The Farm

by Scott Nicholson

  "How's she like school?"

  "Okay so far. You know how kids are."

  Betsy knew, despite never having raised one. "Well, I'd best get back to my canning."

  "Could you show me how to do it someday?"

  "Sure thing." Though Betsy had no intention of giving away any information that was useful.

  "By the way, do you know anything about the scarecrow? Gordon said it's a local legend."

  "Scarecrow? Not heard tell of anything like that."

  Unless you have it confused with the Circuit Rider. But Gordon knows better than that.

  "Well, no big deal." Katy waved and added a "Good doggie" for Digger's sake, though Digger was having none of it.

  Betsy left the dog on the porch to encourage Katy on her way. She watched between the kitchen curtains as the bony woman made her way up the gravel road, grabbing at the goldenrod that bloomed along the ditch.

  "Trouble," Betsy muttered to herself. "A skinny woman ain't never been nothing but trouble."

  Odus Hampton pulled his battered Chevy Blazer into the general store's rutted parking lot. It was a quarter till nine, which almost guaranteed he'd be Sarah's first customer of the day. He figured on buying a cup of coffee and a honey bun, something to kick the hangover out of his head before he went up to Bethel Springs. In addition to odd jobs, he worked part-time for Crystal Mountain Bottlers, a Greensboro company that siphoned off fresh mountain spring water, shipped it to a factory for treatment, then charged idiots over a buck a bottle. Even with all those tricks the Arabs were pulling, gas was still cheaper per gallon than the stuff Odus pumped through a hose into Crystal Mountain's tankers.

  He stepped from the Blazer with a silent groan, his ligaments tight. Maybe if he stuck to spring water instead of Old Crow bourbon, he wouldn't feel like a sixty-year-old twenty years too soon. He stabbed a Marlboro into his mouth and fired it up, counting the number of steps to the front door to see if he could get half the smoke finished. Even good old Sarah had given in to the "no smoking" bullshit, and though she sold two dozen brands of cigarettes, pipe tobacco, and snuff, she wouldn't let her customers use the products in her store. That whole tobacco thing was as bad as the Arabs and their gas, only this time it was the federal government turning the screw. Did away with price support so cigarette companies had farmers by the balls, then taxed the devil out of the stuff on the back end.

  Odus coughed and spat as he climbed the porch steps. The general store wasn't as grand as it had been in his childhood when he'd bounced up those steps with a quarter in his pocket and all manner of choices. A quarter could buy you a Batman comic book and a candy bar, or a Pepsi-Cola and a Moon Pie, or a pack of baseball cards and a bubblegum cigar. Now all a quarter did was weigh down your pants. And Odus's pants needed all the help they could get, what with his belly pushing down on his belt like a watermelon balanced on a clothesline.

  The front door was open. That was funny. Sarah always kept it closed until nine on the dot, even though if you were a regular, you could knock and go on in if you showed up a little early. Odus took a final tug of his cigarette and threw it into the sand-filled bucket with all the other unfinished butts. He peered through the screen door, looking for signs of movement.

  "Sarah?"

  Maybe she was in back, checking on inventory or stacking up some canned preserves that bore the Solom General Store label but were actually contracted to a police auxiliary group over in Westmoreland County. Odus called again. Maybe Sarah had gone over to her house, which sat just beside the store. Decided she'd need a helping of prunes to move things along, maybe. At her age, nature needed a little push now and then.

  Odus went to the deli counter at the rear of the store. The coffeepot sat on top in a little blue tray so customers could help themselves. Nondairy creamer (which was about like non-cow hamburger if you stopped to mink about it), straws, white packets of sugar, and pink packets of artificial sweetener were scattered across the tray. The coffeemaker was turned off, and the pot was empty and as cold as a witch's heart in December. Sarah always made coffee first thing.

  A twinge rippled through Odus's colon, as if a tiny salamander were turning flips down there. It might have been a cheap whiskey fart gathering steam, or it might have been the first stirring of unease. Either way, Odus felt it was time for some fresh morning air. As he passed the register on the way out, he saw Sarah's frail body curled across a couple of sacks of feed corn. Her eyes were partially open, her mouth slack, a thick strand of drool hanging from one corner of her gray lips.

  Odus went around the counter and knelt on the buckled hard-wood floor, feeling for her pulse. All he felt was his own, the hangover beating through his thumb. He turned her face up and put his cheek near her mouth. A stagnant breeze stirred, with that peculiar old-person's smell of pine and decay. She was alive.

  "Sarah," Odus said, patting her cheek, trying to remember what those emergency techs did in the television shows. All he ever watched was the crime scene shows, and those dealt with people who were already dead. He turned back to the counter and was searching among the candy wrappers, invoices, and business cards for the phone when he heard a soft moan.

  Sarah blinked once, a film over her eyes like spiderwebs. She tried to sit up, but Odus eased her back down.

  "Sarah, what happened?"

  Her mouth opened, and with her wrinkled neck and glazed eyes, she looked like a fledging robin trying to suck a digested worm from its mother's beak.

  "Easy, now," Odus said, his mouth parched, wishing Solom wasn't in the dry part of the county and a cold beer was in the cooler alongside the seventeen kinds of cola.

  "Hat," Sarah said.

  "Yes, ma'am, it's sure hot for September," Odus said. "You must have worked up an early sweat. Overdid it a little. But you just sit and rest now."

  Sarah slapped at his chest with a bony hand. "Haaaat."

  "I know. I'll get you some water."

  Sarah grabbed his forearm, her fingers like the talons of a red hawk. She sat up, her face rigid. "You damned drunken fool," she said, spittle flying from her mouth. "The man in the hat. He's back."

  Sarah's eyes closed and she collapsed onto the gray, coarse sacks, her breathing shallow but steady.

  Odus renewed his search for the phone. Going on about a hat, of all things. She must have had a stroke and blown her senses. Most males in these parts wore a hat, and it wasn't unknown for them to come back now and again.

  Chapter Seven

  Total suck city.

  Mrs. McNeeley was outlining on the chalkboard, lecturing like she usually did with her back to the class. To the sixth grade English teacher, instruction meant breathing chalk dust and turning her pupils' brains to sawdust. Who the hell cared what a direct object was, or a plural nominative? Like anybody was ever going to need to know that stuff in real life.

  But teachers like Mrs. McNeeley were great for those kids who were logging their time and sopping up free lunches while waiting until they could legally drop out. Like Grady Eggers and Tommy Williamson on the back row. If McNeeley had the sense to seat the kids in alphabetical order, the problem would cut itself in half. As it was, the two goons kept up a spitball barrage and a constant taunting of everyone around them. Like all successful goons, and most of that species had been gifted by God Grady and Tommy knew when it was time to play the angel, to let their faces go soft and wounded whenever another student made an accusation or complaint.

  Like this morning when Tommy had made a grab for Jett's ass in the hall.

  That kind of thing was flattering in the fifth grade, when you didn't have any ass worth grabbing, but now she was on the verge of becoming a lady, and as freaky as that was, she thought her body had some value. She had whirled and tried to kick him in that mysterious region between his legs, where all manner of lumpy, disgusting things dangled but at the last second he had twisted away and her foot bounced harmlessly off his thigh. Worse, he caught her leg while she was off-balance, tilted her over like
DiCaprio going for Winslet in Titanic, or maybe Gable doing Leigh if you were lame enough to have watched Gone With the Wind, as she had. Tommy put his mouth close to hers, braces and all, and whispered "Not a bad move for a headless chicken."

  Then he spun her in spastic imitation of a Spanish dance, the other kids laughing as she fell to her knees, and a nuclear orange anger had erupted behind her eyelids. She must have screamed because when the dust cleared the beefy assistant principal Richard Bell, known to the kids as Dicky Dumbbell, had sequestered Tommy away for a private counsel. Apparently sexual harassment wasn't a serious offense at Cross Valley Elementary, because Tommy had been right on time for first-period geography, and since Cross Valley was a small school, Jett was in the same class. Tommy had winked at her and given a twisted smile that held the promise of future humiliation.

  The worst thing of all was that part of her had flushed some secret and forbidden woman region that craved attention but didn't know quite what to do with it.

  And so the day had gone. Now, with McNeeley's sentence diagrams covering the chalkboard and the hands of the clock reaching wearily toward two, Jett was calculating how fast she could reach the door when the final bell rang. She closed her eyes and must have dozed because she saw a man in a black hat at McNeeley's desk, seven feet tall, moth holes in his frayed suit. He held a thick Bible in his left hand his pale right hand raised and miles beyond the sleeve of his too-small jacket.

  "The possessive of a name ending in s is followed by apostrophe s, except, strangely enough, in the case of Jesus," he intoned with a voice as dark and loud as Revelation's thunder. "In that case, it's just an apostrophe by itself. That's according to The Chicago Manual of Style, brothers and sisters. Special rule for Jesus. Amen."

  Jett's eyes snapped open and she found her head had almost banged against the top of her desk, the one with the greasy pencil slot and Suck Big Donky Dix carved into the surface.

  McNeeley was finishing some monotone declaration or another, and the class had long since given in to fidgeting. Tommy made a bleating, goatish sound from the back of the class, causing McNeeley to turn. She stood with the piece of chalk in her hand, her eyes like milk.

  "Did someone have a question?" she asked.

  "Yeah," Grady Eggers said, raising his hand and lifting himself out of his seat. He was already five-ten and had the first signs of stubble, the kind of kid who was headed for either gridiron glory or the oily pits of auto shop.

  McNeeley tugged at her cardigan and pushed her cat's-eye glasses up her long nose. "Mr. Eggers?"

  "Does Jesus really get no s?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "I mean, why does he get treated any different? You said every rule applies to everybody the same."

  Jett was wide awake now, no matter how drowsy she had been before.

  "I don't understand," Mrs. McNeeley said, putting on her teacher's smile, the automatic response to anything that cast doubt on the textbook.

  "You said Jesus was the exception to the rule."

  The class grew silent. Even Tommy Williamson looked pensive, a rare expression for him.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Eggers. I didn't say a thing about Jesus."

  "You said he don't get no apostrophe s, just an apostrophe." Grady sounded uneasy, on the edge of rage. "I heard it plain as day. Why come is that?"

  "We were discussing when to use 'who' or 'whom' in the objective case," McNeeley said. "I don't see how our dear Lord and Savior could enter into it."

  The bell gave its brittle cry of release, and the tension in the class dropped like a wet rope.

  Jett gathered her books, hoping to make it to the next class before Tommy caught up with her. She felt faint, partly due to the vision she'd had of the man in the black hat. But Grady had apparently heard the man's words, though from McNeeley's mouth. Did it really count as a vision if two people experienced it, or did you chalk it up to the beginnings of mass hysteria?

  In fifth grade health class in Charlotte, Jett had been subjected to the ever-popular drug scare videos. While most of the kids had snickered as somber narrators expounded on the dangers of evil weed, Jett had actually paid attention. Unlike the others, who wouldn't know a yellow jacket from a roach, Jett saw it as an opportunity to educate herself. She'd paid attention when the talking head launched into a tirade on acid flashbacks, in which a bad trip could come on weeks, months, or even years after the initial "exposure." Come right out of the blue, the narrator had said. Totally unexpected and without warning. Flashback sufferers often went to the hospital because they thought they were having a nervous breakdown.

  The whole thing was starting to freak her out. It was possible that Grady, too, had dropped LSD. But that still didn't mean they would have the same flashback. And how could you "flash back" to something that had never happened before?

  Gordon would probably know, but she'd rather eat a hot popsi-cle in hell than talk with him about anything in her personal life.

  But which one was the hallucination, the scarecrow man she'd seen in the barn or the man in the black hat?

  She negotiated the halls, weaving through kids in denim jackets with rolled-up sleeves, low-hanging pants, the girls wearing wide belts. Even here in the sticks, it seemed everybody knew about Old Navy and Gap. A bunch of brainless trendoids. Some of the redneck boys wore flannel, but they stuck to their own kind, stomping their boots as if to knock the cow shit out of the treads, sneaking pinches of Skoal between their cheeks and gums.

  "What's the hurry?" came a girl's voice behind her.

  Jett wheeled to face Bethany, who was as cool as Mentos in her short skirt and blue halter top with bra straps showing. "No hurry, I just have to do my homework before math class."

  "But class starts in four minutes."

  "That's what I mean. I don't want to disappoint Mrs. Stansberry. She's the only cool teacher I have."

  "Did you sleep okay? You look like you're late for your own funeral. Or maybe your eye shadow's a little thick today."

  "Thanks for the compliment."

  "No, you're good. This Goth thing looks bitching. I wish my parents would let me get away with it."

  "See, that's just it. You don't ask your parents, you tell them. Have to show them who is boss right from diapers."

  "I'll bet yours were black."

  "Well, not while they were clean."

  "Ooh, yuck." Bethany crinkled her overly pert nose.

  "What are you doing after school?"

  "Feeding the goats."

  "I hate those cloven-hoofed little monsters. They scare me."

  Bethany laughed. "They're okay. The males, the billy goats, stink unless you cut their balls off. My dad has a metal band that you put around them, then leave it for a few weeks. The balls swell up and turn black and gross, and then they fall off. Problem solved."

  Jett shuddered. She wasn't an expert in male anatomy, but she was under the impression that the testicles were the most vulnerable spot on their bodies. Which is why you tried to kick there in an emergency. But causing their balls to rot seemed like the sort of punishment that should be reserved for the very worst of them. Creatures like Tommy Williamson.

  Jett decided she wouldn't complain about her own chores for a while. Sweeping the living room didn't seem so bad when compared to forking hay to a goat. "Well, I've got to get to that homework. Say hi to Chuck for me."

  Bethany's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

  "Your boyfriend. The Chuckster."

  "You don't even know him."

  "You told me all about him. Chuck steak, one hundred percent lean."

  "And don't forget he's mine." Bethany frowned and turned, then was swept away in the tide of students. Jett looked at the clock on the wall. Two minutes to solve six math problems. And me rest of her life to solve all the rest of her problems.

  September was a melancholy month for Alex Eakins. It was the month his childhood mutt rolled himself under the wheels of a FedEx van, the month he'd lost his virginity after a
high school football game to a girl who later ditched him for a married man, the month his dad and mom separated, the month he'd been kicked out of Duke for lousy grades and attendance. Since he'd moved to the mountains and spent his trust fund on a little piece of south-facing land on the mountain above Solom, September had been a time of dying.

  He sniffed the air, which was sweet with the sugar of red maples and crab apples. The stench of decay should have been there, but the only rot came from the black innards of his composting toilet, where bacteria performed its thankless job of turning shit to dirt. Nature was just beginning to accept that winter was on the way, that every living thing would soon be asleep or dead. He wondered which of those he would be.

  Alex had embraced organic gardening as a lifestyle, earning enough by selling produce at the county farmers' market to pay his property taxes. He had studied all the latest sustainable building techniques, and his own house was a mix of technologies both primitive and new. Since he lived off-grid and wasn't beholden to the building inspection and permitting process, Alex had used cob and straw bale construction for part of his house, which was cut partly into the bank. From the outside, the structure looked as much like an aboriginal mud hut as anything, but it was incredibly energy efficient. A small cluster of solar panels on the roof ran a dorm-sized refrigerator, and a woodstove system circulated hot water through the house. Alex had fixed a generator to a paddle wheel in the creek that gushed along one side of his property. The generator, along with a miniature wind turbine, fed a bank of alternating-current batteries, so he was covered no matter what the weather.

  The system was put together in the aftermath of Y2K, when all the doomsayers had realized the world wasn't going to end after all and had sold their survival gear. Well, the world may have ended already, for all Alex knew. Because it was autumn again, and the tomatoes were turning to mush on the vines and the corn was getting hard. The cool-weather greens like collards, spinach, and turnips still had a few weeks to go, but soon enough the market would close for the season. Alex had a truckload of pumpkins to sell for Halloween, and one more good haul of organic broccoli, but after that, he would have to go back to work. Or else sell a little of the marijuana he cultivated.