Ceremonies
Page 22
FLEMINGTON, the sign said. KEEP RIGHT.
Moving back into the slower lane, she took a moment to count her blessings. There was her family, of course, though scattered now, and Rochelle, and the sisters she still talked to at St. Agnes's, and evenings at the ballet every week or two, and maybe an occasional fancy meal this summer with Rosie, and the endless rows of library books that stretched before her, thirty hours a week…
Surely that was enough for any girl. More than enough.
But a contemptuous little voice inside her head whispered, Who do you think you're kidding?
So be it. She spun the wheel and pressed her foot against the gas pedal. The Chevy swung onto the exit ramp and sped across the waiting world toward Gilead.
Freirs put down the book and checked his watch. It was almost a quarter to three. He looked to the right, squinting at the sun. Sarr and Deborah were still at it, both of them bent almost double, moving through the plowed field with the seed bags at their sides, chanting as they went. They reminded Freirs of a pair of huge black insects depositing endless rows of eggs. Behind them sunlight glimmered from one of the homemade scarecrows that Sarr had erected -really just aluminum-foil pie plates with strings through one end, dangling like limp kites from the tops of a row of stakes so that, at the smallest breeze, the plates would swing and flutter back and forth, banging softly against the stakes with the sound of far-off temple gongs.
How strange and picturesque it all seemed. He felt as if he were in a distant country. It was easy to forget that the two of them out there were human beings, people he sat down to eat with, people like himself.
He hoped Carol would arrive soon; the day seemed to be passing so quickly that, even with the sun still high, he could feel the chill of evening, the day already lost. A fly settled boldly on his cheek and he struck at it, knocking his glasses askew. Quickly he adjusted them, hoping the Poroths hadn't seen. Where in God's name was Carol? In a little while he was going to get angry, or worried, or both. He plunged despondently back into the novel, trying to lose himself again and speed her coming.
Sarr was thinking about the girl while he counted out the seeds, and he was troubled. He wondered if he'd done the right thing, allowing Freirs to have her out this weekend. Maybe his mother was right.
He had seen her at her house the previous night, where, offering some fresh eggs and a bag of early peas from Deborah's garden, he'd gone to seek his mother's advice on how best to deal with the members of the Co-op, to whom his debt was about to fall due. Thirty-seven hundred dollars for the mortgage, and another thousand for repairs – he would owe them, by August, nearly five thousand dollars. But there were a few grounds for hope, including a modest family trust left by his father that might, in emergencies, be drawn upon…
When he'd mentioned, in passing, that Jeremy Freirs had a girl coming on Saturday, his mother had seemed shocked. No, more than shocked. Dismayed, almost, like one who's learned an enemy has breached the gates.
'Son,' she'd said at last, 'I wouldn't open my door to her.'
'Now, now,' he'd said, 'the two of them aren't going to spend the night together. I wouldn't allow such a thing on my land.' He was already beginning to feel sorry he'd brought it up, and guilty about having acquiesced so easily to Deborah's argument that what Jeremy and Carol did was none of his business. Of course it was his business; everything that went on under his roof or his property was his business.
The evening – so agreeable, at the start, perhaps because he hadn't brought Deborah, always a source of tension – had ended in the sort of unforgiving argument, neither yielding an inch, that he hadn't had with his mother since he was a boy. Even as he'd left, she had still seemed uneasy. 'No,' she kept saying, 'the woman shouldn't come. She shouldn't be here at all.'
'Well,' Sarr had said at last, 'it's too late now. I can't stop her from coming; I can't go back on my word. At the very least, I have to offer common hospitality. Don't worry yourself, Mother, there'll be no sinning on my land.'
But she hadn't appeared comforted.
And now, as he labored in his fields, Sarr couldn't get the matter off his mind. Maybe, in some dark way he didn't yet understand, he had made a mistake.
He wondered if he would have to pay for it.
Mrs Poroth grimaced beneath the beekeeper's veil. Grey wisps drifted past her face from the nozzle of her smoker, a teapot-shaped metal contrivance packed with smoldering rags and fanned by miniature bellows. Every few minutes she would shake her head uneasily, as if trying to clear it of some indigestible thought. Earlier, as she'd gone about her Saturday chores, pruning the hydrangea on the south side of the house and, with veil on, examining the upright wooden frames of the beehives for the day's accumulation of honey, she'd considered, half seriously, the possibility of setting up a roadblock on her lane. Anything to keep away the visitor.
Of course, maybe this was just some idle girlfriend of Freirs' and not the woman whose coming she dreaded; there was no way to be sure. Still, she hated to take chances. Stationing herself by the third hive, lowest on the hill and closest to the roadside, she waited for the visitor's car to pass.
If the woman turned out to be the one she feared, what should she do? Killing her, of course, would be a sin, and the Lord punished such acts, even when committed for good ends, though she was half prepared to accept the sin and the eventual punishment. Besides, she reflected, killing was probably the kindest thing she could do for the poor girl.
No, she couldn't do it. She would have to play by the rules. The Old One would be playing by them too.
There was nothing to do for now but find out all she could. Adjusting her veil and once more directing the smoker into the hive so that the insects, reacting as if to a fire and gorging themselves on honey, would grow sluggish, she lifted the flat unpainted lid and withdrew one of a dozen wooden frames acrawl with bees. Transferring the honey-laden frame to a storage chamber above the hive, she stood once more and prepared herself to wait for the passing of the car. If the chosen woman was in it, she would recognize her – by her hair, if nothing else. It would be red. It would have to be. That, too, was a rule.
Gilead at last. There was no mistaking the tidy little crossroads and the general store, obviously the Co-op that Jeremy had spoken of. He had also said something, Carol recalled, about 'high walls' surrounding the town, but no doubt he'd exaggerated; the only walls she'd seen were low stone ruins back at the approach road, stretching from each gatepost and winding off among the trees. She might not even have noticed them if she hadn't been told to look.
But perhaps, she mused, there were walls here of a different sort. The place seemed different from other towns: neater, certainly, to judge by the well-tended lawns she'd passed coming in, and more decorous in other ways as well. Across the street from the Co-op, where a red-brick schoolhouse glared through a line of trees at the grassy playing field in front, a group of little children played quietly on seesaws, neither shouting nor laughing, as subdued as children in a century-old woodcut, and all without a sign of adult supervision. Nor were there the usual small-town idlers gathered in front of the general store.
Parking in front, just beyond the untended gas pumps, she climbed the steps and entered. The store appeared uncommonly well stocked, and smelled, in the dim light inside, of spice and old apples. It was almost like entering a cave. The beams in the ceiling were heavy with merchandise – everything from sausages to snow-shoes, from bulbous white garlics to lamp wicks, frying pans, and coils of rubber hose. A tall white metal cooler hummed serenely near the back, stocked with cheeses, ordinary-looking cans of soda, and things wrapped in wax paper. Low shelves near the front displayed cellophane-packed cup-cakes, barbecue chips, and beef jerky. A huge jar of picked eggs stood beside the cash register on the counter.
The woman behind the counter was talking with another woman; both were elderly and dressed in black. While pushing through the screen door, Carol overheard references to a Brother Joram and a Lotte Sturt
evant, who was apparently growing quite enormous lately, but the two women fell silent and turned to her as soon as she came in. She asked directions of the one behind the counter. 'I'm trying to reach the Poroths' farm,' she said.
'Well, now, Sarr and that wife of his, I believe they bought the old Baber place.'
The other woman nodded gravely. 'My Rachel was out there last Friday evening. They're the ones that planted late.'
Farther back, in the shadows, Carol saw an alcove with another wooden counter, almost the mirror image of this one, and a wall lined with shelves and cubbyholes, in some of which leaned dusty-looking white envelopes. This, then, would be the local post office. It looked little used.
'You want to head out along the granary road,' the first woman – no doubt the postmistress – was saying. She stepped from behind the counter and, holding open the screen door, gestured in the direction of the retreating maples and the line of distant hills. 'Keep goin' straight past Verdock's dairy – it's just around that bend – and there you turn right and go along for half a mile or so.' She launched into a lengthy, detailed account replete with references to gullies, washed-out crossings, and lanes that dipped up and down like greased pigs, with particular attention to a mill road (' 'Course there ain't no mill there nowadays, it's all fell down since I was a girl') and a fork ('Don't go turnin' off on the little old road that splits off it on the left, 'cause that's goin' to lead you to the Geisels, and Matt and Cora like visitors so much they ain't goin' to let you leave before suppertime'). Carol found herself nodding politely, eagerly, but forgetting everything as soon as it was spoken. Right past Verdock's dairy, she remembered that much. She would find the place, no fear. She thanked the two of them and left the store.
'And be sure to say hello to Sister Deborah,' the woman called after her. 'Tell her we'll be lookin' for her at worship tomorrow.' The other woman tittered.
Parked in front of the store like a reminder of the world she'd left, the small cream-colored Chevy was one of the brighter objects in sight; the only other vehicles she'd seen since entering town had been dark unornamented cars and pickup trucks at least a decade old. Driving down the road in what seemed the suggested direction -it was, at least, the way she'd been heading anyway – she proceeded slowly at first, studying every passing farm and homestead for signs by which she might distinguish it later, if she had to return this way; then, as she realized that there were relatively few turnings to choose from, with more confidence. On impulse, more from the memory of something Freirs had told her than anything the woman in the store had said, she turned right when the road branched after the large dairy farm and found herself heading downhill toward a small, swiftly running stream whose sound echoed in the fields and thickets through which she was passing.
She drove for what seemed several miles along its winding banks, avoiding a narrow stone bridge – had the woman said anything about a bridge? – and coming at last to a clearing where a cluster of shanties stood huddled at the edge of the woods. The road she'd been following curved back uphill among the trees, branching just before the houses into an unsavory-looking pitted dirt road that she prayed was not the Poroths'. Three large, nondescript dogs raced up to the car and yapped fiercely at its wheels. A man in shirt sleeves – not bearded but unshaven, and with a hillbilly's long, straggly hair -looked up from a rusting automobile he'd been scraping, his dark little eyes peering suspiciously toward her car. In the weed-choked yard several pale, moon-faced children in T-shirts and shorts paused in their playing to watch her pass. They looked surprisingly ragged for this area, almost Appalachian. She drove past quickly, determined not to ask for directions here, and with sinking heart followed the road back uphill, taking the first opportunity she found to double back in the direction of the stream.
This time the way felt familiar; when she came again to the stone bridge, she turned left with more confidence and drove over it. The road wound steeply uphill once again, curving past a small stone cottage, a cozy-looking place set well back on a rounded hill, the yard around it overgrown with flowers.
She was so busy admiring them as she drove by that she almost didn't see the tall, faceless figure looming darkly at the edge of the road. With a little cry she swerved to avoid it, the car speeding around the bank of earth and shrubbery as if under its own volition, carrying her past. The road climbed farther, curving now in the other direction; she wasn't inclined to look back. It was only later, when the house would have been concealed from sight behind the bend, that she realized what she'd seen was a woman in a long black dress and the odd, shroudlike mask of a beekeeper.
'She's going to be here soon,' Deborah was saying, 'and I mean it, honey, the least you can do is drive to the Geisels and get us some of that rhubarb wine.'
'I heard you the first time,' said Sarr. 'Don't worry, I'm going.' He wiped the sweat from his forehead. 'But I don't intend taking out the truck for a task like that. Some of us still know how to walk!' He cast a pointed glance to where Freirs lay dozing. 'You've got the room all ready for her?'
Deborah nodded. 'If she's really going to use it.' This had been designed to get a rise from him, and it did.
'She'd damned well better!' he said, exasperated. ' 'Tisn't a whorehouse I'm running!'
'Oh, easy, honey, it's not for us to decide. Don't forget, they're not our people.' She paused, musing. 'Wonder if she'll be pretty. It's hard to picture what Jeremy likes.'
'I can tell you what he likes,' said Sarr. 'Have you ever seen the way he looks at you?'
'What he does with his eyes is his business.' Still smiling, she raised her fist. 'But let me tell you something, mister. What you do w ith your eyes is my business! Now get along down to the Geisels and buy that wine! She ought to be here any minute – should've been here hours ago. Get moving!'
He pretended to cower before her, the sight all the more comic because of his huge size. 'I'm moving,' he said. He loped off toward the house to get his wallet. The screen door slammed.
I wonder what's keeping her, thought Deborah. Probably overslept herself. A good match for Jeremy.
She looked at him. He was no longer asleep. She smiled; he smiled back.
The screen door slammed again, and Sarr emerged. With a wave he disappeared down the road.
The road was proving difficult to follow. It gave another twist, a living thing, hostile to the tires digging into its dusty back, and she had to wrench the wobbly steering wheel to keep the car from going off onto the shoulder or even crashing into the thick underbrush. The front wheels suddenly dropped into an unseen gully with a jarring clang of metal. Applying the brakes, she proceeded more slowly; fearful lest the dust and the bumps and the potholes damage Rosie's car. She pictured herself explaining how it had happened, Rosie's baby smile turning somber, and the empty way she'd feel if he dismissed her. How had she ever gotten herself into this? It was like a carny ride one couldn't get off. Grimly she continued down the road, jaw set, imagining with something close to hunger the comfort of the bed that awaited her at the farmhouse.
Her eagerness to see Jeremy had long since yielded to a certain resentment. What a fool she must look, to have gone to so much trouble just for him! Better to assert herself from the start; if he thought she'd driven all this way simply for the privilege of cuddling up to him, the boy was in for a surprise. Did he take her for one of his horny little students? She would show him just how wrong he was.
On the radio a man was prophesying fair weather; it seemed like magic that his voice remained so steady, so unaffected by the pounding and the bumping of the car. The time, he said – 'Bible time' -was four thirteen.
God, she was late! And perhaps there was no one on this back road after all; perhaps it would simply grow narrower and narrower until it finally disappeared amid the undergrowth and swamp. What if she was simply getting deeper into wilderness and would never be able to get out without abandoning the car? Everything's going to come out okay, she repeated to herself. Meanwhile the radio was whisp
ering the far less sanguine words of Jeremiah: 'And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the Lord: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.'
She was almost ready to turn the car around when, up ahead, half obscured by dust and the waves of rising heat, she saw a dark figure stalking grimly toward her like a moving shadow.
It circled the car warily as she slowed to a stop. She saw a gaunt, rather handsome face staring down at her, eyes wide and shy above the fringe of beard. She knew immediately who it was. 'Sarr,' she said, almost breathless with relief. 'At last!'
Mrs Poroth put the beekeeper's mask back in the closet and sat herself morosely on the narrow bed. She was worried. She had seen the woman. It was her, the one whose coming she'd dreaded. She had recognized the red hair and the intense, almost ascetic face, like that of an unwitting Joan of Arc. A holy victim.
Removing from the drawer in her night table a tattered yellow pile pressed flat between two sheets of cardboard, she untied the ribbon that held the sheets together and gazed down once again at the Pictures. Hesitantly she reached for the one on top – a landscape drawn entirely in white upon a grey background – and turned it over. She sifted through the rest of the pile, not shuffling them, proceeding with no established order, merely allowing her mind to roam free as she scanned Picture after Picture. Her gaze fell immediately on the image of the book, an obscene fat yellow volume, covers bulging, bloated, almost, as if barely able to contain the mass within. The moon drawing, too, caught her eye; but the moon that would appear in the sky tonight, she knew, would be nothing like the cruel, slim crescent shape in the Picture, with the star trapped between its tips. The one that shone tonight would be full.