The Farm

Chapter Nineteen

The general store was crowded with a mix of locals and tourists. Odus, his ball cap tipped low and a toothpick between his teeth, stood by the sandwich counter and waited as Sarah rang up the purchases of a chubby boy in too-tight nylon biking shorts and tank top. The customer's shoulders were pink and peeling, the sign of a spoiled city boy getting too much sun on vacation. The boy's dad stood beside him in a red sweatsuit that was meant to portray athleticism but instead gave the impression of a sausage that was about to bust out of its skin. Sarah bagged the boy's mound of candy bars, pork rinds, and lollipops.

A bluegrass band was tuning up in the park across the road. A Solom community group had bought four acres along the river that were now cleared and grassed, with a band shell at one end. From early summer until the end of October, weekly shows were held in the park. The music was either bluegrass or traditional old-timey, though the general store hosted occasional debates about the dif ference between the two labels. Odus picked some mandolin himself and even sat in on some local recording sessions, but he didn't like performing in front of people.

Sarah looked away from the register and frowned at him. He gave a small nod that said, "We need to talk after you take care of business."

Sarah paid rapt attention to the customers, smiling as if she ap preciated them for more than just their money. A six-pack of Mountain Dew, two cups of overpriced coffee, a microwave burrito, a honey bun, a bottle of sunblock, a rustic birdhouse, a basket made of entwined jack vine, a stack of Doc Watson CDs, and two bags of Twizzlers changed hands before Sarah got a break. She picked up a dusting cloth, came to the sandwich counter, and began wiping down the dewy glass.

"You had me worried," he said.

"Don't waste a good worry on me."

Normally Odus wouldn't. Sarah Jeffers was tougher than beef jerky and had the backbone of a mountain lion. But toughness and spine didn't matter when you were standing up against something that ought not be. Odus ground the end of his toothpick to splinters as he spoke around it. "I seen him."

"Seen who?" Sarah said suddenly taking a great interest in the chub of gray liverwurst. Odus didn't see how anybody could eat that stuff. Bologna was okay, but he preferred good and honest meat, like ham, that looked the way it did when it came from the animal.

"We both know who," he said.

A tan, Florida-thin blonde approached the cash register, pigtails tied with pink ribbons. She wore a T-shirt that read This dog don't hunt. In her hands were a gaudy dried flower arrangement and a miniature wooden church, no doubt decorations for a seasonal sec ond home. Sarah's face uncreased in relief as she went to ring up the sale.

"Are you the storyteller?" a voice behind him asked.

He turned and faced a man wearing sunglasses who held a cas sette tape as if filming a commercial. Odus was on the cover, dressed in his folksy garb of denim overalls and checked flannel shirt. He'd even borrowed a ragged-edged straw hat for the photo because the university woman who had recorded it said the package needed what she called a "hook." Odus didn't know a damned thing about marketing, but he knew stories from eight generations back.

The Hampton family had passed along the Jack tales, in which Jack usually put one over on the old King. "Jack and the Beanstalk" was the best-known of the stories, but that one didn't have a king in it. The university woman said they were parables in which the Scots-Irish who settled the Southern Appalachians were able to get proxy revenge on their English oppressors. Odus didn't feel partic ularly oppressed by anybody in England, except maybe when Princess Diana got all that attention for getting killed, but he fig ured the university woman was a lot smarter than he was about such things.

"I did some telling on that one," Odus said. The tape was called The Mouth of the Mountain.

"So you're a celebrity." The man was eating a Nutty Buddy ice cream cone, and a string of white melt rolled down the back of his hand. He licked it up.

"Not really. I just talked. The woman who made the tape did all the work." Odus looked over at Sarah, who was busy taking money for a gee haw whimmy-diddle, a folk toy that basically consisted of three sticks and a tiny nail. Retail value: $6.99 plus tax.

"Do you tell them in public? We're going to be up for two weeks and would love to hear some authentic Appalachian stories."

"They ain't authentic," Odus said. "They're all lies."

The man laughed ejecting a tiny peanut crumble that arced to the floor at Odus's feet. "That's good. I'm buying this one, and I'm sure I'll be pleased. If you're not holding any performances, can I hire you to come down and tell some stories around the campfire in our backyard?"

Sweat pooled in Odus's armpits. He didn't mind telling the sto ries to family or his few close friends, and he could even put up with talking them into a microphone, but the idea of spinning out some Jack yarns while a bunch of tourists yucked it up and sipped martinis was more than he could stand. "I don't do tellings in a crowd" Odus said.

"This won't be a crowd. Just us and the neighbors. Maybe ten people."

"Ten's a crowd."

The man looked at the tape. "Fifteen dollars for this, huh? I'll pay a hundred dollars for one hour."

Odus thought of the wallet in his back pocket, the leather folds so bare a fiddleback spider wouldn't hide in them. A hundred bucks would buy a case of decent whiskey, and decent whiskey would maybe drown out those dreams of the cheese-faced man in the black hat. From the park, the sounds of the string band blared from the PA speakers. "Fox on the Run," complete with three-part harmony.

The man was mouthing the waffle cone now, running his thick, pink tongue around the cone's rim.

"I'll have to think on it a spell."

The sunglasses hid the man's expression, which could have been disbelief or impatience. Odus didn't much care. It wasn't like losing a steady job or anything. If he'd even wanted a steady job, that was.

"I'll listen to the tape and get back to you," the man said. "What's the best way to reach you?"

Odus took the toothpick from his mouth and pressed the tip into his callused thumb. "I don't have no phone. Usually you can find me he re at the store or around."

The man smiled, vanilla cream on his upper lip. "Okay, 'Mouth of the Mountain.' Have it your way."

He went to pay for the tape. He left the store, and Odus watched through the screen door as the man made his way to the park.

"Sold a tape," Sarah said. "There's another buck-fifty for you."

"Except I don't get it for six more months," Odus said. "That royalty thing."

Sarah took a five out of the cash register and held it out to him. "I'll report that one as damaged. Call it an advance."

Odus swallowed hard and went to the counter. The Store was quiet. An elderly couple was browsing in the knickknacks, and a kid faced tough choices at the candy rack. Odus reached out and took the bill, but as he pulled his hand away, Sarah grabbed his wrist with all the strength of a possum's jaws.

"Take it and buy you a bottle, and forget about it," Sarah said. "You ain't seen nothing, and I ain't seen nothing."

Their eyes met. Odus, at six feet two and 240, somehow seemed to be looking up at Sarah, who stood all of five feet and weighed in at a hundred soaking wet. "He's back, and getting drunk won't change that."

"Getting drunk never changed anything, but that never stopped you before." Sarah let go of his wrist. "Don't go blabbing it or peo ple will think your brain finally pickled and they'll throw you in Crazeville to dry out."

"The people I tell it to will believe me, because they'll know." "I heard what you told that man. Your stories ain't authentic, they're lies." Sarah began fussing with the cigarette packs and cans of smokeless tobacco behind the counter.

"The biggest lies are the easiest to swallow," Odus said. "But they burn like hell when you puke them back up."

He went out into the sunshine and the last chorus of "Fox on the Run."

Jett stood by the pay phone in the school lobby, fumbling in her pocket-sized purse. Many of her classmates, especially the girls, had their own cell phones, but Gordon thought they were a "distrac tion to learning." As if she couldn't get Brittany to text-message her the answer to a quiz question. Phones were tools and were here to stay, so why couldn't Gordon get with the future already?

Because he was lame, that's why. She pulled out the phone card her dad had given her as a present when she and Mom left Charlotte. "Five hundred minutes, call any time," he'd said. Actually, he prob ably didn't mean any time, since he'd started dating the blond librar ian. Mandy, Mindy, Bambi, something like that. Lots of checking out going on there, probably.

Noise leaked from me lunch room, typical middle-school jokes, flirting, me rattle of silverware on hard vinyl trays. She pressed her ear to the phone and punched in her card digits, waded through the operator's asking if she wanted to donate minutes to the troops, then entered the numbers for Dad's work.

"Draper Woodworking and Design," the female voice said.

"Could I get Mark Draper, please?"

"May I ask who is calling?"

"Jett. Jett Draper."

"Oh." Uttered with a tone of sympathy.

After thirty seconds, Dad came on the line, bluff and hearty and probably stoned. "What's up, pumpkin? Aren't you in school?"

"Yeah. It's lunchtime. I have five minutes before the bell rings."

"How's it going? Did you get my letter?"

"Yeah. Thanks for the money. It really saved my sanity."

"I'll send some more soon."

"No, I'm fine. Really."

"Are you liking Solom any better now that you've had some time to get settled?"

"It's all right. A little slow, but you get used to it."

"Made any friends?"

She thought of her drug connection, the goats, the man in the black suit, the kids on the bus, creepy old Betsy Ward. "Yeah. I'm fitting right in."

Her dad's tone turned serious. "And your mom? Is she okay?"

"Actually, that's what I called about."

'Talk to me, sweetheart."

"I'm afraid she's starting to lose it."

"Lose it?"

"Yeah. She's, like, not Mom. Like some alien came down and took over her brain. She's changed so much in the last few weeks. Sometimes I can't believe it's the same person who told me that life sends messages in invisible balloons."

"She's going through an adjustment period. She'll be fine once—"

"Don't give me that counselor babble horseshit, Dad."

"Jett."

"Sorry. It just blurted out."

"I can tell you're upset. Calm down and tell me what she's up to."

"She stares off into space. I'll walk into a room and it's like she's forgotten what she was doing, or like she'd been in the middle of a daydream and I woke her up. She's totally changed her wardrobe and—this might be weirdest of all—she's started cooking. And I don't mean beanie weenies and frozen waffles. I'm talking honest- to-God recipes."

"Well, if you'll forgive the counselor babble, I'd guess she's try ing hard to make things work with her new husband."

"You sound sad about it, Dad."

"We had our chance and blew it. Things just didn't work out. But—"

"I know, I know, it's not my fault and it had nothing to do with me."

"I know it's tough on you, honey. Getting along with Gordon okay?"

She didn't know whether to lie or not. Dad shouldn't have asked, or maybe it was his way of showing he cared about her. It was an uncomfortable subject. Gordon had wanted her to take the Smith name, but she'd balked. Mom had sided with her, of course, but not too vocally. "He's been a hard case but Mom says he just wants what's best for me. But I don't think him and Mom are getting along too well."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

She could tell he wasn't. She didn't understand much about boy-girl stuff, except she was smart enough to know that you wanted to forever own the one you loved, even if it was bad for both of you. "He's not mean or anything, just cold. Not to get too personal, but he never kisses her."

"They'll work it out. I'm more worried about you. I hate to ask, but how are things going with the drugs?"

"Fine." She realized she'd snapped at him, and that was the worst possible thing to do, because it would make him suspicious. "They haven't even invented drugs up here yet. It's like the 1800s. Plowing with mules, no electricity, a church down every dirt road. Nothing but clean air and sunshine."

"Good for you, pumpkin. I don't mean to pry, but I'm your dad. It's still my job, even if we're two hundred miles apart."

The bell rang, its brittle, metallic echo bouncing off the concrete block walls. The traffic in the hall picked up, a few of the guys giving her the eye, no doubt because of her black lipstick. "Got to go to math," she said.

"Love you. Keep in touch, and tell your mom I said hello."

For a moment, Jett almost told about the man in the black hat, but Dad would think she was either cracking up or in serious need of some counselor babble horseshit. Ditto with the menacing goats. Just thinking of them made her a little light-headed, as if such things were never real unless you spoke of them. Better to just ignore them, pen them up behind the walls of Stoner City. "I love you, too, Dad. 'Bye."

She wiped her eyes, careful not to smudge the liner, and waded into the hallway crowd.

Carnivorous goats.

Sounded the fuck like a cheesy zombie movie to Alex Eakins. He could dig zombies, even cheer for them in a way, because when you got down to it, those gut-munching things from beyond the grave were about the most libertarian creatures around. Talk about your free-market economies. But goats were another matter.

Alex was smart enough to be aware of his eccentric nature. His parents were afraid he was turning into a survivalist who would one day construct an armed bunker and have a standoff with fed eral agents. But the true survivalist didn't want to be noticed by the government, much less stage a confrontation. And a true survival ist didn't go around ranting about man-eating goats, because that was a surefire way to get noticed.

So Alex would have to figure out how to handle this on his own. The first order of business was a trip to the general store to get a few reels of barbed wire. He could add another couple of runs around the perimeter of his property as a first line of defense. His gun rack held a .30-30, a sixteen-gauge Remington shotgun, and a .22 so his girlfriends could participate in target practice. He had his bow and arrows, a slingshot, and a couple of sticks of dynamite he'd bought under the table at the last Great Tennessee Border Gun Show. Plus there was the contraband arsenal in his secret room. So goats, even a herd of them, were not something to lose sleep over.

Weird Dude Walking was another story altogether.

Because Alex had returned to the scene of the slaughter yester day afternoon, and not even a stitch of clothing remained. No blood on the ground, either, and not a goat in sight (Alex had the Remington with him just in case). Goats would eat any old thing, especially natural-fiber clothing, but surely a few scraps would be scattered around, or a bone button from the coat. Strangest of all, though the ground was pocked with cloven hoofprints, there was not a single mark from the boots the man had been wearing.

Which meant Weird Dude Walking must have risen up and floated away like Christ gone to heaven.

Even if Alex wanted to report what he'd witnessed, he had no evidence. He never doubted his sanity, though his own family had called him "crazy" any number of times. But only a crazy person would witness a man feeding himself alive to a bunch of goats.

Maybe not crazy, though.

Maybe special.

If a thing like that happened in the old days, the people called you a prophet and let you boss them around.

"Alex?"

Alex looked up, not realizing he'd been staring at his palms as if expecting them to start bleeding. "I thought you were at work."

"It's my day off."

"Oh yeah."

"Something wrong?"

"No, babe. Just thinking about the state of the world. It's a guy thing."

"I've got a guy thing for you." Meredith nuzzled her breasts against his back and put her arms around his chest.

"Not now. I've got some things to work out."

"Don't you want to smoke some?"

"I need to keep a clear head. Dope is the opium of the masses."

"Huh?"

"Hemingway. He said dope is the opium of the masses. But that's pretty fried, because opium is what they make heroin out of, and not many people can hook up with some H. I guess they didn't smoke much weed back in Hemingway's time."

"I thought he said religion was the opium of the masses. Or was that Karl Marx?"

"Same thing. Religion is for dopes, so it all works out." He gave a stoned snicker, though he'd not had any marijuana since the night before.

"You want some lunch? I could cook one of your acorn squashes and some wild rice."

"I'm not hungry. I think I'll go check the babies and meditate."

He got up from the table and went outside. He had a small green house, but he didn't grow his dope in it. The surveillance planes might see it and that would be the first place the snooper troopers would train their little spy cameras. His marijuana was in a little shed by the garden. He used a wind turbine and water wheel to generate electricity for the full-spectrum lights, because one of the ways cops got a warrant was by checking the electric company's records for a jump in kilowatt hours. The jump was "evidence" that a citizen might be using grow lights. Since he was off-grid, he was outside the system, in more ways than one.

He unlocked the shed, checked the sky for bogies, then went in. The main room was filled with a blue glow thrown off by the bank of grow lights. Marijuana plants, spawned from Kona Gold seeds a friend had mailed from Hawaii, stood as tall as Alex, and the room was sweet with the fully flowering buds. The three dozen plants were grown in five-gallon buckets, and the soil was ripe with the best compost Mother Nature could produce. Alex sat cross-legged before the plants in a yoga position. He was at peace in this place, this shrine to the sacred buzz.

Too bad he had to hide it away. In a righteous world, he could grow it out there in the garden, right in front of God and every body. Even Weird Dude Walking. If grass were legal, maybe the country's farmers wouldn't need crop subsidies. Get them off welfare and stifle the feds' war on drugs at the same time. Damn, why couldn't the Libertarians come up with any good candidates?

He let his anger at social injustices slip away as he breathed deeply of the Cannabis sativa. A spider had spun a web at the base of one of the plants. The spider was yellow with black streaks across its back, and it worked its way toward the center of the web where a struggling fly was tangled in the silken threads. Alex realized it was life in a microcosm, a symbolic play. You buzz around minding your own business, and then suddenly your ass is snared and along comes Reality to suck out your juices.

Just like the goats had sucked the life out of the man in the black hat.

Heavy.

Too heavy to contemplate with a straight head, despite what he'd told Meredith. He just didn't want to smoke with her, because then he'd have to either talk or silence her in bed. The only way to shut up a woman was to stick part of yourself in her. He needed to be alone. He pulled a joint out of his sock and fired it up, not shifting from his yoga seating as he puffed. He began a game of situa tion-problem-solution.

Situation: You had a vision. Nobody else will believe you, be cause you don't belong to any religion of the masses. Well, Meredith will probably believe you, but she believes in Atlantis and UFOs and even Dun/tin 'Fucking Donuts.

Problem: You either keep it to yourself and forget it, or you have to admit that miracles happen.

Solution: Smoke more dope.

He took a deep draw off the joint and held the smoke in his lungs. In his mind's eye, the blue smoke seeped into his blood stream and sent its tendrils into his brain. The drug stimulated him and relaxed him at the same time, one of its contradictions that ap pealed to him and suited his worldview.

Been a long time since you were in Methodist Bible school, but miracles in the Bible sort of had a point to them. Like Jesus with the loaves and fishes so everybody could eat, and Jesus turning water into wine so everybody could get wasted. Far as I can remember, nowhere in the Bible did some dude feed his own ass to the goats.

Alex took another puff. The spider had reached the fly, which must have worn itself out, because it had stopped struggling. Or maybe the fly had sensed the jig was up and could see two dozen copies of the approaching spider through its compound eyes. Alex considered rescuing the fly, playing God, releasing it to go off and eat shit and hatch maggots. But it wasn't right to fuck with Nature. Besides, that would have meant standing up, and his legs had a nice tingle going.

Situation: Weird Dude Walking had to come from somewhere. Miracles don't just crawl down off the top of the mountain in the middle of the Blue Ridge, half a world away from the Red Sea and Egypt and Jerusalem.

Problem: That means Weird Dude was an emissary of some sort. Sent by God or the devil or what the movie trailers call the "dark imagination of M. Night Shyamalan." An emissary sent specifically for you, Alexander Lane Eakins, and for you alone.

Solution: Just because an emissary drags ass to your castle door doesn't mean you have to open up and let him in. Pretend it never happened. Denial is a Good Thing.

The joint was down to an orange roach, and Alex hot-boxed it until it burned his fingertips. He exhaled the smoke so that a blue cloud swept over the spider and the fly. One could get the munchies and the other could die with a shit-eating grin. Seemed to be some sort of circular cosmic justice in that.

He sat until the sparkling edges of his buzz wore off; then he went into the house to ignore Meredith.