Scott Nicholson - The Farm

"Get used to it," Katy said.

Something crashed in the pantry.

"Wonderful." She punched up the proper cook time on the keypad of the microwave. She couldn't handle cabbage but she was magic with instant meals.

With the microwave whirring behind her, she went to the pantry and pulled back the curtain. The aroma of lilacs was so strong it was like a slap in the face. Rows and rows of Mason jars lined the shelves, containing raspberry preserves, chow chow, sauerkraut, and a dozen other goods all expertly canned by Gordon's first wife. Enough to last a nuclear winter.

On the floor, juice leaking from shards of curved and gleaming glass, was a jar of pickles. Broken like the spaghetti sauce. As Katy knelt to pick up the largest pieces, she felt the curtain stir behind her, as if someone was through with business in the pantry and had chores elsewhere.

Jett listened to Mom banging around in the kitchen. She tried to muster a little sympathy, because Mom was trying to be some kind of trophy wife and didn't have the sense to recognize it just wasn't in her blood. Mom had just been plain uncool lately, a slave to the kitchen, fussing over the house, keeping dirty laundry off the floor. All to please Gordon, a man who wouldn't notice his slippers were on fire unless somebody turned a hose on him.

She tugged her Walkman from the lower shelf of her bedside table. She almost wished she had a joint. That would go over well with the Cure whispering through the headphones, Robert Smith going on about how he couldn't find himself even when he was in love with someone happy and young. No wonder, he should ditch the "happy" part and find a real woman. Jett would gladly volunteer.

After all, Jett was a drug-addict loser who had finally gone so far over the edge she was imagining mystical encounters with giant scarecrow men. If she had been stoned, she could have laughed it off. But she had promised Mom that drugs were a thing of the past, a habit left in Charlotte, and she was determined to keep the promise. If Mom could change, so could Jett. Though it looked like neither of them were changing for the better.

The front door closed downstairs, and over the guitar solo she heard Gordon's belly-deep professor's voice delivering his standard catch phrase. "Where are my favorite girls?"

Jett wormed deeper beneath the blankets. Gordon never entered her room after she was in bed thank goodness. That was one advantage of his being a religious guy. He had some weird Old Testament code that kept women in their place but also placed them on an altar. Mom had swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. After Dad's neglect, any sort of attention was a cause of mindless joy for her. Not that Dad was a bad guy. He just had his own fucking shit to deal with, truckloads of it, and Jett wished she could call him right now. She needed somebody real to talk to, somebody who would understand about stupid scarecrow men.

But what would she tell him? She couldn't really remember. The whole thing in the barn seemed like a bad acid trip, and Jett knew about acid because she'd dropped it a second time at Melissa Sanderson's fourteenth birthday party. She'd spent the whole night hiding under Melissa's bed, talking to the dust bunnies. The weirdest thing was that the dust bunnies had talked back, and they even acted like bunnies, hopping around, frolicking, twitching their little whiskers. But that was a lifetime ago and a whole other person. That had been a stupid, skinny kid trying to fit in with the crowd.

Now she was trying to fit out of the crowd.

She cranked the Cure up to full volume and put the blanket over her head so Mom would think she was asleep. She wouldn't sleep. She didn't dare. Because, if she closed her eyes, she might see the tall, dark man with the sickle.

Somehow, morning came just the same.

Ray Tester pressed the lever beneath the fuel control of his Massey Ferguson, raising the hydraulic arms at the Tear of the tractor. The arms held a bush hog, an oversize lawn mower attachment that hacked meadows into hay. Ray only had ten acres, the smallest of the parcels that had been divided among the family when Zachariah Tester died. Old Zack had been the preacher at Rush Branch Primitive Baptist Church, a position now held by David Tester, Ray's oldest brother. David had gotten sixty acres in the will and Ray's attendance at the church had been spotty ever since, mostly funerals, weddings, and whenever some good home-baked pies were being served.

Ray surveyed the slain grass behind him. The signs called for dry weather, and if the rain held off for five days, Ray could get the hay rolled and stacked safely in the shed. He had a dozen head of cattle, but the way people were breeding goats up here, he might be better off culling his herd and paying his property tax bill by selling hay. He could understand the temptation to raise goats over cows: goats preferred to browse instead of graze, so you could turn them loose in the woods and they did gangbusters. They didn't mind a steep slope, either.

On the downside, and Ray had learned there was always a downside when it came to farming, goat meat was like a gamier version of venison and you'd never find it served up at McDonald's. Some of the organic farmers that had settled in Solom over the last decade had taken to milking goats. A nanny raised holy hell if you didn't tug her teats twice a day, the yield wasn't all that hot, and unless you were squeezing the milk into cheese, you had to hustle it off to market in Asheville or Charlotte. Both of those cities were full of queers and Asheville in particular was known to harbor witches, so as far as Ray was concerned the organic hippies could keep that little business.

Ray wiped the sweat from his bald head. A Cadillac passed on the road white as a virgin, with tinted windows and tires wide enough to roll out pizza dough. Damned tourist. Ray thought about flipping a finger, but Sarah down at the general store had lectured him on how outside money was good stuff. Yankees with summer homes paid the county plenty in taxes but didn't require many services, since they were only down here two or three months a year. Still, a Yankee was a fucking Yankee, and the invasion that had started in the War Between the States with General Bill Stoneman and finished up with Sherman had never really ended just changed tactics. Instead of cavalry and carpetbaggers, New York sent its developers and architects and their scrawny, pale wives.

But the driver of that heavy-assed hunk of steel was probably spending money down at Sarah's, and she was as sweet as sugarcane, so Ray lifted his hand in a halfhearted wave. Tourists liked that sort of thing, the farmer in his field a simple picture hearkening back to a simpler time. Wasn't nothing simple about it. You couldn't barter for what you needed anymore, and the government had gotten bigger every year, despite the Republican takeover of the South. Ray could sell down at the farmers' market in Boone and pocket some tax-free income, but he also had to be on the Agricultural Extension Office books so he could get his handout when the government decided to subsidize some crop or another.

The Cadillac disappeared around the curve and Ray turned the tractor for another pass. He lowered the bush hog and the thick blade cut into the clover, dandelion, rye, and sour grass. The green scent filled his nostrils. A horsefly landed on the back of his neck and he swiped at it. The fly lifted and settled again just above his ear. Ray slapped again, twisting his neck, so he wasn't watching as his tractor hit a hump, causing the front tires to bounce. Ray's left foot reached for the clutch but the back tires had already rolled over the same hump. The bush hog blade made a whining noise, and Ray looked back to see a stream of dark liquid spew from beneath the protective metal shield.