Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  And there she was! There was Gail! Stooping out of the hole, dazed and bewildered, her hair tumbled down over her shoulders and half obscuring her mud-streaked face. One hand steadied her against the edge of the hole—the other was still clutching that bent old lard pail.

  I heard the woman cry out something shocked and sorry and saw her draw Gail up into her arms. Then Gail was in my arms and Jareb was clutching her skirts and sobbing into them. Gail’s shaking hands were clamped onto my arm and she looked back over her shoulder.

  “Are they angels?” she asked. “Are they angels?” Then she was warm and heavy against me, clinging and sobbing, and my life started again with a shaken breath.

  “Your pardon.” The man was back by us. “We must go.” And the three clustered, tightly but untouching, about us. I had one look of the earth scurrying back, far beneath us, and, helpless to react any more, hid my face against Gail’s hair. I clutched her to me with one aching arm and held Jareb desperately against my side with the other. Then the thought came out of panic. We would have fallen long ago if we were going to fall. But the thought brought no comfort.

  “Step,” said Theo’s father. “Step.” And I did—staggering across the front porch of Gail’s house.

  Quickly we were inside and a dim light filled the fireplace. Gail murmured, and she and the woman disappeared into the other room.

  The man drew Theo to him. “Tell me,” he said.

  In the scurrying silence, I backed toward the fireplace, my hands spreading to gather warmth. There was no warmth, only light. Jareb shivered against me, and I gathered him into the crook of my arm.

  Theo began to cry and his father left him to turn to us. He opened his mouth and then closed it. Perhaps he had to talk twice, too, as Jareb had told me Theo had to. Jareb shivered and I shivered, too. The light in the fireplace brightened and warmth began to creep out into the room.

  “Theo tells me that he and Jareb took a little girl from her mother—” The voice rang some bell for me. Where had I—?

  “Yes,” I said, “they took Tally. But didn’t you—”

  “We knew nothing of it,” said Theo’s father. “We thought Theo was on one of his—his finding—out journeys. The boys have the child concealed in the waterway between here and the end of the water. Theo says she is suffering from the lack of—good.”

  “She’s dying,” I said flatly.

  “Dying?” The man’s startled face leaned into the light.

  “But you—” I groped. “I’ve seen you—”

  “Another time.” He cut my stuttering with a motion of his hand. “Shan—” The other man drifted to the door, paused briefly, looking back at Theo’s father, then he was gone soundlessly, out into the dark.

  The man drew Theo to him again and held him comfortingly as he went on.

  “Children—” he began. Theo squirmed.

  “Children—” I nodded, and Jareb stirred in the circle of my arm.

  The man smiled. “So you know, too, Mr. Lambert,” he said. Then he sobered. “But that doesn’t excuse what they have done. Tally’s mother must be—”

  “She is,” I said. “The whole Conclave is. And they’re sick, too. That’s why they’re acting like this—”

  “I can’t understand.” The man frowned, puzzled. “Theo says you offered them—”

  “I did,” I said. “They couldn’t understand. That’s why—”

  “And they’d rather die—” He shook his head.

  “That’s the way people are,” I said. “Surely you’ve heard of people dying because of misunderstanding.”

  His face was bleak in the warm light, and I felt such a pang of sorrow from him that my eyes blurred. Then they cleared in a hurry as Gail and the woman came back, Gail, clean and decently dressed, braiding the second of the two long braids of her heavy hair.

  “The boys have Tally,” she began.

  The woman interrupted. “Shan’s gone to get her.”

  “It isn’t very far,” said Jareb. “We didn’t take her very far. Theo said—” His eyes flicked to the man. “Theo said his daddy and mamma didn’t know and if they found out, they wouldn’t let him—” He broke off, conscious as I was of the cold feeling of unacceptance that filled the room. For a minute his shoulder pushed against me, then he got mad.

  “She was dying!” he shouted. “She was dying!” He lowered his voice, his eyes apprehensively turned toward the door. “Did you want me to just let her die? Her daddy wouldn’t let her mamma give her any of the good, and when Mamma and I tried to, they were coming to get her. So I went and got Theo and we took her—we went—” his voice faltered. “Maybe she’s dead now!” he wailed. “And Sister Ruth feels so bad! We didn’t have any dry clothes for her—” There was a movement at the door and Shan came in. I felt a relaxation all around me, and Theo ventured a quick half-smile at Jareb.

  In a flurry of movement, Shan gave up the muddy bundle of rags into the hands of Theo’s mother. She and Gail disappeared again into the other room. The indignant cry of a wakened child made us all smile. It was like the ending of a birth-wait.

  “She couldn’t even cry, before,” said Jareb. “She’d open her mouth, but no crying would come out! The good’s working already!”

  I looked at Shan. He wasn’t even wet! How had he managed to go get her without going down into the pond?

  “He shielded.” Theo was answering me, shamefaced. “I forgot. I could have kept Jareb and me dry if I’d thought, but it was so fast—” He thought he had explained!

  Dawn was steel-grey at the window. Tally, full of warm milk spiked with good, was sleeping in Gail’s arms. The rest of us were resting our voices and our minds. Only our minds wouldn’t rest. We had no solution yet. What were we to do about Tally? If we gave her back to her folks with them feeling as they did about the good, she’d die. If we kept her, her parents’ agony would be something we couldn’t bear. If we told them that we had her and wouldn’t give her back—no telling what the half-crazed batch would do.

  Finally Theo’s father said, “Your Conclave came here to separate itself from the world to worship the Presence—your God—in the way they felt right.”

  “Yes,” I said, not liking the sound of “separate,” though it was true.

  “Then you feel a nearness to the Presence.”

  “We hope for it,” I answered.

  “And when we released Gail from the cave, she asked if we were related to the Presence....”

  “Related?” I frowned, trying to think. Gail stirred and lowered her head so that her cheek was pressed to the spiky dampness of Tally’s hair.

  “I thought they were angels,” she said softly. “And they are!”

  “Angels?” asked Theo’s father.

  “Messengers of God,” I explained. “They carry out His will in the world.”

  “Intermediaries?” suggested Theo’s father. “Coming between you and the Presence?”

  “Not coming between!” I was a little annoyed. It didn’t sound right. “Going between!”

  “Oh.” The man fell silent, then he said, “If an angel of God appeared to Tally’s parents and told them to give her the good, would they obey.”

  “I—I think so,” I said. “If they believed—”

  “This is such a roundabout way,” said the man, impatiently. “Just because there’s not good in the soil here—if only you had chosen a place like Everly—”

  “Everly—” I straightened my weary back with astonishment. “So that’s where I’ve seen you—at Everly when I went for the garden truck—”

  “That’s what I tried to tell you,” cried Jareb, suddenly rousing.

  “That’s the other end of the water! They came here first, then went away because there wasn’t any good here, and they came here in wagons without any wheels. Theo didn’t know the words; so he showed them to me inside my head. I want to go there and see some of them wagons. How can wagons go without wheels? Or horses either? In the sky! I want to see—” />
  “Wagons without wheels!” I turned my eyes up in exasperation. Even in this troubled moment, Jareb had to go on with his foolish fantasies.

  “I’m sorry, Jareb,” said Mr. Jensus—that’s who he was in Everly!—matter-of-factly. “They were all burned, long ago.”

  “Aw!” Jareb was disappointed.

  “Some of us were burned—” began Theo, but his voice stopped in midword. He colored to his eyebrows, and his eyes crept away from his father’s face.

  “The angel,” suggested Mr. Jensus.

  “It’s Tally’s father that needs convincing,” said Gail. “But I think he would accept an angel. You don’t argue with angels.”

  “Good,” said Mr. Jensus, standing up briskly. “Then I’ll go to him and tell him I’m an angel—”

  “But,” Gail lowered her head again and then lifted it resolutely, “you don’t look like an angel.”

  “Oh?” Mr. Jensus looked down at himself. “I am the same as when you saw me and thought—”

  “Yes,” said Gail, “because of what you were doing. But if you are going to convince Sister Ruth and Brother Rual, you’ll have to look like a real angel—”

  “And that is—?” asked Mr. Jensus.

  “A long white robe—” Mr. Jensus nodded. “And wings—” “Wings!” Mr. Jensus was startled. “Feathered wings,” Gail went on.

  “Feathers!” Mr. Jensus’ jaw dropped.

  “Aven,” said Mrs. Jensus chidingly, “you must look through other eyes.”

  “And a halo,” said Gail. “A ring of brightness above your head.”

  Mr. Jensus turned despairing eyes to his wife. She smiled at him and touched his arm. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

  Well, Gail, handing me the sleeping Tally, blushingly took a white nightgown from the trunk by the fireplace, and Mrs. Jensus put it on in the other room. She came back to us, letting down the shining length of her light hair all around her shoulders and her back. She and her husband in some way devised wings, like feathered curves of light, and set a halo glowing above her head. She truly looked like an angel!

  “Except,” said Gail.

  “Except?” asked Mrs. Jensus. Her eyes twinkled. “Not a tail, too!”

  “No,” Gail smiled. “That’s for devils. The shoes.” She pointed to the sturdy shoes showing beneath the hem of the gown.

  “No shoes?” Mrs. Jensus asked. “What do they wear?”

  Well, no one knew, except that they wouldn’t wear sturdy shoes.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Jensus, and the shoes dissolved into light.

  She took the sleeping Tally, and a measure of good tied up in a handkerchief. We all moved out onto the front porch and watched her lift herself and Tally into the cool chill of the predawn morning and move off towards Benson’s. I stood there, silent. What could you say in the face of all the impossible things that were happening? Then a niggling little thought crept through the awed wonder. Shouldn’t she be flapping the wings? Or did angels flap—

  “Mamma, I’m hungry,” Jareb’s voice broke the moment. “I bet Theo is, too.”

  “Of course,” said Gail. “It’s almost breakfast time. You men go do the chores while I get breakfast.”

  I was just coming back into the cabin with the first bucket of milk and Gail had started cracking the second dozen eggs into the skillet when I heard it—I heard Tally crying, “Mamma! Mamma!”

  My chest tightened and apprehension ran through my blood like icy water. I yanked the door open. There was Mrs. Jensus, her eyes wide and shocked, clutching a struggling Tally to her crumpled gown.

  “They wouldn’t take her!” She could hardly make the words. “They said she was—was—dead! She was a—a—ghost. What’s a ghost? How could a child be something so evil that she’d frighten her own parents?”

  Gail deftly took the screaming Tally, hushed her into sobs, and gave her a crust of bread. Tally considered it for a moment as she clutched it in her tear-wet hand. Then she drew a shuddering breath and greedily stuffed all the crust she could into her mouth.

  “A ghost is a dead person who—who stays on earth and haunts—” I began.

  “But the Dead are received into the Presence!” cried Mrs. Jensus. “Why would they ever want to—”

  “Tell us.” Mr. Jensus was there, his hands touching hers gently. “Aloud,” he added. “For our friends.”

  “I went,” said Mrs. Jensus, her face smoothing out from its uncomprehending shock. “I went to the meeting house. They were all there because one had been Called. They were to commit his cast-aside to earth.”

  Gail and I exchanged startled looks. The first death in the Conclave. “Who?” I asked.

  Mrs. Jensus hesitated. “Their—their Man of God.”

  “Brother Helon!” I felt a dissolving. Now that the keystone was gone, what would happen—

  “I went in—like an angel,” said Mrs. Jensus. “I went to the mother and held out Tally. The father knocked away her reaching hands because a—a person—Dab?” I shut my eyes and nodded dumbly. Of course, Dab! “Cried ‘Ghost, ghost!’ and everyone—they—it was—” Mrs. Jensus hid her face against Mr. Jensus.

  Theo and Jareb came in with another bucket of milk, and Gail gave me Tally and turned back to the eggs. She knelt to the fireplace and steadied the skillet on the grate as though every day she cooked on red-hot iron with no fire under it. We were all watching her. The smell of cooking eggs had snared our attention, and suddenly starved us all.

  “Dab or no Dab,” said Gail, “Sister Ruth wouldn’t turn from her baby. Brother Rual or no Brother Rual—”

  We heard the voice call, breathlessly. We heard the stagger of steps on the porch.

  “I want my baby!” Sister Ruth slid slowly to her knees, the door frame supporting her back. “I want Tally!”

  Tally surged in my arms toward her mother, her face and hands liberally smeared with wet bread crumbs. Crooning inarticulately, Sister Ruth took the child from me, but had to sag her weight immediately to the floor. “I—I want some of that salt stuff too!” she gasped. “Look at Tally! Look at Tally!” The child was standing alone on shaky little legs. She lurched toward the fireplace and the savory-smelling eggs. “Sumpin a-year!” she said, collapsing on hands and knees against Gail. “Sumpin a-year!”

  Then, as if that wasn’t enough, the door was darkened again. There stood Brother Rual, wavering on spread legs, his black scowl on his pallid face.

  “I want my woman!” he said, trying to moisten his dry lips. “And my child! And to hell with that damn Dab!”

  I choked back a massive shout of laughter as the whole insane affair climaxed in Jareb’s shrill, shocked, “Ah—M-m-m! Mamma! He cussed! He cussed!”

  We all went to Everly—Shan and the two boys going back by the waterway—the rest of us openly in the light wagon, with only the fewest possessions possible. With no need for discussion, our doors had closed unopenably on the Conclave. We drove slowly by the meeting house, and Gail clutched my arm as we saw the bare rectangle of grassless soil marking where Brother Helon’s body lay. The flat scar on the land was waiting for the grass to heal it and to erase Brother Helon from this world.

  As we pulled up the rise to the Everly road, I saw the roadside brush jerk and shake and be still suddenly. I leaned back and reached down into the wagon, lifting my eyebrows at Mr. Jensus. He nodded and put into my hand the bundle of good Mrs. Jensus had carried. I tossed it into the grass by the road. As our wheels ground gravel turning the corner above Hellesgate, I looked back. Dab was crouched in the road looking after us, the good clutched his hand. He was fumbling at the string as we rounded the corner. I wondered. Was he going to taste it—or dump it out on the ground?

  Arriving at Everly was like coming home. We weren’t among strangers—only friends too considerate to gather around in droves, but we could feel their warmth and support all around us. I don’t know why I knew we couldn’t stay, but I did. But stay or not, it was wonderful just to relax
for a while—only that Dab-worry was still nagging me.

  The day after our arrival, Theo was showing us around their place. It was new to everyone but me—and most of it was new to me, too. I had only seen the part where I picked up the garden truck for Hellesgate.

  “The pump’s over here,” said Jareb. “Only it’s—it’s—” He paused a moment, then grinned. “It’s busted!”

  “Pump trouble?” I asked Mr. Jensus.

  “Yes,” he said. “It works for a while and then it stops. It’s a type we don’t know. We’re trying to analyze the difficulty—”

  “I’ve worked on pumps.” I said. “Want me to take a look?”

  “Take a look?” He paused and then smiled. “If you would, please, take a look.”

  It was a simple matter to fix. It made me wonder that they couldn’t have told right off what was the matter. I didn’t say anything and went ahead and fixed it. I put it in gear and watched the blades of the windmill bite the wind. I watched with satisfaction the gush of the water—then I blinked and looked again. The water was being pumped into the hill! It leaped out of the well pipe, twisted in the sun, and disappeared into a crack in the hill!

  Mr. Jensus caught my questioning. “It’s the—creek,” he nodded. “It hasn’t rained for a long time. We can’t let the creek run dry.”

  “The creek?” I blinked, my mind churning. “Yeah, Jareb said you made—”