Solom

by Scott Nicholson

  Suppose there had been a man dressed in black? Katy had heard the boots walking on the loft floor, and they’d sounded much louder than goat’s hooves. She didn’t want to think about it. A goat made more sense than a stranger in black. Odus Hampton wouldn’t have skulked around, he would have called out in his friendly but deferential voice.

  “Why don’t you read something?” Katy said, going to the bookshelf. “How about a comic book? ‘Sandman.’ That sounds like it could put you to sleep.”

  “Mom, you’re so out of it.”

  “Music, then?” She scanned the row of CDs. Jett had raided Katy’s collection and plucked some of the most rebellious titles. Here was Patti Smith, the manic street preacher warning people away from the golden stairs of heaven. Kate Bush, a reclusive genius whose voice could seduce and excoriate in the same breath. Souxsie and her Banshees, who smothered you with sonic layers that were as sweet as funeral flowers. The Psychedelic Furs with their manic saxes and dismal lyrics. Jett had some newer music that Katy was unfamiliar with, Angelfish and Bella Morte.

  Katy knew what it was like to be a teen. She’d been there once, and not so long ago. Decadance and doom seemed like perfectly reasonable pursuits for a girl on the verge of becoming a woman, as long as it was confined to the realm of rock ‘n’ roll. But, in a quirk that secretly pleased Katy, her daughter had also sneaked a lot of upbeat guitar pop out of Katy’s collection: The Replacements, dBs, Let’s Active, Tommy Keene, and Robyn Hitchcock.

  “I just want to lay here and think,” Jett said.

  “‘Lie here,’” Katy corrected.

  “Yeah, I was going to say that, but I’m not lying. I really saw him.”

  Katy sat down on the edge of the bed and felt Jett’s forehead. Clammy, no sign of a fever. “Okay, we’ll see about whether you’re up to school tomorrow.”

  “I want to go to school.”

  “New friends, huh? A guy?”

  Jett twisted her lips into a “yuck,” but her eyes narrowed into a secretive expression. Without her dramatic eyeliner and face powder, Jett looked innocent and girlish. Her careworn teddy bear, Captain Boo, was tucked against her chin. If only those who judged her by her boots and chains and dyed hair with the purple streak could see her like this, Katy thought, maybe they’d give her a break.

  Like that would ever happen. Katy had a hard enough time keeping Gordon off Jett’s case, which had nearly been a deal-breaker after his sudden proposal. It was only after Gordon agreed to give it some time and let Jett deal with the transition in her own way that Katy accepted. Jett even admitted she wasn’t a serious Goth. Hers was more an act, a Goth Lite traveling show that would have been tiresome to her if it didn’t upset some people so much.

  That was the part Katy understood and supported. Despite her former career as a loan officer, very little else about her was ordinary. She’d always had an unhealthy self-image, the scrawny redhead with freckles, and she’d compensated by going out of her way to be a “somebody” in school. Sometimes that meant beating out a girl on the volleyball or cheerleading squad, and a couple of times she’d resorted to stealing one of the more popular girl’s boyfriends. Because she considered herself unattractive, she had to engage in behavior that was a little more extreme than that of her competitors.

  So she could cut her daughter some slack. Besides, Katy wasn’t exactly jumping into her new role as farm wife as if it were a second skin, despite a newfound fondness for Smith family recipes.

  She pulled the blankets up and kissed Jett’s forehead. She thought about asking if Jett wanted to say a prayer, but realized how phony that would sound. Jett would shoot her down by asking how come they never prayed in Charlotte. And, she’d add, what was so freaking great about Solom that deserved special thanks?

  “I’ll come up after supper and check on you,” Katy said. “Or you can come down if you feel up to it.”

  Jett turned to face the window, hugging Captain Boo tightly. “I’ll be here. Unless he comes to get me again.”

  “Honey.”

  “Never mind.”

  Katy rose from the bed. If she had the guts, she would tell her daughter about the mysterious figure she’d seen in the kitchen, the wispy form that had vanished in the pantry. But Katy wasn’t ready to admit that the vision was real. No footsteps had sounded on the stairs when she was home alone, and the sudden scent of lilacs hadn’t drifted across the kitchen whenever she performed a domestic task. This was an old house, that was all, settling wood and seeped-in aromas. Maybe she’d leave her own mark for the next generation: blackened cabbage and funky salmon.

  “If it really was a man, Gordon will probably know him,” Katy said, not quite believing her own words. “He’ll know what to do.”

  “Sure, Mom.” Jett didn’t believe her at all.

  “I love you.”

  “Love you, too.” Sounded like she almost meant it.

  Katy went downstairs into the kitchen, where she scraped the cabbage into the garbage. Perhaps she should dump the mess outside, but she wanted to get something on the table before Gordon showed up. She rummaged in the fridge, then with a sigh retreated to the safety of the freezer and a microwave TV dinner. Gordon’s first wife Rebecca had never used a microwave, and Katy suspected the one she brought from her Charlotte apartment was the first to ever emit radiation in this house. Perhaps this meal was an affront to the generations of Smiths who had gone before.

  “Get used to it,” Katy said.

  Something crashed in the pantry.

  “Wonderful.” She punched up the proper cook time on the keypad of the microwave. She couldn’t handle cabbage but she was magic with instant meals.

  With the microwave whirring behind her, she went to the pantry and pulled back the curtain. The aroma of lilacs was so strong it was like a slap in the face. Rows and rows of Mason jars lined the shelves, containing raspberry preserves, chow chow, sauerkraut, and a dozen other goods all expertly canned by Gordon’s first wife. Enough to last a nuclear winter.

  On the floor, juice leaking from shards of curved and gleaming glass, was a jar of pickles. Broken like the spaghetti sauce. As Katy knelt to pick up the largest pieces, she felt the curtain stir behind her, as if someone was through with business in the pantry and had chores elsewhere.

  ***

  Jett listened to Mom banging around in the kitchen. She tried to muster a little sympathy, because Mom was trying to be some kind of trophy wife and didn’t have the sense to recognize it just wasn’t in her blood. Mom had just been plain uncool lately, a slave to the kitchen, fussing over the house, keeping dirty laundry off the floor. All to please Gordon, a man who wouldn’t notice his slippers were on fire unless somebody turned a hose on him.

  She tugged her Walkman from the lower shelf of her bedside table. She almost wished she had a joint. That would go over well with The Cure whispering through the headphones, Robert Smith going on about how he couldn’t find himself even when he was in love with someone happy and young. No wonder, he should ditch the “happy” part and find a real woman. Jett would gladly volunteer.

  After all, Jett was a drug-addict loser who had finally gone so far over the edge she was imagining mystical encounters with giant scarecrow men. If she had been stoned, she could have laughed it off. But she had promised Mom that drugs were a thing of the past, a habit left in Charlotte, and she was determined to keep the promise. If Mom could change, so could Jett. Though it looked like neither of them were changing for the better.

  The front door closed downstairs, and over the guitar solo she heard Gordon’s belly-deep professor’s voice delivering his standard catch phrase. “Where are my favorite girls?”

  Jett wormed deeper beneath the blankets. Gordon never entered her room after she was in bed, thank goodness. That was one advantage of his being a religious guy. He had some weird Old Testament code that kept women in their place but also placed them on an altar. Mom had swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. After Dad’s neglect, any sort of at
tention was a cause of mindless joy for her. Not that Dad was a bad guy. He just had his own fucking shit to deal with, truckloads of it, and Jett wished she could call him right now. She needed somebody real to talk to, somebody who would understand about stupid scarecrow men.

  But what would she tell him? She couldn’t really remember. The whole thing in the barn seemed like a bad acid trip, and Jett knew about acid because she’d dropped it once at Melissa Sanderson’s fourteenth birthday party. She’d spent the whole night hiding under Melissa’s bed, talking to the dust bunnies. The weirdest thing was that the dust bunnies had talked back, and they even acted like bunnies, hopping around, frolicking, twitching their little whiskers. But that was a lifetime ago and a whole other person. That had been a stupid, skinny kid trying to fit in with the crowd.

  Now, she was trying to fit out of the crowd.

  She cranked The Cure up to full volume and put the blanket over her head so Mom would think she was asleep. She wouldn’t sleep. She didn’t dare. Because, if she closed her eyes, she might see the tall, dark man with the sickle.

  Somehow, morning came just the same.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ray Tester pressed the lever beneath the fuel control of his Massey Ferguson, raising the hydraulic arms at the rear of the tractor. The arms held a bush hog, an oversize lawn mower attachment that hacked meadows into hay. Ray only had ten acres, the smallest of the parcels that had been divided among the family when Zachariah Tester died. Old Zack had been the preacher at Rush Branch Primitive Baptist Church, a position now held by David Tester, Ray’s oldest brother. David had gotten sixty acres in the will and Ray’s attendance at the church had been spotty ever since, mostly funerals, weddings, and whenever some good home-baked pies were being served.

  Ray surveyed the slain grass behind him. The signs called for dry weather, and if the rain held for five days, Ray could get the hay rolled and stacked safely in the shed. He had a dozen head of cattle, but the way people were breeding goats up here, he might be better off culling his herd and paying his property tax bill by selling hay. He could understand the temptation to raise goats over cows: goats preferred to browse instead of graze, so you could turn them loose in the woods and they did gangbusters. They didn’t mind a steep slope, either.

  On the downside, and Ray had learned there was always a downside when it came to farming, goat meat was like a gamier version of venison and you’d never find it served up at McDonald’s. Some of the organic farmers that had settled in Solom over the last decade had taken to milking goats. A nanny raised holy hell if you didn’t tug her teats twice a day, the yield wasn’t all that hot, and unless you were squeezing the milk into cheese, you had to hustle it off to market in Asheville or Charlotte. Both of those cities were full of queers and Asheville in particular was known to harbor witches, so as far as Ray was concerned, the organic hippies could keep that little business.

  Ray wiped the sweat from his bald head. A Cadillac passed on the road, white as a virgin, with tinted windows and tires wide enough to roll out pizza dough. Damned tourist. Ray thought about flipping a finger, but Sarah down at the general store had lectured him on how outside money was good stuff, Yankees with summer homes paid the county plenty in taxes but didn’t require many services, since they were only up here two or three months a year.

  Still, a Yankee was a fucking Yankee, and the invasion that had started in the War Between the States with General Bill Stoneman and finished up with Sherman had never really ended, just changed tactics. Instead of cavalry and carpetbaggers, New York sent its developers and architects and their scrawny, pale wives.

  But the driver of that heavy-assed hunk of steel was probably spending money down at Sarah’s, and she was as sweet as sugar cane, so Ray lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave. Tourists liked that sort of thing, the farmer in his field, a simple picture hearkening back to a simpler time. Wasn’t nothing simple about it. You couldn’t barter for what you needed anymore, and the government had gotten bigger every year, despite the Republican takeover of the South. Ray could sell down at the farmer’s market in Boone and pocket some tax-free income, but he also had to be on the Agricultural Extension Office books so he could get his handout when the government decided to subsidize some crop or another.

  The Cadillac disappeared around the curve and Ray turned the tractor for another pass. He lowered the bush hog and the thick blade cut into the clover, dandelion, rye and sour grass. The green scent filled his nostrils. A horsefly landed on the back of his neck and he swiped at it. The fly lifted and settled again just above his ear. Ray slapped again, twisting his neck, so he wasn’t watching as his tractor hit a hump, causing the front tires to bounce. Ray’s left foot reached for the clutch but the back tires had already rolled over the same hump. The bush hog blade made a whining noise, and Ray looked back to see a stream of dark liquid spew from beneath the protective metal shield.

  “Shit fire,” he said, disengaging the tractor’s transmission and throwing the PTO into neutral, stopping the blade. He set the hand brake and got down from the seat. Sometimes you hit a nest of rabbits in a hayfield. Once, Ray had accidentally chopped up a fawn. If a doe left her fawn, the fawn would remain at that spot until the mother came back, no matter what, even if a giant, smoke-spitting mountain of steel was heading for it. But this was no bunny and no fawn.

  Four goats, their heads gone, their carcasses ripped with red gashes.

  Somebody had slaughtered them and tossed their bodies into the knee-high grass. Somebody who wasn’t interested in goatburger or rank cheese.

  Ray killed the Massey Ferguson’s engine and leaned against a rear tire, watching the flies swarm around their decaying feast. The first buzzard appeared in the sky, its black wings buffeted by the high September wind.

  Hippies. Had to be. Or Yankees, maybe. Who else would kill a damned goat for no good reason? Though Ray saw no use in the stubborn critters, he wouldn’t kill them on purpose. He was raised to kill only for food, anyway.

  This was the work of somebody with no respect for the mountains, for the ways of the farm, for life. A person who pulled something like this didn’t belong in the valley. Solom had always taken care of itself, even if outsiders had started buying up the land. And Ray was sure that, one way or another, Solom would take care of whatever disrespectful trash had done this messy deed.

  ***

  Maters.

  Those blessed maters were going to be the death of her.

  Betsy Ward had canned, stewed, frozen, and dried about thirty pounds of those red, ugly things. The blight had hit hard because of the wet summer, and the first frosts had killed the plants, but her husband Arvel had brought in a double armload just before the big autumn die-off. Now tomatoes sat in rows across the windowsill, along the counter, and on the pantry shelves, turning from green to pink to full sinful red, with the occasional leaking black spot. The thing about tomatoes was that no bug or cutworm would attack them. The plants were as poison as belladonna, and bugs were smart enough to know that maters would kill you. But people were a lot dumber than bugs.

  Betsy wiped the sweat away with a dirty towel. She had been born in Solom, and had even gone off the mountain for a year to attend community college. She’d wanted to be a typist then, maybe get on with Westridge University and draw vacation and retirement. But Arvel had come along with his pick-up and Doc Watson tapes and rusty mufflers and he’d seemed like the Truth for a nineteen-year-old mountain girl, and then one night he forgot the rubber and nine months later they were married and the baby came out with the cord wrapped around its neck and they had tried a few times after that, but now all they had was a long piece of property and a garden and so many tomatoes that Betsy wanted to grab Arvel’s shotgun and blow them all into puree.

  She looked out the window and saw Gordon Smith’s new wife checking the mailbox. The woman had that big-city, washed-out look, as if she couldn’t wander into daylight without a full plate of make-up. Still, she seemed harmless enough,
and not as stand-offish as the other outsiders who had flooded the valley since Betsy’s knee-high days. And Betsy was sick to death of her kitchen, anyway. She flicked the seeds from her fingers and headed for the door, determined to welcome her new neighbor.

  Four mailboxes stood at the mouth of the gravel drive. Arvel’s place was the closest to the highway, followed by Gordon’s, then by a fellow Betsy had never met, though she’d peeked in his mailbox once and learned that his name was Alex Eakins. A young woman drove by to visit him about once a week or so, probably up to fornication and other sins.

  “Howdy,” Betsy called from the porch.

  The redhead looked up from the box where she had been thumbing through a stack of envelopes. Her eyes were bloodshot. Betsy wondered if she was a drinker, then decided a God-fearing man like Gordon would never stand for the stuff in his house. Even if she was kind of good-looking, in an off-the-mountain kind of way.

  Her ankles were way too skinny and would probably snap plumb in half if she ever had to hitch a mule to a plow and cut a straight furrow. Still, she looked a little tough, like a piece of rawhide that had been licked and stuck out in the sun. And she’d walked the quarter-mile to the mailbox instead of jumping in a car.

  “Hi, Mrs. Ward,” the redhead said. “Gordon told me about the tomatoes.”

  Betsy wondered just what Gordon had told, because there wasn’t a lot to tell. She’d known Gordon since he was dragging stained diapers across the floor of the Smith house. Sure, he’d gone off and gotten educated, but he was still the same little boy who’d once pegged her cat with a rotten apple. Plus he had the tainted blood of all the Solom Smiths. “How you liking Solom so far?”

  “I like it here. A little different from what I’m used to, though.”

  Betsy wasn’t so sure the redhead meant that first part, since the corners of her mouth were turned down and her eyes twitched like she hadn’t got a wink of sleep. “How did your garden do this year?”