The noise only lasted a minute or two, but I lay awake till the sky began to get lighter. Probably should have gotten through a little reading but was reluctant to turn on the lamp.
Must have been around noon when I got up. Took my towel amp; went up to the farmhouse for a bath. Didn't see Sarr amp; Deborah anywhere around amp; expected to find them in the kitchen eating lunch. But the house was empty, except for a few cats on the back porch, and the farm seemed very lonely.
Only then did I realize it was Sunday, amp; that the Poroths were off somewhere at worship. I'd been sure it was Saturday…
Interesting, how you can lose track of time out here. I suppose in some ways that's healthy, getting away from the pressures that were on me in New York, but it's also a little disorienting. At certain moments I feel positively adrift. I've been so used to living by the calendar amp; the clock.
Sat soaking in the tub till I heard the Poroths walking up the road; they'd been over at some farm near the Geisels' amp; had worked up a good appetite. So had I, even though I'd done nothing all morning but sleep. Over lunch (eggs with thick slabs of bacon, home fries, amp; blueberry pie) we talked about the wildlife around here, amp; I mentioned the noise last night. Sarr suggested that the shuffling sounds weren't necessarily related to the wailing. The former may have been those of a dog, he said; there are dozens in the area, amp; they love to prowl around at night. As for the wailing… well, he wasn't so sure. He thought it might have been an owl or – more likely, he said – a whippoorwill. Apparently whippoorwills can make some very weird sounds, amp; they tend to do so at night. (Lovecraft had them waiting by the window of a dying man amp; singing gleefully as they made off with his soul.)
I wonder, though, if the wailing might not have come from the same stray dog that shuffled past my window. I've heard recordings of wolf howls, amp; I've heard hounds baying at the moon, amp; both have the same element of worship in them that these sounds did.
I didn't broach the subject of the Poroths' coming in my room while I was gone, the misfiled book, etc. Just didn't quite know how to bring it up. Deborah's fairly easygoing, but you never know when Sarr's going to take offense at something.
After lunch he got up to start work, while I, as usual, lingered in the kitchen with Deborah. A minute or two later we heard him calling us from the yard, to come quick and see 'the sign from heaven.' Through the window we saw him pointing at the sky.
We hurried outside amp; looked up. There, way up in the clouds, a thin green line, like a living thread, was streaming across the sky. We watched as it passed slowly over the farm. Hard to tell how long it was; at one point it seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon.
'What is it?' Deborah asked.
'A sign from God,' said Sarr. But he had to have it both ways: 'and also a migration.'
He was right, the second time at least, because just then a few flecks of green drifted down toward us, carried on the breeze, amp; we saw that they were tiny moths the color of leaves. Above us the line was passing onward, snaking away into the distance, moving west. Eventually it was lost from sight.
Sarr was exultant – 'the Lord has vouchsafed us a vision, a promise of good harvests,' etc., etc. – but I found the sight oddly disturbing. Came back here to the room amp; looked it up in my Field Guide to the Insects. Apparently some butterflies – the monarchs, for one – actually do migrate, even across whole continents; but there was nothing in the book about these little green ones, amp; I couldn't even find out what they were.
Deborah finished stacking the dishes and wiped the crumbs from the table. Lifting the old pewter milk pitcher, she carried it into the hall, where she lit the little oil lamp that hung from a hook beside the stairway. With the pitcher in one hand and the lamp in the other, she started down the narrow steps.
The cellar was the most primitive area of the house, with a floor of hard-packed earth and stone walls lined with crude wooden shelves. The ceiling was low, like the roof of the cave – too low for Sarr to stand upright – and the air, redolent of vinegar and spices, was noticeably cooler than anywhere else in the house. Raising the pitcher, Deborah poured the leftover milk back into a large metal canister near the foot of the stairs and refitted the lid. On a shelf against the nearby wall – above a row of empty pickle jars which she hoped, by summer's end, to fill – lay a cardboard egg carton. Down here, in the cool darkness of the cellar, hens' eggs remained fresh for weeks; each day she'd add new ones to the carton and take the older ones for meals. Today, she noticed, there were only three eggs left on. the shelf; she had used the rest for lunch. But with the hens laying as well as they had been, she knew she could count on four more by dinnertime.
Back upstairs, taking the little basket that hung on the porch where the cats played, she headed toward the barn, Zillah and Cookie trotting at her heels. Sarr, sleeves rolled up, was bent over a thick growth of weed at the margin of the cornfield, slicing at it with a sickle. Freirs was back in his room, seated at his writing table; she could see him dimly through the screens. It was a shame, she reflected, that someone as smart as he was spent so much time on spook books and showed so little interest in religion; in all the weeks he'd been living here he'd never once asked them how services had gone. Well, next week he'd be able to see for himself, because they were going to be held here at the farm, right outside his door.
This morning's worship had been a satisfying one. True, they'd had to hold it in the hot sun; Ham Stoudemire's trees were lately so infested with tent caterpillars that anyone standing in the shade risked getting one down his neck. (She would have to make sure San-checked all their own trees this week, as well as the eaves of the barn.) And a few of the Brethren had made some rather odd remarks about 'the stranger' they were harboring here – how silly! (Just as well, probably, that she and Sarr hadn't told the others he was a Jew.) And too, there'd been the memorial prayer for old Hannah Kraft – that, of course, had been a sad note; poor Minna Buckhalter had been so upset…
But Deborah had been pleased to see that stuck-up Lotte Sturtevant looking so red-faced and puffy; she wouldn't look that way when she was with child. (And why had the woman insisted on coming at all? Perhaps that awful Joram had made her.) She had also enjoyed the singing; the morning's heat had brought out the spirit in everyone.
'Saved by the blood of the Crucified One,
Ransomed from sin and a new work begun… '
Swinging the basket in time, she rounded the corner of the barn and walked inside. Sunlight slanted on the pitted metal surface of the truck parked just within the doorway. A pair of fat bluebottles with heads like gemstones buzzed in the light. Along one wall the line of antiquated farm implements rusted on the hay, their spiked wheels and jagged iron jaws giving them the look of medieval instruments of torture.
'Sing praise to the Father and praise to the Son,
Saved by the blood of the Crucified One.'
The hens were quiet today. Usually when she entered all four of them glared impatiently down at her from the high chicken-wire coop, squawking for their food bucket, but today only one of them peeped through the wire. She could see the dark red rooster pacing agitatedly behind it.
Climbing the heavy wooden ladder up to the platform where the coops lay, she reached above her to unfasten the latch at the side.