The gray day gets grayer, darker. Dusk comes to the mountain. The drizzle stops, but the fog stays put. No one approaches the trailer. No one leaves. John remembers his little son crying, “Mommy.” He wishes it were so easy.
Down the hill to his left, from a thick patch of fog, sound the stomp and suck of footsteps in the wet ground. He grabs the 12-gauge, cocks it, flicks off the safety, and dives behind a spruce bush. Ten feet above the dirt path, he nervously waits for whatever it is to emerge from the mist.
Clomp-suck. Clomp-suck.
Slowly comes a horse’s head, with its pointy ears and sloping snout, then its long neck and muscular torso, atop which elegantly sits the dead girl.
John drops his gun and screams.
The horse shies. Then rears. The girl tries to rein him in.
“Whoa! Easy, boy! Easy, now!” The horse comes back down onto its four feet, hop-steps sideways, then stands there in the path, skittishly tossing its head. “Steady, Diablo. Stea-dee.” Now she talks soothingly to the animal, while rubbing its neck. “John Moon,” she says.
John’s heart echoes loud in his ears. He leans down and picks up his gun. The girl shakes her head. “What do you mean, calling out like that?”
“Thought you was somebody else.”
“Who’d make you scream that way?”
“A ghost.”
“Jesus, John Moon.”
“Sorry ’bout it.” He steps forward, kisses the wet nose of the horse, Nobie’s big dappled-gray Arabian. “Was sleepin’.”
“In the rain?”
“Nappin’s all.”
“You and Mr. 12-gauge?”
“Thought I might see a rabbit or somethin’.”
“On the preserve or on my daddy’s land?”
“Neither. I was back in further. Headin’ for home I ’bout gave out.”
“Look at you, John Moon.”
“I know it.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“I told ya.”
“And you’re soaked!”
“Was some storm.”
“I wouldn’t tell on you even if you were stalking a deer, John Moon. Daddy says you put to good use everything you take, which is more than can be said for most of the world.” She smiles. She’s half John’s age, but already so much he isn’t—intelligent, good-looking, self-assured. In a few years, like her brother, she will go off to college and then only occasionally come home to ride Diablo up past John’s trailer toward the woods, when she will smile and call out, “John Moon!”
“You gonna take the job Daddy offered you?”
“Ain’t decided.”
“You ought to.” She turns red, looking then like the fifteen-year-old she is. “Not everybody gets a chance to do what they love and get paid for it, too.”
“Shoveling shit and milking cows?”
“Uh-huh, John Moon.”
“How you figure?”
“ ’Cause I’m daughter to one just like you.”
John grunts.
“Daddy’d be lost without farming. He had to work in a factory, he’d die.” The horse shakes its head and blows. John steadies it with his hand. “I’m taking an economics course in summer school, John, and you know what we’re studying on?”
“What?”
“Profit sharing.”
“Good you’re gettin’ educated.”
“You know what that is?”
“Nope.”
“It’s when employees own a piece of the companies they work at. The bosses figure they’ll get more for their money from workers who share in the profits and workers work harder because they got a stake in things. What do you think about that, John?”
“Nifty.”
She laughs. “Nifty?”
“Ain’t that your word?”
“Sure. I just never heard you use it before.” The horse dances backward. John takes hold of its rein. Abbie says, “Cool your jets, Diablo.” She looks at John. “Was me, I’d suggest something like that to Daddy.”
“Like what?”
“What I just said.”
“Somethin’ ’bout jets?”
“Don’t act stupid, John Moon!”
John spits.
“I’d tell him I’d take the job if part of my pay could go toward buying a piece of his farm.”
John laughs.
“There’s nothing funny about it, John. Our professor says workers with leverage ought to use it to empower themselves.”
“What’s your daddy think about what they’re teaching you in school?”
“I didn’t discuss this particular matter with him and don’t you dare tell him I did with you!” She purses her lips. “I wouldn’t ask for too much at first, maybe just that Daddy let you buy some heifers from him and raise them up in the barn, then—you know, after that—a piece of the land, and Daddy would listen too, John, because he’s real worried that after Eban and I go off to college he and my mom won’t be able to keep up with the work.”
“Buy back a piece of my own farm, you mean?”
She pushes hair out of her eyes. “John Moon. If you keep looking back, you’ll never get ahead!”
“Maybe you ought to worry ’bout losin’ your inheritance.”
“I won’t need one because I’m going to be a millionaire before I’m thirty. I got a thousand ideas how to do it, like making you my daddy’s partner.”
“Huh?”
“I have faith in you, John Moon.” She giggles. “You’ll only make my inheritance bigger.”
“Glad I ain’t married to you.”
“Me too. We’re not at all compatible.”
“No, we ain’t.”
“We can still be friends, though, can’t we?”
“Uh-huh.” John lets go of the horse. “Be careful back in them woods. It’s nearly dark and is slippery underfoot.”
“Don’t worry about me, John Moon. I’m an experienced horsewoman.” She starts to ride off, then reins Diablo in. “What’d that man you told Daddy shot Mutt have to say?”
“Huh?”
“When he was up to your trailer today?”
John raises his eyes at her.
“An hour or so after the Cadillac left. His car went up by, then come back down a while later. You weren’t there?”
