Solom

by Scott Nicholson

  “About this morning,” Katy said. She focused on slicing a red onion. Any excuse for tears was welcome.

  “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “We have to, honey. We’re married.”

  “I lost control. It won’t happen again.”

  Katy slammed down the knife. “I want it to happen again. But I don’t want it to be cold and strange.”

  If only Gordon would stand up and come to her, take her in his arms, nuzzle her neck and make stupid promises, she would have accepted his earlier behavior. She even would have defended it. After all, Katy had her own problems. She wasn’t exactly coming into the marriage as a virgin.

  “Where’s Jett?” Gordon asked.

  “Jett?” Katy looked down at the raw food and spices. Jett was probably in her room studying. She had walked through the front door hours ago. Katy should have checked on her, or at least called up the stairs to make sure her daughter knew she was around. That was Katy’s part of the deal. She would be an involved parent while trusting Jett to stay away from drugs and giving her daughter some breathing room.

  “She’s in her room,” Katy said.

  “I have a job for her.”

  “About the eggs,” Katy said.

  “Forget it. I’ll have Odus do the farm chores from now on. It wasn’t fair for me to expect you to take on extra work. You have enough to do here in the house.”

  In this house that seemed more like a prison. Katy had to think back to remember the last time she’d left the house. Grocery shopping, three days ago. Most of her time in the house was spent in the kitchen, and she’d never liked cooking before. Now she was making casseroles.

  “How was your day at the college?” It was the kind of thing a normal wife would ask, and she wanted very much to be a normal wife.

  “Long,” he said, then finished his glass of wine. “Try telling that idiot Graybeal that Methodists weren’t the only denomination to use circuit-riding preachers.”

  “Graybeal? He’s the dean, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, but you would think he’s lord of the fiefdom to see him swagger around, whipping out his shriveled intellectual dingus.”

  “He’s probably just jealous because of your book.”

  “No, he thinks foot-washing belongs to the realm of human sacrifice and snake handling. Anything that’s not Hindu, Buddhist, or Taoist is all lumped together under ‘God worship.’”

  Katy stared down at the yellow grue of the casserole. Should she add an extra quarter of a stick of butter? “I thought ‘God worship’ was the point.”

  “Graybeal thinks Christianity is a cult. A popular one, to be sure, but a cult nonetheless.” He was falling into lecture mode. His voice rose slightly in pitch, the words carefully enunciated.

  Katy was pleased that he was spending time with her instead of hiding away in the study, but she wanted to move the subject over to something a little closer to home. “What job did you have for Jett?”

  “I want her to feed the goats.”

  “I thought Odus was going to do the farm chores.”

  “I mean tonight. Odus doesn’t have a phone. I’ll probably have to drive over to his place tomorrow, or catch up with him at the general store.”

  Katy wiped her hands on the dish towel that hung from the oven handle. “I’ll go get her.”

  “No, you’re busy.” His upper lip curled a little, as if he had smelled an unpleasant odor.

  “I thought you’d like this,” Katy said. “It’s your family recipe.”

  “I hate onions,” he said. “They give me indigestion.”

  Such was marriage. You didn’t learn the important things until after the knot was already tied. If you tried to be respectful and cautious, you didn’t jump into the sack with the guy you were going to marry until the vows were made. At least not the second time around. You figured there would be kinks and quirks to sort out, but older people were wiser and more experienced. Or maybe just slower to admit mistakes.

  Gordon rinsed his wine glass and left the room. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Be polite,” Katy said. “She’s trying, you know.”

  Gordon didn’t answer. Katy opened the refrigerator and took out a pint of heavy cream. She had never bought cream in her life, though she had picked some up at the grocery store Tuesday. It was almost as if she knew she would need it for the recipe she’d found this afternoon.

  ***

  Odus eased his truck into the gravel lot of Solom Free Will Baptist Church, parking beside the Ford F-150 driven by Mose Eldreth. Most likely the preacher was taking on an inside chore, mending a loose rail or patching the metal flue that carried away smoke from the wood stove. A dim glow leaked from the open door, framing the church’s windows against the night sky. Odus cast an uneasy glance in the direction of Harmon Smith’s grave, but the white marker looked no different from the others that gleamed under the starlight.

  Odus didn’t hold much stock with Free Will preachers, but at least Preacher Mose was local. Preacher Mose knew the area history and, like most of the people who grew up in Solom, he’d heard about Harmon Smith. After all, Harmon had a headstone in the Free Will cemetery. That didn’t mean the preacher would talk to Odus about it. Like Sarah Jeffers, most people in those parts didn’t want to know too much about the past.

  Odus went up the steps and knocked on the door. “You in, Preacher?”

  A scraping sound died away and there was the metallic echo of a tool being placed on the floor. “Come in,” Preacher Mose said.

  It was the first time Odus had been in a church in a couple of years. He’d attended the Free Will church in his youth, but the congregation didn’t think much of his drinking so he’d been shunned out. He didn’t carry a grudge. He figured they had their principals and he had his, and on Judgement Day maybe him and the Lord would sit down and crack the seal on some of the finest single-malt Scotch that heaven had to offer. Then Odus could lay out his pitch, and the Lord could take it or leave it. Though hopefully not until the bottle was dry.

  The Primitives were different, though. A little drink here and there didn’t matter to them, because the saved were born that way and the blessed would stay blessed no matter how awful they acted. Odus could almost see attending that type of church, but he liked to sleep late on Sundays. As for the True Lighters, they took religion like a whore took sex: five times a day whether you needed it or not.

  Preacher Mose was kneeling before the crude pulpit up front. He wasn’t praying, though; he was laying baseboard molding along the little riser that housed the pulpit and the piano. A hand drill, miter saw, hammer and finish nails were scattered around the preacher like sacraments about to be piled on an altar. Preacher Mose was wearing green overalls, and sweat caused his unseemly long hair to cling to his forehead. “Well, if it isn’t Brother Hampton.”

  “Sorry to barge in,” Odus said. “I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important.”

  “You’re welcome here any time. Even on a Sunday, if you ever want to sit through one of my sermons.”

  “Need a hand? I got some tools in the truck.”

  “We can’t afford to pay. Why do you think they let me carpenter? I’m better at running my mouth than driving nails.”

  The church had no electricity, and even with scant light leaking through the windows Odus could tell the preacher’s molding joints were almost wide enough to tuck a thumb between. “This one’s on the house. A little love offering.”

  “Know him by his fruits and not by his words,” Preacher Mose said.

  “Good, because my words wouldn’t fill the back page of a dictionary and half of those ain’t fit for a house of worship.”

  Odus got his tool kit from the bed of the pick-up and showed the preacher how to use a coping saw to cut a dovetail joint. After the preacher had knicked his knuckles a couple of times, he got the hang of it, and left Odus to run the miter saw and tape measure.

  The preacher bore holes with the hand drill so the wo
od wouldn’t split, then blew the fine sawdust away. “So what’s troubling you?”

  “Harmon Smith.”

  The preacher sat back on his haunches. “You don’t need to worry about Harmon Smith. His soul’s gone on to the reward and what’s left of his bones are out there in the yard.”

  “That’s not the way the stories have it.”

  “I’m a man of faith, Odus. You might say I believe in the supernatural, because God certainly is above all we see and feel and touch. But I don’t believe in any sort of ghost but the Holy Ghost.”

  “Do you believe what you see?”

  “I’m a man of faith.”

  “Guess that settles that.” Odus laid an eight-foot strip of molding, saw that it was a smidge too long. “Always cut long because you can always take off more, but you sure can’t grow it back once it’s gone.”

  “I’ll remember that. Maybe I can work it into a sermon.” Preacher Mose drove a nail with steady strokes, then took the nail set and sunk the head into the wood so the hole could be puttied.

  “What I’m trying to get around to is, I seen him.”

  “Seen who?”

  “Harmon Smith.”

  The preacher paused halfway through the second nail. Then he spoke, each word falling between a hammer stroke. “Sure”—bang—“don’t”—bang—“know”—bang— “what ... ”—bang. He paused, then wound up with a flourish. “In heaven’s name you’re talking about”—bang bang bang BANG.

  “He come down by the river while I was fishing. Face like goat’s cheese and eyes as dark as the back end of a rat hole. He had on that same preachin’ hat you see in the pictures.”

  Preacher Mose drilled another hole and positioned the nail. Odus noticed his hands were shaking.

  “Sarah Jeffers saw him, too, only she won’t admit to it.”

  The preacher swallowed hard and swung at the nail. The hammer glanced off the nail head and cut a half-moon scar in the wood.

  “A little putty will hide it,” Odus said. “That’s the mark of a good carpenter. It’s all in the final job.”

  Preacher Tester swung the hammer again, this time the head glancing off his thumb. “God d—” He stuffed his thumb in his mouth and sucked it before he could finish the cussword.

  “Don’t be so nervous. It’s just a finish nail.”

  “Harmon Smith died of illness. He caught a fever running a mission trip to Parson’s Ford. He had a flock to tend, and his sheep were scattered over two hundred square miles of rocky slopes.”

  “That’s the way the history books tell it. But some people say different, especially in Solom.”

  “And they probably say there’s a grudge between us and the Primitives.”

  “No, they don’t say that.”

  “We all serve the same Lord, and on the Lord’s Earth, the dead don’t walk. Not till Rapture, anyway.”

  “Maybe you ought to tell that to him.” Odus lifted his hammer and pointed the handle to the church door. Framed in silhouette was the tall, gangly preacher, the one who was nearly 200 years dead.

  Preacher Mose knelt at the foot of the pulpit and stared at the black-suited revenant. He put his bruised thumb back in his mouth and tightened his grip on the hammer until his knuckles were white. Harmon Smith’s shadow started to move into the church, but dissolved as it entered the vestibule. The last thing to flicker and fade was the wide brim of the hat.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Arvel remained calm when he found his wife sprawled on the kitchen floor. He’d been a volunteer fire fighter for over a decade, ever since a liquored-up cousin had set one of his outbuildings on fire by dropping a cigarette in a crate of greasy auto parts. Arvel didn’t know all the fancy techniques used by the Rescue Squad folks, but he’d watched them in action plenty of times.

  His favorite emergency tech was Henrietta Bannister, who was built like a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Julia Roberts, except unfortunately Henrietta had Arnie’s chin and hairline and the Pretty Woman’s nose and muscle tone. Despite this unsettling mix, she was cool as a September salamander when the pressure was on, and it was her voice that Arvel now heard in his head. He repeated the imagined lines to his wife as he knelt beside her and felt for her pulse.

  “Hey, honey, looks like you had you a little mishap” a-check pulse, don’t know a damned thing about how fast it’s supposed to be, maybe it’s MINE that’s thumping like a rat trapped in a bucket, but yours feels mighty shallow—“but don’t you worry none cause old Arvel’s right here beside you. We’ll get through this and have you baking lemon cakes again in no time.”

  When Arvel had heard the noise from the kitchen, his first reaction had been annoyance, because one of the guys on TV was about to get voted off the show. It was the guy with the bandanna who hadn’t shaved; there was one on every reality show. Arvel could always tell which asshole was going to get cut loose, though it never happened in the first few episodes.

  No, they had the string the audience along and let all the viewers build up a real hate for the guy, which was made worse by the fact that he just might have a chance of winning. Which would mean another asshole millionaire in the world while folks like Arvel still had to get up at six a.m. and put in ten hard hours. Well, seven if he could help it. So he’d been working up a decent dose of spite for the asshole in the bandanna when the floor shook and thunder boomed in the kitchen, like his wife had dropped four sacks of corn meal. But since she couldn’t lift even one sack of cornmeal, that meant something else had dropped.

  His wife, all hundred and ninety-five pounds of her.

  Arvel put a cheek near her lips, making sure she was still breathing. He looked at the back door, where he’d seen the flicker of movement as he’d entered the room. He was almost sure it was some kind of animal, and he had been getting ready for a closer look when he saw Betsy laid out like Sly Stallone in “Rocky,” only Sly had managed to climb up the ropes and lose on his feet and Betsy appeared down for the count.

  She was still drawing air, but her eyes were hollow and sunken. He lifted one eyelid, just the way Henrietta would do. Betsy’s pupil was a tight as a BB. Her long skirt bunched around her knees, showing the purple road map of her varicose veins. Arvel felt the back of her head and found a raised place the size of a banty egg.

  “You just got a little concussion, is all,” Henrietta would say. She spoke in that slow, reassuring way even when the patients were unconscious. Once Arvel had heard her waltz a car crash victim through death’s door with that same kind of talk.

  Arvel didn’t think he could pretend to be Henrietta anymore, because he wondered what would happen if his wife stopped breathing. “Don’t die on me, now,” he said, a line Henrietta would never use in a hundred years.

  He went for the phone and dialed 9-1-1 with no problem, and then found himself talking to the communications officer in Henrietta’s words. “Is this Francine?”

  Of course it was Francine, because Arvel knew all the communications folks from the scanner he kept in his truck. When Francine said, “Yes, go ahead,” Arvel took a deep breath and said, “Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could have the squad come down to 12 Hogwood Road in Solom. I’ve got a patient down.”

  “What’s the emergency, sir?”

  “I’m not no sir. I’m Henrietta. I mean, this is Arvel Ward.” Somewhere in his glove box, he had a sheet with all the emergency response codes, but since his job was putting out fires or occasionally directing traffic, he’d never bothered to memorize the list. All he knew was that, in car wrecks, “PI” meant “personal injury” and “PD” meant “property damage,” and you hurried with the red light and siren for the first but not the second. So he said, “We got a PI here, weak pulse, possible head injury. Plus something’s burning in the oven.”

  “Hold on, Arvel, we’ll get somebody right there. Are you with the patient?”

  “Not right now. I’m on the phone.”

  “I meant, is the patient in the h
ouse with you?”

  “Yeah. She lives here.”

  “Okay, stay on the phone and let me give you some instructions.”

  “I can’t leave her alone, and the cord won’t reach. Tell them to hurry, and send Henrietta.”

  Arvel hung up. When he got back to the kitchen, he knelt over her again to check her pulse. The hand he placed on the opposite side of her body touched a wet place on the floor. He lifted his hand and saw it was blood, leaking from somewhere just above her waist.

  Arvel wondered if maybe Betsy had landed on a butcher knife when she fell, because it surely wasn’t her head giving off that much blood. He tried to roll her over but she was too heavy. Finally, he lifted her enough to see a rip in her dress and the burgundy maw of a wound in her side, a few inches below her rib cage. It looked like some kind of bite mark, because the edges of the wound were stringy and jagged.

  He looked once more at the back door, wondering what kind of beast had wandered in and taken a chunk out of his wife. And wondering why Digger hadn’t raised holy hell, and if Henrietta would know how to handle something like this. Because, right now, with Henrietta’s voice in his head or not, he couldn’t think of a single comforting thing to say.

  ***

  Jett dropped her book bag on the floor and dove onto her bed. Her heart was racing, as it always did when she was stoned. Pot was a stimulant, and the textbooks classified it somewhere between a narcotic and a hallucinogenic. It didn’t make you hallucinate like acid did, but she’d never known acid to trick you into thinking you’d had a battle of wits with a goat. She swore to herself she wouldn’t get stoned ever again. At least not until after Mom and Gordon went to sleep.

  She was just kicking off her shoes when she heard the pounding on her door. “Jett?”

  Great. It was Gordon. Just the thing to kill a good buzz. “Yeah?”

  The door handle turned. Gordon must have decided to treat her with some respect, though, because he let go of the handle and said, “Can I come in?”