by Jaye Wells
Cotton’s own flame test had produced mixed results. When Rose had first died, he’d burned bright red with rage. But once his anger had burned away, the invisible poison that remained was far deadlier.
He couldn’t remember how he found out about Jack’s death or when he’d decided to go to the funeral, but there he was again up on Cemetery Hill grieving someone else who died too soon.
Deacon Dickhead was jabbering on and on about the Lord’s plan. Cotton looked at all the people gathered around the grave. Most of them were crying and nodding their heads like they bought his bull. Didn’t they always? Virgil Fry could tell them it was God’s plan that they all take a leap into the river and they’d trample each other to be the first in the water.
“It’s not for us to understand why God called our friend Jack home. It’s for us to trust that when it is our turn to join him in heaven we will know that our deaths were also part of a larger plan. It is for us to serve our God and each other so long as we have breath in our bodies and faith in our hearts.”
Cotton snorted. The people nearby looked up, but he ducked his chin to make it look like the noise had resulted from grief instead of scorn.
Christ, he needed a drink.
It didn’t help that Jack’s grave was only a few rows away from where his Rose was buried. He looked that direction and saw that the mound of dirt had settled and had already spouted a few wayward weeds. He needed to remember to pluck them before he left.
“Reverend Peale?” Deacon Fry walked over and helped the reverend shuffle over to the edge of the grave.
Cotton was surprised that the deacon even allowed the reverend to say the prayers. He’d always treated the old man like a child. Didn’t give the man an ounce of respect even though he was the real holy man in Moon Hollow. Only man Deacon Fry respected anyhow was hisself.
Once the prayers were done, Nell Thompson was guided to the edge of the hole. Deacon Fry took her elbow and helped her scoop a handful of dirt into the grave. The woman’s sobs echoed off the tombstones and the trees and rose up into the mountains like black-winged crows.
Her grief made him feel funny, so he looked away. On the far end of the cemetery, there was a statue of an angel that marked the grave of Jeremiah Moon. When he’d died, all the townsfolk pooled their money to have it carved. Now, it was considered one of the town’s greatest treasures, along with the crooked steeple. But to Cotton it was creepy, all covered with moss and dirty. Angels should be clean.
Nell let out a wail that made the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Pulling his attention from the angel, he looked toward the woman who looked ready to jump in the ground with her son. He resented her ability to grieve in public. When Rose died he’d had to hold it all inside. Wouldn’t do for a man to crumple next to his wife’s grave. Wouldn’t do for a man to cry, period. No, he held it all in until the last scoop of dirt was placed over her, and then he’d taken refuge in his cabin where no one else could hear his sorrow.
“A gathering will take place at the Thompson home immediately following the service,” Deacon Fry was saying. “But first, I have an announcement. As you know, our annual Decoration Day ceremony usually occurs in May. I have discussed this with Nell and she agrees that it’s only right to go ahead and have it this weekend so that we may honor all of our lost family and friends.” A ripple of excitement spread through the cemetery. The deacon hadn’t asked Cotton if he minded having the Decoration Day so soon after his Rose’s death.
“All of the deacons and male members of the congregation will be asked to volunteer time over the next few days to clean the cemetery in preparation.”
Cotton had been a member of the community long enough to know he’d have to pitch in on the cleaning. It was an unwritten rule that every able-bodied male in town was expected to put in a few hours of labor. The thing he didn’t understand was why the deacon was insisting on rushing things. Usually the cleaning took place over the course of a week, and the preparations were begun well before that.
There could only be one reason for the rush: Deacon Fry was testing his bead.
Cotton backed slowly through the crowd to begin making his way down the mountain. If he got out of there, he could avoid an awkward conversation with the other deacons about why he didn’t intend to clean or attend the Decoration. Luckily, he had the keys and didn’t feel one ounce of remorse about leaving Ruby and the kids behind. They could walk home after the services or catch a ride with a neighbor. But he needed four wheels and an engine to take the logging road up to his shack. Once he was up on the mountain, he could figure out how to get out of town until after the Decoration Day bullshit was done.
He was almost to the cemetery gate when Deacon Smythe caught up with him. “Cotton, Deacon Fry wants a word with you.”
Cotton paused and looked over his shoulder. “You tell that son-of-a-bitch he don’t tell me what to do.”
“Cotton,” Smythe whispered, “you know he’ll come get you if he has to.”
He turned around to stare Smythe in his coward eyes. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“Everyone’s required to help with the cemetery cleaning, Cotton. You know that.”
“Tell Deacon Fry that if he has a message to give me, he can deliver it him-damn-self.”
“He’ll do that, if you’ll just hang back a minute.” By that time, Earl Sharps had come up behind Smythe, and that’s when Cotton knew they were under orders not to let him leave the hill until Fry had said his piece.
“All right, but this better be quick. I got things to do.”
The other men exchanged a look, but Cotton didn’t give a shit. He knew they thought he was a useless drunk. They didn’t know what it was like, and he was Christian enough to hope they never would.
A few moments later, the mourners started breaking up and making their way to the gate. Smythe and Sharps hung back with Cotton until most of the people had left. Once Sharon Fry walked by, escorting both Sarah Jane and Nell, who seemed to be having some sort of contest to see who could cry the loudest, they pushed him toward the grave for the meeting.
When they made it back to the grave, Deacon Fry was kneeling next to the hole. Cotton couldn’t see exactly what he put in the ground, but he’d be damned if it didn’t look exactly like a potato. He dismissed the idea. The booze was just playing tricks on him again.
By the time the deacon brushed off his hands and stood, Cotton pushed the strange image from his mind.
Deacon Fry actually stood a couple inches taller than Cotton, but with all that white hair he seemed at least a foot taller than that. “Good to see you, Cotton.”
He tipped his chin. “Wish it were for a better reason.”
Deacon Fry nodded. “I know it must be hard to be back here so soon.”
“Being here ain’t what’s hard.”
The deacon’s lips pressed together, as if Cotton’s lack of cooperation annoyed him. Good. “I’ve been real patient, haven’t I? Been giving you space to grieve as you see fit.”
Cotton shrugged.
“Right. But time’s come for you to get back to living, Cotton. Them girls of yours need a daddy and this town needs you to start pulling your weight.”
“My girls are fine. Ruby’s—”
“Only eighteen,” he interrupted. “And she lost Rose, too. Those girls need their daddy.”
Blood rushed to Cotton’s cheeks and his anger rose with it. “My family’s none of your business.”
“They are if they aren’t being taken care of. Now, I know you’re a proud man, and Lord knows you got every right to be, but it’s time to let us help you. This community needs to come together now more’n ever.”
Cotton drew in a breath, but it caught halfway down before he had to cough. He ain’t had a proper lungful of air since he didn’t know when, but the air he managed to get down was warm and scented with fresh dirt. Maybe another man might see those things as signs it was time for a fresh start, but not him. His chance at new begi
nnings was buried thirty feet away. Besides, Deacon Fry didn’t care about his family. That man only cared about being in charge, and ever since Rose died Cotton wasn’t falling in line like he used to.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You can take this community and shove it up your ass—”
Sharps gasped and Smythe stepped forward menacingly. Deacon Fry help up a hand to stop them.
“—and I’m gonna go back up on that mountain and find some answers in the bottom of a whiskey barrel.”
He turned to go, but Deacon Fry’s softly spoken words stopped him. “Whiskey can’t bring her back, Cotton.”
He looked back over his shoulder at his adversary. “Neither can you—or your God.”
27
Lost On The River
Ruby
After the funeral, Ruby needed to be alone. After Daddy took off alone in the pickup, Edna offered to take the girls on to Nell’s, which gave her a couple of hours alone to process things. At first, she’d rejected the idea of going down to the river. That had been their place. She worried it would hurt too much to be there knowing he wasn’t ever going to show up to tell her everything was going to be okay.
But she couldn’t think of anywhere she could go where she’d feel better, and down by the river she’d feel closer to Jack’s memory. Sometimes even though things hurt they were still worth doing.
As she walked through the woods, sunlight flirted with the leaves and danced across the ground. She’d never hated the sun before, but that day it felt like an insult. It hadn’t rained during her mama’s funeral either, and she wondered why the sun insisted on being there to make fun of her pain.
But then she passed the red tree and the river rose ahead of her and she got distracted by the rushing sound of it and the way the air felt cooler down there. She went to the log by the bank where Jack had found her after her mother’s funeral. She placed her hand on the bark and imagined it still held the heat of his body, the imprint of his weight. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply and released the valve on her pain.
The tears came instantly, rushing from her like a downpour on a hot summer afternoon, all angry and hot. Her pain was not delicate or pretty. She cried for Mama and for herself, and for Jack, whose loss had stripped away the last of Ruby’s hope. She cried for Sissy and Jinny, too, who would never know a childhood without loss. She even cried for Daddy even though he probably didn’t deserve her tears.
She cried so long and hard that she didn’t notice when she crumpled onto the log and pressed her wet cheek to the bracken.
Eventually, her list of people to cry for came to Sarah Jane Fry. Standing by the gravesite, she’d looked brittle enough to blow away. Thinking about that now, she realized that she and Sarah Jane now shared a bond, a grief bond, which was as unwelcome as snow on the first day of spring. She hated the idea that she could empathize with Sarah Jane now. She hated that she felt guilty for hating it. But most of all, she hated that she felt sorry for the girl who’d spent so much of her energy making Ruby miserable.
Her grief morphed into anger, and she sat up and swiped at the tears. As she did, the bracelet on her wrist hit her nose. She sniffed and held it up to the light. She’d spent most of the previous afternoon reading her mama’s journal, and now, knowing what she knew, the tarnish on the metal seemed more appropriate than ever.
When Granny had told her that Mama left Moon Hollow, Ruby’s imagination had offered up idealized visions of her mama on a stage singing to a packed house. She pictured fancy parties and sophisticated clothes, and handsome men who’d wooed her mama with romantic gestures. But the journal had different images to offer. Ones about her mama living in roach-infested motels and waitressing in dingy cafes where truckers pinched her bottom and left bad tips. There had been a romance with a particular man, who in the early pages seemed too good to be true. She’d met him at a party at a friend’s house and he’d given her outrageous compliments. Mama had been excited because he claimed to be in the music industry and said he could get her an audition with a big club where lots of agents scouted talent.
Mama had had sex with him in the back seat of his car. Afterward, he promised to get in touch about the audition, but he never called.
After that, the journal entries became shorter and terser, and more days would pass between entries. The last entry happened six weeks after her “date” with the man in the car, and it simply said:
Called Mama Collect today. She’s sending me money for a bus ticket. She was nice about it. Didn’t even say I told you so. I didn’t mention my little problem, but we’ll figure that out when I get there. I wish I’d never left.
Ruby might be young, but she could do math. That last entry had been dated about seven-and-a-half months before her birthday.
It wasn’t every day that a girl found out that her daddy wasn’t hers, and that the man who’d made her had been a bastard.
Last night, she’d skipped the viewing because she couldn’t handle being in the room with Jack’s dead body. Besides, Daddy hadn’t come home and she couldn’t leave the girls alone at night without a sitter. Instead, she spent the time trying to figure out how she felt about what she’d learned. On one hand, she felt like so much of her life suddenly made sense, at least in terms of how Cotton treated her and why her mama had stayed with him for so long. On the other hand, she couldn’t believe the things her mama had done. None of what she read fit with the woman who’d raised her. It had been like reading a story written by a stranger— a dumb one who did everything wrong.
Sitting on the log, she watched that Nashville charm sway in a shaft of light.
Her mama had made lots of mistakes, but Ruby couldn’t fault her too much for her choices. She knew that yearning all too well. The fear that if she stayed in Moon Hollow she’d eventually just disappear altogether.
She sniffed and looked toward the river. The mountain wasn’t singing to her anymore. Mama was dead and Jack, too. Soon, Sissy and Jinny wouldn’t need her anymore. Then what would be left for her in Moon Hollow?
But on the other hand, what was waiting for her off the mountain? Based on her mama’s journals, the world beyond didn’t hold much for her either. Which left her where?
Alone.
28
The Approach
Peter
The day of the funeral, he kept his promise and stayed well away from the church and Cemetery Hill. But about three o’clock, being trapped in the cabin had him so restless he was ready to claw his skin off so he decided to take a walk.
He took off down the road outside the cabin. If he stayed on it, he’d eventually end up in town, but he didn’t plan to walk that far. Just a stroll to stretch his legs and get his mind off the lack of progress he was making on the book.
He’d written that morning for the first time in months. It was terrible, of course. His backspace button had gotten quite a work out, but he’d managed a couple of not-too-shitty pages before lunchtime. He reminded himself that it would take a few days to get his rhythm back and that progress was the most important thing. Isn’t that what he always told his students? Just keep your fingers moving and eventually something will come. Also, the important thing was to have something, anything to rewrite later. You can’t fix a blank page.
He chuckled and kicked a pinecone down the hill. It was always so much easier to give writing advice than to take it. But it did feel damned good to get some real writing done. He’d gotten so used to being blocked that he’d forgotten how good it could feel to open a vein and bleed onto the page.
As he rounded a curve in the road that skirted the forest, a flash of red captured his gaze. He stopped walking and squinted. Was it a person in red clothes or—no, it was stationary. He stepped into the soft grass by the road. His right hand grasped a low hanging branch and he ducked underneath and into the cave of leaves and bark. His gaze never strayed from the shock of red, which was like a bloody handprint in the center of a black and white image.
Th
e leaves underfoot made shushing noises, as if warning him to be quiet in this place. It seemed even the birds had fallen silent the moment his eyes lit upon the curious red. He stepped over a fallen log and stopped to reassess his path. Behind him, the gravel road was still visible through the veil of leaves, but he'd gone farther than he'd first realized.
Something held him back from pushing forward. His hesitation seemed primal, from that instinctive part of every human that knows more than the mind can know.
He was letting his imagination screw with him again. Whatever that damned thing was, it had not moved so much as a centimeter since he'd stepped into the forest.
The unease in his center calmed with this realization. He let his fear of the unknown slip away and tried to focus on the new sensation coalescing in his center—a foreign feeling, one that, had he been blessed with a longer memory, he'd have been able to recognize immediately from his childhood from warm summer days spent exploring the forest behind his grandparents’ house near Knoxville. But his memory was not long, so he’d forgotten that the name of that long-forgotten emotion he'd taken for granted as a kid: wanderlust.
He soldiered on, stepping high over logs and energetically pushing aside branches heavy with silky leaves.
He was breathing heavily by the time he got close enough to realize he’d been looking at a red tree. He’d seen trees with leaves turned red in autumn, but he’d never seen a tree with a red trunk and branches in the middle of spring.
“Hello.”
He spun around so fast he grew dizzy. Sitting not ten feet away was the girl he’d seen on the street the other day—the one Bunk said was touched.
“You’re Ruby.”
“And you’re Peter.”
He stepped closer and realized that her eyes were swollen and red. “Why are you crying?”
