by Billy Coffey
When Maris said she was going to revival, Danny said fine. She had kin in Wilson and Scarlett, a history in the Holler, and that was something Danny didn’t share but was grateful his wife could possess. But he wouldn’t be going to church that week. It was the hypocrisy, yes, but it was also his belief that religion turns to something else when paired with fear and hate. By then, plenty of both had taken up residence in town.
He was sitting in front of the TV watching a rerun of The Twilight Zone when the gunfire started. He didn’t hear it at first, or thought it was young’uns shooting off some firecrackers.
It’d been a long week. There’d been no new cases of what Danny had taken to calling Teenaged-Gotta-Fit-In-Disorder (privately, of course, and to Maris alone), but none of the girls were getting better either. The sickness had stopped spreading. That was good news worth spreading, but then all everybody wanted to talk about was Alvaretta Graves and, now, her dead husband, Stu. It was a mess, that’s what Danny’d said to Maris. A sorry mess.
More shots. Not firecrackers.
He muted the TV and got up, wincing at the crick in his back, and flipped on the porch light before stepping outside. The sounds were coming from town. The first thing he thought was the only word he mumbled—
“Maris.”
He’d turned to go back inside for the car keys when he saw them—horseshoe marks burned into the ground. Coming straight off the road and up his gravel drive. Right to the porch, where they turned and went back.
Danny Sullivan let out a whimper. He ran a shaky hand through his white hair. There were other houses down that way, Wilson’s and the Fosters’, but they were all at revival. That was good, because the doctor had begun to panic.
“No,” he said. “No, no, nonono. Why did you do this, Alvaretta?”
Gunfire again. And now voices, coming from up the road.
Maris would have to wait. Danny hated the thought, but she couldn’t find what had crept up to their door and neither could anyone else. He ran inside not for the keys to the car but the keys to the small garden shed in the backyard. A rake was all he could find. That would have to do. Danny only hoped he could cover the tracks before anyone saw.
XI
John David arrested. Cold. A new deputy. Alvaretta prepares.
-1-
By eleven that night, the only person who didn’t know Alvaretta Graves had loosed her demon was creeping along an old service road that wound its way through miles of trees and river bottoms between the Holler and the little burg of Camden. Wasn’t much of a run for John David that night. Half the bed of his truck had been empty when Chessie sent him off; he’d had to be careful the whole way down from the mountains to keep the jars from jostling. Wasn’t even worth the gas money, taking that small a load out. Then again, John David knew it wasn’t a run Chessie wanted. No, all that woman had in mind was getting him away. Away from the Holler. Away from his daddy. Just away. Which I guess speaks a lot on why John David had taken up with the Hodges after he come back from the war. Chessie and Briar might not’ve been what you’d call one of Christendom’s bright lights, but she understood that boy. She understood that boy better’n anybody.
He drove without headlights, as Briar had always instructed. It was as dangerous as it was pointless (in all John David’s trips back and forth to Camden, not once had he seen another living soul on that old service road), but he enjoyed being part of the night, blending into all that darkness. It gave him time to think.
Chessie had called that afternoon to say they’d dug up Stu Graves. It’d been a crazy notion to John David that Chessie and the rest of the town (not to mention Medric) had agreed to do something like that. Crazier still that Stu’s coffin had been empty. I wouldn’t say John David believed all the stories of the witch, at least not right off. I wouldn’t say he thought Alvaretta had even raised up her husband. But all the news of the day had done one thing, and that was to further convince John David of what he’d come to know as true—every time you say the world can’t get darker, it finds a deeper shade of black.
I expect that was the thought on his mind when he slammed the brakes halfway to town and flipped the headlights on. Up ahead, just at the outer edges of his sight, something had walked across the road. Not a deer (unless there was a deer in these mountains who’d learned to walk on two legs). Not a man, neither. He crept forward and took his hand off the gearshift, reaching for the sawed-off on the passenger’s seat.
Nothing. Nothing there.
Just the moon more than likely, nearly full and easing in and out of a bank of low clouds over the mountains. That didn’t explain why John David’s knee was twitching, though, or why the hand still on the steering wheel had begun to flex. He put the gear back into drive and switched off the lights. With no jars to worry of breaking in back, he stood the engine up to thirty and kept an eye on the rearview. Up ahead, the road curved and rolled over a small hill that led on into the Holler. And on the other side of that curve, a pair of headlights flashed on.
He rounded the turn, and there John David stopped. A heavy man stood basked in shadow between the headlights, waiting. A shotgun rested on his right hip. The barrel pointed high and out.
The man hollered, “Take what you got and put it through the back window.”
John David reached onto the seat beside him and eased the shotgun through the little square of open glass behind him. It clunked into the bed. The pistol tucked under the driver’s seat stayed put.
“That it?” the man yelled.
“All I got.”
“You promise?”
John David wrinkled his forehead at such a question. Almost like it’d come from a child. “Pinky swear,” he called.
The man moved away slow and easy, like he expected an ambush. John David strained to see who it was. He didn’t recognize the face until Bucky stuck his head through the window.
“Say, John David.”
I don’t know whether John David wanted to laugh or reach under the seat and shoot Bucky where he stood for scaring him so bad. “What you doing out here, Sheriff?”
“About to ask you the same thing. How’s things in Camden?”
“Didn’t go to Camden.”
“Sure you did. Camden’s the only place this old road goes. What? You think all of Chessie’s secrets are hers?”
John David cocked his head. “What you doing with Chessie’s shotgun, Bucky?”
“That don’t matter right now. John David, I’m placing you under arrest.”
He tried grinning. “You serious? What’s the charge?”
“I’ll think of something,” Bucky said.
“You can’t do that. Chessie’s got an agreement.”
“With the mayor, not with me. Things has happened in the Holler. I expect Chessie and Briar are both plenty busy at the moment.”
“Heard about y’all’s little trip to the cemetery.”
“And what we found?”
John David nodded.
“Well, more’s happened since you been out . . . riding around. Stu came to town, John David. During revival. Left his mark all over the place, and it’s the same tracks Cordy and her friends found. There was a fight. Ruth Mitchell got shot. She’s gone.”
John David leaned back into the seat. “Ruth’s dead?”
“She is, and ain’t nobody gonna know who did it. People’s shooting at anything that moved, saying Stu was everywhere. So come on, you’re under arrest.”
“Bucky, none of this makes sense.”
“You’ll follow me. I’ll give you that mercy rather than taking you in the car. Stinks in there anyway. But you get a notion to take off, you’ll have more than me to answer to. I’m tired, John David. I’m tired, and I’m scared. So don’t give me no trouble. Please.”
John David could only look at him. “Where we going?”
“Jail, I guess.”
“Bucky, we ain’t got no jail.”
The sheriff tapped on the door. He turned and started wal
king back to the Celebrity.
“I’ll think of something,” he said.
-2-
Wasn’t a doubt in anybody’s mind Stu Graves walked through town that night. Never mind how impossible it seemed, or how he’d managed to grow horse feet in death when regular feet was all he’d had in life. When all you got is the impossible, that’s what you believe. Then was this: There were too many hoofprints covering the area between the grocery and the church and on to Doc Sullivan’s house. Too many for only one demon to make, anyway. That meant either Stu’d been walking around the Holler a good long while as everybody sought the Lord inside the church, or he’d brought some friends along from the grave. You can bet Bucky thought it was that second one, else he wouldn’t have left family and friends to go after John David.
But such things didn’t matter to those still in town. What mattered was Stu had been seen. Not just by Landis and the Reverend but by others as well, and they’d all swear to it on a Bible. After all the shooting was done and the demon (or demons—I’ll leave that for you to decide, friend) was gone, people found some of those tracks led straight to the cemetery. Right to Stu Graves’s empty plot. I know that myself, and I’ll tell you it bothered Reverend Ramsay something awful. It was almost like Stu’d been dragged back to this world against his own will, and now he was pining for the death he once had. Reverend told Belle later he couldn’t shake the feeling that by raising Stu up, Alvaretta had cursed her husband right along with everybody else.
I’ll tell you another feeling nobody could shake that night—the only reason Stu disappeared agin was because he’d accomplished what Alvaretta wanted. Someone had died. The first shot in the war between the witch and the Holler had been fired, and the bullet had struck one of our own.
Joe Mitchell managed to wrestle the body of his dead wife away from Raleigh long enough to carry her from behind the council building to the church steps. He slumped down and held her like one of Alvaretta’s dogs would bring a dead animal for her pleasure. His wailing brought everybody back from searching and all those people out from the Holy Fire. Angela made it out the door first, Cordelia right behind her. Belle shoved her way back inside to find little Chelsea Mitchell and make sure the girl wouldn’t be scarred for life by seeing her dead momma. She found Chelsea with Naomi, the two of them herking and jerking together in embrace as Scarlett stood guard over them. Wasn’t much Christianizing went on that night, friend, but I’ll admit what little there was came straight from those women. Belle, Scarlett, and Naomi sat with Chelsea for near an hour that night. They took turns holding the child until Joe could find courage enough to deliver the sad news.
Mayor screamed for Bucky, but of course Bucky’d already gone. The Reverend kept asking Chessie and Briar if they’d seen who’d fired the shot, but there was no way to tell. Everybody with a gun had pulled the trigger at least once that night. Chessie understood right off that had been Alvaretta’s plan.
“Stu was a distraction,” she said. “Nothing more. He come so Alvaretta’s spy could do her bidding in secret.”
Joe cried out, “Ruthie never hurt nobody.” He shook his wife, begged her to wake. Ruth’s right arm fell free of his grasp. It dangled lifeless and swung like a pendulum off his right leg. “Why’d the witch want her dead?”
Landis Foster bent his head to hide the tears he shed. He whispered, “Because she never hurt nobody.”
Kayann came down the steps around Joe, calling for Landis and Hays. She went to her husband and held him as Angela looked on. Landis let his shotgun fall to the ground, and there it would stay. He would pick up a gun only once more in his life. That would come the next night under the blood moon, when he went with the others to kill the witch.
Mayor Bickford charged up the steps as Cordelia charged down, she looking for Hays, him looking for Scarlett. Wilson kept his gun raised, and I’ll tell you why. He was about the only one there who had the thought that one of them in the crowd was a killer. Ruth hadn’t been murdered, because she was innocent, though the mayor saying that outright would risk exposing his greatest and most secret sin. No, he was the one Alvaretta had sought. That’s why those hoofprints were scattered about the council building more than anywhere else. Poor Ruth had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chessie told the Reverend to tend to the dead. He said something about getting Medric, but of course Medric was nowhere around neither. That all became moot when Joe Mitchell said dead or not, no black man was ever gonna touch his wife. Maris said she’d arrange for the body to be taken to the clinic instead.
Hays heard Cordelia calling to him as best she could. He felt her hand on his arm, watched as her lips moved to form something like Vhat hoppen? The Zippo in his hand burned so hot that it had begun to singe the skin. One image consumed his mind—Medric Johnston running away from where Ruth had been killed. Medric’s demon face. That shotgun in his hand. I think a part of that boy had known a long while Medric was giving aid to the witch. It only made sense, the way he’d changed since Hays and his friends had spent that night on the mountain. How he’d been sneaking out. How he’d protested the unburying.
“I loved her.”
Hays and Cordelia both flinched at the sound. He remained still but she spun, banging her hand against the side of the truck behind her. Raleigh Jennings stood mere feet away. His cheeks were streaked with tears, his hair a wild mess. The hem of his white dress shirt had come loose of his pants and gone drenched with blood. The gun in his hand shook.
“You thcared uth, Printhipal Jenningth,” Cordy said.
Raleigh spoke again, “I loved her,” like she and Hays weren’t even there. Hays looked up and saw the pain in the man’s eyes.
Angela called for Cordelia from the church steps. She looked there to see her momma alongside Scarlett and the mayor. They had to go, Angela said. Now.
“Come with me,” she told Hays.
“I have to go,” he said. “I have to get away, Cordy. It’s not safe here anymore.”
He turned, searching for his mother and father. Cordelia watched her boyfriend go. She turned to the spot where Raleigh had stood, but he had gone. Left to wander back behind the council building, to mourn the loss of his last good thing.
-3-
John David had never been incarcerated, but it didn’t take him long to find life as a convict wasn’t so hard if your prison was Bucky’s trailer. Not that it wasn’t awkward at first. Wilson arrived not long after Bucky did with Scarlett in tow, looking for our fair sheriff so he could find out why Bucky had run off when the town needed him most. Angela and the mayor both near fainted when Bucky brought him inside, Angela more from anger at how Bucky’d left her and Cordelia at the church, the mayor out of fear of how mad Chessie would be at the breaking of their agreement. But once all that wore off, things were near fine. Angela brought out a plate of biscuits and sausage gravy left over from supper, along with a glass of her mint tea. As good as all that looked, John David couldn’t touch any of it. He could only sit there in a sad sort of silence as the mayor and Angela recounted all that had happened in the last hours. When they were both done, Bucky informed John David of his rights (which, I’ll add, was delivered with neither hesitation nor error; Bucky’d been waiting just about all his life for the chance to tell somebody that).
“You figure a charge yet?” the mayor asked.
“Driving around at night with your lights off. It’s a serious one, Wilson. Risk of life and limb, reckless driving, maybe even intent to cause bodily harm. You’re looking at hard time, John David.”
“I weren’t so scared of Stu,” Wilson said, “I’d fire you right now, Bucky.”
There was John David’s phone call, of course. Bucky said that would be to his momma and daddy and nobody else. When John David said that wasn’t going to happen, Bucky had Angela call the Ramsays in his stead. The call down to the Hodge farm came next, followed by a final one to the Fosters. That was all the talking Angela Vest did on the phone that ni
ght. Oh, you can bet that line rang plenty of times. Didn’t matter if the clock had already struck the other side of today, people wanted their news. But Angela never picked up once. Ruth Mitchell might’ve stood in the grocery only a few days before proclaiming this was all Angela’s fault, but nobody deserved to die that way. I guess for Angela, things had gotten way more real that night and a lot less like the TV.
“I expect they’ll be here soon,” Bucky said. “Chessie, Briar. Your folks. Meantime, I think I might just sit here with Wilson and cry some over all I seen tonight. You go on out on the back porch, John David. Give us a little bit. Me and the mayor got some things to talk over.”
John David sighed (his night just kept getting better and better) and got up from the table. He tried once more—“You think you’re scared of Alvaretta, you wait until Chessie gets here”—and then pushed on the little door off the kitchen. The moon that would burn red over Crow Holler the next night now glowed almost white, hanging up in the stars as a near perfect circle. It cast its light down upon what passed for the Vests’ backyard and the porch itself, along with the two girls sitting in the lawn chairs by the steps.
For what must’ve seemed to John David an eternity, he stood part inside and part out, unsure what to do. Cordelia made that decision for him. She got up from beside Scarlett and moved to the door, putting a hand to John David’s shoulder and whispering, “You got to get thith thtraight” before walking inside. Scarlett only stared at him. He took Cordelia’s chair and sat.
“Hey, Scarlett. How’s things going?”
She hadn’t brought her pad or pen and so only shrugged a little.
“I know I was rude the other night. Up at the mines. I didn’t know you’d done all that for me. If somebody’d said something . . .”
Well, if somebody had said something, nothing at all woulda changed. I don’t think John David really understood that until he’d started to speak the words. He woulda told Scarlett back then the very thing he was to tell her now.
