by T E. D Klein
Laying aside the Pictures, she closed her eyes, fell stiffly back on her bed, and tried desperately to think of a connection.
The hum of insects was beginning to drive him to distraction. His ears tingled to the buzz of a mosquito, it seemed about to pierce into his brain, and yet behind it he could hear the reassuring drone of the hornets and bees and those flies with heads like jewels. What was there in that sound? He cocked his head to listen, and, for a moment, believed he understood: it was the hum the world made as it went about its work, serenely preoccupied, all gears meshing smoothly, the mechanism utterly dependable.
Now there was another sound behind it, another motor – and in the distance a small white Chevrolet came lurching slowly up the dirt road toward the farm. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two kittens padding across the lawn to investigate, tails eagerly aloft. He got up from his chair and walked hurriedly around the side of the house to the driveway, just as Deborah was emerging from the back door. She joined him at the bottom of the steps, and by the time the little car had pulled up next to the house, he and Deborah were waiting side by side, cats gamboling at their feet, as if the two of them were the farm couple and he Deborah's lawful husband.
Carol had arrived at last, but more than four hours late, and he could see, even through the dusty windshield, that she was in a bad mood. Well, he would just have to hold her awhile and make her feel better. Turning the engine off, she wiped a hand across her shining forehead and climbed silently from the car. For Deborah, now rushing forward to welcome her, she managed a smile, but it looked forced, strained; and for him, hanging back, there was no smile at all, not even a hello – though he got a greeting he would not quickly forget.
'I swear I could strangle you!' she said, slamming the door shut as the kittens fled back across the lawn. 'How could you tell me this place was only an hour or so away?'
His first reaction was simple embarrassment that she should speak to him that way in front of Deborah. Her mood also unnerved him; it was going to be that much harder now for the two of them to get romantic – which was presumably what they both wanted. Hesitantly he reached in through the window for the tote bag on the seat. 'Here, I'll get this.' It was heavier than he expected; he felt the awkward weight of a bottle and some bulky parcels.
He was about to start for the outbuilding, but she took the bag from him. 'That's okay, I've got it,' she said, already calming down. She turned to Deborah, who, behind her back, had been giving her a cool, appraising glance. 'I'd really like to go wash up. I feel like I've just run a marathon.'
'Come on inside, then. The bathroom's just off the kitchen.' Deborah led her up the back porch steps, the two of them chattering about the unseasonable heat. Seen together like that, buxom brunette and slim redhead, they looked like some Victorian allegory of darkness and light. After all those nights alone on the farm, he was glad that one of them was his.
He drifted back to his room, casting his eye over it one more time before she saw it. The roses on the night table were a nice touch, he decided. Too bad the windows in the back didn't let in more light.
Finally, bored, he walked back up to the house. Voices came from the second floor, but not, as usual, from the Poroths' bedroom. Dismayed, he hurried upstairs to find the two of them, just as he'd feared, in the small spare room in back intended eventually for a child's bedroom. They were talking about the pictures that covered the walls – a series of nursery rhyme cutouts and lithographed Bible scenes chosen with the room's future occupant in mind. Deborah was holding a wrapped-up bottle. Carol's tote bag already lay upon the bed, a fresh towel beside it.
'Jeremy,' said Carol, beaming, 'do you know, this is just like the room my sister and I had when we were growing up! I swear, I had some of these same pictures.'
'Oh, really?' He stood in the doorway, hoping his face didn't betray his disappointment. 'I guess all that's really needed is a crib.'
Deborah was watching him closely. He couldn't tell if she was gloating or feeling sorry for him. 'Well,' she said, 'call me if you need anything. I've got to get back downstairs now – there's something in the oven.' She held up the bottle. 'And thanks again for the wine.'
'Carol,' he said when she was gone, 'you don't really intend to stay here, do you?'
Her eyes widened. 'Where else would I stay?'
He sighed. Already things were going wrong. Out there, beneath the sun, the world was turning serenely, yet inside here a piece of it had turned away from him. 'The fact of the matter is, I thought that you'd be staying out there with me.'
'That's certainly not what I had in mind,' she said. 'And I don't think the Poroths would approve of an unmarried girl spending the night back there with you.'
'Their opinion doesn't matter.'
'Of course it does, Jeremy. We're guests in their home.'
'I'm not a guest. I'm paying rent.'
'Yes, but I'm a guest,' she said firmly, 'and I wouldn't want to offend them. And anyway, though it probably sounds silly to you, I just don't do that sort of thing.'
He'd deserved that, he realized. There was nothing dumber than trying to argue a girl into bed, and that's exactly what he'd been trying. Now she had blown him out of the water. 'It's okay,' he said. 'I understand.' Maybe he could still change her mind.
'And look,' she said, 'I'm sorry about that little outburst of mine, back in the yard. I didn't mean to take it out on you. I guess I just got nervous driving Rosie's car.'
He shrugged. 'Didn't bother me. Honest. I'm just sorry you had such a rough trip.' Glumly he eyed the room's low ceiling, the wide plank floorboards covered by a throw rug, the shallow, smoke-stained fireplace taking up most of one side. How could she actually think of staying here? It was so damned claustrophobic. Around him shapes were thumbtacked to the pale blue papered wall: faces grinned from the ramparts of a cardboard castle, a white-robed priest made solemn gestures before an altar fire, a cow danced dreamily round a startled moon. He waved his hand toward the room at large. 'Well, anyway, welcome to the Land of Nod.'
'It seems very comfortable.'
He sniffed. 'A little stuffy, though.' Frowning, he went to the other side of the room, where a tiny dormer window looked out upon the yard. Just inside the panes, hanging by a length of string from a hook above a lintel, a hollow, ruby-red witch ball of hand-blown glass revolved slowly in the sunlight. Large as an overripe apple, it was designed to keep evil spirits at bay; inside it lay a sprig of angelica, the herb beloved of the Holy Ghost. Across the room, from a trick of the light, a glowing disk the size and color of a rose appeared to float upon the wall above the bed.
From behind him came the muffled sound of a zipper. He caught his breath and looked around, half expecting to see Carol stepping lightly out of her jeans, but she was busy rummaging through the open tote bag; a hairbrush and a pair of slacks already lay upon the bed. Inside the bag he glimpsed a fat yellow book with ornamental covers but failed to recognize it. She reached inside for the volume, then seemed to think better of it and shoved it back among the clothes. God, he thought, she's even brought some kind of prayer book! With a sigh he turned back to the window. Unfastening the latch, he pushed open the two sets of panes, letting in a breeze from the yard. The leaves of the apple tree whispered with it just outside the window, and the witch ball stirred lazily on its string. Past the garden the dusty white Chevy sat dozing in the driveway. In the distance he could see his own building, the afternoon sunlight shining fiercely on the shingles of the roof, and, beyond it, the smokehouse and the old black willow that grew against the barn. She would have a pleasing view if she stayed up here tonight – a better view than he would have from down there on the lawn.
And he would be alone down there.
But she still might reconsider, the optimist in him decided. In fact, he felt confident that she would. Far from discouraging him, her behavior back in the yard made him feel curiously protective: here she was, supposedly a resourceful corn-fed country girl, yet she'd apparen
tly managed to get herself lost two or three times on the ride out and had obviously had trouble navigating the final stretch of road. Whatever she liked to fancy herself, she was certainly no pathfinder. He realized that in the short week he'd been living here, he'd begun to feel at home.
'Come on,' he said, 'let me show you where I live.'
Their footsteps clattered through the hall and down the stairs, the floorboards echoing as they passed.
Behind them in the little room, deserted now, the ball of ruby-red glass spun like a planet in the sunshine. The image it cast on the opposite wall was aglow with rosy light, its center filled with swirling bands of red.
Gradually, hour after hour, the sun would settle earthward; the rosy light would travel ever higher up the wall. At last, trembling with the final rays of sunset, it would strike the lower corner of a Bible lithograph, then a line of badly painted foliage, a rock, a patch of moss, a bit of long white robe… until, like some intense supernal spotlight, it would shine directly on the center of the picture, on a bright configuration with the contours of a star: the altar fire.
Inevitably, for a moment, the star and rose would merge.
Afterward, the sun would settle further; the spotlight would move on. Yet for that single moment, beneath its rays, the fire would have flickered, glowed, and come to life. For an instant the flames would leap higher, burning with a vastly deeper hunger, now shifting, now spreading, devouring picture, planet, all.
Lazy clouds drifted above the tops of the surrounding trees; wisps of shadow swept the grass. Freirs sat slouched next to Carol on a rock by the banks of the stream, beneath the shade of one of the willows that grew along the side.
To his uneasiness the two of them had once more fallen silent, and now barely stirred except to brush away an occasional fly or flip a stone or twig into the water – water so clear that it was impossible to tell the depth. Along the opposite bank, where the woods began, the pine trees shifted restlessly in the afternoon heat, but the water here beside them was nearly cold enough to freeze one's fingers.
Carol leaned over, trying to see her reflection, but the current was too swift. Sunlight glimmered from the water's surface, picking out dead leaves and bits of debris being carried downstream. In the shadows one could see other things, smooth and pale and snakelike, twisting among the rocks at the bottom.
She seemed preoccupied. Freirs watched her out of the corner of his eye with a yearning he couldn't quite remember feeling since the days before his marriage. He wished she were staying more than just one night; he hadn't realized, till now, how lonely he had been. It was something of a surprise, in fact: she looked so wonderfully tight sitting here beside him in her old plaid shirt and slim-legged jeans, her skin so pale in the sunlight, her hair so red against the grass.
And she herself hadn't been immune to the feeling. By the time the two of them had left the farmhouse, she'd seemed very happy to be here with him today. Deborah had been singing in the kitchen. Outside, the air had grown cooler. Butterflies were dancing on the lawn.
'God,' she'd said, 'it feels like coming home!'
But something had unaccountably changed her mood; without warning she had suddenly become less friendly, just when he'd begun to feel close to her.
It had happened in his bedroom. A silence had seemed to fall between them, there among his books and papers. Somehow she had had a change of heart. He had seen it when she'd first walked through his doorway; he'd seen a vague expression of distaste come over her – had she actually wrinkled her nose? – and a certain wariness when she'd looked from bed to rear window and window to bed, as if measuring the distance.
He had tried to keep the conversation going, something he was usually adept at, but maybe in the past week he'd gotten out of practice. They'd talked about a hike they hoped to take, and where to search for animal tracks, arrowheads, edible wild plants. But it had been no more than filling in the blanks. She'd seemed restless and distracted the entire time and was soon suggesting that they go back outside. She hadn't even wanted to sit down – had flatly refused, in fact, to sit beside him on the bed. You'd have thought she was a virgin, the way she'd behaved.
He wondered if maybe the fault lay with the bed itself: with its presence, its very concreteness. Women, he knew, were practical at heart – quite ruthlessly calculating, some of them, certainly the one he'd married – but there were always a few romantic souls who managed to forget that making love was also a matter of bed space and damp sheets and where to put the elbows. Maybe Carol was one of these, her head spinning round and round with flower-scented fantasies until, with a jolt, she stumbled against the hard physical reality of his narrow iron bed. Maybe she preferred to think they'd do it in the air, like angels.
He'd given it one try, at least. He'd felt fat and dull and sweaty, but he'd kissed her just the same, leaning toward her as she looked at the woodcuts in a paperback grimoire and planting a firm kiss at the side of her mouth. She'd been surprised, of course – her eyes had gone wide and she hadn't exactly fallen into his arms – but she hadn't pulled away.
But then, like a kid on his first date, he had failed to follow it up. Instead, he'd made some lame remark about the Brethren and their attitude toward sex – 'very Old Testament,' he'd said – and the two had lapsed back into awkward conversation. The moment had been lost.
Afterward, more tense now, and with more blank space to fill, they'd strolled aimlessly around the farm, Freirs pointing out the various outbuildings and fields just as Sarr had done for him and, beneath a demeanor almost as reserved, watching her reactions with the same anxious curiosity.
She had not been impressed. At first the place had seemed, paradoxically, both novel and familiar, but her initial enthusiasm had apparently worn off, and she was no longer moved by the mere sight of rural landscape. Casting a critical eye at the broad, uncultivated lands beyond the stream, the old wooden outhouse rotting beneath its tangle of vines, the mass of the encroaching woods, the farm machinery rusting in the barn, the north field overgrown with weeds, she had pronounced the farm 'in very poor repair.'
She'd been right, of course, yet somehow the comment had irritated him. What did she expect? After all, this was Sarr and Deborah's first year here. He realized that he'd come to feel a certain loyalty to them.
How to change the mood? How to bring them closer once again? He'd wondered about it all through the remainder of their walk -and now, sitting here beside her on the sun-warmed rock while streams of shadow spread across the lawn, he still wasn't sure what to do. Drop his pants? Recite a poem? Whip out some imaginary pocketknife and carve their initials on the nearest tree? A directly physical approach was out of the question – he could hardly just reach out and grab her, here among the insects and the rocks – and he'd long since run out of things to talk about. What, after all, had he been doing with himself for the last week, except sitting on his ass and taking notes? He had already tried to describe for her the Gothic excesses of The Monk, but though she'd seemed interested enough -'My God,' she kept saying, 'to be so afraid of nuns' – the novel's horror had quite suddenly and unexpectedly begun to pall on him. Subterranean dungeons, inquisitors, and chains all seemed rather foolish and insubstantial out here in the sunlight, with dragonflies dipping innocently above the stream and the smell of pine trees wafting from the woods on the opposite bank.
And anyway, Carol was beginning to seem distracted. 'I hope he'll understand,' she said abruptly. 'Sarr, I mean. I should have offered him a lift. I didn't know he'd be away this long.'
Freirs shrugged, just as happy that Carol hadn't gone off alone with Sarr before reaching the farm. That would have made her even later, and… well, he didn't like the idea of the two of them sharing anything without him. Anyway, why bring him up now?
'He mentioned something this morning about buying wine,' Freirs said. 'There are some people over on the next road who make it out of rhubarb and dandelions and things.' The thought reminded him of dinner; he looked back
to the house – just in time to see Sarr himself walking up the back steps, a large jug swinging heavily from his arm.
He turned back to Carol without mentioning it, but she too had been looking toward the house. She stood, brushing off her jeans. 'He's back,' she said. 'They'll probably be getting dinner ready soon. I'd better head on over to the house and wash up.'
Freirs stood and followed her slowly back across the lawn, past his own ivy-covered building. Somehow it looked quite unlovely now. 'Do you still want to see that field guide?' he asked hopefully. "The one that has the recipe for cattails?'
'After dinner,' she said, not even turning. Suddenly she laughed. 'Speaking of cats… ' Beside them, attracted by the direction of their walk, loped two of the younger cats, an orange male and a tortoise-shell female, perhaps anticipating dinner.
'Where are all the others?' asked Carol, crouching to extend her hand toward the female. With the usual feline ambivalence it dodged her attempt to pat it on the head, remaining just beyond arm's reach; but the orange male crept warily up and, tail lashing, permitted her to stroke its neck.
'The older ones tend to go off by themselves,' said Freirs, watching Carol's fingers sliding through the animal's silky hair. Lucky little bastard. 'They spend all day creeping through the long grass like tigers on the prowl. One of them's a big silver female – you'll see her tonight – who actually roams around in the woods, just like a wild animal. Sarr says she eats what she kills there.'
At that moment, up ahead, Deborah appeared at the back door and stepped out onto the porch, her apron white against the long black of her dress. She was carrying a large ceramic bowl. At her side a thin, wicked-looking bread knife hung like a ceremonial sword. Crouching, she set the bowl carefully beside a smaller one at her feet. The dangling bread knife touched the floor and caught the sinking sun. Brushing back a lock of hair, she stood and waved a greeting to her guests, then tilted back her head and yelled what sounded like a single mystical demon-name: 'Bekariabwada!… Bekaria bwaaaadal'