The Curse of Crow Hollow (22 page)

He was just about to grab a smoke when Briar's gun went off. Tully ducked behind one of the steel tables spread about the room when the door leading out to the store opened. I expect he thought that was Landis coming in, having finally snapped under the weight of what his boy had done and wanting to explain his side of things with the end of a gun. As if whatever sob story that man could offer about Hays would even come close to what Tully's daughter, Daisy, had endured the past day. Tully already had his mouth cocked and loaded when he raised his head, even got “Don't you—” out before he realized the one who'd stepped inside the meat room wasn't Landis at all.

“Say, Hodge.” Tully smiled.

Briar had tucked his gun back away. “Tully,” he said. “Need a word.”

“Sure, sure. Got all the time in the world for you, Briar. Been a busy day so far. Everybody's coming out to stock up.” He laughed a little. “Almost like a snow's coming, ain't it? What's that racket out there?”

Briar didn't say. He walked on around Tully, past the tables and saws and slicers and all that raw meat, to the door leading to the dock. That left Tully looking square at Chessie. The skin on her face was flushed near as red as the hair on her head. Her eyes were wide and they did not move from him. That was about the time Tully realized he had a Hodge at each door, and he'd been caught in the middle.

“What brings you up, Chessie?” Asking casual like, no different than Tully would inquire of the weather.

Chessie nodded to Briar, who turned and opened the door behind him. Sunlight washed into the room. Briar looked out. He nodded and whispered, “Come on,” as if that big man was trying to coax a pup, and Tully saw a shadow on the cement floor that grew and then ended when Scarlett Bickford stepped through.

Tully's face, which had taken on the color of cherries over the years from all that hard liquor, now turned milky white. His hands fumbled with the apron around him, smeared with streaks of browns and reds.

“You pay a visit to Scarlett yest'day, Tully?” Chessie asked. “And before you answer, you choose your words.”

“Scarlett?” he asked. “Well, I . . . I don't recollect.”

Chessie's eyes bored into him. Tully turned from hers only to meet Scarlett's. That girl looked scared. Angry and scared.

“I mean, I may have,” he stammered. “Just to see how she was getting along. Tell her of my Daisy.” And when he finally understood there was no other way through what he'd gotten into, Tully finally said, “Yes'm. I did visit.”

“You strike her?”

Here, Tully wouldn't say. But his silence was more than enough for Chessie. She nodded again to Briar. What happened next was over before Scarlett could flinch. Briar was a mountain, but he was fast. Lightning fast, and he had an arm around Tully's head before Chessie could finish raising her chin. Tully's head slammed atop the metal table in front of him. The sound bounced off the walls, making Scarlett jump, and it was only when Tully stopped struggling that Chessie stepped over to him. She bent down close, making sure he saw her face.

“You got a nerve, Tully Wiseman,” she said. “Coming to me for liquor and preying on my Christian sensibility. Then you
use my jar to find the courage to go after a defenseless girl? What was in your mind?”

Tully was already crying. “It was Daisy,” he was saying. “My Flower's sick. Please don't hurt me, Chessie.”

Briar lifted Tully's head, slammed it down again.

“Which hand was it?” Chessie asked. “Which one'd you hit her with?”

“Chessie, please. I'm sor—”

“Which hand?”
she asked again, this time to Scarlett.

The girl looked as pale as Tully. Her hand trembled as she drew out her pen and pad. She wrote
right
.

Briar reached down and brought up Tully's right arm, stretching it out onto the table. Tully struggled, but it was no use.

“I know your mind, Tully Wiseman,” Chessie said. “I know the kind of people you run with in the shadows, and I know 'twas y'all behind what's happened to the kids here in town. You think I don't, you're even more stupid than I thought you was. But it stops. You hear me? It stops now. You get the word to the rest of your little Circle. You need proof to show how serious I am, you show them this.”

Her hand found was what closest. Not the cleaver (and Tully'll spend the rest of his miserable life thankful at least for that), but the metal meat tenderizer he'd used that morning. A heavy thing, mottled on one end and tiny, dulled spikes on the other. She held it out to Scarlett.

“Go on,” Chessie said. “Eye for an eye, Scarlett Bickford. That's how it is in the Holler.”

Scarlett shook her head.

“You can and you will. You take all that hurt and rage and you let it out. Stand up or bow down, girl. Right now.”

Friend, I won't even pretend to know what went through Scarlett's mind right then. She stood there shaking her head
No
, making her will known even to the likes of Chessie Hodge, and then that
No
became
I shouldn't
, and that led to something like
Maybe
before Scarlett's head stopped moving at all. Was hurt inside that girl. Hurt over a momma she didn't have no more and a daddy who was intent upon fixing her with a future as bleak as her past. It was a rage over the Crow Holler witch. But it was more than that, friend. I know it was. There came a hurt as well. Bubbling up as it had when she'd run off at the mines and hurled those rocks and twigs at the night.

She strode forward. Tully now looked her way, begging her no, begging her pardon, screaming that he'd only been drunk and in sorrow for his child.

“Do it,” Chessie said.

Scarlett held out her hand. Chessie went to hand that filthy meat tenderizer over. Her grin melted when Scarlett refused to take it. Instead, she placed her hand atop Tully's own. Shaking her head at Briar first, then at Chessie.

“Fool,” Chessie whispered. “Just like your daddy. This the way you think you'll rid the town of what you wrought? Is it? Standing up for ones who'd sooner spit on you than help?”

Scarlett looked like she wanted to write something, but she wouldn't move her hand from Tully's.

“Fine, then,” Chessie said.

It was the spiked end a that tenderizer she brought down, doing it in a flash. Scarlett managed to move her hand at the last instant. You ask me if Chessie knew it would happen that way, I don't know. All I know is she meant to teach Scarlett and Tully both a lesson.

The teeth on that tenderizer struck Tully in the back of his hand. His wail was a piercing agony so pure it sounded like death itself. Chessie swung it again, this time to the noise of bone breaking. Blood splattered the table, the side of Chessie's face, Briar's thick beard. Scarlett's arm. Tully screamed again,
so deep and long that all the air was gone from his lungs. And then he could only whimper.

-5-

Back at the mines where Hays Foster had built his fire the past Saturday night, Bucky sat on the hood of his car and tried acting like a real lawman. He held his phone to his ear and listened to what the voice on the other end said. Saying little and nodding much, like this was something he should've done two days before.

Only a dozen miles lie between Crow Holler and the town of Mattingly, but it might as well be a thousand. It's a burden getting between there and here with those steep and winding roads between, and I guess that's why we in the Holler decided over time it'd be better to stick to ourselves. But our two towns being so close as the crow flies, the Commonwealth of Virginia long ago decided in all its wisdom to include us in Mattingly's jurisdiction when it come to matters of the law.

That put us under the eye of Mattingly's sheriff, Jake Barnett. I'll say I've had dealings with that man in the past, though indirectly. People in these parts respect him as much as we can an outsider. And I'll give Jake this—he understood what's good for the city folk up in Richmond usually ain't for the mountains. We take care of our own here and punish those who need it, and we need nobody to tell us how. Jake made a drive through the hill country onced a week or so just to keep appearances, but that was it. We never needed authority until Alvaretta.

Now Bucky knew Jake well enough, having served as constable for so long. And it seemed then was as good a time as any to reach out, hoping Jake could give some guidance. Shame of it was, old Jake didn't have much to give.

“You say how many girls are sick?”

“Near thirty,” Bucky said. “That's my guess, anyway. Pretty much all the young ones in town. All girls, Jake. Not a boy yet among'm.”

“What's your doctor say?”

“What any doctor would. But I don't think you believe that as much as me or anybody else up here does, Jake. I'm at the mines now. Those tracks Cordy found are real. Something's loose up here.”

“Anybody else been to see Alvaretta?”

“No.”

“Might have to be you then, Buck. Maybe somebody can reason with her.”

Bucky chuckled. “You think she's one to reason with?”

“Want me to come up there?”

“No. I can handle this, Jake.”

“You sure?”

Bucky didn't answer that—couldn't, I expect. He nodded into the phone and hung up. Put his face in his hands, wondering what to do next. The answer came when his phone chirped again.

Angela, saying Tully'd hurt himself. Mashed his own hand somehow, drunk old fool that he was, and broken it good. Things were too busy at the grocery for anyone there to take him to Doc Sullivan's, so would he? Bucky checked his watch and found it nearly two. He said sure, wasn't like he had anything to do that afternoon. She told him to come around to the loading dock in back. He never asked her why.

He tried the Fosters next to check on Cordy and Hays. Kayann answered. She said she hadn't heard anything about Tully and maybe she should go down to the grocery since they'd be shorthanded. Bucky laughed at that like he thought she was making a joke about Tully's injury. Then he said maybe
so. Once he got to the store, though, Bucky must've thought Kayann had been exactly right. Landis would need help that day. He would need Kayann and more.

The mess outside Foster's was even bigger than what Bucky had found at the clinic the day before. Cars everywhere, trucks and clunkers and even some old farm tractors, all jammed into that lot. Bucky slowed to gawp at it all and caught sight of Briar's truck and John David's leaving off toward the farm. He pulled around back, weaving his way through traffic and waving to friends and neighbors who looked at him like he was a stranger.

Tully sat on an old stool propped against the dock's wall. He'd found some ice and a dirty rag to wrap his hand in and held his wrist gentle, the same as he'd held his Daisy all the night before. His face had gone from the pale of fright to a suffering gray.

Bucky got out and said, “Have mercy, Tully. What'd you do?”

“Slipped,” he said. “Slipped is all.” And I guess Tully was right about that, if he was talking about losing what little sense he had long enough to put his hands on Scarlett Bickford.

Bucky wanted to go inside and check on Angela, but Tully begged him no. All he wanted was to leave. Whole way to Doc's office, he kept saying how sorry he was for what'd happened to Cordelia. A shame, Tully told him, and when Bucky said he'd always thought Tully a good man despite his demons, Tully started to cry.

It was at the doctor's office where Bucky first heard of the grocery closing. Maris asked him. You could hear the doctor through the door of the exam room telling Tully he was worthless in one breath and feeling sorry for him in the next, asking how drunk a man had to be to mistake his own live hand for a slab of dead meat not once but again and again. Bucky said he'd heard no such thing about Landis closing up, but Maris told him people had been coming in saying it all day.

“You don't think Landis would do that?” she asked. “Shut his doors because some idiot decided to turn his fear of Alvaretta into a rage against Hays?”

“No,” Bucky said. “Landis ain't like that. But I was just over there to pick Tully up, and you ain't never seen such a rush of people. He closes down, it'll be because he's run out of everything.”

“Run out?” A shadow fell over Maris's face. “I never thought of that.”

“Could happen, I guess. Grocery ain't so big that it could ever hold a lot. And since the trucks only come once a week or so . . .” Bucky shrugged. “Don't make a difference though, does it? We ain't in the South Pole, Maris. We can make do.”

“That ain't the point, Bucky. The grocery ain't just the grocery. We don't just go there to get our milk and bread. We get our news there too. That's where we go to connect with each other. If the church is the soul of this town, the grocery is its heart. Close it for a day or a week or forever, Bucky, you take that heart away.”

Tully walked out with his hand braced and bandaged. That would have to do until he could get up to the hospital for a proper cast. He promised the doc that would happen soon, but he never went. Tully was a no-count drunk who spent much of his time out in the woods with Raleigh Jennings and his merry band of racists, but he loved his child. Daisy was the world to that man, and seeing her suffer was enough to lay a crack in his otherwise stone heart. He wouldn't leave her, even if it meant a trip to Stanley to take care of his broken bones. To this day, you greet Tully and he'll offer his left hand instead of the misshapen claw on his right because half of him got ruined. Guess he turned out like Cordelia that way. Some would call that irony.

Bucky said he'd take Tully home. Maris wished them both well and promised she'd be praying. They were no more out the
door than she told Danny to get his keys. She was gonna make a few calls first, then he had to take her to the store.