The Curse of Crow Hollow (15 page)

They passed the Celebrity and snuck into Angela's lane. The wife had her left hand to the back of her husband's head, rubbing his hair in soft, tiny circles; the kids laughing and playing, parents smiling and touching, a family content, happy in the company they kept, joyful because they were going in the same direction and going together, and I do believe for the first time Angela Vest looked upon that sight and thought not What Could Have Been in another life with Landis Foster, but What Could Be in her own life now.

“I love you,” she said. “I've always loved you, Cordelia. How could I not? You're smart and beautiful and so many things I thought I could be but found I couldn't. I know sometimes I haven't been a good mother. I haven't been a good wife. I try. But sometimes it's like I've spent my whole life trying to dig a hole deep enough to put all my troubles in and instead I keep throwing my own self into it. I know that's hard for you to understand.”

Angela looked at her daughter and didn't look away until the right tires skirted the rumble strip on the side of the road. She corrected. The husband in the car ahead stared through his rearview mirror.

“I . . .
l-ove
you,” Cordelia said.

And so Angela promised it would all be okay now, things would be different. No more silent meals at the supper table and awkward meetings in the hallway, even no more TV stories. (“Unless you want to watch with me,” Angela said, and that coaxed a smile.) The Vests would make a new start, fix what had been broken for so long, and I don't doubt Angela and Cordelia both wondered why it'd taken something like the witch to make it happen.

They would go home, tell Bucky everything. Schedule appointments with baby doctors. And there was a psychologist in Mattingly. Norcross was his name. Yes. Cordelia could go see him. All of them could go.

It was a fine plan the two of them had worked out by the time Angela reached Crow Holler. And like all good plans, this one fell apart as soon as it met up with reality. Because people were scared, friend, because word of what the witch had done had gotten out.

And though everybody might've known deep down it was all Alvaretta's doing—her and her demon, playing with those kids like they was toys to toss away once the shine wore off—they also knew the danger of lashing out at her. But those kids? That was different. They were people we went to church with, people we saw every day. Scarlett and Cordy and Naomi and Hays weren't scary. They were just stupid.

And maybe it would've been okay had it ended there, with three girls in the hospital. But now the curse had spread to the Holler itself, and what started as a stupid decision by four kids had turned to danger for us all. All it took for Angela to
understand that was one turn up the driveway to the double-wide, one glance at the sight of Bucky standing in the flower beds.

His hands were full of rosebush stems and thick roots that looked like tiny upside-down trees. His mouth was stuck in a wide O.

Every plant was uprooted and smashed. Dug up and thrown into the yard and onto the porch and against the trailer's front deck. Others had been mashed flat, run over by whoever had left the tire tracks through the beds and down the yard to the road.

Years of work, gone. Angela's hands went to her chest. It was like she herself had been violated.

“I tried to call you,” Bucky said. “They're after us, Angie. Whole town's after us.”

-10-

It's a boy

That's what Scarlett finally wrote, and only because that was the only way her daddy would feel better and because
a boy
was partly true. She didn't say who, and Wilson didn't press. He was happy enough to know Scarlett wasn't thinking of him whenever she stuck a knife under her skin.

A boy
was why Scarlett had asked Cordelia to take her momma's bracelet that night. That's the reason she'd worn those skimpy clothes—to impress some “him” and make sure she was seen. Wilson took it all in with a bunch of slow nods and Poor Dears and pats to Scarlett's hand. Boy trouble. In the grand scheme of things, that was no trouble at all.

Nosir, the real trouble for Wilson and Scarlett lay back in town, once they got home and he decided it was okay to turn
his phone back on. He started out standing by the front door as he listened to Chessie say kids were getting sick; Raleigh wanting to know why Wilson had lied about the flu or the water; then Bucky, telling him not to bring Scarlett home just yet. By the time he'd listened to Bucky again (this time describing the horrible scene in Angela's flower beds), Wilson was closer to the sofa. When he got the message from a frantic Landis, saying Kayann and Hays had come home from seeing Cordelia off at the hospital that morning to find a cinderblock through Hays's bedroom window, Wilson collapsed onto the cushion.

But the worst of it had come to Medric Johnston when he arrived back at the funeral parlor. His message to Wilson had been the longest, told in a voice far too calm to have really been truly calm. Telling the mayor of the thick stench of rotting meat that had greeted him first, and then the buzzing sound of all those flies. Telling of the long-dead raccoon nailed to his back door.

Hit by a truck, was Medric's guess, found and then scooped up from somewhere along the road. The sign underneath had been scrawled in an illegible hand, but the sentiment was clear enough.
Die . . .
well, I won't say what that last word was, friend. You look smart enough to figure it out.

By the time Wilson finished listening to all the people who'd called since that morning, he realized two things: his town was falling apart, and the only person who hadn't seemed to have suffered any trouble at all was the Reverend. And to that, I say why not? Weren't nobody gonna strike the family of the one man who'd been brave enough to speak out on exactly what was going on.

Wilson had no choice then but to leave and try to put out as many a those fires he could. He was our mayor, after all, and he'd been brought up holding fast to the idea that Crow Holler might've been a town full of people, but it all belonged to the
Bickfords and no one else. He couldn't take Scarlett with him and place her in danger, nor did he want to leave her there alone. Couldn't take her to Bucky's or Landis's; they had troubles of their own. I do believe for a brief moment Wilson considered the possibility of calling Chessie and asking a favor, but that notion quickly faded. No direness in the world warranted being in debt to a Hodge. Such was what Wilson believed, though not for much longer.

In the end he had no choice but to tell Scarlett he had to go out for a bit, see to some things, and then ask that she shut the blinds and the doors and not let anybody in. To make sure you get your rest is what he said. Scarlett, she was simple enough to believe.

She watched him go through the edge of the curtain drawn over the living room window. A single tear fell from her eye as her daddy backed out and sped off without even a glance back. Scarlett let the tear fall free. No one was there to see anyway.

She'd walked from the window and made it halfway to the kitchen when the knock came. Scarlett turned, thinking her daddy had changed his mind. All the warnings Wilson had given about keeping the house shut up tight left her thinking, and she flung the front door open with a smile that faded when she saw Tully Wiseman standing there about as drunk as a man could be and still remain upright. He wobbled on the small wooden porch, grabbing the rail to steady himself, then wiped his mouth with a hand that held Chessie's jar.

“Knew you's here,” he said. “Watched you from acrost the way till your daddy gone. How you feelin, Scarlett?”

She stepped back (already knowing, I guess, that this visit wasn't the social kind) and nodded.

“What's matter? Cat got your tongue?”

Scarlett reached into her back pocket for the pad and pen the doctors had given her. She scribbled something and held it
up. Took Tully a few minutes to read it all. Not because that man was filled to the gills, but because he was so stupid.

“Know it?” he snorted. “Course I
know
it. Whole dad-blamed
town
knows it, girl. Witch got y'all. You tempted her and she got you and now she's got us all. Now you step on back and let me in.”

Scarlett shook her head. I expect right about then was when she figured out exactly why Wilson had told her to keep the door shut.

Tully sipped at his jar. “You know my Daisy, don't you? My Flower?”

She nodded.

“She's sick. Brought on by Alvaretta. By
you
. Let me in.”

No.

“Let me in that house, Scarlett. Let me talk to you up close.”

Tully threw the jar before Scarlett could shake her head once more. It bounced off the screen and landed with a thud on the porch, spraying her eyes with moonshine. She fell backward, clawing for a hold on the doorjamb and the drywall, blind now as well as mute. Tully tore the screen away and walked inside. He grabbed the back of Scarlett's hair. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream as Tully bent her head back, smacking her with open hands that turned to fists, yelling, “How bout I roon you altogether, girl?” as his fists rained down. Screaming, “Roon you like you rooned my
daughter
, like you rooned us
all.
Make you all the
way
ugly,” and all Scarlett could do was suffer it in silence.

-11-

It took Bucky most of the evening to decide a fortified position would be best. He went out before sunset and moved the
Celebrity closer to the porch steps, so anybody who wanted to break in would either have to climb over the car or go through it. And just in case they did decide to go through, Bucky went on and locked the car doors too. Angela told Cordelia she saw so many holes in Bucky's grand design that she couldn't decide which one to start with, and so said nothing. It would work, Bucky promised. Ain't nobody gonna come up in here.

I don't reckon Angela thought anybody would. She'd spent more of her life around the people of Crow Holler than even Bucky had, first going to school with them and now ringing up their groceries down at Foster's. She knew who was sick by the medicine they bought and who was coming up on a birthday by the cards and frozen cakes. Don't nothing tell folk who you are more'n what you spend on, especially if it's at the grocery. Especially if that grocery's all there is in town.

Yessir, Angela Vest might've been a failed woman in the eyes of some hereabouts, but she kept her finger on the heartbeat of this town, however faint that pulse had grown. And what Angela knew was this: weren't nobody gonna come after them that night. She'd said the same over the phone when Chessie called to check on things, this after the best, most peaceable, most loving family supper the Vests had enjoyed in years. Oh sure, Angela still smarted over her roses and Bucky still hurt over the way the Reverend had gone back on his word. Cordy still had to eat with one hand holding a fork and the other moving the dead muscles on one side of her jaw. But it was hot food under a sturdy roof with the ones that mattered most circled together, and really, is there more warmth than that to be found in this cold life?

Once the plates were washed and put away, they all went outside to clean up the yard. Angela treated it as a kind of burial. She picked up each broken stem with gloved hands and stared like she was trying to remember when she'd set them in
the ground and what the weather was, and how whatever day that had been was likely a better one than this. Cordelia helped. Her face looked dead but her strength remained. She threw her hands to work and sank them into the soft dirt, kneading the soil through her fingers. I think the labor made her feel some better.

Bucky paced the front porch through it all, and Angela had the good sense to let him. The old her would've asked for her husband's help to bag her most prized possessions before taking them to work and throwing them under the dozer the next day. But this was the new Angela, one born from the calamitous realization of her own selfish ways, and she knew Bucky wasn't loafing. He was up there pacing on the porch with a pistol so big the kick would break your shoulder. Looking out toward the empty road, praying it'd stay that way.

It took seven bags. Bucky jumped down from his lookout long enough to stuff them all in the trunk before ushering his two girls back inside. All the porch lights went on for the night.

Belle Ramsay called to check on everyone. She said she'd just got off the phone with Kayann and everything there was quiet, though Kayann was scared because Hays's bedroom window was now a Glad trash bag Landis had brought home from work. Naomi still had the tremors. Scarlett had been attacked but wouldn't write down who'd done it, and Wilson had vowed vengeance on whoever it had been. The thing with Scarlett was the worst, Belle and Angela both agreed on that, though the sordidness of what had greeted Medric when he got home came in a close second.

“David feels awful,” Belle said.

“He should,” Angela told her.

When the phone rang again an hour later, Cordelia had crawled into bed with her momma. Bucky picked up and heard Wilson's voice on the other end. He was staying up all night, too, watching over Scarlett.

“Heard what happened,” Bucky said. “I'm sorry, Wilson.”

“Scarlett wrote she was blindsided. Never even seen who hit her. I don't know how that can be, but I'd rather believe that than have to wonder why she'd like to protect the one who beat on her. But I'm trying to set that aside for now. Danny called me with the day's numbers. Sixteen girls sick, Bucky. And that's just today. No telling what tomorrow's gonna bring, so you stay sharp. Hear me?”

Bucky nodded into the phone and hung up. He pulled a chair from the kitchen table and sat it in front of the living room window. There he sat all night, surrounded by the darkness, with his daddy's old .44 on his lap, thinking of the bad man that had busted into his childhood home, remembering what that man had done to his momma and what he himself had not done at all.