Instead, she tried on the dress.
It fit perfectly.
Alex Eakins parked his pickup at the edge of the woods, below an embankment where the road had been cut to his property. He finished the last of his joint and doused the roach. He almost tossed it in the ashtray for later, but if a cop found it there, that would probably constitute grounds for a search warrant. The fucking pigs were just that way, and they'd gotten a lot porkier under the nou-veau Stalinism of the Bush II regime.
Fuck them all. Fuck big-budget Bush and his totalitarian ways. Fuck the spineless Democrats who curled up in a ball as they were kicked and fuck even his own chosen Libertarian Party for lacking in ability to capture the popular imagination. When it really counted political action was up close and personal.
He got his Pearson Freedom compound bow and arrows out of the backseat and wandered to the fence. Gordon Smith's goats grazed and browsed among the scrub vegetation, eating blackberry vines, pine trees, locusts, and pokeweed not caring what entered their mouths as long as it was green or brown. Alex considered having a neighborly talk with Smith, but that might lead to unexpected visits and snooping around, and then maybe a peek into the little shed behind Alex's mud house. Gordon was a professor, which almost certainly meant he'd smoked some weed in his day, but when it came down to it, someone on a university payroll was part of the Establishment and couldn't be trusted.
Besides, it was the goats that had fucked with his garden, not their owner. So it was the goats that had to pay. Alex notched an arrow and tilted the bow, then pinched and stretched the string back, muscles straining against the taut arc. It was power, primitive and raw and heady. Or maybe he was stoned.
The flock of a half dozen had paused and given him a speculative appraisal when he'd parked, but the animals now returned to their chewing. The nearest goat was thirty yards away, peeling the bark from a bare sapling. It was tan and white, ears long and tunneled, horns curved and short. The age of goats was hard to figure, since they got plump and grew beards before they were a year old but Alex figured this one for middle age. Probably was bound for the meat locker this winter.
Alex sighted down the arrow, aiming just a little high to compensate for the natural pull of gravity. He was about to let fly when he saw movement in a prickly grove of crab apples behind the flock. Somebody was walking toward him. Shit. Must be that redneck goon Odus Hampton, the odd-jobber who hung around down at the general store. Odus did chores around the Smith place in exchange for liquor money and crops, and probably had some sort of inbred devotion to his master. Mountain folk like Odus seemed to cling to the ideals their Irish and Scots ancestors had brought to the mountains as they fled to the freedom of the Southern Appalachians. They were driven by a rebel streak, but still measured themselves against the value systems of their oppressive overlords and would do anything for a dollar.
Or maybe Odus was just drunk and rambling.
And maybe the Scots-Irish who wanted to be left alone had a lot in common with antigovernment stoners.
Alex was shielded by a stand of small poplars, so Odus wouldn't be able to see him right away. Alex eased the tension on the string and leaned against the camouflage to wait for Odus to move on. The goats didn't turn toward Odus's approach, which didn't make sense. If Odus was the one who regularly fed them, they should have gone running at the first sniff of his bourbon-sweet stench.
Alex peeked from his cover. It wasn't Odus coming down the dirt path.
It was a man in a hat and an ill-cut suit that was too short for his arms. He wore a ragged black tie that was cut in the shape of a cross, and his white linen shirt looked like a stained tooth against the grimy topcoat. His bony wrists were exposed along with a couple of inches of pale forearm. He wore square-toed leather boots and his woolen pants were riddled with tiny rips and moth holes. His face was hidden in the shade of the hat's oversize brim.
Fucking Twilight Zone material, weird dude walking.
Alex debated getting back into his truck and driving away, but the man would probably see him carrying the bow and arrow. The stranger wouldn't know that Alex had been about to kill a goat, but he might tell Gordon about the encounter. And Gordon might get suspicious, drive up the dirt road and knock on Alex's door, or take a look around the property. Worse, Gordon might report Alex to the sheriff's department as a trespasser, and they would come with a warrant whether Alex was guilty or not. That's just the way the fucking cops were, they made up a stupid reason to investigate you so they could find something serious to bust you over. It was the same whether your broken taillight led to a drunk-driving arrest or a bogus trespassing claim got you busted for illegal manufacture of a Schedule I narcotic.
Alex decided to wait it out. Maybe the stranger was trespassing, too, and would walk amid the flock and head on down to the road. Weird Dude Walking could just walk the fuck right on off the stage.
But the stranger didn't keep walking. He stopped in the middle of the flock, in a cleared area of trampled goldenrod and tickseed. He tilted his head forward so that even the shadow of his face was hidden by the hat's brim. He folded his hands in front of him and stood as still as a scarecrow. The goats stopped their ruminating and turned to him, one by one. The only sounds were the September breeze skirling dead leaves and the ticking of the Jeep's engine as it cooled. Even the crows had grown hushed in the high treetops.
The goat closest to Alex, the one he had planned to murder, took a few steps toward the man in the hat. It emitted a soft bleat. Another of the goats, farther up the hill, echoed the bleat, and then others joined in. It wasn't the yearning bleat that hungry goats often made. These calls were gentle and almost tender, like the sound a kid would make as it neared its mother's teats.
Weird Dude Walking kept his head tilted down but slowly lifted his arms until they were suspended straight out from the sides of his body. It looked as if he were imitating a giant bird and would at any moment start flapping for takeoff. But his movements were slow and graceful, like those of someone at peace. The goats all moved forward at me same time, headed for the stranger. The largest, a fat old billy with a long, filthy beard, reached him first and sniffed at the wool suit. The man remained perfectly still, though his body seemed to relax a little, his limp hands dangling from the ends of his raised arms. Other goats crowded around, their nostrils flaring as they checked the air.
The nearest goat put its nose against the man's coat, then opened its jaws and took the cloth in its mouth. The man kept his head tilted and made no sign of movement. The goats squeezed closer, and now others put their snouts against his skin. The big billy tugged on the coat, first gently and then harder, until a lower button popped free. The other goats nipped at the fabric, yanking their heads back with the clothing clenched between their jaws, their bleats growing more frantic.
Alex wondered if Weird Dude had worn some sort of scent that attracted the goats. Deer hunters would splash their coveralls with buck urine, hoping to entice does from the woods. Maybe there was a special scent to attract goats, though goats were tame enough that they didn't need to be stalked. Alex fell back on the theory that the man had fed the goats before and they associated his scent with grain or sugar. Or maybe homegrown sinsemilla bud dulled Alex's thought process. Alex liked that theory better, because then he could take the credit for growing mythical motherlode mind-fuck instead of the possibility that something fucked up was happening that might be happening whether or not the observer was stoned. Like Einstein on acid or something, or an Escher drawing where you were on the inside looking out.
Whatever, man, because it's happening no matter which theory fits…