The Curse of Crow Hollow (36 page)

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 night. 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.

“Look, Scarlett. You're a sweet girl and I've always thought that, but I'm not the guy for you. Maybe before, back when I was younger. Things are just different now. With me, they're different. That night we had at Hays's party, that was great, you know? That was fun. But I didn't ever mean it to be more than that—one night. I'm sorry you thought otherwise.”

Scarlett turned away.

“I just wanted to . . . feel . . . ,” he said, “something. Anything. I don't . . . you wouldn't understand, Scarlett. And even if you could, I couldn't say it.” He looked off into the trees and then to the stars. “My dad used to tell me there's hot people and cold people and people in the middle. The hot ones were the best. They knew what life was about, you know? They had answers and faith. Passion. The cold ones, they were bad. They were the ones who'd gotten so turned around and lost in life that they couldn't love or feel anything at all anymore. Daddy said that was their choice, though, and they'd burn for it. ‘The punishment for the frozen of soul is eternal fire, because that's the only way they'll feel anything.'

“But you know who Daddy says is the worst of all? The ones that ain't either. Not hot, not cold. Not a thing. Those get judged the worst, because they don't care either way. That was me before I left. I don't know how I got that way. I just did. I was
so scared that I ran away and went to war. You want to know what I found over there, Scarlett? At the end of the world?”

Scarlett didn't nod. She didn't shake her head, neither.

“I found there was lots of guys like me. Ain't that something? I mean, I guess there's plenty who sign up looking for glory. Wanting to serve their country. Whatever. But most of them are just looking for a place to belong. People trying to feel something. I saw some awful things I won't ever forget. People who make Alvaretta Graves look like a child at play.

“I killed people. Lot of us did. We were on patrol one evening and came up on an ambush. Just . . . stuff exploding everywhere, people screaming, shooting and getting shot. Just . . . I
hear
it, you know? Even now I do. I went through eight clips in my rifle, just
bapbapbap
, you know? Just shooting at everything. And I hit this guy. Tore his face clean off. And when it was over and we were going over the bodies for intel, I kicked him over—we all did that, you never knew when they'd booby-trap themselves—I saw it was just a kid. Couldn'a been more'n eleven, twelve. A
kid
, Scarlett. And I
killed
him.” John David shook his head. “I didn't kill anybody over there for my country. I never thought I was protecting all of y'all back here. I did it to stay alive and keep the guys with me alive, and you know what? The people I killed, they were just trying to do the same. This world, it's just so . . . messed up. Just an asylum full of crazy people who do crazy things for no reason at all. I went from lukewarm to solid cold over there in all that sand, and I realized Daddy was wrong. Cold's worse, Scarlett. Cold is hell. Daddy preaches that it's fire but it ain't, it's ice. It's the coldest ice there is. That's what I carry, and that's why I took up with Chessie and Briar when I got back. Why I don't talk to my folks anymore. Because there's bad in me, and I can't get it out. That's what you can't know and why you can't be thinking of me the way you have.”

The two of them sat in silence. John David said he was sorry one more time, then got up to leave. Scarlett reached out and grabbed the hem of his T-shirt. She stood and met his eyes with her own, and with one hand she eased up the long sleeve covering her arm, holding her scars close to John David's face. Letting him see. She needed no paper, no pen.

John David understood:

I can't get the bad out either.

She came closer. John David did not back away. He did not move when he felt Scarlett's breath and the closeness of her body. He did not even move when she raised up to her tiptoes and kissed him softly on the cheek.

-4-

Wasn't long before the first vehicle turned up the drive, and all you had to do was listen to the sound of that big engine to know it was the Hodges. Bucky'd hoped Chessie and Briar wouldn't get there first. Then again, I don't think he would've been happy to see the Reverend and Belle either. Either way, he couldn't help but flinch at the sound of the truck doors being shut. Slammed, I should say, and so hard it was a wonder the windows in those doors held. I expect that was when Bucky started to think his grand plan might not be so grand at all.

“Sounds like they're pretty mad,” he told Angela.

“You guess?” She eased the curtain aside, peeking out. “You fool enough to arrest John David, Chessie ain't gonna throw a party for you. And you do it on a night like this one we had? I swear, Bucky, sometimes you're just so
stupid
.”

Bucky ignored that. Stupid or not, he was doing what he could the best way he knew. “They got guns?”

“No.”

Briar's fist hit the door. Angela fluttered the curtain, removing all notion of stealth. The back door squeaked open and shut. Scarlett came in with her head low and her cheeks flushed. John David looked much the same. The mayor ignored it.

“This ain't gonna work, Buck,” he said.

“It will, Wilson,” Bucky told him. “John David, you stand right there. This all goes south, you remember the kindness we've showed you.”

Bucky took hold of the knob and inhaled deep, then opened the door to Chessie's face.