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The two exchanged a look and Rye said, “I get it. Small town. New person.”
“And then there’s the fact that you moved into Granger Janssen’s old place,” the man added.
“Did you know my grandfather?”
“No, no one really knew him,” the woman said. “He kept himself to himself.”
“We didn’t even know he had a grandson.”
Rye shrugged. “Well, I exist.”
They both nodded and continued staring at him.
“Er, can I...ring up your pitchfork? Or did you need anything else?”
The man nodded happily and they followed Rye to the register. He searched for a tag and didn’t find one.
“Why doesn’t he put tags on anything?” Rye muttered to himself.
“Charlie?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you referring to Charlie?”
“Uh. Yes. I was just... Hang on. Hey, Marie!” Rye yelled.
Charlie came in from the back room.
“Hey, Marvin. Hey, Stacy,” Charlie said. “How’s the farm? The Bringhams raise alpacas,” Charlie told Rye.
“The fuzzy llama things?”
“They’re camelids, in fact,” Stacy corrected.
“Oh, right, okay. Cool.”
No one said anything else.
“Um, I couldn’t find a price on this,” Rye said.
Charlie tapped a few buttons on the register and Rye went back to the safety of sorting bolts.
* * *
Friday morning, they drove to work separately because Charlie planned to stay late to do inventory. When Rye left at 5:30, instead of going back to Charlie’s place, he drove to the Crow Lane house.
Windows down, Rye breathed in the smell of pine. The air was crisp but not cold and it whipped his hair into his face as he swung around the final curve and the house came into view. Except it wasn’t so much a house now as it was the hollow outside of a house with a dumpster of debris next to it.
All of which made it very easy to see the three people standing in the center of it.
Their heads jerked up as his car rattled into view. They looked at him, then at each other, and it was clear they were going to rabbit.
“Hey, wait!” Rye yelled, putting his hands up in what he hoped was a recognizable gesture for I’m not gonna call the cops on you.
Whether it was his gesture or the fact that the people could’ve run in any direction at any time and instantly evaded him, Rye wasn’t sure. Maybe it was curiosity—the same curiosity that had resulted in unbearably repetitive and intrusive questions at work. Or maybe it was the simple fact that they outnumbered him three to one. Whichever, after a consulting look at one another, they came out to stand in front of the house.
When Rye drew closer, he could see that they were young. Fifteen or sixteen, maybe. And he’d bet dollars to doughnuts that they were the ones who’d set up the circle of chairs in the old bedroom of the house. Also, what did dollars to doughnuts mean?
“Hey,” Rye said.
“Who are you?” The first one to speak was a tall girl wearing a beanie and an oversized padded flannel jacket. She had a pointy elfin face, and curly blond hair.
“I’m Rye. I...” He’d been about to say that he owned this house, but it was so absurd, so utterly not in line with any sense of himself, that he couldn’t get the words out. “My grandfather used to live here. Apparently.”
“Apparently?” This was said by a kid in beat-up tennis shoes, skinny jeans, and a baby blue bandana covering brown hair.
“Uh. Yeah. I never knew him, but he left me this place. Apparently. I dunno, it’s weird.”
The teenagers nodded. Weirdness they understood.
“You been hanging out here?” he asked.
They exchanged looks and nodded suspiciously.
“I was crashing for a while when I first got here. Thought maybe you were satanists when I found your circle of chairs and candles.”
He said it lightly, just trying to ease the tension.
“Maybe we are,” said the third kid flatly. He had dishwater blond hair that looked unwashed and angry acne over his cheeks and chin.
Rye smirked. “Yeah, well, just don’t let me come back to step in any sacrificial goat blood. Or alpaca blood,” he added, remembering the Bringhams.
They gave him a very strange look.
“Well I don’t know what the hell kind of animals satanists sacrifice in Wyoming,” Rye snapped.
Bandana Kid chuckled. “Imagine trying to sacrifice an alpaca. You’ve got your—I don’t know, sickle blade or whatever?—and you go to kill it but you’re like ‘No, I can’t do it, you’re too soft, I’ll just have to make a sweater instead, hail Satan!’“
Rye laughed along with them.
“I don’t care, you know,” he said. “That you were hanging out here.”
“But you’re gonna fix it up? Live here?” Greasy Hair Kid asked.
Live here, live here, live here. It echoed through Rye’s head and settled in his stomach in a deep well of uncertainty.
“Uh. I dunno. I mean, fix it up, yeah. My...a friend is helping me. After that...yeah, I don’t know.”
Rye looked around at the vista of field and forest and huge sky; birdcalls and chittering and the susurrus of the pines the only sounds around.
