The goat snorted a little and bobbed its head as if threatening her. Or else commanding her to climb the stairs.
Whoa the fuck down. Goats don't boss humans around. They 're stupid Fred-faced, squid-eyed, dumb-as-dirt pieces of meat on the hoof.
The goat grinned, revealing a five-dollar chunk of marijuana bud that was stuck between two upper teeth. Jett almost laughed. This was the kind of stoner story she'd tell at the next party, if she ever made any friends in Solom: "Yeah, a goat came up while I was smoking and gobbled down my stash."
She'd leave out the part about the goat scaring her, and the man in the black hat, and the voice she'd heard in the boiler room behind the school. Because those were things that could get you locked up in the nuthouse, where the drugs were no fun at all, according to her friend Patty from Charlotte. Nuthouse drugs were designed to perform chemical lobotomies, eliminating the problems by stripping away any desire to suffer a thought or feeling. As tempting as oblivion was, Jett liked hers in small and controlled doses.
Besides, who could be bored when a goat was after you?
The wall was covered with garden tools, ropes, and harness. She picked out a hoe, figuring she could use the blunt end of the handle to drive the goat away. The animal clambered forward as she leveled the handle and pointed it like a jousting lance. In the distance, the Wards' dog barked, followed by the sound of tires on gravel. Gordon must be home.
Great.
Gord the Wonder Nerd.
She waited for his SUV engine to die and for the vehicle's door to open. Then she could yell for help. Except the goat had paused, too, and lifted its head as if listening. Like maybe Gordon had a treat.
If Gordon came to the barn, he would see the pot and bust her. She'd probably be grounded for the rest of the school year, or maybe even until high school. Gordon was one of those uptight people who made a big deal about morals without being religious. Because, despite all his blowhard lecturing at the dinner table about this and that denomination, and the fact that he was the great-great-grandson of a circuit-riding preacher, Gordon wore a sneer on his face when he talked about people going to church. Jett wasn't sure what she believed yet, but one thing was for sure, she thought Jesus Christ was the kind of guy who wouldn't put you down for a little bit of weed. True, he probably wouldn't inhale, but he also wouldn't hit you over the head with a Bible because of it.
So calling for Gordon was out of the question. She had to make a decision on whether to try for the loft and wait it out, or scoot past the goat, collect her stash, and sneak around the backyard and into the house before anyone noticed she was missing. Mom had been a real space cadet lately, so Gordon would probably make the obligatory room check. She planned to be at her desk with a textbook open, so she could bat her eyelashes at him in a "What do you want?" look. Pop an Altoid mint, drop in some Visine, and she was bulletproof. The only symptom would be goofiness, and all twelve-year-old girls were goofy.
She prodded at the goat with the hoe handle. It turned and trotted to the barn door, standing just beyond the reach of daylight, as if it were afraid the sun would burn its skin and turn its carcass to dust. Jett dropped the hoe and scooped up her Baggie of marijuana. She tucked it in the pocket of her sleeveless jean jacket. Though she was craving another hit to cap off the buzz, the whole scene was getting to be like a psychedelic, fluorescent-colored episode of The Twilight Zone. She expected the ghost of Rod Serling to step from one of the stalls at any second, wearing a tie-died T-shirt and a ponytail, a pencil-sized joint replacing his ever-present cigarette.
The rear of the barn had another large wooden door, suspended on rollers that slid in a steel track overhead. It was latched from the inside with a dead bolt, but Jett thought she'd be able to maneuver the heavy door open enough to slip around the back way. Gordon's SUV door slammed. That meant he'd go through the front door in about fifteen seconds if he followed his usual routine. Unless he saw the goat in the barn.
Jett Wrestled with the dead bolt. It was rusty, as if it hadn't been operated in years. She banged her knuckles trying to work the bolt free, scraping the skin. She put her knuckles in her mouth and sucked at the blood. Something nudged her hip, and she looked down to see the goat's face turned up to hers, its nostrils dilating, eyes glinting in the dim light. The animal emitted a low moan, as if a hunger had been awakened by the scent of fresh fruit.
"Back off, Fred," she said.
Jett threw back the bolt and leaned against the edge of the door, hoping to get some momentum. The door opened six inches. The goat jumped up and put its front hooves on the door, raising itself up to the height of her shoulder. It was bleating deep in its throat, and raised one hoof and banged it against the wood. Frightened now, almost forgetting her buzz, Jett flung her shoulder against the edge of the door, sending a fat spark of pain down her arm. The goat hammered on the door with both hooves as it creaked open another half a foot. Jett turned sideways and squeezed her body into the gap, squinting against the early evening sun.
As she worked her way free, she felt a rough tongue against the back of her hand.
Great. Goat cooties on her wounded knuckles. She'd probably get a staph infection.
She struggled through the door and moved away from the barn. The goat was too plump to get through the door. An absurd wave of relief washed over Jett. Getting stoned had been almost more trouble than it was worth.
As she went down the path that led between the barn and the garden to the apple trees near the house, she glanced back. In the loft opening was a dark shadow that looked a lot like a man in a black suit, arms spread, a wide-brimmed hat on his head. Jett blinked and hurried under the trees. She wanted her drug-induced visions to stay inside her head where they belonged, not out wandering around in the real world.
But the world hadn't been very real ever since she had moved to Solom. Thank God for dope.
Evening fell like a bag of hammers, and Odus decided there was no better place to let the sun die on you than the cold bank of Blackburn River. He had two rainbow trout on the stringer and half a six-pack of Miller High Life floating in the water, the plastic ring tethered to a stick. The mosquitoes had quit biting weeks ago, and even if they were sorry enough to try to suck his blood, they would be drawing nothing but high-octane, eighty proof out of his veins. The bottle of Old Crow was nearly gone, and that meant another long haul into Windshake to replenish his supply. He cussed God and the virgin whore Mary for making Pickett a dry county.
He was below the old remnants of the dam. Part of the earthworks was still in place, funneling water past in a series of tiny falls. The trout loved to lie among the rocks beneath me white water, where the oxygen level was rich and food dropped down like earthworms from heaven. Odus's hook dropped in, too, though he had to work the reel with a steady hand because the bait washed downstream in the blink of an eye.
The general store up on the hill was dark. That was contrary, because Odus had never known it to be closed for a full day. He'd called up to the hospital to check on Sarah, and the receptionist had hemmed and hawed about federal privacy rules until Odus claimed to be her son. Then the receptionist declared Sarah to be in stable condition and scheduled to be kept overnight for observation.
A few tracks from the old Virginia Creeper line, some that hadn't been washed away in the 1940 flood, lay in weed-infested gravel across the river. The creosote cross ties had long since rotted, and the steel rails themselves would have long been overgrown if the tourists hadn't made a walking trail out of the line. Tourists were the damnedest creatures: they took the ugliest eyesores of Solom, such as fallen-down barns and lightning-scarred apple trees, and proclaimed them a glory of Creation. Took pictures and bought postcards, put their Florida-fat asses onto the narrow seats of expensive ten-speeds, and pedaled down the river road as if they were going nowhere and had all day to do it. Beat all, if you asked Odus, but nobody asked, because he was just a drunken river rat and didn't even own any property. He lived in the bottom floor of a summer house and kept the grounds in trade for rent.