by Billy Coffey
“I appreciate that text you sent, young lady,” Chessie said. “And I won’t forget it. But it was time to come on in. I won’t spend the rest of my life hearing me an Briar is what’s wrong with this town. We did our best to do what good we could. People say that was all done in a bad way, let’m. Like I told you before, people can’t change the minds of others. But I mean to have an end to this either way, and that end comes now. I gotta stand up in church to do it, I will.”
Down at the end of the hall, someone tried pulling on the locked doors of the council building. Scarlett let Chessie and Briar have a moment alone and walked down to see who it was. Turned out, it could’ve been any of a hundred people, because that’s what looked like the crowd outside had become. That parade of cars coming into town from the clinic along with Angela’s wagging tongue had brought everybody in from the surrounding area. All of them wanted to know the same thing—which of the people locked up inside had helped the witch bring ruin upon us all.
Scarlett ran back down the hall and knocked at the door where her daddy sat listening to Danny Sullivan, writing as she waited. Wilson and Bucky stepped outside.
If somebody doesn’t go outside soon, they’ll try to get in here.
“We’re almost done,” Wilson said. “Bucky, why don’t you get the Reverend out here.”
Bucky did as he was told, though with a troubled look. The mayor knocked at the door to the next room. Scarlett could hear Medric sobbing on the other side. John David came out of one room looking twice as bad as Bucky had going in the other. He didn’t even bother to smile at Scarlett, only nodded his head a little. Still, her heart looked to soar. She had been seen.
Reverend Ramsay and Bucky came back out, and everybody shared what they knew. Wilson went first, telling John David and Scarlett everything the doc had said. John David went next, saying how Medric had dug up Stu Graves, and not anytime in the recent past. Maybe even the very day Stu’d been put in the ground. Had to say it twice, as a matter of fact, because didn’t nobody else believe it. I don’t think John David could quite fathom what Medric did himself.
“Why would Medric do such a thing?” Wilson asked.
John David rubbed the scruff on his face. “He says he just felt sorry for Alvaretta. Thought a man should have the right to be laid to rest on the same land he lived on. He didn’t think Alvaretta was going to . . .” He trailed off there, not knowing how to finish that sentence. “. . . do whatever she did.”
“The arrogance of that man,” the Reverend said. “Thinking he alone knew what was right. Did he say if he reburied Stu somewhere on Campbell’s Mountain?”
John David shook his head. “He didn’t. Said he ain’t been out to Alvaretta’s since.”
“Doc has,” Wilson said. “Medric say anything about killing Ruth?”
“No,” John David said. “Swore to me he didn’t know who’d done it. I believe him. He’s a broken man, Wilson. Any chance Danny was the one?”
“Bucky doesn’t think so,” the preacher said. “I’m inclined to agree. Which means Ruth’s killer is still out there.”
“Maybe Stu Graves really did do it,” Wilson said. “She was felled with a shotgun. Danny said the first time he went out to the mountain, Alvaretta chased him off with one.”
“Maybe Alvaretta did it herself,” the preacher said. “Come to town to lead Stu here.”
Wilson didn’t much like the sound of that. “Whatever the case, we got a crowd of angry people outside. I’m gonna need you to go out there, Reverend. Calm them down. I don’t care what you say or how you say it. Tell them this’ll all be put to rest at the church this evening.”
Scarlett flipped a page and wrote Chessie’s waiting.
“Chessie Hodge has done more to harm this town than anybody but the witch herself,” the Reverend said, staring at his son. “She may not have had anything to do with Alvaretta Graves coming for us, but Chessie weakened the walls around Crow Holler enough to let her. She’ll stand up in church along with the rest, if only so she can finally be brought down.”
He walked off for the front doors before either John David or Scarlett could say a word about it. John David went back inside with Medric. Wilson waited until the door was closed before asking Bucky, “You watch him all morning?”
“Sure, Wilson.”
“John David never wandered off for a minute?”
“No. Why?”
“Because we’re still missing somebody. There’s one other person helping Alvaretta.”
“How you figure that?” Bucky asked.
“It took hours for y’all to do what shouldn’t’ve taken one. Hays is gone, Bucky. Medric was running—you told me so. And Chessie turned herself in. How’d she know to do that if she wasn’t supposed to know you were coming for her? Somebody tipped her off. I think that somebody was your new constable.”
“No,” Bucky said. “No way. John David wouldn’t do that.”
“Wouldn’t? How you know that, Buck? The boy was living with Chessie and Briar. He was up there on the mountain with Scarlett and Cordelia.”
Scarlett opened her mouth to speak and then remembered she couldn’t anymore.
Wilson waved her off. He said to Bucky, “I want John David took in.”
Scarlett’s mouth fell open. She started scrawling.
“What?” Bucky asked. “No, Wilson. This is all gone too far now. You can’t—”
“I can, Sheriff. I’m the mayor, and I know the Reverend will agree when he hears what I got to say.”
“I won’t do it.”
“You won’t?” Wilson took a step toward Bucky. “You won’t? Listen here, you fat tub of nothing, I made you what you are. You’ve had my pity your whole life, and that pity’s what got you everything from the wife you bed to the badge in your pocket. Now when it comes time to finally do something to justify your sorry life, you say you won’t?”
Bucky looked as though someone had shot him. He could barely summon a single word: “Wilson . . .”
“Shut up. You’ll do what I say. You’ll do it or I’ll—”
And that’s when Scarlett held up her pad.
-5-
I told them Bucky was coming
That’s what Scarlett had written on the page. In a morning full of confessions that rocked the fragile world that Wilson Bickford had long given his blood and sweat to build, that one cut the deepest. All you needed to know that was the look on his face.
“You did what?” he whispered.
Scarlett wrote: It’s wrong what you did!!!
“Bucky, go on back in with Danny and Maris.”
Our sheriff stayed put. He was staring at what Scarlett had written with a kind of marvel.
“Bucky?” Wilson asked. “Please.”
There was an apology inside that last word, one plain for everyone there. But Bucky didn’t look to accept it. The mayor’s words had stung him, and that pain still smarted. They’d been friends for years—best friends, Bucky often said. And yet now he looked to think maybe that had all been on his part, not Wilson’s. He turned and put his hand on the knob of the door leading back inside that little conference room. Before he turned it, Bucky said, “Scarlett, you come find me if you got to.”
Scarlett winced as the mayor took her arm and led her to his office. He shut the door and told her to sit, then peeked through the blinds to the Reverend and the crowd outside. David Ramsay looked busy giving one of his mini-sermons. Sure did look like he was ginning everybody up a whole lot more than he was calming them down. He turned to find Scarlett slumped into one of the chairs in front of the desk, knees drawn to her chin. She didn’t look as mournful as she did tired.
“All my life,” he said, “all I ever did was try and protect you. I couldn’t protect your momma in the end. I’m big in this town, Scarlett, but cancer’s bigger. I wanted to keep you safe. I wanted to give you a future. And after all I’ve done for you, you stab me in the back. You take off up to Campbell’s Mountain thinking that would
impress some . . . boy. Cross the witch. And now, just when I think I found a way to set things right, you go and give aid to the very people who sought to destroy all me and your granddaddy built. You put us all in more jeopardy this morning with that damn phone of yours than you ever could traipsing around the mines. She wants me dead, Scarlett. Me and everybody I love. And she’s coming for the preacher too.”
Scarlett picked up her pen. Wilson told her to put it down. She didn’t and set to writing—a W, an H. Part of the Y that came next. Stop it, Wilson told her, and when Scarlett would not, he reached across the desk and took her pen away. Silencing her. Making his little girl unseen again. And whether Scarlett believed just then that was the way her daddy had always wanted her or if her rage and hurt had reached its limits, she picked up her pad and flung it at her father. It hit the side of his face with a whump and fell atop the desk, leaving Wilson stunned.
Why? she mouthed, screaming it though only air came out. Why? as she reached for what she could—a tape dispenser, a stapler, the picture of her dead momma—and flung them at her father’s head and chest. Why? as he told her to stop, Why? as he tried pinning her arms but couldn’t, Why?—
“Because we killed Stu Graves,” Wilson shouted, and then disbelief engulfed him. For a moment it looked as though his admission had brought a new level of Alvaretta’s curse upon his daughter. Not only had Scarlett been struck mute, her body slackened like one side of Cordelia’s face. But it was not witchery that had overcome her, it was shock.
Wilson sat. He put his elbows atop the desk and leaned forward, letting his fingers massage the ridge of his nose.
He said it again, softer. “We killed Stu Graves. Me and David. We killed him, Lord help us we did. We’d all gotten together a week before the state game. David came down from college with Belle and John David, who weren’t no taller than a weed. Landis was there with Angela. They were still together then, at least for a few months more. Me and David cut out a little early and went driving around. Just hanging out the way we used to before he left. We both got drunk. Me because that’s just what I did back then, and I guess David just wanted to blow off some steam from all that right living he’d been doing. We were coming back on the Ridge Road.
“I was driving. We got to playing this game where we took all the turns in the opposite lane. I know it’s stupid. Even then, I knew it. The first few times was fine. It was late, and we both knew there wasn’t anybody around. But that last time we took the turn, there was Stu Graves coming right at us. I managed to swerve the same time as he did, but I had a whole ’nother lane. Stu didn’t. He went off the road and into that tree.
“I didn’t know what to do. David was screaming and so was I, and he wanted me to keep going but I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t just leave him there, Scarlett. What if he was okay? What if he was still alive? Stu’d go straight to my daddy and tell him what we done, that’s what. It’d cost me everything, all the future I’d planned. David too. You think they’d let him back in that Bible college after he’d gotten drunk like that? So I threw my car into reverse and went back. We got out, and Stu was . . .” Wilson shook his head. “He was all mangled up. It was the awfulest thing I ever seen before or since.
“I wanted to go for help, but David starts going crazy, saying we’d get sent to jail or worse. We had to make it look like an accident. So we took all the jars we had and put them in Stu’s truck. Made it look like he’d been drinking. We swore to each other we’d never tell a word to anybody. Me and David’d carry that secret to the grave. But Alvaretta knew. I don’t know how, Scarlett, but she knew it was no accident that killed her husband. She swore vengeance at the funeral, and then Medric and Danny gave her everything she needed to get it. One gave her back Stu’s body to raise up, and the other kept her living long enough to do it. So you have to leave. Don’t you understand? The only reason Alvaretta let you live in the first place is so you could spread what she gave you to the whole town when you and the rest got back here.”
Scarlett didn’t need to write down what she thought. Wilson saw it plain.
“I’m trying to save this town. I will not let those people go, Scarlett. Your uncle and Medric and Chessie carry as much blame for what’s happened as you or me.”
Scarlett shook her head.
“You stand with me, Scarlett, or you will stand against me. Let there be no mistake in that. My duty is to Crow Holler first. David and me have given our lives to this town. We done a whole lot more good than bad, and I won’t have anybody, anybody, try to take that away.”
I don’t know if Wilson truly meant that. Maybe he was just trying to scare his daughter into seeing his side of things. But it wasn’t the old Scarlett Bickford he was talking to, remember. This was the new Scarlett, the one risen up from all of what the witch and everybody else had done to her. The one whose mother’d been snatched away and the one the whole town (and even her own father) called guilty for bringing all this on. So I guess it weren’t much surprising what she did.
She got up from that chair and went out the door, leaving it open for Wilson to see. Chessie and Briar sat in the room across the hall. Scarlett opened that door and walked in, taking a seat at Chessie’s side. Her decision had been made. Not for her daddy. Against him.
Wilson Bickford sat alone in his office and wept. I suppose he could’ve made other choices in the hours after and changed things, both for himself and everybody else. Never did, though. People never change who they are. You might like to think they do, friend, because thinking so gives you a kind of hope that maybe you can change your own self, but it’s a lie. Nosir, people never change. And that is how Alvaretta Graves would end Wilson’s life. She hadn’t gotten her vengeance yet, but it was coming. In white hoods and a dead man’s face, it was coming.
-6-
Was a time when John David Ramsay would sit in church and be transfixed by his daddy’s power to sway people. The lowly and the downtrodden; the sick and the dying; those who longed for heaven and those who feared hell; men and women and children. They’d all seek refuge inside the Holy Fire from a hard and fallen world, and then they’d walk out with their heads high and their spirits renewed to face that hard and fallen world once more. Make no mistake on what I tell you, nothing carries the might of words. Give me a sword or a gun, give me the power of death. Those things can only strike flesh and bone, friend. They can change neither nation nor world. But give me words and I may rule, for by them I reach the heart and the mind. John David understood that. He bore witness to it every day of his childhood under his father’s roof. He felt that power even now.
He’d left Medric with Bucky and now stood outside the council building, arms folded in front of his chest as he listened to his father speak to the crowd. Watching the Reverend stir them up, give them reason for hope. Telling them of the three inside who had helped cast the pall that had fallen over the town. Saying the service that night would be a cleansing of all their sin and a welcoming of the Holy Spirit of God to drive the witch away from Crow Holler forever. And all that while John David kept his arms tight around himself, like he was cold still, wanting to feel the warmth of his father’s fire and yet not daring his own heart and mind to venture too close, and when the crowd had had their fill and began drifting away in peace, only the two of them remained.
You would think a man so gifted in speech would have plenty to say to his own son, yet the Reverend could only stand there and look. John David kept his back to the wall of the council building. He said, “Forgot how good your tongue worked.”
“You’d be reminded if you ever came to church. I’m sure Chessie would allow it. Her and Briar come themselves.”
“Chessie leaves my soul up to me,” John David said, settling things.
“Your momma misses you, son. Naomi too.”
“And what of my father?”
Here, the Reverend looked away. Only for a moment, just enough time for him to say, “Sometimes I think your father misses you more than the
y do.” He looked back. “What happened to you over there, John David?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. Everything. Sometimes I think whatever happened, happened here. It wilted in Crow Holler, then finally died and fell away over there. And I guess I’m just trying to get back what I lost.”
“I can help you,” the preacher said.
“I don’t think anything can help me. Time. Maybe that.”
“Time only lasts so long, John David. This week’s taught us all that. The days are dark and the burden is heavy.”
“Don’t try to witness to me, Daddy.”
“It’s my job.”
“No. It isn’t. Your job is to comfort these people, not whip them into a frenzy.”
“We are soldiers, John David. We fight the good fight. Part of that is calling evil what it is and rooting it out.”
“That what you’re doing in this service tonight? Rooting it out?”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” the Reverend said. “This town was pure, maybe the witch would’ve never come. All that stands between the shadow and the light are men willing to take up and fight. There’s a peace that only comes with war. You should know that.”
“All I know is the people who say such things are never the ones who have to take up and do the fighting. They leave that to the common folk. Maybe you suffer and bleed, you’d think otherwise.”
“Don’t you challenge me,” the Reverend said.
“And don’t you pretend to think I don’t know what I’m saying, because I do. You call other people evil, fine. But know when you do, those people are calling you the same.”
He eased away from the wall and made for the door. The preacher watched his son go and said, “Was a good thing Bucky did, making you constable and getting you away from Chessie Hodge.”
“You’d take the time to understand Chessie, you might think different.”
