Ceremonies

by T E. D Klein

  He was out of her now; she had swung herself off him and was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing down her nightgown.

  'I've got to leave,' she whispered, getting to her feet.

  'Couldn't you just-'

  She shook her head. 'There isn't time. Not now. I'll come back to you tomorrow night.'

  Tomorrow, he wanted to say, Carol will be here, she may be in this bed with me…

  But with a final fierce look she had slipped out the door and was hurrying ghostlike across the moonless lawn.

  And in the city, silent in the darkness of his apartment, staring straight ahead at nothing, the Old One contemplates tomorrow's trip – and the past he'll be returning to.

  He will be coming home at last, for the first time in over a century. He has been near the place more recently – as recently as 1939 – but he hasn't seen the farm itself since when he was a boy. It will probably not be much different now, though. Things do not change much in those parts.

  He will also be returning to Maquineanok, where the two previous women met their peculiar deaths. Now the moon has called for the third and final woman, the third and final death…

  Of course, the place will be transformed. The tree will be gone now, swallowed up in the earth: the tree that had seen so much blood and sacrifice will not be there, replaced, though, by something far more wonderful and terrible, the great mound, before which he will stand and perform the final Ceremony.

  He laughs his old man's high-pitched cackle. The poor little fools!

  July Thirtieth

  The woman on the bed groaned. Joram stroked his beard and stared worriedly at her swollen belly. None of her previous children, not even her first, had given her as much pain as this. He bit his lip, wishing that labor would start so that he could in good conscience summon Sister Nettie Stoudemire, the midwife.

  Lotte's belly seemed so large. He'd been told that there were signs for twins or triplets, omens he could watch for, but he'd watched and prayed and called on God for advice, and nothing had suggested that his wife had anything more than a single child in her belly. He was frankly scared, and he craved an explanation. He could find only one: the fat, interfering stranger at the Poroths' who'd had the temerity to place his hand on his wife's belly during last Sunday's worship at their farm. If he was really a cursed being, as some of his neighbors were hinting, then couldn't his touch be in itself a curse, to blight the child within?

  Joram stood awkwardly by the bedside, brooding about what he should do. He would simply have to wait – and pray, of course -pray that nothing went wrong when the birth came. He hoped it would not come tomorrow, on the Lammas Eve; he hoped, for Freirs' sake, that the birth proved a successful one.

  At the farmhouse farther up the road, Adam Verdock gazed mournfully down at his wife on the bed. She had never regained consciousness; she was losing strength fast. Their daughter, Minna, had been wonderful, she'd been there to tend Lise day and night, but the woman had shown no signs of recovery, and this morning he'd been forced to tell old Brother Flinders the carpenter to set aside the pine boards for a coffin. Their prayers, all of them, had been in vain.

  Poroth, too, was praying, kneeling as he faced the corner of his room, eyes tightly shut. He had been there all afternoon, unmindful of the heat, the Bible beside him turned to Judges 6 ('And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?'). But nothing brought him peace today. The Lord was unforgiving. How empty the phrases of the Scriptures seemed, how barren the rituals of his religion. Whom was he calling upon, anyway? He felt as if he were kneeling here speaking only to himself. Was anyone listening?

  'O Lord,' he prayed, 'let me know that we, thy children, still merit thy love. Vouchsafe me a sign of thy presence… '

  He was chilled to hear, as if in answer, a low, malicious laugh. Opening his eyes, he gazed around the room in horror; the sound had seemed to come from just beside his ear. But now he heard voices and more laughter – a man's, a woman's – and realized they were coming from outside. He went to the window and looked out. Down in the yard a dusty white Chevrolet was parked near the house, and beside it stood Freirs, alternately embracing a red-haired young woman, whom Poroth recognized as Carol, and pumping the hand of a short white-haired old man who looked damnably familiar and who, as Poroth watched, threw back his head and laughed.

  So they had arrived. He would slip away with Carol tonight, as promised, and report back to his mother.

  Below him he heard the screen door swing open; slow footsteps descended the back stairs. The old man turned, suddenly no longer laughing, and for a moment Poroth saw his eyes narrow and a new look enter them, a kind of guarded excitement. All at once he beamed. 'Ah, yes,' Poroth heard him say, his little frame now shaking once again with laughter, 'yes, indeed, and this must be Deborah!'

  At last Deborah herself stepped into view. Gravely she advanced across the yard to meet them, a smile spreading slowly across her face as she extended to both visitors, but especially to the little old man, a hand of welcome.

  Aside from the contact he's established, there is no particular joy in being back. Everything is much as he's remembered it, despite the passage of a century. In size, shape, even the weathering of its shingles, the little farmhouse looks almost the same as the first one that stood on this site. The apple tree behind it is new, of course, and so is the line of rosebushes he saw as he climbed from the car. But he recognizes the broad unpainted barn farther down the slope, where he'd drawn his secret pictures and practiced secret chants; its roof is sagging now, and, for all its rusted body, the battered old pickup truck parked within the doorway seems alien and new. So does the little wooden smokehouse at the edge of the property, another addition since his time, though for all he knows its door has been hanging open that way for the past eighty years.

  The black willow rising by the barn is new to him, gnarled and ancient as it seems. But the acres of cornfield (looking stragglier than those he remembers), the vine-encrusted ruins of the outhouse that the woods have all but reclaimed, the brook where he'd performed those preliminary sacrifices, the dense surrounding forest and the hot, doomed country air – all these are familiar. Yet the memories mean little to him.

  He notices, with no more than the faintest curiosity, that some things are gone: the woodshed and the stables and the old chicken coop, replaced by the squat grey structure that the Poroths have converted into a guest house; the elms that lined the roadside (victims, no doubt, of that Dutch disease); and the tall, slender oak that once stood beside the house, shading the living room. But of course, he's almost forgotten: the tree, like the house itself, perished in the fire…

  The fire: how far away that night seems now, in the present afternoon sunlight – and yet how close! He can still remember standing in the back yard beside the barn, watching as the roof caved in and the walls collapsed and the house folded in upon itself and all it contained like a clenching fist…

  Just as the Master had said.

  That same night, at the Master's instructions, he had burned the Master's body and ground the ashes to a black powder- the powder he'd used, as the Ceremony required, to mark the two sacrificial women.

  But he'd been careful to save a part of the Master's body from the flames – a single part which, as the Master had decreed, he had buried at the base of the tree.

  And now this fragment of the Master is free once more, risen from the earth. It has survived. He has just seen it looking at him through the eyes of the one called Deborah.

  Carol had had strong misgivings about bringing Rosie with her to the farm – she knew it was sure to preclude her going to bed with Jeremy, who'd probably resented the old man from the start, and she worried that the Poroths might find him too effete, compared to the crusty old-timers they probably associated with – but now she was glad he'd come along. Good God, he was practically the only one with any animation tonight, and her respect for him grew as she listened to him recount
stories of his travels, and poke fun at bis own fussy driving, and tell amusing anecdotes, with actual beginnings, middles, and ends, about their adventures together in the subway and the park; and all the while, as he talked, the fat red rose that Deborah had given him kept wobbling absurdly in his buttonhole, as if he were the father at a wedding, come to give away the bride. Without him, dinner would have been a real struggle to get through. The two of them had 'shot the works,' as Rosie'd put it. They'd brought out cold pasta from the city, and four pounds of flank steak – not for her, of course – and half a cheddar wheel that Rosie had picked up at Zabar's, and along the way they'd stopped off at a sun-baked little roadside stand outside Morristown for a dozen ears of deliciously sweet fresh corn. She hoped Sarr hadn't been offended by it; his own crop looked terrible.

  So did Sarr himself. He had been silent and morose all evening -so different from the first time she'd seen him, when he'd spoken so freely – and there were deep rings of worry beneath his eyes. Clearly he was going through some kind of crisis: whether marital or spiritual, she couldn't say.

  Jeremy wasn't much better; he looked positively awful, in fact, his complexion blotchy, his hair long, unkempt, and none too clean-looking. And he didn't seem to have lost any weight at all so far this summer; he looked more out of shape than ever. She wondered if this was a preview of what he'd be like ten years from now and was vaguely troubled at the fantasies he'd inspired.

  Deborah, too, seemed out of sorts, and it was clear from her hoarseness and her uncommunicativeness that she hadn't yet gotten her voice back – but then, at least she had an excuse; she was still getting over that horrible incident with the cat, Jeremy had told her about it earlier. Carol noticed with uneasiness, not for the first time tonight, that he kept eyeing Deborah surreptitiously across the dinner table, though Deborah herself seemed unaware of it; the woman had eyes only for her guests.

  God, what if there'd been something between them, Jeremy and Deborah? And what if Sarr suspected? Certainly the farmer had been giving the two of them a lot of funny looks all evening.

  Most of his attention, though, seemed to be focused on, of all people, Rosie. In fact, Sarr had been sneaking glances at the old man all through the meal, even during grace, as if hoping to catch him out in the midst of a prayer. Maybe, after all, it was religion that was on his mind. Serenely oblivious to all this, poor little Rosie had clasped his hands and smiled and uttered a heartfelt amen at the end, right along with everyone else. Carol had actually felt relieved. Yet afterward Sarr had continued to stare at Rosie – and at her too – in the most peculiar way, as if he expected one of them to suddenly do something outrageous. It was disconcerting, to say the least. What in the world had gone wrong with these people? She felt sure that she herself had grown stronger and more confident this summer – had positively blossomed, in fact, out from beneath Rochelle's shadow and under Rosie's kindly tutelage -while here at the farm they were falling apart.

  At the end of the meal, Rosie yawned, gave his lips a prissy wipe with the napkin, and informed them all that, thanks to this afternoon's hours on the road, he was 'weary unto death.' Pushing his chair back, he shuffled off to the bathroom and, on his return, announced that he was going to bed. 'I'll leave the night to you youngsters,' he said, chuckling. 'I'm sure you can make better use of it. Now if someone here can just provide me with a blanket… '

  'I'll bring you everything you need,' said Deborah. She stood, a trifle unsteadily, and moved toward the stairs. They heard her rummaging in the linen closet in the hallway.

  It had already been agreed that Rosie would spend the night on a spare cot in Jeremy's room – an arrangement suggested, to Carol's surprise, by Jeremy himself. Even with Rosie along she'd had a faint, stubborn hope that maybe somehow she'd be able to stay with Jeremy tonight, and she'd at least expected him to ask her. But he hadn't even made an attempt; didn't he realize that it might be weeks before he saw her again? The summer already seemed drearier without him.

  Maybe this was simply further proof that he preferred Deborah to her – or even, however unlikely, that something had gone on between the two of them, a possibility she preferred not to think about.

  Deborah came downstairs with an armload of sheets, blankets, towels, and a pillow. 'Splendid!' said Rosie. 'My dear, I can't thank you enough.' And bidding the others a cordial goodnight, he followed her out the back door.

  Sarr kept his eyes on the screen doors as if waiting to see that they were gone. At last, clearing his throat, he turned to Carol. 'I'm a little curious,' he said lightly, as if in fact he wasn't curious at all, 'just how did you and Rosie come to meet?'

  'Well,' said Carol, surprised, 'it's a rather long story-'

  'And rather too long to tell now,' Jeremy cut in. 'Why don't we save it for morning?' To Carol, caught off guard, he added, 'Look, let's you and I take advantage of the moonlight and go for a walk, okay?'

  It was only a tiny hint of pleading in his voice that prevented her from scolding him. She still felt embarrassed and was not about to abandon Sarr. 'Jeremy, I really don't think it's very nice to go off and leave your host like this.'

  'No, it's all right,' said Poroth, 'you two go ahead. You deserve some time together.' He dismissed them both by getting up from the table with a contented stretch and wandering into the living room.

  'Jeremy,' Carol snapped, when they got outside, 'how could you be so rude to him?'

  He did not immediately reply, but put his arm around her. 'Let's just walk,' he said. Lightning bugs made the lawn look like a convocation of souls, winking silently as they hurried back and forth. The crickets were louder tonight than she'd ever heard before, with a distant chorus of frogs keeping statelier rhythms at the brook. The two of them were passing the side of the farmhouse now; ahead of them a nearly full moon hung low above the ribbon of dirt road. Freirs nodded in the direction of the house, where, through the unlit living room window, outlined in the faint rays of lamplight still streaming from the kitchen, Poroth could be seen pacing up and down in the darkness.

  'He's been acting really weird lately,' said Freirs. 'Almost like he's hitting the bottle. Maybe it's financial problems, maybe some kind of religious mania.'

  'I thought it might be that.'

  'Whatever it is, I want to go back to New York with you tomorrow. If it's okay with you, I'd even like to stay for a few days in your apartment – sleeping on the couch, of course – till I figure out what to do.'

  'Do the Poroths know?'

  'No.'

  'When do you plan on telling them?'

  'Tomorrow, I guess.'

  She felt a little thrill of excitement. He was asking her to rescue him; she was now a fellow conspirator. 'So this means we won't have to say goodbye tomorrow after all.'

  'That's right. We can be together- if you're willing.'

  'I am.' She turned to face him. 'And you won't have to use the couch, either.'

  They kissed, and she let him kiss her breasts, and she knew that the summer was saved.

  Moist air. Scent of roses. Bats fluttering by the barn roof. Silently the two figures – the slim, dark-haired woman and the short, white-haired man – emerge from the outbuilding and make their way toward the barn. Their voices are hushed, their faces indistinct blobs of white.

  The one now called Deborah pauses and turns to the Old One. For an instant her eyes flash in the moonlight.

  'He knows.'

  'Yes, I saw it every time he looked at you. And he suspects me, too.'

  'His mother told him.'

  The old man nods. 'She's a Troet, like I was. She has the gift. But there are things she doesn't know.'

  The woman turns her eyes briefly toward the moon. 'She will be visited tonight.'

  They pause in the darkness of the doorway to the barn, beside the broad form of the pickup truck parked inside. The one called Deborah runs her hand lovingly over something unseen in the shadows on the wall.

  'They're weak,' she says, 'both of them. I'
ve been poisoning them.' There is something like pride in her voice.

  'In that case,' says the Old One, 'we'll be able to make a tiny alteration in our cast. I'd been grooming our chubby friend from the city for this, but under the circumstances – since he's potentially more dangerous – the farmer will serve just as well.'

  He watches as the one called Deborah nods in agreement, her hand still caressing the thing hanging in the shadows. It swings gently on its hook; moonlight catches a length of wooden handle, an edge of steel blade.

  'So,' the Old One continues, 'he's the one you kill.'

  Things going wonderfully with Carol. Suspect she may really be the one. Can't wait till I get back to the city.

  Have been talking about her to myself.

  'I'm in love with her.'

  'Yeah? And what's that supposed to mean?'

  'You know – the works. The whole hog. I like spending time with her, want to fuck her, marry her, give her presents. Want to have kids with her, share my old age with her, have her around when I die. All that stuff.'

  Poroth lay awake, deliberately keeping his breathing deep and regular, waiting till the others were asleep. Carefully he turned to look at his wife. For once her eyes were shut tight.

  Sitting up in bed, he placed a bare foot tentatively on the floor, then the other, knowing that Deborah usually woke when he went downstairs to the bathroom and not wanting to waken her on this of all nights.

  His clothes and shoes were where he'd left them, in the closet; he put them on in the hall. Tiptoeing to Carol's room, he stood looking in at her, asleep there on her back beneath the nursery cutouts on the wall: the moon, the bearded old men, the fire. One arm, unseen, cradled the pillow; the other, exposed to view, was lightly freckled and slim as a reed, her wrist a fragile piece of china, her face unclouded by anything but dreams, slack but for slightly pursed lips. He felt an innocence all about her, the innocence of a little child, and he wondered, for the first time since coming home to Gilead, if the room would ever hold a real child, born of him and Deborah.