The Farm

Chapter Fourteen

"The goats is riled," Betsy Ward said. She dried her hands on her apron, wincing because her skin was chapped and the cool weather hadn't helped a bit. She had a sweet potato pie in the oven. It was a point of pride with her, because sweet potatoes didn't grow worth a darn in the mountains. Yet Arvel's crop always turned out fine. You'd think God was a tater man, judging how he blessed the Ward household.

"Goats?" Arvel was watching a reality show on TV Betsy couldn't tell the shows apart, but one thing most had in common was they got women into tank tops and tight shorts at some point. Which was all the reason Arvel needed, whether he admitted it or not. Betsy's tight-shorts days had passed some twenty years ago, but she didn't hold that against the skinny things that paraded around before the cameras. No, what she held against them was the makeup, the hairstyles, and all the nipping and tucking that went on these days. Any woman could look good with a little cheating.

"Goats," Betsy said. "Over at the Smiths. Except the new wife ain't named Smith."

Arvel had put in a hard day at Drummond Construction, driving a concrete mixer over the twisting mountain roads. Concrete mixers were the most contrary vehicles on earth, according to Arvel. The weight could shift in two directions without warning, and once in a while the slooshing mix of sand, gravel, and mortar coincided with the deepest cut of a sharp curve, and nothing had a mortality rate like the rump-over-clutch-pedal tumble of twenty tons' worth of cement and steel. Or so he said.

"What are you worrying about goats for?" Arvel didn't turn from the flickering light of the screen. "They've not got in the garden in two years or so. Leave them be."

"They ain't right. They come down to the edge of the fence and stare at me when I'm hanging out laundry."

"Maybe you ought to lose some of that fat ass of yourn and then they'd quit staring."

Arvel had never made a mention of her weight until he'd taken up watching TV every weeknight, some five years back. Since then, he'd scarcely shut up about it. She wished she could shrink inside her gingham dress, but she was here and this was all of her. "They started about time the new wife moved in. Been breeding like rabbits, too."

"You know how them billy bucks are," Arvel said. "They'll stick it in anything that wiggles, and some that don't."

A commercial came on for some kind of erectile dysfunction product, and a wattled old guy was in a hot tub with a woman young enough to be his daughter. Arvel thumbed down the sound with his remote. "You keep going on about this new wife. If you want to know what I think, I bet you're mad as a pissant because she's skinnier than you."

Betsy was double upset. Arvel had no business looking at the neighbor's wife. Even though Betsy did, every chance she got.

"She ain't no skinnier than Gordon's first wife, and you never said a thing about her," Betsy said.

"Rebecca was different," Arvel said, eyes flicking back to the TV to make sure the commercials were still going. "She's from here."

"She was," Betsy corrected. "Was."

"Let's not get into that."

"She drove too fast for these twisty roads. Heck, Arvel, I know she turned a few heads, probably even yours, but the stone truth of it is she got what was coming to her."

"Like you know what happened to her?"

"I ain't saying a thing. The sheriff and the rescue team called it an accident, and they know better than me."

"Solom's took more than a few through the years," Arvel said. "Forget it."

"I can't forget it."

"You think it was the Circuit Rider?"

"I don't know."

The commercials were over and Arvel punched a button. The sound burst from the speaker, and a dark-skinned boy with greasy hair was explaining why somebody was kicked off the show. "I smell something," Arvel said.

The pie. The crust must have burned. Betsy had forgotten to set the timer. She was getting more absentminded every day, but she blamed it on worrying about the neighbors. With a possible wife-killer next door, not to mention his witchy-eyed stepdaughter, your train of thought was liable to get derailed now and then. When you threw the Circuit Rider into the mix, it's a wonder anybody in Solom ever got a wink of sleep.

She hurried from the living room and went into the kitchen, where the goat was waiting for her.

Shit. Jett couldn't take another second of reality. She probably should have hidden in the woods, but needed to be close to the house in case Mom called. Jett could always claim to be feeding the chickens or something. The barn door was nearly closed, allowing just enough light to take care of business. Her back was against the wall, and from her sitting position, she could see the back door that led to the kitchen.

She laid out her world history book and pinched some of the pot from the plastic Baggie. In Charlotte, she'd owned an alabaster pipe carved in the shape of a lizard, but she'd left it with her best friend. It was time to improvise. She took the piece of aluminum foil from her pocket, twisted it into a narrow tube, and used her pinky to make a hollow depression in one end. A piece of baling wire hanging on the wall of the barn served to prick three tiny holes in the curved end of the makeshift pipe.

Smoking in the barn was dangerous. During his Great Barn Tour of July, Gordon had made a big deal about how dry the place was. Apparently one of his grandparents' barns had burned to the ground in the 1940s, but that had been the fault of lightning. This barn had been built on the same foundation, and lightning never struck twice in the same place, did it?

She sprinkled some of the dark green leaves into the depression and set the pipe on her book. She'd taken some matches from the tin box on the mantelpiece. She snapped one of the sulfur-tipped stems free from its folded-over cardboard sleeve. Get a degree at home, the matchbox read, along with an 800 number, and beneath that, in smaller letters, Close cover before striking.

"Fuck it." She scratched the match head across the rough strike pad and the flame bobbed to life. She tucked the pipe between her lips, applied the flame, and inhaled. The first hit tasted like hot metal, like braces, and she nearly coughed. The harsh smoke settled in her lungs; then she blew out gently. The match had burned down to her fingers, so she held the pipe in her mouth while she used her other hand to grab the burnt end of the match. She then turned the match upside down so it would burn the unused portion of the paper.

The Kid knows all the tricks.

The next hit was a little smoother. She held the flame just above the grass so that it toasted rather than scorched. Yep. That was the ticket. Her throat was dry and she wished she'd brought a Sprite from the fridge. The smoke filled her nostrils, weakening the smell of old dust and animal manure.

She let the buzz work its way through her nervous system, feeling her pulse accelerate. Tears collected in her eyes. Good shit. Tommy Williamson might be a world-class jerk, but he had good connections. A smile crept across her face, and it felt good. Why did the cops and Jesus freaks get so uptight about something that was so natural? She hadn't smiled in weeks, and now here she was with her cheeks stretching and her head feeling light.

The fucking weight of the world temporarily lifted.

Fucking. What a weird word, when you think about it. I mean, fuck, what's the big deal? Mom said I was able to have babies now and maybe that has something to do with the tingling I feel down there sometimes. I don't understand how a boy's weenie can fit in there, as little and floppy as they are. At least Mom didn't give me the jazz about safe sex. Guess she trusts me.

Trust. Jett looked down at the pipe and the bag of dope, the crumbled marijuana scattered across her book.

I don't have a drug problem. "Drug problem " is what the English teacher would call an "oxymoron." Well, the teacher's a plain old fucking moron.

Jett's stoned leap of logic seemed like the most hilarious thing since Beavis and Butthead did America, and she giggled. The sound was like blue bubbles in her brain. She closed her eyes and listened to them pop.

Blop-bloop-blooooop.

Beh-eh-eh-eh-eh.

Beh-eh?

That wasn't right.

She opened her eyes to find the goat standing right in front of her, its head at eye level with hers. She rolled away with a start. The goat lowered its neck and sniffed at the marijuana, then licked at it.

"Get away, you ugly fucker," Jett said, picking up a dry, dark clod that was probably a goat turd. She flung it at the goat, but it swabbed its tongue across her stash again.

Damn it, this is war. She gave the goat a kick in the side, not too hard but loud enough for a thunk to fill the barn. The goat turned toward her. For the first time, she noticed the pale brown horns. Though they lay nearly flat against the animal's skull, the tips curled back under and out above the ears like oversize, twisted fishhooks.

"Easy, there, Fred," she said. Gordon had names for the goats but she hadn't bothered to learn them. He'd taken them all from the Old Testament. She wondered whether it was Adam, Seth, or Ruth. Couldn't be Ruth, because it had a tube of loose flesh hanging from its loins. She figured the goat didn't know its name, either, so "Fred" would work just as well.

She backed away and the goat stepped closer. At least she'd distracted it from her expensive cash crop. Now if it would only go out the door and act like the brainless sack of fur and manure it was.

But it didn't go for the door. It backed her to the foot of the stairs that led to the loft. And the loft was where she'd blanked out the day before yesterday. Freaked Mom out but good. The bitch of it was, the blackout hadn't been drug-related. She'd let Mom suspect drug use because the alternative was just a little too weird, even for her.

Jett didn't want to go up those stairs. Because the image of a man flashed across the inside of her forehead, like a still from an out-of-focus slide projector. The man with the out-of-fashion hat with the low crown and wide brim, the one who had warned her to "Know them by their fruits." She had a feeling he was waiting up there in the silence and dust of the hay bales.

The goat snorted a little and bobbed its head as if threatening her. Or else commanding her to climb the stairs.

Whoa the fuck down. Goats don't boss humans around. They 're stupid Fred-faced, squid-eyed, dumb-as-dirt pieces of meat on the hoof.

The goat grinned, revealing a five-dollar chunk of marijuana bud that was stuck between two upper teeth. Jett almost laughed. This was the kind of stoner story she'd tell at the next party, if she ever made any friends in Solom: "Yeah, a goat came up while I was smoking and gobbled down my stash."

She'd leave out the part about the goat scaring her, and the man in the black hat, and the voice she'd heard in the boiler room behind the school. Because those were things that could get you locked up in the nuthouse, where the drugs were no fun at all, according to her friend Patty from Charlotte. Nuthouse drugs were designed to perform chemical lobotomies, eliminating the problems by stripping away any desire to suffer a thought or feeling. As tempting as oblivion was, Jett liked hers in small and controlled doses.

Besides, who could be bored when a goat was after you?

The wall was covered with garden tools, ropes, and harness. She picked out a hoe, figuring she could use the blunt end of the handle to drive the goat away. The animal clambered forward as she leveled the handle and pointed it like a jousting lance. In the distance, the Wards' dog barked, followed by the sound of tires on gravel. Gordon must be home.

Great.

Gord the Wonder Nerd.

She waited for his SUV engine to die and for the vehicle's door to open. Then she could yell for help. Except the goat had paused, too, and lifted its head as if listening. Like maybe Gordon had a treat.

If Gordon came to the barn, he would see the pot and bust her. She'd probably be grounded for the rest of the school year, or maybe even until high school. Gordon was one of those uptight people who made a big deal about morals without being religious. Because, despite all his blowhard lecturing at the dinner table about this and that denomination, and the fact that he was the great-great-grandson of a circuit-riding preacher, Gordon wore a sneer on his face when he talked about people going to church. Jett wasn't sure what she believed yet, but one thing was for sure, she thought Jesus Christ was the kind of guy who wouldn't put you down for a little bit of weed. True, he probably wouldn't inhale, but he also wouldn't hit you over the head with a Bible because of it.

So calling for Gordon was out of the question. She had to make a decision on whether to try for the loft and wait it out, or scoot past the goat, collect her stash, and sneak around the backyard and into the house before anyone noticed she was missing. Mom had been a real space cadet lately, so Gordon would probably make the obligatory room check. She planned to be at her desk with a textbook open, so she could bat her eyelashes at him in a "What do you want?" look. Pop an Altoid mint, drop in some Visine, and she was bulletproof. The only symptom would be goofiness, and all twelve-year-old girls were goofy.

She prodded at the goat with the hoe handle. It turned and trotted to the barn door, standing just beyond the reach of daylight, as if it were afraid the sun would burn its skin and turn its carcass to dust. Jett dropped the hoe and scooped up her Baggie of marijuana. She tucked it in the pocket of her sleeveless jean jacket. Though she was craving another hit to cap off the buzz, the whole scene was getting to be like a psychedelic, fluorescent-colored episode of The Twilight Zone. She expected the ghost of Rod Serling to step from one of the stalls at any second, wearing a tie-died T-shirt and a ponytail, a pencil-sized joint replacing his ever-present cigarette.

The rear of the barn had another large wooden door, suspended on rollers that slid in a steel track overhead. It was latched from the inside with a dead bolt, but Jett thought she'd be able to maneuver the heavy door open enough to slip around the back way. Gordon's SUV door slammed. That meant he'd go through the front door in about fifteen seconds if he followed his usual routine. Unless he saw the goat in the barn.

Jett Wrestled with the dead bolt. It was rusty, as if it hadn't been operated in years. She banged her knuckles trying to work the bolt free, scraping the skin. She put her knuckles in her mouth and sucked at the blood. Something nudged her hip, and she looked down to see the goat's face turned up to hers, its nostrils dilating, eyes glinting in the dim light. The animal emitted a low moan, as if a hunger had been awakened by the scent of fresh fruit.

"Back off, Fred," she said.

Jett threw back the bolt and leaned against the edge of the door, hoping to get some momentum. The door opened six inches. The goat jumped up and put its front hooves on the door, raising itself up to the height of her shoulder. It was bleating deep in its throat, and raised one hoof and banged it against the wood. Frightened now, almost forgetting her buzz, Jett flung her shoulder against the edge of the door, sending a fat spark of pain down her arm. The goat hammered on the door with both hooves as it creaked open another half a foot. Jett turned sideways and squeezed her body into the gap, squinting against the early evening sun.

As she worked her way free, she felt a rough tongue against the back of her hand.

Great. Goat cooties on her wounded knuckles. She'd probably get a staph infection.

She struggled through the door and moved away from the barn. The goat was too plump to get through the door. An absurd wave of relief washed over Jett. Getting stoned had been almost more trouble than it was worth.

As she went down the path that led between the barn and the garden to the apple trees near the house, she glanced back. In the loft opening was a dark shadow that looked a lot like a man in a black suit, arms spread, a wide-brimmed hat on his head. Jett blinked and hurried under the trees. She wanted her drug-induced visions to stay inside her head where they belonged, not out wandering around in the real world.

But the world hadn't been very real ever since she had moved to Solom. Thank God for dope.

Evening fell like a bag of hammers, and Odus decided there was no better place to let the sun die on you than the cold bank of Blackburn River. He had two rainbow trout on the stringer and half a six-pack of Miller High Life floating in the water, the plastic ring tethered to a stick. The mosquitoes had quit biting weeks ago, and even if they were sorry enough to try to suck his blood, they would be drawing nothing but high-octane, eighty proof out of his veins. The bottle of Old Crow was nearly gone, and that meant another long haul into Windshake to replenish his supply. He cussed God and the virgin whore Mary for making Pickett a dry county.

He was below the old remnants of the dam. Part of the earthworks was still in place, funneling water past in a series of tiny falls. The trout loved to lie among the rocks beneath me white water, where the oxygen level was rich and food dropped down like earthworms from heaven. Odus's hook dropped in, too, though he had to work the reel with a steady hand because the bait washed downstream in the blink of an eye.

The general store up on the hill was dark. That was contrary, because Odus had never known it to be closed for a full day. He'd called up to the hospital to check on Sarah, and the receptionist had hemmed and hawed about federal privacy rules until Odus claimed to be her son. Then the receptionist declared Sarah to be in stable condition and scheduled to be kept overnight for observation.

A few tracks from the old Virginia Creeper line, some that hadn't been washed away in the 1940 flood, lay in weed-infested gravel across the river. The creosote cross ties had long since rotted, and the steel rails themselves would have long been overgrown if the tourists hadn't made a walking trail out of the line. Tourists were the damnedest creatures: they took the ugliest eyesores of Solom, such as fallen-down barns and lightning-scarred apple trees, and proclaimed them a glory of Creation. Took pictures and bought postcards, put their Florida-fat asses onto the narrow seats of expensive ten-speeds, and pedaled down the river road as if they were going nowhere and had all day to do it. Beat all, if you asked Odus, but nobody asked, because he was just a drunken river rat and didn't even own any property. He lived in the bottom floor of a summer house and kept the grounds in trade for rent.

But, by God, he knew how to troll for trout, and he could take a ten-point buck in October, and when spring came he could pick twelve kinds of native salad greens, and in summer he knew where the best ginseng could be poached, and then it was fall again and he could make a buck or two putting up hay or helping somebody get a few head of cattle to the stockyards. All in all, it was a king's life, and he wasn't beholden to anybody. If you didn't count the Pennsylvania couple that owned the house where he boarded, and Gordon Smith, and the people who had loaned him money.

The sun slipped a notch lower in the sky, spreading orange light across the ribbed clouds like marmalade on waffles. Fish often bit more at dusk, just as they did at the break of dawn, because the insects they fed on were more active then. A lot of the tourists went in for fly-fishing, and all the gear, complete with hip waders, LL Bean jacket, floppy hat, woven basket and all, would run you upwards of three hundred dollars at River Ventures, the little place up the road that rented out kayaks, canoes, bicycles, inner tubes, and every other useless means of transportation known to man. Odus figured the tourists must be bad at math, no matter how many zeroes they had in their bank accounts, because three hundred dollars would buy you more store trout than you could eat in a year.

But that wasn't his worry. Odus wanted one more rainbow on the trotline before he headed home for a late supper. He planned on stopping by Lucas Eggers's cornfield on the way home and snagging a few roasting ears. That and some turnip greens he grew in the Pennsylvania folks' flower garden were plenty enough to keep the ache out of his belly.

He hit the Old Crow and was about to draw in one of the Millers for a chaser when he saw weeds moving on the far side of the river. The rusted-iron tops of the Joe Pye weed shook back and forth as something made its way to the water. Probably deer, because, like the fish, they got more active at sundown. But deer were likely to stick to a trail, not tromp on through briars and all. Odus played out some slack in his line and waited to see what came out on the river-bank. Odus didn't have a gun, so he couldn't kill the deer, and so didn't care if it was a deer or a man from outer space. As long as it wasn't a state wildlife officer ready to write him up for fishing without a license.

At first, Odus thought it was a wildlife officer, because of the hat that bobbed among the tops of the weeds. But the hat was dirty and ragged like that of-

The Smith scarecrow.

Then the weeds parted at the edge of the river.

The sight caused him to drop his pole in the mud, back up onto the slick rocks skirting the riverbank, and wind between the hemlocks and black locust that separated the water from the river road. His heart jumped like a frog trapped in a bucket. The or3nge light of sunset had gone purple, and the clouds somehow seemed sharper and meaner. A bright yellow light shone above the general store's front entrance, the one Sarah claimed kept bugs away, though Odus could see them cutting crazy circles around the bulb. He broke into a jog, sweat under his flabby breasts and in the crease where his belly lay quivering over his belt. He didn't once look back, and even though the river was between it and him, he didn't feel any safer when he reached his truck.

Odus was fumbling the key into the ignition when he remembered the Miller, and for just a moment, he hesitated. He would definitely need a good buzz later. But three beers wouldn't be nearly enough to wash away the image that kept floating before his eyes. The best thing now was to put some distance between him and what he'd seen. Maybe some tourist would be out for a walk, or a bicyclist would get a flat tire, and it could take them instead.

As he drove away, his chest was tight and he could barely breathe. He wondered if he could get a hospital bed in Sarah's room, because now he knew what she'd been going on about as she lay on the sacks with her eyelids fluttering.

It hadn't been the scarecrow he'd seen. It had been much worse than that. The man in the black hat, face white as goat cheese, as if he'd been in the water way too long.

And he had, if you believed the stories.

About two hundred years too long.