The Farm Page 3

  She eased up the stairs. The second tread creaked like an arthritic toad. She paused, letting her weight settle. No sound from above.

  At the top of the stairs stood a rough door, sagging, the boards wired together.

  Jett was in full Nancy Drew mode now, fueled with a little Wonder Woman and some Jennifer Garner thrown in for good measure.

  Assuming the secret signaler in the loft hadn't noticed her approach, she could wait at the door, look through the cracks, and try to figure out what was going on.

  She took the rest of the steps with all the patience of a widow. She sat on the top step, near the hinges, so she would be behind the door if it suddenly swung open. The interior of the barn had grown darker, and no doubt the sun was just beginning its slide down Three Hump Mountain in the west. She held her breath and put an ear to the door.

  A snort. From below. She looked down.

  Abraham stood on the barn floor, head raised. Looking right at her. Jett could swear the animal was grinning, teeth glimmering wetly in the half-light.

  "Go away," she mouthed, giving Abraham the benefit of a doubt. Goats were renowned eating machines, reducing forests to wastelands, eating the very fences that tried to hem them in. Maybe Abraham had a little bit of brains, since he didn't seem to be in the middle of eating something at the moment.

  Abraham stared at her with those boxy pupils.

  Jett looked around, found a dry corncob, and raised herself up to toss it. She flipped her arm forward and the cob spun end over end, striking Abraham just between the horns. He blinked and dipped his neck, grabbed the cob with his lips, and ground it between his teeth. The sound was like that of an alphabet block dropped into a whirring blender.

  "Shh," she said. She looked about for something else to throw, maybe something with a little heft.

  The hinges rasped behind her. She turned toward the door, lost her balance, and grabbed for the rail. The door yawned, shadows pouring out to match those that had risen from the floor.

  The thing loomed seven feet tall, a lantern in one hand that cast flickering shadows up into a face she couldn't see because of the straw hat pulled low. The other hand held a darkly gleaming sickle.

  Chapter Three

  Arvel Ward drew the curtains and turned away from the window. Nights like this were best spent indoors. Goats would be walking tonight, and him that held sway over them. Other things would be afoot, too. Autumn was a time of bad magic. Solom didn't need a Halloween midnight to open the door between the living and the dead; the door was already as thin as the pages of a dry Bible.

  Arvel had first seen Harmon Smith, better known as the Circuit Rider, on a pig path on the back side of Lost Ridge. Arvel was nine years old and on his way back from a Rush Branch fishing hole when he stopped at a gooseberry thicket. It had been August, and the berries were fat and pink, with green tiger stripes. Gooseberries gave him the runs, so he knew better than to keep eating them, but they were so tangy sweet he couldn't stop shoveling them in his mouth, despite the three rainbow trout in the little reed basket he used for a creel.

  Harmon came upon him while he was lying in the shade, his belly swole up like a tick's. Arvel squinted as the man stood with lis back to the sun, the face lost in the wide, worn brim of the rounded hat. Arvel knew who it was right off. The Circuit Rider walked these hills looking for his horse, and had been looking ever since those other preachers had pitched in and murdered him. Arvel couldn't rightly blame Harmon Smith for doing all the terrible things people said he did. After all, he was buried in three different graves and that wasn't any way for a soul to find peace, especially for a man of the cloth.

  Legend had it Harmon pitched Johnny Hampton under the water wheel at the old Rominger gristmill, and Johnny's foot got caught in one of the paddles. Over and over went little Johnny, shouting and blubbering each time his head broke free of the water, grabbing a lungful of air just before he went under again. Took about twenty rounds of the wheel before he tuckered out and drowned while the mill hands desperately tried to stop the wheel. His death went down in the church records and the county deed office as an accident, but folks in Solom kept their own secret ledger.

  Arvel's great-uncle Kenny was galloping down a moonlit road when he came to the covered bridge that used to cross the river near the general store. Everybody liked the nice echo of horseshoes clanging off those wooden runners, so Kenny had picked up speed and burst through. Trouble was, a carpenter had been doing repairs on the bridge's roof that day and left a level line in the rafters. The line had slipped during the night until it was about neck-high to a man on a horse. Kenny's head hadn't been cut clean through, but there was barely enough connecting meat left to stuff a sausage casing.

  Others had fallen into hay rakes, caught blood poisoning from saw blades, and old Willet Miller had been gored by a goat, his intestines yanked out and hanging like noodles on a fork. So Arvel had had no expectations of ever getting up and walking away from the encounter mat long-ago day. He was just glad for two tilings: he'd go with a belly full of gooseberries and he wouldn't have to clean the fish before supper.

  "Boy," Harmon Smith had said in greeting, touching the brim of his hat. The voice held no fire and brimstone, not even the thunder of a preacher. It was just plain talk.

  "You're the Circuit Rider." Arvel figured it was no time for fooling around; plus he ought to be on his best behavior. Free Will Baptists earned their way to heaven, and Arvel figured he had to do some making up for the horehound candy he'd pilfered from the jar down at the general store. Even stealing from a Jew probably counted as a sin in God's all-seeing eyes.

  Harmon's head swiveled back and forth, offering just a hint of the man's angular nose and sharp chin. "Doesn't seem like I'm doing much riding, does it?"

  Arvel squinted, trying to make out the man's eyes in that desperate black shadow beneath the hat. It almost seemed like the man had no face at all, only a solid glob of dark. His suit was black and pocked with holes, and he wore a tow-linen shirt, material only poor kids wore in those days. "You looking for your horse?"

  "Why, have you seen one?"

  Arvel made a big show of looking up and down the pig path. "I think I saw one down that way," he said, and nodded in the direction of the Ward farm.

  Arvel couldn't have said the man exactly grinned, but the darkness broke in the lower part of the face, revealing a gleam of ochre enamel. "And I suppose you'd be leading me to it, right?"

  "Why, yes, sir."

  "Respect for elders. That speaks well for you, boy."

  "I try to do right by people," Arvel said, as much for God's ears as for Harmon's.

  "All right, show me that horse."

  Arvel struggled to his feet, hitched up the suspenders he'd unhooked while digesting, and headed down the pig path, careful not to walk too fast. The Circuit Rider followed, scuffed boots knocking dust in the air. Arvel tried to sneak a look back to catch the man's face now that they were heading into the sun, but somehow the preacher stayed just out of plain view. Arvel had his cane pole over his shoulder, and wondered idly what would happen if his hook accidentally sank in the Circuit Rider's flesh. That would make some fish story.

  They went through the apple orchard that divided the Smith and Ward properties. The apples were small and tart, still weeks away from ripening, and Arvel's belly was already gurgling from all the gooseberries. He wondered if he'd have to make a dash behind a tree before they reached the outhouse. Would the Circuit Rider give him privacy, or stand over him with the wooden door open while he did his business?

  They came out of the trees and the Ward farm was spread out before them. Arvel's pappy was splitting wood by the house, and his brother Zeke was scattering seed corn for the chickens. Acres of hayfields surrounded them, and the crop garden was rich and green behind the house. There under the bright summer sun, Arvel felt protected.

  "I don't see a horse," the Circuit Rider said.

  "Sure, it's there in the barn."

 
"You're lying to me, boy."

  Arvel's heart was pumping like water from a spring hose. He threw aside his pole and the basket of fish and broke into a run, screaming like a fresh gelding. Despite the noise in his own head, the Circuit Rider's voice came through clear from the shade of the orchard rows: "Liars go to the devil, boy. Know them by their fruits."

  Pappy whipped him for raising a ruckus and startling the livestock, and Zeke had snickered and teased for days afterward, but Arvel was fine with all that, because he was alive. Still, he knew Harmon Smith never forgot, and the ride never ended. Sooner or later, Arvel would have to own up to his lie.

  He just hoped it wasn't tonight. Zeke had been taken, but that was an accident, could have happened to anyone. Harmon Smith wasn't the type to rely on old age for stealing souls. No, violence was his way. He'd been taken by violence, and violence was what he had to deliver.

  Arvel locked the doors. He should have warned Gordon's new wife and that little girl, no matter how peculiar they were. But they were outsiders. Plus, every fresh victim that stood between Arvel and the Circuit Rider meant a longer wait until his own day of reckoning.

  After Mark, Katy had promised herself not to fall for a man, any man. She was on the type of post-divorce arc she'd read about in Cosmopolitan: no dating until a year after the breakup, then dating only nonthreatening men who didn't appeal to her all that much. The Cosmo rule declared no serious relationship could even be contemplated until two years after a divorce, especially if a child was involved. Katy ignored those kinds of rules, though she'd made a promise to herself to be cautious for Jett's sake. Jett, born Jessica, had gotten her nickname because of her inability to make sibilants as a toddler. When Jett had learned of eighties black-clad bad-girl rocker Joan Jett, the name was sealed.

  Katy had kept Jett away from the potential replacements for Mark, not wanting to parade men through her life. She'd dated a Roger something-or-other, an insurance adjuster with overpowering cologne and happy hands; a broody food columnist for a Charlotte paper who'd nearly had her in tears after just one lunch; and Rudolph Heinz, a tall blond Aryan she'd met in a coffee shop who'd given her a thrilling three weeks but in the end offered about as much mental stimulation as her favorite vibrator. After those experiences, part of her was ready to settle down again, but the rest was determined to hold out for the perfect situation.

  Gordon changed all that. He was presenting at a conference in the same hotel where Katy's company had scheduled a seminar. Her bank had eschewed frugality and scheduled the event at a resort in Asheville, a vibrant community billed as a "gateway to the North Carolina mountains." In the tradition of such seminars, it combined networking with leisure, the kind of professional vacation that most employees endured for the good of their careers while cramming in as much recreation as possible. She'd skipped out of the session entitled "Tax Considerations of Mortgage Points in Refinancing" and was browsing the vending machines by the check-in desk when she saw the schedule for the hotel's other conference. Written in red marker on the dry-erase board were the words European Mythology in Appalachian Religion, with a room number and time listed. To Katy, bored nearly to tears and nursing a run high on one thigh of her stockings, the topic evoked images of snake-handling hillbilly preachers crossed with sacrificial burnings like the one in the old Christopher Lee film The Wicker Man. She knocked down a quick martini at the hotel's bar and slipped into the small room where she first saw Gordon Smith, who was keynote speaker.

  Gordon resembled a slimmer Orson Welles, tall and broad-chested, projecting a vulnerable arrogance. He told the crowd of about twenty, mostly professors who were nursing tenure-track hangovers, about the Scots-Irish influence on Southern Appalachian culture, as well as contributions by the Germans and Dutch. Katy wasn't that interested in the Druids, and religious politics always seemed like an oxymoron to her, so she tuned out most of the speech and planned the evening ahead. The bank had paid for her room, the seminar officially ended before dinner, and she had hours looming with no responsibilities. Jett was staying with her dad, and she'd left her cell phone in her hotel room. She was about as close to free as a single mom could be.

  Gordon pulled her from her reverie with a rant on Demeter and Diane, harvest goddesses who had to be appeased before they would prove generous with their human subjects.

  "Human sacrifice was common among many primitive religions," Gordon said, his voice assuming an evangelical thunder as if to wake the drowsing audience. "Blood was not only a gift for Diane in the forests of Nemi. Central America, Scandinavia, the South Sea Islands, Africa, India, virtually every continent had bloodthirsty gods, and those gods often demanded the ultimate tribute. Certain Germanic tribes combined human sacrifice with nature worship. If someone was found guilty of scarring the bark of an oak tree, that person's belly button was nailed to the tree trunk, and then the body was circled around the tree until the offender's bowels served to patch the tree's wound."

  Gordon had the audience riveted by then, and Katy found herself admiring the man's strong cheekbones, thick eyebrows, and dark, penetrating eyes. He went on to suggest that vestiges of the old worship still lived on in the form of scarecrows, horseshoes, jack-o'-lanterns, and Yuletide mistletoe. By the time he'd finished, she'd thought of a question to ask him derived from her own lapsed Catholic beliefs. She waited while he shook the hands of balding, tweed-encased academics, and gave him a smile when her turn came. He nodded impatient, as if he'd earned his honorarium and the show was over.

  "Professor Smith, could you tell me how Jesus Christ fits into your theories of human sacrifice?"

  Gordon first looked startled and then he threw back his head and laughed from deep within his belly. "My dear, entire books have been written on the subject. Do you have an hour to spare?"

  His question had not exactly been a come-on, but she didn't want to eat in the hotel dining room alone, or worse, with colleagues from the bank. So she said, "Yes, I do. How about dinner?"

  She wasn't physically attracted to him, at least not in the rip-off-clothes-and-let's-wallow fashion. Even after their marriage, she questioned her original motivation in seeking him out. But somewhere between the oysters and the strawberry cheesecake, he'd become interesting for more than just his obvious intelligence. Gordon didn't flinch when she told him she was a divorced mother of one. If anything, he'd become more deferential and inquisitive. By the end of dinner, they agreed to a nightcap at the bar, Katy fully expecting the drinks to lead to an invitation to his room. She didn't have to decide whether she would have accepted the offer, because he never asked. Instead he made her promise to join him for breakfast.

  A flurry of communication ensued over the following weeks, phone calls at night, e-mails throughout the day, and even old-fashioned, handwritten letters showing up about once a week. It was the letters that eventually won her over. In person, Gordon was a little cool and distant, but his sentences burned with passion and a playful humor that belied his professorial persona. He invited her to visit Solom, and she drove up with Jett one Saturday, her daughter grumbling all the while, dropping into defensive mode over Dad. But Jett had frolicked on the Smith farm, exploring the barn, traipsing through the woods, playing in the creek, and by sundown Jett wanted to stay for another day. By then Katy was prepared to bed the evasive Dr. Smith, but he seemed old-fashioned about courting, reluctant to do more than kiss her cheek.

  Katy's decision to accept his proposal came after a few sleepless weeks of soul-searching. She didn't want a replacement for Mark, especially in Jett's life, but as Mrs. Smith she would be a stay-at-home mother, something she had never desired until Jett's drug problems surfaced. Katy blamed herself for being so absorbed in her career that she let her marriage to Mark fail (though intellectually she knew they'd waltzed together over the cliff edge) and then compounded the error by neglecting Jett. Gordon and Solom offered a fresh start, a chance for her to rebuild her relationship with her daughter with a supportive man in her life.

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nbsp; Gordon had never explained Christ's position as the world's most famous sacrificial lamb, but it didn't matter now. The honeymoon was over.

  The Blackburn River was old.

  Geologists said it was the second-oldest river in the world, after the Amazon.

  The people in Solom didn't care about history books. All they saw was the slim ribbon of silver that cut into the brown banks of the hilltops. The water brought sustenance in the spring, kept their stock alive in the summer, and in September it shot its narrow currents among the yellow and white stones. It slowed to a trickle in January, only to bust out white again during the March melt. Maybe the water, like the humans who clustered around its shores, had an instinctive understanding of ebb and flow.

  Solom took its name from bad grammar. Some say the place used to be called Solomon Branch, after the Old Testament king. Others said it was Solomn, a misspelling of the word solemn, which meant everything from formal and serious in a liturgical sense to grave and somber, as in a funeral ceremony. The permanent valley settlers had eventually trimmed off the silent letter at the end. If it sounded like Solom, then it was Solom.

  The original residents were the buffalo that trampled ruts across the hilltops as they made their way from Kentucky in the summer to the Piedmont flatlands of Carolina in the winter. The herds numbered in the thousands, and the ground shook as their hooves bit into the earth. The Cherokee and Catawba visited the region only in the fall, when meat was available. Otherwise, the natives had the good sense to stay off those cold and forlorn mountaintops. Then the whites came along and poured across the slopes like albino fire ants.

  Daniel Boone and the early European trappers and hunters were cold-blooded enough to hang out on the trails and slaughter their quarry across the seasons, with no sense of a circular food chain. In a few short decades, the buffalo and elk that had sustained the natives for centuries were gone, remembered only in the occasional place name or flea-ridden floor skin. The Cherokee had their own problems, driven at gunpoint to Oklahoma, where the landscape was as alien to them as if they had been dropped onto the surface of Mars. The federal government later felt guilty enough to grant them control of gambling casinos, but by then their heritage and souls had been all but lost. They dreamed of spiritual journeys where they met up with buffalo, but they woke up to an artificially inflated Britney Spears, an artificially inflated Barry Bonds, and a cynical, media-inflated Republican leadership that encouraged fear in every sector of society, especially among the outcast.