"Yeah. It's lunchtime. I have five minutes before the bell rings."
"How's it going? Did you get my letter?"
"Yeah. Thanks for the money. It really saved my sanity."
"I'll send some more soon."
"No, I'm fine. Really."
"Are you liking Solom any better now that you've had some time to get settled?"
"It's all right. A little slow, but you get used to it."
"Made any friends?"
She thought of her drug connection, the goats, the man in the black suit, the kids on the bus, creepy old Betsy Ward. "Yeah. I'm fitting right in."
Her dad's tone turned serious. "And your mom? Is she okay?"
"Actually, that's what I called about."
'Talk to me, sweetheart."
"I'm afraid she's starting to lose it."
"Lose it?"
"Yeah. She's, like, not Mom. Like some alien came down and took over her brain. She's changed so much in the last few weeks. Sometimes I can't believe it's the same person who told me that life sends messages in invisible balloons."
"She's going through an adjustment period. She'll be fine once-"
"Don't give me that counselor babble horseshit, Dad."
"Jett."
"Sorry. It just blurted out."
"I can tell you're upset. Calm down and tell me what she's up to."
"She stares off into space. I'll walk into a room and it's like she's forgotten what she was doing, or like she'd been in the middle of a daydream and I woke her up. She's totally changed her wardrobe and-this might be weirdest of all-she's started cooking. And I don't mean beanie weenies and frozen waffles. I'm talking honest-to-God recipes."
"Well, if you'll forgive the counselor babble, I'd guess she's trying hard to make things work with her new husband."
"You sound sad about it, Dad."
"We had our chance and blew it. Things just didn't work out. But-"
"I know, I know, it's not my fault and it had nothing to do with me."
"I know it's tough on you, honey. Getting along with Gordon okay?"
She didn't know whether to lie or not. Dad shouldn't have asked, or maybe it was his way of showing he cared about her. It was an uncomfortable subject. Gordon had wanted her to take the Smith name, but she'd balked. Mom had sided with her, of course, but not too vocally. "He's been a hard case but Mom says he just wants what's best for me. But I don't think him and Mom are getting along too well."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
She could tell he wasn't. She didn't understand much about boy-girl stuff, except she was smart enough to know that you wanted to forever own the one you loved, even if it was bad for both of you. "He's not mean or anything, just cold. Not to get too personal, but he never kisses her."
"They'll work it out. I'm more worried about you. I hate to ask, but how are things going with the drugs?"
"Fine." She realized she'd snapped at him, and that was the worst possible thing to do, because it would make him suspicious. "They haven't even invented drugs up here yet. It's like the 1800s. Plowing with mules, no electricity, a church down every dirt road. Nothing but clean air and sunshine."
"Good for you, pumpkin. I don't mean to pry, but I'm your dad. It's still my job, even if we're two hundred miles apart."
The bell rang, its brittle, metallic echo bouncing off the concrete block walls. The traffic in the hall picked up, a few of the guys giving her the eye, no doubt because of her black lipstick. "Got to go to math," she said.
"Love you. Keep in touch, and tell your mom I said hello."
For a moment, Jett almost told about the man in the black hat, but Dad would think she was either cracking up or in serious need of some counselor babble horseshit. Ditto with the menacing goats. Just thinking of them made her a little light-headed, as if such things were never real unless you spoke of them. Better to just ignore them, pen them up behind the walls of Stoner City. "I love you, too, Dad. 'Bye."
She wiped her eyes, careful not to smudge the liner, and waded into the hallway crowd.
Carnivorous goats.
Sounded the fuck like a cheesy zombie movie to Alex Eakins. He could dig zombies, even cheer for them in a way, because when you got down to it, those gut-munching things from beyond the grave were about the most libertarian creatures around. Talk about your free-market economies. But goats were another matter.
Alex was smart enough to be aware of his eccentric nature. His parents were afraid he was turning into a survivalist who would one day construct an armed bunker and have a standoff with federal agents. But the true survivalist didn't want to be noticed by the government, much less stage a confrontation. And a true survivalist didn't go around ranting about man-eating goats, because that was a surefire way to get noticed.
So Alex would have to figure out how to handle this on his own. The first order of business was a trip to the general store to get a few reels of barbed wire. He could add another couple of runs around the perimeter of his property as a first line of defense. His gun rack held a.30–30, a sixteen-gauge Remington shotgun, and a.22 so his girlfriends could participate in target practice. He had his bow and arrows, a slingshot, and a couple of sticks of dynamite he'd bought under the table at the last Great Tennessee Border Gun Show. Plus there was the contraband arsenal in his secret room. So goats, even a herd of them, were not something to lose sleep over.
Weird Dude Walking was another story altogether.
Because Alex had returned to the scene of the slaughter yesterday afternoon, and not even a stitch of clothing remained. No blood on the ground, either, and not a goat in sight (Alex had the Remington with him just in case). Goats would eat any old thing, especially natural-fiber clothing, but surely a few scraps would be scattered around, or a bone button from the coat. Strangest of all, though the ground was pocked with cloven hoofprints, there was not a single mark from the boots the man had been wearing.
Which meant Weird Dude Walking must have risen up and floated away like Christ gone to heaven.
Even if Alex wanted to report what he'd witnessed, he had no evidence. He never doubted his sanity, though his own family had called him "crazy" any number of times. But only a crazy person would witness a man feeding himself alive to a bunch of goats.
Maybe not crazy, though.
Maybe special.
If a thing like that happened in the old days, the people called you a prophet and let you boss them around.
"Alex?"
Alex looked up, not realizing he'd been staring at his palms as if expecting them to start bleeding. "I thought you were at work."
"It's my day off."
"Oh yeah."
"Something wrong?"
"No, babe. Just thinking about the state of the world. It's a guy thing."
"I've got a guy thing for you." Meredith nuzzled her breasts against his back and put her arms around his chest.
"Not now. I've got some things to work out."
"Don't you want to smoke some?"
"I need to keep a clear head. Dope is the opium of the masses."
"Huh?"
"Hemingway. He said dope is the opium of the masses. But that's pretty fried, because opium is what they make heroin out of, and not many people can hook up with some H. I guess they didn't smoke much weed back in Hemingway's time."
"I thought he said religion was the opium of the masses. Or was that Karl Marx?"
"Same thing. Religion is for dopes, so it all works out." He gave a stoned snicker, though he'd not had any marijuana since the night before.
"You want some lunch? I could cook one of your acorn squashes and some wild rice."
"I'm not hungry. I think I'll go check the babies and meditate."
He got up from the table and went outside. He had a small greenhouse, but he didn't grow his dope in it. The surveillance planes might see it and that would be the first place the snooper troopers would train their little spy cameras. His marijuana was in a little shed by the garden. He used a wind turbine and water wheel to generate electricity for the full-spectrum lights, because one of the ways cops got a warrant was by checking the electric company's records for a jump in kilowatt hours. The jump was "evidence" that a citizen might be using grow lights. Since he was off-grid, he was outside the system, in more ways than one.