The Candy That Lied

Somebody cut off my sister's feet on her way to sell sorghum candy. She was raped and killed.

All Mamaw did was pat her cold face and wail, "Where did my sorghum candy go!" Ten years later I came back to the hollow to teach, and a girl in my class carefully held out a piece of homemade sorghum candy.

The candy melted slowly in my mouth, and all at once I was crying.

That one wail, the one that had held me for ten years, finally pointed somewhere. "Waylon, I know how to find him now." Chapter 1 Saturday, June 11, 2016.

It was still dark that morning when Mamaw's hollering woke me up. "Taking my candy out to sell again!

What does a little girl like you want money for?" I was too sleepy to get my eyes open. I knew she was yelling at my sister.

Every Saturday my sister carried her homemade sorghum candy into Persimmon to sell at the market, gone before light and back after dark.

Every time she came home the candy was all sold and the bag was packed full of snacks for me.

Before she left, she came back into our room and touched my face. "You be good at home, little bit. I'll bring you something good." I was too sleepy. I didn't open my eyes.

I just made a sound at her. If I'd known that was the last time I would ever see her. I would have opened my eyes and looked at her, and told her goodbye the right way.

I was eleven that year. She was only fourteen. Her whole life was like the name Waylon: sorry and broken.

But she was still the sister I loved most, the only person who ever said she'd take me out of this hollow.

How could I stand her being used like that, thrown in a ditch like a dirty rag.

How could I stand the men of the hollow crowding around her with her clothes half off, pointing, talking. I told them, "Get out! Get away from her!" But I cursed them too late.

Later the police told me, "They'd torn the scene all to pieces.

By the time we got there, there wasn't a usable trace left." But it wasn't their cold, dirtyminded gawking that shocked me most. It was Mamaw.

With everybody talking around us, she was crying and patting my sister's bloodless face. "The sorghum candy!

Where did my sorghum candy go!" My dad kicked her off the body. "You old bitch. Waylon's gone and you're still after your candy!" Everybody just kept watching the show.

Even though this was the second girl in this hollow to be raped and killed. But Mamaw, who'd favored boys over girls her whole life, went out of her mind from that day on. 2021.

I was in eleventh grade, and I went back to see her one last time.

She couldn't keep anybody straight anymore, but she held on to my hand and asked: "Did they ever find the sorghum candy Waylon lost?" I jerked my hand away.

But in the years since she died, I've wondered about it more and more. Why she cried that out, there beside my sister's body.

Was it really that bag of sorghum candy she cared about? June 2026. I got my teaching license, took an opening at the county school, and came back to the hollow.

Detective Roper, who had worked my sister's case back then, made a point of coming to see me. "Look how grown you are.

And the string of murders that took your sister, we still haven't broken it." In the classroom, sitting across from him, I was crying again, and still angry. "All these years I've dreamed about her body.

Why would anybody be that cruel? She was fourteen.

How could he do that to her…" Chapter 2 "It hasn't left my head either, all these years," Detective Roper said, his face serious. "Two girls dead in this hollow, one after the other, both of them assaulted and then killed, and your sister's feet hacked off besides.

We worked it for years. We never found him, and we never found her feet." "How can that be?

You all promised back then you'd have him soon." I was looking right at him, my hand tight on the corner of the desk. "We believed it at the time." He frowned. "We pulled the same man's DNA off your sister and off the other girl.

Once we knew it was a serial case, the state sent in a task force. "Inside of a month we took four hundred and some DNA samples.

Every man in town who'd give one, gave one, and the few who wouldn't, we ruled out other ways.

Nothing. "And the deeper we went, the more this case contradicted itself. "I remember it clear as day. The three biggest contradictions.

They hung up the whole task force, and they're why the case is still open today." "Three contradictions?" "That's right.

Every one of them past what our investigative methods and our profiling could reach back then." "Will you tell me, Detective Roper?" "I will. You're grown now, and you're a teacher.

You can hear it.

But the case is still open, so you keep it to yourself." I nodded. "You don't have to worry about that." "The first one is your sister's feet. "He cut them off and carried them away to satisfy some particular taste of his.

There's no question about that. "And we were sure from the start that it wasn't something he decided in the moment.

He'd planned it before he ever touched her. "Because the morning he killed her, he brought two kinds of tools. "In most rapemurders the man either brings nothing or brings a knife.

This one brought a saw too. "He knew a knife only gets through flesh and soft tissue. It won't go through bone. For bone you need a saw. "Bringing a saw has one purpose.

Taking a body apart. "But he didn't take her apart.

So we figured he went in planning to cut off her feet and carry them out." "That's it!" I said, furious. "That's why he picked her.

Because he's sick like that!" My sister had always been the fairest girl in the hollow, and her feet most of all. They almost shone.

Every time the two of us went down into the creek to wash something, standing barefoot in the water, the men who passed would sneak looks at her feet. Some of them just stared.

When I was little I didn't understand it. Feet that walk in mud all day, what's there to look at.

It wasn't until these last few years, from being online so much, that I found out how many men fixate on feet. Some of them have a whole fetish for it.

Detective Roper nodded. "Here's where it stops making sense. Far as I know, your sister, Waylon Tilley, never once in her life got out past this town. That right?" "She never did.

The farthest she ever went was into town to sell sorghum candy… What's that got to do with the case?" "That's exactly the problem. "If he settled on her because of the feet, then he had to have been around her before that morning.

Day to day, or at the least watching her more than once. Chapter 3 "On top of that, your sister was the second girl killed in this hollow.

He had to know the hollow well to get to two girls that cleanly in that short a stretch.

Outside of somebody who lives here, it's hard to do both of those things at once." "But she went into town to the market.

Could somebody from town, or from the next hollow over, have picked her out then?

Plenty of them know our end of things well enough." "Of course we thought of that. "That's why in 2016 we didn't only look at the hollow.

Inside of a month we asked every man in town to come in, one at a time, and give a sample of his own accord. Four hundred and some.

Not one match, not one close call. "You have to understand, the nearest town to ours is fifteen miles off. "In this whole town, one strange face and somebody notices.

And he killed two people in this hollow, one after the other, without a single witness.

As smooth as that, as well hidden as that, the odds he isn't from this town are about zero." "So that's the first contradiction.

Every man in town gave DNA and none of it matched." "That's it.

We leaned too hard on the lab back then, and we never expected that result." He put a hand to his forehead. "The task force met on it I don't know how many times.

Everybody racked his brain and nobody could answer it. If he isn't from this town, who is he?

How did he do any of it? "Most serial cases that won't break come down to a drifter from somewhere else.

If that's what this was, then he picked at random and didn't know our end of things.

So what, that morning he happened to be passing through this hollow with his tools, happened to meet her on the road, and took a notion to her right there? "There's no such luck in this world.

And he'd already killed the other girl. Was he lucky twice?" "It's not possible." Hearing him lay it out that way shook me. None of it held together.

And that was only the first of the three contradictions. "Was there nothing else to go on?" I asked him, anxious. "There was.

Of course there was." He scooted his chair closer. "What I'm about to tell you is the only card we have left, the way I see it. It's why I came to you today.

From here on, whatever we say between us, you don't tell another soul." "All right." I went tense all over. "There was a man on the task force the state sent down.

We all called him Garland. "He was set on working the link between your sister, Waylon Tilley, and the other victim. "On your sister's case I didn't agree with that approach at first.

Not every serial case has a link between the victims. "Your sister and the other girl were both girls with nobody at home looking after them. Nobody to protect them.

That was all they had in common. "Dig too deep in that direction and it starts to feel like blaming the victim. "Then one day Garland turned up something strange about Waylon. "And that's the second contradiction I wanted to tell you about.

Your sister's sorghum candy." "The sorghum candy?" Chapter 4 Those words set off a ringing in my head. Things came back to me, one after another.

Mamaw wailing beside my sister's body, ten years ago.

What Mamaw asked me before she died. "You remember, after your sister died, most of what we learned about her we learned from you." "Yes.

You all came to the house a lot, and every time you kept me a long while." "You were little, but we had no choice.

Your grandmother wasn't in her right mind by then, and your dad and your stepmother were over in the next hollow with your brother.

They didn't care about the two of you either." "That's right.

The only people in this world who cared about us were the two of us." "You told us back then that she always went alone to sell the candy.

Neither you nor your grandmother ever went with her once. That right?" "That's right. Mamaw wouldn't have gone.

I said I'd go with her every time, and then I couldn't get up in the morning… She was gone before light, every time." "So you don't actually know how the selling went.

All you could tell us was that she sold out every time, that she brought you snacks, and that she kept the rest of the money in her own drawer." "That's right.

My sister was born to make sorghum candy. The way I remember it, hers smelled good and chewed better, better than anybody else's, and every batch she carried out, she sold.

After she died I never ate sorghum candy again." Detective Roper's forehead creased. "That right there is the second contradiction," he said. "What's contradictory about it?

Does what I remember not line up with what you all found?" It came at me out of nowhere and left me muddled. "No. Everything you said is right.

It's only… "Have you ever asked yourself why your sister's candy sold out every single time?" "Because her candy was good!

Because she left before light and came home after dark and worked for it!" The question got me worked up. "You're right," he said. "But everybody along here puts in a little patch of sorghum.

Come fall they cook their own syrup and pull their own candy. You want some, you make it.

Hardly a soul buys it at the market. "Ten years ago, from what we worked out at your house: she made six, seven pounds at a time and sold it all in one Saturday.

At fifteen dollars a pound, that's right around a hundred dollars a trip. "Then she'd hand your grandmother fifteen for the makings, spend another fifteen on food and things for the two of you, and put the other seventy away. "But selling is selling.

Some days are good and some aren't. Why did she sell out every time? Why did she come home with that same figure every time?" "Because she worked so hard.

Every Saturday evening I'd go down to the mouth of the hollow and wait for her, and it was always dark before I saw her come dragging back. "She'd smile the second she saw me, and she couldn't get the snacks out of her bag fast enough…" I couldn't hold it back.

I was crying. I wanted so badly to know the truth about how my sister was killed. But the few good memories of her I had left, were those false too?

Detective Roper was quiet a long time. "What if I told you that Garland, the man I mentioned, ran a test later on.

Chapter 5 "Two Saturdays running, he bought candy off folks around here and stood at the market with it all day. One or two people bought, each time.

Nothing close to your sister." "How can that be…" I started shaking all over. In ten years I had never once asked the question. Back then it had all seemed like the way things were.

He paused a moment, then asked me, "Do you remember when your sister started selling sorghum candy?" "It would have been… after fall break the year before.

October 2015. "From then on she spent every weekday after school getting the candy ready. "Mamaw never helped her.

She even made my sister set aside a pound every time, and Mamaw would take it over to my little brother in the next hollow." "Do you know why she started selling?" "Because she wanted money… "Girls in this hollow, the grown folks at home either took off or don't care.

Once you're in middle school, which one of them doesn't want out? Out of a place where nobody looks after you and nobody loves you.

She wanted to take me with her." He nodded. "Poor folks' kids grow up fast.

No question she wanted money. "So how did she come to the idea of selling sorghum candy at the market?" "That I really don't know.

One afternoon over fall break she went to the market to buy something, and when she got home she brought it up with Mamaw. Mamaw wouldn't put out the money for the makings at first.

Then my sister said she'd pay her back out of what she earned, and she agreed…" I heard him say, half to himself, "So that's it… Garland had it right.

Every bit of it…" "What was that?" I looked at him, not following. His face was heavy. "Garland used to say it was all connected. Connected from way back." "Connected?

You mean this is connected to my sister dying? "Are you telling me the selling, the whole thing, was a lie from start to finish? "That's not possible! She wouldn't!

She wouldn't lie to me!" He looked at me with something complicated in his face. "What if I told you the other girl who was killed also started selling sorghum candy in October 2015?" "What?" I stared at him. "That's right." He knocked twice on the desk, hard. "What happened in October 2015? "What made the two of them start selling that same month, without ever putting their heads together? "Did they run into something? "Or somebody? "And is that somebody the man who killed them?" "If you got that far back then, didn't you look into it?

Who did my sister see while she was alive? What did she do at that market? Who bought her candy