The Farm

Chapter Twenty-eight

Sarah usually closed at six in the evening on Sundays, figuring the second shift at the Free Will Baptist Church would bring in a few customers on the way, those who needed a cup of coffee, Moon Pie, or giant Dr Pepper to fuel them through the service. She could n't understand why some Baptists felt the need to go to church three or four nights a week. She always thought it would be simpler just to do a little less sinning than more begging for forgiveness. But a dollar was a dollar, no matter the stains on the soul who spent it.

She'd had only two customers in the past hour, loud Yankee fly fishermen who prowled the aisles and hadn't bought so much as a pack of Wrigley's, though they'd held up a number of the more esoteric items and laughed in that slick, mean way they taught up in New York. Too many tourists, and Yankees in particular, had a way of waltzing through her store as if it were a museum, as if none of the merchandise had price tags. As if the whole shebang were there for amusement and not to help feed and clothe a poor old hunched- over Appalachian Jew.

So shutting down early had crossed her mind because a feeling was creeping up from the soles of her feet that tonight was going to be a doozy. It was almost like the earth itself was sending up bad vibes, that the billion-year-old rocks and mud of the world's oldest mountains sensed something unclean was walking over them. If tonight was going to be a doozy, and the Circuit Rider had found his horse, then going home and worming deep under the quilts sounded like a good idea. Dollar or no dollar.

Sarah was closing out the cash register, figuring to turn over the sign on the door (from come on in—we're broke! to missed you —and your money, too!) even though it was only four o' clock. Word had gotten around about her fainting spell, so any reg ular who dropped by would understand. As for the tourists, like those who rented out the cabins on the hill, let them haul their big white rumps into Titusville and mingle with the Tennessee welfare moms in the Wal-Mart.

She was counting the twenties—not enough of them to suit her—when the screen door spanged open and a man thrust himself through. He was soaking wet, one shirttail hanging out, the knees of his trousers scuffed. He was missing one shoe, and the toe of his sock make a spongy slap with each step. The man's eyes showed white all around the iris, as if a doctor had just given him a surprise proctology checkup.

Sarah recognized him from earlier in the day, when he'd stopped in for lunch with a young girl. She'd seen the girl around before; you could hardly miss her, the way she waltzed around tarted up in lipstick and black eyeliner. The girl's redheaded mother came in from time to time, buying eggs, baking powder, and flour, and occasionally asking kitchen advice. The redhead had married Gordon Smith, a fact that had been the talk of the community back in June. This man, though, didn't seem to fit that family picture.

He was probably playing fisherman and had walked himself out of his hip waders after a sip too many. Or maybe he'd rented a canoe from Sue Norwood and taken a spill down by the island park along the first stretch of white water. He didn't look hurt, but his face was blanched the color of the provolone cheese she kept in the dairy case. Might be one of those drugged-out meth junkies she'd read about, who seemed to be everywhere these days, cooking up the stuff in their car trunks. She didn't know what meth was, ex actly, or what it did to people, but she wouldn't be surprised if it led you to fall in the river.

"You okay, mister?" She slipped the twenties under the cash register in case he took a notion to rob her. The shotgun beneath the counter was loaded and handy, if need be. She'd made certain of that after the Circuit Rider's recent visit to her store. Not that buckshot would do any good against something two hundred years dead, but it was the comfort of the thing that mattered.

"I don't have any change," he said. He didn't talk Yankee, but he sure wasn't local.

"Well, normally we take credit cards, but I'm just about to close."

"No, I mean—I need to use your phone."

Their eyes settled on the store's rotary-dial phone, a battered black relic that looked like something from a 1950s government office. Sarah liked the sound of a good, solid ring, not the little kitty puttering of those modem phones. A woman of years could hardly hear such a contraption. Most people carried their phones in their pockets these days, as if it were a virtue never to spend a minute totally alone. The pay phone out front barely earned its keep these days, and the BellSouth man had threatened to take it away until she convinced him it was a proper companion to an old country store.

'That's not a public phone," Sarah said, annoyed that a drenched-to-the-gills outsider had the nerve to barge in and take over the place. As if it were a museum built for his amusement and convenience. Sure, he'd tipped well after his earlier meal, but that was hours ago.

The man put his palms flat on the counter and leaned forward water dripping from his chin to dot the scarred maple. He panted, his breath ruffling the cellophane in the jar of cow-tail candy perched by the register. He didn't smell of liquor, so that ruled out the "drunk fisherman" theory.

"I have to report a drowning," he said.

"Oh, goodness, why didn't you say so? Whereabouts?" Sarah grabbed the phone and put her finger in the last hole on the dial, ready to spin out 911.

He waved behind him, toward the old dam. "In the mill. A boy got caught in the waterwheel."

Sarah was halfway through the spin when she lifted her finger away. "About ten? Wearing scrub overalls and a long john shirt?"

The man's eyes grew even wider, near the size of pickled eggs. "Did you see him, too?"

"I seen him," she said. "Not lately, though."

He reached to grab the phone from her, but she slapped his hand away. "Hurry," he said. "There might still be a chance—"

"That was little Johnny Hampton you saw," she said. "No need to hurry on his account. He's dead."

"I didn't see his body. He just went under. He might be some where downstream."

"He ain't downstream."

"Please, ma'am." His hands were shaking, and he sniffed a rope of snot back into his head. Sarah was sticking with the "meth junkie" idea, but meth wasn't what had triggered the man's horri ble ghostly vision.

"He went around and around the wheel, didn't he?" Sarah said, calm now, no longer afraid of him. Instead she felt pity. Solom's dead were meant for the eyes of Solom's people, not those of outsiders. The Circuit Rider must be whooping up some god-awful bad juju if just any-old-body was able to see his victims.

The man pushed the wet hair from his eyes, stepped back, and looked out the store windows, as if checking to see if the dam was visible from the counter. He shuddered and whether it was from the cold or the shock, Sarah couldn't say. She doubted if the man could either.

"I didn't see it this time," Sarah said. "I saw it nearly twenty years ago."

The man faced her again, one eyelid twitching. "The boy?"

"I wasn't the first, and you ain't the second" Sarah said. "Johnny makes an appearance every now and then. Along with the rest of them."

"The rest of who?"

Sarah had lost him. She should have known better. Solom kept its secrets, and outsiders never understood. "Where's the girl? The one you ate lunch with?"

"My daughter? She's back home." The man choked on that word home as if it were a sour green gooseberry.

"Keep her there. Now, be on about your business."

The man lunged forward and grabbed the front of her cardigan sweater. A speck of spit landed on her cheek as he spoke. "If there's some kind of danger, you need to tell me."

"Hey, mister, ain't no call for that." Sarah dug her fingernails into the man's wrists and squeezed until he looked down. He let go of her and studied his palms as if stigmata had appeared there.

"Sorry," he said. "I—damn..."

"Things are walking," Sarah said, pity filling her. If the redhead was his ex-wife and the little tart was his daughter, that meant they were now part of Solom since they'd married into the Smith clan. They'd be bound up in whatever business the Circuit Rider had in store this time.

"Harmon's things," she continued. "The ones he's taken away. They come back when he comes back. It's best for you to make sure your daughter stays in tonight, and get yourself as far away from this valley as you can. This ain't your business."

"If my daughter's involved, I'm not going anywhere," he said.

"Suit yourself. But I can't help you."

"She was telling me about a man in a black hat."

"Harmon Smith." Dark blotches formed across Sarah's vision, drifting like jagged thunderclouds. She wouldn't black out again. She had nothing to fear. Harmon didn't want her, not this time, or he would have taken her the day he walked into the store.

"I think I saw him down at the dam. Where is he?"

Sarah braced herself against the counter, fighting off the dizziness. "Everywhere. In the trees, in the river, in the barns. The best thing we can do is lay low until he rides off for the next stop."

The man shook his head. The river chill had sunk in, and his lips quivered. Steps clattered across the wooden porch. The door opened and Sue Norwood entered the store, a rock climber's pickax in her hand.

"Are you okay?" Sue asked Saran, lifting the pickax as if she knew how to use it.

The man raised his hands, palms showing in a submissive ges ture. "Hey, I was just leaving."

Sue looked at Sarah, who nodded. Sarah was bone tired, seventy years of standing up to gravity and worry and fright finally coming down square on her shoulders. Who cared if Harmon swooped in and reaped her? One less Jewish shopkeeper in the world wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in the big scheme of things.

The man eased around Sue, the toe of his sock slapping like a wet fish against the floor. After he was gone, Sarah sagged into the little rocker she kept behind the counter.

"This is my town, too, even if I've only lived here for a few years," Sue said. "I'm going after the Circuit Rider."

"You and everybody else," Sarah said. Though she had a feeling they wouldn't have to do much seeking. Harmon Smith had found his horse, and that meant he'd be making the rounds in due time.

David Tester's hands were callused from years of landscaping, but a blister arose on the pad of his left hand before he reached Harmon Smith's coffin. As the shovel bit deeper, the soil became darker and gave off a rank, swampy smell. If Harmon had been buried for over two centuries, then the coffin was likely rotted away. The grave might contain nothing but a few bones, given the lack of preservation techniques employed during Smith's era. But that was wrong, too, thinking of Smith as belonging to one era, when every generation in Solom earned a visit from the Circuit Rider.

The shovel blade finally met a soft resistance, and David looked up at the sky. He hadn't cut a sharp rectangle into the ground the way grave diggers shaped them to receive a coffin. David's hole was sloped and uneven, showing the roots and gravel that had slowed his path through the clay. The wood was soggy, but preserved somewhat by the clay, and David had to chew through it with the shovel blade. He wouldn't have to clear the entire lid of the coffin to find what he sought. He rammed the shovel down time and again, the sound of the blows baffled by the walls of dirt. The wood gave way, and David twisted the blade to widen the opening.

A foul odor arose from the voided coffin, like rotten eggs scrambled in formaldehyde and served up with slices of spoiled pork. David pulled a bandana from his back pocket and wrapped it around his mouth and nose, tying it behind his neck. He was reach ing for the shovel when the sodden wooden planks gave way be neath him. He plunged knee-deep into the gap, the stench rising around him in putrid waves. His boots splashed in unseen muck. He clawed at the clay banks, trying to pull himself up, but his movements triggered a tumble of loose soil from the rim of the hole. Clods rained down and bounced off his shoulders.

"You looking for something?"

The voice came from above and below at the same time, as if piped in by some insane and remote sound system. David recog nized it from the night before. He looked up, and the Circuit Rider was framed against the blue afternoon sky, sitting astride his leg endary horse. His back was to the sun, like the lone hero of a west ern, throwing most of his face into shadow.

David sank another six inches, the jagged wood scraping against bis thighs. He grabbed the shovel and spanned the broken top of the coffin with the handle, hoping to halt his descent. He didn't want to die this way, another one of Harmon's victims. Even if it was predestined by God, David fought the urge to surrender. He could imagine his congregation whispering about his failure, he pictured the men casting votes for the next elder, he could see the church abandoned and forlorn, good for nothing but the winter nests of rodents.

"I was looking for you," David said, his voice muffled by the cloth over his mouth. He braced against the shovel handle even though he was now waist-deep in the cool morass. The stench had grown even stronger, despite the protective bandana.

"You got your holdup mask on," Harmon Smith said. "You fix ing to rob a bank? Or just a grave?"

"I needed to see how many pieces of you were buried in my churchyard."

"To see if you got your fair share?"

"You've got three graves."

"And I don't have use for any of them," Harmon said. He twitched the reins and Old Saint took a step forward, knocking a bucket's worth of dirt around David's waist.

David could feel things moving around his legs, loathsome and slithering creatures. He tried to tell himself that an underground spring must run beneath the graveyard, carrying water from the creek, and the creatures were salamanders preparing for a long winter's sleep. But they were too big to be salamanders. And sala manders didn't have teeth...

Predestination. David looked past the gaunt face and potato-beetle eyes of the Circuit Rider to the faint rags of clouds above. Somewhere up there, God sat on His almighty throne and watched it all play out, even though He already knew the ending.

Must be kind of boring, even when the entertainment was as rich as watching a preacher die in a deep hole only to have his soul tied with Harmon Smith's return to the area. How many times would David have to play out this little scene again? How many times would he have to die and be reborn, a puppet in Harmon's lit tle stage show? Jesus Christ might come again, but Harmon Smith would come back not only once, but over and over and over.

"I tried to follow Your ways," David said, slipping another few inches into the mire. He could no longer move his feet.

"Well, that's mighty obliging of you, Elder Tester. A shame your ancestors didn't walk that path."

"I wasn't talking to you, you sorry bastard."

The Circuit Rider laughed, a rattling ululation that silenced the birds in the trees surrounding the graveyard. Even Old Saint blew a moist snicker. He lifted a bony hand, one that was like parchment wrapped around a bundle of broken sticks. His index finger aimed at David as if preparing to shoot fire or a lightning bolt or a magic spell.

"No respect for a fellow man of the cloth," Harmon said. "That's what caused such grief for the people of Solom. If they hadn't given in to jealousy and coveting, all of us would have lived in peace. But they had to go and kill me. And I couldn't allow that to be the end of it. Neither could he who gives life."

David tucked his forearms over the shovel handle and lifted. He thought he was gaining ground, though it felt like one of his boots was sliding off. Something bumped against his knee and sent a sharp flare of pain up his leg.

"All the people who hurt you are long gone," David said between tight lips. "Didn't the Methodists teach you to forgive?"

"Oh, I gave up the Methodist ways. That's why people got so riled. I went back to the older religions. If you want God to grant increase and to bless the orchards of your life, then you offer Him blood. Fair enough trade. Life for life."

The dark morass sucked at David's lower body, a moist, hungry thing. He wondered if this was really the way God wanted his life to end. What if he let go of the shovel and slid on down into the suffocating mud?

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Harmon asked ad justing the brim of his hat. Old Saint kicked at the loose dirt, trig gering another small avalanche onto David's shoulders.

"I wanted to see if your grave was a doorway to hell. Or if the Primitive Baptists had earned their piece of your corpse."

The Circuit Rider tipped his hat. "Well, I'll leave you to your business, then. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

He whipped the reins against Old Saint's neck, and the horse reared and whinnied, the front legs coming down with so much force that David feared the bank would give way and the horse and rider would fall on top of him. The horse wheeled and the hoofbeats thundered off across the graveyard. David slipped another couple of inches into the mud and was losing his battle to brace himself with the shovel handle. How could God allow a true be liever to die in someone else's grave?

Something slithered into his remaining boot, then up his pants leg, scraping rough scales against his bare skin. David tried to kick, but the mud held his leg firm. In his struggles, he lost his balance on the shovel handle and slid into the mud until it was past his waist. The pressure on his abdomen made breathing difficult. He thought of offering a final prayer, but if God had already decided, as the Primitive Baptists believed then it would be a waste of air.

He was just about to let himself slip down into Harmon Smith's tainted coffin when a snake fell across the back of his neck. He slapped at it, frantic, and found it was coarse and fibrous. It wasn't a snake.

It was a rope.

"He would let you die that way, but I won't," the Circuit Rider said. "After all, the Good Book says to bless those who curse you and do good to those who hate you."

David grabbed the rope. The Circuit Rider had tied his end to the saddle horn and nudged Old Saint so the horse backed away, chest and flanks flexing as it fought for purchase in the graveyard grass. The walls of the hole gave way in large chunks, but David wrapped the rope around his wrists and shielded his face from the barrage of dirt. He thought his arms would be ripped off at the shoulder blades, but his body slowly pulled free of the mud and the two feet of loose dirt that had piled around him. He slid on his belly up the slope of clay and then lay gasping and shivering on the grass.

The rope fell beside his face in a rattlesnake's coil.

"A good tree cannot grow bad fruit," Harmon Smith said. "And a man cannot serve two masters."

Once more, the horse's drumming hooves faded into the dis tance, leaving David weak and cold and beyond the numbness, maybe a little angry. Whether at himself, or Harmon Smith, or God he couldn't be certain.