Ceremonies

'We left Minna with her, to tend her till the morning,' said Lise. She was talking to everyone on the porch but, as was customary, directed her words to Elsi van Meer and the other women. 'Minna's made her comfortable, and she'll see to it the garden's looked after till Hannah's got her strength back.'

' If she gets it back.' It was Rupert Lindt, who had joined them that night and was taking up a good portion of the couch.

'Now, now, Brother Rupert,' said Verdock, 'the Lord looks after those that keep the spirit.'

The other shrugged. 'Maybe so, but the spirit and the body's got to part some day. I can't say much about Hannah's spirit, but her body's gettin' old.'

Hannah Kraft was a widow of limited means and solitary habits whose health had been poor for decades, although never so poor as she'd painted it – at least not until now. Now, in her eighties, she seemed to be dying in earnest. The Verdocks had visited her earlier in the evening with their widowed daughter, Minna, and had left Minna there to spend the night with the old woman in the little three-room house off the back road.

'She takes on something fierce about the weather,' Adam was saying. 'A good thing it's so mild tonight. She told Minna she can't get a wink of sleep anymore, what with the thunder and the rain.'

'Well, Hannah will go on,' said Bethuel Reid, perhaps the closest to her in age. 'I remember – years ago, it was – when she wouldn't let you get a word in edgewise and you couldn't make sense of a single thing she said.'

They nodded, all of them, but Lise Verdock raised her voice to add, 'She says there's noises pretty nearly every night now. A rumbling, she calls it, like something's moving out there.'

'Well, sure,' said Bert Steegler, 'it just stands to reason, you stay down by the Neck and you're goin' to hear noises at night.'

Van Meer looked skeptical. 'Oh, a few frogs, maybe, a whippoorwill or two. And maybe the Fenchel boys up to their usual mischief. But I trust you're not holdin' with all those stories about spirits.'

'Well, maybe I am, maybe I ain't. All I'm sayin' is, there's holes in those woods, there's underground springs, there's pockets of gas in the swamp… Such things'll make a bit of noise, as I'm sure Brother Rupert remembers.'

Lindt nodded, pleased to be singled out. He was the youngest man there, and the largest; he had a habit of saying disagreeable things, often in a booming voice, but these people had known him since his boyhood and tolerated his ways. Any time they needed help, they knew they could count on his strong shoulders.

'I grew up near the Neck,' he said, 'and I know the sounds the swamp can make. But this time I ain't so sure. I've heard the thunder too, and it ain't the same. I think it's a sign. Just like all the snakes we've had this summer.'

Van Meer paused in his rocking. 'What are you drivin' at?'

Lindt shifted uneasily in his seat. 'All I'm sayin' is, let's look at what we got. We got us a new influence in the community – a snake in our bosom, so to speak – and I think you all know who I'm talkin' about.'

'I follow you, all right,' said Adam Verdock, 'but I think you're makin' a mistake. I met the boy too, that day in the store, and I liked him all right. Seems to me he's got a good name, too; it honors the prophet.'

'Or mocks him,' said Lindt.

'I asked Sarr about him,' said Bethuel Reid. He drew deeply on his pipe. 'Sarr says he just reads books all day.'

There was a round of head-shaking. Idleness was sinful when there was land to be worked.

'Ever see the fellow's hands?' said Lindt. 'Soft as a baby's. Any fool can see he's never done a day's work in his life. Must have a lot of money stuffed in his pockets – like all those city people.'

Reid nodded, glad he had no pockets of his own. 'Yep. That's their trouble.'

Steegler nodded too, and grinned with a sidelong glance at Lindt. 'All I know is, he had some young woman out here the other week. He must be doin' more than just readin'.'

'Well, you know those city folks,' said Lindt. 'They don't believe in marriage anymore.'

Lindt's thoughts had turned more than once to Carol since he'd first seen her. He himself was married and unhappy; he spent little time with his wife and had come alone tonight.

'And when they do get married,' he added, 'they don't stay that way for long. Some day, you mark my words, that city's gonna be smote with fire, like the Cities of the Plain.'

There was a chorus of assent, with several abstentions.

'Well, I spoke to Sarr about it,' said Verdock. "Tain't as if I didn't try reasonin' with him. I told him -1 said it just ain't proper, takin' a man's money and callin' him a guest. But Sarr, well, when he makes up his mind he's hard to change.'

'That ain't it,' said van Meer. "Tain't proper to bring someone like that into our little congregation, someone who don't fear the Lord and don't know our ways.'

'Our Rachel was talkin' about that just the other day,' said his wife. 'She says Amos don't want his children exposed to such people.'

'I don't think it makes much sense to worry 'bout such things,' said Lise. 'Not now, anyways. All we can do is say our prayers, trust in the Lord, and keep watchful.'

She waited for the amens, but they were slow in coming.

Minna walked slowly from the kitchen, carrying a broad wooden tray whose hand-painted rose border had almost entirely peeled away. She ducked her head as she passed beneath the low beam of the doorway.

'Here we are, Hannah. This'll get you off to sleep quick enough.'

The old woman was sitting up in bed, her head turned toward the open window in the wall behind her. She didn't look around when Minna entered, and turned only when she felt the tray placed upon her lap, to stare fretfully at the bowl of oatmeal and the cup of steaming milk.

A cool breeze blew through the window, bearing the smell of damp earth and summer leaves and almost masking the odor of sickness and decay that hung about the room. Insects wandered up and down the screen. Minna heard the night sounds of the forest, the sound of things calling to each other, the chant of the crickets and frogs.

Scowling, the old woman tried a mouthful of the oatmeal and took a sip of the warm milk. Suddenly she slammed the mug down and shook her head.

'No,' she said, waving away the food, 'I can't get to sleep! If it ain't one thing, 'tis another. First there's the thunder, it made my head ache – and now this! Tis too damned quiet.'

Minna smiled stiffly. 'Quiet? With all that commotion out there? You just listen to those crickets for a spell and have yourself some o' that milk – there's honey in it – and you'll be sleepin' like a baby in no time.'

'Hmph,' grumbled the woman. 'More like the dead!'

She took a few more swallows of milk, then set the cup back down and turned around on the bed to stare once more out the window.

'Watch out that don't fall now,' called Minna, pointing to the tray balanced precariously on the old woman's lap. Ducking through the doorway, she went into the kitchen.

There were plates to wash. The little house had no running water, and Minna took the bucket that hung by the washstand and walked outside, down the front path to the pump. She gave the pump handle a few vigorous strokes, her arm strong as a man's. Above her a shooting star streaked across the sky.

From the house came the crash of falling crockery. I knew it, Minna thought, cursing herself as she hurried toward the bedroom.

Fragments of the shattered bowl gleamed amid a pool of oatmeal. The cup lay overturned on the rug. Minna noticed these things before she saw the woman twisted half off the bed – her mouth stretched wide, eyes bulging, hands clutched stiffly to her throat. From the gaping mouth came the last spasmodic moments of her death rattle.