"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.