The Devil Walks in Mattingly (7 page)

Her brush moved in smooth, practiced strokes from the top of her head down to the right. The result was typical—good but not great, all Lucy could do. Her father would like it, though. He always did.
You have your mother’s hair
, he’d always say, and then Lucy would grin and he would call her Smiles because that’s what he’d called the woman he buried eighteen years before.

She ran a hand through her hair once more and caught a whiff of Johnny’s cologne. The scent was not unlike antifreeze—old and cloying, something no doubt swiped from his father’s medicine cabinet—and yet the sensation gave Lucy a shiver of ecstasy. She closed her eyes and felt Johnny’s closeness once more, remembered the way he’d loved her. He had not said those words exactly. None of them ever did. But Lucy
had discovered early on (and without her mother’s help) that boys covered their hearts well. They liked to play their games, pretend they were men. But they always became animals when there was nothing but skin and breath, and that was when they said anything Lucy wanted. There was a great power in that, so much so that she often reveled more in the feeling of that power than in the act itself. It rekindled an ember long snuffed. Lucy supposed that was why the boys always said they loved her. Inhibition had never been a problem for her. She did not mind baring herself. Fate had brought her into the world stripped of what it gave other children; naked she’d remained.

Another glance at the clock—half an hour late now, and in this the constant pendulum inside her swayed once more, this time back to her father. Moved there by the sudden notion that being without someone hurt more when one knew the person who was missing. Her father was a hard man gone spoiled by the turns his life had taken. What goodness had remained in him since Lucy’s mother died lay starved and shriveled, but he had provided.

Lucy curled the ends of her hair and winced at the split ends she found. She picked up a small pair of scissors next to the brush and trimmed carefully, not wanting to damage the one thing her mother had left behind. The blades worked open and closed in soft snips. She heard the front door open, followed by a long pause and her name being called.

“Coming,” she said to the mirror, and there was a wide beam upon her face. She laid the scissors down and leaned in for one last look, hearing but not remembering the faint pop of the piece of paper in her pocket as it brushed against the sink.

She left the bathroom and bounded down the stairs two at a time. Her father stood in the middle of the living room, hands behind his ample back, looking as though the world had pressed
down on him so long that the only choice he had was to grow out. Lucy hugged him as tight and long as she had all the times before. She kept him close, still believing in that little-girl way that her father couldn’t leave again as long as she held on.

One arm came around her back and rested lightly there. The other remained clenched into a fist just inside Lucy’s hands. Her nose filled with the stale scents of airline seats and rental cars woven into his suit. There, too, was a heavy reek of alcohol. He never drank on his trips away, so he said and so Lucy believed. Which meant the only time he needed to be drunk was when he was home. With her. Lucy’s hug weakened only a little at that smell. His hand guided her away.

“Hi, Dad,” she said. “It’s about time you got here.”

He looked at her, face covered with what looked like dark clouds, and said, “Hello, Lucy.”

Only that. No
Hey, Smiles
or,
I’m so glad I’m home, Smiles
. He just stood there in the middle of the room, hand still behind his back, jowls quivering.

“I don’t have long,” he said. “Flight to Atlanta leaves in a couple hours. Thought you might need some money for groceries and gas, though.”

Something was wrong. That much was plain. And Lucy could not escape the feeling that for whatever reason, that something was her.

“I think I might take some time off when I get back,” he said. “That sound good to you, Lucy?”

Again—
Lucy.

“Sure,” she said. “That sounds great.”

“Really? You don’t think me being around will put a damper on your social life?”

Lucy smiled and said, “I don’t have much of a social life, Dad. I have to keep the house, remember?”

“Oh. Right.” He looked around the living room and nodded. “Looks fine. Clean up this morning?”

“Sure.”

“Vacuum?”

“Yes.”

“You missed this.”

He brought the hand from behind his back. Lucy’s eyes barely had time to register the small plastic square hurtling toward her. She flinched when one of its corners hit her in the cheek. She looked down at the carpet. Three shiny words written in bold blue stared up at her.

Safe and
Effective!

Hot air filled the room, breaking Lucy into a sweat so complete that it made her toes curl. They were both silent—him waiting, Lucy trying to will the wrapper at her feet into the ether. A low crack shuddered through the walls. For not the first time, Lucy wished the house would fall down upon them both.

“Who is he?” her father asked.

Lucy shook her head and tried to speak, but all she could manage

(Safe and Effective!
She thought,
Very effective, oh yes, but not safe)

was a long string of syllables and half words.

The dark clouds on her father’s face swirled, cutting her off. He roared, “
Tell me who he IS
.”

“Johnny,” she cried. “His name is Johnny.” And then, as though it would make any difference at all, she added, “He loves me.”

Her father moved forward in a rush. Lucy retreated until her back met the cold living room wall. The hands she had wrapped around him in love just moments before were now raised to fend off his anger.

“How could you do this, Lucy?” he boomed. “What would your mother say?”

She almost said,
I don’t know, Dad, how could I, she never told me anything and you don’t tell me anything and please call me Smiles because don’t you understand I’m naked?
But then Lucy saw in a moment of perfect clarity that the man in front of her wouldn’t understand at all. Not because he was never there or because he had no idea how to raise a girl on his own, but because he was just as bare. He was a man hollowed out by the sudden turns of his life, forever running away under the guise of his job so he could be spared from contemplating what he’d lost.

“You’re drunk,” Lucy told him. “I think that’s what my mother would say.”

The anger in his eyes flamed, then fell. He moved slowly and eased Lucy against the wall, embracing her in breath that was neither beer nor liquor but something other. He said it was his fault for not being there and her mother’s for leaving so soon. Lucy waited for him to include her own guilt in the fracturing of what their family could have been, but no blame was given. She felt his large body pressing against her and thought at least there was that. And when Lucy’s father said he couldn’t quit drinking and didn’t know why, Lucy knew for him. He had fallen into alcohol for the same reason she had fallen into boys—because such things hid the smallness inside them. And they both stank for it.

He loosened his hold and took in Lucy with sodden eyes. Ran his fingers through the strands of her dark hair. She met his gaze and saw in her father a sadness and a longing that tilted the pendulum back to her mother with such force that Lucy feared it would never sway back.

“Your mother had hair just like this,” he said, the last words
slurring into
juzzlitethizz
. “I loved her hair. Used to stroke it every night. I think I miss that the most.” He held her again. “I miss her more now. Do you know why, Lucy?”

She shook her head.

“Because now I know you’ll never be like her.”

Her tears came in long sobs that stained the front of her father’s shirt. He held Lucy as long as he could bear and then released her. He walked to the coffee table and laid down fifty dollars and whatever silver he carried in his pocket. On the way back, he stepped onto the wrapper. It made a crinkling sound that turned Lucy’s stomach.

“I think it’s time we talk about sending you away,” he said. “Somewhere you’ll have some supervision. I thought I could trust you, but I can’t.” He moved to the door and opened it, pausing with one foot on the porch and the other in the foyer, half in Lucy’s life and half out. “I know there’s only a couple months of school left, Lucy. And I know you’re of age. But I’m still your father, and you will still obey me. If not?” He paused. “Well, I guess if you want to act like an adult, I’ll have to treat you as one. That means you’ll be responsible for your own home and your own money. College included. You will not see that boy again, Lucy. You make sure of it or I will.”

Lucy huddled against the wall long after her father had gone. It was just her and the creaking walls.

9

For the first time that day (for the first time in weeks), I felt relaxed. Evening air rushed through the truck, drowning me in the outside and drowning out Zach’s warbling from the backseat.
Kate was on the phone with Timmy. Her notebook lay open across her lap, the pages pinned down by her right hand.

She’d been speaking of Lucy before Timmy called. I’d nodded in all the right places and said all the right things, more than happy to discuss Kate’s newest name if it kept conversation well away from my dreams. That pretending didn’t feel right. Felt, really, like another lie. I’d done that a lot to Kate in the years we’d known each other, which practically meant our entire lives. I told myself it wasn’t so much a slew of falsehoods as it was the continuation of one—like legs extending out from the same hairy spider—but that notion offered little comfort.

“Jake’s got a call,” Kate said into the phone. “It’s almost eight, Timmy. Nobody’s gonna come in there this time of night on a Saturday. Close up and come on as soon as you can. Joey and Frankie will be there.” She grinned, said, “Good, love you,” then switched to the other line. “Hello?”

I took my eyes from the road long enough to see the color drain from her face. Kate’s back stiffened against the seat, allowing the wind to tousle her hair. Zach kept to his singing in the backseat (something by Brad Paisley, I think, but maybe not), sweetly oblivious to the storm about to gather.

“Don’t call,” Kate said. That and nothing more. But it was the way she slapped the phone closed rather than those two words that turned my head again.

“Who was that?” I asked.

Her mouth moved and sputtered as though searching for what to say—a name, any name, would do. None came but the truth: “Justus.”

My hand gripped the wheel. My shoulders tightened. Kate opened the phone again. She checked the number Justus had used and said she didn’t recognize it. One of those prepaid cell phones, I guessed.

“How did he get hold of your cell number, Jake? He’s always just called the office.”

“He’s got a lot of friends left in town, Kate. You know that.” I considered leaving it at that, but didn’t. I’m still not sure if that decision arose from the small bowl of wisdom inside me or the large reservoir of exhaustion. “He called the office this morning. Zach answered.”

It was subtle (I thought perhaps a little too subtle), but I hoped Kate would hear the admonishment underneath—
If you’d been at the office watching our boy rather than out putting another name in your book, Zach wouldn’t have had to do that.

“What’d he want?” she asked.

“What’s he ever want?”

Kate shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. The wind tousled it again. “How can you arrest him when you don’t even know where he is? That man hasn’t set foot in town for seven years.”

“He’s up in Crawford’s Gap,” I said. That was a truth my weariness made me forget to keep silent. That was another symptom since the nightmares began, one that Doc March had forgotten to mention alongside the loss of weight and the depression: all those things I’d kept unsaid trickled out through the cracks worn into me. “Don’t know where exactly, but he knows I can find him if I want. That’s why he calls.”

The disappointment on Kate’s face was plain even through the long shadows of the trees across her face. “How long’ve you known where he is?”

I shrugged. “While now.”

“So you won’t find him.”

It wasn’t a question, what Kate said. It was a statement. And though it pained me, I knew she was right.

“I won’t,” I said.

Zach squealed from the backseat. I looked through the mirror and saw him rubbing his arm, the victim of a wayward bug.

“I’m sorry he called,” Kate said. “Really sorry, Jake. That’s just one more thing you don’t need right now.”

“I’d really rather not talk about it, Kate.”

But I knew we would, and I knew the reason why. Justus was a problem to fix, maybe one even bigger than what I’d been dreaming about, and Kate fancied herself a fixer of problems—out to right wobbly lives one name at a time in the hopes that it might right her own. I eased down on the gas. The sooner we got to Peter and Abigail’s, the sooner Justus could be set aside.

From the back Zach said, “Hey, Daddy, lookit what flew in here.”

Kate said, “Not talking about Justus won’t make him go away. I know what a bad place he put you in, Jake. I begrudge him for that just as much as you do. But he did what he thought was right. You might not think so, I might not think so, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in town who’d blame him. Other than Mayor Wallis, maybe.”

“What kind of town do we live in if everybody takes up for a man who shot three innocents just out to do their job?” I asked. “He could’ve killed them, Kate.”

“But he didn’t.”

“And that matters?”

Kate shook her head.

“See, Daddy?” Zach asked.

A truck approached around the next corner. It swerved a bit, first toward the center line and then to the white of the shoulder. Gray smoke billowed from the busted tailpipe. As our vehicles neared, I could see two men.

Zach tried once more to get my attention—“Daddy,
see
?”

“What, Zach?”

I looked into the mirror. Zach held up one small hand as my body went slack. Pinched between his thumb and forefinger was a dead white butterfly, its wings flapping