The Farm

back into Solom's heart. 'He came in, all right,' she said. 'Walked right to the cash register like he was born here and knew every inch of this community. How can that be, if he's been dead all this time?'

Ray gave a rat-squeak of laughter. 'Tell us, Brother David. I bet you got it all figured out, with your Bible and your big words. You're the one who's big on believing things you can't see.'

'I haven't seen him,' David said. 'But something strange is going on here.'

Lillian stood up. 'I'm sorry, David. This is getting too wacky for me. I need to get home.'

'And do what, Lillian?' David said. 'Tend to your goats?' He nodded at her wounded hand. 'Feed them?'

Lillian sat. Sarah felt sorry for her. She was one of the imports, an alien invader, but they were all tourists when you got right down to it, even the ones who were born here. First came the buffalo, then the Cherokee came after the buffalo, then the Virginia hunters came after the buffalo, then the buffalo were gone and the Cherokee were gone and the hunters were driven off by the settlers who squatted in these hills. Then came people like Harmon Smith to save them, and he was driven into his grave, and came the wagon trains and the railroad and the Model T and Jewish merchants and a post office, then a bed-and-breakfast, a rental-cabin retreat, a bunch of summer people, and it seemed like everything just kept pushing and pushing until the place called Solom was ripe for something like Harmon Smith. Something that would make the whole crazy cycle complete, knock this little Appalachian valley back to the way God intended from the beginning. 'I guess that brings us to the goats,' Sarah said.

'I saw one,' Sue said. 'Down by the river. It must have got out of its fence.'

'One of them bit Lillian, then chased us into her house,' David said. 'It would be funny if it wasn't so gosh- darned creepy.'

'They been breeding like rabbits this year,' Odus said, letting the bike rest against a chain-saw sculpture. 'Seems like every body's got a herd, and they're acting more ornery than usual.'

'Found four goat heads in my hayfield,' Ray said. 'Figured it was kids playing tricks, or else some pissed-off neighbor trying to gum up my bush hog.'

'Speaking of neighbors, why ain't Gordon Smith here?' Sarah said, determined not to mention the goat she'd found in the store earlier.

'Gordon don't take kindly to talk about the Circuit Rider,' Odus said. 'It's his kin, after all.'

'Well, he's got the biggest goat herd on this side of the county. If anything funny's going on with the animals, he'd probably know about it.'

'I was over mending fence for him last week.' Odus moved over by the woodstove. 'He told me a few of his nannies would go into rut this week. His eyes got all faraway when he said it, like there was a mountain somewhere that needed climbing. And his scarecrow ... well, never mind about that.'

'His wife was in today, looking like she'd swallowed a happy pill,' Sarah said.

'Remember the last time the goats got uppity?' Ray said.

'Yeah,' Odus said. 'Right before Gordon's first wife got killed in that car wreck.'

'Shit,' Ray said. 'You don't reckon Gordon Smith has gone wacko and decided to take up Harmon's old ways, do you?'

'No matter what they say about Harmon Smith, he was a man of God,' David said. 'I just can't believe God would send anything to his earth unless there was a good reason.'

'God don't need no devil, does He?' Ray taunted. 'He's done decided who's going to heaven, so what's the point? Ain't that what you're preaching to the flock, Brother?'

'You ought to come to a service once in a while,' David said. 'Might do you good to get down on your knees and wash some body's feet.'

'Save the family feud for later and let's worry about the Circuit Rider,' Odus said. 'I ain't ever been sure whether Jesus Christ is going to return or not, but I know for a fact that Harmon Smith has.'

'Do you think he—or it, whatever it is—killed the Everharts?' Sue asked.

'I don't know.' Odus stroked his beard, picked something from the hairs, and stared at it. 'Might be he's setting things right, as he sees it. The Everharts ain't from Solom. Or it might have some thing to do with the goats.'

Lillian took her coffee cup away from her lips. The white rim was ragged, and the perfect imprint of her teeth showed where she'd been biting into the Styrofoam. 'Well, even if we accept what you're saying, and we've got a vengeful preacher in our midst, what in the world are we supposed to do about it?'

'That's what this meeting's about,' Odus said. 'Any ideas?' He looked around the room.

Sarah shook her head. She was determined not to get dragged into this mess. Who cared if goats wandered her aisles and a stranger in black stopped by once in a while? As long as her routine didn't change, and the Circuit Rider didn't do away with her best customers, she was willing to live and let live. If such a thing ap plied to dead people.

'I guess this isn't a garlic-and-crucifix kind of thing, is it?' Sue asked. 'I mean, nobody's come up with a mythology. I'd almost rather have a vampire or werewolf, something that had rules.'

'You're the Bible guy,' Odus said to David. 'What do you make of it?'

'Harmon Smith seemed to follow some of the Celtic ideas of harvest sacrifice,' David said. 'Gordon probably knows more about that than anybody, since he teaches it at the college.'

'Well, you work for him,' Ray said. 'Anything peculiar going on at the Smith place?'

'He's been mighty riled up about his scarecrow,' Odus said. 'Muttering strange stuff under his breath and tending to his goats.'

'Every religious figure needs a flock,' Lillian said. 'Without Moonies, Sun Myung Moon would be just another businessman.'

'Moon do what?' Ray said.

'The leader of the Unification Church,' she said. 'He has a church in Washington, D.C., and owns a ton of real estate and in ternational newspapers. The conspiracy theorists believe Moon has his mouth whispering in the ear of our politicians while his fingers are slipping cash into their back pockets. Some say even the presi dent is an ally.'

'Now don't you be knocking George Dubya,' Ray said. 'The worst thing that ever happened to Solom was letting Democrats come in. If Clinton was a Jew, he'd have been the Antichrist.'

Sarah didn't rise to the bait, though she made a mental note of his remark. Her father had changed the family name from Jaffe to Jeffers before moving to Solom. She'd never made a big deal about being Jewish, though she was the only one in the valley, though so many summer people had built homes here that some were bound to be Jewish. She wasn't all that religious, anyway, and she sold plenty of knickknacks that featured Bible verses or pictures of a snow-white Christ.

All she knew about the Moonies was from the Guinness Book of World Records, where they set the record for the number of peo ple married at one time. Out of the thousands, most of them were strangers. Well, she supposed your odds of getting divorced were about the same as whether you thought you were in love. She'd been in love a couple of times, and in something close enough to it a few other times, and they'd all ended up the same.

'Maybe the goats tie in with fertility and harvest,' David said. 'The more you sacrifice, the more they multiply. The Old Testament sacrifices were all about pleasing God. It's the same with most religions, whether you're lighting candles, taking communion, shaving your head, or offering food.'

'All I know is the billy goats don't like it when you talk about gelding them,' Lillian said, holding up her injured hand.

'Hold on a minute, folks,' Sue said. 'I can accept that the Circuit Rider is real. After all, every legend has a basis in fact. And I'll even buy that goats are evil. I mean, with those creepy eyes and cloven hooves, how could anybody think otherwise? And let's assume 'its hour come round,' as the Yeats poem goes, and Solom is our backwoods Bethlehem. After all, the battle of Armageddon has to start somewhere. The question is, what do we do about it?'

They all looked at each other, except Lillian, who was staring into the bottom of her coffee cup as if the answer were spelled out there. 'I reckon we have to find a way to take down the Circuit Rider,' Odus said. 'We have to figure out what he wants, then give it to him and make him go away.'

'What if he wants us all to suffer like starving dogs on a slow trip to hell?' Ray said.