Q Road (7 page)

AFTER JOHNNY HARLAND WAS SHOT AND SECRETLY BURIED
, the skunk stench of Margo's second-to-last kill hung in the air around the
Glutton
for a week. During this time Rachel kept her distance from the empty boat, except to get salve for her torn hands and for the wound near her armpit. She regretted pushing so hard about her father, and she didn't know what to do with the information she'd extracted at such a high price. When Milton offered her a job helping with his garden in those first few days, Rachel was grateful for the distraction as much as for the money; and from Milton she learned about another neighborhood tragedy. Beef prices had been falling steadily for the last few years, Milton said, and his family had no longer been able to compete with the big western feed lots. Milton's parents had found themselves unable to pay summer taxes in July, and rather than going further into debt, they'd decided to sell.

Rachel didn't tell Milton that July was also when Johnny started
coming around; or that July was when her mother began skinning possums, even though nobody wanted a possum skin—when the skin man came up the river he wouldn't pay her even a quarter for them. Now Rachel learned that just as Margo's decline culminated in her shooting Johnny, the Taylor family's problems resulted in their butchering most of their remaining cattle and selling the bulk of their property to a company that would put in a golf course.

And just as Rachel found herself alone with a ramshackle boat (really an old camping trailer riveted to an iron hull), the Taylors' youngest and most peculiar son, Milton, aged thirty, was left with three acres on the corner where Queer Road crossed the Kalamazoo River. The river curved to border the land on the south and west, and the property included his family's vegetable garden and their oldest cow barn. Milton's parents had originally planned to move just a few miles down the road so his mother could continue to garden, but they changed their minds and moved to Florida instead, to a town not far from George Harland's parents. It was as though, once losing their grip on the land, they were spun off by centrifugal force toward the edge of the continent.

Rachel wasn't sure what she'd learned from her mother's decline, but observing the transfer of the Taylors' land taught her that a person could buy somebody else's property and suddenly hundreds of acres of grazing land became a golf course. Rachel had lost not only her mother this autumn, but also the morel mushrooms near the Taylors' dead elms, and the Black Angus and red Hereford cattle munching only a few hundred yards from the
Glutton.
Still, she could not help but be impressed with the power wielded by a human being who owned a parcel of the planet and could alter that parcel at will, or else will it to stay the same. A person who owned land could make sure she would always have a place, no matter what stupid, brutal thing her mother or anybody else might do. In October, the golf course people would show up with earthmoving equipment. They would kill the old native grass
with chemicals in order to plant hybrid tropical grass; within a few months they would replace the decaying Taylor farmhouse with a pole barn-style clubhouse and convert the remaining three solid outbuildings to utility sheds, which they'd paint red and white like toy barns.

Milton had always been more religious than the rest of his family, and from the time he was young he had found his strength and solace in Jesus Christ. As a boy, Milton used to watch his family's cattle move slowly across the field, and he considered that those beasts might be Christians too, without their even knowing it. He admired the way they brushed against each other easily and the way they clustered together at dusk like a congregation, mooing gently as they stamped their feet and swished their tails. His parents' decision to sell the farm saddened him and, though he was a grown man, that sense of loss gradually overwhelmed him, became unbearable. A few weeks after his parents left town for good, there was a full harvest moon, and sometimes the roundness and tug of a full moon are too powerful for those who've become detached from the planet, and Milton just kind of let go.

It was the very same night Margo shot Johnny, in fact, that Milton experienced Jesus coming to his bed in the form of a body of light, both vaporous and solid, and Jesus entered him through every opening, even the pores in his skin, so that Milton's whole body of flesh glowed the way Jesus' heart glowed in the pages of Bible study books. A half mile to the north, meanwhile, Rachel dug into the floor of the Harland barn with a round-end shovel. As Rachel's hands blistered and as those blisters broke open, Milton experienced the soothing caress of His holiness and an embrace from both within and without his own body. A feeling of acceptance flowed all through Milton, assuring him that Jesus loved him even when his thoughts were reprehensible, and Milton in turn loved wholeheartedly every soul in his community, Christian or no, the quiet farmers and the troubled teenagers alike. Bathed in the
soothing light of His touch, Milton knew his own mission in this life: to bring the people of Greenland together as their community changed, to discourage folks from going away as his parents and so many others had done. Milton wept and prayed his thanks to Jesus and His love for hours, until the sun rose.

Milton emerged from his night of holy bliss feeling cleansed and redeemed, filled with joy at knowing he would create a place where bodies and souls could mingle in the name of Jesus. He opened his Bible that morning to the following passage:

Honour the Lord with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.

—P
ROVERBS
3:9–10

From the farm's sale, Milton's parents had left him enough money to build a modest house, but after that night he decided instead he would spend the money remodeling the barn into a church center for evening activities such as Bible discussions and staged dramas, worship of all kinds. He contacted the church officials immediately, but to his surprise the Greenland Methodists resisted any association with such a venture. Though Milton assisted in teaching at the Bible school, the church officials had always held back from embracing Milton fully; they worried that his enthusiasm flowed too easily, that there was something altogether too expansive and expressive about him. Before a new despair could begin to settle into his heart, however, Milton miraculously (praise Jesus!) came upon a new and better option. With the help of several gentlemen from the church, who preferred to remain anonymous, Milton got a line on a liquor license, and he began transforming the barn into the Barn Grill. Milton's vision of the establishment included a small vinyl Bible beside the napkin holder on each table, to serve as a reference for such discussions as
he hoped would take place. He would also copy and frame some appropriate verses, starting with the Old Testament favorite: “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry.” Of course the jukebox would offer hymns and spirituals, along with a few country-western tunes. He camped out on a mattress in the loft and began the remodeling, certain in his heart that folks would joyfully drink in His spirit alongside the wine and beer Milton would place before them.

Though the barn's foundation turned out to be solid on its footings, there would be a lot of work involved in bringing an old barn into health department compliance, starting with plumbing, sewer, and electric, and moving on to ceiling, floor, and walls. Folks told him he'd be wise to level the structure and rebuild from scratch, but he had a strong attachment to the building and to its historical value as the second-oldest barn in the township, and besides, the proverb specifically said
barns.
He probably should have chosen to ignore the garden his parents had abandoned when they left for Florida, but he couldn't bear to let God's bounty rot in the field, and so he hired Rachel to help him.

Milton had plenty of work to do, but he often paused to watch Rachel tend his garden in much the same way he used to watch the Angus and Hereford cattle graze, and she quickly became an integral part of his landscape. Rachel, he knew, would be his greatest challenge, and the need to save her soul swelled so large in him that at times he wanted to dance around her and shout up to Heaven for God to please help him show her the Way. Milton was grateful that when he watched Rachel, or even when he considered Rachel in the abstract, his thoughts and desires were entirely pure, focused only on her salvation.

“Aren't you mad as hell at your parents for selling all that land?” Rachel asked one afternoon. She looked out over the old grazing field, now dotted by landscapers' trucks and men in coveralls raking away cow flops. So far the local frosts had missed Milton's garden, and Rachel was filling a bushel basket with the
season's last tomatoes, most of which Milton would give away at church.

Milton reached down to take out some lamb's quarter and yanked out an acorn squash plant along with it. He stared down at the dark, undeveloped fruits dangling from it, as though uncertain what crime he had just committed.

“Three acres isn't shit, Milton.” Rachel stepped across the row between them. She took the prickly stalk out of Milton's hand and replaced it in the soil, though she didn't think there was much hope in any case of the squash ripening. “How can you stand losing all that land?”

“All the farmers are going to lose their land,” Milton said. “The time for farmers has come and gone.”

“You sound like you want the farmers to fail.”

“When they sell their extra land for houses, our community will grow. That's God's plan, and there's no sense resisting the change. But I'm not going to forget the past—that's why I'm putting together the farm museum.”

Rachel was sick of hearing about the farm museum, which would start with a mule plow, a hand thresher, and a rusted-up mower, all of which he planned to sandblast and repaint with bright colors for display in and around the barn. She said, “Well, if I was in with God the way you are, I'd be asking God to
get
me some damn land.” She formed a little hill around the torn-up squash plant and pressed it down with her bare foot. She wondered if the plan cooked up by Milton's god included Margo, Johnny, and herself, or if some people were just plain outside His circle of interest.

“Will you come to church with me this Sunday?” Milton said.

Rachel shook her head. “My mom doesn't want me to go to church.”

“How is your ma? I ain't seen her lately.”

“She's fine, but you know how she hates Jesus.”

“What on earth does your ma have against the Word of the Lord?”

Rachel couldn't believe that Milton hadn't noticed Margo missing more than two weeks. Apparently he was focused on his own absent parents.

“My mother says Jesus is just another damn man who wants to boss women.”

Milton's face deflated. “You don't feel that way about Jesus, do you?”

“Hey, I don't even know Him.”

“Do you want me to try to talk to your ma? I don't think I've seen her since she threatened to shoot me awhile back.”

“Hell no,” Rachel said. “Promise me you won't try to talk to her.”

“You don't have a regular father you can turn to, but God is the Father of us all.” Milton felt desperately sorry for a girl without God or a father, with only a crazy, recluse mother. A rush of compassion reinflated and softened him. He had half a mind to go talk to Margo, but he didn't want to risk getting shot, and there wasn't much chance she'd listen anyhow. She was a woman who resisted change of any kind, living as though it were 1896 instead of 1996, so it was no wonder she was getting crazier. He mumbled a prayer instead, tried to light up a path between God and the girl, a holy landing strip on which Jesus could fly into her life. Milton looked up at the sky. “Every day I pray that Jesus will come into your life, Rachel. Jesus will save your soul from the fires of hell.” Milton's voice always took on a shaky, hopeful excitement when he talked this way. His arms waved around, without his seeming to notice them. “He will touch your soul and suddenly you won't even want to swear anymore.”

Rachel wiped her hands on her pants, and reached down and cuffed her pant leg. The jeans were from the church box and were both too long and too tight. At fourteen she was as tall as she
would ever be, but she was starting to become hippy. She said, “Swearing makes people know I damn well mean what I say.”

“I'm just saying you should keep your mind open, Rachel, in case Jesus comes to you. Don't resist Him, just let His spirit enter you.”

The spirit of Jesus, or even the living Jesus, with His deep, compassionate eyes and smooth brow, with His sweetly scented body draped in soft robes, wouldn't have lured Rachel. She might have become interested in Adam, naked and made of mud, subject to earthly temptations, but Milton knew only the one official way into the Christian church. Rachel figured she'd already left herself open when a man came to her one night, and she had let him enter her, and no good whatsoever had come of that.