No. Gordon was her husband now and she was determined to make it work this time. All it took was sacrifice.
'Let's go in the house,' Katy said. 'I'll make us some cinnamon rolls. I found a great recipe.'
'What about the scarecrow and the man in the black hat?'
'Gordon will take care of it.'
'Do you love him?'
Katy pulled away from the hug. 'What kind of question is that?'
'I don't know. I saw the way you were looking at Dad, and you've never looked at Gordon like that.'
'Gordon is a good man and he'll make a good father if you give him a chance.'
'I don't want another father. I want mine.'
'I'm sorry, honey. We've turned that page. This is our new life.'
Jett pushed away. The hens squawked at the disturbance, flap ping their wings, tossing soft feathers in the air. Inside the barn came the slam of a large wooden door.
'I don't want a new life. Especially if it's this one.' Jett went through the gate and into the house.
Sister Mary proved to be a rugged animal, despite a lifetime spent in the companionship of cows. Odus had guided her up the mountains and traversed the roughest trails he could find, twisted paths that were scarcely wide enough for deer. He half expected the horse would put her nose to the ground like a bloodhound and instinctively know they were on the scent of something bad. Odus figured that two hours had passed, and maybe Old Man McHenry had already noticed somebody had stolen his pinto mare.
At one point, the forest gave way to a granite shelf, with rocks settled into the Appalachian soil like droppings from some ancient giant bird. Odus tied Sister Mary to a stunted balsam and gave her some of the bread from his sandwich. As she smacked her lips around it, Odus eased to the edge and looked down in the valley below. Solom was sprawled like a faded patchwork quilt of yellow meadows, brown forests, and the small gray squares of houses and barns. The river wound like a loose length of spilled yarn through the bottomland, the water white where it tumbled over rocks. The two-lane road followed the river, except for an intersection near the general store where the covered bridge, post office, and Sue Norwood's shop cluttered up the geometry.
This stony point looked like the kind of place where the Circuit Rider would step out and survey the community. Maybe this had been part of his original route, back when he was a Methodist preacher sent down from Virginia. If so, he might have passed his eyes over the green valley and decided it was just the kind of place to set up shop. A Holy Land, of a sort, one maybe just a little bit re mote from the eyes of God where a fellow could practice the kind of rituals he wanted.
Sister Mary let loose with a wet snort.
'All right, don't get your neck hairs in a tangle,' Odus said. He went back to the horse, unhitched her, and mounted. His rump was a little sore from the jostling ride, but it wasn't sore enough to com plain. He pulled the Old Crow from the knapsack and gargled on a two-finger slug. He was slipping the bottle back into the pack when a twig snapped in the thicket behind him.
'Who's mere?' Odus said, and despite all his high-spirited no tions about not needing a weapon, he wouldn't have minded a rifle right about then. Not that there were any wild animals left in the mountains big enough to threaten a man or a horse. The occasional bobcat was about as predatory as it got these days.
Whatever was thrashing around in the brush didn't answer. Not that Odus expected a reply. He eased Sister Mary down the path a little, wanting to put some distance between them and the cliff edge. Sister Mary seemed to notice her passenger's unease, because her ears pricked up. Odus gave her a pat on the side of the neck to calm her.
He was twenty feet down the path when the goat emerged from the stand of laurels. Odus almost laughed in relief. Except the goat's head was tilted sideways, the way a man might look at a car he was thinking of buying. Or maybe which steak from the butcher's counter he craved for that night's supper. Sister Mary drew up short without Odus having to pull back on the reins.
'Get on,' Odus said to the goat. The goat was nearly a quarter the size of the horse, fat and white, a string of dirty fur trailing from its belly to the ground. Its eyes were rheumy, the corners full of yellow pus. It stank of piss and the musk of its rutting scent. The horns spread wide, with just the slightest bend to them. Its lower jaw dropped the worn and stained teeth showing in a corrupt grin. Odus recognized the animal now, from Gordon Smith's flock.
What was it doing loose up here? Gordon had walked the Smith fence lines in early August, just before the second cutting of the hay. The wire was in good shape, and locust posts took decades to rot. Goats had a reputation for breaking boundaries and getting into where they weren't wanted, but it didn't make sense for the goat to climb up into the laurel thicket. Laurel leaves were poiso nous, and not much else was green this time of year except balsam and jack pine.
The goat didn't look like it cared for green. The strange, glitter ing pupils fixed on Odus as if the two were gunfighters squaring off in the Old West.
The goat lowered its head, the scruff of beard pressed against the shaggy chest, showing the serrated grooves of the two brown horns. The animal pawed at the ground with one hoof, like a Spanish bull preparing to charge a red cape. A goat was far more dangerous than most people thought, because its neck was strong and horns hard and sharp. If the horns tore into the horse's abdom inal cavity, the goat would likely pull away with intestines entwined like spaghetti around a twirled fork. The laurels on each side were too thick and tangled to allow escape.
Odus peeked over his shoulder to see if a path led down the side of the cliff, and that's when the goat charged. It came in low, at Sister Mary's knees. The horse shrieked and bucked, flailing its front legs in the air. Odus clung to the reins and hunched over the horse's neck, one boot flying out of its stirrup. For a moment he was weightless, and then he crashed back down into the saddle, slamming his testicles against the hard leather. Sister Mary reared again, this time catching the goat in the forehead with one steel- shod hoof. The goat let out a gurgling bleat and drew back, a gash opening just above its eerie eyes, blood flowing down the snout. The goat retreated a few unsteady steps and wobbled a moment as Sister Mary hopped forward, not giving Odus a chance to regain control.
The goat fell to its knees, lapping at its blood with a grayish pink tongue. Sister Mary took a long couple of strides and leaped over the goat, once again lifting Odus out of the saddle, with gravity doing its work and plunging him right back down.
Sister Mary galloped along the path, branches slapping at Odus's hands and face. He glanced back and saw the goat was still lapping at its own leaking fluids. They had gone perhaps a hundred yards when Odus pressed his knees against the mare's flanks and urged her to slow down. At last she came to a stop, panting from the effort. Odus reached into the knapsack and treated himself to a shot of bourbon, his hands shaking. Somehow the encounter with the goat was creepier than the Circuit Rider's uninvited stop at the general store the night before.
One thing was for sure, the Circuit Rider appeared to have a few friends on his side. All Odus had was a pinto horse, a half pint of eighty-proof, and a stubborn streak. He guided Sister Mary higher into the forest, where the tributary springs that fed Rush Branch squeezed from cracks in the gray, worn granite. In the world's old est mountains, where the headwaters of one of the oldest rivers leaked like the tears of a tired widow, Odus figured this was as good a place as any to serve as a cradle of evil.
And Odus planned on rocking that cradle.
Mark Draper checked into the cabin at four in the afternoon. He'd driven around Solom to get a feel for his daughter's new home. She hadn't exaggerated when she'd called it a 'one-horse shit bag of a town,' and though he'd chastened her on the use of the expletive, he'd had to grin around the straw of his 7-Up. He hadn't grinned as much as he'd wanted because Jett's story was way too disturbing. As fantasy, it suggested dementia. As truth, it suggested the need for escape.
He couldn't just drive down to Charlotte and hope everything would work out for the best. Mark wasn't an optimist by nature, and that was probably wise, given his penchant for fucking up his life.
He wouldn't fuck this up, wouldn't let Jett down. He paid for the room with a credit card, shocked at the $150 fee for one night. Reading his expression, the Happy Hollow clerk explained that it was the fall tourist season, and with the leaf-lookers who would soon be swarming the highways, he was lucky to find a room at all. Mark thought of driving back to Titusville where a Holiday Inn, Comfort Suites, and other chain hotels feasted on the college. But
