The Farm

by Scott Nicholson

  The farm was too quiet. She'd expected a big change from the city, but she had imagined barking dogs, crowing roosters, badly tuned tractors, and the rattle and clank of distant, rusty machinery. This was autumn. Where were all the chain saws turning hardwood forests into firewood?

  The guineas were strangely hushed in their boxes and the goats watched her as they usually did, standing stiff-legged in the field, their beards drifting slightly in the breeze, ears flapping at the flies. In her mind, she imagined them skinned for meat, their oblong pupils regarding her from the slope of their skinned skulls.

  She shook the woven basket farther up her left elbow and reached into the first nest. Gordon didn't have names for the hens, so Katy thought of them collectively as "Martha." The first one was M, the second one A, and so on. If they were fryers instead of laying hens, she couldn't bear to name them. It was bad enough just eating their eggs. Even though they were unfertilized, it was hard not to think of the yolks as little abortion victims. She had never considered such a thing before, despite being a lifelong omelet lover. Funny how being on a farm made you more aware of and connected to the food, whether it was the seeds that grew into turnips or the steers that turned into ground round.

  "My, M, you must be feeling your oats today," Katy said, finding two eggs in the first nest. She laid them gently in the basket as M clucked in either motherly anguish or pea-brained hunger. Katy peered through the chicken-wired slot at A in the next box. All she could see was the serrated, black-and-gray pattern of the hen's feathers. A's head was tucked under one wing, making her look like a soft wad of thrift-shop rags.

  "Okay, girl, here I come." Katy reached her arm into the curtained slot. She felt around in the straw, finding nothing. Maybe A was sitting on her egg. The hens sometimes did that, driven by an instinct stronger than the memory of all the previous unhatched eggs that had gone before. Katy felt the soft downy feathers of A's chest, then slid her hand underneath.

  She nearly broke her wrist snatching her hand free. Something cool and scaly had writhed away from her touch.

  It wasn't a chicken leg. This thing had rippled.

  Did snakes eat eggs? Could one have crawled through the curtain, or dropped onto the wire from above and slithered into A's nest?

  Katy didn't know, but she wasn't about to stick her hand in to find out.

  But what would Gordon say when he saw only two eggs in the refrigerator? He would ask why, and Katy would have to say "Chickenshit." Because she was too chickenshit to stick her hand into the nests. And Gordon's forehead would furrow slightly, accompanied by a gratuitous, understanding, demeaning smile, all the while his eyes saying, "I thought I'd found a replacement for Rebecca, but all I got was this skinny Irish redhead who can't even pluck an egg, much less a whole chicken."

  "Chickenshit, chickenshit, chickenshit," she said to herself. She had placed a moratorium on cussing because she didn't want Jessie picking up the habit, but she was alone and who gave a good goddamn what the goats thought?

  She looked around for something to poke into the nest. Maybe if she could get A to move, she would be able to see the snake. Or whatever it was.

  God, please let it be a snake, because, sure, they are scary as seven hells, but at least snakes live and breathe and are listed in zoology catalogs.

  Katy was about to give up, to go out into the cornfield to find Gordon, when she remembered the pitchfork inside the barn. She hadn't mentioned the scarecrow to Gordon, because he would have laughed. And she had been scared out of her wits by Jett's strange bout of amnesia. And then there was the goat that had somehow locked itself in the loft. The barn was a place to avoid. Nothing good seemed to happen there. Just ask all the livestock that had been slaughtered over that straw-scattered floor, that had been decapitated and strung up on chains and turned from livestock into deadstock.

  But the pitchfork was a weapon. If she could hoist a skewered snake before Gordon, show off her grit and determination, then perhaps Gordon would at last accept her as a suitable replacement and draw her into his arms at midnight, accept her and take her and finally make her his wife.

  Besides, next to a confrontation with a snake, a little trip inside the barn was nothing. The pitchfork was hanging twenty feet from me front sliding doors. She could be in and out with barely enough time to smell the trampled manure. And once she had the pitchfork, even a goat wouldn't scare her.

  She set the basket on top of R's nesting box and went to the sliding doors. The oaken, crudely planked doors were suspended on rusty wheels that rolled across a steel track overhead. The left one was partially pulled back, and cool air wafted from the opening. The midmorning sun cut an orange sliver into the darkness, but the great, hulking black beyond gave off an almost palpable weight, like oily water held back by a dam.

  Twenty feet. Ten steps max, each way.

  She leaned against the edge of the left door and shoved. It slid across its track with a metal scream. The sun poured in at her back like a sacred ally. She was sweating, though the temperature was in the fifties. She looked into the pasture. The goats seemed curious and faintly amused.

  "Chickenshit, chickenshit, chickenshit."

  Katy squinted into the barn, trying to locate the pitchfork on its wooden-pegged resting place.

  Twenty feet. She could be there and back before you could say "Children of the Corn, Part Thirteen."

  Now she saw it, hanging among some coils of rope, a thick length of rusted chain, a strange set of clamps that looked like a medieval torture device, and a crooked-handled scythe whose blade was brown with age. She didn't remember the scythe from before, but it didn't look like an effective weapon against a snake.

  She stepped into the barn, breath held. Eighteen feet to go. No biggie. Six yards. Not even as far as a first down in football, and she didn't have eleven steroid-inflated males trying to stop her. All she had was her fear.

  Another big step and she was on the dividing line between sun and shadow. One of the goats bleated behind her, and it sounded terribly like laughter. Another joined in, and another, and Katy screamed as she ran, "Chickenshit, chickenshit, CHICKENSHIT!" Then she had her hands around the rough, grainy handle of the pitchfork and she was pulling it from the wall and it felt good and right and powerful and she could take on any damned snake in the world and she was already halfway back to the bright square of the barn door when she happened to look up at the wall above the loft stairs.

  There hung the scarecrow, fully articulated its straw planter's hat resting on the gunnysack head the bone-button eyes catching and reflecting the sun, burning like autumn bonfires, staring bold and red and hellish, and Katy didn't know what she screamed, it may have been "Chickenshiiiiiiiit," but the sound was swallowed by the dry timber of the walls and the hay bales above and the packed dirt below and the pitchfork bounced to the ground and Katy was running across the yard toward the house where Gordon's dead wife might be drifting around the kitchen and tears were streaming down Katy's face, the goats were joined in a chorus of gleeful laughter, a snake was in the henhouse, but all she could think of was the two eggs in the basket, those sad orange yolks and twin chicks that would never be born.

  Mrs. Stansberry had to stay after school for a meeting, so Jett rode the lame-o school bus home. She sat near the front with the first graders because she didn't want to be teased by Tommy Williamson and Grady Eggers, who sat in the back and ruled their keep like warlords. Grady had toned down a bit since yesterday, when he and Jett had suffered their mutual acid flashback in English class. But Tommy was still Tommy, and he tried to play grab-ass with her whenever she wasn't paying attention and drifted within reach.

  The bus was half-empty when it reached her road. She wrestled her book bag down the steps and the bus was pulling away when Tommy called from the rear window, "Hey, shake it for me, Plucky Duck."

  She flipped a middle finger without looking back, then checked the mail. Phone bill, Mom's October issue of Better Homes amp; Gardens, a seed catalog,
a Honda dealership circular. At the bottom of the pile lay a crisp white envelope. She recognized the handwriting right away. Dad's.

  Jett slipped the letter into a pouch of her backpack, her heart racing. The sun felt brighter and warmer somehow, and the wildflowers along the ditch were more colorful. She skipped a few steps, scuffing the toes of her black boots on the gravel. The Wards' dog barked at her, and she resumed walking, albeit at a faster pace. She didn't want creepy old Betsy Ward to call to her through the kitchen window.

  Betsy wasn't inside the house this time. She was down by the little garden shed, holding a pair of hedge clippers. The shed was by the ditch and Jett would have to walk right by her. She kept her eyes on the rocks in the rutted road, wishing she could will herself into invisibility like Sue Storm of the Fantastic Four comics.

  "Good news?" Betsy said.

  "No, just some magazines," Jett said, figuring she could stop for twenty seconds and go on her way without seeming rude.

  "A pretty girl like you shouldn't wear makeup."

  Jett had been raised to respect her elders. Except, as Mom had said, when they were obviously full of crap. "Mom says it's okay."

  "You come from Charlotte, I hear."

  The old woman said it in a knowing manner, as if Charlotte were the only place you could buy black eyeliner and purple hair dye. "I was born there."

  "What do you think about Solom?"

  Jett shrugged. She saw little point in telling the truth. Betsy probably saw the world beyond the county borders as a strange and unholy land, fraught with terrorists, gangland shootings, adult bookstores, and kids dressed in black. "It's not so bad" she said. "Kind of quiet."

  "Be glad of the quiet."

  "Well, I'd better get home. My mom's expecting me. Been nice talking to you, Mrs. Ward." Like hell.

  Jett was already on her way again when Betsy's next words stopped her. "See the horseback preacher yet?"

  "Preacher?"

  Betsy was grinning like a possum that had just eaten a dozen hen's eggs. "About the time of year for it. He comes galloping into town to grab mean little girls and boys and drag them off to the jangling hole up on Lost Ridge."

  "Sorry, Mrs. Ward. I don't go in for spook stories."

  "You will."

  Jett hurried on up the road Betsy Ward's cackle behind her. She couldn't help eyeing the barn on her way to the house. She didn't believe in spooks. She only believed in hallucinations.

  If she had a joint, she would have sneaked into the bushes and fired it up, despite her promise to Mom. Solom was making her uptight, and she didn't like it. And why be uptight when nature offered several substances that served no other purpose but providing artificial relaxation? And where nature came up short, chemists had picked up the slack and come up with a whole alphabet soup of drugs. She had never tried ecstasy or angel dust, but those substances had floated around the big consolidated schools of Charlotte.

  Good one, birdbrain. Try to kill the anxiety of a drug-induced hallucination by taking more drugs. Sort of like drinking yourself sober. Sounds like something Dad would dream up.

  Instead of running from her problems, she could face them head-on. March right into the barn and up those stairs into the loft, hammering the hell out of her boot heels so the monster or the seven-foot-tall creep or the carniverous goat would know she was coming and-

  Actually, the joint was starting to sound better and better. But she didn't know how to score in this backwoods tractor graveyard. She'd probably have to be friends with rednecks like Tommy Williamson if she ever wanted any connections. The thought made her shudder.

  Mom's Subaru was in the driveway, as usual. Mom was becoming a real homebody, a turn for the weird. "We don't have to change who we are," Mom had said, when convincing Jett that marriage would be a positive move for both of them.

  Except the drugs would have to go. That was part of the deal, and the part Jett felt responsible for. She wondered how much of Mom's hasty decision to marry was fueled by a desire to whisk her daughter away from the big-city lifestyle and the accompanying bad influences she had collected. Jett was surprised she didn't miss most of her friends, but instead of seeing her dad every weekend, she had only seen him once since the move.

  But she had the letter…

  Jett was starting up the flagstone walk when a bleat erupted behind her. A goat stood by the wire fence, gnawing on a locust post. The green irises glittered in the afternoon sun, the boxy pupils fixed on her. Like it was sizing her up. Inviting her into the loft.

  "No way, Joshua boy," she said, louder than she wanted.

  She backed the rest of the way up the walk and onto the porch, not letting the goat out of her sight. Just before she opened the door, she glanced at the barn. A figure stood in the upper window, in tattered clothes, face lost in the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat. Jett slipped inside the house and slammed the door closed, then leaned against it, trying to catch her breath.

  "Honey?" Katy called from the kitchen. "Is that you?"

  Jett didn't trust her voice enough to answer. Instead, she eased the backpack off her shoulder and peeked through the curtains at the barn. Nothing. Even the goat had turned away and ambled up to a tangle of blackberry vines.

  A for-Christ's-sake flashback. Acid bouncing back like a cosmic boomerang to whack her on the ass.

  "Jett?" Katy appeared in the kitchen doorway, wet dough nearly up to her elbows.

  "Hi. What are you making?" Jett forced a smile, an expression she'd avoided since getting braces. A grimace went well with her glum Goth look.

  Katy looked down at her hands as if surprised to find them coated in white goo. "Chicken and dumplings, 1 think. And scratch biscuits."

  "Cookbook?"

  Katy shrugged. "An old family recipe. I found it in the pantry."

  Jett nodded. When they first moved she and Mom had a long talk about Rebecca, Gordon's first wife. Mom insisted she wouldn't try to replace Rebecca. Mom was sure Gordon would appreciate her for who she was, and she might not be the world's greatest homemaker, but she was willing to try. "I'll never be the next Rebecca Smith, but I'll be the first Katy Logan, and that's the best Gordon could hope for," Mom had said.

  Except a little of the sparkle had faded from Mom's eyes, and she seemed a little shaken today. Jett felt a pang of guilt for even thinking of breaking her promise to stay clean. Katy had enough to worry about. Like whatever was causing that smoke in the kitchen.

  "I think your biscuits are done," Jett said.

  Chapter Ten

  The dinner table was made of ancient oak, the legs hand-carved by some distant Smith ancestor. It wobbled slightly when Katy put her elbows on it. She caught Jett's eye and frowned. Jett was staring off into space, right in the middle of Gordon's blessing. Then Katy realized her own eyes were open, and she turned her attention back to the lump of mashed potatoes. The potatoes were a bad choice with the dumplings. The meal appeared gray and bland even with the pink meat of the chicken stirred among the dumpling juice. At least they had fresh broccoli, and Katy was grateful for the hardy crop that continued growing through the early frosts.

  "… and may the Lord bless this bounty placed before us, and the hands that prepared it," Gordon said, in a voice Katy imagined he used when delivering a lecture to half-asleep sophomores. "Amen."

  "Amen," Katy said.

  Gordon flipped out his cloth napkin with a flourish. Katy had never used cloth napkins in Charlotte, considering them an extravagance, the kind of thing that led to a premium charge at a fancy restaurant. But Gordon had showed her the drawer that held the table linens, and explained how Rebecca had always kept three clean sets of the same off-white color. He didn't exactly order Katy to lay out cloth napkins with each dinner, but if Rebecca was able to do it, then why shouldn't Katy? So what if it meant extra laundry and another three minutes of her day wasted?

  "These dumplings look plumb delicious," Gordon said. He speared a lump of cooked dough with his fork, brought it to his nose, an
d sniffed. He took a bite.

  Jett picked up a sprig of broccoli with her fingers, tossed it into her mouth, and began chewing noisily. Katy didn't even think to ask Jett to mind her manners because she was so intent on Gordon's reaction.

  "Mmm," Gordon said. "Acceptable. Most acceptable indeed."

  Acceptable? What in the hell did that mean? That Rebecca's were better? But all she said was, "I'm glad you like them, dear."

  "Maybe we should tell him about the scarecrow now," Jett said.

  "Scarecrow?" Gordon reached for the white wine. Katy would never have dared select a suitable wine. She was a gin girl, at least on her infrequent opportunities to imbibe. Since Jett's drug problems began, though, she had denied herself the dubious pleasure of alcohol. Gordon didn't seem to care about intoxication. He rarely drank more than a glass or two. To him, it was an affectation, like his pipe, the requisite habit of a tenured scholar.

  "The scarecrow in the barn," Katy said.

  "Oh, that old thing? What about it?"

  "Yesterday, it was out in the cornfield. Now it's hanging on the wall."

  "Maybe Odus Hampton brought it in. He was doing some work for me a few days ago, while you guys were shopping in Windshake."

  "It was on the wall, then it was gone yesterday. And it was back again today." Katy didn't want to tell the other part, about how the goat had dragged it away, about how she thought it had moved under its own power. And how it must have put itself together, climbed the wall, and snagged itself on the hook again.

  "Just like the story you told us," Jett said. She didn't seem as enamored of Katy's dumplings as Gordon was. She worked on the broccoli and her milk, then dipped into the bowl of cinnamon apple slices that Katy had prepared as a side dish.

  "The scarecrow boy," Gordon said breaking into a grin. His cheeks were flushed from the wine.