or do chores. That wasn't much of a stretch, because he was so nervous he puked every time a spoonful of food hit his gut. From the bedroom he shared with his brother Zeke, he could see the Smith barn, and under the moonlight shadows sometimes moved in the hayloft. He'd clamp his eyes tight, but one of them would end up creeping open like the lid of a vampire's coffin. He didn't sleep much those two days.
Then, his brother didn't come home from school. The county schools had buses, but the Wards and other kids in their area had to walk a mile down to the river to catch one. The bus stop was a fa vorite spot for shenanigans, with a dozen kids of different ages killing time with jokes, pocketknife stretch, and the occasional round of post office or show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine. Zeke had taken up cigarettes, another favorite pastime at the bus stop, but none of the other kids dared smoke. Of course, that made Zeke the idol of the dirt-road neighborhood, but he also knew he would get his rear end worn to a pile of rags if the folks caught him. The kids said he showed them the pack of cigarettes that morning, unfiltered Viceroys in a shiny pack he must have swiped from the general store.
As big a show-off as he was, Zeke thought he'd best slip off into the woods to do his puffing. Arvel guessed his brother was just as afraid of coughing and hacking in front of the others as he was of being spied by an adult. Whatever the reason, Zeke went into a lau rel scrub and lit up. The kids watched for the trail of smoke to be sure that Zeke wasn't joshing them, then turned their attention back to their games. It was only when the bus rolled up and one of the kids hollered Zeke's name that they realized he'd been gone way too long to just smoke a cigarette.
Arvel's best friend, J.C. Littlejohn, had gone into the laurel to find Zeke. The bus driver honked and the other kids shouted names, according to J.C, but Zeke didn't come out of hiding. J.C. found him sprawled on the ground, belly down, the moist butt of the Viceroy inches from his lips, the ember on the lit end burning a hole in a dead leaf. Zeke's Kedd sneaker had lodged in a protruding root and he'd tripped. Freak accident, the county coroner said. His forehead hit a tree trunk and snapped his neck back, killing him instantly.
And Arvel's first thought upon hearing the news:
He was having a similar thought now. Betsy had come home from the hospital and was going to be just fine. That was the trou ble. Arvel had been hoping that Betsy would be the one the Circuit Rider took this time. Not that he wished ill of Betsy, but after all these years, he was still so sweat-shaky scared of the Circuit Rider he'd rather die a thousand different ways man end up done in by the Circuit Rider. Because them that the Circuit Rider claimed had a way of showing back up.
Arvel had seen his brother a decade after his death, when Arvel was newly married and had taken over running the farm after Daddy's final stroke. Arvel made a habit of keeping watch on the Smith barn, and his adolescence was haunted not by his brother's fluke accident, but by the shifting wedges of darkness that seemed to cavort just beyond the sunlit windows. On a cold March morn ing, when Arvel was on his way to slop the two hogs, Zeke was standing by the collard patch, barely visible, wreathed in the fog as if he were woven into it. His head lolled to one side like an onion hanging by a piece of twine.
'Soon as he finds his horse, you can come join me,' Zeke said, the words seeping out of the mist as if growing up from the dirt. 'Gets lonely over here waiting.'
Arvel dropped the slop bucket, splashing sour milk, table scraps, eggshells, and apple peels on his jeans. He ran back into the house, where Dad saw the smelly clothing and whooped him for spilling the slop. Dad sent him back out to retrieve the bucket, and Arvel had no choice, you didn't cross Dad on pain of death or worse. Zeke was gone when he reached the spot by the collards. Arvel didn't look too hard for his dead brother. Instead, he found an excuse to hang around the house or work in the barn for the next several days, only venturing to the garden in broad daylight.
And even through the fear of that encounter, another thought had pierced through like sunshine through a church's plate-glass window:
Which is the same way he felt when he'd come into the kitchen and seen Betsy sprawled on her back by the stove. The gouge in her side was the mystery. The Circuit Rider wasn't known to mutilate his victims. Sure, they didn't die pretty, but almost always whole. Some said that Rebecca Smith had been taken by the Circuit Rider, but Arvel figured that was just a plain old car wreck on a twisty mountain road. Harmon Smith hadn't been seen in the days leading up to her accident, and it hadn't really fit the pattern of the preacher's rounds.
But he was back now, that was for sure. The first night that Betsy was confined in a Titusville hospital room, Arvel had lain awake until 3:00 a.m., listening for the sound of hoofbeats outside, his heart jumping every time Digger let out a bark. Once he'd gone to the window to check on the Smith barn, but the windows were dark and the moon was buried behind the clouds. Last night, he'd curled up on a couch in the hospital waiting room, a magazine in his lap as if he were expecting a diagnosis, and had napped just enough to have a nightmare of the Circuit Rider chasing him down the goat path from the fishing hole.
He poured a cup of tea for Betsy and checked the lock on the back door. He didn't know if locks would keep the dead preacher out. For all he knew, the door had been locked when Betsy had her little accident. She had no memory of falling or hitting her head, only a headache she compared to the one she'd had the morning after Arvel got her drunk on moonshine and became engaged to her the old-fashioned way.
Betsy was local, half Rominger and half Tester, and she knew about the Circuit Rider, like everyone else who grew up in these parts. She didn't talk about it, and didn't seem to connect her acci dent with the preacher's return. So there was still a chance that Betsy was the intended victim. The preacher could certainly do worse: Betsy was a decent cook and didn't run her mouth too much, she was beholden to men and honored the local traditions. She could can a mean batch of relish or sauerkraut, wasn't above butchering a chicken, and put up with Arvel's rumblings about once a month when he needed satisfaction. Arvel didn't know exactly what the preacher did with them after he got mem, but he didn't want to find out. All he knew was if he survived this time, he probably wouldn't live long enough for another turn of the Circuit Rider's wheel. And that was plenty fine with Arvel.
This was Sunday, the very day Harmon Smith had been killed all those years ago. If ever there was a day for the preacher to carry a grudge, this would be it. And no doubt Zeke would be out tonight, maybe hanging around the garden carrying a hoe or flitting through the apple orchard like a shredded kite.
He added a spoonful of sugar to the tea and carried it up the stairs, glad that he wouldn't be alone tonight.
Chapter Thirty
Jett tucked a stone-washed denim jacket, a pair of black stock ings, and a sweat suit into her backpack. She looked around the room. She'd never really settled into this place. Maybe it was Gordon's dreariness hanging over the entire house, or the faceless generations of Smiths who had lived in this room before her. A Brandon Lee poster and a diaphanous black scarf over the lamp shade didn't make a place any more inviting to a Gothling.
Mom had said to hurry, so Jett flipped through the CD stack. She passed over the Bella Morte, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, the music that had once seemed to match her mood. Now it all seemed so childish. Nihilism was great when it was part of a stage character, like makeup and black-leather props and facial piercings. But when you had stared nothingness in the face, and it stared right back and grinned, then the romanticism was lost. Jett nudged the CDs aside and plucked up some of her mother's fa vorites. Robyn Hitchcock's
She crammed a couple of changes of day clothes in the bag. She didn't know if she'd ever see this room again, or the rest of her stuff. It depended on how well Gordon handled Mom's leaving. He might go postal and come after them with both guns blazing, or he might just as easily sit by the fire with a glass of wine, intellectual izing the reality of abandonment. That was the problem with Gordon. He didn't seem human, so you couldn't expect a human reaction.
After packing, Jett slid open her desk drawer and reached to the underside of the desk where she'd taped her
