out of the weekend. For once he wished the Poroths had a phone; it was frustrating to have to rely on the mail. He had left a forwarding address with the post office back in New York, but so far he'd received nothing except Carol's letter, addressed directly to the farm, and a few birthday cards, hollowly cheerful things congratulating him on entering his fourth decade, a doom which in fact would befall him tomorrow. He had carefully hidden the cards away in the top drawer of the bureau, deep among his notebooks and his stationery, so as not to be reminded of the day. He wondered if tomorrow's mail would bring a card'from Laura or his ex-wife. He rather hoped it would not.
God, could it really be tomorrow? How had it come so soon? He felt like Doctor Faustus, with his one bare hour to live. Of course, turning twenty had been even worse; it had seemed so tragic, somehow, to kiss his teenage years goodbye, with all their arrogance and special privileges, that sense of glorious future possibilities…
He felt the book fall shut. His head was growing heavy; his mind was slowing down. He was dozing off again, drifting back into a purple world where dreams and half-dreams mingled, heated by the sunlight that flamed against his eyelids. Carol sat nearby, stretching her arms in the warmth. With a languorous movement she rolled toward him, mashing her hips against the back of bis hand, and instantly he knew that she was naked beneath her skirt; he could almost feel a wisp of hair against his fingertips. But the hair, he saw now, was not Carol's, it was Deborah's, thick and dark as fur, and at his touch she rose and stood before him with Deborah's full hips, Deborah's full breasts. He saw her glaring down at him, saw her mouth fall open as if she were about to speak, and suddenly the place his fingers touched was wet.
He awoke with a gasp. The Poroths' old charcoal cat, Rebekah, was pacing back and forth in the grass beside his chair, butting her head softly against his outstretched hand and looking up at him. As he watched, her pink tongue darted out to lick his fingertips.
Backs aching from the hours spent stooped over the furrowed ground beneath the burning sky, Sarr and Deborah were planting pumpkin seed between the bare rows where soon tiny corn sprouts would dot the field. Less than fifty yards away their visitor sat nodding over his reading, brushing sporadically at some invisible flying insect. From time to time Deborah would look toward him and smile, but her husband only shook his head and kept his gaze upon the ground.
Whenever the mood struck them, they would sing one of their planting songs – a different song this time, simpler, more in keeping with the present task:
'One for the blackbird,
One for the crow,
One for the cutworm,
And three to grow.'
Suddenly Deborah paused in the singing and poked her husband in the ribs. 'Look,' she said, lowering her voice and grinning. 'Look at him.'
Over by the outbuilding Freirs had dozed off again. The book lay open on his lap, the pages turning slowly backward.
Sarr frowned and looked away. He could usually convince himself he loved this labor – hellfire, he really did! – but it was harder with Freirs so near and so disconcertingly idle. In truth, he would much rather have been asleep right now himself, or at least lying up in the little bedroom on the cool sheets, while Deborah, in the kitchen, made him something cold to drink. Then she would come upstairs to him with two tall glasses on a tray, the ice cubes clinking as she walked, the long dress swishing softly around her legs… He shook his head to clear it of this vision and stomped some dirt over a clump of seeds with the heel of his boot.
'Wouldn't be surprised if he got twenty hours of sleep a day!'
Deborah smiled. 'Now, honey, that's not fair. You know how late he stays up every night, and I've seen him up real early in the morning, doing his exercises. He didn't see me looking.'
Sarr snorted derisively. 'Exercises! That's a laugh! And then he spends all morning soaking in the tub – as if he's even worked up a sweat! Let me tell you, if he really wanted to build some strength he'd be out here helping us. Lord knows there's plenty of work to be done.' Laying a line of seeds along the furrow and pressing each into the earth, he straightened up and rubbed his back. 'I'll give him all the muscles he wants. I'll bet he's never done a day's work in his life. Not real work, like this.'
He noticed that his wife was making a face at him. 'What's so funny?' he demanded.
'You are,' she said, nudging him with her hip. 'You act like you've been doing this ever since you were a little boy. You forget who you're talking to! I've seen where you grew up, and the nearest you ever got to a field was that playground out behind the school. I remember you at college, only a few years ago. You didn't have a callus on your hand! In fact, I remember now, that's just what I liked about you. You had the softest hands I'd ever seen.'
He had to laugh. She really took him out of himself, this woman. She was good for him. 'Lord's my witness,' he said, 'any hands would seem soft to you after some of the clodhoppers you took up with. I was probably the first man you ever saw who didn't have dirt all over his face and manure on his shoes!'
Playfully she tossed a lump of dirt at him. 'Well, you sure do now, mister!'
He reached for her and would have thrown her down beneath him, as he knew she expected him to, but at that moment a small cloud drifted across the sun and shadows darkened the field. His smile faded abruptly; he drew away his hand. 'There'll be time for this later,' he said. 'Right now we've work to do.' He bent back to the rows.
Responding to his mood, she pulled away. She was used to these changes in him. 'And not even much time for that,' she said. She wiped a sleeve across her sweating forehead. 'If that girl of his is coming today, I've got to get back inside soon and start dinner.'
Sarr nodded silently, busy grappling with the earth. Deborah's mention of the girl had reminded him of something that had been troubling him. He felt like a fool, now, for having carried on so with her. There was something more important on his mind.
It really was a shame, Carol decided, that she wasn't going to sleep with Jeremy.
She would have liked to. And under different circumstances she might actually have done it. Surely God would have understood (though the farmer and his wife might be shocked). She'd never pretended to be a saint, she told herself; if Rochelle could sleep with all those men, it wouldn't hurt for her to sleep with one. High time she got it over with, in fact; this maidenhood of hers, this blessed virginity, was fast becoming a burden and a bore. While once it had seemed worth preserving, setting her a cut above the rest of the world, now it seemed little more than a souvenir of the convent, separating her from her friends, her own sisters, most of all from Rochelle. She was sick of being different.
But now was not the time to change. After twenty-two years of holding onto something, you didn't just give it away to the first halfway acceptable man who came along. Especially not tonight, on what amounted to their second date, in a glorified henhouse with stern, religious, disapproving strangers all around. She hoped Jeremy didn't expect anything more, and assumed he'd had enough sense to make provisions for her to spend the night inside the farmhouse.
Not that there was anything wrong with Jeremy; as soon him as anyone else. It was all very well to remind herself that, considered critically, he was not the first man she would have chosen and that her interest in him derived, in part, from that most humbling of predicaments, his being, at least for now, the only game in town. Still, the choice was more than just pragmatic. He genuinely appealed to her. He made her smile.
All this past week he'd been much on her mind. She had found herself pausing in her homeward walk down Eighth Avenue to stare expectantly at the western horizon, as if to catch a glimpse of distant marvels – in Jersey, of all places! She'd even found herself inventing entire conversations with him, conversations which, however playful or earnest, invariably ended with a mutual declaration of love. / must be crazy, she told herself for the dozenth time. Was her life really so empty that she'd fall for the first man who showed an interest in her? And did it really take so little – a drink, a cheap Italian meal, a walk home in the dark? Surely there was more to her life than that.
FLEMINGTON, the sign said. KEEP RIGHT.
Moving back into the slower lane, she took a moment to count her blessings. There was her family, of course, though scattered now, and Rochelle, and the sisters she still talked to at St. Agnes's, and evenings at the ballet every week or two, and maybe an occasional fancy meal this summer with Rosie, and the endless rows of library books that stretched before her, thirty hours a week…
Surely that was enough for any girl. More than enough.
But a contemptuous little voice inside her head whispered, Who do you think you're kidding?
