with shoe hammers. DeWalt said it was a relaxing sound and liked to sit here on the porch during rainy afternoons. But Chester thought a man might as well have marbles rolling around inside his skull. Chester watched the drops bounce off the Ford's black hood. Rivulets of red clay ran down the twin dirt tracks of the driveway. He'd be going nowhere today if this kept up.
But that was just fine with Chester. That meant nobody would be out to bother him, either. That slack-eyed Johnny Mack wouldn't be trying to hit him up for liquor money and Sylvester wouldn't be wanting to take him squirrel hunting. And DeWalt, even though he had a shiny four-wheel drive, didn't like getting his two-hundred- dollar boots muddy. DeWalt liked to keep his things just the way they looked in the catalog.
'About time for a little liquid lunch, Boomer,' Chester said. Boomer looked up, thumped his tail a couple of times, and farted.
'You're entitled to your opinion,' Chester said.
The rain began falling in thick silver sheets, and Chester could barely see across the yard. But at the edge of the forest, about two miles up the slope, that weird green stuff was still glowing. Sure as hell wasn't foxfire, the glow-in-the-dark fungus that freaked out city folk. The glow had been there a couple of days now, but Chester hadn't yet mustered the energy to walk out and check on it.
In all those damned stories Chester had to listen to growing up, sitting on the plank edge of Grandpappy's knee, he'd never heard anything about shiny green stuff. Sure, the old lady with the lamp that haunted the Brushy Fork bridge, the scarecrow boy in the barn, the panther that screamed like a woman while it followed the wagon in from the fields, he'd heard all those. But nothing about no green stuff.
Of course, they didn't pass on stories like they used to. Chester’s dad had tried to get him to carry on the oral tradition, but Chester didn't see the point. They had picture shows in Windshake and now almost everybody in these parts had a television. Who wanted to sit around and listen to a toothless old geezer flapping his jowls?
Chester stretched and his spine popped. His joints were tightening up on him for sure. He forgot all about the shiny green stuff. It was time for some good old Southern self-medication.
He lifted the jar and toasted the clouds, whatever color they wanted to be.
The alien stretched its tendrils into the soil, edging its way deeper into the cave. It found a quiet, moist place between two large rocks. Its slick effluence coated the granite surrounding it, and its cells mutated to mimic those of the humus and loam that coated the skin of this new world. Since emerging from its seed, the alien had probed the exotic chemical soup around it, drawing nourishment, assimilating the structural order of the strange biosystem, fulfilling the necessities of survival.
A native life form slid from a crevice, this one far more complex than the bacteria that had provided the alien sustenance in the wake of its impact. The life form was as cool as the air, sluggish, and emanated a primitive intelligence. The life form slithered into contact with one of the alien’s tendrils, exhaling in pain as its nervous system fused with that of the alien’s. The life form writhed as its metabolism slowed, then it fell still and its warmth faded.
The alien tried to comprehend the sound that had fallen from the life form’s forked tongue.
Shhh.
Shu-shaaa.
A symbol.
A sound, a fluctuation in air pressure, a varying system of vibrations. The alien tried the symbol again, experimenting, seeking to give it meaning.
Shu-shaaa.
Nettie Hartbarger glanced up from the Bible, sneaking a peek at the handsome man across the table.
'Will you read some more scripture for me?' Bill Lemly asked in his deep, quiet voice. 'It makes more sense when you say it. It sounds like poetry.'
Bill clutched a Sprite in his big-knuckled hands. He looked at Nettie with his soft brown eyes and smiled. She was in the middle of St. Luke, Chapter Four. Maybe that wasn't the best verse of choice for spinning a web of seduction.
She read: 'And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the spirit into the desert for the space of forty days, and was tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days, and when they were ended, he was hungry.'
She looked up again, and Bill was nodding gently as if transfixed by the rhythm of the scriptures. Or maybe he had been listening to the rain bouncing off her apartment roof.
Nettie continued: 'And the devil said to him, 'If thou be the Son of God, say to this stone that it may be made bread.' And Jesus answered him, 'It is written that man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word of God.'
'And the devil led him into a high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and he said to Him, 'To Thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them, for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them. If thou therefore wilt adore before me, all shall be thine.''
Nettie was thinking that she wouldn't mind if Bill would adore her. And all of the kingdoms of her flesh would most definitely be his.
Bill hunched forward, hands under the table, jaw clenched as if he, too, were looking out over the devil's vistas of gold and marble. He appeared to be in a state of rapture. Nettie took a sip of her soft drink. She would have loved a glass of wine, but was afraid Bill would disapprove. She swallowed and continued.
'And Jesus answering said to him, 'It is written, thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.' And the devil brought him to Jerusalem and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and he said to him, 'If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself from hence. For it is written, that he hath given his angels charge over thee, that they keep thee, and that in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest perhaps thou dash thy foot against a stone.''
Nettie wished that she were an angel. Not like the one she was going to be when she went to heaven, but one here on earth, so Bill would love her. She knew her hair was dark and angels were supposed to be blonde. And she was petite, not buxom and curvy. No wonder Bill hadn't made a pass at her, even after four months of dating.
She glanced at him and caught him looking away and frowning in self-reproach. He must have been chastising himself for going out with such a homely girl. Maybe she was a mercy case, and Bill was being nice to her out of a sense of Christian duty. She finished the chapter and closed her Bible. She put her hands out halfway across the table, hoping he would take hold of them. Bill still looked lost in thought.
'Would you like to watch some television?' she asked, hoping she didn't sound desperate.
At least if they were on the couch together, he couldn't avoid touching her. And that would not be bad at all, being close to his warm, strong body, smelling his subtle masculine aftershave and maybe just a teeny hint of sweat. And maybe she could get up the nerve to lean her head oh so lightly on his shoulder until his breath was on her cheek.
And she was thinking 'couch,' when she really wanted 'bed,' when she really wanted him to stand up and carry her in his arms and lay her gently on her clean white bedspread and lean over her with his lips and hair and hands all over Bill stood, making the chair squeak on the linoleum in his haste. 'I'm afraid I have to go, Nettie,' he said, hands clasped in front of him like a Quaker. 'Got a few phone calls to make.'
She looked down at the tabletop, hoping her disappointment didn't show.
'But your reading was pretty. I thank you so much.' He started for the door.
'Bill?' she said, and he turned.
Ask me out again, ask me out again, even if “out” is “in,” sitting in my apartment with a Bible. It doesn't have to be once a week.
'Yes, Nettie?'
'See you in church.'
Bill nodded and smiled, then ducked through the doorway into the rainy night.
In bed, Tamara rolled over and felt Robert stir. He grunted and yawned, and she reached for him.
“Hey,” he whispered in the dark.
“We need to talk,” she said.
