Ceremonies

'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 snares 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.