, they’ll maybe even love’m. But they’ll fear a Hodge. And do you know why that is, Scarlett? They fear us because they know we got a power. We the ones who call the evil here for what it is. And we say that evil must be fought with hardness. With strength. Devil comes up here wanting my heart, I’ll spit on him as I take his head. That’s the way it should be.” She smiled. “You want to know how you face this world and come out with your head held high? Ain’t with love. It’s with anger.
“There’s coming a dark time now, Scarlett. People in town won’t see things as you and I do. They got to lay blame for their troubles on somebody besides the witch, and might as well be you. There’s some in town—ones who scurry about in the dark where no one can see—who’ll get it in their minds to turn this to their own gain. The Circle, they call themselves. Keep themselves hidden-like, and even I don’t know who all they are. But I think one a them’s who hurt you, and I won’t abide by it. It’s bad for business. You heard what Hays and Cordelia found when they got home yest’day?”
Scarlett nodded.
“And Medric?”
She nodded again.
“I never minded Cordelia Vest. I like her and I respect Bucky for what he does. Angela I could take or leave. I could say the same for Landis, though Kayann Foster has a sour heart and their boy is badness in the making. And I’ll say I’ve always seen Medric Johnston as a man of secrets. I guess dealing with the dead’ll do that, but I don’t trust him. But that’s how the days are now, Scarlett, and that’s how things will remain until somebody stands up and does something to put things right. I think that somebody should be you.”
Scarlett wrote How?
“I knew your momma. Tonya Bickford was a good woman, and it’s a sin what happened to her. A tragedy, because she never got to tell you the things every girl should hear. So I’ll tell you one a those things in her stead: This here’s a man’s world. Always has been. They think’s they got the power. They talk big and lie and cheat, then they come home and toss you in the bed to get their jollies. They call that love, and maybe that’s all the love they’re built to know.
“But listen to me—that’s all a lie. Men can prance and preen, but there ain’t a beauty to this world a woman ain’t had a hand in. It’s we who got the power, you an me, but we got to take it. We got to make it ours. My momma did. Her daddy laid a hand to her until she couldn’t take no more, and then she near beat him to death in his sleep. I took hold of Briar’s business and supported not only us but this town, and one day this business will be gone because that’s my aim. No more moonshine, no more weed. I’m gonna be bona fide, and do you know why, girl? Because I choose my future. And you can choose yours too.”
Chessie sat back. She drained the last of her cup as a robin called out and watched Scarlett write.
What can I do?
“You can start by giving me a name. Show this town you cross Scarlett Bickford, hell’s gonna follow. You claim your life or someone else will, and on that I give my guarantee. That’ll make folk respect you.” And then Chessie stroked the short hairs sprouting from her chin and added, “You ain’t even gotta be pretty to do it.”
-5-
I expect it was the hardest thing Bucky Vest ever had to do in his life, having to get out his car and walk into the mayor’s office that morning. I wouldn’t put it down to either courage or strength, though. Bucky just didn’t have no choice.
He walked into that council building and took a right down that long hallway until he reache
d Wilson’s office at the end. Bucky didn’t knock, just walked in and sat in one of the two chairs in front of the mayor’s desk. Wilson had his back to the door, looking out the window toward the church and the funeral home. Had a picture of his dead wife in his hand.
“Thought you’d be up at the dump by now, Buck,” he said.
“Thought you’d be out trying to calm everybody down.”
“I did. Went up to the doc’s this morning, talked to the parents who’s bringing in all their sick kids. Had a dozen of them, I’d say. Some can’t talk, some can’t walk. Some jerking around like the Spirit’s got’m. You find out yet who hurt my little girl?”
“Thought I’d look around some today,” Bucky said. “I got the time.”
Wilson turned his chair around. His hair hadn’t been combed and his tie hung limp off his neck—a red one that matched the color of his eyes. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Bucky rubbed the back of his head and let out a heavy sigh that put a ripple through his double chin. It was bad enough he had to keep things together in front of Angela all the way to town. Worse on the drive to the Foster home, listening to Cordelia ask if they were going to be okay and saying it was all her fault, Bucky answering yes to the one and no to the other, over and over.
“Took Angela to work,” he said. “Cordy’s staying with Hays today. I told him to watch her and call me if anything happened.”
“More like Cordelia’s got to watch Hays,” Wilson said. “Scarlett don’t like that boy at all. I won’t lie, Buck. I don’t like him either. He’s a strange one. You should consider getting your daughter away from him.”
“Little late for that, I guess,” Bucky said. He didn’t explain more.
“Wish I’d thought of that, letting Scarlett stay with Cordy. As it was, I sent her to Chessie’s for the day. I couldn’t stay home, and she wouldn’t come here—”
“Homer let me go, Wilson.”
Wilson leaned back in his chair, making the springs squeak. “What you mean Homer let you go? He fired you?”
