But he hadn't even made an attempt; didn't he realize that it might be weeks before he saw her again? The summer already seemed drearier without him.
Maybe this was simply further proof that he preferred Deborah to her – or even, however unlikely, that something had gone on between the two of them, a possibility she preferred not to think about.
Deborah came downstairs with an armload of sheets, blankets, towels, and a pillow. 'Splendid!' said Rosie. 'My dear, I can't thank you enough.' And bidding the others a cordial goodnight, he followed her out the back door.
Sarr kept his eyes on the screen doors as if waiting to see that they were gone. At last, clearing his throat, he turned to Carol. 'I'm a little curious,' he said lightly, as if in fact he wasn't curious at all, 'just how did you and Rosie come to meet?'
'Well,' said Carol, surprised, 'it's a rather long story-'
'And rather too long to tell now,' Jeremy cut in. 'Why don't we save it for morning?' To Carol, caught off guard, he added, 'Look, let's you and I take advantage of the moonlight and go for a walk, okay?'
It was only a tiny hint of pleading in his voice that prevented her from scolding him. She still felt embarrassed and was not about to abandon Sarr. 'Jeremy, I really don't think it's very nice to go off and leave your host like this.'
'No, it's all right,' said Poroth, 'you two go ahead. You deserve some time together.' He dismissed them both by getting up from the table with a contented stretch and wandering into the living room.
'Jeremy,' Carol snapped, when they got outside, 'how could you be so rude to him?'
He did not immediately reply, but put his arm around her. 'Let's just walk,' he said. Lightning bugs made the lawn look like a convocation of souls, winking silently as they hurried back and forth. The crickets were louder tonight than she'd ever heard before, with a distant chorus of frogs keeping statelier rhythms at the brook. The two of them were passing the side of the farmhouse now; ahead of them a nearly full moon hung low above the ribbon of dirt road. Freirs nodded in the direction of the house, where, through the unlit living room window, outlined in the faint rays of lamplight still streaming from the kitchen, Poroth could be seen pacing up and down in the darkness.
'He's been acting really weird lately,' said Freirs. 'Almost like he's hitting the bottle. Maybe it's financial problems, maybe some kind of religious mania.'
'I thought it might be that.'
'Whatever it is, I want to go back to New York with you tomorrow. If it's okay with you, I'd even like to stay for a few days in your apartment – sleeping on the couch, of course – till I figure out what to do.'
'Do the Poroths know?'
'No.'
'When do you plan on telling them?'
'Tomorrow, I guess.'
She felt a little thrill of excitement. He was asking her to rescue him; she was now a fellow conspirator. 'So this means we won't have to say goodbye tomorrow after all.'
'That's right. We can be together- if you're willing.'
'I am.' She turned to face him. 'And you won't have to use the couch, either.'
They kissed, and she let him kiss her breasts, and she knew that the summer was saved.
Moist air. Scent of roses. Bats fluttering by the barn roof. Silently the two figures – the slim, dark-haired woman and the short, white-haired man – emerge from the outbuilding and make their way toward the barn. Their voices are hushed, their faces indistinct blobs of white.
The one now called Deborah pauses and turns to the Old One. For an instant her eyes flash in the moonlight.
'He knows.'
'Yes, I saw it every time he looked at you. And he suspects me, too.'
'His mother told him.'
The old man nods. 'She's a Troet, like I was. She has the gift. But there are things she doesn't know.'
The woman turns her eyes briefly toward the moon. 'She will be visited tonight.'
They pause in the darkness of the doorway to the barn, beside the broad form of the pickup truck parked inside. The one called Deborah runs her hand lovingly over something unseen in the shadows on the wall.
'They're weak,' she says, 'both of them. I've been poisoning them.' There is something like pride in her voice.
'In that case,' says the Old One, 'we'll be able to make a tiny alteration in our cast. I'd been grooming our chubby friend from the city for this, but under the circumstances – since he's potentially more dangerous – the farmer will serve just as well.'
He watches as the one called Deborah nods in agreement, her hand still caressing the thing hanging in the shadows. It swings gently on its hook; moonlight catches a length of wooden handle, an edge of steel blade.
'So,' the Old One continues, 'he's the one you kill.'
Things going wonderfully with Carol. Suspect she may really be the one. Can't wait till I get back to the city.
Have been talking about her to myself.
'I'm in love with her.'
'Yeah? And what's that supposed to mean?'
'You know – the works. The whole hog. I like spending time with her, want to fuck her, marry her, give her presents. Want to have kids with her, share my old age with her, have her around when I die. All that stuff.'
Poroth lay awake, deliberately keeping his breathing deep and regular, waiting till the others were asleep. Carefully he turned to look at his wife. For once her eyes were shut tight.
Sitting up in bed, he placed a bare foot tentatively on the floor, then the other, knowing that Deborah usually woke when he went downstairs to the bathroom and not wanting to waken her on this of all nights.
His clothes and shoes were where he'd left them, in the closet; he put them on in the hall. Tiptoeing to Carol's room, he stood looking in at her, asleep there on her back beneath the nursery cutouts on the wall: the moon, the bearded old men, the fire. One arm, unseen, cradled the pillow; the other, exposed to view, was lightly freckled and slim as a reed, her wrist a fragile piece of china, her face unclouded by anything but dreams, slack but for slightly pursed lips. He felt an innocence all about her, the innocence of a little child, and he wondered, for the first time since coming home to Gilead, if the room would ever hold a real child, born of him and Deborah.
Better not to brood on that now. God would reward him as He saw fit. Buttoning his shirt, he stepped into the room.
Just before waking her, he hesitated. It might not be so easy to convince her to come with him; there might be an argument – a struggle, even. Embarrassing, under his own roof. How could his mother have failed to realize that?
She's crazy, said a mocking little voice inside his head. Why take orders from a crazy woman?
Better to let Carol sleep, he decided. He would bring his mother out here to the farm; she would just have to be content with that. Backing out of the doorway, he continued down the stairs.
He didn't see the thing that sat upright in the bed and crept down the stairs after him.
The moon was higher now, a beacon at the center of the sky so bright it hurt his eyes to look as he hurried across the lawn toward the barn. He knew that, when he started the truck, the sound of the engine might wake the others, but that couldn't be helped; surely in a moment they'd fall back asleep, and by then he'd be gone. As he tiptoed past the dark outbuilding where Jeremy and Rosie lay sleeping, he heard the throbbing rhythm of the frogs, but he didn't hear the pale, naked figure that followed on his heels like a shadow.
Rounding the corner of the barn and slipping inside, he opened the door of the truck and was about to step up to the driver's seat when, with a cry, he swore and jumped back, away from the form already crouched there directly before his face, little pink hands and plump red lips and wrinkles around eyes that were like razors now. Poroth recognized him at last.
'Twas you in the park ten years ago,' he said. 'I remember now. What business have you here?'
The old man grinned. 'Waiting for you, Sarr Poroth.'
Poroth saw the eyes look past him briefly, to a place just behind his shoulder, and he would have whirled around, but the figure wielding the axe was too swift. Its blade caught him square in the back of the skull and
