The figure in the doorway seemed to shrug. 'End of the year,' he said softly. 'Gotta clear the room.'
Donna's lip curled. 'Boy! These goddamned janitors think they own the school.' She glanced at Freirs for support, but he was reaching for his jacket.
'Oh, well,' he said, 'I guess we've been here long enough.' Gathering up a few remaining papers and stuffing them into the bag, he began moving toward the door.
Awkwardly the others filed out, brushing past the small grey figure, who had turned away and was busily dragging through the doorway a large brown trash barrel almost as big as he was. Its wheels squeaked unpleasantly behind them.
Outside, in the light, Freirs stood slouching in silence by the hall elevator, but several of the younger students headed for the stairs. 'Come on,' called one, 'it's just two flights.' With a sigh Freirs straightened up and moved toward the stairway. The ones remaining followed him – all except Donna, who reached worriedly to her ear. 'Damn!' she muttered. Her left earring was gone.
The others had already started down. The hall was silent. Frowning, she searched the floor around her, then turned back toward the classroom. From its shadowed interior came a faint irregular squeaking, then silence again. Hesitating a moment, she strode through the doorway and disappeared inside.
'Do you mind putting on a light in here?' Her voice echoed in the hall. 'Fm trying to find-'
There was a thud, a high-pitched little laugh, and then a protracted series of cracking sounds, as of the splintering of wood. Moments later came another sound: the crunch of compressed paper, as from an object being stuffed into a wastebasket.
With a snap the final light went off, and then a small grey figure emerged from the darkness pushing a laden trash barrel, its wheels squeaking rhythmically as he steered it down the hall. To this noise, as if softly in counterpoint, he was whistling a tuneless little song.
Outside, the group had begun to disperse. 'There's no sense in waiting,' said one of the women. 'She's certainly not up there.' The others followed her gaze; she was staring at the darkened windows on the third floor.
'Right,' said a young man. 'She must've gone on ahead.' They turned to Freirs; he looked puzzled and somewhat annoyed. 'Well,' he said at last, shrugging, 'tell her when you see her that if she wants to talk about her paper, she'd better call me first thing tomorrow, because she won't be able to reach me after that.' Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he nodded goodbye. 'Maybe I'll be seeing some of you next fall. Have a pleasant summer.'
Two of the students walked westward with him as far as Seventh Avenue; but then, as Freirs turned south, they repeated their goodbyes and went their separate ways.
Smiling at what he's performed back there in the darkness, he slips from the doorway of the school, averting his face from the glare of the streetlamps. Beyond the glare, half hidden by the city's fumes, the night's first constellations glimmer faintly to the east, while before him, in the northern sky, Draco sweeps sinuously round an invisible pole star. To the west there are no signs at all save a lonely broken moon.
He has no need for signs now. He knows where the stars tremble cold and unseen overhead, and where they did so fifty centuries ago and will do so five thousand years hence. No matter that the Milky Way is grey with smog, or that lamplight hides the familiar shapes of Pegasus, the Herdsman, and the Swan. He knows just where to find them; knows, as well, their real and ancient names.
And he knows the land below them, knows it as a general knows terrain that's ripe for conquest. Far across the river, where the sun has disappeared, he the dominions of the unsuspecting world. Beyond the dark horizon, men and women fight and scheme and struggle. Others toil in a field like figures in a biblical tableau, chanting as they work. He can almost hear their song.
They will be his special playthings, these farmers. They will suffer first. His man Freirs- his fat, unwitting tool -will see to that. Soon, soon…
Swift as death he moves along the block in their direction, noting, as he hurries across the avenue, a paunchy, rumpled figure with a book bag and a seersucker jacket – Freirs himself, one block farther south, plodding gamely toward their common destination, unaware that he is headed anywhere but home. One avenue west of him, nearer the water, the old man turns southward too, jauntily swinging his briefcase, already eager to play his next part.
He pauses once in his journey to cock his head and listen for the voices. Before him the sky is stained red with neon, but to the west it shimmers with the whiteness of the moon. As he passes between the buildings he can see dim lights on the river, the distant shore, and, above it, the places where the stars will soon come into view. The stage is being set; soon the fools will get what they deserve. Let them sing while they can!
'Scramble thee, scratch thee,
Gillycorn Hill.
If Mouse don't catch thee,
Mole he will.'
In the moonlight the women were planting corn. They labored side by side, the seven of them, and in the gathering darkness they looked much alike. All were young, all married; all but one had borne a child. Their long hair hung down their backs loose and unadorned, but their bodies were concealed, neck to naked ankle, beneath dresses of homespun black. From a distance only the burlap sacks they carried at their sides were visible, and their pale white faces floating like will-o'-the-wisps over the empty field.
Ahead of them walked the seven men, treading stiffly in their starched white shirts, black vests, and high black leather shoes. They moved together in silence, grave of expression, faces cleanshaven but for the fringe of beard below each chin. As in a close-order military drill they carried long wooden staffs sharpened at both ends, and with every stride the men stabbed downward, making holes an inch deep and a yard apart in the freshly turned earth.
Behind them the line of women reached deep in their bags and, stooping gracefully to drop three kernels into each hole, chanted another measure of the counting rhyme.
'Hide thee, haste thee,
Gillycorn Hill…'
Standing, they pushed loose soil over the holes with a scrape of their bare feet, then moved on.
Suddenly one of them laughed aloud – unaffected, childlike laughter that carried through the evening air. 'I'm sure glad I didn't see what I just stepped on!'
The others giggled, causing a momentary break in the chant. 'Oh, Deborah,' said the one beside her, 'there's nothin' out here but a few night crawlers, and I've been steppin' on them ever since the moon came up. I've just said nothin' about it.' She took up the chant:
'If Mole don't taste thee,
Worm he will.'
At the end of the row another woman stood and wiped her brow. 'You'd best be right,' she said. 'I don't fancy the notion of tripping over a corn snake out here. 'Twouldn't do to have that kind of scare-not in my condition.' She patted her distended stomach.
'Just listen to her!' Deborah laughed again. 'Lotte Sturtevant's afraid her baby'11 be born with a split tongue!'
'Deborah!' Her husband whirled to face her, eyes blazing angrily in the moonlight. 'Have you forgotten yourself, woman? These good people came out here to kelp us.'
He stood a little taller than the other men, wide shoulders tapering to a willow-thin waist, and despite the severity of his expression he was clearly a shade younger than the rest. His voice was stern and very deep, the voice of an Old Testament lawgiver, but it softened in one last urgent whisper: 'Please!'
Just as abruptly he turned and caught up with the others; none of them had looked back. 'My apologies, Brother Joram,' he said to the older man who walked beside him. 'She meant no harm. We both give thanks you're with us tonight.'
'No need for thanks, Sarr.' The man jabbed bis pole into the earth and withdrew it with an expert twist. 'We do what the Lord gives us to do. 'They helped every one his neighbor, and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage.' '
'Amen,' said the others in unison, without looking up from their work, and the younger man chimed in quickly, 'Amen.' Behind them the women continued their chant, but more softly now, for they were listening. Their voices were no louder than the chirping of the crickets.
