The Devil Walks in Mattingly (40 page)

(“Dandelions,” she said.

Jake took his eyes off the dark road that led to the mountains and asked, “What’d you say?”

Kate only muttered, “That’s why I hate them now, because they remind me of me,” and she fell silent again.)

Kate takes the weeds and thanks him. Phillip reaches out and takes her hand. His fingers are slippery and his breaths come out heavy. He says, “If you let go, I’ll float into the sun.”

Afternoon light bathes the backside of the bleachers. Phillip looks up to see legs but no eyes. There is chatter and laughter and the metallic ring of feet upon stairs, and Kate thinks if she doesn’t hurry someone will falter, someone will squeal, someone always does. Sweat covers Phillip’s face. He pushes his glasses up.

“I have to go make sure no one sees,” Kate says. “You wouldn’t want to be the one to spoil my honor, would you, Phillip?”

“No, not ever.”

“Good. You wait here. Close your eyes. It’ll be better that way. But don’t peek. If you peek, I’ll know and you won’t get a kiss. Okay?”

“Okay,” Phillip says.

“Good. Close them now. Shut them tight. I’ll be right back.”

His glasses slip down. Phillip lets them hang. Kate smiles as she walks away, sure he will wait. For her, Phillip McBride would wait forever. She waits until his eyes are closed and runs, tossing the dandelions as far beneath the bleachers as she can.

2

“I’m looking toward the Holler on that day.”

Taylor looked from the fire he’d built to Lucy. An orange glow colored her face, and though the night was warm and the flames burned hot, she huddled close. The rocks laid by hands that were not his own towered over them. Those stones frightened Taylor. They frightened him more than anything had in his life.

“I’m only a child, lady, no older’n you, but I’ve wandered this Holler often. Fashioned my flint knife in this wood just the week before. This land begins toward the hill lands in Mattingly and ends in the hill lands of Camden, as you may know. Where it ends is where I lived with my aunt. Charlene’s her name. She says the devil lives in this wood, and I think to myself mayhap he does or doesn’t, but it don’t matter because the devil’s more a friend to me than anyone else. It draws me, this Holler. As the Hole draws you now.

“So there I stand on that warm day, walled in by boys and girls who are my age in body but only children to me in mind. I don’t know them and they don’t know me and we all agree that way is best. I don’t like Mattingly. It stinks of corn and cows. I’m just a ghost there. I come to school and no one speaks to Taylor, no one sees Taylor, no one knows Taylor. So I stand against those poles that day while everybody’s playin’. I feel this flint knife in my pocket and look out over the mountains to where this Holler lies. I count my minutes until I’m free of that school and can run here.

“That’s when I sense her coming. Sashaying her way through that bright green football grass. And though my eyes are still on that wide patch of dead trees midway up the mountains, I know it’s Kate Griffith who walks my way. She don’t know of me but I know of her, and I know of Jake. Them two see the school as I come to see this Holler, and by that I mean as their own. She’s grinning as she nears, like she sees my own heart set to fluttering. I always thought Kate is fair. Her eyes are like evening, and I feel if I stroll there, I will stroll forever.

“She helloes and asks my name, but my tongue’s too knotted to speak. She chuckles (like birdsong, that titter is) and says it don’t matter if I talk or not. She says she’s watched me all day. I doubt that in my head—a ghost is all I am, and even those who see ghosts see them as there for a blink and then there no more—but my heart says, No, Taylor, don’t you go thinking that right yet, you just let me feel some for a while.

“Then she says, ‘Would you like to kiss me?’ and I near crumble at her feet.

“She takes my hand and leads me longways past the teachers and the kids, back to where the bleachers sit. We’re close there, and she turns and hushes me.

“ ‘Be quiet and close your eyes,’ she whispers, and then she says it’s unmanly to kiss a girl otherwise.

“There’s a voice in me that speaks then, telling me to never mind what she says, that something’s wrong about a girl as pretty as that kissin’ a boy whose name she don’t even know. But another voice, this one louder, hushes that speech with a fire that shuts my eyes tight. I mean to have Kate’s lips, my heart says.

“She leads me stumbling behind the bleachers. There’s talkin’ everywhere, people laughing, having a grand old time. And then it’s like the world hushes.

“Kate stops me and whispers, ‘Come here.’

“I lean in and meet her mouth, and there’s a softness that steals my breath and weakens my knees. But I know it’s only for a moment, that feeling. It don’t matter a whit how good anything is, all things fade. But to
see
her! To hold that picture in my mind. I think that would last me forever. So I open my eyes.”

Taylor stopped there. Lucy’s gaze fixed to his. He shuddered despite the heat of the fire.

“What?” she asked. “What happened, Taylor?”

He said, “I open my eyes, and it’s not Kate’s lips upon mine. ’Tis a boy’s.”

3

Kate sensed the thick night as Jake stopped the Blazer. They both climbed out. Jake stood at the rusty gate, tracing the names scratched into the iron with his fingers. His lips moved, but Kate couldn’t hear if he was speaking to her or himself. The noise was too great. Not in the woods (even then there was only silence, as if both sides of the gate were caught in an inhale and waiting to breathe out), but in her own mind. It was the sharp sound of—

4

—
Laughter! Rolling down from behind the bleachers like a waterfall, spilling onto Kate like cool rain on a hot day, joyous bursting, cackling voices of friends and friends in passing, howling and teary and jubilant, faces turned and pointed to the boys—the two poor HILL BOYS—locked in an amorous kiss.

Kate wails with glee, drowning herself in the hilarity. The dirty boy—Kate will not know his name is Taylor until twenty years later—has already opened his eyes. He steps back in a grimace and swipes at his mouth, which only makes them laugh more. Phil the Fairy jumps when the laughter starts, his eyes wide at the sight of where his lips had rested. There is no shock to him, no horror, and upon seeing him as such, Kate feels the first fringes of a fog that will damper her life from this moment on. Phillip McBride looks as one who has woken from a dream he knew was too good to be true.

They
run, each of them. Phillip one way and the dirty boy the
other, pushed by the mocking at their backs through the exits on either side of the football field.

Aside from Kate and those on the
bleachers, no one sees them
leave. It’s just as well; no one had ever noticed them before, and only Phillip would be remembered after because only Phillip died.

Kate holds her hands aloft, reaching for the sound of acceptance—of glorious worship—and drinks until she’s full. She laughs (oh, how she laughs!), yet even as she does, Kate remembers the look on Phillip’s face, and even now there is a dark knowing in
her mind that something more has happened here, something far worse than she could have ever intended, and that her laughter will end in tears.

5

“I tore off,” Taylor said.

Lucy’s hand had slipped into his sometime during the telling. It was an act that stood in contrast to the hate on her face. Taylor hoped the girl’s rage would stay on Kate and not veer to him. The story was near its end, and though Taylor was still sure what had happened after he ran from the football field that day was true—was
good
—he remembered he had not woken Charlie or Lucy’s momma and yet they were gone still.

“I have my Aunt Charlene’s car—she lets me have it on schoolin’ days and hoofs it to her own job down at the laundrymat in Camden—and I go’s fast as I can. But no matter how much gas I give that old Ford, I cain’t outrun the memory of that boy’s kiss. I’m past the Mattingly line and I can still hear them cackling at me, saying ‘Stupid redneck’ and calling me a boy lover. And I see Kate too. Oh yes, I see her well, and I know that memory of her I feared would slip my mind will now be there always.

“Charlene, she’s got beer in the fridge. She sips and swallows and then cusses my ma for the drugs she takes. I drink until the heat I feel from Kate turns cold, and then I go to the only place that gives me comfort. It’s this Holler that takes me. I’m not laughed at here, and I’m not made sport of. Here, I’m a king.

“I walk on ’til the sun’s low on the mountaintops. Hours, I reckon it was, up from the lowlands to these cliffs right above us. That’s when I hear a sound of mourning that buckles me. I
been in this wood many a’time afore then. Seen things. Heard things. But I never saw or heard no sound like that. I turn to run off, but that sound gets closer, callin’-me like. I reach to my pocket for my stone knife. There’s a stand of rock up there and a small path for game, and when that noise comes around those rocks, I see it’s the boy.

“It’s the
boy
. The one Kate
tricked
me with. He starts sayin’ he’s lost, that he cain’t go home wailing to his folks and so he parked his truck and now he’s lost, but I know it’s deceit. He followed me. I know that more than I’ve ever known anything. How else would we both’ve gotten to this same place at this same time?

“I tole him to get goin’, but he didn’t. He’s wailing and walking to me, saying to me, ‘I’m lost, I don’t want to be lost,’ and then he reaches out his arms to give me a hug, aiming to
touch
me, and in my head I see Kate and I hear that cackle rising louder, calling me hillbilly and boy lover, and then . . .”

Taylor reached into his back pocket. He felt the flint knife there but drew out his old book instead. His eyes grow wide at something he’d never considered before. “’Twas not out of love, lady. Not at all. I hated him.”

6

I turned from the Hollow and faced Kate. Her shoulders were hunched and she held her arms folded across her chest, as though holding herself against a cold only she could feel. Her eyes were fully on me. She had left whatever place her mind had visited on our way to the gate, and the long trip back had left her looking tired and worn. My heart broke for her.

We were bound together, Kate and I. Not simply by love
or duty to our son, but because of Phillip. Because of what had happened on a day that to most of the billions of people in this sad world came and went no different from any other, filled with the same trifles to endure and worries to dwell upon. That day had been long forgotten to them, and yet for Kate and me it came to define not just the lives we would live from then forward but the people we would become. Standing there watching the moonlight glint off the tears pooling in her eyes, I knew she had suffered more. Kate was loved and accepted by our town. Yet she was still held responsible for Phillip’s death in everyone’s eyes but my own, no matter how many boxes she delivered to the doorsteps of Mattingly’s poor.

Yes, she had suffered more. I understood that. But I also understood I had borne more. Kate had carried regret all those years, a mourning for what she’d done. I carried a remorse for what I hadn’t, and that burden is heavy and hard to lay down. But there at the rusty gate with the peak of Indian Hill looming far, I knew that was what I had to do. And I prayed that if I couldn’t find the courage to lay that weight down, I could at least find the strength to loosen my grip.

I turned away and set my hands upon the gate. My words were soft and slow.

“I saw Phillip after he ran off that day. I saw him here. And then I killed him.”

I couldn’t face her. Nor could I look ahead to all those miles of dead trees soaked in a moon that only made everything frighten me more. I could only be silent now and steel myself against whatever might come.

What came was a soft and broken voice carried by the breeze: “What did you say?”

“I saw him here,” I said. “I didn’t know anything of what had happened. I saw everybody up in the bleachers for Field
Day and I remember hearing them laughing, but I didn’t know what it was about. I was down on the field, showing off. Being the man. I had eyes for you then, Kate. I’ve loved you ever since I can remember. Couldn’t believe it when we started dating. I thought you were just too pretty and too good for me. I still think that.”

I heard Kate’s feet shuffle. The way she spoke my name shamed me. It reminded me of the way I’d spoken Phillip’s name when he first entered my dreams. It was a plea. I could only face the gate and shake my head.

“I decided that morning I’d come up here after school was out,” I said. “It wasn’t so much I was graduating as I was getting ready to turn eighteen. You leave off school and get that age, people start calling you a man. I didn’t feel much like a man, though. Momma was long passed, and it was just me and Justus. Hard, living under that shadow. He always wanted to make me into him, and I always wanted it. But it wasn’t in me, Kate. My heart was too soft to let me be a hard man. That made me weak. In his eyes, and my own.

“Never put much stock in coming up here and scrawling my name, but I decided to do it anyway. I figured it would be the kind of thing Justus would approve of. And I guess I thought I’d have at least that to lean on—I could say I came here to the gate, just like all those men in all those years. I know it sounds stupid, but it felt like doing that would make me part of something. Like I belonged.

“So when Field Day was over, I climbed in the truck and drove here. Parked right there where the Blazer is. And let me tell you, Kate, I felt then what I feel right now. This place births a fear in you like none other. I just sat there behind the wheel, half of me saying go ahead and get it over with, the other half telling me to turn tail and run before whatever hell
lives here gets hungry. It was Justus’s face that settled things. He was all I saw, and that’s why I got out.