Sat by some rocks on the bank of the stream, throwing blades of grass into the water amp; playing word games with myself. The shrill twitter of the birds, I would say, the white birds singing in the sun
… And inexorably I'd continue with the sun dying in the moonlight, the moonlight falling on the floor… The sun's heat on my head felt almost painful, as if my brain were growing too large for my skull. The floor sagging to the cellar, the cellar filling with water, the water seeping into the ground… I turned amp; looked at the farmhouse. In the distance it looked like a picture at the other end of a large room; the carpet was grass, the ceiling was an endless great blue sky. Deborah, in the distance, was stroking one of the cats, then seemed to grow angry when it struggled from her arms; I could hear the screen door slam as she went into the kitchen, but the sound reached me so long after the visual image that the whole scene struck me as somehow fake. The ground twisting into smoke, the smoke staining the sky… I gazed up at the oaks behind me amp; they seemed trees out of a cheap postcard, the kind in which thinly colored paint is dabbed over a black- amp;-white photograph; if you looked closely at them you could see that the green was not merely in the leaves, but rather floated as a vapor over leaves, branches, parts of the sky.. . The sky b urning in the sun, the sun dying in the moonlight, the moonlight falling on the floor… endless progressions that held my mind like a whirlpool. The trees behind me seemed the production of a poor painter, the color amp; shape not quite meshing. Parts of the sky were green, amp; pieces of it kept floating away from my vision, no matter how hard I tried to follow them.
Reality hangs by a thread…
Far down the stream I could see something small amp; kicking, a black beetle, legs in the air, borne swiftly along in the current. Then it was swept around a bend amp; was gone.
By a thread…
Sarr woke me for dinner; I had dozed off, there by the water, amp; my clothes were damp from the grass. I saw scratches on his cheek. As we walked up to the house together he whispered that, earlier in the day, he'd come upon his wife bending over me, peering into my sleeping face. 'Her eyes were wide,' he said. 'Like Bwada's. Like the moon.'
Could he be drinking? No, he didn't smell of alcohol. I said I didn't understand why he was telling me this.
'Because,' he recited in a whisper, gripping my arm,' 'the heart is deceitful above all things, amp; desperately wicked: who can know it?' '
Dinner was especially uncomfortable; the two of them sat picking at their food, occasionally raising their eyes to one another like children in a staring contest. I longed for the conversations of our early days, inconsequential though they must have been, amp; wondered where things had first gone wrong.
The meal was dry amp; unappetizing, but the dessert looked delicious – chocolate mousse, a rather fancy dish for people like the Poroths, but which Deborah considers one of her specialties. She took none for herself, explaining that her stomach was upset.
'Then we'll not eat any!' Sarr shouted, amp; with that he snatched my dish from in front of me, grabbed his own, amp; hurled them both against the wall, where they splattered like mud balls.
Deborah was very still; she said nothing, just sat there watching us. She didn't look particularly afraid of this madman – but I was. He may have read my thoughts, because as I got up from my seat he said much more gently, in the normal soft voice he has, 'Sorry,
Jeremy. I know you hate scenes. We'll pray for each other, all right?'
'Are you okay?' I asked, turning to Deborah. 'I'm going out now, but I'll stay if you think you'll be needing me.' She stared at me with a slight smile amp; shook her head; when I glanced pointedly at her husband, she just shrugged.
'Things will work out,' she said. I could hear Sarr mumbling one of his insane prayers as I shut the door.
I walked back here through a cloud of fireflies, like stars, the stars themselves frosting the sky like bubbles in a water glass. Inside here the bubbles in my water glass, left unemptied by my bed all week, were like the stars…
I realized I was shaking. If I have to tangle with him, big as he is, I'm ready. I took off my shirt amp; stood in front of the little mirror. How could Deborah have allowed me to touch her yesterday? How can I face Carol tomorrow? It has been days since I've bathed, amp; I've become used to the smell of my body. My hair has wound itself into greasy brown curls, my beard is at least a week old, amp; my eyes… well, the eyes that stared back at me were those of an old man, the whites turning yellow as rotten teeth. I looked at my chest amp; arms, plump amp; flabby at thirty, amp; I thought of the frightening alterations in Sarr, amp; I thought, What the hell is going on? I smoothed back my hair amp; got out my roll of dental floss amp; began running the thread through my teeth, but it had been so long since I'd done it that my gums began to bleed, amp; when I looked back into the mirror I had blood dripping down my lips like a vampire.
I made a resolution as I stood there. When Carol and Rosie leave after this weekend, I'm going back with them.
Poroth stood on the back porch, lost in imaginary arguments with himself as he stared out at the night, the cats miaowing plaintively at his feet. He felt an angel perched on his right shoulder, a demon on his left. Lord, he whispered from time to time, give me strength. He had erred, losing his temper like that over dinner; he'd been a fool. He had yielded to despair, and that, his mother had always said, was the devil's oldest weapon. But he hadn't lost his faith, he reminded himself; God watched and loved him, just as before; there was still hope. If only he wouldn't tremble so…
He regretted that he'd ever lent an ear to his mother's bizarre notions about dragons and ceremonies and intruders from outside, and that he'd ever allowed her to show him those hellish pictures: that small black shapeless thing like the one he had seen on the cards, and that black face peering from the tree, and the squat unnatural contours of that mound… The myth was just too alien to take seriously, of course; it conflicted with everything he'd been brought up to believe. And yet its power was undeniable.
By rights these visions should have meant no more to him than a half-heard fairy tale from some country far away. His mother's gods and demons were, after all, not his; her virgin was nothing like the Virgin. To think that poor prim red-haired Carol, who'd be here from the city tomorrow, could have any mythological significance! And that her cosmically decreed counterpart might be right here on this farm in the person of Jeremy Freirs! Preposterous! He would have laughed – and someday, perhaps, he might be able to. He gazed out over the lawn, where the light was on in Freirs' room. He could see the plump little figure scribbling away at his studies or meditations or letters or whatever they were. Well, God would set his mother right soon enough. ..
A jet passed overhead, the customary Friday night visitation, a memento of the modern world he'd rejected. Straightening his shoulders, he turned and walked back into the house.
The house was silent, except for the ticking of the clock. Shutting the kitchen door, he paused after turning down the lamp. He hated to think about going upstairs. Up there was Deborah, with whom he'd taken holy vows to share his life, and if the devil was hiding in her somewhere – his devil, Satan, the devil he knew – well, one didn't flee, one stood and fought, cleansing the woman the way he'd seen his house and barn cleansed last Sunday.
Why, then, did he hesitate? Had his mother's stories really gotten to him: her talk of eggs and dragons, and beings that changed shape? Had those pictures of hers had their intended effect? Maybe not; but he knew he wasn't ready to face his wife yet, not after that scene tonight in the kitchen. To lie so close to someone and know that in her heart she was your enemy… It took more courage than he had right now. Lord, he said again, give me strength.
If only he could prove his mother wrong. If only she'd said something that might actually be verified. There was one thing, perhaps…
In the living room he lit the lamp and crouched before his little cache of books. Byfield's almanac was still on the top of the pile from the evening Freirs had asked him about Lammas. Sure enough, in the back of the volume was a section of lunar tables, page after page of spidery fine print. Taking both book and lamp over to the rocker, he settled back to read.
His mother had said yesterday that there'd be two full moons this month; well, that much he'd known already, as any farmer would-any farmer, at least, here in Gilead. But she'd also said that the occurrence was a rare one, at least when the second moon in question turned full on Lammas Eve. This happened more seldom, she had hinted, than mere chance might have led one to expect.
Running his finger down the columns, he squinted at the listings for July thirty-first. The tables were difficult to follow; there were footnotes to refer to, quantities for leap years to be added or subtracted, and rows of tiny
