The Devil Walks in Mattingly (6 page)

Taylor looked up and asked, “What’d you get laid off for?”

Charlie slouched. “Took somebody’s microwave they put out. Boss man said it weren’t mine for the havin’, but dear Lord, all’s it was goin’ was on the truck.” He shook his head as though mourning the stupidity of his world. “Who gets fired for takin’ trash?”

“Reckon a trash man does,” Taylor said. He wrote that down too. “Now look here, Charlie. Camden’s not our end, we got business in Mattingly.”

Charlie shook his head. “I cain’t.”

Taylor tried to keep his voice daddy-like and found it near impossible. This was why he’d never taken Charlie to the grove, why Charlie had never been told Her name. Because when you got right down to the center of Charlie Givens, what you found was weakness. Weakness so complete that one could respond with no less than pity.

“Charlie Givens,” he said, “you ain’t but a worthless nothing.”

It was as if those words grew teeth when spoken and bit down on Charlie’s ears when heard. His eyes watered. “Don’t go sayin’ that, Taylor.”

“Now I know that pains.” Taylor laid the pencil down and rested his hand atop Charlie’s, squeezed it, telling him it would all be fine. “But it’s gotta be said. This here’s a place of Truth. And this here being that sort of place, I’m bound to say it. Why, Charlie, you’re no more useful than that busted mandolin against the wall. Everything in this cabin was put here for me—put here for a purpose. All except that. It just sits there, broken with no use. Like you. I was once like that m’self. But no more. I ain’t no nothing now, Charlie Givens. I’m a king.” He spread his arms to moldy walls and lifted his head to the sagging ceiling. “This here’s my castle. Free and beholden to none, Charlie, that’s me. Now let me ask you this: You wanna be a king?”

“I do,” Charlie said, and Taylor believed he meant it well enough. He also believed Charlie had a slanted view of what that truly meant. Taylor thought Charlie’s idea of kingship might even mean living in a dead forest full of eyes and spending all his time watching through a pair of broken spyglasses at a town he hated for a Her he hated even more.

“Ain’t much changed for you, though, has it?” Taylor asked. “Don’t nobody pay you no mind, because you don’t matter. You live in a little ol’ trailer and spend your days on back of a trash truck. That’s all the world reckons you’re worth—picking up what nobody wants no more. And now you ain’t even good enough for that.”

Charlie’s eyes settled on the table. He whispered, “Cain’t even be no trash man.”

“Well now, that just means you’re meant for greater things,” Taylor said. “You help me, Charlie. I don’t know what’s lingering for us down there, but I know it’ll lead me to Her. All’s I gotta do’s find what’s in those sneakers. But I can’t do it singly. You’re right, I forgot how to step in a town. I been in paradise too long.” He slapped the table at that, making Charlie jump. “But see there?
I
need you. That’s something. And you help me, I’ll help you right back. Might as well get you some money while we’re down there, seeing as how you’re recently unwaged. Right? Lots of vendors down there. We can stop at the first place we see.”

In the end Taylor knew that would be what swayed Charlie’s mind. Not Truth, just simple greed. Taylor thought that tragic, as he thought all things were beyond the Hollow.

“Reckon it ain’t hard to risk it all if you ain’t got nothin’,” Charlie said.

Taylor picked up his pencil—
Charly gona help!—
and smiled. He said, “Well, that’s just fine, Charlie. Let’s get on, then. It’s a long walk to the gate. And don’t you worry about those eyes on the going. I’ll keep you.”

Charlie rose and went to the door with a posture taller than Taylor had seen. That was good; Charlie needed some swagger to him. Taylor placed his book in the back pocket of his jeans. He paused at the door and looked at the shotgun resting against
the crates, wanted to take it, then decided no. He rummaged through the topmost crate along the wall instead, pushing aside Charlie’s ginseng. Mixed in with a length of rope, a hunting knife, two hammers, fishing line, and spare cloth was a folded burlap sack containing the flint blade he’d carved long ago. Taylor considered taking that, believing the extra protection would be necessary. Then he felt the power seeping out from the sack and opted for the hunting knife instead. Taylor walked outside feeling a bit taller himself. It was good, knowing one’s purpose. Having a destiny. Especially if that destiny set you upon a path that led to only one end.

7

The clean pair of jeans and denim shirt I’d left the house wearing that morning had turned to a stained canvas of leaves and dirt by the time I reached the sheriff’s office. Kate had returned from the Texaco. She was at her desk scribbling in her notebook when I walked in. Zach and Doc March huddled over a game of checkers near the wide front window. I shook from exhaustion and what that exhaustion had almost done. The world looked like it had gone slanted. I smiled and straightened my shoulders as I walked into the foyer
(nothing to see here,
that smile said,
just a man going about his morning)
, but then I stumbled over the gallon of gray paint I’d used to freshen up the front door the previous day. Kate went to me as Doc March rose.

Zach looked up from the board, the smile on his face fading. “What’s wrong, Daddy?”

“Not a thing.” (smile) “Just gotta sit a minute.”

Kate took my arm, feigning a hug so Zach wouldn’t be frightened, and guided me to the battered upholstered sofa in
the middle of the foyer. I sat and winced. She reached behind my back and laid Bessie on the coffee table in front of us. Zach went to the small bathroom off my office as Doc March went for the leather bag on Kate’s desk. His gaunt, wrinkled face fell into a look of worried determination.

“What’s wrong?” Kate asked.

“Nothing. Almost fell asleep on the road. Shook me up a little. Fine now.”

Zach returned with a Dixie cup filled with his panacea for everything from bad dreams to beestings.

“Here, Daddy,” he said.

He lifted the cup to my mouth and turned it upward, spilling water down the front of my shirt. I coughed and thanked him.

Kate said, “Zach, why don’t you take Bessie out back for a little while. Daddy’s fine, just tired is all.”

I nodded to him. My voice came out dull and cracking: “Just mind her like I showed you.”

Zach hefted Bessie and made a slow walk from the sofa to the open back door, carrying the tomahawk like it was a live snake. He stopped at the gun rack by Kate’s desk and offered a lingering look back. Kate nodded. Zach continued on.

Doc March strapped a blood pressure cuff and the business end of his stethoscope on my arm and told me to hush before I could tell him not to bother. He asked how I felt and where and if I hurt. All I could do was nod. I’d been dreaming of Phillip every night, sometimes as soon as I fell asleep, other times a few hours later. Always stacking those rocks, most times running from the butterflies. And even though a part of me knew those dreams weren’t real, I still felt tired after I woke. Tired and scared. Not just because I didn’t sleep either. My shoulders and back felt like tight knots. My arms
hurt. It was as if I’d really been lifting those stones along the riverbank, one right after the other, trying to lay my memory to rest.

Doc said, “Jacob, your pulse and blood pressure are both high’s the moon. I need you to take some deep breaths. Slow down.”

I nodded again. Kate took my hat off and put her hand to my head. She kissed me there.

“You’re still not sleeping?” Doc asked. “You should have called me, Kate. And, Jake, you should have let her. You and your fool pride. Runs in the family. Any other symptoms? Loss of appetite? Depression? What’s that bandage on your arm?”

I mumbled, “Just a scratch.”

“He had a bad dream last night,” Kate said. She caught my stare, but I suppose by then she’d passed the point of tolerating such childishness. The doctor needed truth. If my foolishness couldn’t part with it, Kate would do it for me. “It was worse than ever. When he woke up, his arm was bleeding.”

“Just from thrashing about,” I said. “Must’ve caught it on something.”

For proof I pulled the tape on my arm and let the bandage fall. The scar was still there, but the cut was gone. Even the few drips of drying blood that had been there when Kate had wrapped it had disappeared. She looked at me, eyebrows scrunched.

“I can’t make you better unless you’re forthright with me, Jacob,” Doc said.

“Just a dream,” I told him.

The old man sighed and nodded his head. “Fine, then. But I’m going to up your medication nonetheless. Maybe we’ll try something stronger. I’ll pick up the prescription myself and bring it by.”

I started to tell him no and thank you, but Kate interrupted and said, “We’d appreciate that very much.”

Doc nodded and gave me a grandfatherly pat. “I’ll be going, then. Pharmacy closes at noon on Saturdays. I’ll drop your medicine by later and set it on your desk. Mind my advice to rest in the meantime, and you’ll be fine. Zach too. Just make sure he covers up next time before throwing that right hook.”

“Won’t be a next time,” Kate said.

The doctor laughed, thinking Kate should know better. “The boy’s a Barnett, Kate.”

He shuffled his aging frame away to the door and paused to remind me to take it easy. Kate smiled and promised I would. She waited for the faint click of the latch before her grin disappeared.

“Tell me what happened, Jake. What really happened. There’s no one here but me now.”

“Just what I said,” is what I told her, but Kate wasn’t convinced because I couldn’t look her in the eyes.

“Then why are your clothes so dirty?”

I looked down and flicked a bit of dried mud from the leg of my jeans. Picked up my hat. Studied my boots. In the end I couldn’t lie. I’d done that enough over the years, and in a way that had made me more tired than Phillip ever could.

“I went to see Jenny,” I said.

“Jacob Barnett, are you serious? Is this so you can sleep?”

“Just supporting the local economy.” I smiled. Kate didn’t. “I don’t know what else to do, Kate.”

“Doc March is getting you more pills. Why don’t you go talk to Preacher Goggins again?”

“Pills and praying don’t work. I’ve tried both.”

Kate reached down and took my hands. When she spoke, there was a pleading in her eyes. “Well, how about you talk
to me about it, then? We’ve always shared everything, Jake. Good and bad. Why are you keeping this from me? What are you dreaming about?”

Butterflies. White ones.

“What about them?”

I looked at her, my eyes widening in one blink and narrowing in the next. I thought I’d spoken those words to myself, but Kate must have heard them. I shook my head and told myself that I was a good man for holding my silence. Because telling Kate of my dreams would only lead her to Phillip, and that was someone I wanted to keep as far from her as I could. Kate had spent too many years trying to get her distance.

I said the one thing I thought would steer our talk into a more favorable direction—“Zach called, said you went for a name”—but wasn’t sure if it would work. For a moment it didn’t. Kate didn’t waver. Then, slowly, she did.

“Her name’s Lucy Seekins. Her and her daddy bought the Kingman house.”

“I remember hearing that someone bought that old place,” I said. “Don’t think I know them.”

“I visited her. Not really what I normally do, I know, but then Lucy isn’t the sort of person I normally help either. She’s rich, Jake. Not much I can do for rich folk. But Timmy wanted me to go, and she’s hurting, so I wrote her name down.”

“Well, good then.”

From the open back door came the soft thunking sound of Bessie against the wooden target I’d built long ago. It was regular, soothing.

“Dandelions,” Kate said.

“Mmm?”

“Your butterflies. Maybe they scare you like dandelions scare me.”

“Maybe so. Why is that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Just one of those silly things, I guess.”

Kate said no more of Lucy Seekins, nor did I say anything of Zach answering the phone when Justus called. That still angered me, but I understood why Kate had to go down to the Texaco that morning and why she had to go alone. I understood that more than anyone.

She kissed the sweat from my lips. I squeezed her hand and smiled,
Nothing to see here
. Kate smiled back,
I know better
, and yet she asked no more. I loved her for it. We’d always shared everything, yes. But we both believed the real glue that held two people together was often the things that went unsaid.

8

The great battle that often raged in Lucy Seekins’s mind was whether it was worse to have a dead mother or a father who was never home. Most times that answer depended upon whoever happened to be closer at the time.

Her father had been in China for the last five weeks. On business, of course. Always that. A start-up or a shutdown, a merger or an acquisition. Lucy didn’t know which because she cared for neither. All that mattered was that he was on the other side of the world and she was in backwater Virginia alone. In those times she missed her father most.

But when Lucy looked at herself in the mirror as she did now, she missed her mother more—longed for those small things they would never do together. Things like showing Lucy how to keep her hair nice and how to paint her nails.
What to say to a boy to make him love her. Lucy had been forced to learn these things on her own, and it had been a hard education.

That was Lucy’s answer, then, at least for now—it hurt more to not have a mother at all than to have a father some.

The small digital clock by the sink gave notice that her father was already twenty minutes late, which meant it would only be an hour or so before he left again. He’d called from the airport to say the China thing had gone well but the Atlanta thing had not; someone there had jumbled something, flipped a switch instead of pushing a button maybe, and The Boys were sending him down there that evening. That’s what Lucy’s father called his bosses—The Boys. Lucy imagined them as pinstripe-suited old men who lit fat cigars with twenty-dollar bills and golfed at the country club when they were not moving her father around the world like a pawn on a chessboard. Yet he loved them, even if Lucy did not. To her that was one more shaky bridge over yet another yawning gulf between them.