Ceremonies

By the time grace was over, though, Freirs had become distracted by a growing need to sneeze. 'It's nothing to worry about,' he explained with irritation when the two finally looked up. 'I just happen to be allergic to a variety of things – cats most of all.' He gritted his teeth and tried to smile as a pair of them, a yellow tiger-stripe and a charcoal grey, both obviously young, crowded closer to rub against his legs. He was as angry with himself as with the animals; he'd have been happy to reach down and pat them, scratch the downy hair behind their ears, but with each successive breath he could feel his nose becoming clogged, as if somewhere a mechanism had been triggered that he was helpless to control. The corners of his eyes had already begun to itch.

Sarr sat watching him in silence; maybe he saw such afflictions as evidence of weakness or of God's displeasure. Deborah appeared more sympathetic.

'I think it's a good sign,' she declared, watching beneath the table as the cats, no doubt in an effort to leave their mark on a stranger, continued to rub themselves diligently against the bottoms of Freirs' pants legs. 'I mean, the way they've taken to you. It shows you're welcome here. I guess we're all starved for visitors.'

Sarr frowned. Clearly this sort of thing made him impatient. 'Shall I put them outside?'

That was, in fact, precisely what Freirs wanted, but he was in no mood to make a scene; these animals were the closest things the Poroths had to children. Surely they could all work it out over the summer. 'They're okay here,' he said lightly, and launched into an elaborate cock-and-bull story – though who could say, maybe it made sense – about how the only way he'd ever get over the allergy was by exposing himself to the offending animals as often as possible. 'It's just a matter of building up the right antibodies,' he said, privately resolving to see a decent allergist as soon as he got back.

Deborah looked relieved. 'Well, just remember now,' she said, 'If you ever have problems like this over the summer, there's always antihistamine in the medicine chest.'

She sounded as if it were a foregone conclusion he'd be staying with them; and maybe it was. He already felt as if he knew them. Obligingly he marched off to the bathroom in search of the pills, grateful that she hadn't offered him some Brethren-approved medication like herbs or mud or some other crazy folk remedy.

The bathroom was a crowded little chamber just off the kitchen, with a small curtained window looking out upon the rosebushes at the side of the house. In the corner stood a bulky metal water heater apparently connected to the tanks out back and, next to it, a primitive sink with separate faucets for hot and cold. Freirs wondered why nobody'd had the sense to connect them; it only took a simple Y-shaped pipe. The room was dominated by a gigantic old claw-footed bathtub, big enough for two, that would probably take hours to fill. No showers for him, then, if he spent his summer here. He told himself that baths were more relaxing: reading classics in the tub, soft music on the radio – it might not be so bad.

The medicine cabinet was a revelation: dusty little plastic bags with roots in them, and colored powders, and things afloat in brown unlabeled bottles, side by side with a handful of prescription drugs for headaches, nausea, nerves – plus mouthwash and aspirin and scented bath talc, and, on the top shelf near the end, a half-empty package of strawberry douche. The Poroths must have an interesting marriage, he decided.

Back in the kitchen Deborah had set out a platter of cheese beside the ham and was busy slicing a loaf of thick brown bread, the kind he saw at German delis but that always seemed too expensive. She was wielding a bread knife that looked half as long as a sword, while San-sat watching her impassively, a king on his throne.

'Now this looks good,' said Freirs, seating himself across from Poroth. He poured himself some milk from a ceramic pitcher and washed down the pill, some local version of Contac.

'Yesterday, I want you to know, that milk was in the cow,' said Deborah. 'It's from Sarr's uncle's dairy.'

'Sure, I remember. We passed it on the way.' He swallowed a large bite of bread and cheese. 'And I'll bet this bread's homemade.'

She nodded, pleased. 'I haven't bought bread since we lived in Trenton. It's all baked right here.'

'In that thing?' Freirs nodded toward the huge black wood-burning stove that stood beside the Hotpoint, already seeing pictures out of Norman Rockwell, Currier amp; Ives. 'It looks at least a century old.'

'It is,' said Deborah. 'It's as old as the house. But it's hard to regulate. We only use it for heating in the winter… and for certain ceremonial occasions.'

'Does this place get very cold in the winter?'

'The attic needs work,' said Sarr, obviously looking forward to it. 'I'll have to put new insulation in this fall.'

'It gets cold here all right,' said Deborah. 'You've heard people talk about three-dog nights, when you need all three dogs in the bed? Well, this January, Sarr and I had a couple of six-cat nights!'

Freirs winced, but not at the idea of such cold. His eyes were still red and he hadn't stopped sniffling. 'God,' he said, 'I probably wouldn't survive the night! Though I guess on a farm like this six cats must have their uses.'

'Seven,' said Deborah. 'You probably haven't seen Bwada yet. That's his cat.' She nodded at Sarr.

'And where is he?' asked Freirs.

'She,' said Poroth. 'She stays outside all day – sometimes nights, too. She's more adventurous than the others. I've had her since she was a kitten.'

Deborah added, 'She's fat and just plain mean. That's why she sleeps by herself. Now, these are the nice ones, Jeremy-' And until dessert she proceeded to furnish him with detailed biographies of the other six, complete with ancestries. They all had names like Habakkuk, Tobias, and Azariah, names which sounded as if they'd been taken from obscure portions of the Bible and which Freirs immediately forgot. He was too busy thinking of Deborah. It would be heavenly, he imagined, to pile into that big soft feather bed they must have up there and he beside her on a long winter night, slipping the flannel nightgown above her waist and breasts, feeling her warmth against the cold and darkness outside.

Dessert was a tart red rhubarb pie and a plate of lacy brown molasses cookies, the kind he bought at block fairs in the city. He wondered, over his second cup of coffee, if all the meals were going to be this elaborate. If so, he wasn't going to lose much weight out here, but he'd probably be content just the same.

Once coffee was over, Poroth wiped his mouth, pushed back from the table, and offered to show Freirs around. 'You may as well see what you came for,' he said, stretching as he rose so that his fingers bent back against the ceiling.

'You can see my garden from here,' said Deborah, pointing out the window at a small brown fenced-in plot beside the house. 'It doesn't look much right now, but by summer there'll be squash, tomatoes, peas, cucumbers, carrots… We'll be eating well, I promise you that.'

Clearly they were trying to sell him on the place. They must be counting on his ninety dollars a week.

'We're starting awfully late this year,' said Sarr, as the two of them descended the steps from the back porch, Deborah having elected to remain in the kitchen. A pair of cats scampered out behind them just before the screen door slammed. 'We'll probably just have enough for the three of us. But by next year we expect to produce enough to sell.'

Even that prediction seemed somewhat optimistic. The garden looked far from flourishing, though there were small shoots where the carrots were coming up and green wooden stakes standing in hopeful rows above the young tomato plants. The adjoining lawn, by contrast, looked surprisingly hardy, as if the land's true destiny was to be one of the suburban estates that were already taking up so much of the county.

Across the lawn, and well off to one side, lay the weed-strewn wreckage of an old wooden outhouse, grass growing over the doorway. Freirs wrinkled his nose as they approached, but the air smelled of nothing but damp earth and pine. 'You're free to use it if you like,' said Poroth, making one of his infrequent jokes. 'I believe it's still in working order.'

'Wonderful!' Freirs peered through the gaps in the planks. The bench inside was the double-seater sort, for the ultimate in rural togetherness. Welcome to Appalachia. He thanked God that the farm had modern plumbing.

Farther down the slope, its back to the surrounding wall of forest, was the low, barracklike outbuilding he'd be renting. It was the one he'd glimpsed from the front of the house; he recognized it immediately from the photograph.

'Am I right,' asked Freirs, 'in assuming that the place was originally a chicken coop?'

'True enough,' said Poroth. 'We've never used it as one, though. We keep our chickens in the barn.'

The building looked somewhat more cheerful in the spring sunlight than it had when the photo was taken, though ivy now covered the walls more thickly and was curling over the edges of the windows, an ever-shrinking