by T E. D Klein
The subway uptown was almost empty in the late morning heat except for a pair of Columbia summer-termers, one of whom kept eyeing her over his paperback, and a group of black youths with baseball caps and duffel bags. Two of them were looking past her and giggling. Pretending to wipe the sweat from her forehead, she turned and saw a tattered blue sign pasted to the window just above her, bearing a cross and the printed slogan, It’s A Blessing To Be A Virgin. Below them someone had scribbled, But you got to give Great Head. Quickly she looked away. She was glad the next stop, 110th Street, was hers.
She walked south until she recognized the ancient grey brick building just off Riverside Drive. From eight till six a doorman was on duty, a sleepy-looking Hispanic whose only uniform was a T- shirt and brown slacks. He seemed confused as to what she wanted of him and, after she'd explained herself, reluctant.
'No,' he said, shaking his head slowly. 'I can't open no door for nobody.'
'But he may be in there dying,' Carol pleaded.
His expression suggested that he found this unlikely. 'Look, lady, I ain' got no key. The super, he the one with the key, but he gone out now. You wanna come back tomorrow, you talk to him, okay?' He looked away, his face impassive, as if she weren't standing there in front of him.
'Well, can I at least go up there and knock on his door?'
He nodded, still not looking at her.
'Thanks a lot.' She walked past him to the elevator and jammed her thumb onto the button marked 12. A minute later she emerged on Rosie's floor. His apartment was at the end of the hall, behind a dull green rather shabby-looking door from which gleamed three brass locks of formidable size. The old man was worried about thieves.
'Rosie?' she called, holding her finger against the buzzer beside the door. 'Rosie?' She could hear the buzzer's muffled ringing within the apartment. She pressed her ear to the door. There was no other sound.
She knocked now, softly at first, then harder, putting her ear once more to the door.
Nothing.
She shrugged, began to walk away, then stopped and went back. 'Rosie,' she called, putting her mouth to the crack, speaking as softly as she dared because she was somewhat embarrassed to be doing this, 'Rosie, this is Carol. If you're in there, listen to me. I can't get in the apartment, but I'm coming back tomorrow and I'll have the super let me in. So try not to worry. I'll be back.'
More than an hour had passed, and he still couldn't reach Carol. There was no answer at her apartment, and the woman he'd spoken to at Voorhis said that Carol hadn't come to work today. 'No,' Freirs had told her, 'no message.' He hung up, troubled, almost indignant, at this unexpected absence of someone he'd regarded as reliable. Where the hell was she, anyway? Who had she gone off with? Well, he would call her in a day or two, when he got back to New
York. He certainly wasn't going to wait around here any longer; he had already wasted enough time. Gilead's main street had been dull, with cars passing but rarely and those inside them regarding him with little warmth; and the library, where he'd thought he might spend the afternoon, had been unaccountably closed. He had drunk too many cans of soda, there on the porch, and eaten too many potato chips. Now, as he got to his feet and moved slowly down the front steps, the heat made him feel dizzy.
It was a long way back to the farm. He walked for more than twenty minutes down the road that curved past Verdock's dairy and the Sturtevant home, hoping for a ride, but the only car that passed him was an antiquated Ford, black as a hearse and traveling in the opposite direction. The elderly couple inside, also in black, regarded him with stony disapproval as they went by, giving him a taste of their exhaust.
He watched the car recede slowly up the narrow road until it rounded a bend and disappeared, the faint hum of its engine lingering a moment or two afterward. Once again the air was still, but for the sound of a distant tractor and the echoes of an axe; not a thing was moving save the cows eyeing him suspiciously in a field to the left, the butterflies hurrying from flower to flower, and an occasional green snake that wandered onto the pavement and slithered back into the grass at his approach. The oak trees' shadows lengthened perceptibly with the passing day, as if reaching back toward town.
Five minutes later, just as he was descending the hill that ran past Ham Stoudemire's farm and stepping past the dark, motionless form of a garden snake coiled in sleep at the edge of the pavement, a rusty blue pickup truck appeared on the road, two black-garbed figures inside, a sparsely bearded boy at the wheel and beside him a plump, snub-nosed girl. The truck bore swiftly down upon him. He stuck out his thumb and flashed a hopeful smile.
Far from slowing as it neared him, the truck increased its speed and made a sudden swerve to the right. The garden snake woke just ' in time and slipped into the grass. Freirs jumped back to avoid being run down.
'Assholes!'
He hoisted an angry finger at them as they went by, hoping, at first, that the two had seen the gesture and then, on reflection, that they hadn't. No sense getting into fights with the townspeople.
Teenagers, he supposed, were teenagers everywhere, even among the Brethren. Anyway, for all he knew they'd just been aiming at the snake.
It wasn't until he'd descended halfway to the brook, the road ahead now crisscrossed with shadows of trees, that he encountered a genuine Samaritan: a leathery old farmer with a truckful of garbage, on his way to the town dump half a mile past the Geisels' north field. 'I almost didn't stop for you,' he said, eyeing Freirs warily through eyes whose whites had turned as yellow as corn. 'Thought you might be one o' them gangsters.'
Freirs laughed and assured him that he was as honest as the next.
The other nodded gravely. 'You're the guy who's stayin' at the Poroths'.'
'How'd you know?'
'Figured that's who you'd be, soon as you opened your mouth.'
'It must be hard to keep a secret around here. Everybody seems to know everything that's going on.'
'Pretty much.'
It occurred to him, after they got. under way, that the man might be a resource. 'For a town this small,' he said, 'there seems to be a wealth of family history.'
The other was shaking his head. 'There ain't too much wealth in this town, son. We don't hold with gatherin' up the goods o' this world like some folks do.'
'No, no, I mean, a wealth of memories, a sense of identity based on family background.' God, he sounded like a textbook! 'Like Sarr Poroth moving back to his ancestral farm after more than a century. That's pretty amazing.'
The man shrugged. 'It was for sale at a good price, and someone was bound to settle there by and by. The Babers never did do much with it – not as much as some folks might.'
'I suppose the land's not all that fertile down there.'
'No, sir, there's nothin' the matter with that land. It's just a matter of clearin' back the trees from time to time. You've got to have the will to see it through.' He paused. 'Less'n you fancy livin' in the woods, like some around here.'
'You mean families like the Fenchels. I've heard Sarr speak of them.'
He nodded. 'Folks like that.'
'And the McKinneys,' said Freirs. "They must live out there, too, even deeper in the woods.'
The other looked puzzled. 'Never heard of anyone by that name, leastwise not around here.'
'No? What about the place they call McKinney's Neck? I figured it was named for someone in the area.'
'I expect you're right. But I sure ain't never heard of no McKinneys. Not in these parts.'
Freirs tried to remember his stroll through the cemetery. Now that he thought of it, he couldn't recall seeing any gravestones with that name.
'At any rate,' he said, 'I mean to hike through that region someday. Maybe I'll even run into a few ghosts.'
The man didn't take the bait. 'Don't see why a ghost would pass his time out in the Neck. Ain't nothin' there but swamp water and mud. You just be careful you don't go sinkin' in.'
'Still, I hear some pretty strange things hav
e happened out there.' He watched for the other's reaction. 'Even a couple of murders, I hear.'
The man's expression barely changed, save for a certain impatience. 'I remember somethin' like that, but it was years ago. 'Twould be well before you were born. And beggin' your pardon, it seems to me that when it comes to killin', the place you're from has the rest of us just about beat.'
'I won't deny it' said Freirs. He tried to look properly contrite. 'But the killings I'm thinking of were a bit unusual – both on the last day of July. I don't suppose anything special happened last year on that date, did it? Or maybe the year before? Some sort of violent crime, or someone missing? An unexplained death, maybe?'
The man drove a while in silence. 'Nope,' he said at last. 'Not so's I remember. Summer's pretty quiet around here. Why?'
'Oh, nothing,' said Freirs. 'Just a thought.'
July 31, 1890, and July 31,1939… Why those two dates nearly half a century apart? There had to be something special about them, something that separated them from all other July thirty-firsts…
'Fact is,' the farmer said, breaking into Freirs' reverie, 'that time o' year's amongst the holiest, August commencin' as it does with the Feast o' the Lamb and closin' on the harvest festivities.'
'Really?' He was slightly disappointed. 'I guess your year must be filled with all sorts of holy days.'
'Well, we try to live in the way o' the Lord. For instance, only last Sunday, at worship, Brother Amos turned to me and said… '
But Freirs' mind was already back at the farm, going over the preparations to be made before leaving: the explanations that, tomorrow morning, he would have to give the Poroths, the shelfloads of books to pack away… And through it all his thoughts kept returning to the faded old photograph that he'd taped to the wall above his writing table – a photo of that curious little white face, smiling at him from the past.
It was the leg of mutton that prompted his question – the mutton which, upon Freirs' return, lay roasting in the oven for the night's dinner, its smell filling the little kitchen.
'Deborah, what's the Feast of the Lamb?'
She shrugged. 'Just another one of our observances. Why?'
'The old man who gave me a lift here mentioned that it comes at the beginning of August. I'd never heard of it before.'
'Honestly, Jeremy,' she said, laughing, 'you haven't even tasted tonight's meal and you're already hungry for more!' She turned back to the cucumbers and tomatoes she was slicing for the salad. 'What else did he tell you?'
Freirs thought back. 'Nothing very interesting,' he said. 'I don't think he knew that much. I asked him about McKinney's Neck, but he'd never even heard of anyone around here named McKinney.'
'Come to think of it, neither have I,' said Deborah. 'Honey, was there ever a McKinney family in these parts?'
Poroth looked up from the previous day's Home News, which he'd been frowning over. 'None that I recall.'
'So where'd McKinney's Neck come from?' asked Freirs.
The other shook his head. 'Couldn't tell you. But I'll see what I can find out.' He returned to his reading.
'If you're interested in the Feast of the Lamb,' said Deborah, 'you could join us at the Geisels'. That's where we'll be having it this year. Sister Corah's a wonderful cook, but I warn you, there'll be a lot of praying.'
'I take it I'm invited.'
'I don't see why not. Honey, can't Jeremy have the lamb with us at Matt and Corah's?'
'He'll be welcome,' said Poroth. 'If he's still here.'
Freirs flushed. 'I certainly hope I am.'
'And why wouldn't he be?' said Deborah, busy taking out plates and saucers. 'Put away the paper, honey, it's time to eat.' She glanced at Freirs. 'Nobody's going to leave meals like this behind.'
'How could I?' Freirs said, with a heartiness he didn't feel. Eyeing the food she was already laying on the table, the bright reds and greens of the salad, the cold pitcher of milk, the beans fresh from the garden, he wondered what the Poroths had been saying about him today.
The subject of his leaving didn't come up again. But after dinner, as the two men stood on the back porch watching darkness settle over the land and listening to Deborah singing hymns as she worked in the kitchen, Sarr returned, if only indirectly, to an earlier subject.
'You know,' he said with obvious deliberation, 'God answers to many different names, and He's worshiped in strange ways. But He's always the same God.'
There was a pause; Freirs felt the other's eyes on him. 'That's true,' he said at last, wondering what the man was driving at. 'I'm sure it doesn't matter what you call Him.'
'It doesn't,' said Poroth heatedly. 'The words may be different, but the spirit's always been the same. At Trenton the professors talked about "other systems of belief," and so did all those books in there' – he nodded toward the house, where his few remaining college texts stood gathering dust in the living room – 'and at first I was troubled, I don't mind telling you, at how many different forms God seemed to take. But in the end I found I was able to return to the fold with even more faith than I'd started with, because I came to see how, even when He had different names, He was the same God I knew.'
'I once read a story,' Freirs began, 'about how the people in Tibet have nine billion names for Him… '
'You don't even have to go that far away,' said Poroth. 'There was a little village down in Mexico that the Catholics were wonderfully proud of. The Indians in the area had all been converted, you see -they'd been Christians for at least a hundred years – and week after week every last one of 'em would show up in church to worship the Virgin Mary. And then one day the priest had the altar taken up, so as to make some repairs, and underneath it he discovered another altar, with an idol much older than his, a cruel-looking thing with a snake head and teeth.'
'And that's what they'd really been worshiping all along?'
Poroth nodded. 'But the point is, they were all just fooling themselves. The Catholics thought they were praying to one god and the Indians thought they were praying to another, but they were really praying to the same. It's as if below both the Virgin and the snake was still another god – the true one.'
'The one with the capital G,' said Freirs. Privately he had drawn a different conclusion from the story: something about older, darker gods, and rites in which the blood wasn't just a symbol.
'It's the same with the Feast of the Lamb,' Poroth was saying. 'Actually, it's got another celebration buried underneath, though folks around here wouldn't have heard of it.'
'What kind of celebration?'
Poroth shrugged. 'Pagan. Your standard harvest festival.' He held open the screen door. 'Come on, I'll show you.'
Deborah was standing at the sink as they passed through the kitchen but didn't look up from her washing. A glowing lantern made the night beyond the windows look darker than it had from the porch. Sarr lit another and they went into the living room, where he stooped before his little cache of books in the corner, peering at the names on the spines.
'Sometimes,' he said, 'the Christians took a pagan day and made it their own – like Easter, which, as I expect you've heard, was a planting festival long before Christ.' He pulled out a battered grey volume from the bottom shelf and began thumbing through it. 'Sometimes they changed the name a little, to disguise the origin. That's what we Brethren did with the Feast of the Lamb, which sounds so proper and Christian.'
'It wasn't originally?'
Poroth looked up from the book. 'No,' he said in a low voice. 'And I'm probably the only one who knows.'
'What's that you're looking at? Some rival to the Bible?'
The other laughed uneasily. 'No, just an almanac, something I haven't opened for years.' He squinted at the cover, but the name had long since worn away, and he turned instead to the tide page. 'Byfield's Newly Revised Agricultural Almanack and Celestial Guide f or 1947,' he read. 'I found it at a church bazaar in Trenton for fifteen cents.' Looking down, he flipped through several more pages, then pause
d. 'Ah, here's what I've been searching for.' He handed the open book to Freirs, pointing to a line in the middle of what appeared to be a chart. 'See? Right there.'
The book itself smelled faintly of mildew, its covers warped and faded. Freirs scanned the opened page. Festivals of the Ancients, it said at the top; below it lay a complicated-looking calendar. He found the indicated line. August 1, it said. Lammas.
'It's got nought to do with lambs,' said Poroth. 'Nor does the night before.'
Freirs checked the previous column. July 31, he read. Lammas Eve. 'Hmmm, sounds sinister!'
'It can be. Black magic's always powerful on Lammas Eve. There'll probably be some odd doings somewhere in the world that night.'
'Why's that?'
Instead of answering, Poroth merely pointed back to the calendar in the book. There was something called Roodmas on May third, and Midsummer on the twenty-fourth of June, and the day Deborah had spoken of, St Swithin's, on the fifteenth of July. Several dates, he noticed now, were marked with tiny asterisks – dates like the first of May and the last day of October. So was Lammas Eve, the last day of July.
He looked down at the bottom of the page. There beside an asterisk was the footnote, a simple one, just two words long:
Sabbats likely.
Moonlight slanted through the misty air of the place known as McKinney's Neck, through motes of dust and dancing insects, through the latticework of ancient roots that spread from the column of a fallen cottonwood, down through the roots, down to the freshly built little altar of rock and mud and bone.
The altar was smaller than the first but considerably more colorful. Between each of the tiny standing pebbles that encircled the mound like a miniature Stonehenge lay freshly plucked rose blossoms that shone, by day, like red beacons in the mud, and at night looked like small knots of darkness. And stuck at the top of the mound, like a comical little pompom atop a clown's hat, there now lay a single round head, eye sockets empty but ears and whiskers intact – and with black fur still soft enough to pet.
