Around the front of the house, lights are still burning on the first floor. There he sits again tonight, the visitor from the city, absorbed in a book, his plump white face glowing like a full moon in the lamplight. The animal watches, and the Old One watches, as he turns another page.
Momentarily, as if aware he is observed, the visitor sets down the book and goes to the window. His troubled eyes peer blindly through the screen, unable to see past the lamplight. Seven feet away, the animal sits watching him, shielded by the darkness.
The man returns to his chair and, moments later, to the thick grey book he has been reading. The animal turns and pads briskly around the side of the house to the porch steps in the back. There, in the darkness beneath the stairway, two metal garbage cans stand reeking of death and corruption. On one of them the scent is old, but the other has accumulated a full week's stock of tiny mangled corpses, a choice supply of putrefying meat.
And this very putrefaction has its uses.
With the easy swipe of a paw and a clank of metal the can is overturned, the lid tumbling noisily off to roll several feet away upon the grass.
Upstairs, in the darkness, the woman's grip tightens on the man's shoulder. 'Honey, wait,' she whispers. 'Did you hear that?'
He makes a low sound of assent. 'Coon,' he says, and enters her again.
Downstairs, in the living room, the visitor puts down the book and walks around the room, carefully shutting each window.
The animal, untroubled, creeps into the darkness of the overturned can. The fragrance of death fills its lungs. Before it lies the little mound of bodies, the field mice, frogs, and snakes. Delicately, methodically, it runs its razor claws through the soft and rotting flesh – first the front claws, then the rear, shredding the flesh with machinelike efficiency, working the corruption into the fur and deep beneath each gracefully hooked nail.
Forty miles away the Old One watches, smells the death smell, feels the decay beneath the nails of his own fingers. Yes, it is good: it may be helpful in tomorrow evening's enterprise. A little poison never hurts.
July Twenty-second
Amos Reid had a bag of Bordeaux dust under his arm for the leaf blight on his cukes, young Abram Sturtevant was about to buy his third can of Malathion for a sudden invasion of aphids, and Rupert Lindt was stocking up on Gurney's patented worm powder for the cutworms and snails that had already slaughtered a third of his tomato plants. None of them had any moral qualms about using chemicals on their crops; what qualms they had were purely economic. Pesticides were expensive, but under the circumstances they were going to have to rely on them and salvage whatever they could. It was suddenly turning out to be a bad year. You could see it in their faces; you could hear it in their talk.
Not even Bert Steegler was happy, though business had been brisk today. He and his wife worked mainly on salary; the profit or loss they derived from the store hardly differed from anyone else's. Besides, Bert's married daughter, Irma, had just had an entire plot of pattypan squash wiped out, almost overnight, by a particularly voracious breed of corpulent grey slug that had never been seen in the area before.
'You heard about what happened at the Verdocks?' asked Steegler, as he rang up Abram Sturtevant's purchase.
'I've been too busy tryin' to save my crops to worry myself about other folks' affairs,' said Sturtevant.
'I'll tell you,' said Rupert Lindt, from halfway across the store. 'Lise got herself kicked in the head by one of Adam's cows, tryin' to squeeze a bit of milk from it.'
'You don't say! Lord's mercy on her, how's she bearin' up?'
'Pretty bad,' said Lindt. 'They think she may not live till Sunday.'
'We've been prayin' for her regular,' added Amos Reid. 'Tis all we can do.'
'I'll be sure to do the same,' said Sturtevant. 'Does my brother know of this?'
'You can ask him yourself,' said Steegler, who'd been looking out the screen door. 'That's him comin' now.'
They heard Joram’s heavy foosteps on the porch outside. He was a tall, formidable-looking figure with eyebrows black and heavy as his beard, but as he entered the store he appeared pale and unwell. 'Aye,' he said, of the news about Lise, 'I'll be headin' over there this evenin' to pray with Brother Adam and their girl.' He sounded troubled, but from the briefness of his response it was clear that it was some other trouble that occupied his mind.
'And how's Sister Lotte bearin' up,' said Amod Reid, 'in her time of trial?'
'As well as a man can expect,' said Joram gloomily. 'I'd thought her a stronger woman than she's turnin' out to be, but-' He shrugged. 'The child's a large one, I guess. The labor's goin' to be hard. But we're resigned to it, Lotte and I. If that's God's will, so be it.'
He moved off down the aisle, peering through the shelves of household goods, obviously somewhat unfamiliar with an aspect of the shopping that, before her pregnancy, his wife would have seen to. As he crossed to the adjoining aisle, he found himself face to face with Lindt, the only man there as tall as he was.
'Greetings to you, Brother Joram,' Lindt said. 'Anna and me, we've been includin' Sister Lotte in our prayers.'
Joram nodded curtly. 'That's good of you, Brother Rupert. 'Tis a time for prayin' now, if ever there was one.'
'Ain't that the gospel truth,' the other said. 'You heard 'bout the trouble Ham Stoudemire suffered yesterday? Well, the same thing's been happenin' up the road from me, over at Bethuel Reid's. 'Tis like the Land o' Tophet – never saw so many serpents in one place. Old Bethuel don't even want to set foot outdoors no more.'
'Twill pass,' said Joram. 'All things must.' He did not sound very hopeful.
'Of course,' said Lindt, following the other as he continued up the aisle. 'The Lord takes care of His own. But when you start to add up what's been goin' on-' He enumerated on his thick fingers. 'They say there's a pack of dogs runnin' wild now up by the Annandale road, runnin' wild the way the Fenchels' did just yesterday, I'm told. And what happened to poor Sister Lise, well… ' He shook his head. 'The same thing's agoin' to happen again, you mark my words, 'cause all the Verdocks' cows have been actin' up.'
'Matthew Geisel's too,' said Steegler, from the counter in front. 'He says they're like to kick the barn door right down.'
'Fact is,' said Lindt, 'we've all of us got our tribulations-'
'Werner Klapp was in earlier this mornin',' Steegler cut in, 'and he says he's havin' troubles with his fowl. Sold four of 'em to Sarr Poroth and his woman just the other day, and now he's afraid they'll be askin' for their money back when they find out that the critters just ain't layin'.'
'We were of a mind to ask you what you thought, Brother Joram,' Lindt continued. 'When people's got troubles like this-'
'Man is born to trouble,' said Joram, 'and 'tis through tribulation that we enter the kingdom of God. You know that, Brother Rupert. The Lord is testin' us.'
'Aye,' said Lindt, 'but mightn't He be warnin' us as well? I'm talkin' about the one who's come amongst us this season – the one from the city, who's took the prophet's name as his own.'
'I'm aware of how you feel,' said Joram. 'You don't have to lay these snares for me. I knew what was in your heart from the beginnin', for 'twas in mine as well. I'll be wantin' to hear what
Brother Sarr has to say for himself when next we meet- don't forget, the worship's at his farm this week – and I'll also be lookin' at the stranger come Sunday, lookin' real hard. Then we'll see what the Lord commands of us. But till that time there's nothin' more to be done. Remember, now, 'Blessed is he that watcheth… ' '
'Amen,' they said mechanically, little satisfied, as Joram continued his distracted way down the aisle, thinking of a pregnant wife back home.
Sarr Poroth, too, knew trouble now, as if clouds that had once loomed on the horizon were gathering dark and thunderous overhead. He was plagued by a host of small afflictions; he despaired of the fate of his farm. Though the surviving hen from the original four had once more begun to lay eggs, they had proved to be hideously soft things, almost transparent, that shook like jelly when you held them in your hand. He reminded himself repeatedly that, for poultry, this was not so uncommon an ailment – it might be cured within a week or two by adding calcium to their feed, normally in the form of the ground-up eggshells of healthier birds – but for now the thought of a nestful of eggs as soft as his own testicles filled him with disgust; they were obscene, against nature, an abomination unto the Lord. Deborah had sworn they could be eaten, that there was no harm in them at all, but
