The Farm

Chapter Thirty-four

Odus gripped the reins to steady Sister Mary as more people came out from the trees, vehicles groaned up the old logging roads of Lost Ridge, and a few stray goats staggered into the combined glare of a half dozen headlights. It was like some kind of bizarre revival service, with the Circuit Rider calling his flock. Odus suddenly didn't feel so special. He was ashamed to think that he would be the one to rid the world of the Circuit Rider. He was unworthy. He was just a drunk who couldn't hold down a steady job, a dirty horse thief, part of a bloodline that had squatted on these lands since Colonial times but had not really improved them.

The Eakins boy, the one who owned a piece of property above the Smith place, stood with his compound bow, unsure of which direction to aim. Loretta Whitley and her son Todd each held pitchforks, looking like frightened members of a mob storming Victor Frankenstein's castle. Amos Clayton sported a shotgun of a larger bore than Sarah's, though he seemed uncertain about using it. Odus wondered if they each had suffered the same delusion, of being called to kill the Circuit Rider and finally lay the preacher to rest, bringing peace to the valley. Or perhaps they had come because they each wanted to offer themselves on the altar of life.

Several more vehicles rolled into the clearing, and the smell of exhaust briefly muted the stench of the goats and the bright, metallic odor of human fear. Odus recognized Ray Tester's Ford pickup, and a sport utility vehicle pulled up beside it. A sheriff's department patrol car, a Crown Victoria, had been beaten up by the rough road, but the rear-wheel drive had dragged the car to the peak. The door on the patrol car opened and a deputy stepped out, half his face blotted by a red birthmark, one hand on his sidearm. Odus figured the deputy would try to take control and restore order, but he seemed as much under the Circuit Rider's sway as the rest of them.

"Welcome, all," the preacher said, standing on legs that seemed to unfold like broken black sticks. In the combined glare of a half dozen sets of headlights, he seemed almost a silhouette in his moth-eaten black suit. He lifted the brim of his hat and turned in a semicircle so that all the assembled could see his face. The skin appeared to be as smooth as hardened wax and just as brittle. The preacher's eyes were the bloodied color of a harvest moon just after sundown.

The crowd fell silent, as if each word might be the one that delivered the Truth. The late-arriving goats joined their kind near the stone that served as the Circuit Rider's pulpit, and they, too, settled into passive and meek positions. The people who had emerged from the woods-Odus saw Marietta Hoyle, the wispy-haired English teacher at the elementary school, carrying an eagle-head cane as if she meant to brain Harmon Smith like a wayward student-drew closer around the stone with an air of expectation. The Tester brothers had climbed out of the truck cab and stood at the outer edge of the goats, David looking a little beaten down but Ray stood with his shoulders thrown back and head held high, like a dog waiting for a treat.

"We're not all here yet," the Circuit Rider said.

A man in the concealed safety of the forest called out, "Go back to where you come from, you black devil."

The Circuit Rider grinned showing teeth as orange as candy corn. "This is where I came from."

The unseen man hollered, "You wasn't born to Solom. The damned Methodists sent you."

"It was a Methodist who rode into this fair valley all those years ago," he said, in a voice that would make any preacher, living or dead, proud. "But that Methodist found other, older ways here. Ways brought over with the first white settlers."

"We're God-fearing folk, Harmon Smith," Loretta Whitley said, slamming the point of her pitchfork handle into the ground for emphasis. "Why don't you go on about your business and leave us alone?"

"This is my business," the Circuit Rider said. "Your church leaders couldn't tolerate my beliefs, so they did away with them the only way they knew how."

"By killing you," Sarah said surprising Odus with the strength in her voice. "The same way we're fixing to kill you again."

The Circuit Rider laughed, a sound as raw as an owl's screech and as deep as the howling of a red wolf. "We all serve a purpose under God's sky. The tree is known by its fruit."

"What about your goats, Weird Dude?" asked the Eakins boy. The way his hands were trembling, Odus figured the arrow would let fly at any second. Maybe all of them were waiting to see who would attack Harmon Smith first. Then they could all join in with whatever weapons or talismans they had brought. Odus realized he still hadn't decided on a weapon. He had trusted that the way would be shown, but now that the moment was at hand no voice from the wilderness gave him instruction. Through all his false courage, he was alone. As were they all, despite their number.

"Which one of us do you want, Harmon?" Ray Tester called. "We know you need to take one of us, and we know you've done passed over a few." Ray shot a glance at his brother.

"I want all of you," the Circuit Rider said. "Why do you think I keep returning?"

"You're just a pesky old buzzard" Sarah said. "You pick at the bones of the past. But we don't need you around no more."

"It's not about what you need Sarah Jeffers. It's about what's meant to be."

"Well, I ain't meant to be standing on the top of a cold mountain in the middle of a September night."

"You're here, though, aren't you?"

Sarah had no answer for that. She thumbed at the hammer of the shotgun as if debating whether to try a shot in such a crowd. No doubt stray pellets would strike innocent bystanders. But maybe, Odus figured, none of them were innocent. After all, they belonged to Solom, and Solom had slaughtered the Circuit Rider. Maybe the years had led to this moment just as surely as the Circuit Rider's route brought him back again and again. While the past drew only further in the distance, the Circuit Rider was caught in an endless loop, playing out his fate with no hope of rest.

Odus was surprised to hear his own voice, not aware his thoughts had slipped to his tongue. "We're here because we have to be."

"That's the same reason I'm here, Mr. Odus Dell Hampton. Because you all need me."

Odus felt the Circuit Rider was looking straight through him, and he was sure that everybody in the crowd had the same feeling. Though the headlights must have been burning his eyes, Harmon Smith didn't squint as he surveyed the creatures gathered on the ridge.

"Let's kill the fucker," the Eakins boy said.

The sheriff's deputy barked in an authoritative mariner, "Hold it right there. Nobody gets killed here unless I say so."

Odus wondered if anyone was going to point out the irony of killing a dead man, but the assembly merely waited with half-held breath. Amos Clayton raised his shotgun but it was pointed toward the leering moon above. Will Absher, who had once been Odus's fishing buddy before Odus had caught him stealing change out of his truck ashtray, stepped from the laurel thicket carrying a muzzle-loading rifle that appeared to date to back before the Civil War. Odus wondered if that was the means of sending the Circuit Rider on to heaven or hell or lands in between: a weapon from Harmon Smith's own mortal time. Odus was getting a headache from thinking over the possibilities, and decided his original idea was the best one. The way would be shown when the time was right.

If the time was right, Odus amended. He'd seen no sign that Harmon Smith was bound to die again tonight.

Sister Mary's flank muscles quivered beneath Odus, and for a moment Odus wasn't sure whether it was his own shivering, building until it was transmitted into the horse's mottled flesh.

Another handful of people leaked from the woods, one of them on horseback. As James Greene walked into the clearing leading a mule, the Circuit Rider issued his black grin.

"Well, now that we're all here, let's see who among us is ready to enter the kingdom tonight," the preacher said.

"Holy fucking frijoles," Jett said as they came upon the bizarre scene.

Katy forgot to chastise Jett for the expletive, she was so stunned by the cars, people, and goats gathered on the isolated ridge. As she applied the brakes and brought the car to a halt, she saw the man in the black suit, the one Jett had told her about. He stood on the rock, basking in the crisp glare of the various car headlights. Katy recognized a couple of the people who stood outside the circle of goats.

"Those are Gordon's goats," Jett said. "I would recognize them anywhere, especially after they tried to munch me. See that big one, up at the front? With the brown tail? That's Ezekiel."

Katy turned to ask Rebecca about the goats, but Rebecca was gone. Or at least, most of her was. Her head floated in the air, ragged strips of ghostly neck flesh tugged by whatever gravity held sway over the dead.

"Hey, don't do that," Katy said. "This was your idea, remember?"

"Sorry, I haven't been myself lately."

"What are we supposed to do now?"

"Get out and listen."

Katy looked at Jett, who nodded. "Guess we might as well get this over with, Mom. Besides, you need to see that I wasn't lying."

"How did the goats get up here before we did?"

"Forget about that. We ought to be worrying about-hey, look!"

A figure moved from the edge of the woods, and the crowd parted to let it through. Katy recognized the battered straw hat and the feed-sack face. "It's your scarecrow," she whispered.

'Told you, Mom. But you wouldn't believe me about the scarecrow, either."

The scarecrow figure held a wicked-looking sickle. Its clothes were torn and rumpled, and straw leaked from the folds with each step of cracked and flapping boots.

Jett unsnapped her seat belt and was out of the car before Katy could grab her arm. "Come back here, Jett."

But Jett was already passing the Jeep and Odus Hampton on a horse, reaching the outer circle of goats.

"Shit," Katy hissed getting out of the car.

"It's him," Jett screamed, pointing at the scarecrow, which was approaching the Circuit Rider from the opposite side of the clearing.

The Circuit Rider's pale and waxen face turned from Jett to the scarecrow. The grin froze on the preacher's lips. Katy was pushing past Odus Hampton and Sarah Jeffers, noting the shotgun in the old woman's arms. What in the hell is going on here? her mind screamed as her feet carried her after Jett.

The goats stirred for the first time since their arrival, snorting and bleating as the scarecrow stomped into their midst.

"You're not supposed to be here," the Circuit Rider said.

The scarecrow's stitched lips gave the illusion of a wicked smile, but surely that was an illusion, because the feed-sack face bore no other expression. The scarecrow hopped over a fat nanny, catching one dusty boot on a curled horn. It regained its balance and leaped onto the stone beside the Circuit Rider.

"Solom doesn't need you anymore," the scarecrow said, in a muffled and rough voice. "We can appease God ourselves."

"Solom needs me," the Circuit Rider said. "Who else can bring the rain and the frost and the wind and the sun?"

"You're not the only one who understands the power of blood sacrifice."

Jett had drawn to a stop among the goats, about ten feet from the stone stage. Katy dodged around the goats, ignoring their sinister eyes and wicked teeth. Her daughter was more important to her than the whole world, and she was nearly oblivious to the strange assembly of people, many of whom held weapons. At least she had proof that she wasn't descending into madness, because if this was a hallucination, it was a communal one.

Katy sensed more than saw the movement around her: the sheriff's deputy reaching in the car and triggering the blue strobes on the car's roof; Ray Tester dashing through the goats like a drunk running an obstacle course, rousing some to their feet as he thumped against them; their reclusive neighbor, Alex Eakins, raising what looked like a bow and aiming an arrow toward the stage; a large old goat that was the spitting image of Abraham, the one that Katy had killed or crippled in the driveway, rising and stomping toward the Circuit Rider like a repentant sinner headed for the touch of a faith healer; Sarah Jeffers moving into shotgun range with the careful steps of the elderly; Odus whacking the paint pony on the flank and urging it toward the granite slab; others circling and drawing closer, wanting to be part of the malevolent miracle, some stretching out their hands like New Testament lepers reaching for the robes of Jesus.

Jett's quoting of the Tommy Keene title "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" popped into her mind, all the pretty ponies spilling from their poles, the center giving way, the crazy carnival lights bobbing, though the smells were those of fur and forest instead of popcorn and spun sugar. She reached Jett just as the scarecrow joined the Circuit Rider as if wanting to hog half the spotlight.

"These are my people now," the scarecrow said, and Katy recognized the cruel, commanding tone.

Gordon.

"Fucking Christ on a rubber crutch," Jett said. "It's him"

Katy recalled the scarecrow outfit in the box upstairs, the blood in the locked cupboard. She'd accepted that Gordon was capable of murder in the wake of Rebecca's confession, but she hadn't pegged him for a lunatic until now. She figured he was just like any man, vain and cruel and possessive, but she didn't know the possession might have worked both ways.

But why the costume? Why dress up when the most successful killers were those who didn't draw attention to themselves?

Katy had no time to analyze Gordon's motives. She hadn't figured him out in the year she had known him, and she suspected that would be the job for a team of prison psychiatrists over the next thirty years. In fact, all of Solom's residents would probably be scooped up in a giant butterfly net and plopped gently into soft asylum rooms, especially when they started babbling about dead preachers, man-eating goats, and mountaintop revivals where faith was challenged and madness was shared like communion sacraments.

The scarecrow-Gordon, she had to remind herself-stood half a foot taller than the Circuit Rider, the brims of their hats nearly touching.

"Have you people had enough of the Circuit Rider?" Gordon shouted, the feed-sack mouth puffing out with the air of his words, the stitched lips moving in a grotesque parody of language.

"Get out of the way and give me a clear shot," Alex Eakins yelled back.

Ray Tester tripped over a billy goat, and the goat snapped at bis flesh, teeth sinking into his arm and eliciting a scream. Ray swung the heavy wrench he was carrying as if it were Samson's jawbone of an ass wielded against Philistines. The scent of blood seemed to arouse the other goats, because several of them broke out of their languid stupor and sniffed the night air. Katy looked down at the goats around her legs, noting that their attention was still fixed on the Circuit Rider. The goats around Jett twitched their tails but were otherwise docile. Ray regained his balance and continued toward the stage, holding his arm, blood trickling between his fingers, the bloody wrench clutched in one fist.

Throughout all the chaos, the Circuit Rider stood with his grave-seasoned hands at his sides, his face calm, his eyes burning with the orange and red of coals being fanned to life by an inner wind.

"What has this preacher ever done for you?" the scarecrow/ Gordon called to the crowd.

"Is that you, Gordon?" someone said from the edge of the crowd.

"I am the son of Ceres, the daughter of Diana," he answered, in that bombastic, lecturing tone that should have been enough for Katy to call off the engagement. But she had wanted to give Jett a happy, stable home, one far removed from the troubled past, the drugs, the divorce.

All those ordinary failures now seemed so laughable when compared to this supernatural tsunami of danger and death.

Katy reached Jett and tried to pull her back, but Jett stood transfixed. Though it was difficult to tell where the bone-button eyes of the scarecrow mask were focused, she felt burned by his stare, which was brighter and hotter than the beams of the collective headlights. Katy could have sworn the black yarn of the lips arched into a sneer.

"Ah, my sweet little scapegoats," Gordon said. "Come to offer yourself to the old gods? Come to give yourself to the soil so that Solom may be fruitful and multiply?"

The scarecrow put a hand on the Circuit Rider's shoulders and forced him to his knees. "See how hollow this supposed man of God is? A straw man, you might say. Ha-ha-haa-haaaaa."

Ray scrabbled the final few feet to the granite slab, pushing past complaining goats. "Take me," Ray said. "I'm the chosen one."

"No," Odus said, guiding his horse among the capricious herd. "This is my mission."

"Get off that horse and come back here," Sarah called to him. "I can't get a good shot with so many people standing in the way."

To Katy, the woman sounded almost grateful to have an excuse. Any of them could have attacked the Circuit Rider if that was their intention. He was exposed on the rock, presumably blinded by the glaring lights, unless his vision was guided by unnatural laws. Those at his back wouldn't have to worry about being seen and marked by whatever wrath he might unleash. It was as if the people, like the goats, were under some sort of spell, transfixed despite their hatred of the entity that had brought such pain and suffering to their community.

"See?" Gordon said, towering over the Circuit Rider. "Look how frail is this creature of the night."

Gordon yanked off the preacher's hat, exposing the wiry gray hairs that curled over the pale, crenulated skull. Gordon sailed the hat into the herd of goats, where it caught on the horn of one and hung as if tossed atop a coatrack.

"Look upon his wonder and be disappointed," Gordon said. "Know him by his fruits."

Katy wanted to bring Jett back to the relative safety of the Subaru, but found herself as rapt and awestruck as the rest. This close, she detected not only the electric aura of the Circuit Rider, but Gordon's mad energy that created its own special and strange gravity as well. She wondered if that danger-tinged charisma had been what had attracted her to him, but the thought sickened her.

"What's he doing and why doesn't that policeman stop him?" Jett said.

"Because the policeman's human. Like the rest of us."

Ray tried to climb up onto the stone slab. It was slick with September dew, and his wounded arm prevented him from gaining solid purchase in the crevices. He lodged one boot into a crack and was about to haul himself up onto the impromptu stage when one of the goats in the front row, whose brown facial fur made a raccoon mask, lurched forward and snagged his other leg, tugging on the cuff of his jeans. Another goat rose, this one with crooked beige horns, and began sniffing his calf. "Help me, David," Ray called.

A hissing thwack pierced a hole in the night, and the goat with the beige horns let out a bruised bleat of shock. The feathers of an arrow tip jutted from its rib cage, just above its heart. It staggered back two steps, wobbled, and collapsed as if its legs were pipe cleaners.

"No!" Gordon moaned, as though the injury had been inflicted on him instead.

"The fucker munched my stash, man," Alex said. "That was private property. My property."

The goats near the one who had fallen began sniffing the warm corpse. One poked out a tentative tongue and licked the wound. The flock began bleating and lowing, giving off restless snorts, several of them rising.

"Come on, Jett," Katy said. "I don't trust these goats."

"I don't trust anything right now."

A grizzled billy goat, one eye made milky by blindness, nipped the air a couple of feet from Katy's leg, brown teeth clacking with menace. She eyed the distance back to the Subaru. The rock slab was closer, but that would put them within Gordon's reach. Gordon pointed his sickle at Alex, the other hand still pressing on the kneeling preacher's shoulder.

Words issued from behind the scarecrow's mask: "You should forgive those who trespass against you."

"Maybe you should take better care of your fences," Alex said, notching another arrow. "Gordon."

"I'm not Gordon. I am he who gives tribute."

"With other people's lives," Odus said, guiding his paint pony through the restless goats.

"Gordon's gone squirrel-shit nutty," Jett whispered to Katy.

"I think we all have," Katy whispered, just before the first shotgun blast ripped through the forest night.