The Farm

nearly coughed. The harsh smoke set tled in her lungs; then she blew out gently. The match had burned down to her fingers, so she held the pipe in her mouth while she used her other hand to grab the burnt end of the match. She then turned the match upside down so it would burn the unused portion of the paper.

The Kid knows all the tricks.

The next hit was a little smoother. She held the flame just above the grass so that it toasted rather than scorched. Yep. That was the ticket. Her throat was dry and she wished she'd brought a Sprite from the fridge. The smoke filled her nostrils, weakening the smell of old dust and animal manure.

She let the buzz work its way through her nervous system, feel ing her pulse accelerate. Tears collected in her eyes. Good shit. Tommy Williamson might be a world-class jerk, but he had good connections. A smile crept across her face, and it felt good. Why did the cops and Jesus freaks get so uptight about something that was so natural? She hadn't smiled in weeks, and now here she was with her cheeks stretching and her head feeling light.

The fucking weight of the world temporarily lifted.

Fucking. What a weird word, when you think about it. I mean, fuck, what's the big deal? Mom said I was able to have babies now and maybe that has something to do with the tingling I feel down there sometimes. I don't understand how a boy's weenie can fit in there, as little and floppy as they are. At least Mom didn't give me the jazz about safe sex. Guess she trusts me.

Trust. Jett looked down at the pipe and the bag of dope, the crumbled marijuana scattered across her book.

I don't have a drug problem. 'Drug problem ' is what the English teacher would call an 'oxymoron.' Well, the teacher's a plain old fucking moron.

Jett's stoned leap of logic seemed like the most hilarious thing since Beavis and Butthead did America, and she giggled. The sound was like blue bubbles in her brain. She closed her eyes and listened to them pop.

Blop-bloop-blooooop.

Beh-eh-eh-eh-eh.

Beh-eh?

That wasn't right.

She opened her eyes to find the goat standing right in front of her, its head at eye level with hers. She rolled away with a start. The goat lowered its neck and sniffed at the marijuana, then licked at it.

'Get away, you ugly fucker,' Jett said, picking up a dry, dark clod that was probably a goat turd. She flung it at the goat, but it swabbed its tongue across her stash again.

Damn it, this is war. She gave the goat a kick in the side, not too hard but loud enough for a thunk to fill the barn. The goat turned toward her. For the first time, she noticed the pale brown horns. Though they lay nearly flat against the animal's skull, the tips curled back under and out above the ears like oversize, twisted fishhooks.

'Easy, there, Fred,' she said. Gordon had names for the goats but she hadn't bothered to learn them. He'd taken them all from the Old Testament. She wondered whether it was Adam, Seth, or Ruth. Couldn't be Ruth, because it had a tube of loose flesh hanging from its loins. She figured the goat didn't know its name, either, so 'Fred' would work just as well.

She backed away and the goat stepped closer. At least she'd dis tracted it from her expensive cash crop. Now if it would only go out the door and act like the brainless sack of fur and manure it was.

But it didn't go for the door. It backed her to the foot of the stairs that led to the loft. And the loft was where she'd blanked out the day before yesterday. Freaked Mom out but good. The bitch of it was, the blackout hadn't been drug-related. She'd let Mom suspect drug use because the alternative was just a little too weird, even for her.

Jett didn't want to go up those stairs. Because the image of a man flashed across the inside of her forehead, like a still from an out-of-focus slide projector. The man with the out-of-fashion hat with the low crown and wide brim, the one who had warned her to 'Know them by their fruits.' She had a feeling he was waiting up there in the silence and dust of the hay bales.

The goat snorted a little and bobbed its head as if threatening her. Or else commanding her to climb the stairs.

Whoa the fuck down. Goats don't boss humans around. They 're stupid Fred-faced, squid-eyed, dumb-as-dirt pieces of meat on the hoof.

The goat grinned, revealing a five-dollar chunk of marijuana bud that was stuck between two upper teeth. Jett almost laughed. This was the kind of stoner story she'd tell at the next party, if she ever made any friends in Solom: 'Yeah, a goat came up while I was smoking and gobbled down my stash.'

She'd leave out the part about the goat scaring her, and the man in the black hat, and the voice she'd heard in the boiler room be hind the school. Because those were things that could get you locked up in the nuthouse, where the drugs were no fun at all, according to her friend Patty from Charlotte. Nuthouse drugs were designed to perform chemical lobotomies, eliminating the prob lems by stripping away any desire to suffer a thought or feeling. As tempting as oblivion was, Jett liked hers in small and controlled doses.

Besides, who could be bored when a goat was after you?

The wall was covered with garden tools, ropes, and harness. She picked out a hoe, figuring she could use the blunt end of the handle to drive the goat away. The animal clambered forward as she leveled the handle and pointed it like a jousting lance. In the distance, the Wards' dog barked, followed by the sound of tires on gravel. Gordon must be home.

Great.

Gord the Wonder Nerd.

She waited for his SUV engine to die and for the vehicle's door to open. Then she could yell for help. Except the goat had paused, too, and lifted its head as if listening. Like maybe Gordon had a treat.

If Gordon came to the barn, he would see the pot and bust her. She'd probably be grounded for the rest of the school year, or maybe even until high school. Gordon was one of those uptight people who made a big deal about morals without being religious. Because, despite all his blowhard lecturing at the dinner table about this and that denomination, and the fact that he was the great-great-grandson of a circuit-riding preacher, Gordon wore a sneer on his face when he talked about people going to church. Jett wasn't sure what she believed yet, but one thing was for sure, she thought Jesus Christ was the kind of guy who wouldn't put you down for a little bit of weed. True, he probably wouldn't inhale, but he also wouldn't hit you over the head with a Bible because of it.

So calling for Gordon was out of the question. She had to make a decision on whether to try for the loft and wait it out, or scoot past the goat, collect her stash, and sneak around the backyard and into the house before anyone noticed she was missing. Mom had been a real space cadet lately, so Gordon would probably make the obligatory room check. She planned to be at her desk with a text book open, so she could bat her eyelashes at him in a 'What do you want?' look. Pop an Altoid mint, drop in some Visine, and she was bulletproof. The only symptom would be goofiness, and all twelve- year-old girls were goofy.

She prodded at the goat with the hoe handle. It turned and trotted to the barn door, standing just beyond the reach of daylight, as if it were afraid the sun would burn its skin and turn its carcass to dust. Jett dropped the hoe and scooped up her Baggie of marijuana. She tucked it in the pocket of her sleeveless jean jacket. Though she was craving another hit to cap off the buzz, the whole scene was getting to be like a psychedelic, fluorescent- colored episode of The Twilight Zone. She expected the ghost of Rod Serling to step from one of the stalls at any second, wearing a tie-died T-shirt and a ponytail, a pencil-sized joint replacing his ever-present cigarette.

The rear of the barn had another large wooden door, suspended on rollers that slid in a steel track overhead. It was latched from the inside with a dead bolt, but Jett thought she'd be able to maneuver the heavy door open enough to slip around the back way. Gordon's SUV door slammed. That meant he'd go through the front door in about fifteen seconds if he followed his usual routine. Unless he saw the goat in the barn.

Jett Wrestled with the dead bolt. It was rusty, as if it hadn't been operated in years. She banged her knuckles trying to work the bolt free, scraping the skin. She put her knuckles in her mouth and sucked at the blood. Something nudged her hip, and she looked down to see the goat's face turned up to hers, its nostrils dilating, eyes