Chapter Thirty
Jett tucked a stone-washed denim jacket, a pair of black stockings, and a sweat suit into her backpack. She looked around the room. She'd never really settled into this place. Maybe it was Gordon's dreariness hanging over the entire house, or the faceless generations of Smiths who had lived in this room before her. A Brandon Lee poster and a diaphanous black scarf over the lamp shade didn't make a place any more inviting to a Gothling.
Mom had said to hurry, so Jett flipped through the CD stack. She passed over the Bella Morte, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, the music that had once seemed to match her mood. Now it all seemed so childish. Nihilism was great when it was part of a stage character, like makeup and black-leather props and facial piercings. But when you had stared nothingness in the face, and it stared right back and grinned, then the romanticism was lost. Jett nudged the CDs aside and plucked up some of her mother's favorites. Robyn Hitchcock's Queen Elvis, Tommy Keene's Songs from the Film, the Replacements' All Shook Down, XTC's The Big Express. Seemed like music to escape by, stuff that let you be yourself with no questions asked. Songs that made you feel stoned without drugs.
She crammed a couple of changes of day clothes in the bag. She didn't know if she'd ever see this room again, or the rest of her stuff. It depended on how well Gordon handled Mom's leaving. He might go postal and come after them with both guns blazing, or he might just as easily sit by the fire with a glass of wine, intellectualizing the reality of abandonment. That was the problem with Gordon. He didn't seem human, so you couldn't expect a human reaction.
After packing, Jett slid open her desk drawer and reached to the underside of the desk where she'd taped her bag of pot. She was a veteran of room searches, and though Mom had sworn to trust her, Gordon had no doubt rummaged a few times. She pulled the Baggie free and checked its contents. Enough to get her through the week. And then what?
Reality.
A reality far from a creepy stranger in a black hat, a gooned-out living scarecrow, a goat that sniffed your skin as if you were an apple pie, a ghost that haunted your mom.
Fuck it. Those would all be memories one day, and the more time that passed, the less she'd be able to see them. In a year, she probably would be able to tell herself it was all just a stoned nightmare. She tossed the pot back in the drawer. Let Gordon find it. Maybe he'd cram some into his pipe and see what all the fuss was about. Might loosen him up a little.
Textbooks lay scattered across the desk. No need to worry about that geography test next week. The sun was touching the mountains, and the first long shadows reached between the curtains. She wanted to be out of Solom before dark, and would bet her leather bracelet that Mom felt the same way.
Jett snatched Captain Boo off the bed, flung the backpack over her shoulder, and ran down to meet Mom at the car.
"There's just one thing about this," Sarah said.
"Whatever," Sue said, still clutching the climber's pickax. "I'm already nuts to believe any of this, so just lay it all out."
"The Circuit Rider only takes one. He had his shot at me, and I didn't cut the mustard with him for whatever reason. Not that I'm complaining. but I don't know if I want to double my odds. And it may be that he's ready to take on outsiders like you. After all, a soul's a soul, no matter where it comes from."
"I'll take my chances. I worked too hard to get established here. I'm not going to run off without a fight."
"That's a lot of gumption for a little thing like you. But that pickax might not do any good against a dead guy."
Sue swung the pickax handle against her other palm and caught it with a smack. "It feels right, somehow. Like you're supposed to use something that's part of who you are."
"In that case," Sarah said. She rummaged under the counter and brought out the twenty-gauge shotgun. She broke down the barrel and checked the shell. The gun hadn't been fired in five years but the powder had been kept dry. She reached up on the shelves behind her where she displayed ammunition for sale. Pulling down a box of bird-shot shells, she opened it and slipped three of them in her pants pocket.
"If I need more than three shots, the last one is for me," she said, pointing her thumb to her chin to show she'd blow her own head off before she let the Circuit Rider gallop her soul off to hell. Except part of her wondered if, by committing such an act, she would be volunteering to play the part of victim.
They stood looking at each other for a moment, sheepish expressions on their faces. "What now?" Sue asked.
"You got your Jeep?"
"It's by the shop."
"Let's take a ride, then."
"Where?"
"If you want to catch a mouse, you have to think like a mouse. If you want to catch a contrary preacher that's two hundred years dead and won't accept it, then you have to think like one of those, too. And if I was the Circuit Rider, I'd head for high ground."
"High ground? You mean Lost Ridge?"
"Can't think of any better place for a soul to get lost, can you?"
"Closer to heaven."
"Turn over the sign on the door and I'll close out the register. If there's a chance I'm dying tonight, I don't want some Yankee lawyer claiming the petty cash as part of my estate."
"You're a woman after my own heart," Sue said. "Except I ain't got one."
Ray was changing the plugs on his Massey Ferguson when he saw a goat moving across his meadow, hobbling as if it had blown a knee joint or gotten a thorn up in between its cloven hoofs. The animal moved between the giant rolls of hay that were still green and moist. Ray recalled the headless goats he'd found in the field. He'd buried the goats behind his blackberry patch, using his tractor to gouge a hole in the ground. The heads had never turned up.
Ray figured the Circuit Rider would be afoot tonight. After Harmon Smith's appearance at the general store last night, Ray thought the preacher was toying with them, letting them know he could take one of them at any time. Ray wasn't particularly afraid of dying. He'd given up on religion, and the Primitives didn't really believe you could do anything about the fate of your soul, anyway. His younger brother David hadn't reached out to try to bring Ray back into the church. David had always been the smooth talker of the family, the one who'd learned to read before grade school. Ray had studied shop and auto mechanics before dropping out in the eleventh grade, while David had gotten a degree at the community college. Never mind that David was practically nothing but a glorified lawn mower man these days, while Ray worked for himself running a backhoe. David was the one the church members had selected to be elder.
The church had a hand in Harmon Smith's death. It wasn't something the Rush Branch Primitive Baptists were either proud of or ashamed of, it just was. Like that lame goat that made its way between the rolls of hay, making a drunken beeline for the fence. Ray put down his ratchet and wiped his hands on a rag. As he watched the goat eased against the wire, its left foreleg twisted as if the bone had snapped. Goats were known for breaking out of any kind of pen, and this one must have pulled a Houdini act once already. But there was no way it would make it over four feet of hog wire topped with two strands of barbed wire.
Yet the goat reared up, put its broken limb on top of the hog wire, and dragged itself up. Then its other leg hooked on a strand of wire, and the rear hooves fought for purchase. The damned goat (a billy, judging by the sac that swung between its rear legs) was climbing the fence like a brain-damaged monkey. It put its chin over the top strand of wire, puncturing its flesh and sending a dribble of blood down the dirty white fur of its neck. Then it repositioned its legs and shoved forward until its chest, and then belly, were suspended on the top wire. The barbs must have been shredding its stomach, but the goat didn't mutter a grunt of complaint. Instead, it worked like it had a mission, wriggling until the bulk of its weight caused it to flop onto the other side of the fence. It stood on shaky legs and stared at Ray, eyes red and mucusy. Could goats get rabies?