Ceremonies

by T E. D Klein

  From the long grass behind them three blurred shapes, a charcoal, a tiger-stripe, and a silver grey – Rebekah, Azariah, and Bwada – streaked across the lawn and up the back steps. And sure enough, one of them, Freirs noticed, bore something small and struggling in its teeth.

  The city feels deserted this evening. It is the start of a three-day weekend, and even some of the poor have managed to escape. The rest sit in their doorways and curse the heat.

  The Old One doesn't mind the heat. In fact, he is in an extremely good mood. As he waits outside the building where the women live, he hums a little song.

  The sun sinks toward the river like a dying rose. Lines of jagged shadows creep farther down the sidewalk. One by one, as the darkness descends, he flexes his pudgy little fingers.

  'Honey, are you sure Matthew gave you your money's worth?'

  Sarr looked up from the astrological column in that day's Home News: Full moon tonight, and unexpected sights beneath it. 'Huh?'

  'Matthew Geisel. Did that old man try to cheat you?'

  'That's no way to talk about Brother-'

  'Because this thing's not even full,' Deborah went on. 'See? It's five or six inches down.' She pointed to the wine jug that stood upon the table. Suddenly her expression changed; she looked at him suspiciously. 'Hey, have you been into this?'

  Scowling, he went back to his paper. 'And what if I was? It's hot out there.'

  She sighed and shook her head. 'Gonna get yourself sick, you are, walking in the sun with a belly full of wine. It's a wonder you left any for the rest of us.'

  He grunted noncommittally, already looking forward to finishing off the jug at dinner, along with the wine that Freirs' skinny redheaded girlfriend had brought out. The Brethren didn't hold with drunkenness, but as sins went it was a minor one. No sense getting into an argument over a few tart swigs of rhubarb wine. He looked up. 'Want me to rinse off those greens?' he asked. 'Or feed the cats?'

  She was having none of it. 'All that's been done,' she said. 'Dinner'll be ready in a minute. Go see where they are.'

  'Last time I looked, they were still out there trying to make friends with Zillah and Toby. She seemed to give up on Zillah – without getting scratched, praise the Lord – and then she started in on Toby. Picked him up just like a baby.'

  'And he let her?'

  'He seemed to like it.'

  Deborah shrugged and began methodically slicing a tomato. 'Probably thought she was his mother, with that hair of hers. You don't suppose that's the real-colour, do you?'

  Sarr smiled. He was tempted to say something about women and cats, but held his tongue. 'Oh, I don't know,' he said. 'Here she is. Why don't you ask her?'

  He was amused to find the subject dropped. While Carol, then Freirs, filed into the bathroom to wash for dinner, Deborah busied herself at the stove. Suddenly she paused and turned to face him.

  'By the way,' she said, 'aren't you forgetting something?' She nodded toward the porch. 'May as well get it over with before you wash up.'

  Sarr winced. It was time for the body count. He had almost forgotten. With a sigh he heaved himself from the chair. 'Ah, yes. 'Twouldn't do to neglect the dead.'

  Pushing through the screen door, he stood with hands on hips and watched the cats gathered round a bowl heaped with dry commercial cat food mixed with last night's table scraps; a water dish stood nearby. Moments later the two remaining kittens, charcoal Dinah and coalblack Habakkuk, came scampering up the back steps to join the other five. Bwada raised he silver-grey head to glare at them as they crowded in beside her. She gave a warning hiss, but they ignored her and, purring softly, proceeded to gobble up as much food as they could in dainty but determined bites.

  While they ate, he went grimly about his task. It was not a pleasant one, even when blunted somewhat by the drink. Each evening around mealtime, now that summer was here, the cats had taken to bringing in dead things, corpses of animals they'd caught during the day: field mice, moles, shrews, birds – even, once, a slender green garter snake. It was doubtful that they saw those creatures as food (though Bwada, on occasion, had been known to make a meal of one – as if she weren't fat enough already). Usually they just laid the bodies out upon the kitchen steps for the Poroths to see. Sarr believed the offerings were meant as tribute – a kind of ceremony.

  Tonight, thank the Lord, they had returned with relatively little plunder: he saw only two mangled field mice and, almost out of sight within the shadows by the wall, the not-quite-lifeless body of a young robin, one delicate brown wing still trembling.

  A good thing Deborah hadn't seen this. How she raged and carried on about the birds! Frowning, he stooped to pick the mice up gingerly by the tails. With his other hand he grasped the robin by the legs and walked down the back steps to a pair of garbage cans that stood beneath the porch. His head was swimming slightly from the wine, but he knew his intoxication only brought him nearer to the essential mystery. Placing the bird on the hard ground and looking away, he crushed its skull beneath the heel of his boot. As he did so, he thought he felt a tiny soul flutter past his face and up to heaven.

  Wrinkling his nose, he lifted the lid from the nearer can and was immediately sickened by the foul odor of rotting flesh that welled up from its depths. Quickly he dropped the three bodies into the can and clamped the metal lid back on. It was a process he'd had to repeat, with little variation, nearly every night, but he still had not grown used to it.

  Before returning inside, he paused a moment, leaning against one of the square white posts that supported the roof and gazing out at the farmland as it stretched away past the outbuilding and the brook to the distant line of woods. He spent a lot of time here on the porch, especially at the end of the day, staring alone and silent at the land. It was a sight that never failed to move him; familiar as it had become, he still felt like a stranger.

  It was a paradox, really. During the day, at the height of the sun, while he sweated over some intractable root or turned the soil of some outlying pasture, though the land resisted him with all its strength, he nonetheless felt himself its master. But at moments like this – at dusk, when the world was at peace and he could survey his domain in lordly comfort from the back steps of his house – it somehow seemed to him that the land wasn't really his at all and that, with no human figure to mar the landscape, the farm reverted to what it had always been: a living thing, belonging only to itself. The waving grass and newly planted fields seemed to keep their own counsel; there was a consciousness at work in the lengthening shadows by the apple tree, outbuilding, and barn. True, he had purchased all these himself only last fall; the deed, signed, dated, and notarized, lay upstairs in a desk drawer. But how foolish he'd been to think that he could actually own this land, land which had been here so long before him and would be here so long after his body had crumbled beneath it. He was just another visitor, though thankful even for that; enough that he'd been given tonight's scent of roses and marsh water and pine, the faint evening breeze that even now brushed his face, and the darkness stealing leaf by leaf over the great trees.

  Suddenly, disturbingly, another scent was mingled with the roses: the scent of decay seeping up from the garbage cans, a reminder of what lay waiting for everything that walked or crept upon the earth. Turning away, he hurried back into the house.

  When he emerged from the bathroom after washing and rewash-ing his hands – faintly troubled, as he was every night, by the inevitable thoughts of Pilate – the odor of death seemed to linger in his nostrils, gradually mingling with the smell of roasting meat that filled the kitchen. Deborah was still at the stove, stirring one large black pot while keeping watch on a smaller one. The others were already seated, Freirs, as usual, toying with his napkin ring. The wine had been opened, the four glasses filled. It looked tawny and sweet; Sarr wished there were more.

  'It's lovely, the way you've fixed this place up,' Carol was saying. She ran her hand appreciatively along the smooth, age-stained wood of the little dinin
g table, set with four straw place mats. It was the same table that, a week before, had borne the star of cottonbread. 'This kitchen's around ten times the size of the one in my apartment, and I'll bet it's twenty degrees cooler in here.'

  Bending over the stove, Deborah called back, 'There's a certain person I know who believes the city's hotter because it's so much closer to you-know-where!'

  Sarr forced a smile, but he felt a flicker of annoyance. 'Oh, I wouldn't put it like that, exactly,' he said, crossing the kitchen, 'but Lord knows there's precious Utile comfort there.' He pulled back his chair and sat down heavily. 'It's a matter of science, I suppose -something to do with the pavement and the brick. Hardly the sort of place I'd care to live.'

  There, the gauntlet was thrown; no use blaming it on the wine. He hadn't meant to speak out that way, but it was too late to take it back. He suspected he was going to have an argument on his hands, because Freirs had stopped toying with the wooden ring.

  'Sure,' said Freirs, 'it is a bit hotter in the city. But that's why God gave us air conditioners.'

  Sarr heard the laughter of the two women, and his smile vanished. He had always been uncomfortable with jokes, especially jokes about the Lord. He began to frame a reply, but paused, for Deborah had come from the stove carrying a large, steaming bowl of barley soup. Placing it on a hand-painted tile in the center of the table, she seated herself and clasped her hands piously before her. It was time to say grace.

  He took a breath. 'Dear Lord,' he said with sudden vehemence, clasping his own hands and dropping his gaze, 'as we, Thy servants, prepare to enjoy the richness of Thy bounty, we give thanks for the two good people who have come to share it with us-'

  He glanced up to see their reaction. Freirs, as usual, was merely inclining his head, staring pensively at the soup bowl, as if to prove that, while polite, he was not about to buy any of the Poroths' beliefs; but Sarr was pleased to see that Carol's fingers were locked in fervent prayer, her eyes shut tight, her expression rapt. She looked almost angelic.

  – and thanks to Thee, O Lord, as the source of all well-being and content.'

  'Amen,' they murmured, even Freirs. Perhaps he was going along for Carol's sake.

  Carol – she was an odd one for Freirs to bring out here. He wouldn't have thought she was his type. Not that she wasn't attractive; she was, and Sarr was honest enough with himself to acknowledge the feelings she'd inspired in him ever since he'd met her out there on the road this afternoon.

  It was good to have her so close now; he suddenly realized that it had been years since he'd sat down to dinner with an unmarried woman from outside his family, especially one with Carol's strange mixture of independence and submissiveness, her soft uncallused skin, her clean-looking red hair cut so curiously short, so unlike the women's here in Gilead. He couldn't help picturing her climbing into his bed, so thin and pale and trembling; and he knew that tonight, as he made love to his wife, his thoughts would stray unbidden to this new woman, at least until he forced himself to think of holier things.

  Deborah was speaking, lightening the mood, drawing the visitors in while she poured the rhubarb wine and served them their soup.

  She was so much better at that than he was. 'I wouldn't trade the country with anyone,' she was saying, 'but there are times I miss the city something awful. If I hadn't gotten myself married I probably would have tried to live there for a few years. I still think about going back someday, just for a visit.'

  Freirs made a mock bow. 'Just remember,' he said, 'whenever you're in town you'll always have a place to stay. Not exactly the Waldorf, maybe, but comfy enough.' He raised his glass. 'To travel, and the broadening effects thereof.'

  The others raised theirs. 'To country virtues,' said Carol, smiling. 'And to those of us who still remember them.'

  Deborah giggled. 'And to city vices!' She took a sip of the wine. 'Mmm, good.'

  Sarr watched uneasily, wondering if Freirs and Deborah were flirting with one another. Unable to think of another toast, he brought the wineglass to his lips and took a large swallow, almost without tasting it. The lines, he realized, were shifting, setting him and the new woman against his wife and guest. He alone remained consistent. The thought made him feel stronger and at last encouraged him to speak.

  'Deborah,' he said, choosing his words carefully, 'I know you've got a longing for the city. I've heard you talk of it before. And it's just as I told you when I made you my wife: you're free to do as you please. I'll not stand in your way.' He took another drink and wiped his mouth. 'As for me, though, I'll never set foot in that citadel of godlessness again. It's a place of corruption, and its people are swollen with envy and greed. Even the very best of them are infected. I hear it in their voices: the obsession with luxury, money, and the things of the world.'

  He looked from face to face. He could see that they knew he was serious. Freirs, though, was eyeing him skeptically. No doubt he resented not being the center of attention – how like a schoolteacher! -and would take any word spoken against the city as a personal attack. Probably he would try to assert himself in the eyes of the women. Yet to do so would only be natural; it was God's way that men must compete. Sarr understood and forgave.

  'That's why I'm so glad the two of you are with us here tonight,' he went on, nodding to Carol and Freirs. 'Lord's my witness, I truly believe you'll both be the better for this. At least you're out of danger, at least for now.'

  'Danger?' said Freirs. 'You mean like street crime?'

  Sarr shook his head. 'It isn't criminals I mean, nor dirt and noise. I mean a danger to the spirit. I see the city as the prophets did, a place to rival Babylon. Everyone is buying and selling, and everything's for sale. Even their own souls have a price.'

  Freirs smiled. 'I'm not so sure about that,' he said. 'I've tried to buy a few lately, and no one's selling. In my film class I asked someone-'

  But Sarr wasn't waiting for his explanation. 'Perhaps you should have offered more,' he said. 'Remember, you're competing with the devil, and he's got the city in his pocket.'

  He was still feeling, he realized, rather light-headed. Too many hours in the sun. It would be good to get some food in him.

  'Mind you,' he added, almost apologetically, 'I didn't always think so. When I was growing up here, I used to dream about running off to see the Empire State Building, and at night I'd pretend that I could see it brightening the sky. I used to think that, if light was good and darkness evil, then God must love the cities best. I knew He'd made man and man made the city, so I thought that was where He must live.' He paused, suddenly remembering. 'I don't think so anymore.'

  'I gather you had a less than delightful visit,' Freirs said lightly, with a look toward Carol. 'What happen, you get mugged?'

  'No, not that. I may have been a bit too big for that, even then. I've heard they prefer old ladies.'

  'They'll take whoever they can get. How old did you say you were?'

  Sarr rubbed his chin. 'It was Christmas of your senior year in school,' said Deborah. 'That's what you told me.'

  Sarr nodded. 'That's right. I'd just turned seventeen. My father'd died that fall God rest his soul.'

  'My father died then too,' said Carol. 'I mean, in the fall. It'll be a year this November.'

  'Really?' He regarded her with new interest. 'Then that's another thing we have in common.'

  Freirs looked up, quick to catch a hint of conspiracy. 'You mean, aside from your both being country people?'

  'No, I meant aside from our both being religious. We talked about it when I met her on the road.'

  'I had a Bible program on the radio, that's all,' said Carol. She sounded irritated, but it was hard to tell at whom. 'As for our respective fathers… '

  'We've both experienced loss,' said Sarr. He was about to add a biblical observation on the ephemerality of man, but Deborah cut him off.

  'I'll bet her mother took it a whole lot harder than-' Sarr silenced her with a look. 'My mother bore her loss with dignity,'
he said, with another glance at Deborah. 'She's always kept pretty much to herself and doesn't let on how she's feeling. But I knew what was in her heart -1 knew that the feeling was there – and I thought, If only there was something I could give her, something that would interest her, it'd pull her away from… well, all the things that were on her mind. So one Saturday morning I put on my father's old sheepskin coat-'

  Deborah nodded grimly. 'Like a lamb to the slaughter!' '-and I hitched a ride to Flemington and climbed aboard the bus to New York. I thought I'd bring her back some sort of gift. A jewel, maybe. Something precious.' He shook his head. 'It was a long time ago.'

  'And your mother,' said Carol. 'She didn't mind your going?' He looked pained. 'I told her I'd be in Flemington till after dark, trying to find a part-time job. It was probably the first time I ever lied to her. Not that she was fooled.'

  'Nothing fools her,' said Deborah. 'She knows everything.' 'But she never seemed to care too much where I went,' said Sarr. 'So I yielded to temptation and set off.'

  He sat back, pulling himself almost physically from the memory. At the same moment he became aware of a scratching at the door, where four owlish little faces were peering through the screen. It was the younger cats; he still tended to think of them as 'the kittens.' As he rose to let them in, he saw Carol turn and look questioningly at Freirs, who shrugged in acknowledgement. 'It's okay,' Freirs said. 'They're in here almost every night. I think I may be getting used to them.'

  As always, no sooner was the door opened for them than the cats seemed to grow undecided about whether to enter, even though San-stood waiting by the doorway. Bwada pushed impatiently from behind them and bounded beneath the table, but the others hung back as if making up their minds; and when at last the four slipped past his feet into the kitchen, it was with a kind of wary indifference. Their parents, Rebekah and Azariah, remained outside, pacing like tigers back and forth along the steps, and soon disappeared into the long grass at the edge of the yard.