The short hallway was dim, but sunlight streamed from the living room, through whose doorway, as if within a frame, he saw the figure of his seated wife – and of Jeremy Freirs bending over her, murmuring soft words as he stroked her rounded stomach.
It took the others several minutes to calm Joram down. The first group of Brethren had entered the house just as the yelling began, and in the end what they remembered were Joram's wild expression, the way the veins stood out in his forehead, and the admirable way that, in consideration of Freirs' relations with the Poroths, he restrained himself from physically attacking their guest.
His greatest fury was directed at his wife – though this, too, was held in check before the eyes of the community. Choking out a 'Woman! Remember yourself!' he seized her arm and dragged her roughly past the others, down the porch steps, and out to the navy blue station wagon parked beside the house. And what he said to the quaking woman once they were inside the car with the windows rolled up tight, no one in Gilead ever learned.
Meanwhile, politely ignoring the contretemps, if not oblivious to it, the others were continuing to file inside for the Cleansing, the crowd streaming through the back door and spreading throughout the house, each person taking as many objects as his or her arms could hold and carrying them out onto the lawn behind the house. It was like an old-fashioned moving day, Freirs decided, with the entire community there to help. He had stoutly maintained his innocence throughout Sturtevant's harangue, and now, reluctant to venture outside where the two of them were parked, he remained on the first floor watching the activity and lending a hand when he could. He saw men carry out chairs, shelves, a picture of the Holy Land from the living-room wall, even the andirons from the fireplace; two men struggled down the narrow wooden stairway with a chest of drawers; Rupert Lindt picked up the heavy wooden kitchen table all by himself and bore it outside. Women moved through the house, their arms laden with stacks of plates, clocks, rugs, or jars from the cellar. Even the smallest children worked, one with a handful of silverware, another with a flat, hard pillow from the bed, another with the little weather house from the living room. Cats darted excitedly beneath everyone's feet.
Gradually they were stripping the house of everything but the walls. Corah Geisel carefully untied the red glass witch ball from the lintel above the window in the nursery. Joram's brother Abram helped Poroth and Galen Trudel as they struggled to haul the Poroths' huge, heavy bed down the narrow stairs. Deborah, ill as she was, tried to carry out the Bible from the night table in the bedroom, but in her weakness dropped it to the floor, so that old Sister Corah, muttering a hurried prayer, had to carry it for her, Freirs helping Deborah herself downstairs. He was pleased at how tightly she gripped his arm.
The Poroths did not have a great many possessions, but the collection on the lawn grew huge, encompassing as it did all their worldly goods, even to the tiniest thimble. Freirs, when he wasn't actually helping, stood in the living room watching the furniture and objects being taken away around him with bemusement, like a homeowner surrounded by moving men – nearly a hundred moving men, to be exact, and clearly familiar with the requirements of the occasion. In little more than half an hour the lawn outside, like the scene of some desperate everything-must-go tag sale, lay covered with household belongings and a mob of milling people.
The barn was next. Poroth released the hand brake in the truck and the assembled men pushed it out of the building and into the yard, with no need to start its engine and break the holy silence of the service. Following the truck, men hauled out the rusted old farm implements and, from the attic, the tools and removable furnishings from Sarr's workshop. The five hens and the rooster, cocking their heads as they looked down curiously on all the activity through the wire of their cage, were left inside to be blessed.
Poroth stood by the barn with hands on hips, overlooking the accumulation on his lawn with a gaze that appeared transported.
Freirs realized that he must be seeing, in all this, proof that his luck would surely turn. What Deborah felt was impossible to make out.
Freirs moved beside him and looked dubiously at the clouds. In a clearing to the east a smoke-white half-moon hung suspended in the sky. 'Let's hope it doesn't rain,' he said.
Poroth glanced up but, surprisingly, showed no concern. 'No matter,' he said with a shrug. "Twould simply be a cleansing sign from the Lord.'
Freirs nodded, privately recalling twin sayings about the weather at funerals: sunshine was a sign that heaven loved the deceased; rain was a sign that heaven was weeping for him. It was impossible to lose.
He looked back down at the lawn in time to see that a group of nearly twenty young women had joined hands in a ring and were staring in their direction.
'Who are they?' he whispered.
'Unmarried women,' said Poroth. 'I'll explain in a minute.' Smiling, he strode off into the center of the circle. One of the girls brandished a large black kerchief and, as Freirs watched, bound it around Poroth's eyes like a blindfold. Suddenly the group began singing, their high, girlish voices carrying eerily across the lawn:
'Make the choosing, round about,
Choose the one and draw her out.
First her willing hand you take,
Then the Cleansing she will make.'
As they sang, they began turning slowly around Sarr, watching him intently. They had circled three times and had finished three complete choruses of the song when suddenly Sarr's hand shot out and tapped one of them, a thin young blond girl, on the shoulder.
'Eve Buckhalter,' someone called.
'Draw her out!'
It was Joram Sturtevant who'd spoken. He was standing straight and tall on the back steps of the farmhouse, still grim-faced from the encounter and careful, it seemed, not to glance in Freirs' direction. Freirs assumed that, by this time, he'd settled the matter with his wife, for she was no longer in the car. Perhaps he was even ashamed now of having gotten so hot under the collar.
The Buckhalter girl was led outside the ring, where a woman
Freirs didn't recognize handed her a small white feather. Grinning broadly, she stood waiting, awkward as all teenagers but clearly pleased at the attention.
'She will lead the Cleansing of the barn,' called Sturtevant. 'Now choose for the house.'
Once more the girls in the ring began revolving, raising their voices in song. They had sung for three more revolutions of the circle when Sarr's hand shot out again, touching another girl, this time just below her breast, which made her squeal.
'Sarah Lindt,' Brother Joram called. 'Draw her out!'
It was Rupert's daughter; Freirs studied her closely as she was led from the circle, recognizing the wide face and snub nose. He felt even more certain now that she had been the girl in the truck.
Sarr, his task completed, had returned to Deborah's side, while in the center of the yard two women – the girls' mothers, he guessed, recognizing the woman he'd seen arrive with Lindt – proceeded to twine corn leaves in their daughters' hair. The leaves in place, the pair of girls, each grasping a white feather, were led before the group, where they stood waiting nervously. The second girl, young Sarah, he saw, looked very nervous.
Sturtevant, on the back steps, raised his hand. Turning to the girls, the congregation murmured an invocation: