The Curse of Crow Hollow (23 page)

-6-

I guess now I come to it, friend. There's gonna be harder parts to this story, I don't doubt that and neither should you, but that don't mean I'm looking forward to saying what comes next. It ain't been easy, me sitting here with you. People catch me telling you all this—people like Bucky or John David or his momma, Belle, who I know's peeking at us through one a the church windows—they'd have a fit. They don't want nobody else to know, you see. Plenty already do, least down in Mattingly and all the other towns dotting these mountains, and that's why they stay away.

Everything that happened up until Bucky sat in that waiting room with Maris? All of it could've unfolded as it did, and things still mighta turned out different. But what I'll tell you now? That's what led to everything else, the stuff with Wilson and Medric and Bucky and all the rest, all of it falling like a line of dominoes some ignorant soul kicked over on accident.

People think they're free in life. Maybe they are for a while. But sooner or later all the choices you make narrow down to a single end, and that's the only end you can meet. After what would happen at the grocery that evening, was but one way it could go for everybody in Crow Holler.

Doc Sullivan took Maris to Foster's just like she'd asked. He said Landis wasn't gonna do anything more'n call for a grocery truck a little earlier than usual, but Maris thought otherwise. “You don't know this town like I do,” she said. “Be just like that man to close a couple days and reopen with prices twice as high as they were.” Well, Maris wasn't gonna fall for that.

Neither would the two friends Maris had called to say what was going on. Course, both Helen Pruitt and Belle Ramsay had close friends too. As did those friends. And even though all of them to a person swore on all that was holy and good not to go and start a panic, that was all a lie. No other way to put it, friend.

It was near four thirty by the time Bucky brought Tully back to his home. Tully's wife, Lorraine (a horrible woman, and if you'd spend a minute with her you'd know how right I am and why Tully drank so much), had pinned a note to the door. Three words were scrawled on the page—D
AISY SLEEPING
STORE!!! Bucky got some ice out of the freezer and a couple aspirin for Tully's hand. Tully thanked Bucky again and said how he'd always liked Scarlett Bickford just fine.

Angela got off at five. Bucky was late getting there, but that didn't matter. The lot at Foster's was so jammed that even people couldn't move around, let alone cars. Horns blowing, voices shouting and cussing. Customers ran out with bags pressed tight to their chests and sides, ready to pounce on any who dared steal what they'd bought honestly. The sun had fallen over the mountains by then. Even in springtime, evening comes to Crow Holler not much past four, casting all this hard part of the world into hours of dim dusk. Bucky parked nearer the Exxon than the grocery and started walking. Those who passed him never said a word. Their eyes were on the store instead, and how quick time could run out.

He found Raleigh Jennings, Joe Mitchell, and Homer Pruitt in a circle at the lot's edge. I don't believe Bucky had any intent to have a chat with the man who'd fired him just that morning, but Homer shouted, “What's going on here, Bucky?” and Bucky felt a need to answer.

“I don't know,” he said. “Just came up here to get Angela.”

Somebody shouted up near the doors. All up there was a tangle of arms and legs.

“Grocery's closing, Buck,” Raleigh said. “That's the word.”

“Grocery ain't closing. Where'd you get such a thing?”

“One I got it from said she got it from Angela.”

“From Angela? No, Raleigh. That can't be right.”

“Looks it to me,” Homer said. “Helen come in earlier and said wasn't much left. Now she's back in there getting what she can.”

Joe Mitchell spoke up: “You heard what happened to Tully, Buck?”

“I did. Took him to the doc's myself. Just got back from there.”

“Who called you?”

“Angela.” They all looked at each other. Bucky couldn't help but say to Homer, “Was my pleasure to give Tully aid, seeing as how I had the free time.”

“Tully say how it happened?” Raleigh asked.

“No, just that he slipped. You know how he is when he's in a bottle.”

“Wasn't a bottle did it,” Raleigh told him. “Tully called me after it happened. I was gonna take him to the clinic myself until he said no. Told me to keep away. Said the grocery wasn't safe.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Joe spat a brown streak of tobacco juice onto the lot. “Go ask your wife,” he said.

“Guess I will.”

Bucky went on toward the front of the store. People came out of the grocery with whatever they'd had the chance to grab. Not just food and drink, but tubes of toothpaste, boxes of detergent, cans of dog food, mops, buckets. Anything Landis had to sell had taken on a lusty sheen of need in the town's eyes. There came David and Belle trying to get inside and the mayor jogging from his truck. Everybody, friend. Everybody was there.

Bucky turned when he heard his name. John David Ramsay waved his arms and ran toward him.

“Get in there,” he yelled.
“Go.”

“What you doing, John David?”

He grabbed Bucky's collar, pulling him along. “We got to get inside right now.”

Bucky tried planting his feet. It didn't work. John David's wiry, but he's strong as an ox.

“Chessie heard there's a run on Foster's,” he said. “My fault.” He cursed. “This is all my fault.”

The doors loomed. Bucky could see Angela at her register. Her hands were moving over the counter in a blur, but it wasn't fast enough. Her hair had gone limp and hung over her eyes. And those people. Lining the aisles and pressing in. The crowd outside was too much, but it was worse inside, and that's when Bucky finally understood what John David had been trying to say.

“Something's gonna happen.”

John David let go when Bucky's feet started moving on their own. They ran side by side to the door. John David started tossing people aside, telling them to back away, make room for the constable. They squeezed through the doors at the same time. Angela looked up but couldn't say a word for all her stress and fear. Her face said enough. Fingers flying over the buttons, trying to shove groceries into bags or letting them pile up wherever the conveyor belt on the counter spit them, ignoring the pleas and threats of those in line demanding that she hurry.

Some didn't wait. Landis ran back and forth along the stretch of floor where the aisles began, begging people to be patient and get only what they needed. Those who avoided him—and there were many—ran straight for the doors with all their goods in tow. Kayann Foster demanded they turn and
pay, screaming it in a panic. I don't reckon Kayann had been told no more in her whole life than she had in the few hours she spent at the front of the grocery that afternoon. But those who got by Kayann now had to deal with John David. Let me tell you, folk were a whole lot more afraid of him than her. Mayor, Belle, and the Reverend had made it through by then. They were shouting, too, telling people to calm down and be orderly. Bucky didn't know what to do and so joined in. Didn't take him long to get the hang of it.

They was all up front, see. Landis and Kayann, Bucky and Angela, Wilson and the Ramsays. They were all trying to get a handle on things from where they were. But not a one of them was toward the back, and that's where the trouble started. The shelves were all but bare by then, everything gone or spilled or broken. But the last of the milk was still up for grabs—a single gallon of 2 percent and a few quarts of skim. Ruth Mitchell had returned with her husband, Joe, as soon as she'd gotten word the grocery might not be open for long (so said Helen Pruitt, who'd gotten it from Maris, who'd gotten it from someone she said “would intimately know if such a thing were true”), grabbing all she could get whether her family needed it or not. Same could be said for Lorraine Wiseman, who'd not only gotten news of Tully's injury, but that Foster's was running out of food. They both reached for that gallon of milk the same time, Lorraine gripping the handle and Ruth the base.

Lorraine looked about ready to say that gallon was hers alone when somebody pushed past for one of the quarts of skim, running her straight into Ruth. Ruth pushed back (everybody always said Ruth Mitchell had a fire to her, Raleigh loved that in a woman), sending Lorraine into an empty stack of soda crates. Those crates tumbled right down onto Homer Pruitt, who'd come in looking for his Helen.

And friend, that's all it took.

Bucky never saw all that happen, but he saw the wave it started. It rolled toward him from the back of the store slow and gathering, a wall of shouts and screams and fists meeting flesh, and by the time it reached the front, that wave crested and tumbled upon them all.

Wilson tried to help but got caught in the throng. He didn't see who hit him. David and Belle were brave enough to keep shouting for calm but not so courageous that they dove into the crowd. John David, though? Guess that boy'd been trained to run toward trouble rather than away, because he got Wilson off the floor before they both got trampled. Landis hollered for everybody to leave when a few hours ago he'd been praying for them all to come in, while Kayann stood pale and motionless. Angela ran from her register screaming Bucky's name.

You think about it, that could've been Bucky's time to shine, the single moment when he rose above. But he eased away from all that pushing and punching instead, overcome by the sight of it all, and no one would've noticed had he not backed into the fire alarm stuck to the wall.

The Klaxon went off like the angel of the Lord blowing his trumpet. Landis screamed
Fire!
and all that did was trade one panic for another. Everybody ran—the ones inside trying to get out, and the ones stuck outside trying to get in—and they all met in a wall at the front doors. Someone picked up a newspaper rack and threw it through the window. Another window broke and then another. Those able crawled for safety over shards that sliced their hands and legs. The siren's wail shifted from loud to unbearable as Bucky clamored past bodies in search of Angela. He found her huddled and crying in the first aisle and grabbed her hand. They ran through Tully's shop and out to the dock, and friend, I don't think either of them started breathing again until they were halfway to the Foster home to get Cordelia.

Everyone else in and around Foster's gathered at the far end of the lot. No one went to their car or truck. Not a soul ran for home. I always thought that a queer thing. Even now, I don't understand it. All them people just standing there, staring back at what remained of Landis Foster's dream and legacy, their fight and anger gone. Those too stunned to cry laid their hands to the backs and heads of those who whimpered, holding them, trying to comfort, asking if any were hurt or still inside. Not a one of them paused to consider how it was that the kind and merciful people they were now could be so different from the violent and hateful people they'd been only minutes before. You ask me how that can be, I have no idea.

You can't figure folk.

-7-

It took awhile for everybody to scatter. When they did, it was with the slow, confused pace of a funeral procession, like they all could understand
how
such a thing had happened but not why. Most shuffled off with their heads hung in shame. Some managed to tell the ones nearest good-bye—ones they'd shoved and beaten and cursed over deodorant and cans of potted meat. A few even had the gall to tell Landis and Kayann they hoped things could be put back together before morning, they still had groceries to get.

Landis went inside long enough to turn off that infernal alarm. He came back in a dead run, looking over his shoulder like he expected another crowd to be chasing him. His chest heaved and his face was drowned in sweat, or tears; now that I think on it, it was probably some of both. What few muscles grew on his body were locked and flexing.

John David bent over Landis and told him to breathe deep,
let his blood settle. Landis kept saying, “It's gone, isn't it, my whole life?” and nobody said a word because they knew it was. Kayann still had her hands over her ears. She didn't pull them away, even when the horn stopped and Belle put her arms around her. Maybe Kayann didn't feel that. I don't think any of them could feel much at all.

The Reverend was still there, too, along with Raleigh and Wilson. Belle turned to David and said, “Naomi's at the house alone.”

“No she isn't,” John David said. He glanced up from Landis. “Briar picked her up a little bit ago.”

The Reverend's eyes flared. “You sent your sister to Chessie?”

“I called Briar little bit ago. Said he'd take her out to the farm and get her settled. Chessie needed to know what happened.”

“Chessie doesn't need to know anything, boy.”

John David straightened his back and took three long steps, putting his chin inches from his daddy's nose. “You don't get to tell me what's wrong and right anymore,” he said. “And don't you call me boy again.”

You ask me, them two would've come to blows right then and there. It'd been building to that point for months. David thinking his boy had strayed from the Lord's path, John David thinking his daddy'd lived too long in the Holler to understand the world beyond lay colored in something other than black and white. But Briar's truck pulled into the lot right then, and that gave them both something other than each other to fret over.

Chessie didn't wait for her husband to walk around and open her door. She got out on her own this time, and in her expression lay both Kayann's shock and Landis's sorrow.

“Where's Naomi?” Belle asked.