Ceremonies

by T E. D Klein

  He turned and walked purposefully toward the house, keeping down the impulse to run. A garter snake was unwinding from the bushes that grew in front of the basement window. Wait – there were two more just behind it.

  'Nettie,' he called. 'Nettie!'

  The door opened and she stood upon the back steps, studying his face. 'Ham? What's the-' She looked past him. 'Oh, sweet Lord!'

  He turned. For a moment it looked as if the cornfield was alive with snakes, each row a river of cold squirming bodies.

  'Lord,' she said, "tis like the plagues of Egypt!'

  He looked down at his feet; the very ground on which he stood seemed to breed them. As he watched, three small dark heads appeared only a few yards away, three small heads with eyes of shiny black, heads that grew like ground vines and that, slipping from their holes, crept forth to wriggle upon the earth.

  He pointed, wide-eyed, to where two more scaly bodies were emerging from the ground. 'Something down there is forcin' 'em up.'

  In the shadow of the outhouse writhed a veritable Medusa's coil of them, strands of which were detaching themselves and moving toward the woods. How could the earth hold so many? It was as if they'd been planted like seeds a moon or two ago and had now begun to ripen.

  Retreating to the back steps, he stood beside his wife and surveyed the things that crept across his land. 'What does it mean?' she kept asking – asking herself, or him, or God. 'What does it mean?'

  Others were asking that same question. At Abram Sturtevant's a beloved old pony suddenly turned vicious and bit one of the children on the neck; Hildegarde Troet watched with horror that morning as a family of mice came dancing out of their holes beneath the kitchen and ran round and round the floor; Adam Verdock's cows had, for the past two days, been giving sour milk, and a hen in Werner Klapp's henhouse had just laid its third double-yoked egg. One of Shem Fenchel's dogs, the younger male, snapped at the female and had to be locked up. Shortly after noon Rachel Reid's canary sat stock still in its cage, its beak gaping wide, and uttered strange, piercing cries.

  What was happening? Were they living under a curse? At first they asked individually, but as they learned, throughout that day, that others, too, were suffering the calamities, they grew more frightened and asked it of one another. What was happening? they asked. What did it mean?

  A fourth day has dawned, a fine layer of dust has settled on his eyeballs, and still he has not moved. He does not hear the radio blaring salsa music in the street below, or the sound of children's voices in the playground down the block, or the urgently repeated ringing of the telephone. He is far away, far across the river. He has not broken contact.

  He will see this thing through till the end. To do otherwise would be unthinkable.

  He intends to be in on the kill.

  Freirs counted his change and tried to get his story straight as he stood contemplating the pay phone that jutted from the rear wall of the Co-op, just inside the passageway to the grain warehouse. Surely, he told himself, Carol wouldn't turn him down – it wasn't as if he was asking so much, just a night or two of simple hospitality -but just the same, it was best to be prepared.

  He had decided, this very morning, to leave the Poroths; had awakened, in fact, with that resolve uppermost in mind, having spent the previous night camped in the farmhouse, sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the living-room floor. He had gotten up shortly after day-break in a sour mood, eyes itching and nose running, his skin covered with cat hairs. This was no way to be passing the summer, hiding in a cat-infested farmhouse while another feline, downright homicidal, lurked somewhere nearby. The whole thing was turning into a bad dream. He wanted out.

  The Poroths, unaware of his intent, had been nothing if not solicitous. They had moved aside all the living-room furniture to make a temporary bedroom for him and had made sure that the doors to the house were firmly locked, both front and back. Yesterday, on their way back from Werner Klapp's chicken farm, where they had purchased four new laying hens, they had stopped off in town to buy new screening for Freirs' room and a latch to bolt his door from the inside. Sarr had rigged up a simple wooden floor lamp for him from an old clothing rack and some spare parts found in the storeroom. Obviously the two of them were sorry that events at the farm had taken such a turn; obviously they wanted him to stay for the rest of the summer. It’s probably my money they want, he told himself.

  He hadn't yet said anything to them about leaving, though no doubt they sensed the possibility. He wasn't sure just how to bring it up, and besides, there was one thing he'd have to arrange first in private: finding a place in New York where he could stay until his own apartment was vacant. Perhaps Carol would be willing… He would have to propose it as a temporary measure, of course – just until he found a summer sublet. He could ask if he might simply use the couch for a few days; and then, if things developed as he hoped they would…

  Getting into town to phone her had seemed a problem. The Poroths would hardly be driving in again, having made the trip just yesterday, and he hated to ask to borrow the truck, especially when he'd have to make up some innocent-sounding pretext for needing it.

  It had looked, though, as if he'd have no choice. He'd been seated on the front porch, preparing himself to walk down to the cornfield where Sarr and Deborah were working and ask them for the keys, when from up the road had come the sound of an engine, followed by a cloud of dust the same grey as the sky. Moments later a square yellow van had rattled into view with Hunterdon Oil amp; Gas in large red letters on its side. Sarr had hurried back from the field in time to help the company's driver replace one of the tall silver cylinders that stood behind the house with a new one and to stow the empty cylinder in the back of the van. Afterward, with an apologetic smile – as if this were a betrayal of the Poroths' trust – the driver had presented them with a printed receipt and, attached to it, the bill for last month's gas. The first Sarr had slowly and conscientiously signed, but the bill had left him scowling and shaking his head.

  Freirs, seeing his chance, had asked the man if he'd be driving toward Gilead; there were things he needed at the store.

  The Poroths had exchanged a glance. 'You should have told us yesterday,' said Deborah,*when Sarr and I went in. We'd have been glad to pick up something for you.' Sarr, meanwhile, had been looking gloomily away, as if he knew that Freirs might be leaving them soon and was resigned to it.

  'I need more bug spray,' Freirs had said. 'Something a bit more powerful.'

  'But how will you get back?' Deborah had asked as Freirs climbed into the van. 'Should I-'

  'He'll find a way,' Sarr had cut in. 'Come on, woman, there's work to be done.' He had turned his back and started off in the direction of the fields.

  'I'll get a hitch,' Freirs had yelled, as the van came to life with a roar. 'See you by dinnertime.' Soon they'd been rolling down the road, the farm receding behind them, Deborah's forlorn figure still watching them go, Sarr's already lost behind the house.

  He still felt faintly guilty, standing here now before the phone. He was going to betray these people. Deborah, in particular, would be hurt.

  He forced himself to think of the city as he slipped a dime into the phone and dialed Carol's number. The memory of New York's hot and sticky streets was beginning to seem almost attractive. There'd be movies to catch up on, and restaurants to try, and Carol 'Please deposit seventy-five cents,' said an unfamiliar voice.

  He thumbed in the contents of his back pocket, fixing his face in a smile to help put himself into the proper mood. Okay, he thought, here goes nothing.

  Where was Rosie? What could he be up to? She hadn't heard from him in days. This wasn't like him at all.

  Carol reached down from the bed, picked up the phone, and dialed again. She let it ring for almost a full minute, her ear pressed close to the receiver, as if, by listening with all her might, she could hear the ringing echo through the corridors of his apartment, the sound of morning traffic in the street below his window,
the regular faint whisper of the old man's labored breathing…

  No, it was no use. No one was going to answer. She hung up the phone and wondered what to do.

  There was really nothing to get excited about, of course. Rosie was probably out of town, attending to business or visiting friends. He would be back this weekend, she was sure of that, because he'd promised to take her to the ballet Saturday and he always kept his promises.

  But then, he'd also promised to call her sometime this week, and here it was Thursday and she hadn't heard from him. That was unlike the old man; he usually phoned her every day, often twice, and sometimes even took her out to lunch at one of the Cuban Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood. She had come to expect his little calls, to look forward to them. Perhaps, in a way, she depended on them.

  His sudden silence worried her. After all, he was so old and frail; he'd never actually told her his age and she'd never dared ask him, of course, but the more she'd seen of him the more she'd begun to think that he must be eighty at least.

  What if he was lying dead, right this minute, on the floor of his apartment? That sort of thing happened often in New York, she'd read about it; there'd been a poor old man in the Bronx who'd died of a heart attack and had lain for months, an entire summer, in fact, his body decomposing, swelling, bloating with maggots and gas until it seeped through the ceiling of the apartment below.

  Or what if he wasn't dead but simply in a coma, unable to hear the phone? Or perfectly conscious but simply unable to reach the phone? How horrible she'd just been, then, to let the phone ring for an entire minute; she could almost picture the old man lying there paralyzed, listening to the rings, helpless to stop them, praying that someone would help him…

  She swung her legs off the bed and hurried to get dressed. Maybe nothing would come of this, she was probably just being silly, but she wouldn't be able to go to work this afternoon until she'd satisfied herself that he was all right. She had to do something, anyway. She owed him that much.

  The phone rang nine, ten, eleven times without an answer.

  'Damn!' said Freirs. It was almost noon. Maybe she was on her way to work. Well, he would wait around for a while and try her again at the library. Having gone to so much trouble to get here, he wasn't about to leave without talking to her.

  He wondered how he'd kill an hour or so, and wished he'd had the sense to bring a book. He'd thought general stores were supposed to stock magazines or at least the local papers, but the Co-operative had none. He was surprised how much he'd begun to miss the Times. The cemetery across the street held no interest for him in all this heat, the dusty headstones baking in the sun. Briefly he thought of the corpses beneath; at least they'd be cool down there.

  His shirt, he saw, was sticking to his back, and there were already sweat stains beneath his arms. With a sigh he rubbed the perspiration on the back of his neck and walked into the main room of the store.

  Too bad the Brethren seemed never to have heard of air conditioning; the only trace of refrigeration in sight was the cooler near the back. Bert Steegler, carefully marking catalogues at the front counter, looked up with as little friendliness as he'd displayed when Freirs had entered. Steegler's wife was across the corridor in the post office section, filling out a pile of official-looking forms. Freirs wandered down the nearest aisle, smelling the clean, cozy scent of spice, coffee, and floor wax. One aisle up from the passage leading back to the warehouse stood three large burlap sacks of grain, the first of them open at the top. I wonder whether you plant this stuff or eat it, he thought, running his hand through the kernels.

  'Is there somethin' you want?' Steegler had come around the counter and was peering down the aisle at him. Freirs dropped the grain and pointed to the cooler.

  'I think I'll get myself one of these hero sandwiches.' He took the largest, with a not-too-cold can of diet cola. 'And I'd better pick up some insect spray,' he added, suddenly remembering to lie to the Poroths. A dark red can labeled Chemtex caught his eye; this brand looked even stronger than the first. For Outdoor Use Only, the label warned; probably that just meant it was powerful.

  Steegler eyed the can dubiously and seemed reluctant to ring it up.

  'Don't worry,' said Freirs, grinning. 'I'll make sure I point it away from me.'

  But as the other looked up, Freirs saw the hardness in his gaze, the set of his mouth, and realized he'd misread the man's expression.

  'You fixin' to stay out here much longer?' asked Steegler.

  Freirs flushed guiltily. Had the other read his mind? 'What do you mean, "out here"?'

  'I mean here among the Brethren.'

  'Oh, I don't know,' said Freirs. Across the corridor Steegler's wife had paused in her writing and appeared to be listening. He chose his words with care. 'Sarr and Deborah are expecting me to stay until the end of the summer. Why?'

  Steegler shook his head. 'Nothin'. Just wonderin', that's all.' He totaled Freirs' bill with pencil and paper, a small drawer serving to hold the cash. 'You tell Brother Sarr I said hello, all right?'

  'Oh, sure,' said Freirs. 'Sure thing.' Taking his purchases, he walked quickly from the store. He was confused. Why had Steegler been so hostile? It was almost as if the fellow wanted him to leave town. ..

  Not until he'd seated himself on the hard wooden bench on the Co-op's front porch and was unwrapping the sandwich on his lap did an explanation present itself. Of course! he decided. He must nave heard me over by the phone and figured I was calling New York. He's probably afraid I'm running out on the Poroths.

  Freirs felt better now. Yes, that must be it. It wasn't that Steegler wanted him to leave town – quite the opposite. The fellow wanted him to stay!

  Ever since he'd first laid eyes on him that warm Sunday in May, Bert Steegler had never forgiven the outsider for sleeping in the graveyard. Oh, he'd seen him, all right, up there in the shadow of the Troet monument, snoozing away the afternoon with his fat belly in the air, just like those were his own people up there and he had a right to he amongst them. Steegler and his wife had family buried there – poor little six-week-old Annalee, Lord rest her soul – and he took it amiss to see this sloppily dressed stranger lying on top of the departed like they were so many clumps of earth. He had seen Brother Sarr Poroth climb the low hill to the monument that day, had seen him wake the city fellow and take him down to his truck, and had heard how the Poroths had opened their home to him. Brother Sarr didn't seem to mind the outsider; but then, Brother Sarr didn't seem to mind very much about a lot of things: the proper respect the community was due, to say nothing of his own mother, the boy up and going off to get his education in some other town, then trotting back home like the Prodigal. And now he was flouting the Co-operative itself- which was, after all, really no more than the community of Brethren anyway, as they existed on paper – to which he owed – what was it now? Why, it was over $4900, the last time he'd checked. How did the boy think he was going to pay that off? A good thing his father wasn't alive, Lord rest his soul; the old man wouldn't have taken kindly to a son so deep in debt to the Go-op.

  Steegler craned his skinny neck and peered out the window. Yes, he was out there, all right; he knew he hadn't heard the fellow walk down the front steps. There he was, sitting fat and lazy on the bench, young enough to work, certainly, and probably strong -folks who carried a lot of weight usually had the muscles to go with it – but preferring to remain there in idleness, swallowing his sandwich and staring out at nothing, with Lord knows what sinful thoughts in his head. Brother Rupert Lindt was right about the fellow: that sort expected others to work for them but wouldn't do a lick themselves. It set a bad example, him being there like that, with his bulging pockets, in front of the store that was the symbol of the community. He should never have listened to Amelia he should have taken that bench away years ago; he'd warned her it was an invitation to the idle, but she'd maintained that old folks needed a place to rest their bones. As if old folks had nothing better to do this side of the grav
e than sit and stare at the street. For all he knew, the fellow was discouraging trade.

  From across the room the glass door to the cooler didn't look completely shut; it would be just like the outsider to leave it hanging open, wasting the propane gas whose price had just gone up another dollar twelve a tank. Steegler hurried down the aisle to check and saw, with a tiny edge of disappointment, that the door was in fact closed. He turned lest any of the cornmeal livestock feed had spilled from the sack the fellow had been running his hands through. That's when he saw the worms.

  The corn was alive with them. There were dozens – no, hundreds, he suddenly realized, as his eye took them all in: squirming little yellowish things nearly the color of the corn, slipping in and out amongst the kernels like the inhabitants of some satanic city.

  And even as Steegler told himself that it couldn't be the stranger's fault, that the worms must have been breeding there for weeks, that the unusually hot weather was to blame, or whoever'd sold him the corn (hadn't it been Brother Ham Stoudemire?) – even as these thoughts occurred to him, the association was formed: the stranger spoiled things just by touching them. It was like the Bible said: at his touch sprouted vermin.

  He couldn't wait to tell Brother Rupert about this. He could almost see the other now, the slowly widening eyes, the deepening scowl, the angry clenching of his huge fists.

  Bert Steegler was no fool. He had a good idea what was behind Lindt's dislike of the outsider: it was that thin redheaded girl, the one'd he'd had with him that Sunday right here in the store. Steegler had seen the larger man glance her way and glance again, and he'd sympathized; everyone knew Sister Anna led Rupert a hard life.

  Still, he could appreciate the truth of what Lindt said. The fellow out there on the porch just didn't belong here. He had come amongst the Brethren bearing the taint of the city; he was a gateway for sin. Gilead would need a cleansing to rid itself of him.