by Billy Coffey
Two rings. Three. Then the sound of Jake Barnett’s tired voice: “Hello?”
“Hhhhhha.” She squeezed her eyes shut and bore down on her throat and chest.
“Hello?”
“Hhhhhha.”
“Who’s this?”
“Hhhhelp,” Scarlett whispered. And then she began to cry.
-2-
They all met at the end of Alvaretta’s lane—Bucky and John David, Chessie and Briar, the Reverend, Doc Sullivan, and Landis—each as quiet as they could be inside that cut in the trees. Briar lowered the tailgate on his truck and pushed back the thick blanket he’d laid inside.
“Pick what you want,” he said. “Just make sure you can handle what you take. Plenty of ammo for it all.”
The Hodges began loading shells into their shotguns. Doc refused to carry anything but his own good intentions, saying he’d come to make sure nobody was killed rather than do the killing. Chessie looked at him and shook her head. She grabbed two pistols from the blanket and handed them to John David.
“Don’t like guns,” he said.
“Maybe, but they sure got a fondness for you.”
The Reverend reached for the guns instead. He took them from Chessie’s hands and loaded the clips with the steady movements of a professional, pulling back the slides to chamber the first rounds. “My son doesn’t have to carry if that’s his wish,” he said. “Don’t you worry about things, Chessie. I’ll be with him.”
John David looked to protest. But then he met the Reverend’s eyes, and what lay there was not the patronizing gaze of a man who’d come to believe his son a disgrace, but a look of near equality. Whether John David had risen to his father’s level in the last hours or the Reverend had sunk to his son’s, I don’t know. But to this day, I believe that was as close to an apology as the preacher had ever given.
Landis went next. He reached for the biggest gun Briar had brought, a full-on assault rifle like the ones John David had used in the war. Chessie slapped his hand away and handed him another scatter-gun.
“You’re too worked up, Landis,” she said. “We all are, but you most. You take something like that down there, you’re apt to kill us all before Alvaretta gets the chance.”
Bucky took the machine gun instead, along with four extra magazines. When Chessie told Bucky maybe he should leave that alone, Bucky told her an automatic rifle was about as illegal as a thing could be and so he had to confiscate it for about an hour. He assured her he’d have no problem handling such a weapon. John David had to show him how to load it.
Everything ready and nothing more to do, the eight of them gathered in a circle for the Reverend’s blessing. Even John David dipped his head. He knew things would turn bad. I reckon they all did.
Bucky said, “I don’t want all of us rolling up on there at once and scaring her. We’ll have to walk it. Quiet and slow until we get there, then we take her by surprise. And we take the witch alive. I need y’all to understand that. You’re all acting deputies here, not a lynch mob. Landis? You hear me? Whatever that woman’s conjured we’ll send back to hell, but Alvaretta lives to face trial.”
The group set off then, aiming for the middle of the narrow lane and wary of the woods to either side, where the darkness looked thicker and even alive. Over their heads the blood moon stood, and you can bet each of them glanced skyward to behold the terribleness of how that looked. To this day, you’ll hear folk in Crow Holler speak of the blood moon, and how it’d been a warning for Bucky and the rest to stay away. But it was past late for that. Too many had suffered and died and too many more would if things was left as they were. Wasn’t no going back. Not for Bucky or the Reverend, not for Chessie or Landis. Not even for John David. They’d come this far; they’d see the rest through.
The lane began to rise over the hill when they heard the first scurry in the trees. Landis wheeled his pistol in that direction. He would’ve fired if John David hadn’t pushed him at the last moment. It was a good thing he did. Not only would Landis have let everybody inside of five miles know exactly where they were, he’d’ve also shot Danny Sullivan square in the face.
“Dogs,” Bucky whispered.
Briar nodded. “Heard’m a ways back. They get to wailing, Alvaretta’s gonna know.”
“Let’s get on, then,” Chessie said. “More time we stand out here, harder this’ll be.”
John David hesitated. “It’s too late. She knows already.”
He pointed on up the hill, where the top carried a glow that resembled the moon but wasn’t that exactly—more fire than blood. Bucky led the rest of the way. He had John David to one side and the preacher on the other and felt safe enough, especially with the Hodges at his back. Landis and the doc traveled in the middle. Everyone strung out shoulder to shoulder when they reached the crest of the hill.
Below, stretched out in a half circle at the edge of Alvaretta’s yard, burned thirteen torches. The fire lit all that stretch of wood so that nothing could remain hidden in the darkness. Even the solid black shapes of crows hanging off the trees could be seen. The cabin glowed with lantern light and a fire in the hearth. And the witch herself, standing at the open door upon her front porch, with a shotgun in her hands and a pistol tucked in an old brown belt she’d cinched around her vanishing waist. Waiting for them, daring Bucky to cross the wide space between the torches and the cabin, because that would be Alvaretta’s killing field.
“Think our element of surprise is gone,” John David said. He looked at the Reverend. “Better go on and give me one of those pistols.”
-3-
No need for them to hide now, friend. Everybody knew what cards they held, except for whatever ace was up Alvaretta’s sleeve inside her cabin. They were out of the witch’s range, but that didn’t stop Briar and Landis from raising their guns as the group descended the hill. The trees came alive. Alvaretta’s dogs clamored, and those dead birds set to swaying in wind that never stills on that ridgetop. It looked like the forest itself had joined the fight on the witch’s side. A mongrel mutt eased its way from the trees and growled deep and long at Chessie. She tried kicking it away. Her foot missed but sent the creature back into the darkness.
Alvaretta remained quiet on the porch, some sixty feet away. No farther than pitcher to catcher is how the Reverend described it later, and then he said he’d never been so close to the devil. Her shotgun was nearly as long as she was tall, and yet the witch’s arms did not shake from the weight. She kept her legs spread just past shoulder width and her head still. Angela’s bracelet glimmered on her wrist.
Bucky stopped them at the torches. He took a step toward the witch and yelled, “Alvaretta Graves, this is the sheriff. Throw down your arms.”
Alvaretta did just the opposite. She brought the shotgun up and the barrel toward Bucky’s chest. Bucky returned the favor. All you heard was clicks—everyone at Bucky’s left and right, kicking off the safeties on their guns.
“Told you not to come back,” the witch hollered. “Knew you would. ’Tis a blood moon this night. Blood calls for blood, always has. Turn tail, Sheriff Bucky Vest. Leave this mountain. I’ll warn you onced and only.”
“I won’t leave without what I come for,” Bucky said. “I know who you hide, Alvaretta. You go on and bring him out.”
“He’s mine. You won’t have him.”
“I can and I will, and I’ll do the same with you. Your time’s over now. Too many’s been hurt.”
Alvaretta racked her gun. She stared at Danny. “You come with them, man from town? Was it you betrayed me?”
“This doesn’t have to end badly, Ms. Graves,” the doctor hollered. “You cooperate, it’ll turn out best.”
“Shoulda kilt you when I had the chance. Shoulda kilt you all.”
“You’ll answer for what you did,” Landis screamed. “You ruined my boy.”
“Cain’t roon what’s already spoilt,” Alvaretta said. “That’s what ye are—spoilt. Rot of the earth. Now turn and get on or feel m
y power, it makes no difference.”
The Reverend slid in behind Briar, as far from Alvaretta’s eyes as he could manage. Yet now he came forth into the torchlight with his gun tucked in his belt and his two arms high, and the witch saw him and knew him. She spat at the ground and swung the barrel to the preacher’s face. John David lurched forward in front of his father. He leveled the pistol at Alvaretta and shouted No.
“I see your face, David Ramsay,” she said. “I’ll have your heart. You took mine. You and Wilson Bickford, the night you took Stu. Bring Wilson to me, the rest can go.”
“You’ve taken Wilson,” Bucky said. “Wilson was my friend. Now bring him out here.”
“He’s mine.”
“Bring him out.”
She whistled low against the breeze in a tune none of them had neither heard nor believed could exist. The shadows beyond the firelight began to harden and move. One by one, Alvaretta’s beasts crept from the trees. They came around the side of the cabin to where the porch stood and from the edge of the shed into the open. They came behind Bucky and the rest, turning Briar and Chessie both. Heads low to the ground, hackles as straight and hard as razors, teeth bared such that you could see the slobber dripping from their maws.
“You’ll not leave this place,” she said.
Landis tried backing off but found the way blocked by what looked like a retriever mixed with coyote. One eye had been gouged away, but the other saw him clear. The dog barked hard, making Landis jump and Alvaretta cackle. Landis turned to where she stood and saw a shadow move beyond a drawn curtain in one of the front windows.
What Landis did next, he did for his boy.
-4-
Bucky saw that shadow, too, and how big it looked against the window. He watched Landis’s face go stiff and felt his own slacken at the understanding of what was about to happen. And it was the worst thing that could happen, friend. They were armed, sure. And with John David and both Hodges, they were as capable as any posse you’d find in Crow Holler. But no amount of bullets and right could change the fact they were trapped by light in a wide open space with Alvaretta occupying the high ground, and they were surrounded by thirty wild and angry dogs.
But none of that played a part in Landis Foster’s thinking. Only thing that man heard was the witch’s taunts, and all he seen was her demon standing in the window. He saw his shot and took it, and there’s no way you or I can blame him for that.
Alvaretta must’ve seen his finger settling down on the trigger, because right then she screamed and raised to fire. Landis emptied half his gun into that window, sending glass onto the porch and the dogs below. The spray knocked the witch’s aim off just enough to send her shot wide into the trees. The shadow inside took off. Briar chased it with shots of his own while Chessie and the Reverend took aim at Alvaretta. She swung her shotgun their way and pulled. Fire leaped from the barrel.
“Eat,” she cried to her children. “Eat.”
Dogs pounced from all sides. Chessie got the first two, though she needed four shots and there were six more of the beasts right behind. Briar shot as fast as he could, as did the Reverend. Yet the more Alvaretta’s holler erupted to gunfire, the hungrier her beasts became. Bucky aimed that army rifle to one animal and then another, yet his finger froze on the trigger. John David shot two. The third snuck behind and leaped, barking as it did. He spun too late. John David’s world became nothing more than a black mouth with white fangs before the dog’s head exploded in a shower of blood. The monster fell limp to the ground. Reverend Ramsay stood with his gun pointed not a foot from his son’s head. He’d tell Belle later was a miracle he hit that dog and not John David, so bad his hand shook.
The dogs had backed them into a tight knot, and there is where Alvaretta aimed. She emptied her shotgun and cared not if she hit human or animal. Briar returned fire and missed. Landis ran for the porch. Whether to get away from the dogs or to rush the witch, I can’t say. All I can tell you is Alvaretta saw his approach and grinned as she leveled her gun. Bucky ran for Landis, pushing him aside as the gun boomed. Buckshot lit his shoulder and part of his face afire. Bucky cried out and took a single step to his right when he heard the sharp sound of metal springing and the crunching sound of bone. The world went all bright colors and searing pain. Bucky wailed as the jaws of the bear trap Alvaretta had hidden in the scrub and grass devoured his leg. Four dogs set upon him. Landis shot one, John David and Chessie the others.
The witch threw her scatter-gun down and yanked the pistol from her belt. As soon as Bucky saw that long barrel in the blood moon’s eerie glow, he knew that gun was his own. He had no time to call a warning. Alvaretta took aim at the only person she truly wanted to kill that night and pulled the trigger. The gun’s kick would’ve knocked her off her feet were it not that it slammed her backward into the wall. A shot like cannon fire boomed over the holler. The Reverend’s head snapped backward. He spun and fell at Briar’s feet, clutching the bullet hole through his shoulder. Briar fought off the advancing dogs as the doc tried to stanch the wound.
John David yelled, “We have to get out of here,” but there was nowhere to go. Twenty or so of Alvaretta’s children remained, and while half of those had retreated, the other half pressed in to cut off any escape. The Reverend couldn’t be moved, nor could Bucky until his leg could be freed. Strange as it is to say, the only safe place on Campbell’s Mountain was inside Alvaretta’s cabin. Bucky must’ve figured this. Either that, or some part of him he’d always hoped existed but was always afraid to know awoke. I expect it was just as John David told Cordelia about war—you don’t think of good and evil in battle, you think only of your friends.
He raised his body and wrenched free the anchor chain from where Alvaretta had stuck it into the hard ground. Blood poured from the holes the steel teeth had carved between his ankle and knee. He staggered, lifting the rifle as he dragged all forty pounds of that trap toward the cabin, deaf and blind to the screams and barks around him.
-5-
For the first time in memory, Alvaretta Graves gave herself over not to the hate that had fueled the evening years of her life, but to the fear that had draped those years in shadow. The man stumbling for her had a rage-filled look in his eyes. Something had come upon him, a devilry Alvaretta could not comprehend. The bumbling fat man who had days before turned tail off the mountain with his own waste staining his pants now came forth like one who could not die. Like one eternal.
Most of her children lay dead or wounded. Others had scampered. A few, the hungriest, remained, and yet they could only fight off some of the intruders. This one—the Bucky Vest—would not be stopped by them. And so that fell to her.
All those years on the mountain, all that life she’d scraped and bled for, only to have this man try to take it away? Try to take her secret? Rape her hope as the man who’d called himself Wally had tried to rape her body after her Stu had been killed? No. No, she thought. The scrap of land upon which she’d made her stand may have been poisoned and unholy, but it and all it contained was hers and hers alone, and she would protect it even unto death.
She turned her face to the curtained window long enough to see the shadow inside. In that small glance, Alvaretta Graves poured what small bit of love still remained hidden inside her. One step to the porch. The clatter of the bear trap being dragged closer pulled her back to all that mattered now. Her children howled in pain and death as gunshots rang out, and yet time itself now slowed for the witch just as it had for Bucky. She leveled the pistol (his pistol, and my, how sweet that was) at the sheriff’s head and moved down the steps firing, shooting and shooting again, no longer able to see or keep the gun raised as her elderly body began to fail. One boot landed upon the ground. The other stepped into a puddle of blood and fur. The crippled man (Alvaretta could no longer remember his name) stumbled over the trap that bit into his leg. He fell with a cry of pain that went unnoticed by those who had come with him to kill and steal. Going to him now, her eyes searching the
grass and leaves for the other hidden traps. And when Alvaretta looked to Bucky once more, she saw not him but the barrel he pointed at her.
The pistol felt like an anvil in her hand. She tried to raise it but found she could not. Alvaretta could do nothing but gape in a kind of wonder at the flash of orange and yellow light that flowered from that dark tube.
In that brief and final moment, I believe the witch knew she would die protecting what she most loved. That peace came unbidden, yet it came.
-6-
Jake Barnett kept the blue light flashing and parked at the edge of the torches. He eased out and met the distant sound of baying dogs and the coppery smell of blood.
Chessie greeted him. Her cheeks were bruised and cut by then. Doc Sullivan had fashioned a crude bandage around the flab of her left bicep that had already soaked through with blood. He’d shaken his head as he cinched it, telling Chessie there was no way around the rabies shots she would have to get. She talked a long while with the sheriff, explaining as best she could all that had happened and why Jake wouldn’t be arresting her that night. Then she turned and faded into the darkness. Looking for Briar, I suppose, who had set off to hunt the last of Alvaretta’s hell hounds.
Jake watched her go and eased his way through the ring of torches toward the porch. He spotted two bear traps hidden in the leaves and stepped wide of the body, offering it only a glancing look. The bedsheet Doc Sullivan had found and draped over the body was worn so thin you could see the flesh he’d meant to cover. A single gnarled hand jutted out, exposing a thin wrist and the diamond bracelet clasped around it. Dozens of rusty blotches littered the body.
Bucky didn’t see him, nor did he look to feel the bow in the boards as Jake took the steps. Two men sat slumped at a wooden table inside. Both were bleeding and silent.
“Hey, Buck.”
“Jake.”
It was barely a whisper, that word, and yet enough to tremble the fat that hung from Bucky’s chin. His uniform had been rendered filthy despite its newness, as was the star on his chest. He ran a hand down the machine gun draped across his lap.
