I’m not saying it’s a fact.
But one way or another, Heaster Senior ended up with a whole passel of property, and all it took was a few generations to fill it up with the squabbling families that produced me and Titus.
And when the old man died, his holdings went to Heaster Junior.
***
Heaster Junior was 99 years old when he finally passed, or that’s how Titus counted it. It’s a wonder we tend to be such a long-lived bunch, given how little we ever had to eat and how little medicine we ever got. When I think about my own children now, living in good farm country, with good farm food and even a doctor when they need one…I think that maybe, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, they’ll live to see a century themselves without any trouble.
But those men, the Heasters (as folks used to call them collectively, when they were both alive), they were tougher than leather.
Now they’re both gone. It’s like the end of a chapter in a history book.
Don’t misunderstand me. It didn’t break my heart that they weren’t around anymore. I never knew Heaster Senior; he died before I was born. But Junior? Junior was a mean old devil.
Deep down I know that once, Heaster Junior must’ve been a young man. Once, he must’ve been a little boy, and maybe he laughed or giggled at his momma or his sisters. Maybe once he picked a flower or roughhoused with a puppy, and maybe once he’d been a handsome young man.
But as long as I knew him, he was ancient and hateful. If there was any good reason for how mean he was, I never heard it.
Some people said it was because he never had any sons, just those four girls. Some people said he’d got his heart broke by a woman. My mother said his ornery spirit was due to the way he’d turned away from God, and he was getting the happiness he deserved; but my mother would say that about anyone she didn’t like.
Maybe there wasn’t any good reason.
Anyhow, he beat his first, second, and third wives—and he would’ve beat the fourth if he hadn’t been so old and frail by the time he married her. He hit his girls to the point of crippling the oldest one, and she walked with a cane the rest of her life. He’d ride a horse to death just because he felt like it. He shot two of his sons-in-law, but he only killed the one and the justice of the peace agreed it must’ve been self defense. Of course, that justice would’ve agreed the moon was made of cornmeal with Heaster standing over him with that rifle.
In the end, Titus figured it was pneumonia that got him, or maybe consumption. The last few years he’d had a hard time breathing, and sometimes he’d take to bed for a month. Every time this happened, everyone would get all excited, thinking this was the end.
And when it finally came, everyone was surprised. I guess by then they’d known almost 200 years of living under the reign of a Heaster, and when Junior was gone, no one quite knew what to do about it.
No one had liked him, but he was the closest thing the valley had to an authority figure. And now he was dead, and it dawned on everybody that he owned all the land we ever lived on, fought on, or fought for.
With him gone, who would be in charge?
Years back, probably before he’d married the missus number four, he’d drawn up a will. Everyone knew he’d gone to Lexington and talked with a lawyer. Everyone knew he’d drawn up some papers and that someday, when the devil came to claim his own, the valley would belong to somebody else.
***
And this is what I meant when I said something was wrong and weird about the will: no one could find it. It’s not that no one knew where it was; according to Titus, within the hour everyone knew where it was. But no one was willing to go and get it, and according to the instructions left by the Lexington lawyer, no one was allowed to go and get it until everyone got there. I’m guessing that this was fine by pretty much everyone, because no one wanted to go into the Witch’s Pit, anyway.
That’s right. The crazy old bastard hid his will somewhere in the cave on the back acres of his property.
Why?
I’ll be damned if I know. I can scarce imagine how he would’ve got it there in the first place, unless he paid someone a whole ton of money to deposit it for him. If that’s how he did it, he must’ve gotten someone from outside the valley to do his dirty work. Otherwise we’d have heard about it by now. Nobody in the county, not Mander or Coy or anyone else, can keep a secret.
But that’s the big news from Leitchfield. Heaster Junior’s dead, and his soul is in the Lord’s hands or Satan’s, but his earthly holdings are up for grabs.
***
Titus and I both got jumpier as the roads got more familiar on the south side of the Ohio River.
He said his brother told him they’d had a dry year, and I could see it as we rode. The hills were gold and green instead of that richer color I remember from being young; and the forests were looking sparse, with their canopies thinned and brittle. It added to the overall sense that this was a dying, desolate place. It reminded me even harder how much better my new life was, and how right I was to flee in the first place.
Titus didn’t say anything much about it. I wasn’t sure he felt as happy about his new circumstances as I did about mine. Chicago sounded like a crowded, dirty place, and I don’t believe I would’ve cared for it.
But he piped up when we crossed into the county, and he pointed over his horse’s ears. “You know what we’re on right now, don’t you?”
“Wilderness Road,” I said. “North part of it, anyhow. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s right,” he nodded. “And you know what that means.”
I answered, “We’re almost…there.” I’d started to say, “almost home,” but that would’ve made me mad, so I didn’t.
We led our horses off the main stretch of Boone’s Road and cut off between two limestone hills covered with broken slabs and half-fallen trees. We were dragging ourselves, urging the horses to be careful even though the horses were just fine with the terrain. We were slowing them whenever we could.
***
But eventually, we did arrive at Heaster’s home.
***
We tied up the horses outside, and wished we could stay with them. They acted nervous. I never in all my life wanted so badly to turn around and run as I did that day.
Heaster’s home was the biggest in the valley. He had the most money and he lived like it, even though he wasn’t really a wealthy man. When I was a boy, he looked like the richest man in the world, which goes to show how everything’s relative.
The house was built into the side of a hill to help keep it cooler in the miserable, fire-hot summers; and I bet it kept the place warmer during the bitter blue winters, too. It had a big, full porch that stretched all the way across the front, and the whole thing was unfinished wood that was a hundred years old, so it wasn’t any particular color anymore. There were three windows, but only two of them had any glass.
The front door was open, and an older woman was standing there, holding it aside with her hip. She stood every bit as firm, dour, and determined as any general. She had to. She was the only thing standing between them.
One side of the porch was packed with Coys, and the other side was crammed with Manders.
Divvied up like that, the differences between the clans were more obvious than they might’ve been otherwise.
Both ends of the family made tall, thin men and petite women, but the Coys were a little more ginger. Their beards were lighter and touched with orange like mine, and most of them had brown eyes. There’s a hawkish look to them, especially when they get older. It’s something about their noses, sharp and long, and the way their chins aren’t very strong.
The Manders are darker, with rounder faces and hair that shines blue-black instead of chestnut. Their eyes are blue too, almost down to the last of them. Their skin goes brown in the sun instead of pink, like the Coys.
They stretched themselves as far apart from one another as the porch would let them, and as far apart as that woma
n could keep them.
It took me a minute to recognize her as one of Heaster’s girls. I say “girls,” but that’s just a habit. She’s old enough to be my grandmother, if she’s a day. I wasn’t sure which one she was until she came away from the door to acknowledge me and Titus, and I saw she was holding that knobby old cane she always used.
“Ma’am,” I said.
“Ma’am,” Titus echoed.
We both tipped our hats at her, and she nodded her head at us. I’ve never been any good at numbers, but I think she must’ve been in her mid-seventies, at least. She was Heaster’s oldest, Abigail.
“Fellas,” she greeted us. She squinted, but whether it was from the sun or suspicion at seeing the pair of us side by side, I couldn’t say. “Both of you’ve had long trips, and here you are arriving together. It’s a good sign, I believe.”
Heads bobbed slowly, uncertainly on each side of the family line.
Titus and I climbed the stairs because it seemed like that’s what everyone wanted. Then we looked at each other like we didn’t know what to do next. There was a pull like gravity coming from each pack.
I wanted to stand up and say, “You know what? This is all a bunch of horseshit. Me and Titus have been traveling together now for days and days, and I think he’s an all right fellow. And anyway, all of us are kin and no one even remembers why everyone fights anymore.”
And in his eyes I saw something similar, like maybe he wanted to say something too. But he didn’t, and neither did I. The old habits, Jesus help me. They’re heavier than chains.
We parted ways, stepping apart and going off to stand by our closer relations. I felt stupid about it, and I could tell by the look on Titus that he did, too. But what were we supposed to do? You don’t just leave for ten or fifteen years and then come back, and act like you’re different—so everything else is different too.
It isn’t. Everybody knows it, and you only look like an idiot if you fight it.
Titus and I hadn’t bonded so close in a couple of weeks that we thought we were best friends and we could stand up for each other. We were smarter than that.
***
Once we’d been sorted by the pressure of our families, the rest of them relaxed a little. This was normal. This was better, us on our side, them on theirs. I thought, “What a stupid state, when a whole clan of people is happiest knowing who hates who—and it’s easier than thinking maybe some of them are getting along.” But I didn’t say it.
Instead, I just watched Abigail act like a fierce shepherd with a flock of crazy sheep. She used her body to keep us apart, and I believe everyone was grateful for it. Except for her, nobody talked.
“This ain’t everyone,” she observed. “I already heard-tell that they couldn’t find Gregory, and my sister said she didn’t give a shit what came of this whole thing, so she won’t be coming either. John was sent for, though, and I think he might come.”
“John?” I asked, because there are a bunch of Johns and I didn’t know which one she meant.
“Your uncle. I believe he’s on his way.”
I didn’t ask how she knew that, and I didn’t ask where he was coming from. Everyone knew about my uncle, John Coy. His brother Abraham went up to find him, back before I’d left. When Abraham returned, he said John had gone crazy up north, and he’d started talking to dead people and obviously, the man had sold his soul to Satan. Let him stay gone, that was what the rest of the family said.
And now they’d called him back?
I didn’t ask. Even if Abigail knew why, she might not tell me. Family politics were tricky, and I’d been out of the valley for too many years to just jump back in.
***
I felt intensely alone, standing there allied with kin I hadn’t seen in over a decade.
***
My mother, gone. I was relieved about that, but I was still real aware that she wasn’t present. My sister, gone years and years before. I wondered what she’d look like if she’d lived, or stayed. I spied a cousin roughly the age she would’ve been, and I tried to imagine her with Winnter’s face, but I couldn’t do it.
I recognized a few people, or I thought I did. But I didn’t see anybody I’d ever been close to.
Across the way, I saw Titus doing the same thing as me—scanning faces, hoping for some reception apart from blank stares and curiosity. He didn’t find it any better than I did. I don’t know where his parents were, and if any of his brothers were there, I couldn’t pick them out.
All told, there were maybe fifty people crowded onto that porch. I don’t know how we all fit there—much less how we all fit, and managed not to touch each other at all.
***
Abigail said to me, “Meshack, when John finally comes, you can catch him up, all right?”
“All right,” I said, even though it made me nervous. I never knew John very well when I was a boy, and hearing about the devil-worshipping thing didn’t make me too inclined to buddy up with him, but if someone had to, then it could be me.
I saw how she was doing it, penning the outsiders together.
She planted the end of her cane down hard and planted one of her feet down straight, bracing herself to address the lot of us. And she said, “Everybody here has heard part of what’s happened, and some of you know more than others. The long and short of it is this—my daddy’s died, and there’s a proper will, but I can’t show it to you because I don’t have it. Granny don’t have it either.”
She meant her stepmother, Opal. Opal was eighty years old, give or take, and she kept mostly to the bed.
“Before he passed, he told us to get the Bible down from the mantle and to see about the twenty-third Psalm. And when we opened it up to that chapter, we found an envelope with some papers in it. The papers said that the will was made in Lexington, but it weren’t there no more. If Daddy wasn’t pulling our leg, then it’s stashed somewhere inside the Witch’s Pit.”
Folks on both side made murmurs like they’d heard it same as I had, in a rumor, and they’d expected it, but it still surprised them to know it.
“Here’s how Daddy wanted it to happen: he picked out six folks—three from each family—and he wanted them to join up together and go down into the hole and get the will. He said that if y’all couldn’t stop fighting while he was alive, he’d force you to work together with his dying. And I know you’re all wondering if that means he split the land up good, and I have to tell you, I don’t know. All I know is that there’s a will, and that you’ll have to go and get it. He named the six he wanted, and I think that’s likely because you’re the six set to receive land, but there’s no telling until we see the papers ourselves.”
She shifted on her feet, adjusting the cane again and bringing it down again, like she was tapping a time with what she was saying.
“For now, though, there ain’t going to be no fighting. There ain’t going to be no feuding, there ain’t going to be no stealing or killing. There just ain’t. I’m tired of it, and Daddy was tired of it too. I don’t care who did what or why, it don’t matter. All of you, now, have got to get along—at least until we see where the land goes. If it don’t look fair and you want to fight some more afterwards, then I don’t give a shit. But for now,” she beat the cane against the porch. “For now, like it or not, all of you is kin.”
She turned on her good foot and went back inside.
Before she shut the door, she poked her head around it and added, “If John ain’t here by tomorrow night, we’ll pick somebody else to go in his place. Otherwise, we’re going to sort this out and settle it up on Wednesday morning. Everybody go, and come back here then.”
The old slat-panel thing creaked and cracked when she jammed it closed behind her.
VI
Back Into Darkness
I kept the letter in my jacket pocket, and sometimes I would pull it out again, just to feel the paper and stare down at my name on the envelope. A thousand times on the train down south I ran my fingers over it and t
hought, “What am I doing? Why am I following these preposterous instructions, calling me back?”
Twice, when the train pulled into a station in some wilderness backwater, I gathered my things and prepared to leave.
“I can’t do this,” I said to the man sharing my compartment.
I took my suitcase and I made it to the edge of the ironwork stairs that would allow me to disembark, and I felt the envelope burning against my chest.
So insistent, so vengeful, so reluctant to be ignored.
I turned around both times and went back to my car, where my fellow passenger was too polite to comment upon my inconstant nature.
As the engine dragged us along the rails, the puffing smoke and clanging wheels and whistling steam created a rhythm that lulled me, and from time to time I would rest my neck against the back of the seat and I would dream.
But the dreams were fierce and unpleasant, and I would jolt awake with apologies to my seatmate. The last time I awakened before my final stop, he was gone. Perhaps I was drowsy or dazed, or perhaps I was too overcome with emotion to remember things correctly—but I swear, I spent half an hour wondering if he’d ever been present at all. I tried to recall his face, his clothing, or his luggage, and none of it had left any impression at all in my mind.
This engendered in me a sense of profound and distressing paranoia. My dreams grew more feverish and my impatience became almost unbearable. I wasn’t impatient to arrive, but I was impatient to see some end to my torment. I wanted to return to Leitchfield if only to see the visit accomplished, and completed, so that I might never need to attempt it again.
***
I do not remember any of those dreams except for the last one, the one that was interrupted by the whistle that noted the Lexington depot.
I was tethered to the letter as if by a magical poison. It was drawing me along a course, scorching a path into the earth and into my life; and if I attempted to deviate from the letter’s agenda, I would feel a terrible shock and a revolting wave of dizzying nausea.