Blood Wounds (12 page)

I would have been more than happy to let Trace keep it, along with whatever pieces he wasn't telling me about. But I guessed he'd feel better if he gave me something. Besides, it would prove to Faye I'd searched the way she wanted me to.

"It's pretty," I said. "Thank you."

"You sure we inherit?" he asked. "I never inherited nothing before, except a shitload of trouble."

"That's what Sam told me," I said. "It's the law."

Trace shook his head. "The law never did me no favors before," he said. "If it's okay with you, I think I'll stick around, look things over. See if Budge or Crystal left some money or something. Course, I'll give you your share."

"Great," I said. "You look and I'll go back to Faye's."

"You sure?" he asked. "I can walk you home."

"No, that's okay," I said. "I have directions. But I'll see you tomorrow? At the funeral?"

"I'll be there," Trace said. "They were my sisters too."

P
AULINE MUST HAVE DECIDED
nothing I owned was appropriate for the funeral. Alyssa is six inches taller and twenty pounds heavier than me, so the outfit Pauline chose for me came from Brooke's closet. Black wool skirt, pale pink silk blouse, burgundy cashmere sweater. The skirt and sweater still had their price tags, so I had to borrow scissors from Faye to snip away proof of Val's generosity to her daughter.

"Why don't you wear Crystal's pin?" Faye asked. "Add a little color to the sweater?"

"I don't think so," I said, knowing it would feel like a double desecration. But the skirt had a pocket, and I slipped the pin in there. I guess that was an acceptable compromise to Faye, because she didn't press me about it.

Jack and the girls are Episcopalians, and when Mom and I go to church, we join them at St. James. Not that any of us go that often. But that's my image of a church, stately and formal. The kind of church Brooke's outfit belonged in.

New Hope Gospel Church looked nothing like that, but unlike practically everyplace else I'd seen in Pryor, it looked alive. It was a mile or so out of town, located in a desolate field that now served as a parking lot. Even though Faye and I had left early, the lot was almost completely full when we arrived, with cars and pickup trucks, and TV news vans. Faye found a spot, and as we walked toward the church, we both noticed oversize loudspeakers set up so the crowd outside could hear the service.

There were two police officers standing by the door. Faye walked up to one of them. "Hi, Joey," she said. "Are there any seats left?"

"It's all full," he replied. "Sorry, Faye. But they'll be broadcasting the whole thing. You can even sit in your car, like a drive-in, and hear what's going on."

I could see Faye was tempted to tell Joey who I was, but the field was swarming with reporters and I gave her a shake of the head. She scowled but kept quiet.

"I'm sorry," she said to me. "I should've gotten us here earlier."

"It's okay," I said, because there was nothing else to say.

The crowd kept milling around, and news crews interviewed whoever they thought might provide a good story. The people of Pryor seemed happy to cooperate. Talking to reporters was the last thing I wanted to do, but I guess none of them thought I looked interesting enough. I was glad for that, and relieved, because other people were staring at me. Maybe they knew who was staying with Faye, or maybe it was because I was all Coffey, but I could sense their appraising looks.

Everything seemed to stop as Trace walked up to the church, accompanied by a tiny, sour-smelling old woman I recognized immediately as Granny Coffey. "Let us in," she said. "That's my flesh and blood in there."

"Yes, Mrs. Coffey," Joey said. "Hi, Trace. It's been a while."

Trace nodded. "Granny, that's Willa standing over there," he said, pointing to me.

Granny Coffey walked over to me. "Well, ain't you the high-class lady," she said. "What're you waiting for? Come on in."

I felt as though she'd yanked me by the ear, but it was Trace who took my hand and pulled me along.

The church was simple, more a barn than a cathedral, and it was jammed. I kept my head down, trying not to look at the front of the church, where a full-size coffin sat flanked by two little coffins to its right, another to its left, each with a photograph and covered with flowers. I could hear bits of conversation as we made our way to the front.

"...such darling little girls..."

"...saddest thing I ever saw..."

"...her head right off. Heard they had to sew it back on."

"...don't believe their nerve coming to this..."

Granny Coffey must have heard that one, because she turned around. "Those are my great-grandbabies up there," she said. "They bear my name. And these two are more their kin than any of you." She gestured wildly. "Now keep your traps shut and let us through."

The nervous chattering turned into silence. Granny Coffey, Trace, and I made our way to the front.

"Clear out room for us," she demanded when we got to the front row. "That's our kin up there."

"How dare you come?" a woman whispered. "When it was Dwayne who did this?"

"Think I don't know that?" Granny yelled. "Think my heart ain't breaking from shame? Now show a little of that Christian charity you're always hollering about and leave us sit in our rightful place."

The woman looked distraught, but the man sitting next to her gestured to some of the people in the row and they cleared out. Granny, Trace, and I made our way in. Trace kept holding on to my hand; I'm not sure which one of us was comforting the other.

It was surrounded by noise, the voices of scores of strangers talking about people I should have known, should have loved. Most of the words I couldn't make out, but I did hear someone say something about jewelry, and I focused on that.

"They wanted Crystal's favorite pin for her dress," a woman said. "Turquoise and silver. But it was gone, along with most of her other jewelry. Someone must've broken in and taken it all."

"No one has any shame anymore," the woman sitting next to her said. "No respect for the living or the dead."

Instinctively my hand went into the skirt pocket. I felt for the tip of the pin, let it pierce my skin. I pulled my hand out before I left a bloodstain in Brooke's skirt.

A choir came out and began singing hymns. People joined in. I would have liked to have sung along, but I didn't know any of the songs. I guessed it didn't matter. The hymns were heartfelt and soothing, and staring at the choir helped stop me from looking at the coffins, especially those three tiny ones.

Granny Coffey kept muttering, but Trace paid her no mind. I opened my bag and located the tissue packet Faye had given me. I had no idea where Faye was, and realizing that made me feel even more alone.

I was at this funeral as a Coffey, and while that had been my intention when I first told Mom I was going, it felt frightening now. Not because everyone there hated the Coffey blood, but because I hated it too, even as it coursed through me.

All around me people were crying, but at least the conversations had stopped. The choir finished singing as a tall beefy man I recognized from TV as Pastor Hendrick walked to the pulpit. There was a microphone attached to it, but I had the feeling it wasn't necessary. Even Granny Coffey had ceased her mumbling.

"I see many familiar faces here," the pastor began. "Faces of people who knew and loved Crystal Ballard Coffey and her beloved daughters, Kelli Marie, Kadi, and Krissi. People who rejoiced at their christenings, their birthdays.

"But I also see new faces here, people I don't know. Maybe they knew Crystal or the girls outside the world of this church. Maybe they didn't know them at all but needed to be here, to bear witness. None of us were there when Christ was on the cross, but all here bear witness to it.

"I'm not here to talk about Crystal, about Kelli Marie and Kadi and Krissi. Others will do that, far more eloquently than I. They'll speak of the beauty of those girls' souls, of the joy they brought to their family, their friends. They'll talk from the bottomless well of their grief, and we'll weep with them and embrace them with the power of our love.

"No, I'm not going to talk about them, when others will do it so much better than I ever could. Instead, I'm going to talk about Dwayne Coffey."

There was a gasp, as though everyone exhaled in horror at the exact same moment. Trace clutched my hand even tighter.

"Since we heard the horrible news, people have been full of questions," Pastor Hendrick said. "They've come to me and said, 'I was there when Dwayne Coffey was saved. I was there when he accepted Christ as his savior. I was there, week after week, as he sat in this very church, prayed the same prayers I prayed, rejoiced in the word of the Lord just as I did. How could Dwayne have done this? How could a man, certainly one with failings, but a good Christian nonetheless, have done such a cruel, horrific act?'"

"Yes!" someone yelled from the back of the church. "How?"

"Less than a month ago, Dwayne Coffey was in this church, sitting where one of you now is," the pastor continued. "His wife and lovely little girls seated by his side. And when the service ended, and I stood outside, I saw Dwayne and asked him how he was. I knew about his battles with his demons. Many times we'd talked about them, prayed together.

"Crystal had turned her back to him, looking after the little girls, or pausing to talk to one of the many people who loved her. And Dwayne said to me, hardly louder than a whisper, 'Pastor Hendrick, my soul has died. I know it just as sure as I know the sky is blue.' He looked me straight in the eye when he said it, and I knew it was true. Souls can die before people. We've all seen that happen. We all know that sense of powerlessness we feel when someone we love is lost to Satan.

"We forget sometimes that accepting Christ as our savior isn't something we do once or twice in our lives. It's something we have to do every single moment of every single day. Just because Christ is in our heart doesn't mean Satan is satisfied to leave us alone. For Satan, no soul is off-limits. Not Dwayne's, not yours, not mine. Satan puts his temptations in all our paths. 'Look this way,' he says. 'Here's lust. Here's drink. Here's envy and anger, greed and resentment.' And all of us, not just Dwayne, but you and me, we all give in to those temptations at some point or another. We are all guilty. We all allow Satan to chip away at our souls. Some days, with Christ's help, we're stronger than Satan. Some days, even with Christ at our side, Satan wins the battle.

"Yes, Dwayne Coffey was a Christian. I baptized him. I struggled with him against his demons. But Satan was stronger than Dwayne. And Dwayne's soul died.

"Satan may have won that battle," Pastor Hendrick continued. "But it was Crystal Ballard and her beautiful little daughters who won the war. Because we know when Dwayne raised his knife to them, their hearts and their souls went straight to heaven, straight to the loving embrace of their Father, their savior. The girls were too young to have sinned, too young for Satan to care about. And whatever sins Crystal might have committed in the everyday course of her everyday life, those sins were washed away in the blood she shed trying to save the lives of her precious daughters. Crystal Ballard died for the love of her children just as surely as Christ died for the love of us all.

"So as we grieve at our loss, our horrific loss, let us also rejoice for the four souls Satan cannot have. Let us celebrate God's power and give ourselves to it and vow to do battle against Satan in his many wicked forms. Let us vow to love with the purity of Crystal's love, the purity of those dear little girls' love, the purity of Christ's love. Now let us pray."

He began the recitation of the twenty-third Psalm, which I recited along with Trace, with Granny Coffey, with everyone else in the church and most likely everyone else outside. I was comforted by the familiarity of the words, by the sense of being part of a whole far greater than me. And I was grateful that someone had offered an explanation I could understand for an act I could never truly understand.

Then a man walked to the pulpit. "I'm Michael Ballard," he said. "Crystal's brother." He took a deep breath. "I want to thank Pastor Hendrick for his words of wisdom. I was one of those full of questions. But through Christ's mercy, I have found an answer. Heaven must have been short four angels. God looked at all of us and found the four most perfect..." He began to weep and walked away.

A younger woman approached the pulpit. She was carrying a guitar.

"My name is Sarah Towner," she said. "Some of you know me from this church. Some of you know me from school. I was Kelli Marie's kindergarten teacher." She took a deep breath, and I could see she was fighting her tears. "Kelli Marie was a dear little girl, and she loved her mother and her baby sisters very much. She loved to sing. She told me once this was her favorite song. It's a song we sing in school, but Kelli Marie knew all the words before I taught it in class. She said she sang it all the time to Kadi and Krissi. So I'm singing it for all of them."

She began to strum her guitar and sing.

The itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
And the itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the spout again

I started to cry, and my tears soon became sobs of hysteria. They couldn't be stopped. I had no control anymore. Everything halted, everyone stared, and I kept weeping, until finally Trace lifted me up and dragged me down the aisle, out of the church, into Faye's warm and accepting embrace.

"I
'M GOING TO GET DRUNK,
" Faye informed me that night. "Not roaring, fall-on-the-floor drunk. Just drunk enough to forget the sight of those little coffins. I'm sorry, sweetie. It's not a Dairy Queen night. It's a getting-drunk night."

I nodded. Faye was already on her fourth beer, so she wasn't telling me something I hadn't guessed.