‘Might want to close y’shutters, though,’ Eden added. The dog lifted his tail and articulated another long and groaning dog-fart, as if to emphasize the point.
‘We’ll… we’ll do that,’ Elise said faintly, and then John had the Ford’s passenger door open and was nearly shovelling her inside.
‘You bet,’ he said through his large frozen grin.
‘And come back and see us tomorrow,’ Eden called as John hurried around the front of the Ford to his side. ‘You’ll feel a mite safer around us tomorrow, I think.’ He paused, then added: ‘If you’re still around at all, accourse.’
John waved, got behind the wheel, and pulled out.
There was silence on the porch for a moment as the old man and the woman with the pale, unhealthy skin watched the Ford head back up Main Street. It left at a considerably higher speed than that at which it had come.
‘Well, we done it,’ the old man said contentedly.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘and I feel like a horse’s ass. I always feel like a horse’s ass when I see the way they look at us. At me.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s only once every seven years. And it has to be done just that way. Because…’
‘Because it’s part of the ritual,’ she said glumly.
‘Ayuh. It’s the ritual.’
As if agreeing it was so, the dog flipped up his tail and farted once more.
The woman booted it and then turned to the old man with her hands clamped on her hips. ‘That is the stinkiest mutt in four towns, Henry Eden!’