an all-but-unseen hand. Regularly it swung out from the crowd, then was lost again from sight, like the pendulum on an overwound clock – or the leg she'd seen swinging in the darkness of the classroom.
It was him, of course; Jeremy, the young man from the library. Even from behind, she recognized the book bag, the stocky build, the rumpled seersucker jacket that hung from one plump shoulder. He seemed to be alone. And as she watched the bag appear and disappear, appear and disappear, she was struck by the crazy, not unpleasant notion that, like an engineer flagging down a train, fate was giving her a sign.
Her first impulse was to hail him, but she stopped herself in time; she didn't want to seem too aggressive. Crossing the street once more, she slipped to the opposite side of the crowd and wormed her way up to the front. At first she could see nothing but the encircling faces; they were gazing toward something on the sidewalk. She looked down. At her feet squatted a diminutive old man with shiny black skin and grimy turban, piping frenziedly upon a wooden flute. Beside him lay a battered black umbrella. Between his knees he gripped a basket filled with loose change, from the middle of which rose a pale, serpentine thing that swayed before his face.
Carol blanched. For an instant she had taken the object for some grotesque phallic joke, but now she realized what it was: a stick of wood carved to resemble a rearing snake, moved by pressure from the flautist's knee upon a metal rod. From a distance the illusion might have been effective; here on the sidewalk in front of her it just looked silly.
Suddenly the man's eyes widened as he turned toward someone in the crowd. His pudgy black fingers curled more fiercely over the stops, his cheeks puffed in and out, and the music climbed to a shrill tremolo, just as a dollar bill fluttered like a dying moth into the basket at his knees'.
Who was throwing dollars away? Carol looked up – and recognized Freirs at the same moment he recognized her. He was standing on the other side of the circle, his tie slightly askew, jamming a wallet back into his pants pocket. Street light was reflected in his glasses. As he turned and saw her, his face brightened; he signaled to Carol to wait where she was. Pushing his way through the knot of people, he made his way to her side.
'So it's you again,' he said. 'The elusive librarian!' He seemed quite pleased to see her. 'There's just no missing you – that hair of yours really stands out in a crowd. It's like a flag.' Behind him the piping grew faster, as if in celebration. 'I looked for you in class tonight. It's a shame you didn't come.'
Carol shrugged. 'I had to stay late at work,' she heard herself say. 'Maybe next time.'
'There won't be a next time,' he said, looking pleased at the fact. 'At least not till next fall.' He glanced doubtfully up the block, at the head shops and frozen-custard stands. 'Don't tell me you live around here. This is no place for anyone who works at Voorhis.'
'Oh, no,' she said, 'I was just taking the long way home.'
'Really?' He appeared to consider it a moment. 'Feel like stopping off for a drink? A cup of coffee maybe?'
She felt a queer thrill of triumph out of all proportion to the question. Absurd, of course, but there it was: a tiny voice that whispered, Anything can happen now. It was almost as if he had asked her to marry him.
Within the stone circle the flames snapped ravenously, demanding still another log. Insects danced and died amid the smoke, which, rising in a slender column, twisted among the stars and was lost in the surrounding darkness.
At the edge of the firelight the children crouched impatiently by the bag of corn seed, their eyes drawn past the flames to the tables that the older men had brought from the house and were now busy setting up: a folding bridge table, a sewing table, and the small square wooden table from the Poroths' kitchen, arranged in a row and, as the children watched, draped with a dark cloth to form one long platform. The screen door slammed again, and four women could be seen hurrying across the yard like stretcher bearers, hauling something heavy in a sagging white bedsheet. Behind them emerged others, arms laden with large brown thermos jugs which they placed by the fire. None of them spoke, and none were smiling; the only sound now was the distant clatter of pans from within the kitchen and, regular as a pulse beat, the slow and steady cadence of the crickets.
Suddenly, for the second time, the night was split by the clanging of a large brass dinner bell brandished by one of the elders. Setting it down beside him, he reached for a hand-hewn limb of cottonwood and added it to the fire. It fizzed and crackled like a living thing.
Nearby the women had lifted the bedsheet onto the tables and were crowded alongside, backs to the firelight, busily molding a flat, straw-colored mass that lay inert upon the cloth. They had been working since sundown, gathered around the huge cast-iron stove, measuring out the cornmeal, the molasses, the shortening, milk, and eggs. With practiced fingers they had scraped the separate portions still hot from the pans, fitting them together into the prescribed shape, using icing as mortar. Now at last it was ready, arranged hot and smoking by the fireside, awaiting the workers' return from the fields.
The younger women struggled in behind the men. Theirs had been the harder job, as tradition dictated; man's work would come later, with the cultivation and the harvest. All were tired and hungry, in no mood for surprise; but all of them stopped short, men and women alike, when they saw what lay upon the bedsheet, burnished by the flickering light.
It was the size that astonished them; it was longer than a man and covered most of the combined tabletops. In shape it resembled an immense five-pointed star, its entire surface studded with an intricate pattern of currants, nuts, and glistening sweetmeats. It smelled of corn and fruit and molasses, and everything about it spoke of holidays and feasting. Only its name, born of long custom, was ordinary: cottonbread, they called it. Ceremoniously they filed around the tables.
'I didn't think I'd be seein' this again so soon,' said one of the men, wiping the dirt from his hands. 'It's a sight bigger than the loaf we had last week, wouldn't you say, Rachel?'
'That's because we don't have so many mouths to feed,' said his wife.
A heavy-set man grinned and nudged the first one in the ribs. 'Not yet, anyways!'
The men around them chuckled – all but Poroth, the youngest here, who stood a little apart from the rest, silent and uneasy. He wasn't one for joking, especially about matters such as that. Children were holy, a gift from the Lord; a woman's body was His sacred instrument.
He glanced anxiously at his wife. She was hunched beside a little girl, whispering something in her ear to coax a smile. It wasn't right that she herself was childless. Just as soon as they were out of debt he would make a mother of her; he knew she was impatient for that.
How beautiful she looked with her hair down – far more beautiful than the local wives. If only she would learn to hold her tongue! After all, this was his land and these people his guests. Even though other hands had prepared the food that lay before them, he'd refused their offers of charity and had paid for it himself. It had put him even deeper into debt; but then, first planting was a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. He prayed that nothing would mar it.
Behind the friends the townspeople assembled by the tables, behind the knots of children and old men, he noticed the spare, severe-looking figure of his mother. She was talking with his Aunt Lise and Lise's widowed daughter, Minna Buckhalter, both of them a full head taller than she was, their jet black hair drawn tightly in the back. Lise had been his late father's sister, and she and Minna bore an almost haunting resemblance to him. It was a look perhaps more handsome in a man – the wide and sturdy shoulders, the thin ascetic lips, the stern, deep-set brown eyes – though it lent them an undeniable air of strength.
His mother's back was turned to him, as it had been so often these past years – ever since, with Bible school behind him, he'd made his impetuous decision to leave the community. In time he had returned to it, with much learned and no regrets, but there was still a coolness between them. What Utile love there'd been had proven difficult to restore, like corn that wouldn't grow in played-out soil.
But then, he remembered, he had himself to blame: for when he'd returned, he hadn't been alone. He'd had a wife with him – a stranger who, while of their faith, came from outside the area and, more important, seemed to make little effort to adapt herself to local ways. Her morals were, of course, beyond reproach, her training as strict as his own; he wouldn't have considered marrying any other kind. Still, there were those who thought her frivolous, high-spirited – dangerous, even. And then there'd been the question of the ceremony itself, that hurried little song- and-dance performed by an assistant college chaplain, with none of the parents in attendance… Yes, it was a lot for a mother to forgive, especially one who had no other child. Though he couldn't help but wish she were a little less reluctant to so much as speak Deborah's name.
Lately he'd begun to wonder if this hardness of his mother's wasn't somehow connected, in some mysterious and fundamental way, with the very things that made her so special in the community – her supposed 'gifts.' He
