What the Hollow Keeps: Hattie Vance

The road gave up its gravel two miles past the Crane place, and after that it was just oil and chip, then nothing but cracked asphalt that nobody had patched since the state forgot Briarvale existed.

Reese Dark drove with one wrist laid across the steering wheel, the other hand hanging out the open window. The summer air tasted of creek water and diesel and the first hint of woodsmoke from somewhere deep in the hollow. Cal Meachum sat beside him, knees wide, a half-smoked cigarette pinched between two fingers he never lifted to his mouth.

Neither of them had spoken for a quarter mile.

"You remember this stretch," Cal said finally, not quite a question.

Reese's grip shifted on the wheel. The cracked blacktop ran ahead of them straight as a preacher's line, bordered on both sides by sweet gum and hickory so dense the branches laced overhead. Light came through in coins.

"I remember," he said. That was all.

Cal took a slow drag and let the smoke curl out through the missing window seal. The trees had grown in since the last time Reese had been through. That was the thing about Briarvale. The forest did not retreat. It waited.

Mile marker five came and went, a battered square of green with a five so sun-bleached it looked like a smudge. Cal tapped the ash from his cigarette into his palm and brushed it onto his jeans.

"Six," he said, almost to himself.

Reese eased off the gas. The truck's engine note dropped, and in the new quiet the hollow opened around them, cicadas thrummed in the canopy, a woodpecker hammered somewhere out of sight. He had driven this road ten thousand times before he left, and ten thousand times it had been the same. Straight. Forgiving. A road that minded its own business.

He did not expect what came at seven.

The pavement lifted.

That was the first thing Reese saw, and for a long moment his mind refused it. The asphalt ahead of them rose in a long, slow swell, the way a sheet draws up over a sleeping chest. The motion was faint, almost gentle, but it was there. The centerline cracked along the crest and the pieces ground against each other with a soft rasp he felt through the soles of his boots.

He stamped the brake. The truck skidded a foot and stopped.

"Reese."

"I see it."

The surface kept moving. No wind stirred the trees on either side. The cicadas had gone quiet. In the new silence the only sound was the faint wet grinding of the road itself, breathing in and out, in and out.

Cal set his cigarette on the dashboard, careful as a man laying down a tool. He turned his head and looked at Reese, then at the road, then back at Reese.

"Don't stop the engine," Cal said.

Reese left it running. The truck idled, ticking. Ahead of them, the swell of pavement held its shape, then settled by a fraction, then rose again. The cracked blacktop glistened faintly in the slanted morning light, and at the crest of the breath there stood a road sign he had never seen before.

It was the old kind. Galvanized metal on a wooden post, square as a coffin lid, rusted to the color of dried blood. At its center someone had scratched four letters and a surname into the metal with something sharp, a nail, maybe, or a corner of stone. The scratches were deep enough to catch the light.

HATTIE VANCE

Below the name, in smaller, more deliberate cuts, three words.

DO NOT PASS.

Reese cut the engine. The silence rushed in.

He sat with both hands on the wheel and stared at the sign. The road kept its slow respiration, unhurried, patient as a thing that had been doing this for a long time and did not care who watched.

"We're four miles from the property line," Cal said. His voice had gone flat.

"I know where we are."

Cal looked at the sign again. He read it twice, mouth moving the second time without sound. He had the look of a man trying to decide whether he was allowed to be afraid.

"You think she put it up?"

Reese did not answer right away. He watched the pavement lift, settle, lift. Somewhere down the hollow, a dog started to bark and stopped mid-bark, as though a hand had closed around its throat.

"Hattie Vance is ninety-one years old," Reese said. "She hasn't walked to the end of her lane in eight years. Eunice Holler brings her groceries."

Cal nodded, slow. He picked up the cigarette from the dashboard, looked at it, and put it back.

"So who scratched her name into a sign we never seen before, on a piece of road that's moving like it has a heart."

Reese's jaw worked. The scar along it, the one he had never explained to anyone, paled against the rest of his face.

"Dolly Crane told me," he said, "when I stopped at the store yesterday, that the road past six has been doing strange things since the spring. Said her husband drove over it after dark and felt his tires go soft. Said he came back the next morning and the asphalt was smooth as poured concrete. Smooth, Reese. No cracks. No patches."

"It ain't smooth now."

"No."

Cal reached across and laid his hand flat on the dash, fingers spread. It was a small, unconscious gesture, the kind a man makes when he wants to touch something solid and confirm that solid things still exist.

"Pastor Thresh," Cal said, and then stopped, as if he had walked to the edge of a sentence and looked down.

"What about him."

"He came by the house Tuesday. While you was over to your daddy's. Asked after you. Asked if you'd heard from your ma."

Reese's hands tightened on the wheel. The knuckles stood out like stones under the skin.

"What'd you tell him."

"I told him what there was to tell. That you came back in May. That you'd been gone nine years. That you hadn't heard from Loretta since before you left, and neither had anybody else, and that was the truth of it and he knew it."

The road breathed. The cicadas had not come back. A jay screamed somewhere in the trees, a bright ragged sound that did not fit the quiet.

"He stood on the porch a long time," Cal said. "Told me the church was having troubles. Wouldn't say what kind. Asked me if I'd noticed anything wrong with the river. I told him the river's been wrong since before I was born. He didn't laugh."

Reese looked at the sign. The scratches caught the light again as the road lifted beneath it. HATTIE VANCE. DO NOT PASS. The metal was old. The post was set deep. Whoever had put it there had used a posthole digger and a level and had taken their time. It was not a joke. It was not the work of children.

"Dolly said Eunice saw Hattie last week," Reese said. "Said Hattie came out onto her porch at three in the morning and stood there until the sun came up. Eunice asked her what she was doing. Hattie told her she was counting."

"Counting what."

"She didn't say."

Cal looked at the road again. The swell had shifted. The crest had moved a few feet closer to them, almost imperceptibly, like the tide coming in while a man watches the horizon.

"I want to get out," Cal said.

Reese turned his head and looked at him. Cal's face was set, but his eyes were not. There was something behind them he had not let Reese see in a long time. Not fear exactly. Recognition. The look of a man remembering a thing he had sworn not to remember.

"You don't have to," Reese said.

"I know I don't have to."

Cal opened the door. The hinges complained. He swung down from the cab and set his boots on the asphalt, and Reese watched his friend's knees take his weight, watched him settle. Cal Meachum stood five ten in his socks and weighed a hundred and seventy pounds and had never, in all the years Reese had known him, done a single thing that was not exactly what he said he was going to do. He was the kind of man a man could lean on. He was the kind of man who did not lean.

Cal walked to the front of the truck. He stopped. He stood there, his back to Reese, and looked at the road.

It rose under his gaze. A long slow inhale, and the cracked blacktop drew up an inch, two, and settled back. The sound of it reached Reese even through the closed window, a wet grinding, like a man shifting a great weight in his sleep.

Reese opened his door and got out.

The air hit him differently outside. It smelled of creosote and warm stone and something faintly metallic that he could not place. The sun was up but the light under the trees had the color of old glass. He walked around the front of the truck and stood beside Cal. They did not speak. They watched the road.

It was the size of a car. The swell. It rose and fell in that slow measure, and at its center the sign post leaned a fraction of an inch with each breath, then corrected itself, then leaned again. The wood of the post was dark with age, but the base was fresh-cut where it entered the asphalt, the pale wood bright against the black.

"She didn't put it up," Cal said.

"No."

"Who did."

Reese looked at the name scratched into the sign. The letters were uneven. The H had a crooked crossbar. The T's were cut at different angles. Whoever had done it had worked by hand and had not been in any hurry. He thought of Hattie Vance on her porch at three in the morning, counting whatever it was she counted. He thought of her at ninety-one, with her hands still steady enough to scratch words into metal.

"The road did," Reese said.

Cal turned his head and looked at him. His mouth opened, then closed. He looked back at the road. It rose, fell, rose, fell.

"Reese."

"Yeah."

"I ain't never heard a road breathe before."

"Neither have I."

The dog down the hollow had not barked again. The jay had stopped. The only sound under the trees was the wet rasp of the asphalt and the faint tick of the truck's engine cooling behind them. Reese looked at the sign again.

DO NOT PASS.

He looked past it. The road ran on through the trees, straight and cracked, the swell ending a hundred yards ahead where the pavement flattened and ran on toward the Dark property and the river and the house where his father sat in a chair by the window and waited for a wife and a daughter who were not coming back. The only way home was through that sign.

The road breathed in.

Reese's hand found the flashlight under the seat without him having to think about it. The beam came on cold and white, and the tunnel of light it cut through the dark ahead of the truck looked like something poured.

"Stay close," he said.

He stepped out of the cab. The asphalt was wet under his boots, and the air that came off the trees smelled of leaf rot and cold water and the iron tang that lived in the rocks of Briarvale Hollow. He could smell the river from here, somewhere down past the dark, though he had not been able to smell it for years and now he could. That was not a good sign.

He walked toward the sign. Cal followed two steps behind, the way they had walked since they were boys, and the dog in the hollow had started barking again, a high, yipping sound that bounced off the trees and came back wrong. Reese did not look back at the sign. He let his light move past it and onto the road, and he watched the way the asphalt caught the beam and threw it back, the wet surface looking almost black, almost like water.

"Reese."

"Yeah."

"Walk faster."

He walked faster. The road rose under his feet in that long, slow swell, and when he reached the crown of it he could see down the next pitch and into the flat beyond. The trees on either side leaned in. He could see the place where the old road branched off toward the Vance place, and past it the dark shape of the cemetery on its low rise, and past that the dark shape of the house where Hattie Vance sat on her porch and counted whatever it was she counted.

He started down the slope.

The road did not breathe this time. It lay under his feet like a sleeping thing, and the only sound was the wet slap of his boots and the higher, quicker slap of Cal's boots behind him. The flashlight beam jittered on the asphalt. Once he swung it to the side and caught the trunk of an oak that stood close to the road, and the bark of the tree was dark and wet, and there was a scrape on it at about the height of a man's head that he did not stop to look at.

"Hattie."

It was Cal, behind him, and his voice was low.

"I know."

"You can't go up there tonight."

"I know."

"She won't have you up there tonight."

"I know, Cal."

Cal did not answer. They walked on. The branch in the road came up out of the dark, and Reese swung the light onto it and saw the gravel of the old lane shining wet between the trees. He turned onto it without stopping, and the gravel gave under his boots with a sound like teeth.

The lane was narrow. The trees came in close on both sides, and the branches laced overhead so that even the small light that was left in the sky did not get through. Reese kept the flashlight on the ground at his feet. He could see the ruts where Hattie's old truck had worn the gravel down to the clay under it. He could see the places where the water had run across the lane in the last rain and left fans of pale silt. He could see, once, a print in the silt that might have been a deer's and once a print that was not a deer's, but he did not stop to look at either of them.

The lane ended at a fence. The fence was old and made of wire and wooden posts, and one of the posts had a strip of tin nailed to it that flashed when his light hit it. Beyond the fence he could see the dark bulk of the house, and the square of darker dark that was the open door of the porch, and past that a deeper dark that was the edge of the cemetery. The wind came down off the ridge behind the house and brought the smell of cold water with it again, and under that smell there was another smell, faint and old, like something that had been buried in wood for a long time and had only just been uncovered.

He clicked the flashlight off.

"Don't," Cal said, behind him.

"Hush."

He stood in the dark and let his eyes make what they could of it. The square of the porch door was a few shades less black than the wall around it. He could see the edge of the porch rail, and the shape of the chair that sat at the near end of it, and the shape that sat in the chair.

She did not move. He could not tell if she was looking at him or past him or at the dark between the trees. He waited. The wind turned. The smell of buried wood came again, stronger this time, and under it there was the smell of metal, and under that there was nothing.

"Vance," he said.

Her voice came back across the dark. It was low and unhurried, and it carried the way water carries in a pipe.

"You walked past my sign."

"I did."

"You saw what it said."

"I did."

"Then you walked past it anyway."

"I did."

She was quiet for a long time. The dark between the trees made a small sound that might have been the wind and might have been something else. Cal shifted behind him. Reese did not shift.

"Come up then," she said. "Since you've come."

He clicked the flashlight back on and let it drop to the ground so that it lit the lane and the bottom of the fence and not the porch. He could hear Cal draw in his breath, but he did not look back. He found the wire gate in the fence by feel, lifted the loop of wire that held it shut, and stepped through.

The grass of the yard was wet under his boots. He crossed the yard with the light behind him and the porch coming up ahead, and he could see her now as more than a shape. She was wearing the same coat she had been wearing that morning. Her hands were in her lap. Her hair was pulled back. She was looking at him.

He stopped at the foot of the porch steps.

"Not you," she said, without looking past him. "Him."

Reese did not turn his head. He heard Cal stop at the fence. He heard the wire of the gate creak as Cal lifted it. He heard Cal's boots on the wet grass, slower now, and then Cal was beside him at the foot of the steps, breathing through his nose.

"Both of you then," she said. "Up."

He went up the steps. The wood of the porch gave under his boots with a sound he remembered from when he was a boy, and he did not like that he remembered it. He crossed to the chair at the near end and stopped. She did not look up at him. She looked out at the dark between the trees, and then she looked past him at Cal, and then she looked back at the dark.

"You walked past my sign," she said again, "and you brought him with you, and you did not call first, and you did not knock."

"No," Reese said.

"No," she said. "You did not."

She was quiet for a while. The wind moved through the trees. The smell of buried wood came again and was gone.

"Sit down," she said. "Both of you. I'm tired of looking up."

There was a second chair at the far end of the porch, and a crate beside it that had once held oranges. Reese pulled the crate to the middle of the porch and sat on it, and Cal went to the second chair and sat on the edge of it with his forearms on his knees. The three of them sat in the dark and listened to the wind for a while.

"You went to see Eunice," Hattie said.

"Yes."

"She told you what she tells."

"Yes."

"Then you came here."

"Yes."

"You ought to have gone home."

"I know."

"Your father's up."

"I know."

"He's sitting in the chair by the window."

"Yes."

"He's waiting."

Reese did not answer. Cal shifted on the chair.

"He's been waiting," Hattie said. "He's not going to stop. You walking past the sign doesn't change that. You sitting on my porch in the dark doesn't change that. You going down to the river in the morning and doing what you think you're going to do doesn't change that."

Reese's hands were on his knees. He could feel the grain of the wood of the crate under his fingers. He could feel the cold of the wet through the seat of his pants. He could feel, somewhere behind his sternum, the thing that had been sitting there since the day his mother did not come back from the river, and it had not moved, and it was not going to move.

"I know what I'm going to do," he said.

"You don't," she said. "But you think you do, and that's worse."

She turned her head and looked at him. Her eyes were very dark, and they caught what little light there was and held it.

"You want to know about the photo," she said.

"Yes."

"You want to know about the oak."

"Yes."

"You want to know about the scratching on the marker."

"Yes."

"You think if you know, you'll know what to do."

"I think if I know, I won't make it worse."

She looked at him for a long time.

"You already made it worse," she said. "The day you left, you made it worse. The day you came back, you made it worse. The day you walked past my sign tonight, you made it worse. There's no knowing that won't make it worse now. There's only knowing, and then doing, and then sitting in a chair by a window and waiting."

Cal's head came up. He looked at her. He looked at Reese.

"Vance," Cal said.

"Hush," she said, without looking at him. "I'm talking to him."

She looked back at Reese.

"You went to the records office," she said. "You found the photo. You found the date. You found the words they wrote under it."

"Yes."

"You want to know if it's me."

He did not answer. He waited.

"It's me," she said. "I'm the one in the photo. I'm the one they wrote the words about. I'm the one they hanged from the oak at the crossroads and never found. I'm the one whose name is scratched into the tin of my own sign. I'm the one who scratched it there herself, so I'd know where the line is, so the others would know where the line is, so you'd know where the line is, and you walked past it anyway."

The wind stopped. The porch was very quiet.

"There's no one in the cemetery," she said. "There's a marker with my name on it and my initials scratched into the stone, and there's no one under it. There's no one under any of them. There's the oak at the crossroads, and the rope is still there, and the knot is still tied, and no one was ever hanged from it. There's the road that breathes, and the house that watches, and the river that takes what it's owed, and there's me, sitting on this porch, counting."

She stopped. She looked out at the dark between the trees.

"You want to know what I count," she said.

He did not answer.

"I count the ones who come back," she said. "I count the ones who don't. I count the ones who walk past the sign. I count the ones who stop. I've been counting for a long time. The number doesn't get smaller."

She looked at him.

"Your mother came to this porch," she said. "The night before she went down to the river. She sat on this crate. She asked me what I count. I told her. She asked me if it would take her. I told her it would take what it was owed. She asked me if she could pay it. I told her no. She asked me if I could pay it for her. I told her no. She sat on this crate for a long time. Then she went home."

Reese did not move.

"Then she went down to the river," Hattie said, "and the river took her."

The porch was very quiet. The wind had not come back. The smell of buried wood was gone. The smell of metal was gone. There was only the smell of wet wood and wet grass and the cold air off the ridge, and under it, very faint, the smell of the river.

"I'm sorry," Hattie said. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm sorry I couldn't pay it for her. I'm sorry I couldn't stop her. I'm sorry she went down to the river. I'm sorry your father's sitting in that chair. I'm sorry you walked past my sign."

She stopped. She looked at him. Her eyes were very dark, and they were wet.

"There's nothing I can do for you," she said. "There's nothing you can do for me. There's nothing either of us can do for her. There's the river, and the road, and the oak, and the cemetery with no one in it, and the sign I put up so I'd know, and you walked past it."

She looked out at the dark.

"Go home," she said. "Sit with your father. Hold his hand. Tell him you love him. Tell him you came back. Tell him you're sorry. Tell him you're here. That's all you can do now. That's all anyone's ever been able to do."

She stopped talking. She did not look at him again. She sat in her chair with her hands in her lap and looked out at the dark between the trees.

Reese stood up. The crate creaked under him. He did not say anything. He turned and walked across the porch and down the steps and across the wet grass to the fence. Cal was ahead of him, already through the gate, already waiting at the lane. Reese stopped at the gate and looked back.

She had not moved. She was a shape in the dark on the porch, and the dark was all around her, and the wind had not come back.

He went through the gate. He followed Cal down the lane. He did not look back again. The lane gave back the sound of their boots, and the trees leaned over them, and the smell of the river came up from the dark ahead and was not gone.

Hattie Vance sat on the porch of her house on the lane until the dark came all the way down. She did not move. The wind did not come back. The river kept its sound, far off and constant, the way it had sounded all her life.

She had told him the truth. That was the only thing she had left to give. The truth, and the sign, and the warning that would not be heard. The rest of it, the years of it, the weight of it, she kept in the house, in the cellar, in the jars and the bundles and the books that no one in the hollow could read anymore.

When the dark was full, she stood. Her knees ached. Her back was a bar of pain from the day and the night before and the day and the night before that. She had been a girl on this porch. She had been a young woman on this porch. She had been a wife on this porch, and then she had been a widow on this porch, and now she was an old woman on this porch, and the dark had watched her through all of it.

She went inside. She did not lock the door. She had not locked the door in forty years, not since the year her husband went down to the river with the Darks and did not come back, not since the year she had understood what the hollow was and what it wanted and what she had to do.

The kitchen was warm. The stove still held a little heat. She touched the kettle with her palm. It was cool enough to move. She lifted it off the stove and set it on the counter. She would wash it in the morning. She would wash it and fill it and set it back, and the morning would come, and the day would come, and she would sit on the porch and look at the lane and the trees and the river, and the dark would come again, and she would be here.

She did not light a lamp. She knew the house. She had walked it in the dark for so long that the dark was a kind of light to her. She moved down the hall to the bedroom she had slept in alone for forty years. She undressed. She put on the cotton nightgown she had sewn herself the winter before, the one with the lace at the collar that she had bought at the store in town. She sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled off her shoes. She set them side by side on the floor.

She lay down. The bed was made. The sheets were clean. She had washed them on Monday and hung them on the line and taken them down before the rain and folded them and put them in the cupboard, and she had put them on the bed in the evening, and now she lay in them, and they smelled of lavender and the wind.

She did not close her eyes. She lay on her back with her hands folded on her chest and looked at the dark above her. The ceiling was not there. The roof was not there. There was only the dark, and the dark went up.

"You hear me," she said, to the dark, to the house, to the hollow, to the river. "You hear me, and you know what I told him. You know I told him the truth. You know I told him to go home. You know I told him to sit with his father and hold his hand."

The dark did not answer. The dark had never answered. The dark only listened, and waited, and took what it wanted when it wanted it.

"I'm tired," she said. "I've been tired a long time. I'm tired of the porch and the lane and the river. I'm tired of the sign and the warning. I'm tired of the cellar and the jars and the bundles. I'm tired of being the only one who knows."

The dark did not answer.

"I'm tired of Eunice and Dolly and Lena coming to me because they don't know what to do. I'm tired of Owen Thresh coming to me because he thinks I can tell him why his prayers don't work. I'm tired of the men from the church coming up the lane to ask me questions I won't answer."

The dark did not answer.

"I'm tired of the Darks. I'm tired of the first one and the second one and the third one and the fourth one. I'm tired of the wife who disappeared and the husband who's dying and the son who came back from God knows where to sit in the kitchen and ask me what I know. I'm tired of all of it."

The dark did not answer. The dark had never answered.

She closed her eyes. The dark behind her eyelids was the same as the dark above her. She breathed. She counted her breaths, the way she had counted them all her life, the way her mother had taught her, the way her grandmother had taught her mother. One for the river. Two for the oak. Three for the road. Four for the cemetery. Five for the sign.

She fell asleep.

She woke in the night. She did not know what time it was. The dark was the same. The house was the same. The wind was back, low against the window, and she could hear the river through the glass, far off, constant.

She lay still. She listened. There was something in the house. She had lived in the house long enough to know the sounds it made in the wind, the sounds it made in the rain, the sounds it made in the dark, and this was not one of those sounds.

This was a footstep.

She sat up. She put her feet on the floor. Her shoes were where she had left them, side by side. She did not put them on. She stood. The floor was cold. The cotton of her nightgown was thin, and she felt the cold through it, and she felt the dark through the cotton, and she felt the dark all around her.

She listened. The house was quiet. The wind was low. The river was far. The footstep did not come again.

She stood in the bedroom and waited. The minutes went by. The dark did not change. The house did not change. The footstep did not come back.

She lay down. She pulled the sheet up to her chin. She closed her eyes. She did not sleep. She lay in the dark and waited for the morning, and the morning did not come, and the dark went on.

When the dawn came it came slow. It came through the east window of the bedroom, gray and thin, and it lay on the floor in a long pale stripe, and she watched it move across the boards toward the bed. She watched it reach the edge of the quilt. She watched it lie there.

She got up. She put on her shoes. She put on her dress. She went to the kitchen and made coffee. She drank it standing at the counter, looking out the window at the lane, at the trees, at the gray morning that had come to the hollow.

She went to the front door. She opened it. The porch was wet. The rain had come in the night. The steps were dark with it. The lane beyond the gate was dark with it. The trees beyond the fence were dark with it, and the leaves were black, and the sky above the trees was the color of iron.

She stepped onto the porch. She walked to the railing. She looked at the lane. The mud was fresh. There were prints in the mud. Boot prints. Two sets. One large, one smaller. They went from the gate to the porch and back again.

She had known they would be there.

She looked at the prints. She looked at the lane. She looked at the trees. The wind was still. The river was not loud this morning. The river was low and quiet, the way it got in the fall when the rains had not come for a while and the water in the mountains had not fed it.

She went back inside. She closed the door. She went to the cellar door. She opened it. The stairs went down into the dark. She did not go down. She stood at the top and looked at the stairs, and the stairs looked back at her.

She could smell it from the top. Iron and rain. The smell of the river when it was low and the mud on the bank was red. The smell of the hollow when the year was turning and the leaves had been down for a while and the ground was soft.

She closed the cellar door. She went to the kitchen. She put on the kettle. She set the kettle on the stove. She lit the burner. The flame was blue and then it was orange and then it was the color of the morning, and the kettle began to warm, and she stood at the counter and waited for it to sing.

She did not go down to the cellar. She did not need to go down to the cellar. She knew what was down there. She had known what was down there for forty years. She had put it there herself, with her own hands, in the night, in the dark, with the help of the man who had been her husband, and then without him, after he had gone down to the river with the Darks and not come back.

The kettle sang. She lifted it off the burner. She poured the water into the pot. She set the kettle back. She sat at the table with the cup in her hands and looked at the wall, and the wall looked back at her, and the morning went on.

At eight o'clock she went to the porch. She sat in the chair. She looked at the lane. The prints were still there in the mud. Two sets. One large, one smaller. The dark man and the woman who was not dark. The woman who had been here in the night. The woman who had gone down into the cellar and come back up.

She waited. She did not know who would come first. Eunice or Dolly or Lena or Owen. One of them would come. One of them always came. They came to her because they did not know what to do. They came to her because they had been told, all their lives, that she knew things. They came to her because the hollow had taken something from them and they wanted to know why, and she was the only one who could tell them, and she never did.

At nine o'clock Eunice Holler came up the lane. Eunice walked slow. She was seventy. She had been a girl in the hollow. She had married a Holler. She had buried a Holler. She had raised four Hollers and buried two of them. She came up the lane in her good coat and her good shoes and her hat with the veil, and she came up the steps and she sat in the other chair and she did not speak.

Hattie did not speak. The two women sat on the porch in the gray morning and looked at the lane and the trees and the sky.

"She came to me last night," Eunice said, after a while. "Dolly. She came to my house. She said she'd been to yours. She said she'd been in your cellar. She said she'd taken something out of a jar and she'd put it back. She said it smelled of iron and rain."

Hattie did not answer.

"She said you told her not to go down there. She said she went anyway. She said she had to see what you kept down there. She said she'd been curious all her life. She said she'd been curious since she was a girl. She said she'd heard her mother talk about it, and her grandmother, and she'd wanted to see for herself."

Hattie looked at Eunice. Eunice's face was white. Eunice's hands were folded in her lap.

"She said she opened a jar," Eunice said. "She said the jar was on the shelf at the bottom of the stairs. She said the lid was sealed with wax. She said she broke the wax with her thumbnail. She said she opened the jar and looked inside and there was something in the water. She said it was small and it was dark and it smelled of iron and rain. She said it moved. She said it was alive. She said she put the lid back on. She said she put the jar back on the shelf. She said she came back up the stairs and went home and she couldn't sleep. She said she came to me at ten o'clock last night and she told me what she'd done and she's sorry, she said, she's sorry, she said she didn't mean to, she said she was curious, she said she was a fool."

Hattie looked at the lane. The prints were still there. Two sets. One large, one smaller.

"What was in the jar?" Eunice said.

"Nothing," Hattie said.

"Dolly said it moved. Dolly said it was alive."

"Dolly saw what Dolly saw," Hattie said. "Dolly has seen things all her life that weren't there. Dolly sees things when the year turns. Dolly sees things when the river is low."

"Dolly's not a liar," Eunice said.

"Dolly's not a liar," Hattie said. "Dolly's a woman who went where she had no business going. Dolly's a woman who opened a jar that had been sealed for forty years. Dolly's a woman who put it back and went home and came to you in the middle of the night because she was afraid of what she'd done."

Eunice did not speak.

"You tell Dolly," Hattie said, "that I'm going to the cellar today. You tell Dolly that I'm going to see what she's done. You tell Dolly that if she's broken the seal, I'll know it. You tell Dolly that if she's taken anything, I'll know it. You tell Dolly that if she's put something of her own in the jar, I'll know it. You tell Dolly that I'm going to the river with what's in the jar, and I'm going to put it back where it belongs, and the river will take it, and the hollow will have what it wants, and Dolly will be safe. You tell Dolly that."