by Billy Coffey
Ruth showing up brought in a steady stream of others, all of whom looked to be in her same state of mind. They grabbed their buggies and gathered their fruits and vegetables and the meat Tully had finally started putting out, grabbed the medicine especially, pills for pain and pills for nausea and pills for sleep, because Doc Sullivan had told them all there was nothing he could do and Reverend Ramsay was already saying it would take healing of a different sort to drive Alvaretta away, but a parent will grasp at near anything to render a broken child whole again. They picked through the store and kept their voices to themselves, wanting none of the grocery’s employees to hear. And yet as neighbor met neighbor and burdens were shared, those whispers rose to the comfortable rumble of community.
Angela spent the next hour running people’s groceries down the little conveyor belt beside her, ringing them up and bagging what they had and trying to tell them to have a nice day. At first, no one much wanted to return her favor. But as the morning wore on and more townfolk arrived, Angela was reminded once again of a peculiar human trait she’d been well acquainted with for years: people would set aside almost any feelings of ill will if it meant obtaining a bit of gossip.
They’d prodded Landis plenty, wandering over to the day-old section in front of his office, feigning interest in the stiff breads and moldering rolls to casually ask what Hays had seen at Alvaretta’s. If it was true about the wild cats the witch had enchanted and the dead crows that hung from her trees. As they wrote their checks to Angela or slid their credit cards through the machine, they wondered aloud if Cordelia had seen the demon and just how big the hoofprints she’d followed through the woods were.
Angela had always been one who sought both attention and favor, and she’d never much cared who it was from or how it was gotten. Didn’t take her long to figure nobody would sneer and throw their money at her if she told them of the witch.
Like how it wasn’t cats Alvaretta had but dogs, and Cordy had told them plenty out of her poor ruined mouth about how horrible those dogs had looked, how calculating, but that weren’t nearly as awful as all those murdered birds. Telling them Cordy hadn’t seen the demon but had heard it, all the kids had, and it had spoken its curse in a dark tongue that would make angels cower. Sharing with all those who wheeled their groceries into her aisle how it had not been easy for her and Bucky, that maybe they even had it worse than most, because not only did they have to suffer through a child gone disfigured, they had to deal with the heartbreak of knowing it had all started with their poor precious Cordelia. Swaying them, turning the crowd once against her to one that felt something close to sympathy.
That all worked fine until Ruth Mitchell finished a lengthy chat with Tully at the meat department and wheeled her buggy to the front. And when she’d had enough of Angela’s talk, she shouted past the customers in front and said, “Pour all the syrup you want over your words, Angela Vest, that won’t change what your girl’s done.”
Angela had just run a loaf of butter bread over the scanner. Her hand stopped midway between the counter and the bag, leaving the loaf to dangle in the air. She turned to Ruth. “What did you say?”
“You heard me plain. Only reason those kids come across the witch was Cordy wanted to get your fancy bracelet back. We all know it.” Ruth straightened up and tilted her head toward the ceiling, talking louder in case any inside the store hadn’t heard. “Something took that bauble of yours, Cordelia had no choice but to follow. Because of you, Angela. Because your daughter’s more afraid of you than she is of the witch.”
“That ain’t true,” Angela said.
“Maybe you’d’ve been a better momma to your little girl, none a this would’ve happened.”
Angela shot away from her register. “You hold your tongue, Ruth Mitchell.”
Inside his little office, Landis picked up the phone to call the mayor. He told Wilson to get down there now. Trouble was brewing.
Ruth ignored what Angela said. “Tully told me everything,” she said, and the crowd pressed in more. “Said he came in here this morning to find Angela and Landis arguing over whose kid was to blame for all this. I say they’re all to blame, and their parents too.”
A few murmurs in the throng. Angela saw all the goodwill she’d spent the better part of her morning building begin to fade.
“I say these two right here are gonna be the death of us all,” Ruth said.
Landis had already gotten out of his chair. He ran down the steps, tie flying back, cheeks flushed, pushing his glasses against his skinny nose.
Angela was shaking now. She still had that loaf of bread in her hand. It was jerking like some darkness possessed it. “How dare you say such a thing. You come in here for your goods and speak ill of we who provide. This town’d be nothing without Landis opening his store every day and me standing on sore feet to take your money. You sit there all righteous and pronounce your judgment. Well, you cast a stone at me, Ruthie Mitchell. You go on, and maybe what’ll happen is Landis’ll bar these doors and let you starve.”
“Angela,” Landis said. He came up from behind her smiling and nodding like nothing was wrong. Chuckling, like all of what Angela said had been a joke no one but him could understand. “Why don’t you go in the back and take a break.”
“That true, Landis?” Ruth asked.
More murmurs now. Landis tried, “We’re all upset here, Ruth.”
“Why not?” Angela asked. “Serve you right, Ruth.”
Landis all but shoved her aside. He pried the bread from Angela’s hand and took her spot at the register, leaving her with nothing to do but storm off. She heard him telling Ruth everything was just fine, but by then things had gone too far for comforting. People were starting to shout, wanting to know the truth of what Landis had in mind. He couldn’t answer them all and so ignored them, which only made the shouting grow.
Ruth took her receipt and ran for the lot. She sat in her car, body shaking. She fumbled for her cell phone and called Raleigh. Raleigh would know what to do. He picked up on the first ring and told Ruth to slow down. She tried, but the words were coming too fast. Telling Raleigh things in town were about to get worse. That Landis was closing the grocery.
-2-
John David read the text again, not wanting to believe what Chessie had typed even as a part of him likely knew all along. Given the unusual circumstances, Chessie or Briar both might not have seen any harm in selling a bit of their shine to town. But I believe John David had, and now that deed had bore its awful fruit.
THE GIRL GAVE TULLY’S NAME. MEET US AT THE GROCERY.
John David tossed the phone onto the passenger’s seat and crossed the gate leading away from Campbell’s Mountain. His left foot got to twitching and his knee bouncing up and down, the same as it’d always done before a mission. Nerves, I guess, or adrenaline taking hold. Either way, that was something John David couldn’t turn off all the way on the other side of the world no better than he could back home in the Holler. Nothing good could come of this. Everybody would be at Foster’s that day, gathering their supplies and getting their news as they always did. And here in the midst of it all would come Chessie Hodge, wanting to settle things. Wanting to prove her point and set right her bent sense of honor to a drunk like Tully.
He pulled into the grocery on past lunchtime and saw Briar and Chessie getting out of Briar’s big truck. The lot hummed with people coming in and out. Rushing, like being near each other risked spreading Alvaretta’s curse. John David got out of his truck flexing his hands. His eyes were wide and searching.
Chessie’s orders were simple: “We got to get everybody out.”
“These people need their supplies, Chessie. You chase them off, you’ll only scare them more.”
She bent her eyes to the sun and looked square into John David’s face. Briar straightened up enough to let the handle of his pistol poke out from the roll of fat hanging over his jeans.
“I’m doing this for the town, John David. So they won’t be
scared. Tully didn’t do this alone. It’s all connected somehow, just as it always is, and I’m gonna nip this in the bud right here. Now you either come help us or tuck your tail and go home.”
John David helped, though not because he was scared. Everybody from the Holler might’ve given the Hodges a wide berth, but that boy didn’t really consider himself from Crow Holler no more. He just wanted to make sure bad didn’t go to worse.
Chessie and Briar busted into the grocery like a storm. Didn’t matter how raucous things had gotten inside the store in the five hours Landis had been opened, it all went silent as soon as everybody saw them two. Angela had calmed down enough to resume her place behind the register. The mayor had come up from the council building, first to assure everyone that all was well and then to help Angela bag groceries.
Landis came running up the first aisle, trying to keep his tie straight and a look off his face that wondered what fresh hell had just presented itself. “Morning, Chessie,” he called. “Anything I can help you find today?”
Her reply was short and to the point: “I know what I’m lookin for, Landis, and I know where it’s kep.”
John David looked at the dozen or so people in line. He took a spot at the end of the register, cutting off the only route inside the store or out. “Y’all need to get what you have to. Grocery’s closing for a bit. Chessie’s got business.”
“Business?” the mayor asked.
“That’s what we’re calling it,” Briar said.
Landis kept coming forward. “Chessie, you can’t do this.”
Chessie never broke her stride. “Can and will, Landis, now you move out my way. And you keep your trap shut too, Wilson.”
She turned as people began shouting and nodded to Briar. He reached into the front of his pants and drew that pearl handle. John David reached for Angela and the mayor both, pulling them down as Briar shot three bullets into the ceiling.
“You hear me?” Chessie shouted. “I said everybody out.”
What people hadn’t been chased by Chessie’s presence ran screaming now, dropping their goods where they stood. John David let go of Angela and the mayor and did his best to make sure nobody got hurt making their escape. The grocery emptied in seconds. John David turned the sign on the doors from OPEN TO CLOSED.
“Sorry to do that, Landis,” Chessie said. She and Briar turned again, heading for the back. “Won’t be but a minute. Just need a word with your butcher.”
-3-
John David watched as Chessie and Briar disappeared behind the door to the cutting room. Angela turned to him and asked, “What’s going on? You tell us now.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
The mayor tried next: “John David?”
“She didn’t tell me, Wilson. Never does. So y’all just stand here with me. Landis?” he called, stopping the man in his tracks. He’d made it halfway down the aisle and now looked back. “You come back up here, okay? Like she said, it’ll only be a bit.”
And it was. Just a few minutes is all, enough time for Chessie to maim Tully Wiseman for the rest of his life and for a few dozen people to drive up to the grocery to find the CLOSED sign turned out. Raleigh Jennings was among them. He banged on those doors and then pulled, yelling at Landis to open up, but Landis wouldn’t. Him and Angela and the mayor and John David only looked. That’s when the rumors started taking off, friend. People saying Ruth Mitchell had been right. Everybody knew the Fosters had always been in league with the Bickfords and the Ramsays and the Vests. Every town has its own upper crust; the Holler’s no different. So they saw the closed sign on the grocery and heard there was business going on inside, and they all put two and two together—Landis had decided along with the mayor and whoever else that if their kids got hurt by the town, the parents would hurt the town right back and shut the grocery for good.
Now I know that sounds like a stretch. Most times, it would be. But these weren’t normal times in the Holler. These were the days of the witch.
John David turned back around and said, “Don’t you worry none, Landis. Chessie’s doing this as much for y’all as she is herself.”
The mayor asked, “Who’s ‘y’all,’ John David?”
“The town.”
His face had taken on a steely sort of calm that comforted Angela in a way Bucky never could. He was not as thick as Briar, nor as muscular, and yet John David was more intimidating in a way hard to put to words. His arms were inked in tattoos he usually kept hidden much like Scarlett hid her scars. The mayor glimpsed a bit of them, saw what looked to be a snake eating its own tail on one forearm and the words CARRY THE FALLEN on the other. He saw the twelve marks drawn on the inside of the right wrist that some said were a tally of those John David had killed.
It was a silent strength that boy possessed, one that needed neither threats nor strong words to convey. His shoulders were continually square, his back never bent, his chin (his father’s chin, let there be no doubt) forever high and confident. But where his eyes had once carried a bright spark of life, they were now two hollow pools where light would not dwell. Angela would tell Bucky later that John David looked dead on the inside that morning. I think that’s about the best way anybody could say it.
“I’m sorry for what happened to your kids,” he said. “Cordy and Scarlett. They’re nice girls.” He looked at Landis, saying nothing of Hays. “I have to say I feel partly to blame. I’d’ve known all that would happen, I would have stayed to keep watch.”
“You were there,” the mayor said. His eyes flew wide. “You were there, weren’t you? At the mines? You told us at the hospital.”
“Yessir.”
The mayor stepped back. His mouth stretched into a kind of grin, not believing it. “It was you. Cordy took Angela’s bracelet so Scarlett could impress a boy. Scarlett told me as much. Only boy there was Hays, and he’s spoken for. It was you.”
John David blinked twice, no doubt remembering how he’d ignored Scarlett that night on the mountain except to poke fun at the clothes she’d worn.
“John David Ramsay, do you have designs on my daughter?”
He’d started shaking his head when Tully screamed. Angela spun herself around, as did the mayor and Landis. John David took off for the back and then stopped when he remembered Chessie’s warning. Tully screamed again. At the front, Angela and Landis stared stone-faced. I suppose Tully’s curses from that morning were still fresh in their minds, because he kept wailing, begging for mercy and aid, but none came.
-4-
Tully Wiseman was used to being cold. He’d tell people that’s why he drank so much, it was the only way he could stay warm stuck inside that refrigerated meat shop all hours of the day, carving up beef and getting himself all filthy and bloody so Landis could keep Kayann happy inside that fancy car. Truth be told, that room really was cold. Cold and stark and smelling of raw meat. You ask me if there’s a wonder why Tully was always drunk, I’ll tell you no.
His only respite was the steel door on the other side of the room that led to the loading dock. He’d walk out there a couple times an hour and stare out at a field full of weeds and mice, take a smoke and a nip. Took his lunch out there most times too. Landis had a little break room fixed in back, but the last thing Tully wanted was to sit and listen to Angela drone on about her TV stories.
He was just about to grab a smoke when Briar’s gun went off. Tully ducked behind one of the steel tables spread about the room when the door leading out to the store opened. I expect he thought that was Landis coming in, having finally snapped under the weight of what his boy had done and wanting to explain his side of things with the end of a gun. As if whatever sob story that man could offer about Hays would even come close to what Tully’s daughter, Daisy, had endured the past day. Tully already had his mouth cocked and loaded when he raised his head, even got “Don’t you—” out before he realized the one who’d stepped inside the meat room wasn’t Landis at all.
“Say, Hodge.” Tully smiled.
Briar had tucked his gun back away. “Tully,” he said. “Need a word.”
“Sure, sure. Got all the time in the world for you, Briar. Been a busy day so far. Everybody’s coming out to stock up.” He laughed a little. “Almost like a snow’s coming, ain’t it? What’s that racket out there?”
Briar didn’t say. He walked on around Tully, past the tables and saws and slicers and all that raw meat, to the door leading to the dock. That left Tully looking square at Chessie. The skin on her face was flushed near as red as the hair on her head. Her eyes were wide and they did not move from him. That was about the time Tully realized he had a Hodge at each door, and he’d been caught in the middle.
“What brings you up, Chessie?” Asking casual like, no different than Tully would inquire of the weather.
Chessie nodded to Briar, who turned and opened the door behind him. Sunlight washed into the room. Briar looked out. He nodded and whispered, “Come on,” as if that big man was trying to coax a pup, and Tully saw a shadow on the cement floor that grew and then ended when Scarlett Bickford stepped through.
Tully’s face, which had taken on the color of cherries over the years from all that hard liquor, now turned milky white. His hands fumbled with the apron around him, smeared with streaks of browns and reds.
“You pay a visit to Scarlett yest’day, Tully?” Chessie asked. “And before you answer, you choose your words.”
“Scarlett?” he asked. “Well, I . . . I don’t recollect.”
Chessie’s eyes bored into him. Tully turned from hers only to meet Scarlett’s. That girl looked scared. Angry and scared.
“I mean, I may have,” he stammered. “Just to see how she was getting along. Tell her of my Daisy.” And when he finally understood there was no other way through what he’d gotten into, Tully finally said, “Yes’m. I did visit.”
“You strike her?”
Here, Tully wouldn’t say. But his silence was more than enough for Chessie. She nodded again to Briar. What happened next was over before Scarlett could flinch. Briar was a mountain, but he was fast. Lightning fast, and he had an arm around Tully’s head before Chessie could finish raising her chin. Tully’s head slammed atop the metal table in front of him. The sound bounced off the walls, making Scarlett jump, and it was only when Tully stopped struggling that Chessie stepped over to him. She bent down close, making sure he saw her face.
