Poroth himself was speaking now, drawing laborious parallels, in a low and earnest voice, between the tribulations of Noah and the Brethren's current difficulties. The young man had a good mind, Joram conceded, but he was clearly nervous in groups and made a poor speaker. And it seemed he made an even worse farmer. Joram cast his eye over the cornfields in the distance, the small, sickly-looking stalks already prey to all manner of weeds and pests. He could see, even now, that Poroth's first crop would be accounted a failure.
The image struck him as an apt one: for wasn't Gilead itself a kind of garden, carefully cultivated, nourished and protected, its families as varied as the crops of a well-managed farm, its young like tender shoots? Yes, here was the stuff of some future sermon! And admitting a stranger entrance, as Poroth had, was akin to opening a garden's gates to predators. The shoots would be corrupted, seeds trampled, the soil itself tainted.
Perhaps, though, as with the first Fall, a woman was to blame.
Young Poroth, lacking as he did a father's guidance, seemed inclined to let Deborah order him about, and it was said that taking in the stranger had been her idea.
There she was now, amongst the women near the barn, staring dully at the proceedings. What had happened to her yesterday had been no surprise to Joram. He had been convinced for some time that the devil was in that cat; his right hand still smarted from his encounter with her earlier in the year. Sister Deborah should have foreseen the tragedy. Like as not it had been a judgment upon her. She was, Joram allowed, a handsome woman; he admired the slim-ness of her form and her dark, wanton-looking eyes, though he suspected she'd be capable of all manner of sin.
Lotte, his own wife, had once been just as slim, but after three sons her figure had thickened. And now, of course, the woman was almost unrecognizable, her belly grown so enormous it pained her constantly. Joram thought of her as Sarr came to the end of his talk. He had left her in the Poroths' living room, her sweating form filling their little rocker in a way he'd found faintly disagreeable. Somewhere in him was the vague suspicion that he'd been wrong to bring her here today, but this he'd long since repressed, and what he felt instead was, for the most part, a mixture of irritation at her feminine frailty – the other children hadn't been such trouble – and concern at her appearance. If he felt any guilt, it was for not having insisted that she come outside here with him for the services, to stand, just like Deborah, with the other women. They couldn't allow themselves to grow soft, he and Lotte. They had an example to set for the community.
Freirs had expected the services would be over when Poroth finished speaking; he hadn't counted on the hymns. There were more than a dozen of them, from 'Blue Galilee' to 'Christ the Harvester,' growing in volume and fervour until he felt sure some of the Brethren would wilt beneath the steadily advancing sun, which, having risen above the low wall of clouds, now shone down fiercely.
Toward the end, growing weary of the songs, he thought he heard from the living room, a low, agonized moan. Leaving his seat by the window, he walked to the doorway and looked in. There, still sunken in the rocker where he'd seen her before, was the pregnant woman, alone now and looking barely conscious, sweating terribly in her heavy black dress and obviously in great discomfort. She looked up dully as he entered, blinking at him through great trusting cow eyes that showed neither recognition nor fear.
Freirs approached the chair and stood staring down at her, thinking, Christ, she shouldn't be out of bed looking as pregnant as this. As she raised her head to look at him, he forced his face into a smile. 'Hello,' he said softly. As the morning sunlight touched it, he saw her swollen belly squirm.
He was the first man to smile at her all morning. Joram only glowered at her these days, as if her condition were somehow not a blessing but a curse. She hadn't wanted to come to the worship, she'd felt so tired, so filled up inside she could scarcely breathe. It had never been like this before, not with the others; sometimes, when the child inside her moved, it felt as if the child were rearranging all her insides to suit itself, so strong-willed was it, like Joram. It was surely bound to be another boy. She wished that just this once the Lord would let her have a daughter, but it wasn't for her to question His ways. Joram would be angry with her if he knew she'd even thought of it.
She wanted this pregnancy to end. It was becoming too much for her to bear. And it was so hot today; she'd have liked to sit out upon the back porch and watch the services, she knew they'd be a comfort to her, but Joram wouldn't hear of it. He'd said that either his woman stood out there in the sun with the rest of the congregation or else hid herself away; he'd not be shamed by having her sit while the others stood. So she'd been condemned to this airless little living room. She had been feeling dizzy from the heat and the discomfort when the stranger approached her.
She envied the way he was dressed; he looked so much more comfortable, and you could see his plump arms and legs, like a baby's. The colors of his clothing reminded her of the flowers in her garden. He had a kind face, and his hands looked soft, like healing hands; they stirred vague memories of Joram's own hands long ago, before the children came, and memories of the soft hands of the mid wives.
'How are you feeling?' he was asking, smiling down at her like the sun.
'Oh, my,' she said, 'just look at me!' And she shook her head, almost ready to laugh, as if the two of them were sharing a joke, one that people like her husband would never understand.
'I am looking,' he was saying, and his smile was so sympathetic she was almost able to forget the ache inside her. She smoothed back a strand of hair from her sweating brow, wishing he could see her at her best, and realized, suddenly, that her thighs were parted more than was proper for a married woman with a strange man, the heavy black material dipping like a damp trough between her legs. But it was all right, the stranger was comfortable in his way and she was comfortable in hers. He looked as though he would understand.
'How much longer do you have?' he was asking, nodding at her stomach. She could see he was impressed. She was proud of her condition once again and remembered that she didn't have to be ashamed at all, the way Joram tried to make her feel. She thrust her belly upward even more.
"Twill be any day now,' she confided, with a little shiver of excitement. 'I feel it movin' all the time.'
The stranger smiled. 'I guess the poor kid's getting impatient!'
She giggled; the sound felt funny, she hadn't laughed in so long. 'It's movin' now,' she said, but not alarmed for once; she was pleased at the stranger's interest. She ran a hand over her belly, feeling the child kick but also feeling how good her own hand felt. His would feel even better.
'You can touch it if you want,' she said, smiling up at him, her body so huge and so sensitive. The stranger reached toward her, then hesitated.
'Go ahead,' she said breathlessly. 'Touch it… Touch it… '
They were all looking at Sturtevant now, waiting for him to give the word. He turned to the assembled group. 'Brothers and Sisters, as you know, the Lord has given us a special task to perform today. These good people fear they've been sheltering malign spirits under their roof. It is for us, their brethren and neighbors, to purify the house and all within it. Let us, then, have a Cleansing. Join with me now in divesting their home of its worldly goods so that we may better fill it with the Holy Spirit.'
The sun was hot on his head. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. While the others formed themselves into a line and made ready for heavy labor, the men laying aside their vests and rolling up their sleeves, Joram walked round the side of the house and, slipping off his heavy black jacket, left it folded on the front seat of his car. In a moment or two the others would be filing into the house, with Lotte still seated there fat and sweating in the living room. He hated the thought of them seeing his wife like that; better to rouse her and get her outside, maybe have her sit in the car. He hoped she would not attempt to argue with him; with a determined stride he hurried up the front steps and through the open door.