The Curse of Crow Hollow (45 page)

Wilson's eyes fluttered open to see Scarlett bent over him. There was agony and shame in his face. He kept muttering something about Stu. Belle and Naomi stood like islands in the middle of the church, not sure what to do. John David looked at his father and asked the one question his momma and little sister were afraid to ask.

“It true, what Chessie said?”

The Reverend didn't answer.

“You're coming with me,” John David said. “I ain't letting you out of my sight.” He walked up the center aisle past Belle and Naomi, leaving his father to follow like a lost puppy. John David met Bucky halfway up the aisle, where a black spot had been left in the floor. “Come on,” he said. “Town needs us.”

By then the Holy Fire had turned from a place of worship to a place of fear. The whole church smelled of sulfur and sweat. I don't believe Bucky wanted to follow John David out there at all. I think he'd got the feeling that whatever waited outside was something horrible beyond his reckoning—Stu Graves, maybe, or Alvaretta herself. But Angela and Cordelia were somewhere out there, too, and maybe they were both in danger, and that's what made Bucky take that slow trip to the doors in the end. He caught up with John David and skipped his feet to get in front of him and the Reverend.

“Excuse me,” he whispered as he moved aside those in his way. “Pardon me, let me through please, watch your foot,” until he reached the open doors and stepped out.

Fifteen men were gathered in a circle around the church, all done up in white robes and hoods. Each man held a gun in one hand and a flaming torch in the other. Across the street beside the church, a wooden cross burned in front of the funeral home. More men stood there, guarding the fire like it was a holy thing.

“What's this?” Bucky asked.

“Judgment,” one of the hooded men said. He stepped out from his place in the circle and made himself the center.

John David stepped forward. He said, “Mask can hide your face, but it don't hide your voice. Take that thing off and talk like a man, Raleigh Jennings.”

“Raleigh?” the Reverend asked. It was his first word as a fallen man whose sin lay exposed to the world. Gone was David
Ramsay's confident manner. He spoke for God no more, only himself, and that voice sounded as frail as a child's. “Raleigh, that you?”

The man carried a gun but no torch, at least no longer. The one he'd come with had been thrown through the church doors only minutes before. He used his free hand to pull the hood up from his face, bringing a cry from the people who could see.

Bucky took a step down, like that much distance closer would prove the man he saw wasn't Raleigh, but someone who looked just like him. “Raleigh, what you doing?”

“What needs done. I want Medric, Bucky. You get him out here right now.”

“Why?”

“Because he killed my wife,” another man said. And since saying it dispensed with all question of who that man was, Joe Mitchell took his hood off as well. “Medric shot my Ruth. He left me a widower and my Chelsea and Little Joe without a momma.”

“How you know that?” Bucky asked.

“Hays Foster told us,” Raleigh said. “The boy witnessed it himself.”

A voice somewhere inside the church said, “Hays?” Landis pushed his way out onto the steps. “You've seen Hays, Raleigh?”

“Seen him this morning, running from Wilson.”

“From Wilson?” Bucky asked.

“Mayor knows the truth. I'll need him out here too, Bucky. There'll be no judgment. Judgment's past. Landis? You hear me? You want to see your boy again, you bring'm both to me. You don't, we got gas spread whole way around the church. I'll light it, and I won't think twice.”

“You wouldn't dare,” the Reverend said. “Raleigh, this is the house of God.”

“It's a haven for the guilty and the dead,” Raleigh told him.
“Your life worth less than a murderer's, Preacher? Do you count yourself a poorer soul than a liar who wants nothing more than keep an iron grip on this town?”

A few inside the foyer decided they'd had enough of church for one night. They tried coming past John David and Bucky down the steps. Raleigh's men leveled their guns, stopping them.

“Anybody tries to leave before I get Medric and Wilson,” Raleigh said, “they die first. Your call, Buck.”

David said, “Raleigh, you can't—”

“I can. I will.”

Bucky leaned toward John David. “What do I do?”

“They're armed, Buck. We're not. Raleigh's not kidding.”

“I know that. What do I do? You ain't got a gun?”

“Don't like guns.”

“Time's up,” Raleigh said. He motioned for one of the men closest to the church, who lowered the torch in his hand.

“Wait,” the Reverend said. “Raleigh, just . . .
wait
. I'll bring them out.”

“You can't do that, David,” Bucky said. He looked around for someone to say the same. No one did.

“I'll bring them out,” the preacher said again.

-5-

If there remained a single blessing in what David Ramsay did next, it was that hardly anybody remained at the front of the church. Belle, Naomi, Scarlett, Briar, Wilson, Medric, and Chessie. That's all. Everybody else had crowded at the doors, trying to figure out how they were going to get out of church that night without ending up in glory. And yet I imagine it felt a hard thing, what David had to do. Yessir, a hard thing indeed.

He come back down the aisle with all but Medric and Wilson
watching. You could see the Reverend's lips moving—trying to remember how to pray, I guess, wondering if such a man as he would even warrant the Lord's attention. All those years up there behind that pulpit telling folk how they should live, when all the time he'd been a liar to his family and his town and to his own self especially. Stu's blood had never been on Wilson alone. It had stained David Ramsay plenty too. And so there he was, forced to make the impossible decision of saving one man or saving them all. Up the stage he went, and I have no doubt every step felt harder than the next. Medric looked up with sad eyes, but the Reverend didn't stop. David walked right on past him instead and knelt in front of Chessie.

“You have to do something.”

“What say?” Chessie asked.

“Raleigh's out there with a bunch of men. They're armed. He wants Medric and Wilson, and if he don't get them, they're going to burn the church.”

Briar started to rise. He met Chessie's stare and sat again. Wilson took hold of the arm Scarlett had placed around his neck and stood on two feet made of sand. The place where Stu had looked down from the loft now stood empty.

“Medric,” the Reverend said, “Raleigh's telling us you were the one who shot Ruth. That true?”

I would imagine that man's back hurt something fierce by then, having been bent over for such a long while. Medric rubbed his hands over his eyes and gave a heavy sigh full of tears. “Didn't mean to do it,” he said. “I swear I didn't, David. I thought she was Stu come to get me.”

“What's he want me for?” Wilson asked.

Reverend said, “Says you have to pay for your sins.” And then to Chessie, “Bucky needs help out there.
My son
needs help out there.”

Chessie looked at him. “You come to me, Preacher, when
times call for a hard hand? You ask a Hodge for aid when you say we ruined this town?”

“I will not turn Medric and Wilson over to them. Raleigh'll kill them both. He'll kill more if anybody gets in his way.”

“And what of you, David Ramsay? Will you kill again as you killed Stu Graves?”

“That was a long time ago,” David whispered. “I've suffered and made amends.”

“Ha! Amends. You've made amends to nobody, David Ramsay. You preach, that's all you do. You use your words and call that faith. You call me hell bound and yourself a saint. What you need is what you say I lack. Humility.”

“Time's running out, Chessie.”

“It'll wait.”

“No, it won't,” Medric said. “Can't let y'all suffer on my account. I'm tired, Reverend. Chessie, I'm just tired. Of everything. If it's you or me, it'll be me.”

He stood and made for the center aisle. No one stopped him, nor did Scarlett move when her daddy followed behind.

David watched them and turned back to Chessie. “I don't care if you hate me, Chessie. Just don't punish those two men because of me.”

Chessie moved the bowl and pitcher beside her chair to in front of it, between her and the preacher. Out came the torch John David had shoved inside. Chessie laid it on the towel and began, “ ‘If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.' ” She removed her boots and socks, setting them aside. “ ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.' ” And then that woman smiled. “ ‘If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.' ”

You ask me if David Ramsay bent to his knees and dipped Chessie's feet in that water. Ask me if he put his hands to that calloused skin, brown with dirt and sticky with sweat, and cleaned the bunions that pocked Chessie's heels and the long nails at the ends of her toes. Ask me if the one everyone considered the holiest man in Crow Holler washed the feet of the one considered the town's most sinful woman outside of Alvaretta Graves herself. I'll tell you yes, friend.

I've heard tell it's a humbling thing, a foot washing service. Never been to one myself. Those who have say it borders a holy thing, though it's hard to endure. Not for the one doing the washing, though. The one being washed. I suppose that makes some sense. You being so grown, friend, imagine this—imagine washing your momma's feet. You get that picture? Ain't too bad really, is it? Now imagine your momma washing yours. That's what I'm talking about. Humbling. But you know what? It was the other way around up there on the stage of the Holy Fire that night. Chessie Hodge looked to be enjoying her time just fine, even if the world outside stood ready to burn. But David Ramsay? Friend, that man sobbed through it all.

-6-

It's hard to say what Medric thought as he walked to those doors. What's in a man's mind when he knows he's about to cast off from this world? I may know some of that, if I'm honest, friend. Way things are in the Holler now, I may know indeed. But I've no idea when it comes to Medric Johnston. All I know is Wilson trailed behind whispering this was the end of things, and Medric never said a word otherwise.

The crowd parted like them two'd caught a disease spread by simple nearness. Medric stepped out first. He took in
the contempt on Raleigh's face and the hurting rage on Joe Mitchell's, but he could dwell on neither of them long. That burning cross in front of the funeral home held all his attention, and how those flames licked the porch's roof. How those cloaked and hooded men raised their pistols and rifles. How those torches burned in the night under that full moon. It was hate Medric felt, that much is sure. But it wasn't so much the hate he felt himself as it was the hate directed at him.

“You stay right here, Medric,” Bucky said. “Don't you move.”

“I appreciate that, Bucky, I truly do. But Raleigh means business this time, and we all know it.”

“More of us than them,” John David said.

“Not with them guns.”

Raleigh lifted his chin. “Get on down here, Medric. Wilson, you too.”

“Don't do this, Raleigh,” Wilson said. “It's the witch we have to fight, not each other.”

“You brought the witch. You and Medric and your girl.”

Medric took the first step down.

Bucky tried stopping him. “This ain't the way.”

“It is, Buck. It's the only way. Raleigh's right. I shot Ruth. Didn't mean to, but that don't matter. I go out there to him, I die. I go back inside, I still die, along with everybody else. I can't do that. You told me we a town. I never believed it, but I guess I do now. So you go on now and let me go. It's what I deserve for killing Ruth and giving Alvaretta what she wanted. Maybe y'all can get out of here and be safe. You do that? You keep everybody safe now.”

He walked off then, down the steps slow and one at a time, in no hurry to meet his end. John David said they had to do something, but I think he had as many ideas as Bucky, and by that I mean zero.

“Wilson,” Raleigh said. “Come on.”

You could smell the gas spread around the church. All it'd take was one of them fifteen men to drop a torch, they'd all be burned alive. Wilson must've known that, because he went on down the steps too and didn't even listen to Bucky's pleading. Medric reached the parking lot first. He waited for Wilson, then they both made their way to Raleigh. Raleigh stepped away like the men in front of him carried a stench.

The pistol in his hand twitched and had started rising up when a voice shouted, “You'll want to hold off on that, Raleigh Jennings.”

Raleigh looked up to see Chessie Hodge pushing her way through the crowd. Briar came along behind and then the preacher, looking like he'd just been squashed like a bug.

Scarlett came out last. She saw what was happening and tried to run down the steps for her daddy. Bucky and John David stopped her.

“I love you, Scarlett,” Wilson said.

Scarlett shook her head—
Please no.

“You turn'm loose, Raleigh,” Chessie said. She came down those steps like she owned them, Briar too, and neither did not so much as flinch at the guns pointed at them. “You turn'm loose or you face my wrath.”

“I'm not your lackey anymore, Chessie,” Raleigh said. “You don't get to order me around. I don't see iron in your hand.” He raised his voice and added, “Can't carry guns in the Lord's house, and I appreciate you making that rule, David,” then lowered and said to Chessie, “That makes you just a plain old woman.” He looked at Medric. “You said your prayer yet?”