"No, but he came up while I was digging."
"Dumb-ass. I could have told you that. When they looked in Jesus' tomb, it was empty, too."
"I wasn't good enough, Ray-Ray." David had fallen back to using a childhood nickname, proof that he'd been shaken like a rat in a terrier's jaws. "I had the chance to defeat him, or at least give myself and save others, but I wasn't worthy."
Ray bit back bis grin of pleasure. Maybe God hadn't blown this thing yet Maybe the Big Guy had set up the domino chits so the real favorite son could knock them down.
He patted David on the shoulder and gave him the kind of manly squeeze that said, Yeah, that's some rotten possum you got served, but eat it for your own good.
"I've got this feeling," Ray said. "A feeling (hat maybe God has other business for you. That's how you got to look at it. Maybe you're the fish he threw back in so you could grow up big and strong and feed the multitudes."
David nodded, shivering a little. Mist rose off his damp clothes as the night chill settled around them.
"Maybe it's my turn," Ray continued. "God passed me over the first time because he had this job for me. That explains the scarecrow and the headless goats. Those were signs, and I was too red-eyed blind to see them. I'm the one, Davey Boy. I'm the one"
David was drawn up and beaten, the way he'd been after wetting the bed at age five. David had to sleep on the bottom bunk, not because Ray was older and therefore deserved a higher station, but because there was the real risk that urine would dribble off his plastic sheet to the bed below if he'd been on top. David was in an agreeable mood, Ray noted, because he'd seen the light of truth. David wasn't worthy, and that meant Ray was in the driver's seat again. He could hardly wait until next Sunday's service, when David announced his resignation and Ray stepped up to win their vote as the new elder.
Elder. As if that name for the church leader weren't self-evident. It probably wouldn't hurt the congregation to eat a little crow for going with style over substance, as if practically every lesson in the Bible didn't warn against arrogance, pride, and hypocrisy.
Looking through the windshield, Ray saw a faint glow at the top of the ridge, less than a half mile from the church. He'd hunted that ridge for wild turkey, one of the most elusive creatures ever set loose on God's green earth. The glow was more than just a collected pool of moonlight against the granite boulders. It was a spotlight shone down from heaven, marking a center stage where Ray would meet his destiny. With David serving as witness.
"The path has been marked," Ray said. "Narrow is the gate and hard is the road, but the logging road to Lost Ridge is as wide open as Mary Lou Slater's legs." He punched his brother on the shoulder. "And you get to ride shotgun, just like you did that day we busted our cherries. Whaddaya think about that, Davey Boy?"
David may have answered, but Ray couldn't have heard him over the roar of the engine's kicking to life.
Sarah leveled the shotgun at the Circuit Rider, who sat on the flat boulder with his legs crossed like one of those fat Asian bud-dhas. Four dozen goats knelt before the dead preacher, still and waiting under the glare of the Jeep headlights. That might have been the creepiest part of the whole scene: the Circuit Rider's eyes burned yellow in the light, his waxen face and gaunt cheeks visible under the wide brim of his black hat, and his smile was like a broken snake under his long, thin nose, but goats were never still. They usually twitched and nattered and stomped and kicked, and most of all, they were usually chewing on something. But these animals folded up before Harmon Smith as if they were dosed with tranquilizers and headed for a long drowse. Even the kids among them were motionless and relaxed scarcely wiggling an ear.
Old Saint was tied to a tree at the edge of the clearing, and it was the first time Sarah had ever seen the fabled creature. He was an admirable hunk of horseflesh, if "flesh" was the right word. He might have been a couple of centuries up from the grave, but he looked as solid as the oak that served as his hitching post. The horse nibbled at a patch of moss on the tree, as if he'd already heard the sermon that Harmon Smith appeared about to deliver.
Sue sat behind the wheel of the Jeep, frozen by the sight that had greeted them upon pushing into the clearing. Odus, who had regained Sister Mary's good graces, sat astride the paint pony to the left of the Jeep. The young man who held some sort of bow-and-arrow stood on the opposite side of the clearing, as if he'd found another route to the top of the ridge. Sarah recognized him from a couple of his shopping trips to the store, where he bought only cheap staples like rice and dried beans. She figured it was no coincidence that the man had shown up here at the same time as her little trio, and had no doubt that the reason for their mutual summoning was buried in the skull space beneath mat ragged-rimmed black hat.
If the Circuit Rider even had a brain, that was. Sarah suspected if that skull was laid open with a shotgun blast, it would ooze a stinky, sticky tar. The juice of madness and evil, the sort of stuff that might pump through Satan's icy-hot veins. She was tempted to give Harmon Smith a load of bird shot, just to test the waters, so to speak, but she had a sense that the stage wasn't completely set yet. Harmon had a few other pieces to move into the picture, and he seemed in no particular hurry, as if a full-moon Sunday night were just the right time for a nice, peaceful gathering of good company.
"Shoot him, Sarah," Sue said from the Jeep's cab. Young folks were so impatient.
"You don't just up and shoot a man without giving him a chance to explain himself," Sarah said, keeping the fright out of her voice. "Otherwise the gender would have been wiped out years ago. Besides, sometimes it's fun to hear a man open his mouth just to hear what kind of lie comes out."
"I bring only the truth,'' Harmon shouted, though he was too far away to have heard Sarah, just at the edge of effective shotgun range. But he looked to be in range of the man with the cocked arrow, who raised his own weapon. Sarah saw the man had other weapons slung over his shoulder, and wore a sidearm in a belt holster. He was equipped like a secret agent in a movie that couldn't keep its time period right.
"Do these shit-bag animals belong to you?" the man asked, voice quivering with either fear or anger.
Harmon swept out a casual hand to indicate the ridge and the valley below. "All this belongs to me," the preacher answered. "And other places as well. My road is long and my service is never done."
"Drop the double talk, Weird Dude," the man said. "If these are yours, you've got reparations to pay. Because you trespassed against me."
"Fences are for the living. I go where I want because Solom belongs to me."
Sarah thought the man's release finger on the bow-and-arrow looked a little itchy. "My deed is registered at the courthouse," he said.
"And mine is recorded in the Book of Knowledge."
"Are you with the government?"
"I answer to one law."
"What's with the riddles, man?" He raised his voice, addressing Sarah, Sue, and Odus. "What are you guys doing up here?"
"We're here for the same reason you are," Sarah said.
"To kill some damned goats?"
"They came because of me," the Circuit Rider said. "As do all my creatures."
"Hey, dude, I saw those goats eating you."
"I provide nourishment to my flock."
Sarah figured Harmon Smith, back when he was alive, had been touched in the head somewhere along the line, about the time he traded in his Methodist leanings for a belief in fleshly sacrifice. After a couple hundred years roaming the backwoods to visit various Appalachian communities, killing somebody here and there along the way, he'd probably made peace with his madness. The miles were long and the path dusty, but a mission of that kind would require a man to embrace solitude. Even with a horse for company, the Circuit Rider worked alone, abandoned by both God and the devil and shunned by every mortal creature. Then why were those creatures gathering around him like moths drawn to a porch light?