Odus had first heard about the Circuit Rider when he was eight years old. His grandmother, a thick, dough-faced woman who survived the Great Depression and hoarded canned foods because of it, would often gather the grandkids around the front porch on Saturday nights. The older kids complained because they would rather watch television, but, to Odus, it was a way to stay up after bedtime without getting in trouble. He knew even then that stories were a way of passing along the truth, even when they walked on the legs of lies.
Granny Hampton was the matriarch of a half dozen kids, and three of those had seen fit to breed. Odus was an only child, but he had five cousins, and that was before they all moved away from Solom, so Granny's front porch was a lively and crowded place during the summer. Granny would settle in her rocker, the smaller kids gathered on the cool boards at her feet, the bigger ones slouched against the railing. A Mason jar at Granny's feet served as her spitoon, and she wouldn't talk before she'd placed a large pinch of Scotch-colored snuff behind her lower lip. As if on cue, the dusk grew a shade darker, the crickets launched their brittle screams, and fireflies blanketed the black silhouettes of the trees. The stars twinkled over the bowl of the valley, and the rest of the world may as well have broken off and drifted past the moon for all it mattered. It was as if Granny were a witch who conjured up a magical stage for her tales and Solom were the only solid ground in the universe.
"The Circuit Rider was one of the first horseback preachers to come through these parts," Granny said on mat July night of 1966. "There had been a couple of Methodists and an Episcopalian, but Harmon Smith was a converted Primitive Baptist. The Baptists weren't all over the place like they are now, and most of the white settlers kept their religion to themselves. The thing about Primitives is they don't believe in salvation-"
Lonnie, who was a year older than Odus, cut in and said, "Does that mean they don't believe in Jesus?"
"They believe in Jesus, but he ain't the only way to heaven. Primitives believe you're bora saved."
"I don't want to hear no sermon," said Walter Buck, Odus's oldest cousin and the one probably most in need of a sermon. "Get on to the ghost."
Granny paused to let a tawny strand of saliva leak into the Mason jar, her eyes like onyx marbles in the weak light of the porch's bare bulb. "I'll get to the ghost soon enough, but if I was you, I'd make sure the ghost don't get on to you"
Walter Buck snickered, but there was a little catch in his breath when he finished.
"Harmon Smith decided he liked the look of the land because it reminded him of his homeland in the Pennsylvania high country. He aimed to settle down and build a little church here. Problem was, a couple of other preachers had been riding through the region, and they were all hell-bent for saving souls in those days. The Methodists were the worst, or the best, depending on how you looked at it. They would ride themselves ragged, cross mountains in the dead of winter, sleep on hard ground, and generally run themselves to the bone in order to bring a single person into the fold. They tended to wear down and get ill, and it was common for them to die before the age of thirty. This all happened two hundred years ago, so people didn't live all that long back then anyway."
"Was Daniel Boone here then?" Lonnie asked.
"Boone never was here, much. He'd come up and hunt, maybe spend a few weeks in the winter. He kept a little cabin over on Kettle Knob, but he never had much claim on this place. Besides, this story ain't about Daniel Boone, it's about Harmon Smith."
All the cousins had watched Fess Parker wearing his coonskin cap on television, starring as Daniel Boone, the fightin'est man the frontier ever knew. But Odus was more interested in the Circuit Rider, and looked at the Three Top Mountain range, imagining Harmon Smith guiding his horse along the rocky trails.
"Harmon Smith was based in Roanoke, Virginia, at the time, and his territory went into Tennessee and Kentucky. He had used up three horses by the time he first set eyes on Solom. In them days, there was probably two dozen families in the valley, and most of them are still here."
"Was there any Hamptons?" Lonnie asked.
"Quit interrupting or we'll never get through," Walter said.
Granny lowered one eyelid and gave Walter a stare that shut him up for the rest of the story. The bugs had found the porch light by that time, and a mosquito bite on Odus's ear had swollen up and begun to itch, but he could put up with a hundred bites to learn about the Circuit Rider.
"The Hamptons were here, Robert and Dolly, they'd be your great, let me see, great-great-great-grandparents, if I'm figuring right. They were one of the first to invite Harmon Smith in for a bite of supper, which is why I know so much about him. The story's been passed down all these years, but I'm sure there's some parts that have been beefed up a bit along the way. Wouldn't be a good folktale otherwise.
"Harmon Smith told Robert and Dolly that he wanted to buy some land up here. Preachers in those days never had any money, figuring they'd get their reward in heaven, not like them slick-haired weasels you'll find behind a pulpit these days. But Harmon had a young coon dog with him, and one of the Hicks boys took a cotton to the hound and ended up trading ten acres for it. By that time, Harmon had persuaded Dolly and Robert to join the Primitives, mostly because joining didn't seem to require any kind of obligation. You didn't have to give up dancing or corn liquor, not that any Hamptons ever liked to take a drink."
Odus knew that was one family trait that hadn't made it into his branch, because his dad rarely went through a day without a drink. But Odus didn't think liquor was bad, because it made his dad sleepy and talkative. When he wasn't drinking, he was prone to cussing and stomping around, so Odus's gut always unclenched when his dad twisted the cap on a pint bottle.
"Harmon ended up building his church, but it took him five long years. In the meantime, he was still making his circuit on his horse, Old Saint, taking collections where he could, preaching the Primitive line as he went. Harmon took a wife but she must have wandered off and left him, because she was never heard from again. The preacher turned peculiar after that. He took up farming, but his soil was too thin and rocky. One autumn, Harmon stacked up some stones and covered them with dead locust branches. He knelt before them and prayed, then took one of his chickens and chopped"-here spit flew from Granny's mouth as she made a chopping motion with her hand and Lonnie jumped a foot in the air even though he was sitting on his rump-"and its head flew off and dribbled blood all over the wood. He set the branches on fire and tossed the chicken on it, like the way they used to offer up lambs in the Old Testament. People whispered about that, but figured Harmon knew how such things were done. The next year, Harmon's crops were busting open they were so thick, corn and cabbage and squash and even things that don't take hold too well here like melons and strawberries. In his church he said God had smiled down on a humble servant, but that October he sacrificed a goat on his stack of killing stones. Garden got even better, so the autumn after that it was a cow, and the wood had to be stacked as high as man's head in order to do the job proper."
"Didn't anybody think he was crazy?" Debbie asked, who was the weird cousin who had once tried to show Odus her panties. The night had settled down more heavily than ever, a thick, black blanket held in place by the glittering nail heads of the stars.
"Sure, some did, but they figured if burnt offerings was good enough for Abraham, it was good enough for Harmon Smith. Other horseback preachers came through, though, and talk went around that they weren't happy with the way old Harmon had set up shop. These were 'enlightened minds,' and they didn't hold with old-fashioned ways. The Methodist man in particular felt the strong hand of God pushing him into this territory as if there was only one right way to put us mountain people on the path to Glory."