The Curse of Crow Hollow (19 page)

“I didn't have any of that in mind, Constable. I promise that.”

Bucky moved past the preacher and sat at the end of the back pew and closed his eyes. The wood squeaked as his weight settled.

“Don't matter what you had in mind, Reverend. It's what
is.
That's what we all got to worry about now. My girl's sick. Cordelia's hurting, just like Naomi. Lots of kids hurting now. Shoot, just about everybody's daughter old enough to know what's happening has something wrong with them. Homer called me this morning. Cut me from my job.”

“Homer let you go?”

“Thought I might go out today, try to scare up some work. Let people know I'm available, you know? If anything comes up.” He looked at the preacher. “Maybe you can put it on a prayer chain. Everybody'd know then.”

David flashed a bit of anger that turned to embarrassment when he saw the look in Bucky's eyes. It was a pleading there, nothing more. I don't think Bucky even realized what he'd said, much less how it could have been taken in an unkind way.

“I told Raleigh it was all Alvaretta's doing,” he said. “And I made sure he knew that. People had to know. You understand that, don't you? We couldn't keep something like that a secret, Bucky. Town had a right. I had no idea it'd get turned around on the kids.”

“I don't know about the town having a right. All I know's Wilson was trying to protect them.”

“And so am I,” the preacher said. “This is more than the witch we're dealing with here. There's what we've done to let the witch continue on free and unfettered, too.”

“I wouldn't call being holed up on Campbell's Mountain being free, David.”

“She's free enough to lay a curse on the town.”

“Maybe,” Bucky told him. “
Maybe
, Reverend. But I was up to the doc's yesterday, and he says Alvaretta's done nothing to the kids at all. Calls it some kinda insanity. But I don't even think that matters, because you got this whole town ready to string up our daughters. You got everybody thinking Alvaretta
Graves is gonna ride through here any minute and lay waste, and that's the thing we was all trying to avoid.”

“Doc Sullivan ain't even from around here. He don't know. Things is different in the Holler. You think it's insanity? You really think that, Bucky? You tell me: Cordy crazy? Huh? Naomi? Scarlett? Hays? Or was it Alvaretta drew them there instead, meaning to hurt us all?”

Bucky wouldn't answer. I'd say that was answer enough, at least for the preacher.

“I know what I promised up at the hospital, Bucky. But I answer to a higher authority, and God told me otherwise. Alvaretta's
marked
us. We thought it'd be okay if she kept to her holler and we kept to town, but it wasn't enough. Light and dark can't mix, Constable. Sooner or later, one of them must yield to the other. We let it go when Wally Cork turned up dead. Didn't do anything when the crops failed. We did the same when all the work dried up and left. But this is our
children
, and the only reason it's gotten this far is because we've lapsed. In our faith, and in our deeds. I know you want to keep the town safe. I want the same. Only difference is you and Wilson think keeping everybody safe means shadowing them with ignorance, and I know it's the truth that'll set us free. Only that.”

“What's that mean?” Bucky asked. “The truth?”

On that, the preacher fell quiet.

“I was over at Wilson's a bit ago,” Bucky said. “He's all fired up over what you did, but he said he can't blame you. Said something about fear making people do things they wouldn't normally.” He paused, considering his next words. “Almost like he was saying you knew a little more about all this than you're letting on, Reverend.”

“Know?” the Reverend asked. “I
helped,
Bucky. God help me I did, then and now. I keep my mouth shut on the vile things Chessie does because of the agreement the mayor talked
me into making. For every warning I utter from the pulpit over Wilson's handling of this town, I hold my peace for two. But I ache in my memories for what we did.”

“Who's ‘we'?” Bucky asked. “You and Wilson?”

“I tell myself the man I was is dead. Dead and raised again. We built this town, Wilson and me. Poured our sweat and tears into it. And then I see my Naomi and the way she is now, and I think it's all gonna get taken away.” He was blubbering now, and not ashamed of it. “Alvaretta took my
boy
, Bucky. Something happened to John David. Everybody thinks it was the war, but sometimes I wonder. You ever think Wally Cork wasn't the only person Alvaretta got? Not just the crops and the jobs and him, but others? Like my boy? Ask the mayor if he ever thinks on that.” And what the Reverend said last was the thing that chilled Bucky like a wind:

“You ask if he ever wonders where Tonya's cancer came from.”

-7-

It's hard to say what all was on Bucky's mind when he finally left the church. The Reverend walked him out, saying how sorry he was for showing such emotion. The pressure, he kept telling Bucky. Just so much going on and so many people hurting, and sometimes even men and women of the Lord had to break down and have themselves a good cry. Bucky said that was okay, he'd shed more than a few tears these last days himself.

What was plain as he watched those church doors close (after promising the Reverend what all had been said would remain between the two of them) was job hunting would have to wait. Mayor had been right—there was a lot for Bucky to do now. Constabling was never hard work in a place like this,
friend. You get your occasional vandals and every once in a while a farmer'd call saying somebody'd stolen some cows, but that's about it. People here relied on their own selves to settle any differences. Sometimes that meant words and other times that meant fists, but that's how it'd always been. Wasn't no need for any serious lawman, which was why the closest thing we allowed was a part-time constable. But Bucky? Part-time or not, he was on to something.

He stood there a minute, pondering things. Bucky could see all of Crow Holler from that spot atop the church steps, or at least what parts mattered. Mitchell's Exxon was nothing more than a pile of rust and rot jutting up from the dusty ground. No C
LOSED
sign had been hooked on the door, but neither had Joe propped open the entrance. Wilson's T-bird and Bucky's Celebrity were the only cars other than the Ramsays' anywhere near the church or council building. Wasn't nobody down to the grocery, either. The only movement he saw at all came from just across the way, so that's where he headed. He'd woke up intending to see Medric, and now seemed a good enough time.

He took the steps down and covered the lot, paused to look both ways before crossing the deserted road. Medric was in back. Bucky could hear him but saw only glimpses through the bushes that grew along the property's edge—a flash of Medric's thick black arms and a bit of his shirt, the brim of the straw hat he wore when he meant to be out in the sun for long. Something metallic shuffled. Bucky cleared his throat and went on around.

It was paint cans he'd heard. Dozen of them, in various states—white for the fence, brown for the doors, a light gray for the parlor's wood siding. Medric looked up and flinched.

Bucky lifted his hands and blushed. “Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you, Medric.”

“What you doing sneaking around here, Buck?”

“Wasn't sneaking. I was over to the church, heard you out here. Fixing to do a little sprucing up?”

“Getting ready,” Medric said, though not for what.

“Uh-huh. Well, I wanted to come by. Ask you about what happened yesterday? I'd like to investigate things. Might be able to turn something up.”

Medric stacked another can of paint and pointed into the small backyard where a shed stood. “There it is,” he said. “Go have yourself a look if you want.”

Bucky took a few steps and stopped when he met the smell, rancid flesh and rotting fur. The raccoon's innards had dried and shriveled, leaving it nearly flat. Its jaws were wedged open in a look of rage at whatever run it over. Ants marched in and out a the hole where the nail had gone through and into the door.

“You should bury that, Medric. Or I can take it, if you want.”

“Why you want it? You gonna dust fingerprints?” Medric smiled a little, but it was a sad one. “Run it through some contraption like they do on the NCIS?”

“No. I ain't got anything like that.”

“Then let it rot. I want the whole town to get a good whiff. Carry the stench in their noses so they can smell it in their dreams.”

“You keep the note?”

“Nope.” He piddled around a little and said, “Guess you'll want to talk about that key.”

“Guess so, while I'm here. You know folks'll ask, way you and Hays got a friendship. You give him the key to the mines?”

“I gotta answer that, Buck? You so in doubt you got to hear me say it outright?” Medric chuckled. “Something bad happens, it's the black man always gets it first.”

“Gets what?”

“Blame.”

“It ain't like that. Blame's shared, Medric. We all got vandalized.”

“Not the preacher.”

That was true enough. But, “Least you didn't get beat on like Scarlett did.”

“And I mean to make sure that don't happen,” Medric said. “It'll come though, Buck. You mark it. They'll try. Wilson don't get a hold on things, there'll be blood.”

“Won't come to that.”

“Won't?” Medric laughed. He set his stick aside and brought out an old brush from his pocket. In the tall elm that draped over the parlor's backyard, a crow called. “Let me ask you this, Bucky. Mayor told you yet to get on up to Campbell's Mountain and get the key to the mines? He tell you what to do with it after?”

Bucky didn't answer.

“Course he did. I get robbed—I get a
crime
committed against me—I'm the one turns up guilty.” Medric shook his head. “I'm fifty-eight come fall, Buck. Been in this town my whole life, buried more dead'n I know. I go out my way to be left alone, I get a coon nailed to my door and a sign underneath for my trouble. You know what that sign said? Know what they called me?”

“I heard,” Bucky said.

“You ask me bout all this? I say people here's finally getting as they've always given. Been a long time coming, and I'm just gonna sit back and watch it. I hope Alvaretta and her demon gets them all.”

“Don't you say such a thing, Medric. We're a town. These are your neighbors.”

“Like Alvaretta's your neighbor?” He laughed. “People here's
no different than they are anywhere else. Only neighbors in this town's the ones who look and act the same as the rest. Leaves me and Alvaretta out, don't it?”

He stared at Bucky, daring him to say more. I guess Bucky didn't see that glare for what it was.

“You said at the hospital Alvaretta ain't no witch. Now you're telling me she is? Which is it, Medric? You know something I don't?”

I'll let you in on something, friend—very likely that answer was yes, quite a bit. But Medric just stuck his brush down into the can and turned his back, slathering paint on that door. Weren't no raccoon guts there or anything, just a swirl where Medric had scrubbed and a spackled hole where the nail had gone.

“Best you get on, Buck. I got work.”

Bucky stood there a minute and then decided their conversation was done. At the gate he turned and asked, “You buried Stu Graves, didn't you?”

“I did.”

“Spend much time with Alvaretta? You know, planning the burial and all that?”

“Spend time with all my customers.”

“Sad thing, something like that. Woman left all alone. Might have occasion to open up to somebody. I'm just thinking out loud, Medric. Trying to figure things. But you know, seems like close to everybody in the Holler's had a tough time of it since then. Some would say all but maybe you.”

Medric stilled his brush. “People always dyin',” he said. “Fosters and Bickfords seem to do all right. Or you not see that? Or maybe reason I'm okay's cause the Lord's black.”

Bucky didn't answer that, making Medric chuckle.

“I'll see you, Buck,” he said, then went back to the door.

-8-

In a lot of ways, the Foster home was every bit what the Vest home wasn't. Big and roomy with bricked walls instead of faded old siding, and when the wind blew there was no risk of the whole thing flopping over on its side. But there were other differences too. Like the way everything inside there always sounded so quiet and lifeless, or Cordelia always ended up walking around there with her arms folded across her chest, as though there were a constant draft soft enough to chill her but that she never really felt.

She was on the edge of Hays's bed that morning, arms crossed as usual, staring at the hole in his window. He'd taken down the trash bag Landis had put up the afternoon before to show her what remained. The last ten minutes had been him trying to explain how the form staring back at them was like a puzzle in reverse—a picture not of pieces put together but pieces taken away. Those jagged lines of glass, the wide pieces left at the sides and the slivers at the top and bottom, had created the clear face of a monster's hungry smile.

“I dun't fee it,” Cordelia said. “It'f . . .
j—
ust a hole.”

But Hays only shook his head. He stared out the window, past that grinning monster to the woods across the street. Only one other house stood in view on that stretch of road, and that was Joe and Ruth Mitchell's little ranch on down the way. Wasn't a soul there now. Both Joe's truck and Ruth's car were gone from the driveway. Which was strange because something was moving around in their backyard.