by T E. D Klein
Night. The crescent moon is hidden by trees as the animal creeps out upon the lawn and sits gazing at the farmhouse. Singing comes from a dimly lit room on the second floor where the farmer and his woman are at their evening devotions.
'Watchman ofZion, herald the story,
Sin and death His kingdom shall destroy… '
It moves closer, to crouch below the window. Forty miles away and twelve floors up, a wrinkled shape upon a bed hears the closing verses of their song.
'All the earth shall sing of His glory;
Praise Him, ye angels, ye who behold Him,
Great is Jehovah, King over all.'
The voices die away. Briefly the man is heard again, reciting a short prayer; the woman joins him, echoing his words. Then, as always, the light goes out. Soon the room will echo to the sounds of their lovemaking. The animal moves on.
Around the front of the house, lights are still burning on the first floor. There he sits again tonight, the visitor from the city, absorbed in a book, his plump white face glowing like a full moon in the lamplight. The animal watches, and the Old One watches, as he turns another page.
Momentarily, as if aware he is observed, the visitor sets down the book and goes to the window. His troubled eyes peer blindly through the screen, unable to see past the lamplight. Seven feet away, the animal sits watching him, shielded by the darkness.
The man returns to his chair and, moments later, to the thick grey book he has been reading. The animal turns and pads briskly around the side of the house to the porch steps in the back. There, in the darkness beneath the stairway, two metal garbage cans stand reeking of death and corruption. On one of them the scent is old, but the other has accumulated a full week's stock of tiny mangled corpses, a choice supply of putrefying meat.
And this very putrefaction has its uses.
With the easy swipe of a paw and a clank of metal the can is overturned, the lid tumbling noisily off to roll several feet away upon the grass.
Upstairs, in the darkness, the woman's grip tightens on the man's shoulder. 'Honey, wait,' she whispers. 'Did you hear that?'
He makes a low sound of assent. 'Coon,' he says, and enters her again.
Downstairs, in the living room, the visitor puts down the book and walks around the room, carefully shutting each window.
The animal, untroubled, creeps into the darkness of the overturned can. The fragrance of death fills its lungs. Before it lies the little mound of bodies, the field mice, frogs, and snakes. Delicately, methodically, it runs its razor claws through the soft and rotting flesh – first the front claws, then the rear, shredding the flesh with machinelike efficiency, working the corruption into the fur and deep beneath each gracefully hooked nail.
Forty miles away the Old One watches, smells the death smell, feels the decay beneath the nails of his own fingers. Yes, it is good: it may be helpful in tomorrow evening's enterprise. A little poison never hurts.
July Twenty-second
Amos Reid had a bag of Bordeaux dust under his arm for the leaf blight on his cukes, young Abram Sturtevant was about to buy his third can of Malathion for a sudden invasion of aphids, and Rupert Lindt was stocking up on Gurney's patented worm powder for the cutworms and snails that had already slaughtered a third of his tomato plants. None of them had any moral qualms about using chemicals on their crops; what qualms they had were purely economic. Pesticides were expensive, but under the circumstances they were going to have to rely on them and salvage whatever they could. It was suddenly turning out to be a bad year. You could see it in their faces; you could hear it in their talk.
Not even Bert Steegler was happy, though business had been brisk today. He and his wife worked mainly on salary; the profit or loss they derived from the store hardly differed from anyone else's. Besides, Bert's married daughter, Irma, had just had an entire plot of pattypan squash wiped out, almost overnight, by a particularly voracious breed of corpulent grey slug that had never been seen in the area before.
'You heard about what happened at the Verdocks?' asked Steegler, as he rang up Abram Sturtevant's purchase.
'I've been too busy tryin' to save my crops to worry myself about other folks' affairs,' said Sturtevant.
'I'll tell you,' said Rupert Lindt, from halfway across the store. 'Lise got herself kicked in the head by one of Adam's cows, tryin' to squeeze a bit of milk from it.'
'You don't say! Lord's mercy on her, how's she bearin' up?'
'Pretty bad,' said Lindt. 'They think she may not live till Sunday.'
'We've been prayin' for her regular,' added Amos Reid. "Tis all we can do.'
'I'll be sure to do the same,' said Sturtevant. 'Does my brother know of this?'
'You can ask him yourself,' said Steegler, who'd been looking out the screen door. 'That's him comin' now.'
They heard Joram’s heavy foosteps on the porch outside. He was a tall, formidable-looking figure with eyebrows black and heavy as his beard, but as he entered the store he appeared pale and unwell. 'Aye,' he said, of the news about Lise, 'I'll be headin' over there this evenin' to pray with Brother Adam and their girl.' He sounded troubled, but from the briefness of his response it was clear that it was some other trouble that occupied his mind.
'And how's Sister Lotte bearin' up,' said Amod Reid, 'in her time of trial?'
'As well as a man can expect,' said Joram gloomily. 'I'd thought her a stronger woman than she's turnin' out to be, but-' He shrugged. 'The child's a large one, I guess. The labor's goin' to be hard. But we're resigned to it, Lotte and I. If that's God's will, so be it.'
He moved off down the aisle, peering through the shelves of household goods, obviously somewhat unfamiliar with an aspect of the shopping that, before her pregnancy, his wife would have seen to. As he crossed to the adjoining aisle, he found himself face to face with Lindt, the only man there as tall as he was.
'Greetings to you, Brother Joram,' Lindt said. 'Anna and me, we've been includin' Sister Lotte in our prayers.'
Joram nodded curtly. 'That's good of you, Brother Rupert. 'Tis a time for prayin' now, if ever there was one.'
'Ain't that the gospel truth,' the other said. 'You heard 'bout the trouble Ham Stoudemire suffered yesterday? Well, the same thing's been happenin' up the road from me, over at Bethuel Reid's. 'Tis like the Land o' Tophet – never saw so many serpents in one place. Old Bethuel don't even want to set foot outdoors no more.'
"Twill pass,' said Joram. 'All things must.' He did not sound very hopeful.
'Of course,' said Lindt, following the other as he continued up the aisle. 'The Lord takes care of His own. But when you start to add up what's been goin' on-' He enumerated on his thick fingers. 'They say there's a pack of dogs runnin' wild now up by the Annandale road, runnin' wild the way the Fenchels' did just yesterday, I'm told. And what happened to poor Sister Lise, well… ' He shook his head. 'The same thing's agoin' to happen again, you mark my words, 'cause all the Verdocks' cows have been actin' up.'
'Matthew Geisel's too,' said Steegler, from the counter in front. 'He says they're like to kick the barn door right down.'
'Fact is,' said Lindt, 'we've all of us got our tribulations-'
'Werner Klapp was in earlier this mornin',' Steegler cut in, 'and he says he's havin' troubles with his fowl. Sold four of 'em to Sarr Poroth and his woman just the other day, and now he's afraid they'll be askin' for their money back when they find out that the critters just ain't layin'.'
'We were of a mind to ask you what you thought, Brother Joram,' Lindt continued. 'When people's got troubles like this-'
'Man is born to trouble,' said Joram, 'and 'tis through tribulation that we enter the kingdom of God. You know that, Brother Rupert. The Lord is testin' us.'
'Aye,' said Lindt, 'but mightn't He be warnin' us as well? I'm talkin' about the one who's come amongst us this season – the one from the city, who's took the prophet's name as his own.'
'I'm aware of how you feel,' said Joram. 'You don't have to lay these sn
ares for me. I knew what was in your heart from the beginnin', for 'twas in mine as well. I'll be wantin' to hear what
Brother Sarr has to say for himself when next we meet- don't forget, the worship's at his farm this week – and I'll also be lookin' at the stranger come Sunday, lookin' real hard. Then we'll see what the Lord commands of us. But till that time there's nothin' more to be done. Remember, now, "Blessed is he that watcheth… " '
'Amen,' they said mechanically, little satisfied, as Joram continued his distracted way down the aisle, thinking of a pregnant wife back home.
Sarr Poroth, too, knew trouble now, as if clouds that had once loomed on the horizon were gathering dark and thunderous overhead. He was plagued by a host of small afflictions; he despaired of the fate of his farm. Though the surviving hen from the original four had once more begun to lay eggs, they had proved to be hideously soft things, almost transparent, that shook like jelly when you held them in your hand. He reminded himself repeatedly that, for poultry, this was not so uncommon an ailment – it might be cured within a week or two by adding calcium to their feed, normally in the form of the ground-up eggshells of healthier birds – but for now the thought of a nestful of eggs as soft as his own testicles filled him with disgust; they were obscene, against nature, an abomination unto the Lord. Deborah had sworn they could be eaten, that there was no harm in them at all, but Sarr had done a different kind of swearing and had hurled the eggs against the barren ground east of the barn. He had acted, he realized, like a spoiled child and felt shame for it now, but it was already too late to apologize.
Yet even soft eggs were better than nothing, and nothing was what they'd had so far from the four hens they'd purchased Wednesday morning. Perhaps it was just a question of their new surroundings, he was too inexperienced a farmer to know for sure; perhaps they simply needed time to grow used to the place. Nevertheless he'd already decided that, if they weren't laying regularly by the end of the month, he'd go to Brother Werner and demand his money back.
Money – that was the real trouble, the one that stung the most. For just this morning the thing he'd been dreading had happened: Freirs had come to them and told them he was leaving – Freirs, whom they'd sheltered for the last two nights beneath their very roof and whom they'd treated, at all times, like a guest rather than a paying tenant. Freirs had cleared his throat this morning, after helping himself to his usual oversized breakfast, and, obviously shamefaced, had announced that he'd be pulling out on Saturday.
And why? All because he was frightened of that damned infernal cat.
'You told me yourself that the devil's in her,' Freirs had said. 'And maybe I'm beginning to believe it. At any rate, I don't particularly relish sleeping back in the outbuilding with a thing that likes to claw its way through screens.'
'You don't run from the devil,' Poroth had argued, 'not when it's your own land. You stand and fight him.'
'It's your land,' said Freirs, 'not mine. You fight the devil. I'm going home.'
Well, he'd seen it coming, this betrayal; he'd discussed it with Deborah just the night before last. He had warned her that city people turned tail and fled at the first sign of adversity. After all, they had no God to call upon, no certitude of heavenly support. Even the best of them were faithless.
At any rate, he hadn't made a scene; he hadn't argued with Freirs and he hadn't pleaded with him either. 'I expect you know what's best for you,' he'd said, reaching across the breakfast table to shake Freirs' chubby hand. 'I wish you all the luck a man can have.' He had comported himself gently, like a true Christian should; though inside he'd been crushed – panicked, even, for a moment – and haunted by a mocking little voice that echoed All the luck a man can have and then whispered You're ruined!
'Honey,' Deborah had said, when Freirs had gone back to his room, 'this means we'll be out nearly five hundred dollars. Do you think it'll be-'
'None of that matters!' he had said, more roughly than he'd intended. 'We'll just find the money somewhere else. God watches out for His own.'
Still brooding over Freirs' announcement, he had gone stalking down the slope toward the cornfields when his eye had fallen on the old wooden smokehouse that stood between the barn and the stream. He had always avoided it because of the wasps' nest somewhere inside, but now he saw it as a challenge, an outlet for his frustrated energies: something he might do to cleanse the land. Seizing a broom from the barn and prepared at any moment to flee, he had peered inside the little building through the hanging-open door. To his surprise he had seen no sign of a nest until, looking upward through a smokehole in the ceiling – a hole that now led nowhere, for the roof above it had long since been sealed over – he glimpsed in the darkness a pale grey claylike thing the size and shape of a human brain, plastered to the underside of the roofbeams.
There would be no knocking the nest down, he realized; it was too inaccessible. The only way of reaching it was by the circuitous route the insects themselves used, flying in and out the open doorway and up through the passage in the ceiling. It would have been a great place to hide money, if he'd had any, but in truth he had nothing worth stealing. Halfheartedly he had jabbed the broom up through the smokehole, and had been rewarded for his effort with a painful sting on his right hand just beneath the thumb.
Grimly he had hurried off to the abandoned field and, despite the pain had busied himself clearing rocks when, like a messenger come to see Job, worried Amos Reid had come bumping down the road in his car with the news that Poroth's aunt, Lise Verdock, had been kicked by a cow last night as she tried to coax some milk from it and now lay at death's door. So he and Deborah, both sorely troubled, had piled into the truck and had followed Amos back toward town and up the hill to the Verdocks' farm. Aunt Lise had been lying pale and unconscious on the bed with a horrible purple swelling curved across one temple like a hungry living thing, while Minna, her daughter, had been sitting exhausted nearby, and poor Adam Verdock – who'd known trouble enough the past week, God knows, what with his cattle having ceased to give milk – was almost too distraught to speak. Poroth had looked down at the unconscious woman and a terrible dread seized him; he had thought for just an instant, She'll die if they don't get her to a hospital. .. But that had been the devil's solution, not his own, a remnant of the years he'd passed in the wicked world outside. Prayer, he knew for sure now, worked just as well as surgeons' polished steel.
And prayer was what they'd raised. They had gotten on their knees, all five of them together by the bed, and had prayed silently for what seemed close to an hour. And here he had discovered the most terrible secret of all: for while the others had been praying, he'd been wrestling with visions of losing the farm; and that mocking little voice had kept whispering Money… ruined… damned!
And so, because of him, what should have been a holy occasion, filled with the devotion a man owes his father's only sister, had been blighted. The guilt was his alone; he had discovered sin, not under his roof but in his own heart.
He stood leaning by himself against the pickup truck parked just beside the barn. He surveyed the straggly rows of cornstalks, prey to all manner of vermin and not half so high as they should have been by this time of year, and he wondered, for the first time in his life, what the future held in store for him, for Deborah, for the Brethren. Had they been abandoned by God? Did the devil have his claws around their ankles? And was he somehow to blame, if this was so?
He kicked gloomily at the earth at his feet. How ironic, that the Brethren should be coming here this Sunday to hold their worship! This was no place for blessings. This earth was damned.
The student checked his watch – two p.m. exactly – and opened the door marked Authorized Personnel Only. Switching on the light, he crossed the small cluttered room and unlocked a cabinet where the rolls of lined paper were stored. Taking a fresh roll, he returned to the main room; here the geology department's recording instrument stood on permanent display, connected by cables to a Sprengnether vertical seismograph
in the basement. With another key he unlocked the large glass-and-steel case and slid back the heavy glass lid that protected the device from dust and disturbances in the room. The paper on the drum was changed daily at this hour, and the task had to be done quickly; back in 1979 the department had missed recording one of the largest earthquakes in central New Jersey history because a student had been caught between rolls.
Carefully he lifted the delicate metal stylus from the paper, the ink at its tip leaving a jagged little squiggle as if the vicinity had suffered some small disturbance. Slowly turning the metal drum, he pulled off the old paper roll and slipped the new one in its place, fitting the ends into slots in the metal. He relocated the stylus and, taking a pen from his pocket, scribbled a few words on the new paper: the date, time, attenuation, or signal power of the machine, and the name of this seismographic station – PRIN for Princeton. Closing the glass lid, he locked it in place.
Turning to the previous day's record, the student scanned the thin black line that rose and fell across the paper as if tracing the contours of a mountain range. Yes, the pattern had been holding all this week, as it had been for most of the month, and even without triangulating the data with the other stations in the Lamont network, he knew exactly what it represented: minor seismic disturbances in the north central part of the state.
For the next half hour, he transcribed the data onto a series of U.S. Geological Survey record forms; the paper roll was filed in a closet. Still calculating mentally to himself, he carried the forms across the corridor to an office marked 'Prof. J. Lewalski -Director.' He knocked twice and went in.
The young man inside was not Professor Lewalski; he was a graduate student in geology employed by the department for the summer. He took the forms and ran his eye over the data.
'Hmm, one point four, eh? That's up a little, isn't it?'
The younger student nodded. 'Yes, it was one point two on Wednesday. It's been climbing all week. Are we supposed to inform someone about this?'