Granny Hampton paused on that word "glory," and let them chew it over as she relieved her mouth of brown saliva. The way she said it, getting to heaven sounded almost like a scary thing, because you'd find a cavalry of nasty horseback preachers guarding the Pearly Gates.
"One November Sunday morning, when Harmon was due back for a service, Old Saint came clopping down Snakeberry Trail with an empty saddle." Here Granny Hampton gave a vague wave to Three Top, and Odus could almost hear those iron horseshoes knocking off of granite and maple roots. "Some of the menfolk went up to hunt for him, and they saw what looked like signs of a struggle near the creek. Never found his body. Your ancestor Robert figured he got took by a mountain lion. Some said Harmon went in the water and got tugged down into a sinkhole and turned to soap."
"Yuck," Lonnie said.
"Others said he never did die. They say he still comes back every decade or so to toss a body on his killing stones. And it ain't animals no more."
"What is it, then?" Walter Buck said and his voice was low and reverent and maybe just a little bit spooked.
"Now nothing will do for Harmon Smith's garden but a bad little young'un."
Granny Hampton lifted herself up with a groan of both breath and chair wood, took up her cane, and headed for the screen door. She paused and looked out at the mountains once more and said, "Praise the Lord, I'm mighty glad I'm old. Not much left to be scared of anymore."
She went inside, her chair still rocking, the runners whispering against the night like a language two hundred years lost.
Odus never forgot that story, and more than once he'd found himself alone at night on a dark trail or stretch of pasture and recall that image of Old Saint prancing down off Three Top. Except, in the image, a soapy, pale figure was perched on the horse's back, the head beneath the black hat swaying back and forth with the horse's motion. For those who had ever heard Granny Hampton tell the story, it was easy to believe Harmon Smith was still riding the circuit.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Katy asked.
"What?"
"The thing you don't want to talk about."
Katy turned her back to him and shimmied out of the dress with the autumnal print. She hung it in the closet, though she'd spilled some butter sauce on it during dinner. She felt oddly exposed in front of her husband, though she was in her bra and panties and he'd certainly viewed the marital merchandise on at least one occasion.
Gordon was in his pajamas, in bed, pretending to be engrossed in a Dostoyevsky novel. He had changed in the bathroom, locking the door so she couldn't enter while he was taking a shower and brushing his teeth.
"You mean Jett?"
That wasn't what she meant, and she approached the dresser for the sole purpose of glancing in the mirror to see if he was looking at her body. His gaze never left the book. "What about Jett?" she asked.
"I know a counselor. He teaches part-time at Westridge, and I'm sure he'll give me a discount if insurance doesn't cover it."
She removed her earrings, a set of sterling silver crescent moons, and put mem in the cedar jewelry box on the dresser. Only after she closed the lid did she realize she'd never seen either the earrings or the box before. "What?" she said, too loudly for bedtime.
"For her problems. The drugs, the wild stories, the way she dresses to intentionally offend. She's making a classic ploy for attention."
Like mother, like daughter.
Katy removed her bra and let it slip to the floor, still looking into the mirror. Her freckled breasts were high and firm, even though she had breast-fed Jett. Katy picked up the silver-handled brush on the dresser and began running it through her red hair, flipping her head so the sheen would reflect in the bedside lamplight. Gordon was reading the Dostoyevsky.
"Do you think I'm prettier than Rebecca?" she asked.
Gordon closed the novel with a slap of pulp. "That's a hell of a thing to ask a man. It's like asking if I think you're fat."
"I've seen her picture. She's not like me at all. Brown hair, dark eyes, fuller lips. They say some men have a 'type' and go for it time after time, even when it's bad for them."
"We were talking about Jett."
She turned to face him, her nipples hard in the cool September air. "You keep changing the subject."
"The subject is us. All of us." His eyes stayed fixed on hers, resisting any temptation he might have had to let his gaze crawl over her figure. Perhaps he had no desire and nothing to hide. Maybe this morning's sex had been his version of a personality warp. Jett might not be the only one in the house who had hallucinations. Then again, Katy had been the one to wear a dead woman's dress without a moment's consideration of how strange that was, especially when the dress belonged to Gordon's first wife. Even stranger, Gordon had not commented on it.
Were they all going insane? What if Jett was spiking their food slipping LSD or some other brain-scrambling substance into the recipes she'd found scattered about the kitchen? No. Jett was off drugs. She had promised.
"We're trying, Gordon," she said. "You knew we came with strings attached."
"You look cold. Why don't you put on a robe?"
"I'm fine."
"I'm worried about you."
"Maybe you should save your worry for what's happening between us. We screwed each other's brains out this morning, and it was the first time you ever touched me in any way that mattered. I thought I'd finally broken through. Now you act like nothing happened."
Gordon never looked embarrassed but his cheeks turned a shade rosier. "It's complicated."
"Not really. Either I'm prettier than Rebecca or I'm not. Either you want to screw me or you don't. Either we're married or just people who sleep in the same bed. Sounds pretty damned simple to me.
"You're not from Solom."
"I am now. I moved here, remember. I said 'I do' and I gave up my stable if unspectacular career in Charlotte and yanked my daughter's roots out of the Piedmont dirt and dragged both of us up here because I thought we had a future with you. Only it turns out I'm second on your 'honey-do' list behind your dead wife."
Gordon exploded out of the blankets, rising from the bed with an angry squeak of springs. His pajamas were askew, one tail of his shirt dangling across his groin. "Leave Rebecca out of this."
"How can I? I thought you wanted me to be her."
"You'll never be Rebecca."
Katy stormed out of the room, tears blurring her vision. She slammed the bedroom door as punctuation to her unspoken comeback. Her curled right fist ached and she looked down to see the silver-handled hairbrush with the initials R.L.S.
Rebecca Leigh Smith.
Katy flung the hairbrush down the hall and ran to the top of the stairs. The air coming up from the landing was cool and drafty, moving around her flesh like soft hands. The smell of lilacs wrapped her, carrying a faintly sweet undercurrent of corruption. She leaned against the top post, the landing spread below her like still and dark water.
Maybe if she died, Gordon would love her as well.
"Do you love him?"
The words crawled from the hidden corners of the kitchen, out from the cluttered pantry shelves, beneath the plush leather couch, off the mantel with its dusty pictures and Gordon's collection of religious relics, up from the dank swell of the crawl space. Katy thought she had imagined the words, that the voice was the whisk of a late autumn wind, or the settling of a centuries-old farmhouse. Better that than to accept she was losing her mind. Because, however briefly and innocently, she had just contemplated suicide.