Solom

by Scott Nicholson

  A flurry of communication ensued over the following weeks, phone calls at night, emails throughout the day, and even old-fashioned, handwritten letters showing up about once a week. It was the letters that eventually won her over. In person, Gordon was a little cool and distant, but his sentences burned with passion and a playful humor that belied his professorial persona. He invited her to visit Solom, and she drove up with Jett one Saturday, her daughter grumbling all the while, dropping into defensive mode over Dad. But Jett had frolicked on the Smith farm, exploring the barn, traipsing through the woods, playing in the creek, and by sundown Jett wanted to stay for another day. By then Katy was prepared to bed the evasive Dr. Smith, but he seemed old-fashioned about courting, reluctant to do more than kiss her cheek.

  Katy’s decision to accept his proposal came after a few sleepless weeks of soul-searching. She didn’t want a replacement for Mark, especially in Jett’s life, but as Mrs. Smith she would be a stay-at-home mother, something she had never desired until Jett’s drug problems surfaced. Katy blamed herself for being so absorbed in her career that she let her marriage to Mark fail (though intellectually she knew they’d waltzed together over the cliff edge) and then compounded the error by neglecting Jett. Gordon and Solom offered a fresh start, a chance for her to rebuild her relationship with her daughter with a supportive man in her life.

  Gordon had never explained Christ’s position as the world’s most famous sacrificial lamb, but it didn’t matter now. The honeymoon was over.

  ***

  The Blackburn River was old.

  Geologists said it was the second oldest river in the world, after the Amazon.

  The people in Solom didn’t care about history books. All they saw was the slim ribbon of silver that cut into the brown banks of the hilltops. The water brought sustenance in the spring, kept their stock alive in the summer, and in September it shot its narrow currents among the yellow and white stones. It slowed to a trickle in January, only to bust out white again during the March melt. Maybe the water, like the humans who clustered around its shores, had an instinctive understanding of ebb of flow.

  Solom took its name from bad grammar. Some say the place used to be called Solomon Branch, after the Old Testament king. Others said it was Solomn, a misspelling of the word “solemn,” which meant everything from formal and serious in a liturgical sense to grave and somber, as in a funeral ceremony. The permanent valley settlers had eventually trimmed off the silent letter at the end. If it sounded like Solom, then it was Solom.

  The original residents were the buffalo that trampled ruts across the hilltops as they made their way from Kentucky in the summer to the Piedmont flatlands of Carolina in the winter. The herds numbered in the thousands, and the ground shook as their hooves bit into the earth. The Cherokee and Catawba visited the region only in the fall, when meat was available. Otherwise, the natives had the good sense to stay off those cold and forlorn mountaintops. Then the whites came along and poured across the slopes like albino fire ants.

  Daniel Boone and the early European trappers and hunters were cold-blooded enough to hang out on the trails and slaughter their quarry across the seasons, with no sense of a circular food chain. In a few short decades, the buffalo and elk that had sustained the natives for centuries were gone, remembered only in the occasional place name or flea-ridden floor skin. The Cherokee had their own problems, driven at gunpoint to Oklahoma, where the landscape was as alien to them as if they had been dropped onto the surface of Mars. The federal government later felt guilty enough to grant them control of gambling casinos, but by then their heritage and souls had been all but lost. They dreamed of spiritual journeys where they met up with buffalo, but they woke up to an artificially inflated Britney Spears, an artificially inflated Barry Bonds, and a cynical, media-inflated Republican leadership that encouraged fear in every sector of society, especially among the outcast.

  Not that modern Solom paid any attention. The inhabitants were mostly the offspring of farm and lumber workers, the women thick and faithful, the men prone to drink when they weren’t in church. All were raised with a sense of duty, and church records were often the final statement on the quality of a life lived. A man’s obituary was set down by a barely literate family member, and if the man lived a good life, he was noted as a solid provider, a friend of the church and community, and an honest trader. If he failed in any of those areas, his obituary was nothing more than an opportunity to question the eventual resting place of his soul.

  Women were measured within a narrower yet more sophisticated set of parameters. Were her hips broad enough to bear a goodly number of children? Did she sit quietly on her side of church, raising her voice only at the appropriate time, after the males had established the proper cadence? Did she keep the Bible on her lap instead of the shelf? Did her obituary list more than a dozen grandchildren?

  No obit had ever been written for Harmon Smith, and his name was marked in no family Bible.

  Many testimonials had once been recorded about the work of Good Harmon Smith, a Methodist minister who had crossed denominational lines in the late 1800s, whose horse Old Saint had touched half of three states. A rival minister, the Rev. Duncan Blackburn, had attended to the needs of Episcopalians and the few mountain Catholics. Blackburn had earned a resting place on holy ground while Smith had died on the slopes of what became know as Lost Ridge. Legend held he was on his way to a January bedside appointment with a dying widow when a blizzard swept down from Canadian tundra and paid his holy debt in full. In the twenty-first century, Blackburn had a line-drawing portrait tucked in the back pages of a university library while Smith occupied graves in three different churchyards. No one knew where Smith’s real remains were buried.

  And some questioned if there were any remains left worth returning to the dirt.

  But this was Solom, home of an old river, and questions only came from those who didn’t know any better. From outsiders, and newcomers, and those who heard the soft sound of distant twilight hoof beats.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cabbage.

  Katy hated the stuff. When cooked, it stank almost as much as swordfish. But Gordon had grown it in the garden, and therefore it achieved all the sacred status of a sacrificial lamb. She could cop out and make slaw, a little mayo, celery seed, and paprika and she’d be done. But she wanted Gordon to know she had broken a sweat, and she might accidentally cut her thumb in the bargain and prove herself a worthy mountain farm wife.

  She lifted the heavy knife and was about to snick a fat green-white wedge when the scream pierced the air.

  Jett.

  Not from upstairs, so it couldn’t be Jett.

  Outside.

  Maybe the cat had gotten a baby rabbit. Katy had been startled by the first bunny scream she’d ever heard, on a Sunday morning several weeks back. It was the keening of a raped woman, the grunt of a gutted man, and the mournful wail of an abandoned child all rolled into one. Gordon had chuckled at her leap from the bed. “City girl,” he’d admonished.

  But Gordon wasn’t here and this was no laughing matter.

  The scream came again, and this time it did sound like Jett, and it came from the barn, muffled by the chestnut walls.

  Time for Supermom without a cape, her uniform stained blue jeans and beige sleeveless blouse instead of blue-and- red tights with a yellow S across her boobs.

  She burst onto the porch, raising the knife as if she meant business.

  Katy made a direct line toward the barn, kicking away the dormant lilies that had grown around the Smith house for decades. She plowed through the garden, her flip-flops throwing up brown bits of dirt and dead vegetation. The gate was at the end of the driveway, but it was thirty yards out of the way. The fence was right in front of her, sparkling silver in the sunset, but seemed as ephemeral as a spider web. Her heart beat monkey rhythms.

  Where was Jett?

  She was unaware of leaping the fence, though one foot had probably reached the top strand of
hog wire, but she stumbled on the other side, the knife flying from her hand as she fell to her knees. The barn rose before her, a haunted vault of straw and cow manure, as ancient as the family that had erected it. Her daughter, her life, her soul was in there.

  She scrambled to her feet and found the knife. Her breath was a sick series of dry heaves in her chest. As she entered the barn, she raised the blade like a talisman.

  “Jett?”

  No answer, only the wooden echo of her pulse.

  The inside of the barn had gone to a bruised shade of purple with sunset.

  Creeeeeek.

  The loft.

  She squinted and found the stairs and was halfway to them when a blur of motion came from her left.

  “Jett?”

  Katy’s gasp tasted of dust. She stepped back as the body fell from above, its arms flailing in the half-light, the waist bent at an obscene angle. She cringed, waiting for it to fall in a splintering heap of bones on the crooked steps. Instead, the body bounced and sprawled on the dirt floor at her feet. She jumped away, slamming her back into a locust support beam.

  The body was too large to be Jett’s. It was face down, the limbs askew. Katy waited for breathing or a wheeze of pain to come from the twisted figure. After a few moments of silence, she eased forward and nudged the body with her toe. It moved with a rodent rustle, too light to be flesh and bone.

  Katy knelt and touched the flannel of the shirt, then lifted the head. Straw spilled from a split seam in the clothing. It was a scarecrow, mildewed and ragged. Her ascent up the stairs must have dislodged it from its seasonal slumber dangling from a rusty nail. A length of braided hemp rope was tied in a noose around its neck, the top end frayed. The head was wrapped in cheesecloth, with pale bone button for eyes and a piece of black yarn for a mouth. Its straw planter’s hat had rolled away, a jagged crescent torn in the brim as if some animal had taken a big bite.

  Maybe Jett had seen the scarecrow and thought it was a person and freaked out, just as Katy had done. After all, Gordon had told her the legend, too, and Jett’s face had gone pale while listening, making her black eye shadow even more dramatic.

  But there were worse things than legends. Like drugs. What if Jett had scored some angel dust or crystal meth, something that turned reality into a rocket ride down a nightmare chute to hell?

  “Jett?”

  Footsteps drummed on the loft floor above. Boots, too heavy to be Jett’s ankle-high black leather things.

  Katy mounted the steps, glancing at the four chicken-wired windows on the lower floor, wishing more of the fading sunlight would pour through and burn her fear away. But she had little room for fear, because worry took over. At the top of the stairs, she eased up the little metal hasp that kept the door fastened. She’d never been in the loft, and had only briefly visited the barn during Gordon’s introductory tour.

  Too bad she wasn’t Supermom for real. X-ray vision would come in handy right now. The light was a little better up here, thanks to the large triangles cut into each end of the barn. Uneven squares of dirty blonde hay were stacked around like an autistic giant’s alphabet blocks. Stalks of tobacco dangled upside down at the far end of the barn, speared on poles, the drying leaves like the wings of reddish-brown bats.

  Could Jett be playing some bizarre game of hide-and-seek? She wasn’t the type to scream. If Jett wanted to get attention, she usually came up with some mind-blowing observation or another. But Katy had been neglecting Jett in favor of Gordon lately, even though Jett’s world had been shaken more than anyone’s by the move to Solom.

  “Okay, Jett,” she said. “Fun’s over. Come on out.”

  She heard a giggle, or maybe it was only a breeze rifling the parched tobacco.

  “Dinner’s probably burning,” Katy said. “If you thought the swordfish was bad, wait until you smell scorched cabbage.”

  Katy felt silly holding the knife, so she tucked it behind her back as she headed between the rows of hay. The air was as thick as snuff, motes spinning in the shafts of dying sunlight. A few loose piles of hay were scattered here and there, near the black square holes in the floor through which food was thrown down to the animals. Katy expected Jett to jump from behind a stack at any moment, or burst up from one of the hay piles in a sneeze-inducing spray of gold. Good prank, except that would spoil dinner. She wanted Gordon in a good mood, so maybe they could finally finish consummating their marriage.

  “Cute, honey. We can have a good laugh over the dinner table.”

  No answer. The time Jett had taken acid in Charlotte, she’d stayed out all night, hiding in a storm sewage pipe, showing up late for school the next day, dirty, wild-eyed, and ravaged by insects. Katy, who had waited up sleepless and had several times resisted the urge to call the police, had picked her up from school, taken her to the doctor, and let the school psychologist give the lecture. Something in Jett had changed after that, a drifting look in her eyes, a secretive smile that spoke of more journeys to come. Hopefully this wasn’t one of them.

  Katy made her way through the maze of bales to the far end of the barn. She looked through the triangle to the wooded hills above. A few goats dotted the slopes, browsing in the brush at the edge of the forest. In the adjacent meadow, separated by a stitch of fencing, cows worked the grass, their heads swiveling, ears twitching against the insects. She was about to turn back to explore the loft again when a light flickered in the distant trees.

  Somebody with a lantern or flashlight. The ridge was Gordon’s property. It was nearly hunting season, but Gordon’s land was posted. Gordon said his neighbors were always welcome, as long as no bullets flew around and no drunken hunters mistook his cows for oversize deer. She’d have to tell him about the trespassing later, when such ordinary oddities would matter.

  “Jett, seriously. Don’t make me get mad.” She tapped the knife against a post. “The scarecrow trick was a good one. Spooked the living daylights out of me. I bet you can’t wait to tell Gordon.”

  No answer. Maybe Jett had already slipped down the stairs and was waiting at the dinner table, or in her room, cheeks swollen with the laughter she was storing up. At any rate, Jett was thirteen and could find her way to the house with no trouble, even in the dark. Even stoned out of her eyeballs.

  But that scream—

  It hadn’t sounded like a joke.

  If there had even been a scream. Maybe, like the perfume in the kitchen or the footsteps that had no legs, the scream had been nothing more than invisible smoke. The farm wasn’t haunted. Despite the way Gordon’s first wife had died.

  This was silly. Jett had promised to quit drugs as part of their new life. If a mother and daughter couldn’t trust each other, they were hopeless anyway. Katy decided she would check on dinner, and if she didn’t see Jett in the house, she would grab a flashlight and return. Without the knife.

  “Okay, Jett,” she yelled, her words stifled by the hay. “I’m going back to the house.”

  The lower floor of the barn was darker as she descended the stairs. The air was as cool as a cellar. A soft, moist sighing arose from the packed floor. She swallowed hard and took another step, nearly slipping to fall alongside the prone scarecrow. Something large and pale moved in the shadows, and Katy tightened her grip on the knife.

  Damn Gordon and his mountain legends. The one about the haunted scarecrow, in particular. About how it only walked at late harvest, when the corn was turning hard and brown and the first frosts settled on the land. According to legend, the scarecrow climbed down from the stake where it had hung all growing season like a neglected Christ on the cross. Then it dragged itself into the barn, where it feasted on one of the animals, filling its dry throat with fresh blood. Sustained until winter, the scarecrow then returned to its stake, though on moonlit nights you might see rusty red spots on its sackcloth head. Gordon’s eyes glistened as he’d told the story, and Katy had given the uneasy laugh he expected in response.

  This was the right time of year. And the scare
crow that had fallen at her feet looked just like the one that leaned broken and sad in the cornfield at the end of the vegetable garden.

  No. That was just a mountain folk tale. Not a wives’ tale, because no wife would be so stupid as to pass along a story like that. Katy could come up with a rational explanation. Holder of a business degree from Queen’s College, assistant to the board of directors at Wachovia Bank, she was made of stern stuff. Almost boring but ultimately practical.

  So THINK.

  Surely a big farm like this one had several scarecrows. Gordon’s family had probably saved them, the same way frugal farm families had always hoarded things that could be used again. Besides, it was just a sack of straw. Flannel and old denim and scraps. No matter the legends.

  The dim outline of the scarecrow made a lesser darkness on the floor, the gray socks of the feet poking out of the jeans, gloves at the end of each sleeve. The left sock, the one closest to her, twitched.

  The wind, had to be. Except the air was as still as sundown.

  Katy put out her own foot, meaning to kick the sock in case a frantic mouse was inside and upset that its nest had been disturbed. The straw toes flexed and curled, then the foot kicked back at her.

  The scarecrow would rise to its elbows and knees and haul itself off to eat a chicken or pig or maybe even a cow, ready to gnaw with those teeth—what would its teeth be?—kernels of giant, hardened corn, piercing flesh and grinding bone and—

  The boots sounded above her again.

  She hadn’t imagined them. Despite her hallucinations in the house, she wasn’t losing her mind. Scarecrows didn’t move by themselves and her new house wasn’t haunted. Never mind Gordon’s goddamned legends.

  Crumbs of straw fell in a snow between the cracks in the flooring planks above. Someone was up there for real.