Prolog

It was spring and the temperature was balmy, and the sun was warm and bright. The best part was that with the window down on her side and the other rolled down enough for her dog to sniff and catch the breeze she could smell the scents of pine trees, cut grass and a dairy farm. Piety Jones drove her ancient Jeep Cherokee with the windows down and her dog road shot gun in the passenger’s seat. The dog happily sniffed the air quivering as he fanned his cinnamon and brown tail at the prospect of running through the woods.

The woman was late twenties and already had two divorces under her belt and her entire life compressed into the Jeep and a small tow behind U-Haul. The dog was not quite a year old and Piety loved him dearly. In all the craziness and sorrow of her second failed marriage the unlikely pet had been a source of comfort and solace. The dog unfailingly loved her and as they drove so many miles from North Carolina to New York. The dog, she had named Finnegan, listened to her pour out her heart and fears and in return gave no judgement or comment. Piety had not seen her aunt since she was kid living at home with her parents. The memory had been a bright spot in an otherwise rocky childhood where her parents often hated one another, united under the sway of religious dictatorship and mutual racism, with an all-around intolerance for anything they decided was not "normal". Her Aunt Charity had appeared in her childhood home’s doorway like a fairy god mother for a magical stay. Aunt Charity challenged Piety’s father, Leonard Jones and her sister Mercy constantly fought with Charity's views of women’s rights, religious freedom for every religion and equality for everyone.

 After a two week visit the girl’s father ordered Aunt Charity off his property and to never return. The last straw was after one dramatic blow up over her assertion that Christ, popular to all his depictions, was not a white man. The sobbing child watched from her bedroom window as the van left the driveway with tears streaming down her face. In those two weeks her aunt had been there had been no whippings for having a smart mouth. The girl’s parents’ fights had not escalated to the horrendous screaming matches heard through the heating vents accompanied by crashes of things being thrown. Miraculously not once had daddy called her little brother a pussy or fag boy till, he cried. Somehow Aunt Charity had made an oasis of calm in a hateful turbulent world. Under her pillow all those years ago was found a business card to a shop:

Bell Book and Candle Metaphysical shop

For all your occult needs

Main street Pulaski New York

Proprietor Charity

315-555-1212

Now all these years later the grown woman hoping that her child like belief in Aunt Charity was still well founded. Was her aunt still alive and would want to take in a homeless adult with husky mutt? After all it had been over ten years since she had seen her last.

With trembling fingers, she had called the number and on the first ring the phone had been picked up. The cheerful voice had said, “Hello Piety love, where are you?”

“How did you know it was me?” Piety said with a little tremor in her voice.

“I’m psychic and have caller ID.” The voice replied and, in the background, she head the tic of keys and paper rustling. Then her aunt wished someone a nice day. “Of course,” Piety thought, “I called her work number she must be waiting on a customer.”

“Hey, I can call back I hear you’re busy”

“Don’t you dare, I turned over the open sign and you’re telling me your life story for the next ten minutes or so.”

Piety had laughed uncertainly and the said, “I am divorced, I have nowhere to go and about $200.00 to my name. Look Aunt Charity, I know it’s been a long time…”

“Do you have a pen and paper dear?” Her aunt interrupted, “ I am going to give you my home address and western union you some money. You simply must come stay with me.” There had been a pause as the woman had had said goodbye to another customer and returned to the conversation with her niece.

Now Piety turned into the hidden driveway and at the end of it waving was an older woman in a tie-dyed t shirt and jeans. Her iron grey hair restrained under a straw hat and she stood in garden clogs with chickens pecking about her feet. The older woman trotted up the jeep and as Piety got out the woman hugged her tightly and piety was stiff for a second them she melted into her aunts arms and the older woman said in her ear, “ Welcome home girl I have missed you.” The husky dog danced about them and Piety wept like a child in that moment of finally feeling like she was home.

Chapter 1

Mr. Yoder stood behind his card table waiting for the overly made-up woman to make her decision between Apple butter or Blackberry preserves. As he tried to wait patiently, Yoder was curious as just how one decided how much black eyeliner was needed over the turquoise eyelids? The man smiled his wife would never need all the paint and frippery; Sarah was pretty with the asset’s god had given her. He sighed the woman was still eyeing the jars. The choice was to his mind not one that required this much consideration and weighing of options. After all he was selling both the preserves and the apple butter for the same cost of $5 and to his mind it was an either-or, and if you felt like being extremely extravagant you could buy both. The woman tapped a French manicured nail on the Apple butter the tic, tic, tic … now that grated on his nerves. His smile wavered the breeze was turning chill. He scratched at his chin his long dark beard rustling. His father at 25 had a beard down to the bottom of his sternum and he barely had 2 inches off his chin, his wife teased him that he just wake up one day and it would suddenly grow two feet and make up for lost time.

Yoder could hear in the distance his horse pawing at the ground with one hoof, making a snorting noise echoing his masters body language. The man imagined his horse thinking that the woman's decision was holding up its return to the farm with its grain with a warm stall. The horse in Yoder’s mind had been thinking, “Lady you are so lucky I can’t get a hoof on you. You’re very inconsiderate dilly-dallying this way”

Mister Yoder looked forward to bringing his tidy sum of money home from selling all the eggs, bread, sweet rolls, preserves, jam, and jellies. He knew his wife would be pleased at her work selling so well. The briefest of smiles crossed his bearded face, Sarah his bride of six years had the sunniest smile when she perceived she had done well for the family. His mood was again soured as another round of picking up one jar then the other resumed. “Why” he thought “can't this woman make a simple decision?”

He glanced at the sky as it was darkening early in the Autumn with daylight hours growing shorter and shorter for the march towards Christmas, the temperatures were growing chillier and Yoder wanted nothing better than to go home. Yoder knew his wife would be making biscuits and a baked chicken. Yoder loved it when the chicken was fresh hot out of the oven with the skin crispy and brown. The smell of sage and he bet baked apples would be even now wafting out of her kitchen and out the side door. Mister Yoder adored his children sitting in attendance at the table, as they would say grace then companionably eat near the warmth of the wood stove. His oldest daughter a tiny copy of her mother who would try sweet talking him out of both chicken legs, his favorite part of the dinner.

Yes, he would hitch up the horse and be done with this, he wanted nothing more than to go home. He waited and felt a splat of rain. Just wonderful he grumbled, and the bay gelding snorted at a distance as if in agreement, no one wanted a drive home in the rain.

Yoder was a family man and other than these excursions to buy supplies or sell some of his wife's wonderfully made goods he preferred his life at home. " Come now English " he thought miserably, " I want to go home where there is one rain drop there will be more.”

He had enough! Mister Yoder handed both jars to the woman, "two for one." He announced and as he was handed the money. The woman chattered at him how much she loved organic Amish products. Yoder nodded going for his bay gelding. If the woman wanted to stand all night in the Topps Market parking lot that was her business. He was going home.

.

Piety hated this time of the year. It was getting dark by 7 o'clock and the cold rains were unrelenting in heavy splats on her car’s windshield. She knew that those late September rains were notice of November snows to come. Monday had been almost not worth opening the store for. Piety was at a loss how her aunt had made money with her metaphysical gift store. Then again just how much sage and incense do people really need?? Piety ordered the same things, was open the same hours and yet the sales just covered the rent this month. The woman pushed her glassed up onto the bridge of her nose, just great the rain had started in earnest and she still had to drag the trash to the end of the road.

She was on highway 69 before French Road, cursing the fact that she should have changed the windshield wiper blades on the old Kea Sportage when she had the oil changed. when a horse stood in the center of the highway. Piety slowed down as the rain came down in sheets and suddenly, she almost stood on the break as something large was in the road. Her car fish tailed, and the breaks screeched the smell of hot rubber was suddenly in her nose. The red indicator light for the anti-locking breaks system flashed angerly on her dashboard. Her heart pounded and she felt a rush in her chest of adrenalin and lower was sick stomach-churning anxiety. What the hell had she almost hit?

Wobbling in the road snorting stood a bay horse it’s eyes showing the whites as shook. The poor animals harness traces dragging, and its torn up hindquarters . The gashes on its flanks were seething red in the down pour and the tears in the hide with blood dripping over the hind quarters. The woman and the horse eyed each other for a second and then Piety with hands shaking put her car in reverse and slowly put it on the graveled shoulder. Fumbling and digging into her purse the woman cursed . Her hands still shook as adrenaline powered the fight or flight response and she was doing neither right now. She pulled the black android cell out after what seemed like 30 minutes of fishing and called 911. The phone rang twice she thought “Had the horse been hit by a car? If so where was the cart or buggy?”

“911 what is your emergency”

“I was driving home and almost hit a horse…in the road.” Her voice quavered she sounded like she was 90 years old.

“What’s your name please and are you injured?”

“Piety Jones is my names and No, I’m not hurt but the horse has on a harness and its hind end is tore up.”

“Is there another car near by that could have hit the animal?”

The rain was now intermittent, and she set her 4-way blinkers on the Kia it was silver colored, but darkness was closing in and she didn’t want to be hit by a someone rubbernecking the horse. The operator asked her location and the poor animal staggered a few steps then went down harness jangled and the heavy smack of the animal as it hit the pavement.

“Shit!” she said “ The poor thing just fell over in the middle of the road!” she said to the operator and popped her door open, she wasn’t a veterinarian what was she thinking. The operator told her to stay in the car.

Piety regretted not have leaving a better coat in the car. Damn this season where it would be cold in the morning and too warm for a coat by noon. He coat was at the shop abandoned on a hook by the door. The night air was biting through the thin sweater. Her long brown hair hung lank and dripping around her face. The rain was heavier, and the raindrops pelted her in icy globules. Thunder rumbled in the distance. She stayed on the line ignoring the operator telling her to wait in the car. “That poor animal”, she thought, “If it has a harness where is the wagon ?”

Piety turned the flashlight option on her phone and the speaker. Piety answered the rest of questions of the 911 operator. She saw for a moment a man with his hands on his hips his back to her in the flat brimmed hat of the Amish. His voice angry floated to her between rumbles of thunder, “Dunner uns Gewidder!” {Confound it!}

“She called to him, “Sir are you okay?” He started to turn from what he was looking at in the ditch and a crack of lighting went off. The light blinded her and as Piety’s eyes adjusted the man was gone. The weird smell of ozone hung about where the lightning struck. She moved forward to where he had been standing. The smell of blood and horse shit was in the air and the rain smell in the dead grass and leaves. Her phone had lost signal, but the flashlight still worked. She investigated the darkness of the ditch a few spots l looking like a fourth of July sparkler danced before her eyes..

Sure, enough the black Amish buggy was on its side in the ditch. Piety shined the light into the area where a driver would sit. Nothing. Piety panned left and saw nothing; she swung her arm right and the light of the phone revealed a man in the traditional beard and dark clothes of the closeted religious sect that lived all around her in Mexico, New York. Okay if he was knocked out down there who had stood by the road?

Piety questioned her intelligence of getting into the ditch feeling the water fill up her tennis shoes. Then again what if he was hurt? Piety said to the man slumped on muddy side of the ditch “Are you okay? " there was no response. the smell of copper like pennies that had been held in a hand was in the air as well as the wet grass scent. It was dark and the scene looked like weird colorless film to her rather than real life. 

When she touched his face, it was cold and clammy , the head set in an unnatural angle to his shoulders and shining the light further down she screamed discovering that the head was actually not attached by much and that the bone of his spine stuck up amongst the carnage above his collar bones, his arm missing at the shoulder.  The slick wetness was more than just rain how much blood would have poured out from that sort of wound? Then  Piety stopped analyzing with horrible realization, she  screamed and dropped her phone. Piety was scrambling to get away from the gore she slipped and fell. The image seared in her brain from the shoulders up it was just shreds of skin and flesh that held the head on.  She willed herself to stop,Piety needed the light to get out of the six foot deep ditch, turning she snatched the phone from where it had fell in the dead man’s lap, scrambling back to her vehicle she only stopped her hysterical waling when she slammed and locked her car door. Sitting there shaking she thought, “ What the fuck happened ? How does something like that happen.”