Ceremonies

He stared at her for a moment as if weighing the matter. Then, shaking his head, he returned to the Bible. 'There'll be time for such things,' he said. 'We owe so much now, you and I, and have so little ourselves… ' He paused again. 'Well, maybe the prophet can guide us.'

He handed her the heavy book and got up from the bed. Silently he walked to the corner of the room near the fireplace where the wall faced inward toward the house, unadorned with pictures and unbroken by a window. Moving the simple hand-braided rug out of the way, he knelt facing the wall, his bare knees upon the planks.

'Let's begin,' he said. He closed his eyes.

Deborah sat upright in the bed, feeling the hard wooden headboard against her back; it seemed only fitting, the hardness, when she held the Bible on her lap. It was open to Jeremiah, as was usual when they performed the ceremony known as 'drawing the sortes,' though occasionally Sarr would test himself by substituting a less familiar chapter. Deborah raised her gaze to the opposite wall, where below a tattered Trenton State banner hung an ancient crocheted design, the Bird of Paradise in the Tree of Life. Keeping her eyes upon the green and gold foliage, she flipped through the chapter at random and poked her finger toward the bottom of the page.

'Twenty-nine three,' she said.

He remained silent, rigid.

She read over the text and raised her eyebrows. "Fraid I started off with a mean one,' she said.' "By the hand of Elasah the son-'

'-the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent unto Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon

'Right.' She looked away, flipped the pages again. 'I wonder if Jeremy's been using those cards Carol gave him' – her finger stabbed downward – 'to tell fortunes with, the way we use the Bible. Eight fifteen.'

' "We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!" Frankly, I think Carol swallowed a white lie about those cards. The Dynnod's not for telling fortunes.'

'How do you know, honey?'

'I read about it back in college. One of my religion courses.'

'I thought the cards were just a game invented by some novelty company.'

'The cards are, yes. But the pictures on them are a whole lot older.'

'What are they for, then?'

'They're supposed to bring on visions.'

Deborah stared blankly at the ceiling while her fingers selected another passage. 'Hmmm. Well, I guess Carol didn't know any better.' She looked down. 'Forty-four seven.'

' "Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls, to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling… " '

'Right.' She chose another. 'Thirty-seven four. Speaking of sucklings, Lotte Sturtevant's belly is so big now that all of us think it's going to be a boy. Twins, even. Now, if I were to have a son, say-'

' "Now Jeremiah came in and went out among the people… "*

'-he could help me with the housework when he was little, and you with the farm work by the time he was half grown. You've been saying you could use another hand. And there's-' She looked down. 'Um, eleven six. There's just no end of things that need doing around here.'

' "Then the Lord said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them." ',

'Right.' She flipped farther back. 'I expect all that rusted machinery in the barn is going to have to be cleaned or sold or -forty-nine sixteen.'

' "Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hilclass="underline" though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down." '

'And have you noticed how the caterpillars have gotten under those eaves? There's a regular mess of them, last time I looked, and the other day Jeremy complained they're nesting in his building. Five thirty. And the woods by his windows need clearing-'

' "A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land." '

'The land, yes. All that land's just going to waste right now. Ten twenty-two.

' "Behold, the noise of the bruit is coming, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons." '

'Uh-huh.' Deborah smoothed back a lock of hair and stared reflectively at the ceiling. 'You said those cards are supposed to bring visions? The ones she gave Jeremy?'

'That's right.'

'Do they really work?'

Sarr nodded, still facing the corner. 'Of course they do. All magic works.'

'Maybe we ought to tell Jeremy.'

There was a pause. 'I don't think the Lord means us to interfere. Consider it a part of his spiritual education.'

'I wouldn't say-'

Sarr glanced impatiently over his shoulder. 'Come on, Deb, let's get on with this.'

'All right. Just one more.' She leafed blindly through the pages. Her finger stabbed toward the words. 'Five thirty.'

' "A wonderful and-" Wait a minute, we just did that.'

Deborah peered at the words. 'My Lord, you're right! That's funny.' She turned to another passage and looked toward the ceiling, her finger poised above the page.

At that moment a staccato drumming echoed from somewhere above them. The sound seemed to start at one corner of the room and, like Freirs' footsteps earlier that night, to pass above their heads and beyond the farther wall. The cats looked up and growled, tails lashing.

'Oh, no!' groaned Deborah, laying aside the Bible. 'Not again.'

They'd been hearing it for the past few nights: the sound of tiny feet magnified by the reverberation of the wooden boards. Mice were up there, young ones, born just this spring and thriving in the past month's unseasonably warm temperatures; but as they ran across the attic floor, feet thumping on the floorboards, they sounded huge as weasels.

Sarr, still on his knees, was gazing toward the ceiling. He shook his head. 'We'll have to let the cats get at them. There's nothing else to do.'

'Oh, no, honey. I'll not have it! I'll not have them killing things.'

Protectively with her hands she reined in Dinah and Toby, drawing them toward her, but both continued to look longingly at the ceiling, making little sounds of eagerness and hunger deep in their throats.

Sarr got to his feet and came over to the bed. 'Look,' he said gently, 'you don't want those creatures to keep you awake all night, do you? They'll just multiply, you know.'

'Then you and I can go up there and put them out – give them a way to get outside, where they'll have more to eat. I'll not have any murdering in my house.'

She closed the Bible and laid it back on the table, then settled down in bed, face turned toward the wall. Clearly this was to be her last word on the subject. Sarr, sighing, climbed in beside her and blew out the light just as another series of footsteps rattled overhead.

Soon, despite the occasional noise, both he and Deborah were sleeping soundly, chests rising and falling in a common rhythm. But all night long the seven cats looked up toward the ceiling, eyes wide, and growled.

Rosie came to see her that night. He seemed positively cherubic, all chuckles, winks, and smiles. It almost made her forget about what she'd seen in the restaurant the evening before.

'I just dropped by to see if they'd gotten that awful gas under control,' he said, shaking his little head. 'Frankly, young lady, I was worried about you.'

He had brought her a gift in a large, flat cardboard box – it’s some kind of clothing, thought Carol eagerly – but he wouldn't let her open it till after they'd talked. 'First,' he said, 'I want to see those summaries you've been doing for me,' waggling his plump finger with mock-schoolmasterly concern; but when she handed him her notes on the Cherokees and the aborigines he barely seemed to glance at them.