The Farm

Chapter Seventeen

Sue Norwood turned around the sign in her window to inform any late-night cyclists mat she was closed—gone fishing. Not that she'd ever cared for sportfishing, even though she sold Orvis rods and reels, hip waders, hand-tied flies, coolers, Henry Fonda hats, and everything the genteel fisherman needed except for alco hol. Solom was unincorporated which precluded a vote on local alcohol sales, and Sue figured in maybe five years the seasonal home owners from Florida would own enough property to push for a referendum. For now, she was content to bide her time on that front. The pickings were easy enough as it was.

In 1995, Sue had purchased a small outbuilding that had belonged to me Little Tennessee Railroad one of the few structures in Solom to survive the 1940 flood. It sat within spitting distance of the Blackburn River, but was on ground just high enough to survive the calamities that Solom seemed to call down upon itself. Ice storms and blizzards were biannual events, high water hit every spring and fall, hellacious thunderstorms rumbled in from March through July, and the winter wind rattled the siding boards as if they were the bones of a scarecrow. But all the outbuilding needed was a green coat of paint, a twenty-thousand-dollar commercial loan at Clinton-era rates, and sixty hours of Sue's time each week to hang in there despite Solom's lack of a true business climate.

Sue had converted an upstairs storage room into an apartment, and it was to this space she retired after closing. She passed the racks of kayaks that stood like whales' ribs on each side of the aisle, making sure the back door was locked. As an all-season outfitter, she'd packed the place with every profitable item she could order, from North Face sleeping bags to compasses to Coleman gas stoves. Ten-speed bicycles were lined against the front wall, with rentals bringing in more than enough to keep her wheels greased. Ever since Lance Armstrong had trained along the old river road before his third run at the Tour de France (a little factoid that Sue always managed to slip into her advertising copy, when she could n't get the local media to mention it for free), out-of-shape amateurs had been flocking to the area to rest their sweaty cracks on her bicycle seats. At twenty dollars a day, they could hump it all they wanted. She was even willing to sponsor a community fundraising ride for the Red Cross each summer, a nice little tax write off that paid back in spades.

Sue counted the bikes before she went upstairs, her last official chore for the day. Two were still out. She checked her registration records at the desk and found the bikes were rented by a Mr. and Mrs. Elliott Everhart of White Plains, New York. Fellow Yankees. Sue was from Connecticut herself, but she'd graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in exercise science, spent three extra years in Athens as an assistant coach for the women's field hockey team, pretty much flattening her vowels and slowing down her speech enough to pass for southern if she was drunk. At the age of twenty-five, she had written down the names of all her favorite rock-climbing spots, clipped them apart with scissors, and randomly pulled one out of a hat. Solom wasn't on the list, but it had been the closest to the Pisgah National Forest, which featured Table Rock and Wiseman's View. Since Solom was near a river, and rock climbing wasn't exactly a major source of commercial recreation income, as it required little more than a rock and an attitude, she'd launched Back2Nature Outfitters and had been expand ing ever since. Funny thing was, she'd been so busy these past few years with her business that she rarely was outdoors herself.

The Everharts. Sue could remember them because the husband, Elliott, had detected her up-coast accent and made conversation about it. Sue couldn't remember the wife's name, but she was a quiet, willowy blonde who spoke little and didn't seem all that thrilled with the idea of human-powered transportation. They had rented the bikes at 2:00 p.m. and had estimated their return at 6:00 p.m. Elliott told her they had rented a cabin on the hill above Solom General Store and had walked down so as not to take up a parking space in the small gravel lot. Sue had said, "Thank you kindly," an artificial southern response that had come more and more easily over the years, then sent the couple on their way with bottled min eral water (two dollars a pint) and a map free with any purchase. Sue now checked the clock above the front door, the one that elicited native birdcalls with each stroke of the hour. It was ten minutes away from Verio, nearly two hours later than the Everharts' anticipated return.

People who rented bicycles sometimes got flats. That was rare, because she kept the equipment in good condition. All those who Tented equipment, whether it was a propane lantern or a kayak or a ten-speed, were required to sign release forms absolving Back2Nature Outfitters of any responsibility. That didn't mean that people didn't screw up, especially the types of deep-pocketed but shallow-skulled clients to which Sue usually catered. Even if the Everharts had gotten lost or had a breakdown, they most likely could have walked back to Solom, flagged a ride, or called for assistance on their cell phones.

Except Sue could see three problems with that scenario, be cause she'd experienced each of them. Sometimes bikers got lost when they tried to walk back, because the going was so much slower that the maps became deceptive. Flagging a ride was no guarantee because there simply wasn't that much traffic after sun down in Solom, and outsiders were loathe to pick up anyone wear ing fluorescent spandex and alien-looking crash helmets. And cell phones were almost universally useless in Solom because the val leys were deep and the old families owning the high mountains had yet to lease space for transmitting towers.

Sue considered a fourth alternative. The Everharts appeared to be in their thirties and were presumably childless, at least for the length of their vacation. Maybe good old Elliott had gotten a boner for nature and coaxed his wife into the weeds for a little of the world's oldest and greatest recreational sport. Or maybe the wil lowy blonde had been the one to turn into a ravening maw of wild lust. Either way, Sue couldn't blame them. Some of the locals had whispered that she was a lesbian, and, sure, like many girls she'd sampled that particular ware in college, but she was pretty much married to her business these days.

As far as Sue could tell, there was no reason to call out the search-and-rescue team just yet. Besides, she earned an extra thirty dollars for late fees and the Everharts had put a five-hundred-dollar deposit on their credit cards to cover much of the value of the bikes. With depreciation, subsequent tax write-off, and the tip they'd probably give when they rolled in red-faced tomorrow morning, Sue figured the old saying "Better late than never" wasn't quite as good as "Better late and then never."

She left on a small light above the desk, went up the stairs at the back of the store, and made herself a dinner of canned salmon, creamed rice, and fresh collard greens, all heated over a Coleman gas stove. The stove was a legitimate business expense. She'd checked with her accountant boyfriend, Walter, whom she'd met on a white-water rafting expedition.

Though the relationship had launched on class-four rapids, it had drifted into shallow eddies by summer's end. That was okay, too. The money she'd spent on condoms and Korbel champagne was a valid tax write-off. Sue had a warm meal ahead and a vibrator waiting under her pillow, the famous Wascally Wabbit that was never too "hare-triggered" and didn't lie or cheat. If the Everharts came knocking in the middle of the night, she planned to sleep right through it.

Odus had first heard about the Circuit Rider when he was eight years old. His grandmother, a thick, dough-faced woman who sur vived the Great Depression and hoarded canned foods because of it, would often gather the grandkids around the front porch on Saturday nights. The older kids complained because they would rather watch television, but, to Odus, it was a way to stay up after bedtime without getting in trouble. He knew even then that stories were a way of passing along the truth, even when they walked on the legs of lies.

Granny Hampton was the matriarch of a half dozen kids, and three of those had seen fit to breed. Odus was an only child, but he had five cousins, and that was before they all moved away from Solom, so Granny's front porch was a lively and crowded place during the summer. Granny would settle in her rocker, the smaller kids gathered on the cool boards at her feet, the bigger ones slouched against the railing. A Mason jar at Granny's feet served as her spitoon, and she wouldn't talk before she'd placed a large pinch of Scotch-colored snuff behind her lower lip. As if on cue, the dusk grew a shade darker, the crickets launched their brittle screams, and fireflies blanketed the black silhouettes of the trees. The stars twinkled over the bowl of the valley, and the rest of the world may as well have broken off and drifted past the moon for all it mattered. It was as if Granny were a witch who conjured up a magical stage for her tales and Solom were the only solid ground in the universe.

"The Circuit Rider was one of the first horseback preachers to come through these parts," Granny said on mat July night of 1966. "There had been a couple of Methodists and an Episcopalian, but Harmon Smith was a converted Primitive Baptist. The Baptists weren't all over the place like they are now, and most of the white settlers kept their religion to themselves. The thing about Primitives is they don't believe in salvation—"

Lonnie, who was a year older than Odus, cut in and said, "Does that mean they don't believe in Jesus?"

"They believe in Jesus, but he ain't the only way to heaven. Primitives believe you're bora saved."

"I don't want to hear no sermon," said Walter Buck, Odus's old est cousin and the one probably most in need of a sermon. "Get on to the ghost."

Granny paused to let a tawny strand of saliva leak into the Mason jar, her eyes like onyx marbles in the weak light of the porch's bare bulb. "I'll get to the ghost soon enough, but if I was you, I'd make sure the ghost don't get on to you"

Walter Buck snickered, but there was a little catch in his breath when he finished.

"Harmon Smith decided he liked the look of the land because it reminded him of his homeland in the Pennsylvania high country. He aimed to settle down and build a little church here. Problem was, a couple of other preachers had been riding through the re gion, and they were all hell-bent for saving souls in those days. The Methodists were the worst, or the best, depending on how you looked at it. They would ride themselves ragged, cross mountains in the dead of winter, sleep on hard ground, and generally run themselves to the bone in order to bring a single person into the fold. They tended to wear down and get ill, and it was common for them to die before the age of thirty. This all happened two hundred years ago, so people didn't live all that long back then anyway."

"Was Daniel Boone here then?" Lonnie asked.

"Boone never was here, much. He'd come up and hunt, maybe spend a few weeks in the winter. He kept a little cabin over on Kettle Knob, but he never had much claim on this place. Besides, this story ain't about Daniel Boone, it's about Harmon Smith."

All the cousins had watched Fess Parker wearing his coonskin cap on television, starring as Daniel Boone, the fightin'est man the frontier ever knew. But Odus was more interested in the Circuit Rider, and looked at the Three Top Mountain range, imagining Harmon Smith guiding his horse along the rocky trails.

"Harmon Smith was based in Roanoke, Virginia, at the time, and his territory went into Tennessee and Kentucky. He had used up three horses by the time he first set eyes on Solom. In them days, there was probably two dozen families in the valley, and most of them are still here."

"Was there any Hamptons?" Lonnie asked.

"Quit interrupting or we'll never get through," Walter said.

Granny lowered one eyelid and gave Walter a stare that shut him up for the rest of the story. The bugs had found the porch light by that time, and a mosquito bite on Odus's ear had swollen up and begun to itch, but he could put up with a hundred bites to learn about the Circuit Rider.

"The Hamptons were here, Robert and Dolly, they'd be your great, let me see, great-great-great-grandparents, if I'm figuring right. They were one of the first to invite Harmon Smith in for a bite of supper, which is why I know so much about him. The story's been passed down all these years, but I'm sure there's some parts that have been beefed up a bit along the way. Wouldn't be a good folktale otherwise.

"Harmon Smith told Robert and Dolly that he wanted to buy some land up here. Preachers in those days never had any money, figuring they'd get their reward in heaven, not like them slick- haired weasels you'll find behind a pulpit these days. But Harmon had a young coon dog with him, and one of the Hicks boys took a cotton to the hound and ended up trading ten acres for it. By that time, Harmon had persuaded Dolly and Robert to join the Primitives, mostly because joining didn't seem to require any kind of obligation. You didn't have to give up dancing or corn liquor, not that any Hamptons ever liked to take a drink."

Odus knew that was one family trait that hadn't made it into his branch, because his dad rarely went through a day without a drink. But Odus didn't think liquor was bad, because it made his dad sleepy and talkative. When he wasn't drinking, he was prone to cussing and stomping around, so Odus's gut always unclenched when his dad twisted the cap on a pint bottle.

"Harmon ended up building his church, but it took him five long years. In the meantime, he was still making his circuit on his horse, Old Saint, taking collections where he could, preaching the Primitive line as he went. Harmon took a wife but she must have wandered off and left him, because she was never heard from again. The preacher turned peculiar after that. He took up farming, but his soil was too thin and rocky. One autumn, Harmon stacked up some stones and covered them with dead locust branches. He knelt before them and prayed, then took one of his chickens and chopped" —here spit flew from Granny's mouth as she made a chopping motion with her hand and Lonnie jumped a foot in the air even though he was sitting on his rump—"and its head flew off and dribbled blood all over the wood. He set the branches on fire and tossed the chicken on it, like the way they used to offer up lambs in the Old Testament. People whispered about that, but figured Harmon knew how such things were done. The next year, Harmon's crops were busting open they were so thick, corn and cabbage and squash and even things that don't take hold too well here like melons and strawberries. In his church he said God had smiled down on a humble servant, but that October he sacrificed a goat on his stack of killing stones. Garden got even better, so the autumn after that it was a cow, and the wood had to be stacked as high as man's head in order to do the job proper."

"Didn't anybody think he was crazy?" Debbie asked, who was the weird cousin who had once tried to show Odus her panties. The night had settled down more heavily than ever, a thick, black blan ket held in place by the glittering nail heads of the stars.

"Sure, some did, but they figured if burnt offerings was good enough for Abraham, it was good enough for Harmon Smith. Other horseback preachers came through, though, and talk went around that they weren't happy with the way old Harmon had set up shop. These were 'enlightened minds,' and they didn't hold with old- fashioned ways. The Methodist man in particular felt the strong hand of God pushing him into this territory as if there was only one right way to put us mountain people on the path to Glory."

Granny Hampton paused on that word "glory," and let them chew it over as she relieved her mouth of brown saliva. The way she said it, getting to heaven sounded almost like a scary thing, be cause you'd find a cavalry of nasty horseback preachers guarding the Pearly Gates.

"One November Sunday morning, when Harmon was due back for a service, Old Saint came clopping down Snakeberry Trail with an empty saddle." Here Granny Hampton gave a vague wave to Three Top, and Odus could almost hear those iron horseshoes knocking off of granite and maple roots. "Some of the menfolk went up to hunt for him, and they saw what looked like signs of a struggle near the creek. Never found his body. Your ancestor Robert figured he got took by a mountain lion. Some said Harmon went in the water and got tugged down into a sinkhole and turned to soap."

"Yuck," Lonnie said.

"Others said he never did die. They say he still comes back every decade or so to toss a body on his killing stones. And it ain't animals no more."

"What is it, then?" Walter Buck said and his voice was low and reverent and maybe just a little bit spooked.

"Now nothing will do for Harmon Smith's garden but a bad lit tle young'un."

Granny Hampton lifted herself up with a groan of both breath and chair wood, took up her cane, and headed for the screen door. She paused and looked out at the mountains once more and said, "Praise the Lord, I'm mighty glad I'm old. Not much left to be scared of anymore."

She went inside, her chair still rocking, the runners whispering against the night like a language two hundred years lost.

Odus never forgot that story, and more than once he'd found himself alone at night on a dark trail or stretch of pasture and recall that image of Old Saint prancing down off Three Top. Except, in the image, a soapy, pale figure was perched on the horse's back, the head beneath the black hat swaying back and forth with the horse's motion. For those who had ever heard Granny Hampton tell the story, it was easy to believe Harmon Smith was still riding the cir cuit.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Katy asked.

"What?"

"The thing you don't want to talk about."

Katy turned her back to him and shimmied out of the dress with the autumnal print. She hung it in the closet, though she'd spilled some butter sauce on it during dinner. She felt oddly exposed in front of her husband, though she was in her bra and panties and he'd certainly viewed the marital merchandise on at least one occa sion.

Gordon was in his pajamas, in bed, pretending to be engrossed in a Dostoyevsky novel. He had changed in the bathroom, locking the door so she couldn't enter while he was taking a shower and brushing his teeth.

"You mean Jett?"

That wasn't what she meant, and she approached the dresser for the sole purpose of glancing in the mirror to see if he was looking at her body. His gaze never left the book. "What about Jett?" she asked.

"I know a counselor. He teaches part-time at Westridge, and I'm sure he'll give me a discount if insurance doesn't cover it."

She removed her earrings, a set of sterling silver crescent moons, and put mem in the cedar jewelry box on the dresser. Only after she closed the lid did she realize she'd never seen either the earrings or the box before. "What?" she said, too loudly for bedtime.

"For her problems. The drugs, the wild stories, the way she dresses to intentionally offend. She's making a classic ploy for at tention."

Like mother, like daughter.

Katy removed her bra and let it slip to the floor, still looking into the mirror. Her freckled breasts were high and firm, even though she had breast-fed Jett. Katy picked up the silver-handled brush on the dresser and began running it through her red hair, flip ping her head so the sheen would reflect in the bedside lamplight. Gordon was reading the Dostoyevsky.

"Do you think I'm prettier than Rebecca?" she asked.

Gordon closed the novel with a slap of pulp. "That's a hell of a thing to ask a man. It's like asking if I think you're fat."

"I've seen her picture. She's not like me at all. Brown hair, dark eyes, fuller lips. They say some men have a 'type' and go for it time after time, even when it's bad for them."

"We were talking about Jett."

She turned to face him, her nipples hard in the cool September air. "You keep changing the subject."

"The subject is us. All of us." His eyes stayed fixed on hers, re sisting any temptation he might have had to let his gaze crawl over her figure. Perhaps he had no desire and nothing to hide. Maybe this morning's sex had been his version of a personality warp. Jett might not be the only one in the house who had hallucinations. Then again, Katy had been the one to wear a dead woman's dress without a moment's consideration of how strange that was, espe cially when the dress belonged to Gordon's first wife. Even stranger, Gordon had not commented on it.

Were they all going insane? What if Jett was spiking their food slipping LSD or some other brain-scrambling substance into the recipes she'd found scattered about the kitchen? No. Jett was off drugs. She had promised.

"We're trying, Gordon," she said. "You knew we came with strings attached."

"You look cold. Why don't you put on a robe?"

"I'm fine."

"I'm worried about you."

"Maybe you should save your worry for what's happening between us. We screwed each other's brains out this morning, and it was the first time you ever touched me in any way that mattered. I thought I'd finally broken through. Now you act like nothing hap pened."

Gordon never looked embarrassed but his cheeks turned a shade rosier. "It's complicated."

"Not really. Either I'm prettier than Rebecca or I'm not. Either you want to screw me or you don't. Either we're married or just people who sleep in the same bed. Sounds pretty damned simple to me.

"You're not from Solom."

"I am now. I moved here, remember. I said 'I do' and I gave up my stable if unspectacular career in Charlotte and yanked my daughter's roots out of the Piedmont dirt and dragged both of us up here because I thought we had a future with you. Only it turns out I'm second on your 'honey-do' list behind your dead wife."

Gordon exploded out of the blankets, rising from the bed with an angry squeak of springs. His pajamas were askew, one tail of his shirt dangling across his groin. "Leave Rebecca out of this."

"How can I? I thought you wanted me to be her."

"You'll never be Rebecca."

Katy stormed out of the room, tears blurring her vision. She slammed the bedroom door as punctuation to her unspoken come back. Her curled right fist ached and she looked down to see the silver-handled hairbrush with the initials R.L.S.

Rebecca Leigh Smith.

Katy flung the hairbrush down the hall and ran to the top of the stairs. The air coming up from the landing was cool and drafty, moving around her flesh like soft hands. The smell of lilacs wrapped her, carrying a faintly sweet undercurrent of corruption. She leaned against the top post, the landing spread below her like still and dark water.

Maybe if she died, Gordon would love her as well.

"Do you love him?"

The words crawled from the hidden corners of the kitchen, out from the cluttered pantry shelves, beneath the plush leather couch, off the mantel with its dusty pictures and Gordon's collection of re ligious relics, up from the dank swell of the crawl space. Katy thought she had imagined the words, that the voice was the whisk of a late autumn wind, or the settling of a centuries-old farmhouse. Better that than to accept she was losing her mind. Because, however briefly and innocently, she had just contemplated suicide.

The realization brought fresh tears, and behind them, a surge of anger. She had always thought herself strong. After her divorce, she had maintained a household, provided for her daughter, and re sisted any temptation to reconcile with Mark, who would occasion ally make overtures that seemed more like the pat chatter of a horny male than the sincere revelations of a man suffering regrets. She had moved on, moved up, and though this new marriage had n't been the stuff of dreams, she was determined—

"DO YOU LOVE HIM?"

This time the breeze was staccato, deep, the sounds rounded off into syllables. The voice was female, as frigid and calm and dead as the lost echo from a forgotten grave.

"Who's there?" Katy said, not really thinking anyone was there. The house was locked. Only crazy people heard voices when no one was there. And she wasn't crazy.

"Mom?"

The voice was behind her now. Younger, higher...

"Jett?" She turned. Her daughter stood in the shadows of the hall, her silhouette visible against the slice of light leaking from her room. Katy was aware of her exposed body and wrapped her arms around her chest.

"Are you okay, Mom?"

"Sure, honey. I was just checking on something in the kitchen."

"I thought I heard you talking to somebody."

Had Katy spoken? She couldn't be sure. A horrified part of her self wondered if she had actually answered the Voice's bare and bald question. But the Voice wasn't real and the house was quiet and it was always easy to lie to yourself when you didn't like the truth. What she couldn't avoid was her daughter's stare. Katy had never been a prude about nakedness, but there was an unwritten rule that you didn't go starkers around your kids once they passed th e toddler stage.

"It's okay, sweetie," Katy said. "Go on back to bed. You have school tomorrow."

"It's not even ten yet, Mom. That's pretty lame even for Solom."

"Well, go read or study or something. Listen to some music."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine."

Jett stepped back into the light of her doorway. Her dyed-black hair was tied back in a ponytail, her face bare of makeup, braces glinting silver. A sweet, round-eyed child. Not a drugged-out potential menace to society, as Gordon saw her, and not a disruption to learning, as her teachers claimed. Just a sweet little girl. Her baby.

"Whatever," Jett said. "It's not like we get through problems to gether or anything. That's just a line we use for the counselors, right?"

Jett was about to close the door, but men stuck her head back out and said, "By the way, what's that smell? Like somebody farted flowers or something."

The door closed with a click and the hallway went black and Katy slid down the newel post and sat on the top stair until her tears had dried.