above the low wall of clouds, now shone down fiercely.
Toward the end, growing weary of the songs, he thought he heard from the living room, a low, agonized moan. Leaving his seat by the window, he walked to the doorway and looked in. There, still sunken in the rocker where he'd seen her before, was the pregnant woman, alone now and looking barely conscious, sweating terribly in her heavy black dress and obviously in great discomfort. She looked up dully as he entered, blinking at him through great trusting cow eyes that showed neither recognition nor fear.
Freirs approached the chair and stood staring down at her, thinking, Christ, she shouldn't be out of bed looking as pregnant as this. As she raised her head to look at him, he forced his face into a smile. 'Hello,' he said softly. As the morning sunlight touched it, he saw her swollen belly squirm.
He was the first man to smile at her all morning. Joram only glowered at her these days, as if her condition were somehow not a blessing but a curse. She hadn't wanted to come to the worship, she'd felt so tired, so filled up inside she could scarcely breathe. It had never been like this before, not with the others; sometimes, when the child inside her moved, it felt as if the child were rearranging all her insides to suit itself, so strong-willed was it, like Joram. It was surely bound to be another boy. She wished that just this once the Lord would let her have a daughter, but it wasn't for her to question His ways. Joram would be angry with her if he knew she'd even thought of it.
She wanted this pregnancy to end. It was becoming too much for her to bear. And it was so hot today; she'd have liked to sit out upon the back porch and watch the services, she knew they'd be a comfort to her, but Joram wouldn't hear of it. He'd said that either his woman stood out there in the sun with the rest of the congregation or else hid herself away; he'd not be shamed by having her sit while the others stood. So she'd been condemned to this airless little living room. She had been feeling dizzy from the heat and the discomfort when the stranger approached her.
She envied the way he was dressed; he looked so much more comfortable, and you could see his plump arms and legs, like a baby's. The colors of his clothing reminded her of the flowers in her garden. He had a kind face, and his hands looked soft, like healing hands; they stirred vague memories of Joram's own hands long ago, before the children came, and memories of the soft hands of the mid wives.
'How are you feeling?' he was asking, smiling down at her like the sun.
'Oh, my,' she said, 'just look at me!' And she shook her head, almost ready to laugh, as if the two of them were sharing a joke, one that people like her husband would never understand.
'I am looking,' he was saying, and his smile was so sympathetic she was almost able to forget the ache inside her. She smoothed back a strand of hair from her sweating brow, wishing he could see her at her best, and realized, suddenly, that her thighs were parted more than was proper for a married woman with a strange man, the heavy black material dipping like a damp trough between her legs. But it was all right, the stranger was comfortable in his way and she was comfortable in hers. He looked as though he would understand.
'How much longer do you have?' he was asking, nodding at her stomach. She could see he was impressed. She was proud of her condition once again and remembered that she didn't have to be ashamed at all, the way Joram tried to make her feel. She thrust her belly upward even more.
'Twill be any day now,' she confided, with a little shiver of excitement. 'I feel it movin' all the time.'
The stranger smiled. 'I guess the poor kid's getting impatient!'
She giggled; the sound felt funny, she hadn't laughed in so long. 'It's movin' now,' she said, but not alarmed for once; she was pleased at the stranger's interest. She ran a hand over her belly, feeling the child kick but also feeling how good her own hand felt. His would feel even better.
'You can touch it if you want,' she said, smiling up at him, her body so huge and so sensitive. The stranger reached toward her, then hesitated.
'Go ahead,' she said breathlessly. 'Touch it… Touch it… '
They were all looking at Sturtevant now, waiting for him to give the word. He turned to the assembled group. 'Brothers and Sisters, as you know, the Lord has given us a special task to perform today. These good people fear they've been sheltering malign spirits under their roof. It is for us, their brethren and neighbors, to purify the house and all within it. Let us, then, have a Cleansing. Join with me now in divesting their home of its worldly goods so that we may better fill it with the Holy Spirit.'
The sun was hot on his head. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. While the others formed themselves into a line and made ready for heavy labor, the men laying aside their vests and rolling up their sleeves, Joram walked round the side of the house and, slipping off his heavy black jacket, left it folded on the front seat of his car. In a moment or two the others would be filing into the house, with Lotte still seated there fat and sweating in the living room. He hated the thought of them seeing his wife like that; better to rouse her and get her outside, maybe have her sit in the car. He hoped she would not attempt to argue with him; with a determined stride he hurried up the front steps and through the open door.
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
