by Billy Coffey
Medric stacked another can of paint and pointed into the small backyard where a shed stood. “There it is,” he said. “Go have yourself a look if you want.”
Bucky took a few steps and stopped when he met the smell, rancid flesh and rotting fur. The raccoon’s innards had dried and shriveled, leaving it nearly flat. Its jaws were wedged open in a look of rage at whatever run it over. Ants marched in and out a the hole where the nail had gone through and into the door.
“You should bury that, Medric. Or I can take it, if you want.”
“Why you want it? You gonna dust fingerprints?” Medric smiled a little, but it was a sad one. “Run it through some contraption like they do on the NCIS?”
“No. I ain’t got anything like that.”
“Then let it rot. I want the whole town to get a good whiff. Carry the stench in their noses so they can smell it in their dreams.”
“You keep the note?”
“Nope.” He piddled around a little and said, “Guess you’ll want to talk about that key.”
“Guess so, while I’m here. You know folks’ll ask, way you and Hays got a friendship. You give him the key to the mines?”
“I gotta answer that, Buck? You so in doubt you got to hear me say it outright?” Medric chuckled. “Something bad happens, it’s the black man always gets it first.”
“Gets what?”
“Blame.”
“It ain’t like that. Blame’s shared, Medric. We all got vandalized.”
“Not the preacher.”
That was true enough. But, “Least you didn’t get beat on like Scarlett did.”
“And I mean to make sure that don’t happen,” Medric said. “It’ll come though, Buck. You mark it. They’ll try. Wilson don’t get a hold on things, there’ll be blood.”
“Won’t come to that.”
“Won’t?” Medric laughed. He set his stick aside and brought out an old brush from his pocket. In the tall elm that draped over the parlor’s backyard, a crow called. “Let me ask you this, Bucky. Mayor told you yet to get on up to Campbell’s Mountain and get the key to the mines? He tell you what to do with it after?”
Bucky didn’t answer.
“Course he did. I get robbed—I get a crime committed against me—I’m the one turns up guilty.” Medric shook his head. “I’m fifty-eight come fall, Buck. Been in this town my whole life, buried more dead’n I know. I go out my way to be left alone, I get a coon nailed to my door and a sign underneath for my trouble. You know what that sign said? Know what they called me?”
“I heard,” Bucky said.
“You ask me bout all this? I say people here’s finally getting as they’ve always given. Been a long time coming, and I’m just gonna sit back and watch it. I hope Alvaretta and her demon gets them all.”
“Don’t you say such a thing, Medric. We’re a town. These are your neighbors.”
“Like Alvaretta’s your neighbor?” He laughed. “People here’s no different than they are anywhere else. Only neighbors in this town’s the ones who look and act the same as the rest. Leaves me and Alvaretta out, don’t it?”
He stared at Bucky, daring him to say more. I guess Bucky didn’t see that glare for what it was.
“You said at the hospital Alvaretta ain’t no witch. Now you’re telling me she is? Which is it, Medric? You know something I don’t?”
I’ll let you in on something, friend—very likely that answer was yes, quite a bit. But Medric just stuck his brush down into the can and turned his back, slathering paint on that door. Weren’t no raccoon guts there or anything, just a swirl where Medric had scrubbed and a spackled hole where the nail had gone.
“Best you get on, Buck. I got work.”
Bucky stood there a minute and then decided their conversation was done. At the gate he turned and asked, “You buried Stu Graves, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Spend much time with Alvaretta? You know, planning the burial and all that?”
“Spend time with all my customers.”
“Sad thing, something like that. Woman left all alone. Might have occasion to open up to somebody. I’m just thinking out loud, Medric. Trying to figure things. But you know, seems like close to everybody in the Holler’s had a tough time of it since then. Some would say all but maybe you.”
Medric stilled his brush. “People always dyin’,” he said. “Fosters and Bickfords seem to do all right. Or you not see that? Or maybe reason I’m okay’s cause the Lord’s black.”
Bucky didn’t answer that, making Medric chuckle.
“I’ll see you, Buck,” he said, then went back to the door.
-8-
In a lot of ways, the Foster home was every bit what the Vest home wasn’t. Big and roomy with bricked walls instead of faded old siding, and when the wind blew there was no risk of the whole thing flopping over on its side. But there were other differences too. Like the way everything inside there always sounded so quiet and lifeless, or Cordelia always ended up walking around there with her arms folded across her chest, as though there were a constant draft soft enough to chill her but that she never really felt.
She was on the edge of Hays’s bed that morning, arms crossed as usual, staring at the hole in his window. He’d taken down the trash bag Landis had put up the afternoon before to show her what remained. The last ten minutes had been him trying to explain how the form staring back at them was like a puzzle in reverse—a picture not of pieces put together but pieces taken away. Those jagged lines of glass, the wide pieces left at the sides and the slivers at the top and bottom, had created the clear face of a monster’s hungry smile.
“I dun’t fee it,” Cordelia said. “It’f . . . j—ust a hole.”
But Hays only shook his head. He stared out the window, past that grinning monster to the woods across the street. Only one other house stood in view on that stretch of road, and that was Joe and Ruth Mitchell’s little ranch on down the way. Wasn’t a soul there now. Both Joe’s truck and Ruth’s car were gone from the driveway. Which was strange because something was moving around in their backyard.
“Vut are you doing?” Cordy asked.
Somewhere in the kitchen, Kayann rattled dishes. She’d vowed to stay with the kids that day, keep watch in case someone else decided to come along with another cinderblock (or worse). Hays told Cordelia that wouldn’t last. The grocery was always a busy place when a blow was on its way, and a curse is no different than a storm when you get right down to it. Once things got busy, Landis would be calling for reinforcements.
“Come thit down,” Cordy said. She patted the bed. “I need to tawk.”
“Something’s across the road.”
Cordy got up. “Vut?”
“I don’t know what it is,” Hays said. He pointed, not wanting to touch the sharp glass. “Right there by the Mitchells’ shed.”
Cordy leaned left and then right, squinting.
“Don’t feek me out.”
“I’m not. There’s something back there, Cordy. I swear there is. Saw it last night too. I don’t know. Like a . . . thing. Something’s watching me. I think something followed me from Alvaretta’s.”
“Thould I call Daddy?” She reached into her pocket for her phone.
“No. Never mind. It’s gone now,” he said, though he didn’t move from the window. Almost like he was willing whatever it was to return.
“Hayth,” Cordy said. “Vut’s wong wif you?”
He kept his eyes out to the yard (I think he just couldn’t bring himself to look at Cordelia now, looking as she did) and said, “I ain’t sick.”
“Vut?”
“I ain’t sick, Cordy. Everybody else is sick. You, Scarlett, Naomi. Not me.” And as Cordelia looked at him, his back seemed to shudder. “Why ain’t I sick?”
She put a hand to his waist, rubbing him there. But that had never calmed Hays before, and it didn’t look to calm him then.
“Do you know what she did, Cordelia? The witch? She didn’
t just curse us. I mean, you know that, right?” He turned around now. His eyes were red and swollen. “What’s Naomi always going on about? Staying so pure and disciplined and whatever other garbage the preacher’s put in her head over the years. Staying in control of herself, right? She got drunk at my party, and all she’s talked about since is how she can’t do that anymore. Not because she didn’t like it, but because she lost control. Now look at her. She can’t even get hold of herself long enough to tie her own shoes and eat her own food.”
Cordy wrinkled her brow like she hadn’t thought of that.
“How many times has Scarlett said everybody but you and Naomi ignore her so much she feels invisible? Well, what’s worse than being unseen?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Being unheard. And then there’s you.”
Hays reached out and touched Cordelia’s chin, like he was going to nudge it up to kiss her. Instead, he moved his thumb to the good side of her face, and then across to what had gone spoiled. “How many times have you said you always worried that you wouldn’t have any friends at all if you didn’t have a pretty smile?”
Cordy’s chin trembled. “You’re thow mean.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Hays said. “She didn’t curse us, she gave us the things we fear the most. That’s what she did, Cordy. That’s Alvaretta’s curse.”
He turned again, ignoring Cordelia’s sobs as he stared at that gash in his window. And you can’t blame him for that, friend. Hays didn’t know no better. I don’t think that boy ever cared what Cordy looked like, to be honest. Not before, and certainly not right then. Right then, he was too busy thinking on what he’d just said about the witch.
Thinking of that thing he most feared.
-9-
Bucky got out of the car and winced at the crick in his back, moving his eyes down one side of the fence and the next. He reached for the lock hanging off the gate’s chain like touching it would bring a shock. The key was stuck. He wrenched it free and shook his head, then looked on up that little hill past the trees.
The gate had been left open. I don’t guess Bucky could blame the kids for that. He sighed a little and went to swing the gate back when he noticed how the grass looked on the hill’s slope. Mashed down, the way it’d be if a car had gone through there. And sure, a car had. Three of them, as you’ll remember—Scarlett’s bug and Hays’s Camaro and then John David’s truck. But Bucky saw a fourth set of tire tracks, and these looked fresh.
Bucky’s gun (and by that I mean the hand cannon handed down when his daddy died in the war cradling a hand grenade) lay in a shoe box high on the shelf in the closet at home. Only time he took it out was when Homer Pruitt wanted him to cull the rat population at the dump. But Bucky wanted that pistol right then. Somebody was up at the mines.
Wasn’t a choice what to do next. Bucky got back in the car and eased through the gate, following the tracks already made. The Celebrity sputtered and lurched as it took the hill, bald tires spinning in the grass. Bucky shifted to low and gritted his teeth. No way Scarlett’s fancy new car and Hays’s hot rod could make it all the way up here and not him. That climb had become a matter of pride.
I don’t know who it was Bucky expected to find on the other side of that hill, but I guarantee you it wasn’t John David Ramsay. His rusty truck sat in the same place he’d parked it that past Saturday night, only this time he’d turned off the engine. Bucky brought the Celebrity to a stop. He’d gotten mostly out when John David stepped out from the trees.
“Guess locks and fences and signs ain’t enough no more,” Bucky hollered. “Maybe I should tell the mayor to go ahead and rip it all down, turn the mines into a spot for family picnics.”
John David grinned and kept coming forward. “Wouldn’t say that’s a good idea, Constable.”
“What you doing here, John David?”
“Trying to figure what in the world happened up here.”
Bucky pursed his lips and nodded. But it was a slow sort of nod, one you might associate with a measure of embarrassment, like he’d just discovered that was something he should be doing too.
“You were up here Saturday night?”
“I was. Naomi wanted some shine for Scarlett’s party.”
“You didn’t bring any, did you?”
John David raised an eyebrow, as though telling Bucky he should know better. Problem was, Bucky knew no such thing. The man standing in front of him wasn’t John David anymore, or at least not the version of him everybody had known.
“You didn’t see anything up here?”
“No. It was dark. Everybody seemed okay, though. I told them to leave, Constable. Give you my word on that. But Naomi, she’s stubborn. Said there was nothing I could do about it.”
“Maybe there weren’t,” Bucky said.
“How’s Cordelia?”
“Same. Me and Angela’s just trying to understand how this could happen. How Cordy could lie as she did.” About being here, sure, but also about what she’d let Hays do to her.
“Well, I don’t know if this’ll help or not,” John David said, “but she didn’t lie about what they found up here. Found those tracks.”
“That right?”
“Down near the Number Four. Horseshoed kinda, just like they said. And big. I can show you. Ain’t never seen nothing like it. They lead on to that oak, straight up it and straight down. Then on I guess to Alvaretta’s.”
“You didn’t go that far, then?” Bucky smirked. “Ain’t afraid, are you?”
“No. Been afraid worse.”
Bucky’s smile kind of faded there. Guess he supposed John David was right about that.
“Fear’s the world’s way of reminding you of what you have,” John David said. “Less you got to lose, less scared you have to get. I didn’t follow those tracks because we always left Alvaretta alone. Nothing more. We leave her be, she does the same for us.”
“An agreement, then. Like the one the mayor’s got with Chessie?”
John David shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about Chessie, Constable.”
“No, didn’t figure you would. Been up to Doc’s this morning. Lotta girls getting sick. People getting worked up. I think this will all get worse before it gets better. You might not be afraid, but that’s enough to put a scare into me.”
John David cocked his head. “Because that means Cordy might get worse, or because you think you’re the one folk’ll turn to?”
Bucky didn’t really answer that. Instead, he said, “Folk’ll turn to the ones they always have in hard times. Mayor. Your daddy. Sure, maybe me. Maybe you too.”
“Ain’t nobody gonna turn to me.”
“Sure they will. Don’t matter how you act or what you say you are now, John David. You’re a Ramsay. People look up to that name.”
“Not interested.”
“Yeah.” Bucky kicked at the dirt. Thought about asking it, didn’t, then thought again. “What happened to you over there, John David?”
“Same thing that happens to us all. See too much hurting in the world, Bucky, you just don’t want to see no more. Don’t want to do no more. I seen enough hardship and bad. Come down like a rain over there. Now I’m just looking for the sun.”
“My momma? Used to say too much sun’ll only leave you with a desert.”
“I liked your momma, but she weren’t right. There’s things worse than a desert.”
Bucky kicked the dirt again, harder this time. His cheeks flushed. John David could go on all he wanted about the horror of war. Bucky would let him because he didn’t know nothing about it himself. But when it came to hurt, that boy had nothing on Bucky’s momma. I know that for a fact, friend. And I think Bucky would’ve maybe even told him the story of the Bad Man right there on that little hilltop, told it for the first time ever, but he didn’t because John David spoke again.
“Done my serving, Constable. I just want to be left alone now.”
As if to tack a little irony onto the end of that statement, John
David’s cell phone chirped just then. He fished it from his pocket (flashing those dozen tattooed slashes on his right forearm as he did) and read the text.
“That Chessie?” Bucky asked.
“Best be going. Lock that gate back, Bucky. Do it tight. Then you throw away that key.”
“Kind of like shutting the barn door after the horse got out, ain’t it?”
“Yep,” John David said. “Just like that.”
VII
Tully learns a lesson. The panic. Run on the grocery. The Holler has a sheriff.
-1-
The morning started like something out of a nightmare for Landis Foster. It would become the stuff of his dreams by noon before turning to the worst hours of his life by closing. I guess that’s how that day ended up for a lot of folk here—two bookends of worry and fear with a spot of ease in the middle. Sort of day makes you wonder why you bother living at all.
It was bad enough Landis had sat up all the night before, pacing the living room and fighting the nagging thought he should be protecting the grocery instead of his home. It was a look of elation on his face when he come in early that morning to find no windows broken and everything still on the shelves. But as dawn crept toward noon another fear came across Landis, one far worse than the thought of vandals: nobody would ever set foot in his store again.
But all it took was one townsperson to stop in, a single brave soul to blaze the trail so everybody else could say at least they hadn’t been first to come crawling to Landis for what they needed that morning. Ruth Mitchell had no care for such idiocy. She’d long set aside any of those peculiar small-town predilections of pride and self-reliance. All you’d need for proof of that was to ask her what she’d had to do with Raleigh to get grocery money in her pocket. She come in bearing a long list of supplies and a firm resolve not to speak to Angela or Landis no matter what, not after what their kids had wrought on Ruth’s precious little Chelsea. Only fourteen Chelsea was, yet she’d been trembling like an old woman for two days. To make matters worse, Doc Sullivan said all Chelsea had to do was go to bed. And so when Angela helloed, Ruth only lifted her chin in defiance. That didn’t seem to bother Landis. He looked happy enough just to have a customer roaming the aisles.
