"We're down to two dozen members, Elder David."
David nodded. Since the Primitives didn't believe in missionary work, there was no call to go out among the people and recruit new members. The younger generation had drifted away from all the churches, not just the Primitive subdenomination. Sometimes David watched those showy evangelists on television with their silk neckties and stiff hair and felt a little jealous. He wondered how he would fare out there onstage, where you felt the Spirit work in you as you exhorted others to take Jesus Christ into their hearts and be born again.
The Primitives had already been born into grace, according to their statement of beliefs, so believers had little to do besides wait around for the Rapture. Of course, the rituals at church helped soothe worldly troubles. And services offered fellowship, too, something still a little rare in the mountains, with the closest Wal-Mart over fifty miles away. The Solom General Store had a potbellied stove and a little dining area, but loud tourists with their cell phones and cologne had altered the store's atmosphere, and in some ways, their money had taken it out of the hands of the community.
"The Lord will take care of it," David said. The collection plate had yielded more metal than paper over the last few months. David didn't preach for money, though he did accept reimbursement for the gas and equipment he used to maintain the church grounds.
"Folks around here could use a good miracle or two," James said.
"Amen to that." David fixed his gaze on the hole, which glared right back like a cold ebony eye.
Sarah Jeffers came to her senses in a dimly lighted room. At first, she thought she was in her bed on the second floor of the old family home by the store, because the light through the window had a late-Sunday-morning quality. Sunday was her sleep-in day, and her headache might have been caused by a couple of tall after-dinner sherries. Her eyelids were heavy, so she listened for the ticking of the antique grandfather clock downstairs. She heard nothing but a faint, irregular beeping.
And the smell was all wrong. Instead of aged wood musty quilts, and cats, the room had the crisp tang of antiseptic. She opened her eyes and blinked her vision into focus. The walls were white, unlike the maple paneling of her bedroom. The pillows were encased in vinyl and the bed was angled up like a lounge chair at the side of a swimming pool.
"Back among the waking," a young woman said. "How do you feel?"
"Get me a doctor," Sarah said.
The woman smiled. "I am a doctor. Dr. Hyatt. You're in Tri-Cities Regional Hospital."
Sarah closed her eyes. Doctors were supposed to be male and gray-haired. How could this urchin know the least little thing about the workings of the human body? She didn't look old enough to have ever dissected a frog, much less gone through medical school.
"One of your friends found you at your store," Dr. Hyatt said. "You were unconscious."
"And that's a bad thing, right?"
"A sense of humor. Good. 'Laughter is the best medicine' is not just a section in Reader's Digest. The claim also has some research backing it up."
"Then tell me a good one so I can laugh my way out of this hun-dred-dollar-an-hour prison cell. Let me out of here."
"It's not that simple, Miss Jeffers. It is 'miss,' isn't it?"
"I can't lay around here during store hours. I got customers to see to."
"We ran some tests while you were unconscious. You had symptoms of a stroke, but your EEG and CAT were fine and your blood pressure is that of somebody thirty years younger."
"Tests? Who signed for them? And why are these wires sticking in me?"
"The gentleman who called 9-1-1 said you had no next of kin. We followed the usual procedures for treating an apparent stroke victim."
"But I ain't been stroked, have I?"
"Not that we can tell. We thought you might have suffered a blow to the head maybe by a can falling from a top shelf. Or a robbery. But the register was untouched and the store appeared to be intact. Your friend called the sheriff's department and they checked it out. And you have no visible marks."
Sarah struggled to sit up, saw black spots before her eyes, and decided to try again a little later. "I hope somebody locked up. Half the merchandise will walk off otherwise."
"The deputies will take care of that. Your job is to get better."
The black spots coalesced behind her eyelids, turning into a shadow, a man in a black, wide-brimmed hat. She reached out for the doctor's arm and clutched it, afraid the image would still be there if she opened her eyes. The beeping accelerated.
"Are you okay, Miss Jeffers?"
"I seen him," she said.
"Your friend? He said you were unconscious, but you might have been partially aware of what was going on. It's not unusual during a fainting spell."
"No, before that. I seen him." Suddenly she wasn't in such a big hurry to leave Titusville and go back to Solom.
"Just breathe regularly," Dr. Hyatt said patting Sarah's hand until the beep marking her pulse became steady again. "Rest up. You're not going anywhere for a little while."
That sounded good to Sarah. She closed her eyes and tried to block the recurring image of the man tilting up his chin until the wide brim no longer hid his face.
Or what was left of his face.
Odus had stayed with Sarah for a couple of hours, but when the doctor reported that she was awake and alert, yet refusing visitors, he'd driven his Blazer back to Solom and the Smith farm. He had agreed to help Gordon put up some corn, though it hadn't quite gotten frozen enough to harden for feed. Now, ripping and twisting the brown ears from their stalks, he decided that Gordon's crops were Gordon's business, as long as the man paid cash. Odus was thirsty after the fright Sarah had thrown into him, and he'd picked up a quart of sipping whiskey from the Titusville liquor store. A few hours of September sweat and he'd have earned a sip or two.
Gordon usually left the grunt work to Odus, but today the professor was pitching in, working the rows right alongside him. They filled bushel baskets and carried them to the end of the row where Gordon had parked his riding lawn mower. Gordon didn't own a tractor, though a metal relic from the horse-drawn days gathered rust between the barn and garden. Odus was thinking about what Sarah had said, about the man in the hat, when Gordon spoke.
"Guess it's time to take down the scarecrow," Gordon said.
Odus looked up at the form on the wooden crossbar whose head stood a good two feet above the dried blooms of the corn. It wore an old straw-reed hat that had been bleached by the sun and mottled gray by the rain, tied with twine to the feed-sack face. People in Solom were peculiar about their scarecrows, treating them like family members, using the same one from year to year. Odus had always thought it was some sort of good-luck ritual. The habit was to store the scarecrow in the barn, where it would hang on the wall and watch over the livestock during the long winter. Odus had been working for Gordon three years, and knew the usual time to tuck the straw man away was in late October, when the nights grew short and the wind rattled strange syllables in the leaves.
"A little early yet, ain't it?" Odus asked.
Gordon put a gloved hand over his eyes and scanned the clear sky. "There's a storm coming."
"Don't believe so. The birds aren't quiet and the mice are no busier than usual."
Gordon pulled off his glove, fished a handkerchief from his jeans pocket, and wiped his glasses. His eyes were glittery and unfocused, and he looked lost. "I'm talking about a different kind of storm, Odus."