Ceremonies

by T E. D Klein

  Suddenly the air contained a new voice, a low and distant rumbling from the east. At first it had been barely distinguishable from the wind in the trees; now it was growing deeper, in lazy waves of sound, like the drone of some gigantic insect.

  In the fields the women fell silent. The older men kept to their steady pace, eyes pointedly averted toward the ground, but a few of the younger ones surreptitiously scanned the horizon and found at last some small red winking lights that climbed among the stars. Miles above the woods and fields a shape like a great silver crucifix was streaking across the planet heading westward.

  The women stirred themselves. 'We've got corn to plant,' said the pregnant one. She peered into the darkened furrows at her feet, searching for a place to drop the seed. The others again took up the counting rhyme, but Deborah stared wistfully at the moving lights. Each Friday night the jet passed overhead, a jarring reminder of the world they'd shut out. 'Wonder where it's going,' she said, almost to herself. Her words were lost amid the chanting, the smell of moist black humus, the ancient and laborious routine. There was work to do, and her husband might be watching; she turned back to the corn seeds and the earth.

  Ahead of her one of the men continued to gaze awestruck at the eastern sky. 'So many stars up there,' he remarked to his companions, 'and so little light down here! You're a hard worker, Sarr, and a good God-fearing man, but I sure do wish you'd been ready when the rest of us were. Leastways we had a moon we could see by.'

  Poroth peered dolefully upward, aware that the other was right. Just above the trees the half moon reminded him of something damaged or broken, but the elders had assured him that, on the contrary, it was a most favorable omen for the crops: waxing larger day by day, it presaged an abundant growth and harvest. 'It wasn't possible to get these fields plowed by the appointed time,' he said, hurrying to keep pace with the others. He remembered the weeks of backbreaking labor, struggling with a balky tractor rented from the Go-operative. 'A month ago the ground we're walking on was covered by scrub and trees. This land hadn't been worked for seven years.'

  'We know that, Sarr,' said the first man. 'We know what this farm means to you, and what it must've cost. We respect you for it. 'Tisn't every man takes to the land so late.' Coming to the edge of a row, he turned in unison with the rest and reversed his staff, using the alternate tip. 'You're bound to make a few mistakes at first, but with the Lord's help you'll come out all right in the end. That's why we're here tonight, and why Brother Joram made his wife come along. She's sure to bring good portent.'

  There it was again, the omnipresent reverence for signs. A pregnant woman ensured good crops; a widow might bring disaster. Poroth knew that a cousin of his, Minna Buckhalter, was working in the kitchen side by side with women twice her age, his own long-widowed mother among them. Though Minna was strong enough for the outdoor work, she was considered unfit to bury seeds because last month she'd laid a husband in the earth.

  Were the Brethren superstitious fools, then? Poroth didn't care. He'd had more education than the rest, and he'd lived for a while in the place that called itself the modern world – yet he was a believer, his faith unshaken. Fertile women meant fertile crops; their long straight hair meant long straight stalks of corn. Primitive symbolism, perhaps, but it worked; he was certain of it. Jets flew high above the earth, where angels played; there was room up there for both. Thunder was a collision of molecules, and also the voice of God; both might be true. The Lord was in His heaven, whatever name you called Him, as assuredly as there were demons here below, whatever faces they wore. Him you worshiped, them you wrestled; it was as simple as that. The only trick was not to lose your faith. The nature of the belief didn't matter, Poroth knew; what mattered was its intensity. He had a high regard for superstition.

  'God's my witness,' he said to the other men, 'I know we've had our differences, but that's all past. Deborah and I are going to make you proud of us, you wait and see. You won't recognize this place!'

  In the distance light spilled from the kitchen doorway of the farmhouse; moments later came the slam of the screen door, echoing across the field.

  'By Michaelmas,' he went on, 'I'll have every acre planted, clear back to the stream.' He smiled at the thought. 'You wait and see. This land's going to look like the Garden of Eden!'

  The one called Joram paused and looked his way. If he was smiling, the darkness concealed it. 'Mark you, Brother Sarr,' he said softly, 'the Gospels speak of another garden.' They knew he meant Gethsemane.

  From beyond the fire came the faint clanging of a bell. Joram held up his hand. 'It's ready,' he said. 'Come.'

  They followed him from the field.

  The Village was alive tonight. The shoe stores and overpriced boutiques that lined both sides of Eighth Street were already closed, their windows dim, but the crowds were out in force and the food stands and novelty shops were packed. Comic T-shirts, zodiac posters, pizza slices, frozen yogurt: there was something for everyone, and everyone had a gimmick on display. Carol passed a fat girl in dirt-farmer overalls; a goateed black with a gypsy headdress and an earring; a young couple with leather pants and shiny blue streaks in their hair, the girl wearing a wristband ringed with spikes.

  Perhaps it was her mood, but she found herself disliking almost everyone she saw. It did no good to narrow her eyes and view the world through a veil of lashes; the faces still swam at her out of the shadows, only now they were distorted, as in a waking dream. From a doorway a dark figure made explicit sucking sounds and hissed something at her in Spanish; a group of heavy-set blond boys staggered past, football types from the suburbs, drunk already and raining blows on the one in front, nearly shouldering her off the sidewalk. Dodging a black selling incense and a party of teenagers arguing where to go next, she slipped into a bookshop just off Sixth Avenue and killed some time by leafing through the fashion magazines. They had foreign editions of Vogue here, and photo annuals from Japan. Glossy sullen-faced women in shiny dark lipstick pouted across the pages. She tried picturing herself as some of them, and for the first time the idea didn't seem so far-fetched. St Agnes's seemed far in the past; or maybe it was just the prospect of more money to spend and her close brush with the young man at the library.

  Leaving these fantasies on the rack, in magazines selling for five dollars or more, she journeyed back out onto the sidewalk, up the block, and around the corner to the relative quiet of MacDougal Street. It was less noisy here; ahead lay the darkness and trees of Washington Square, as if she'd come to the edge of the city. It was time she got some food in her.

  That was not going to be easy, unless she was willing to stand at a counter eating vegetable tacos or falafel or a greasy wedge of pizza. She had only seven dollars in her wallet, with perhaps two more in change. This might well have to last her till Monday; Rosie's expense check was useless for the moment, and – if her supermarket refused to cash it – would remain so all weekend. Her roommate never had any money either; she got men to pay for everything. It was an arrangement that, at this point, Carol would have welcomed.

  With a hand on her pocketbook and an eye peeled for strangers she wandered farther south, lingering a minute or two before a shop off the park, where she stared pensively at a slinky blue dress in the window and tried to imagine herself in it. Afterward she considered a more modest transaction – treating herself to cappuccino and a croissant in one of the coffeehouses along Bleecker Street – but a dollar eighty-five seemed a foolish price to pay for a cup of coffee. Besides, all the seats were taken in every place she passed; couples waited morosely by the open doorways, peering inside for vacancies, while others sprawled over tables set up cafe-style on the sidewalk. Movement here was only partially impeded, but farther west the sidewalks were completely blocked by street musicians. Standing behind open guitar cases or hopeful-looking upturned hats, they played wherever the crowds were thickest. From every side their music filled the night.

  Carol fought her way past the crowd surrounding a Jam
aican steel drummer and felt her exhaustion returning; somewhere soon she would have to rest. She was just crossing the street to avoid an even larger mob near the corner, flute music issuing from its midst, when, among the knot of spectators, their backs to her, her eye was caught by a bit of movement and a flash of red. It was a red canvas bag, swinging back and forth at the end of an all-but-unseen hand. Regularly it swung out from the crowd, then was lost again from sight, like the pendulum on an overwound clock – or the leg she'd seen swinging in the darkness of the classroom.

  It was him, of course; Jeremy, the young man from the library. Even from behind, she recognized the book bag, the stocky build, the rumpled seersucker jacket that hung from one plump shoulder. He seemed to be alone. And as she watched the bag appear and disappear, appear and disappear, she was struck by the crazy, not unpleasant notion that, like an engineer flagging down a train, fate was giving her a sign.

  Her first impulse was to hail him, but she stopped herself in time; she didn't want to seem too aggressive. Crossing the street once more, she slipped to the opposite side of the crowd and wormed her way up to the front. At first she could see nothing but the encircling faces; they were gazing toward something on the sidewalk. She looked down. At her feet squatted a diminutive old man with shiny black skin and grimy turban, piping frenziedly upon a wooden flute. Beside him lay a battered black umbrella. Between his knees he gripped a basket filled with loose change, from the middle of which rose a pale, serpentine thing that swayed before his face.

  Carol blanched. For an instant she had taken the object for some grotesque phallic joke, but now she realized what it was: a stick of wood carved to resemble a rearing snake, moved by pressure from the flautist's knee upon a metal rod. From a distance the illusion might have been effective; here on the sidewalk in front of her it just looked silly.

  Suddenly the man's eyes widened as he turned toward someone in the crowd. His pudgy black fingers curled more fiercely over the stops, his cheeks puffed in and out, and the music climbed to a shrill tremolo, just as a dollar bill fluttered like a dying moth into the basket at his knees'.

  Who was throwing dollars away? Carol looked up – and recognized Freirs at the same moment he recognized her. He was standing on the other side of the circle, his tie slightly askew, jamming a wallet back into his pants pocket. Street light was reflected in his glasses. As he turned and saw her, his face brightened; he signaled to Carol to wait where she was. Pushing his way through the knot of people, he made his way to her side.

  'So it's you again,' he said. 'The elusive librarian!' He seemed quite pleased to see her. 'There's just no missing you – that hair of yours really stands out in a crowd. It's like a flag.' Behind him the piping grew faster, as if in celebration. 'I looked for you in class tonight. It's a shame you didn't come.'

  Carol shrugged. 'I had to stay late at work,' she heard herself say. 'Maybe next time.'

  'There won't be a next time,' he said, looking pleased at the fact. 'At least not till next fall.' He glanced doubtfully up the block, at the head shops and frozen-custard stands. 'Don't tell me you live around here. This is no place for anyone who works at Voorhis.'

  'Oh, no,' she said, 'I was just taking the long way home.'

  'Really?' He appeared to consider it a moment. 'Feel like stopping off for a drink? A cup of coffee maybe?'

  She felt a queer thrill of triumph out of all proportion to the question. Absurd, of course, but there it was: a tiny voice that whispered, Anything can happen now. It was almost as if he had asked her to marry him.

  Within the stone circle the flames snapped ravenously, demanding still another log. Insects danced and died amid the smoke, which, rising in a slender column, twisted among the stars and was lost in the surrounding darkness.

  At the edge of the firelight the children crouched impatiently by the bag of corn seed, their eyes drawn past the flames to the tables that the older men had brought from the house and were now busy setting up: a folding bridge table, a sewing table, and the small square wooden table from the Poroths' kitchen, arranged in a row and, as the children watched, draped with a dark cloth to form one long platform. The screen door slammed again, and four women could be seen hurrying across the yard like stretcher bearers, hauling something heavy in a sagging white bedsheet. Behind them emerged others, arms laden with large brown thermos jugs which they placed by the fire. None of them spoke, and none were smiling; the only sound now was the distant clatter of pans from within the kitchen and, regular as a pulse beat, the slow and steady cadence of the crickets.

  Suddenly, for the second time, the night was split by the clanging of a large brass dinner bell brandished by one of the elders. Setting it down beside him, he reached for a hand-hewn limb of cottonwood and added it to the fire. It fizzed and crackled like a living thing.

  Nearby the women had lifted the bedsheet onto the tables and were crowded alongside, backs to the firelight, busily molding a flat, straw-colored mass that lay inert upon the cloth. They had been working since sundown, gathered around the huge cast-iron stove, measuring out the cornmeal, the molasses, the shortening, milk, and eggs. With practiced fingers they had scraped the separate portions still hot from the pans, fitting them together into the prescribed shape, using icing as mortar. Now at last it was ready, arranged hot and smoking by the fireside, awaiting the workers' return from the fields.

  The younger women struggled in behind the men. Theirs had been the harder job, as tradition dictated; man's work would come later, with the cultivation and the harvest. All were tired and hungry, in no mood for surprise; but all of them stopped short, men and women alike, when they saw what lay upon the bedsheet, burnished by the flickering light.

  It was the size that astonished them; it was longer than a man and covered most of the combined tabletops. In shape it resembled an immense five-pointed star, its entire surface studded with an intricate pattern of currants, nuts, and glistening sweetmeats. It smelled of corn and fruit and molasses, and everything about it spoke of holidays and feasting. Only its name, born of long custom, was ordinary: cottonbread, they called it. Ceremoniously they filed around the tables.

  'I didn't think I'd be seein' this again so soon,' said one of the men, wiping the dirt from his hands. 'It's a sight bigger than the loaf we had last week, wouldn't you say, Rachel?'

  'That's because we don't have so many mouths to feed,' said his wife.

  A heavy-set man grinned and nudged the first one in the ribs. 'Not yet, anyways!'

  The men around them chuckled – all but Poroth, the youngest here, who stood a little apart from the rest, silent and uneasy. He wasn't one for joking, especially about matters such as that. Children were holy, a gift from the Lord; a woman's body was His sacred instrument.

  He glanced anxiously at his wife. She was hunched beside a little girl, whispering something in her ear to coax a smile. It wasn't right that she herself was childless. Just as soon as they were out of debt he would make a mother of her; he knew she was impatient for that.

  How beautiful she looked with her hair down – far more beautiful than the local wives. If only she would learn to hold her tongue! After all, this was his land and these people his guests. Even though other hands had prepared the food that lay before them, he'd refused their offers of charity and had paid for it himself. It had put him even deeper into debt; but then, first planting was a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. He prayed that nothing would mar it.

  Behind the friends the townspeople assembled by the tables, behind the knots of children and old men, he noticed the spare, severe-looking figure of his mother. She was talking with his Aunt Lise and Lise's widowed daughter, Minna Buckhalter, both of them a full head taller than she was, their jet black hair drawn tightly in the back. Lise had been his late father's sister, and she and Minna bore an almost haunting resemblance to him. It was a look perhaps more handsome in a man – the wide and sturdy shoulders, the thin ascetic lips, the stern, deep-set brown eyes – though it lent them an unde
niable air of strength.

  His mother's back was turned to him, as it had been so often these past years – ever since, with Bible school behind him, he'd made his impetuous decision to leave the community. In time he had returned to it, with much learned and no regrets, but there was still a coolness between them. What Utile love there'd been had proven difficult to restore, like corn that wouldn't grow in played-out soil.

  But then, he remembered, he had himself to blame: for when he'd returned, he hadn't been alone. He'd had a wife with him – a stranger who, while of their faith, came from outside the area and, more important, seemed to make little effort to adapt herself to local ways. Her morals were, of course, beyond reproach, her training as strict as his own; he wouldn't have considered marrying any other kind. Still, there were those who thought her frivolous, high-spirited – dangerous, even. And then there'd been the question of the ceremony itself, that hurried little song-and-dance performed by an assistant college chaplain, with none of the parents in attendance… Yes, it was a lot for a mother to forgive, especially one who had no other child. Though he couldn't help but wish she were a little less reluctant to so much as speak Deborah's name.

  Lately he'd begun to wonder if this hardness of his mother's wasn't somehow connected, in some mysterious and fundamental way, with the very things that made her so special in the community – her supposed 'gifts.' He himself felt no particular reverence for them; what good had they ever done him? What good, for that matter, had they ever done her? Sometimes, in fact, it seemed as if this special knowledge was all but wasted on her; it apparently brought her not a moment's pleasure. She was like one who, shown a magic window to the future, yawns and looks away. Throughout her life she'd seen things, heard things, felt things coming – bitter winters, summer droughts, births and deaths and storms – but none of them had ever seemed to matter. Nothing had commanded her attention, nothing moved her: nothing, at least, within the bounds of the visible world. "Tisn't right to get attached to things,' she liked to say. 'The Lord don't mean for us to love one another too much.'