The man didn't take the bait. 'Don't see why a ghost would pass his time out in the Neck. Ain't nothin' there but swamp water and mud. You just be careful you don't go sinkin' in.'
'Still, I hear some pretty strange things have happened out there.' He watched for the other's reaction. 'Even a couple of murders, I hear.'
The man's expression barely changed, save for a certain impatience. 'I remember somethin' like that, but it was years ago. 'Twould be well before you were born. And beggin' your pardon, it seems to me that when it comes to killin', the place you're from has the rest of us just about beat.'
'I won't deny it' said Freirs. He tried to look properly contrite. 'But the killings I'm thinking of were a bit unusual – both on the last day of July. I don't suppose anything special happened last year on that date, did it? Or maybe the year before? Some sort of violent crime, or someone missing? An unexplained death, maybe?'
The man drove a while in silence. 'Nope,' he said at last. 'Not so's I remember. Summer's pretty quiet around here. Why?'
'Oh, nothing,' said Freirs. 'Just a thought.'
July 31, 1890, and July 31,1939… Why those two dates nearly half a century apart? There had to be something special about them, something that separated them from all other July thirty-firsts…
'Fact is,' the farmer said, breaking into Freirs' reverie, 'that time o' year's amongst the holiest, August commencin' as it does with the Feast o' the Lamb and closin' on the harvest festivities.'
'Really?' He was slightly disappointed. 'I guess your year must be filled with all sorts of holy days.'
'Well, we try to live in the way o' the Lord. For instance, only last Sunday, at worship, Brother Amos turned to me and said… '
But Freirs' mind was already back at the farm, going over the preparations to be made before leaving: the explanations that, tomorrow morning, he would have to give the Poroths, the shelfloads of books to pack away… And through it all his thoughts kept returning to the faded old photograph that he'd taped to the wall above his writing table – a photo of that curious little white face, smiling at him from the past.
It was the leg of mutton that prompted his question – the mutton which, upon Freirs' return, lay roasting in the oven for the night's dinner, its smell filling the little kitchen.
'Deborah, what's the Feast of the Lamb?'
She shrugged. 'Just another one of our observances. Why?'
'The old man who gave me a lift here mentioned that it comes at the beginning of August. I'd never heard of it before.'
'Honestly, Jeremy,' she said, laughing, 'you haven't even tasted tonight's meal and you're already hungry for more!' She turned back to the cucumbers and tomatoes she was slicing for the salad. 'What else did he tell you?'
Freirs thought back. 'Nothing very interesting,' he said. 'I don't think he knew that much. I asked him about McKinney's Neck, but he'd never even heard of anyone around here named McKinney.'
'Come to think of it, neither have I,' said Deborah. 'Honey, was there ever a McKinney family in these parts?'
Poroth looked up from the previous day's Home News, which he'd been frowning over. 'None that I recall.'
'So where'd McKinney's Neck come from?' asked Freirs.
The other shook his head. 'Couldn't tell you. But I'll see what I can find out.' He returned to his reading.
'If you're interested in the Feast of the Lamb,' said Deborah, 'you could join us at the Geisels'. That's where we'll be having it this year. Sister Corah's a wonderful cook, but I warn you, there'll be a lot of praying.'
'I take it I'm invited.'
'I don't see why not. Honey, can't Jeremy have the lamb with us at Matt and Corah's?'
'He'll be welcome,' said Poroth. 'If he's still here.'
Freirs flushed. 'I certainly hope I am.'
'And why wouldn't he be?' said Deborah, busy taking out plates and saucers. 'Put away the paper, honey, it's time to eat.' She glanced at Freirs. 'Nobody's going to leave meals like this behind.'
'How could I?' Freirs said, with a heartiness he didn't feel. Eyeing the food she was already laying on the table, the bright reds and greens of the salad, the cold pitcher of milk, the beans fresh from the garden, he wondered what the Poroths had been saying about him today.
The subject of his leaving didn't come up again. But after dinner, as the two men stood on the back porch watching darkness settle over the land and listening to Deborah singing hymns as she worked in the kitchen, Sarr returned, if only indirectly, to an earlier subject.
'You know,' he said with obvious deliberation, 'God answers to many different names, and He's worshiped in strange ways. But He's always the same God.'
There was a pause; Freirs felt the other's eyes on him. 'That's true,' he said at last, wondering what the man was driving at. 'I'm sure it doesn't matter what you call Him.'
'It doesn't,' said Poroth heatedly. 'The words may be different, but the spirit's always been the same. At Trenton the professors talked about "other systems of belief," and so did all those books in there' – he nodded toward the house, where his few remaining college texts stood gathering dust in the living room – 'and at first I was troubled, I don't mind telling you, at how many different forms God seemed to take. But in the end I found I was able to return to the fold with even more faith than I'd started with, because I came to see how, even when He had different names, He was the same God I knew.'
'I once read a story,' Freirs began, 'about how the people in Tibet have nine billion names for Him… '
'You don't even have to go that far away,' said Poroth. 'There was a little village down in Mexico that the Catholics were wonderfully proud of. The Indians in the area had all been converted, you see -they'd been Christians for at least a hundred years – and week after week every last one of 'em would show up in church to worship the Virgin Mary. And then one day the priest had the altar taken up, so as to make some repairs, and underneath it he discovered another altar, with an idol much older than his, a cruel-looking thing with a snake head and teeth.'
'And that's what they'd really been worshiping all along?'
Poroth nodded. 'But the point is, they were all just fooling themselves. The Catholics thought they were praying to one god and the Indians thought they were praying to another, but they were really praying to the same. It's as if below both the Virgin and the snake was still another god – the true one.'
'The one with the capital G,' said Freirs. Privately he had drawn a different conclusion from the story: something about older, darker gods, and rites in which the blood wasn't just a symbol.
'It's the same with the Feast of the Lamb,' Poroth was saying. 'Actually, it's got another celebration buried underneath, though folks around here wouldn't have heard of it.'
'What kind of celebration?'
Poroth shrugged. 'Pagan. Your standard harvest festival.' He held open the screen door. 'Come on, I'll show you.'
Deborah was standing at the sink as they passed through the kitchen but didn't look up from her washing. A glowing lantern made the night beyond the windows look darker than it had from the porch. Sarr lit another and they went into the living room, where he stooped before his little cache of books in the corner, peering at the names on the spines.
'Sometimes,' he said, 'the Christians took a pagan day and made it their own – like Easter, which, as I expect you've heard, was a planting festival long before Christ.' He pulled out a battered grey volume from the bottom shelf and began thumbing through it. 'Sometimes they changed the name a little, to disguise the origin. That's what we Brethren did with the Feast of the Lamb, which sounds so proper and Christian.'
'It wasn't originally?'
Poroth looked up from the book. 'No,' he said in a low voice. 'And I'm probably the only one who knows.'