Chapter 1

Momma always told us that the wind blew nothin’ but sin into Harrom.  She said that’s why nothin’ ever grew there, that the flowers were too pure to bloom in the dust that layered over our town.  Momma made me and Kat go to church every Sunday.  She’d always be tellin’ us that if we didn’t go we’d be no better than that dust.
We both sang in the choir.  Kat had a voice that was ‘bout as beautiful as herself.  She’s four years older than me, so she was around sixteen when we were livin’ in Harrom.  All the boys in town chased her and all the parents tried to fix their sons up with her.  She was real sweet about it, never showed any disrespect, but never once settled for the boys that lived around there.  Sometimes the men looked at her too.  And sometimes the drunk ones’d shout disgustin’ things from their porches at her when she was walkin’ with me in the evenin’s.  She never said a word.  She just kept her head held straight and only turned to look me in the eyes when I stared up at her in fright.  She never let me be scared.  She loved me, and there was nothin’ I wanted more in life than to be like her and make her proud.
Every evenin’ after supper, Kat and I’d help Momma clean up the kitchen while Pop sat drunk in his chair.  He’d just sit there, starin’ at Momma cleanin’ up, sayin’ things that Momma’d told him not to say around us.  “Go to bed, Ed,” Momma’d say to him.  When I was real little, I thought it was funny that “bed” rhymed with “Ed.”  I’d giggle next to the faucet and Momma’d turn to me.  Her face would get real soft and she’d smile.  I’d smile too, and those were my favorite moments with her.  But I got older, and my ears eventually heard the bitter tone behind the little rhyme.  I stopped laughing.  I’d just keep my eyes on the dishes, the smile Momma gave me wasn’t so sweet anymore as it was regretful, ‘cause she could see that I knew who Pop was now. 
He was a drunkard, a cheater, and the deputy of Harrom.  He was fat and tall, and loud with fury.   He’d beat up Momma a couple of times, even though she never told us.  She never cried when it happened.  Kat and I could hear Pop yellin’ some nights and throwin’ things and sometimes hittin’ her but we never once heard her cry.  I always imagined she just stared at him, Momma could always fix you straight with one look.  I bet it scared him, which probably made him angrier.
Bein’ a deputy didn’t mean much in Harrom.  If there was an opening in the sheriff’s department, all you really had to do was buy Sheriff Gregory Dirk a drink and tell him how much you hate Mexicans and he’d give you a job.  The sheriff’s department held a firm belief that you could tell a man’s intentions by the color of his skin.  If he was a shade darker than a sun-kissed white man, he was out to cause trouble for a white man, and he was promptly arrested and sometimes hung.  That seemed to be about the only code they lived by, other than that it was all a matter of money.  If you could pay the sheriff, you couldn’t do anything wrong.  Some folks said that when it came to robberies, the thief was arrested, brought into the sheriff’s office, told to give up ninety per-cent of what he took, and then sent out the back door.  There was no one to stop it.  The sheriff was the highest authority.  Dirk couldn’t be a tyrant though, and he didn’t want to, he just wanted to reap what he could from his position, like any man. 
We had a mayor, but no one ever saw him, he just drank and slept and approved whatever came into his office.  He won re-election every year until people stopped runnin’ against him.  Everyone was okay with how things were.  No one wanted change; no one wanted responsibility.  Nothin’ was good, but whiskey was cheap and no one was hungry.  A little hunger would’ve helped, actually.  The closest any man came to satisfaction was the bottom of a flask or the embrace of a prostitute.  It was never quite what he wanted.  The people of Harrom basked in carelessness,  in feculence, in dust.  Humming, bumpin’ into omens of damnation, and stumblin’ over tombstones, they breathed in and breathed out like clueless gaping fish with dead eyes and dull, dying mouths.  Stagnation was in the air and corruption was sifted into the soil.  “Good” was not demanded, so Harrom lay idle, idle in the great New Mexican desert, idle in the path of coyotes and sidewinders.

Chapter 2
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Tommy’s eyes were following the cold creek water as it ran over his toes.  I walked around aimlessly by the bank, pushin’ leaves around with a stick.
“Do ya?” Tommy repeated, lookin’ up at me from the water.
“I dunno,” I said.
Tommy looked back at the water, “They sure are scary though,” he said.
“Only if you believe in ‘em,” I told ‘im haughtily.
“I dunno,” he said, “I don’t even know if I believe in ‘em, but I’m still scared of ‘em.”
“Then you believe in ‘em,” I kept pokin’ around the leaves with the stick.
“Naw,” Tommy started, “naw it’s not like that.  It’s like I can kinda feel ‘em ya know?  Like snakes, I believe in snakes, but I don’t believe they’re in my room at night, cause that’s not where they belong, but some nights I’m still scared of ‘em, and I can kinda feel ‘em in the corners of my room.”
I looked at ‘im puzzled, “You’re not makin’ any Gawd-damned sense Tommy.”
Tommy reddened and looked back at the stream, “I dunno,” he stuttered, “maybe I’m just not sayin’ it right.  Alls I’m sayin’ is that, maybe, maybe I believe in ‘em but, but I just don’t believe that they’re here with us, but I’m scared of ‘em bein’ here with us.”  We both were quiet and Tommy looked back at me, “You’re Ma really let’s you use words like that?”
“Like what? ‘Gawd-Damn?’”
“Yeah, like that.”
“Naw,” I said a little ashamedly, “but I feel like I can say that stuff when I’m down here.  No one’s gon’ get angry with me; it’s just us and the creek.” 
It was a nice little creek.  It was quiet ‘cept for the thin stream of runnin’ water, and little animals scurryin’ in bushes every now n’ again.  I went there nearly everyday after schoolin’.  Tommy tagged along most ‘of the time.  We were neighbors so he’d just hop over the fence by my back door, and we’d march down to the creek.  Momma knew I went there a lot and she was alright with it as long as I watched out for snakes.  Momma said that there were tons of ‘em down there but I’d never seen any.  Of course she set boundaries though.  She told me not to go past the high boulders to the west of our house where the stream fell in a kind of waterfall, not to go past Tommy’s backyard, which was to the east, and not to go as far south as where birch trees grew real thick, about fifty feet from the south bank of the creek.  She told me to never go into those trees.  She said I’d get lost in there and never find my way back if I did.  Tommy n’ I usually just sat on the north bank, or we’d walk along the south bank, lookin’ at the birches.  We didn’t talk ‘bout goin’ in there.  We were both scared stiff of doin’ that, and we liked the little piece of the creek that we were allowed to.  It was calm and gray, and we were free to talk ‘bout what pleased us, not so much what scared us.
“It doesn’t please me a whole lot when I say that stuff though,” I said, lookin’ down at the leaves.
“What stuff?” Tommy asked, starin’ at the stream.
“Bad words like that,” I explained, “I say ‘em cause I think I feel like it, but then I say ‘em and then I don’t feel like sayin’ ‘em so much anymore.”
“Oh,” Tommy said as he kept lookin’ at the stream.  He was still thinkin’ about ghosts I could tell.  “Whatchu think of that story ‘bout the farmer’s ghost?”  All the older boys in school tried to scare us young’uns with that story.
“I don’t really buy it.” 
It was about a farmer that used to live in Modas, a town ‘bout a hundred miles north of Harrom.  It sounded like he was more of a rancher really, cause nothin’ worth growin’ ever grew New Mexico.  His name changed every time someone told the story.  It went that he lived on a farm on the West part of town with his wife and daughter.   His wife was real gorgeous, pregnant with his second child, and his daughter was young but pretty as a daisy.  He’d take her into town with him when he had to buy supplies, an’ all the folks around town’d comment on how pretty she was growin’ up to be.  He loved her with all his heart and kept her close to it.  There wasn’t a thing in the world he wouldn’t do to keep ‘er safe. 
The farmer didn’t talk to many of the people in Modas cause he didn’t like how they lived.  He thought they were filthy and sinful, like the folks in Harrom, and he shielded his family far away from ‘em.  One afternoon, the farmer was in his barn, doin’ somethin’ high up on a ladder.  Some folks say he was doin’ somethin’ simple, like storin’ hay barrels, some folks say he was stashin’ gold, lots of it.  Regardless of what he was doin’ though, the ladder tipped over and he fell and broke his leg.  He was supposed to go into town and get supplies but he couldn’t walk, so his wife sent their daughter into town by herself.
After she got the supplies she had to pass the saloon on the way home, where the old sheriff spent most of his time.  He was a sick man, twisted in the head, he got worse when he had liquor in ‘im too.  As the little girl passed by, the sheriff ran out and told her to come in.  She listened to ‘im, ‘cause he was the sheriff.  She trusted ‘im cause that’s what she was supposed to do. 
The sheriff went on tryna give her drinks.  He grabbed her and fondled her and soon she could tell that she was with a very bad man.  Some say that he raped ‘er.  He really was a sick man.
Pale and shivering she wriggled her way out of the saloon when it got busier and the sheriff lost sight of ‘er.  She came home crying, trying to tell her parents what happened to her.  The farmer got real quiet; he was haunted, burnin’ in disgust and outrage.  His face grew stiff like a stone, and he stood up like a great angry giant, broken leg and all, rifle in hand, limpin’ into town.  He shot the sheriff on sight, not a word said.  The sheriff saw him comin’ and remained seated in a drunken heap.  “What’a you want?” he spat with contempt right before the farmer put a bullet between his eyes.
That night the deputy wrangled up a mob of the sheriff’s friends and roared westward to the farm.  Torches in hand they cursed and swore at the farmer, inchin’ closer with the flames.  Just before they burned it to the ground the farmer told his wife and daughter he loved them, and snuck ‘em out the back door.  The farmer came out without resistance they say, and they tied ‘im up and hung i’m in the middle of town for everyone to see, while his child and pregnant wife wandered somewhere in the New Mexican night.
Now, it’s told that the farmer’s ghost wanders ‘round this desert at nights.  They say he floats into Modas and Harrom, searchin’ for his family, tormentin’ the people for livin’ like they do, for bein’ as wrong as they are.