Those Who Went Remain There Still (8 page)

But to John’s credit, he gathered real quick that it made me feel strange so he changed the subject some. He told me about what it’s like living in New York, and how he works up there as a teacher and a counselor, helping folks understand his church. Sometimes he just teaches reading and spelling, but mostly it sounded like he enjoyed telling folks about the church.

I asked if he was something like a preacher in this church. He said it don’t work that way. Then he started telling me about circles and chants and spirits, and my face must’ve told him how I felt about it so he cut himself off.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mean to make you ill at ease. I just want you to know that it’s not something awful or devilish, like I’m sure they told you. Suffice it to say, the world is a big, strange, wonderful place—and there’s room for many mysteries. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do appreciate having the freedom of spirit to chase down my questions.”

“I understand,” I told him, even though I didn’t understand much of it. I understood that he didn’t mean me or anybody else any trouble, and he wasn’t worshipping Satan, and that pretty much, he was harmless.

I liked that about him. I didn’t get any sense of anger from him, like I did from everyone else in the valley. I just got that same sense of confusion and fear that me and Titus both shared, and it warmed me up a touch, seeing another Coy with that same uncertainty.

The situation being what it was, I couldn’t very well confide in Titus or share my worries with him. But John Coy was just as much an outsider as I was, and the name we both wore gave us an excuse to come together.

I wondered after Titus. I hoped he’d found a place for himself, and I hoped his own people weren’t too hard on him. But there wasn’t anything I could do for him, so I tried not to worry about it.

***

We passed the night on the creaking, half-rotted boards of the floor because there weren’t any beds and there wasn’t any furniture. My other aunts and uncles must’ve cleaned the place out after my mother died. I don’t guess there was any blaming them. They had no reason to think I’d ever be back.

Some deeply set sense of hospitality made me embarrassed that I couldn’t offer John anything better. It didn’t make sense for me to fret about it, and John didn’t hold the house’s meager state against me, but still.

All I could do was invite him out to Iowa, and offer him a much nicer place for visiting. He was very kind about it, and said that sometime he’d do his best to come out and see me.

I didn’t know if he would or not. There was no telling.

***

When morning came we were both aching. We’d have been better off sleeping outside on the ground, I bet. But outside it was cool and everything was shining wet with dew when we stepped off the porch, so I decided to be thankful for the roof after all.

Our horses were out back under an overhang that wasn’t enough to shelter the poor beasts hardly at all. At least it kept them dry, which was better than nothing. We fed them and mounted them, and took our own sweet time riding back out to Heaster Junior’s place, even though we knew we were running late.

***

We were the last to arrive. People looked at us all impatient-like, but I didn’t care too much about that. They were curious, that’s all. Whatever game Heaster was playing from beyond the grave…they could wait a little longer to hear the details.

When I had that thought, I remembered what John was saying the night before, about talking to ghosts. And for a second or two, I almost wished maybe we’d tried talking to some ghosts that last night. Wouldn’t that have been easier than all this rigmarole?

Well, maybe not.

Heaster was an ornery old fool when he was alive, and I didn’t see any good reason why he’d be different as a ghost. Probably, he’d be even worse. Maybe he’d even take to haunting people he didn’t like, just out of a mean spirit.

No. Better to leave all that alone.

If it occurred to John to ask the dead for any assistance, he didn’t do it while I was listening—and he didn’t tell me anything about it.

***

Granny Gail was waiting on that porch, still standing up straight and holding real still with that cane in her hand. She made me think of Moses, standing in front of the Red Sea, holding his hands out
and parting the water. Only Abigail was so tough she didn’t have to lift a finger to hold the Coys and Manders apart; and I swear to you this much, if Moses had to contend with these two families, he couldn’t have held them back any better.

“Ma’am,” I greeted her, and John said the same.

“Fellas,” she greeted us back.

She leaned forward on that cane and placed herself in the center of the porch, between the two groups. She balanced herself there so careful, like a tightrope walker I saw at a circus once. Not too far on this side, not too far on that one. Everything falls down if it leans.

She said, “Now we got everybody here.”

John and I found ourselves in the center of a widening circle.

Not all the family members would fit on the porch, so they were spilling out and down the stairs, and into the front yard where we’d brought the horses. Titus was saddled up too, and he gave me a nod that said ‘hello’ without committing to anything more than that.

Two men were also mounted on horses beside Titus, and there was another man—somebody I didn’t recognize right away—who stood beside a horse, and a bit apart from the Manders.

“This is how it’s gonna go,” Granny Gail announced, and there wasn’t a soul alive who’d have argued with her. “John Coy, you’re the oldest man going, but that don’t put you in charge of nothing. You’re going to the Pit on behalf of your daddy and your brother, ‘cause neither one of them’s living no more. Meshack Coy, you’re riding for your mother who ain’t here no more. Carlson Coy, you ride for yourself, and for nobody else.”

Carlson Coy, yes. He was a cousin, and not one too close, I didn’t think. He pulled himself up into the saddle and nudged his foot against the flank of his spotted white pony. He was older than me, not by much; but sometimes it was hard to tell. I’ve heard that hard work will age a man, and maybe that’s true. Living in the valley, though—that’ll age a man like nothing else. His clothes were clean but old, and he was wearing shoes that hung a little loose on his feet.

He adjusted his hat, tipping it our way and moving the pony over to join me and John.

“Titus Mander,” she continued, “You ride for your parents, since neither one of them’s with us no more. Jacob Mander, you ride as Heaster asked; and your son Nicodemus rides for your father, who ain’t well enough to go.

“All six of you, now—you’re doing this for your families and for yourselves, and if you want to do it right you’ve got to set your old gripes down. Put them aside, or God damn the lot of you.”

The way she said it, it sounded like she was finished. But Jacob Mander stopped her from walking away by asking, “Granny Gail, where do we go once we get inside? Ain’t nobody been in there for years, or not nobody who’d admit it.”

“And I ain’t either,” she snapped back at him. “I’ve done told you all there is I know. I don’t know where he put it, and I don’t know why he wanted you all to go down there together. I think the whole thing’s as stupid as a shit-pie, but if it don’t happen, then that’ll just mean more fighting, and that’s even stupider. I’m sick of it. And if any one of you had a lick of sense, you’d admit you’re sick of it too.”

“Ma’am,” Uncle John tried to interrupt her.

She ignored him, and didn’t let him talk any. “Maybe you folks deserve each other, and that’s all it is. If you can’t get your act together and behave like grown men, then you deserve to bicker like babies until the day you die. Now go on out, the six of you. Go find my daddy’s will, and whatever it says, you’re all going to abide by it ‘cause you ain’t got no choice.”

***

She stomped back inside and slammed the door.

***

Nobody went after her. Those of us on our horses just sat there, because not one of us wanted to go out to the Witch’s Pit even a little bit, but we didn’t have a choice in the matter, not anymore.

The crowd of relations around us thinned, or the folks milling around down by our horses backed off even farther. It was a lot of pressure, all of a sudden, and it was making us all tense. The horses even got wind of it, and they started fussing in their reins.

I couldn’t stand it, all the standing around. So I led my horse over to Titus’s mount, closing the gap between the two sides. And I said, “Cousin, it’s been a whole lot of years since I went out to that Pit. I ain’t been there since Winnter went missing, and everybody here knows how long ago that was. Does any one of you want to take the lead?”

“What are you doing?” Carlson asked, cross with me already, but I didn’t care. We might’ve been closer kin, and that was a fact; but I wouldn’t have known the man on sight and I knew enough of Titus to like him all right.

Titus wasn’t dumb, though. He said, “Hey there, Carlson. It’s fine, if you want to lead us on out.”

“Who says it’s fine?” And now Jacob was in on it—this crazy little stand-off of who gets to be in charge.

“
I
said it’s fine,” Titus said. Everyone got all quiet, because of how he said it loud and with an order lying inside it somewhere. He was only about as old as Nicodemus. Jacob had seniority over him, but Jacob didn’t answer back.

I looked over my shoulder at Carlson, who was glaring at the whole bunch of us with a look on his face like he was sucking a lemon. I told him, “Carlson, someone’s got to get started. And it don’t have to be us. If we can’t ride our horses in a line together, we sure as hell can’t get ourselves into the cave. So stop it now, I’m
asking you.”

“You been gone too long, both of you,” he said, but he didn’t mean me and John. He meant me and Titus.

“Then maybe this’ll work after all,” Titus answered before I could. “Meshack, me and you can work together all right, can’t we?”

“I believe we can. And my uncle here, John. He’s willing to get along with the rest of you too, ain’t he?”

John nodded and said, “I am.”

I pointed my finger back at Carlson, and then swung it around at Jacob and Nicodemus, just so everyone would be real clear on who I was talking to. “That’s three of us who ain’t about to kill each other. The other three of you get on board, and we’ll get started.”

The remaining three grumbled, but everyone was watching—even Granny Gail. Or she was listening anyway, we could be sure of that. I don’t think any of us would’ve been ashamed to admit we were a touch afraid of her. And if that was all it took for us to behave there, in front of the house, then that was all right by me.

But the other three men were still shuffling in their saddles, searching the faces of their nearest relations and looking for answers, or permission for something.

It was John who spoke up next. “Don’t you see what’s happening here? This is a golden opportunity. This is a gift, from Heaster—even if he meant for it to be an inconvenience, it’s a
gift
. If it works out, there doesn’t have to be any more fighting, and no one has to lose any face. You can all step back away from it, and be even. Isn’t that better than the old give-and-take you’ve been carrying out for the last forty years?”

His questions did not do what he wanted, I don’t think. It was because he used big words, and because he’d lost a lot of the accent that marked him as being local to the valley.

“Shut your mouth, John,” Carlson said, every bit as nasty as one of the Manders might’ve said it. “This ain’t no goddamned opportunity for shit. It’s a stupid game Heaster’s laid down, and if you don’t know it, then that just goes to show.”

“Goes to show what?” he asked, then his lips pressed together tight.

“How you ain’t got no business here. I don’t care who your momma and daddy were. You shouldn’t have come. They should’ve picked somebody else.”

“Cut it out,” I told Carlson.

“He’s a devil worshipper,” Carlson said back, as if that answered anything.

So I said, “He ain’t, and even if he was, it wouldn’t matter none. He’s the one who’s owed the money, or property, or whatever else it turns out to be at the end of this thing. He’s owed, same as you’re owed.”

***

John had been gone away longer than I had. He’d been gone longer than any of us, and even though he was oldest, that meant he had the least authority.

I didn’t like the thought of that so much, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, John might’ve been an outsider through-and-through, but he wasn’t no dummy. I’ve always believed that smart men were worth hearing, and I was afraid that I was on my own in that opinion.
But for another thing, if we were counting up status by who’d been gone the longest, then I had the second-least amount of authority, and nobody would listen to me, either.

***

But for some reason, they listened well enough. Might’ve been the rest of them were impatient to get started, same as me. Might’ve been something else. I don’t think they shut up and started riding just because I recommended it, but that’s what happened.

***

One by one, the Manders set out ahead of us. Titus brought up the rear of their clan, and I went to swing my horse in behind him, but Carlson nosed his horse in faster. I don’t know why it mattered for him to go first. I let him do it, and I offered to let John go in front of me. He fussed about it, but I insisted.

I wanted to watch the rear of our little train.

I assumed we might get followed, and I wasn’t sure how friendly our followers would turn out to be.

And you know, I liked John and I thought he was a real smart man. But I had some doubts about how well he’d hold up if a brawl happened, and I didn’t bet he’d be any good at keeping lookout.

He led the horse on into the line, in front of me. He looked over his shoulder as he did it, though, like he was watching me for some signal. I didn’t know what he wanted, so I couldn’t give him the answer he was hunting for.

That’s how we made our march out to the cave, anyway. We rode all in a line because most spots, that was the only way the horses could pass through the narrow places, or through the tight wedges between broken-off hills.