by Billy Coffey
Hays stumbled back. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nuffing.” She came forward again as the tip of her chin bubbled and popped, revealing a patch of mottled black skin beneath.
“You’re one of them,” he said. “Cordelia?”
“Thtop, Hayth. Let me help you. We’ll make it okay. Juft tell me you wuv me.”
Her right cheek slipped free of her face, followed by an ear and a lock of her thick hair. Cordelia stood by the flames and had no idea her mask was falling away.
“Tell me you wuv me, Hayth,” she said, begging to hear those words. “Tell me you’ll be wiff me alwayth, no matter vut.”
“Get away.”
He stumbled back as Cordelia moved away from the fire’s heat, and at the far edge of the field came the others. Angela screamed his name. And there came Kayann, there came Hays’s own mother, hollering for her boy and saying she loved him, and all Hays could think of was how horrible it would be once they all reached the fire and their masks burned away, too, and how that sight would snatch what remained of his sanity.
“Vey’re here to help you,” the thing that had once been Cordelia said, but Hays wanted no such aid. He tore for the woods where he’d hidden Briar’s old truck, and he did not turn to the calls begging him to turn back and join them.
You’ll ask me, friend, if that’s what Hays had truly seen—that piece of hell beneath Cordelia’s pretty face and all them faces at the Circle. I’ll tell you I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t know the whole of the story I’m telling you, but I can guess on the parts I don’t. My guess as far as Hays Foster is concerned is that he thought that’s what he saw, and that’s the only thing that matters because it’s the only thing that explains what he did next. He’d been inside the Circle’s ring of fire when he’d seen the true faces of Raleigh’s men. Medric Johnston had crossed by the lighter’s flame when Hays had seen the undertaker’s truth. That’s what Hays had thought as he loaded up all that moonshine into the back of that truck. Now fire had exposed Cordy, too, and I guess that settled things. There was only one way for Hays to expose the rest of Alvaretta’s demons that had overtaken Crow Holler, and that would be to burn the town.
Burn it all.
-3-
“I’ll speak,” Chessie said. She kicked the chair she’d sat in away. The tumble sounded like thunder. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
The Reverend said, “Chessie, you stand accused. The time for you to speak is done.”
“My time to speak is whenever I get the urge, David Ramsay. You got the nerve to shut me up, come over here and try.”
The Reverend looked at Wilson, who rose from his pew. It’d be tricky, getting Chessie to shut her mouth without Briar throwing the whole church into a riot, but I think that’s what Wilson had decided to do.
And yet as he turned to speak to the congregation—tell them what a fool Chessie was for thinking she could do all that sinning all those years and not have it all come back on them all in spades—his eyes went to the crowd huddled in the choir loft. Someone there stood. The figure was basked in shadow, moving from the back row up toward the front of the balcony with a slow ease that seemed impossible given how they’d all been packed in.
“You’ll sit,” the Reverend told Chessie.
Wilson watched as the figure passed Helen Pruitt, then Helen’s stricken child Maddie. On past the others, moving not around them but almost through them, easing its way to the wood railing that overlooked the sanctuary.
“I’ll speak and I’ll be heard,” Chessie said. “Stu Graves did not die by his own hand. He was murdered. And I know by whose hand.”
Doc Sullivan looked to have forgotten his migraine. Even Medric raised his head some.
Now not only standing but leaning over the rail, not so the figure could get a better look, but so the mayor could see clear the man who had haunted him since that night so long ago. Stu Graves curled a hand of skinless fingers over that railing and stared through two black holes where his eyes had rotted away. His face was little more than a thin layer of gray and mottled skin stretched taut over bone. A scream built in Wilson’s throat, one that threatened to escape not simply because the man he had killed had come back to return the favor, but because no one else seemed aware of the danger around them.
Wilson did not hear Chessie say she would bear witness against him and the Reverend both. His mind was overcome by Stu’s empty stare and Maddie Pruitt’s sudden look of shock over what Chessie had just said. He didn’t hear Chessie announce that Scarlett had told her all that Wilson had confessed only a short time ago, or the screaming the Reverend had started next, the No and That’s not true. Wilson did not feel Scarlett’s hand upon him or see the scrap of paper with I’m so sorry Daddy I love you that she waved in his eyes. He did not even hear the congregation’s gasp when Chessie said our mayor and preacher had killed Stu Graves along the Ridge Road that night. All of these things were unimportant to Mayor Wilson Bickford just then, inconsequential. Stu smiled through two rows of black and needled teeth. A worm fell from his mouth. It tumbled down from the choir loft and landed unseen and unnoticed atop Landis Foster’s head, where it stretched and flopped as though dumped into water.
Three things happened then. That whole church started hollering. Stu Graves disappeared from his place beside Maddie Pruitt. And Wilson Bickford fainted dead away.
The Reverend shouted for Bucky to take Chessie out of there. Bucky remained in his seat, too stunned to move. Then the preacher tried to do it himself, even with Briar standing in front of him. He didn’t get far. John David grabbed Scarlett from behind, getting her to safety, but there was no place to go. The crowd had rose up, shouting and cursing and wanting to know if it was true. There’s not a doubt in my mind, friend, that our preacher and our mayor would’ve been torn apart right there. But that’s when the front doors of the church flew open and the fire poured in.
-4-
The staff had been fashioned from a stout limb of oak, wrapped on one end with an old shop rag doused with a few cents of the Exxon’s finest 87 octane, and the only reason it didn’t strike anyone was they’d all moved to the front when Wilson fell. It tumbled end over end down the center aisle and landed with a clang against one of the metal chairs. Next came a soft whoomp as the fire took hold. It bloomed like a flower in the thick carpet. Doc Sullivan had already left his place on the stage to tend to Wilson. He paused now as the flames took hold and screamed Fire.
Bodies collided as people scrambled to get out of the way. John David left Scarlett to care for her unconscious daddy. He charged through the crowd, ripping off his shirt to beat the flames. Bucky ran to join him. Reverend Ramsay stood behind the pulpit with a look of confusion, like he couldn’t figure how there could be a fire because it hadn’t been printed up in the bulletin.
John David grabbed the torch and ran it to the stage, where he shoved it inside the pitcher of water beside Chessie. The fire let out an angry hiss as it died. People clamored to the foyer. John David saw them and shouted, “No. Wait. Everybody wait.”
Didn’t make no difference he said that, weren’t nobody going to listen. All everybody wanted was get out of there and into open space. They all charged to the doors, and there’s where they stopped. Not a one of them dared a step more. A silence fell over the room.
Briar rose to see what was outside. Chessie called his name and then shook her head, telling him to stay put. She sat back down in her chair on the stage and stared at the empty seat between herself and Medric. Doc stood with Maris in the middle of the sanctuary near where the torch had hit, asking if anyone was hurt. Briar nodded to his wife and returned to the front pew.
Wilson’s eyes fluttered open to see Scarlett bent over him. There was agony and shame in his face. He kept muttering something about Stu. Belle and Naomi stood like islands in the middle of the church, not sure what to do. John David looked at his father and asked the one question his momma and little sister were afraid to ask.
/> “It true, what Chessie said?”
The Reverend didn’t answer.
“You’re coming with me,” John David said. “I ain’t letting you out of my sight.” He walked up the center aisle past Belle and Naomi, leaving his father to follow like a lost puppy. John David met Bucky halfway up the aisle, where a black spot had been left in the floor. “Come on,” he said. “Town needs us.”
By then the Holy Fire had turned from a place of worship to a place of fear. The whole church smelled of sulfur and sweat. I don’t believe Bucky wanted to follow John David out there at all. I think he’d got the feeling that whatever waited outside was something horrible beyond his reckoning—Stu Graves, maybe, or Alvaretta herself. But Angela and Cordelia were somewhere out there, too, and maybe they were both in danger, and that’s what made Bucky take that slow trip to the doors in the end. He caught up with John David and skipped his feet to get in front of him and the Reverend.
“Excuse me,” he whispered as he moved aside those in his way. “Pardon me, let me through please, watch your foot,” until he reached the open doors and stepped out.
Fifteen men were gathered in a circle around the church, all done up in white robes and hoods. Each man held a gun in one hand and a flaming torch in the other. Across the street beside the church, a wooden cross burned in front of the funeral home. More men stood there, guarding the fire like it was a holy thing.
“What’s this?” Bucky asked.
“Judgment,” one of the hooded men said. He stepped out from his place in the circle and made himself the center.
John David stepped forward. He said, “Mask can hide your face, but it don’t hide your voice. Take that thing off and talk like a man, Raleigh Jennings.”
“Raleigh?” the Reverend asked. It was his first word as a fallen man whose sin lay exposed to the world. Gone was David Ramsay’s confident manner. He spoke for God no more, only himself, and that voice sounded as frail as a child’s. “Raleigh, that you?”
The man carried a gun but no torch, at least no longer. The one he’d come with had been thrown through the church doors only minutes before. He used his free hand to pull the hood up from his face, bringing a cry from the people who could see.
Bucky took a step down, like that much distance closer would prove the man he saw wasn’t Raleigh, but someone who looked just like him. “Raleigh, what you doing?”
“What needs done. I want Medric, Bucky. You get him out here right now.”
“Why?”
“Because he killed my wife,” another man said. And since saying it dispensed with all question of who that man was, Joe Mitchell took his hood off as well. “Medric shot my Ruth. He left me a widower and my Chelsea and Little Joe without a momma.”
“How you know that?” Bucky asked.
“Hays Foster told us,” Raleigh said. “The boy witnessed it himself.”
A voice somewhere inside the church said, “Hays?” Landis pushed his way out onto the steps. “You’ve seen Hays, Raleigh?”
“Seen him this morning, running from Wilson.”
“From Wilson?” Bucky asked.
“Mayor knows the truth. I’ll need him out here too, Bucky. There’ll be no judgment. Judgment’s past. Landis? You hear me? You want to see your boy again, you bring’m both to me. You don’t, we got gas spread whole way around the church. I’ll light it, and I won’t think twice.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” the Reverend said. “Raleigh, this is the house of God.”
“It’s a haven for the guilty and the dead,” Raleigh told him. “Your life worth less than a murderer’s, Preacher? Do you count yourself a poorer soul than a liar who wants nothing more than keep an iron grip on this town?”
A few inside the foyer decided they’d had enough of church for one night. They tried coming past John David and Bucky down the steps. Raleigh’s men leveled their guns, stopping them.
“Anybody tries to leave before I get Medric and Wilson,” Raleigh said, “they die first. Your call, Buck.”
David said, “Raleigh, you can’t—”
“I can. I will.”
Bucky leaned toward John David. “What do I do?”
“They’re armed, Buck. We’re not. Raleigh’s not kidding.”
“I know that. What do I do? You ain’t got a gun?”
“Don’t like guns.”
“Time’s up,” Raleigh said. He motioned for one of the men closest to the church, who lowered the torch in his hand.
“Wait,” the Reverend said. “Raleigh, just . . . wait. I’ll bring them out.”
“You can’t do that, David,” Bucky said. He looked around for someone to say the same. No one did.
“I’ll bring them out,” the preacher said again.
-5-
If there remained a single blessing in what David Ramsay did next, it was that hardly anybody remained at the front of the church. Belle, Naomi, Scarlett, Briar, Wilson, Medric, and Chessie. That’s all. Everybody else had crowded at the doors, trying to figure out how they were going to get out of church that night without ending up in glory. And yet I imagine it felt a hard thing, what David had to do. Yessir, a hard thing indeed.
He come back down the aisle with all but Medric and Wilson watching. You could see the Reverend’s lips moving—trying to remember how to pray, I guess, wondering if such a man as he would even warrant the Lord’s attention. All those years up there behind that pulpit telling folk how they should live, when all the time he’d been a liar to his family and his town and to his own self especially. Stu’s blood had never been on Wilson alone. It had stained David Ramsay plenty too. And so there he was, forced to make the impossible decision of saving one man or saving them all. Up the stage he went, and I have no doubt every step felt harder than the next. Medric looked up with sad eyes, but the Reverend didn’t stop. David walked right on past him instead and knelt in front of Chessie.
“You have to do something.”
“What say?” Chessie asked.
“Raleigh’s out there with a bunch of men. They’re armed. He wants Medric and Wilson, and if he don’t get them, they’re going to burn the church.”
Briar started to rise. He met Chessie’s stare and sat again. Wilson took hold of the arm Scarlett had placed around his neck and stood on two feet made of sand. The place where Stu had looked down from the loft now stood empty.
“Medric,” the Reverend said, “Raleigh’s telling us you were the one who shot Ruth. That true?”
I would imagine that man’s back hurt something fierce by then, having been bent over for such a long while. Medric rubbed his hands over his eyes and gave a heavy sigh full of tears. “Didn’t mean to do it,” he said. “I swear I didn’t, David. I thought she was Stu come to get me.”
“What’s he want me for?” Wilson asked.
Reverend said, “Says you have to pay for your sins.” And then to Chessie, “Bucky needs help out there. My son needs help out there.”
Chessie looked at him. “You come to me, Preacher, when times call for a hard hand? You ask a Hodge for aid when you say we ruined this town?”
“I will not turn Medric and Wilson over to them. Raleigh’ll kill them both. He’ll kill more if anybody gets in his way.”
“And what of you, David Ramsay? Will you kill again as you killed Stu Graves?”
“That was a long time ago,” David whispered. “I’ve suffered and made amends.”
“Ha! Amends. You’ve made amends to nobody, David Ramsay. You preach, that’s all you do. You use your words and call that faith. You call me hell bound and yourself a saint. What you need is what you say I lack. Humility.”
“Time’s running out, Chessie.”
“It’ll wait.”
“No, it won’t,” Medric said. “Can’t let y’all suffer on my account. I’m tired, Reverend. Chessie, I’m just tired. Of everything. If it’s you or me, it’ll be me.”
He stood and made for the center aisle. No one stopped him, nor did Scarlett move w
hen her daddy followed behind.
David watched them and turned back to Chessie. “I don’t care if you hate me, Chessie. Just don’t punish those two men because of me.”
Chessie moved the bowl and pitcher beside her chair to in front of it, between her and the preacher. Out came the torch John David had shoved inside. Chessie laid it on the towel and began, “ ‘If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.’ ” She removed her boots and socks, setting them aside. “ ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.’ ” And then that woman smiled. “ ‘If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.’ ”
You ask me if David Ramsay bent to his knees and dipped Chessie’s feet in that water. Ask me if he put his hands to that calloused skin, brown with dirt and sticky with sweat, and cleaned the bunions that pocked Chessie’s heels and the long nails at the ends of her toes. Ask me if the one everyone considered the holiest man in Crow Holler washed the feet of the one considered the town’s most sinful woman outside of Alvaretta Graves herself. I’ll tell you yes, friend.
I’ve heard tell it’s a humbling thing, a foot washing service. Never been to one myself. Those who have say it borders a holy thing, though it’s hard to endure. Not for the one doing the washing, though. The one being washed. I suppose that makes some sense. You being so grown, friend, imagine this—imagine washing your momma’s feet. You get that picture? Ain’t too bad really, is it? Now imagine your momma washing yours. That’s what I’m talking about. Humbling. But you know what? It was the other way around up there on the stage of the Holy Fire that night. Chessie Hodge looked to be enjoying her time just fine, even if the world outside stood ready to burn. But David Ramsay? Friend, that man sobbed through it all.
-6-
It’s hard to say what Medric thought as he walked to those doors. What’s in a man’s mind when he knows he’s about to cast off from this world? I may know some of that, if I’m honest, friend. Way things are in the Holler now, I may know indeed. But I’ve no idea when it comes to Medric Johnston. All I know is Wilson trailed behind whispering this was the end of things, and Medric never said a word otherwise.
