Morning finds him on the beach, walking back and forth along the water's edge, the battered old umbrella tucked uselessly beneath his arm. He pays no attention to the flocks of bathers, to the cries of children braving the assaults of the surf or playing on the rubbish-strewn sand, or to the oily, sun-warmed bodies of their elders lying inert upon blankets with radios and picnic baskets by their heads. Humanity, for the moment, is forgotten, its noise and filth and ugliness ignored. He is far too busy studying the patterns of the waves and, at other moments, squinting directly upward into the blinding blue dome of the sky.
To those on the beach, should anyone chance to be watching, this awkward little figure trudging through the wet sand in a baggy blue suit and soggy overshoes which more than once become soaked as a wave breaks over his ankles might seem a tourist from some other era; as he peers up and down the beach, he might well be in search of some seaside vista fit for the amateur painter or photographer. Or perhaps he'd be mistaken for some confused but harmless octogenarian who's wandered out from one of the old-age homes that line the avenue across from the boardwalk.
But the concerns of art and freedom are, in fact, far from his mind. More urgent matters have brought him to the shore today: matters of geography, sand formation, tides.
He is scouting locations.
Suddenly he pauses, grows rigid. Something up the beach has distracted him: a pair of lovers lying together, body to body, in the boardwalk's striped shadow.
Rage sweeps over him like a wave. Jerkily he begins moving toward them, lips tightening, color surging to his face. He can feel, in his fists, the pumping of their loathsome hearts; the air before him rings with ancient voices screaming for a kill. Oh, to perform the Voola'teine! To drown the pair, to burn them where they he, to climb the boardwalk and drop knives upon their flesh through the cracks between the planks. In a vision he sees thrashing young bodies buried beneath waves of smothering sand…
He calms himself in time and turns away. The day is young. He has other sites to visit.
That afternoon he spends walking jauntily through the park, swinging his umbrella, making silent calculations with the figures he discerns in the branches of the trees. As the sun slips behind a horn-shaped cloud, he spies a group of people coming toward him up the path: a slim, bespectacled man and his pale, wide-eyed wife, their little girl in her red sunsuit, and a baby recumbent in a stroller.
And like the sudden waning of the light, his rage returns.
His eyes narrow; his face goes dark; his little hand tightens on the umbrella. Trembling, he whirls and follows them, his face fixed in an amiable smile.
The family turns eastward toward the zoo; he follows, drawing closer. As they stop to exclaim at penguins, hippos, bears, he eases himself beside them, nodding fondly to the parents, watching benignly as they're drawn on toward the panther curled within a spot of shade, the lion dozing grandly in the sunlight, the tiger pacing madly in its cage…
He sees the air vibrate around the tawny form, feels its baffled hunger, shares the beast's longing to leap and slash and rend. Blinking before the cage, smiling at the children, he loses himself in a reverie of death: how he would love to press that vile infant through the bars! to lacerate its flesh! to crush its throbbing neck with his own hands!
And he could do it, too. Though he dares not. Not now.
But for one brief moment, while the gazes of the other three are turned toward the cage and the infant's gaze toward him, he allows his mask to slip. The grin disappears. Eyes go hard. Teeth show in a tigerish snarl…
Smiling once more, he strolls onward, momentarily relieved. Behind him, to the astonishment of its parents, the infant explodes into wails of terror.
North of the zoo, just off the path, rises a small stand of dogwood and magnolia bushes and, hidden behind them, a tiny patch of dark ground that shelters wildflowers. He stands poised in the middle of it now, features contorted as before, swinging about him with his umbrella. Swoosh! – foliage lies slashed to pieces. Swoosh! – heads of flowers are sliced off clean. Knuckles whiten on the umbrella; his complexion grows red; his breath comes in furious gasps between clenched teeth. The air around him shrieks with mangled leaves and tattered blossoms.
The episode lasts but a minute. Afterward, calm once more, the smile back in place, a fragile pink magnolia in his buttonhole, he slips back to the path, umbrella at his side, and heads jauntily for home.
July First
The letter was waiting for him in the kitchen. Freirs read it over lunch. He looked up to see Deborah watching him intently from across the table.
'Remember,' he said, 'I mentioned something about having guests out?' Deborah nodded, while Sarr continued eating. 'Well, I hope it's not going to be inconvenient, but believe it or not, this friend of mine is thinking of driving out here tomorrow. I know it's a little early in the summer, but-'
Deborah silenced him. 'Now don't go worrying yourself. That'll be just fine.' She stood and began clearing away some of the dishes. 'We like having guests out here, don't we, honey?'
Sarr nodded without much enthusiasm. 'Mmm-hmm. Be glad to meet him.'
'Well, actually, it's a girl. Name's Carol. Someone I know from the city.'
Sarr looked up from his dessert with a tiny flicker of annoyance -and perhaps something else. 'She'll be staying overnight?'
'I think so.' Freirs fell silent, reluctant to say more.
Sarr's mouth made a thin straight line. 'We'll put her in the room upstairs.'
Deborah, moving past him, touched his shoulder. 'Honey, isn't that for Jeremy to say?' It drew an angry look.
'Upstairs will be fine,' Freirs said hurriedly, disinclined to make an issue of it. Let them go ahead and prepare a room for her; she wouldn't have to stay there. 'She should be getting here around noon tomorrow. Somebody's lending her his car. I was just wondering about the food situation. If you like, I could drive into town and pick up a few extra things.'
Sarr pushed his chair back from the table. 'No, no need of that. 'Tis a blessing to have guests in a home, and she'll be welcome here.' Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he stood. 'Well, guess I'd best see to those cuttings out there, before the worms do.' He turned and left the kitchen, his heavy footsteps echoing on the porch. Moments later they heard him descend the back steps and set out toward the fields.
Freirs waited till he'd gone. 'He didn't look all that pleased, did he?'
'Oh, he's not one to show it, but he's pleased, all right. He likes it when strangers come and look the place over. Reminds him that he really belongs here – that he's back where his roots are.'
'Roots?' Freirs laughed. 'You know, he mentioned something about that the first time he was showing me around. I thought he was kidding.'
Deborah shook her head. 'My husband doesn't jest. This farm's real special to him.'
'But I thought you bought the place just last winter.'
'We did – but Sarr's family owned it a long time before. They were the first to settle here.'
'You mean the Poroths built this place?'
'No, it was on his mother's side. The Troets. They're another one of Gilead's old families.'
'Yes, I remember. A group of them died in a fire.'
'And this is where they lived.'
'You mean the fire was right here? On this site?'
She nodded. 'It was a long time ago – a hundred years or more. Sarr told me about it. He says the house we're in now is the second on this spot, built on the old foundation. The first burned right down to the ground, with naught left but the chimney and this old thing.' She gestured toward the squat cast-iron stove. 'I forget how many people died. Six or seven, I think. Mother, father, babies – the whole family.'
'Except for one,' said Freirs. 'The young boy that people think set it. Matt Geisel told me about him.'
'Well, whatever the cause, it was a tragedy.' She turned back to the dishes.
Freirs nodded, then reached for the pudding bowl. 'Must have happened at night, while they were asleep. Otherwise you'd think they could've gotten out.'
'Yes… Yes, it must have been at night.' Deborah stood at the window, gazing absently into the sunshine. It was barely noon. Freirs sat contented over dessert. Outside lay her garden, the cornfields, the barn, distant hills –
