But now was not the time to change. After twenty-two years of holding onto something, you didn't just give it away to the first halfway acceptable man who came along. Especially not tonight, on what amounted to their second date, in a glorified henhouse with stern, religious, disapproving strangers all around. She hoped Jeremy didn't expect anything more, and assumed he'd had enough sense to make provisions for her to spend the night inside the farmhouse.
Not that there was anything wrong with Jeremy; as soon him as anyone else. It was all very well to remind herself that, considered critically, he was not the first man she would have chosen and that her interest in him derived, in part, from that most humbling of predicaments, his being, at least for now, the only game in town. Still, the choice was more than just pragmatic. He genuinely appealed to her. He made her smile.
All this past week he'd been much on her mind. She had found herself pausing in her homeward walk down Eighth Avenue to stare expectantly at the western horizon, as if to catch a glimpse of distant marvels – in Jersey, of all places! She'd even found herself inventing entire conversations with him, conversations which, however playful or earnest, invariably ended with a mutual declaration of love. / must be crazy, she told herself for the dozenth time. Was her life really so empty that she'd fall for the first man who showed an interest in her? And did it really take so little – a drink, a cheap Italian meal, a walk home in the dark? Surely there was more to her life than that.
FLEMINGTON, the sign said. KEEP RIGHT.
Moving back into the slower lane, she took a moment to count her blessings. There was her family, of course, though scattered now, and Rochelle, and the sisters she still talked to at St. Agnes's, and evenings at the ballet every week or two, and maybe an occasional fancy meal this summer with Rosie, and the endless rows of library books that stretched before her, thirty hours a week…
Surely that was enough for any girl. More than enough.
But a contemptuous little voice inside her head whispered, Who do you think you're kidding?
So be it. She spun the wheel and pressed her foot against the gas pedal. The Chevy swung onto the exit ramp and sped across the waiting world toward Gilead.
Freirs put down the book and checked his watch. It was almost a quarter to three. He looked to the right, squinting at the sun. Sarr and Deborah were still at it, both of them bent almost double, moving through the plowed field with the seed bags at their sides, chanting as they went. They reminded Freirs of a pair of huge black insects depositing endless rows of eggs. Behind them sunlight glimmered from one of the homemade scarecrows that Sarr had erected -really just aluminum-foil pie plates with strings through one end, dangling like limp kites from the tops of a row of stakes so that, at the smallest breeze, the plates would swing and flutter back and forth, banging softly against the stakes with the sound of far-off temple gongs.
How strange and picturesque it all seemed. He felt as if he were in a distant country. It was easy to forget that the two of them out there were human beings, people he sat down to eat with, people like himself.
He hoped Carol would arrive soon; the day seemed to be passing so quickly that, even with the sun still high, he could feel the chill of evening, the day already lost. A fly settled boldly on his cheek and he struck at it, knocking his glasses askew. Quickly he adjusted them, hoping the Poroths hadn't seen. Where in God's name was Carol? In a little while he was going to get angry, or worried, or both. He plunged despondently back into the novel, trying to lose himself again and speed her coming.
Sarr was thinking about the girl while he counted out the seeds, and he was troubled. He wondered if he'd done the right thing, allowing Freirs to have her out this weekend. Maybe his mother was right.
He had seen her at her house the previous night, where, offering some fresh eggs and a bag of early peas from Deborah's garden, he'd gone to seek his mother's advice on how best to deal with the members of the Co-op, to whom his debt was about to fall due. Thirty-seven hundred dollars for the mortgage, and another thousand for repairs – he would owe them, by August, nearly five thousand dollars. But there were a few grounds for hope, including a modest family trust left by his father that might, in emergencies, be drawn upon…
When he'd mentioned, in passing, that Jeremy Freirs had a girl coming on Saturday, his mother had seemed shocked. No, more than shocked. Dismayed, almost, like one who's learned an enemy has breached the gates.
'Son,' she'd said at last, 'I wouldn't open my door to her.'
'Now, now,' he'd said, 'the two of them aren't going to spend the night together. I wouldn't allow such a thing on my land.' He was already beginning to feel sorry he'd brought it up, and guilty about having acquiesced so easily to Deborah's argument that what Jeremy and Carol did was none of his business. Of course it was his business; everything that went on under his roof or his property was his business.
The evening – so agreeable, at the start, perhaps because he hadn't brought Deborah, always a source of tension – had ended in the sort of unforgiving argument, neither yielding an inch, that he hadn't had with his mother since he was a boy. Even as he'd left, she had still seemed uneasy. 'No,' she kept saying, 'the woman shouldn't come. She shouldn't be here at all.'
'Well,' Sarr had said at last, 'it's too late now. I can't stop her from coming; I can't go back on my word. At the very least, I have to offer common hospitality. Don't worry yourself, Mother, there'll be no sinning on my land.'
But she hadn't appeared comforted.
And now, as he labored in his fields, Sarr couldn't get the matter off his mind. Maybe, in some dark way he didn't yet understand, he had made a mistake.
He wondered if he would have to pay for it.
Mrs Poroth grimaced beneath the beekeeper's veil. Grey wisps drifted past her face from the nozzle of her smoker, a teapot-shaped metal contrivance packed with smoldering rags and fanned by miniature bellows. Every few minutes she would shake her head uneasily, as if trying to clear it of some indigestible thought. Earlier, as she'd gone about her Saturday chores, pruning the hydrangea on the south side of the house and, with veil on, examining the upright wooden frames of the beehives for the day's accumulation of honey, she'd considered, half seriously, the possibility of setting up a roadblock on her lane. Anything to keep away the visitor.
Of course, maybe this was just some idle girlfriend of Freirs' and not the woman whose coming she dreaded; there was no way to be sure. Still, she hated to take chances. Stationing herself by the third hive, lowest on the hill and closest to the roadside, she waited for the visitor's car to pass.
If the woman turned out to be the one she feared, what should she do? Killing her, of course, would be a sin, and the Lord punished such acts, even when committed for good ends, though she was half prepared to accept the sin and the eventual punishment. Besides, she reflected, killing was probably the kindest thing she could do for the poor girl.
No, she couldn't do it. She would have to play by the rules. The Old One would be playing by them too.
There was nothing to do for now but find out all she could. Adjusting her veil and once more directing the smoker into the hive so that the insects, reacting as if to a fire and gorging themselves on honey, would grow sluggish, she lifted the flat unpainted lid and withdrew one of a dozen wooden frames acrawl with bees. Transferring the honey-laden frame to a storage chamber above the hive, she stood once more and prepared herself to wait for the passing of the car. If the chosen woman was in it, she would recognize her – by her hair, if nothing else. It would be red. It would have to be. That, too, was a rule.