Chicken (15 page)

Shetan stretches his neck over the chicken wire fence, nudges me hard between the shoulder blades. “I better get on with the chores. I’ll dry quick.”

“Yes, I think today’ll be a hot one.” 

She sips her tea, gazes off to the east where the blurry sun hovers over the stand of pines that separates her land from the neighbors’.  A cow bellows and a crow bursts from the tallest tree, cawing. My eyes follow it across the cloudless sky. 

“I was hoping for some more rain.”

Because if I’m not going to Brant’s house today, I don’t want anyone else going either. Specifically, Lauren and her greedy, grabby hands. She had to take the pledge before Mackey would let her sing in church, but I don’t think she meant it, and I suspect it was already too late. I mean, theater people, you know.

“Me too. But all we can do is be grateful for what we received and keep praying for more.”

“Like Brother Mackey said.”

She makes a face like her tea is bitter. “Yes.”

“I guess he really knows what he’s talking about.”

She squints at me over her next sip. Crow’s feet pulled back to her temples. Something about being on this end of that look makes me feel like a grown-up. I stand a little straighter, hold my shoulders back. She sets her glass on the rail, leans one shoulder against the wooden column holding up the roof. Sucks her lips in and then lets them go with a tiny pop, like Mama after she’s applied lipstick. 

“He’s the pastor. I should hope he does.”

Shetan snuffles at my hair, smears something wet on my neck. I step forward, and it’s like that movement jostles out the words I don’t mean to say. “Is it weird? Having your nephew over you spiritually? You probably changed his diapers and stuff.”

She laughs. “I did quite a bit more than that.”

“I think that’d be strange. I can’t imagine taking advice from Laramie, much less her kid someday.”

“Casper, did you notice I was upset last night?”

I kick a clod of mud off the side of my boot. “You were upset?”

Holding onto the post, she eases herself down beside Debbie. She pats the boards beside her. “Come sit.”

I cross the yard, sit on the opposite side of the steps, and lean against the other peeling column. Debbie stretches out on her belly and rests her chin on my knee. I pat the white ruff around her neck. Sister Bonnie takes her glass down from the rail and enjoys a nice, long, ice-clinking swig. I’m suddenly aware of the syrup coating my lips and tongue and throat, but I don’t want to distract her by asking for a drink.

“As a member of Harvest Mission, I have to respect Mackey and his decisions for the church. God placed him in that position for a reason. He’s a good man. A sincere man. And he loves you kids with all his heart. He truly does. But as his aunt, I sometimes want to bend him over my knee when I see him doing certain things. Because he’s not helping the people he loves.”

I comb my fingers through Debbie’s fur. Up close, it’s clear the sun’s washed her out from black to a dark rusty brown. She smacks her lips like she’s trying to get rid of a bad taste too. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is—imagine if someone in the church were experiencing those kinds of feelings, and they came to church looking for God’s love, and they heard the man in charge talking like they’re his enemy. And not even like they’re one of the enemies God tells us to love, but something different, something worse. Something that needs to be stamped out. How would that person feel?”

I bite my lip and curl my fingers in Debbie’s fur. “Pretty bad.”

She doesn’t say anything else right away. Her little goats butt their heads against the trough, demanding I come feed them. 

“But there’s nobody around here like that,” I mumble.

“Statistically speaking, there could be as many six hundred somebodies like that in town right now.”

I shake my head. “Nope. No way. Not possible.”

“Not probable. But only because people have this funny way of leaving when they don’t feel wanted. But I assure you there’s plenty around.”

I play with Debbie’s silky ear, turn it inside out over her skull. “I thought Caleb Courts was the only one there’d ever been.”

She sighs and looks off across the pasture toward the Ditch. “Caleb was just very open about it from a very early age.”

I pinch a tick out of the pink crevice of Debbie’s ear. Smash it between my thumbnails. “And now he’s dead.”

Sister Bonnie reaches out and strokes Debbie’s tail. “Casper, did anyone ever tell you what happened to my sister and her husband? Mackey’s parents?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t know anything happened to them.” 

“They died. During a mission trip. Along with two other couples from the church. What do you think God was punishing them for?”

I shrug. “I can’t imagine.”

“Good. Because whatever you imagined would be wrong. My sister and her husband and my friends—they died because they wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all. Death is a tragedy, not a punishment, Casper.”

My eyebrows crunch down. “But doesn’t the Bible say the wages of sin is death? Sounds like a punishment to me.”

“It does say that. Because bad decisions often lead to tragic endings. If you drive drunk, you’ll probably crash one day. But that doesn’t mean Jesus took the wheel and steered you into a light pole to prove a point.”

I think about my father’s last bull ride and his conviction that God let it happen, let us lose everything just to bring us closer to Him. I think about how this lets Daddy off the hook for doing something arrogant and stupid. He didn’t fail us; he just experienced a pre-determined plot twist. 

“Caleb is just one story, Casper. If I could tell you all the kids—and I can’t, so don’t ask—but if I could tell you all the kids who have come in over the years, sneaking books off my shelves that they never bring back—”

I swallow. “You’ve got books about that? Here?”

“Not as many as I should because, like I said, they keep disappearing.”

I think about Brant telling me what his mother did to the copy of Harry Potter he borrowed from Hannah. “Maybe grown-ups are stealing them so kids can’t read ’em.”

“Maybe. But I think it’s more likely that sometimes people don’t want to let go of the first hand that reaches out to them.”

Debbie, like Tyler Mathis, apparently has a gift for intuiting shameful secrets because she picks that moment to sit up and destroy the evidence in my eye before it can slide down my nose. I push her away and wipe the slobber off my face.

I clear my throat. “So you’re like a liberal then?”

“I’m a librarian, Casper. And a Christian. Two things, which to me, are all about being the hand that reaches out, not the one that pushes away. If that says something to you about the way I vote, you’re welcome to make that assumption.”

Shetan whistles and starts tugging on the green gate’s chain. Sister Bonnie touches my hand. I want to tell her everything, but I don’t have the words. Then again, maybe I don’t need them. Seems she’s already read enough of other peoples’ to fill in my blanks.

“I can’t change my nephew, Casper. But I can pray he makes better decisions.” She hauls herself up with a groan. “I’ve got to get to work. Go now. Feed my sheep.”

She chuckles at her joke as she opens the back door. Debbie jumps up and tries to squeezes her way in, but I turn around and grab her by the hips, pull her against my chest. 

“Thank you, Casper.” She slips inside.

“Wait. Sister Bonnie?”

She leans her head back out the door. “Uh-huh?”

“Could I maybe like borrow your horse?”

What I pictured was this: Me on my devil horse thundering through that wormhole in the Ditch; them on their high horses running for cover from the sudden storm; me, the red-headed horseman sweeping from the shadows, screaming like the ghost they want me to be; them, shitting their pants. But not Brant. He stands his ground even as it shakes, even as Shetan skids to a stop and rears up, slashing the sky with his mighty hooves. I pull Brant up behind me and spirit him off to some far-away land where no one will tell him what he can sing and when he can dance. 

What happens is this: I emerge from the tunnel of leaves and shadows on a puffing and plodding seventeen-year-old gelding whose ears have been pinned back for the last nine miles because as it turns out he only enjoys being ridden in circles around his field.  It also turns out that no one is here. The Ditch is empty but for some birds frantically plucking worms from the mud before the sun bakes it hard. There’s already a crust forming over yesterday’s ruts and no puddles left between them.

Shetan struggles on the uneven ground. He swishes his tail and makes unhappy smacking sounds on the bit. When we come to the ramp, I nudge him up, leaning forward in the saddle to make the climb easier on his old bones. At the top, we pause to consider our options. Shetan needs to rest before we make the two hour trip back to Sister Bonnie’s but riding all the way up to Brant’s house and knocking on the door seems dorky and desperate in a way that surprising him in the woods did not. Although now that I’m here even that seems a lot dumber than it did in my head on the way over.

I feel Shetan’s legs folding, so I squeeze his ribs hard, urging him on before he can lie down and roll—his preferred method for removing me. We move slowly through the trees, my toes knocking off bark as we go because it’s such close quarters in here. Shetan pulls his head to the left toward the field beyond the trees where there’s recently watered grass to eat. But I’m not ready to be seen so I make him follow along the Ditch for a ways, ’til we come to the bend where it begins its curve around the mountain. The ground is covered with boulders, some as small as dozing fawns, others as big as sleeping buffalo, all of them draped with patchwork quilts of slick green and spongy gray mosses.

Shetan stops. I give him a squeeze, but he takes a stubborn step back. His ears flick and his nostrils quiver. He prances in place. I lean forward and stroke his neck, murmuring soft nonsense. My eyes sweep the side of the mountain, all the hiding places big enough for a hog or a bear. I cock my head and listen, but there’s nothing but the ambient sounds of horseback riding—jangling bit, creaking saddle, snuffling breaths. Most likely he’s caught wind of some deer bedded down out there, but I reckon now’s as good a time as any to turn around. I lay the reins against the right side of his neck—

A crunch of moss. A tawny flash. A scuffle on stone. 

Something long and limber leaps atop a boulder, landing on all fours.

Shetan crow hops and snorts—a loud, rippling, snot-blowing explosion that flushes every bird from every tree.

Brant Mitchell yowls and shoots up in the air, back arched and limbs spread-eagled like a cartoon cat. I throw all my weight into yanking the reins, drawing Shetan’s chin all the way down to his chest, trying to hold him back from plunging into the Ditch. He squeals and side-hops, slamming my leg up against a sturdy hickory. Now I’m yelping and Brant is screaming, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and it’s taking everything I’ve got to stop this crazy horse from bolting through the trees—something that’d be a very short ride for me.

Brant slumps across the rock on his stomach, stretching his arms toward us, and slow-flapping his hands like Brother Mackey trying to seat the congregation. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Shit! Whoa!”

I gather up the reins in one hand and reach down with the other to stroke Shetan’s frothing shoulder. “Whoa, boy, whoa, come on now, settle down.”

He trembles and stamps his feet but slowly the fight goes out of him. His eyes keep rolling, but the bunched-up muscles in his shoulders and haunches relax. 

Finally, he stands still. I pat his neck and ease up on the reins.

Brant pushes himself up into a crouch, wild-eyed and gaping. He presses a hand to his heart. “Jesus Christ, Casper, I thought you were the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse.”

I take a few gulps of air and slick my hand through my hair. “Which one is that?”

“The black one, stupid.”

“Well, no shit. I meant, what’s it represent? War? Pestilence?”

His hand slides down to his stomach.  “Famine.”

“Cookie Monster’s worst nightmare.”

He smirks and pats his back pocket. “Me come prepared.”

“So that’s what you’re doing out here.”

He shrugs and hops off the boulder. “Isn’t the real question what you’re doing out here? In my backyard? On a wild black stallion?”

“Gelding. Don’t rub it in.” 

“Huh. You don’t say.” Brant squats and squints under Shetan’s belly. He stands up, shaking his head. “Tough luck, bro. But at least your dick is huge.”

I blush on my horse’s behalf. 

Brant eases closer. “And just for the record, there’s no such thing as a Horseman of Pestilence. The Bible calls them Conquest, War, Famine, and Death.”

“What’s the difference between Conquest and War?”

He shrugs. “Those were John’s Revelations, not mine.”

Shetan grumbles and fidgets. I turn him in a tight circle, which sometimes helps settle a horse down. “I had a revelation this morning.”

Brant takes a step back, keeping a wary eye on the horse. “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“I think Sister Bonnie is a Democrat.”

He laughs. “Shut up. She’s got a floaty fetus bumper sticker on her car.”

“I know, but she pretty much confessed.”

“Why would she go and do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. We were just talking about her job, and it sort of came out.” I wince because I’m what sort of came out. “She also said people steal books. Like all the time.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

I look down at the intricate stitching on my saddle seat. “I wondered if maybe you’d ever done that. Since your parents—”

“Have never taken me to the library, it would be impossible.” Brant peels a piece of bark off the tree. “But one time your girlfriend snuck me some book about a little girl in Nazi Germany who stole books. Ruined my life.” He tosses the bark on the ground. 

Shetan balks like Brant threw a grenade. And in a way, he did. That two hour ride gave me plenty of time to convince myself that Brant Mitchell was one of the kids Sister Bonnie wouldn’t name. I’d ask him, he wouldn’t be able to resist bragging, and then I’d say something about how it’d be nice if he’d return them because I’d been looking for them.