'And be sure to say hello to Sister Deborah,' the woman called after her. 'Tell her we'll be lookin' for her at worship tomorrow.' The other woman tittered.
Parked in front of the store like a reminder of the world she'd left, the small cream-colored Chevy was one of the brighter objects in sight; the only other vehicles she'd seen since entering town had been dark unornamented cars and pickup trucks at least a decade old. Driving down the road in what seemed the suggested direction -it was, at least, the way she'd been heading anyway – she proceeded slowly at first, studying every passing farm and homestead for signs by which she might distinguish it later, if she had to return this way; then, as she realized that there were relatively few turnings to choose from, with more confidence. On impulse, more from the memory of something Freirs had told her than anything the woman in the store had said, she turned right when the road branched after the large dairy farm and found herself heading downhill toward a small, swiftly running stream whose sound echoed in the fields and thickets through which she was passing.
She drove for what seemed several miles along its winding banks, avoiding a narrow stone bridge – had the woman said anything about a bridge? – and coming at last to a clearing where a cluster of shanties stood huddled at the edge of the woods. The road she'd been following curved back uphill among the trees, branching just before the houses into an unsavory-looking pitted dirt road that she prayed was not the Poroths'. Three large, nondescript dogs raced up to the car and yapped fiercely at its wheels. A man in shirt sleeves – not bearded but unshaven, and with a hillbilly's long, straggly hair -looked up from a rusting automobile he'd been scraping, his dark little eyes peering suspiciously toward her car. In the weed-choked yard several pale, moon-faced children in T-shirts and shorts paused in their playing to watch her pass. They looked surprisingly ragged for this area, almost Appalachian. She drove past quickly, determined not to ask for directions here, and with sinking heart followed the road back uphill, taking the first opportunity she found to double back in the direction of the stream.
This time the way felt familiar; when she came again to the stone bridge, she turned left with more confidence and drove over it. The road wound steeply uphill once again, curving past a small stone cottage, a cozy- looking place set well back on a rounded hill, the yard around it overgrown with flowers.
She was so busy admiring them as she drove by that she almost didn't see the tall, faceless figure looming darkly at the edge of the road. With a little cry she swerved to avoid it, the car speeding around the bank of earth and shrubbery as if under its own volition, carrying her past. The road climbed farther, curving now in the other direction; she wasn't inclined to look back. It was only later, when the house would have been concealed from sight behind the bend, that she realized what she'd seen was a woman in a long black dress and the odd, shroudlike mask of a beekeeper.
'She's going to be here soon,' Deborah was saying, 'and I mean it, honey, the least you can do is drive to the Geisels and get us some of that rhubarb wine.'
'I heard you the first time,' said Sarr. 'Don't worry, I'm going.' He wiped the sweat from his forehead. 'But I don't intend taking out the truck for a task like that. Some of us still know how to walk!' He cast a pointed glance to where Freirs lay dozing. 'You've got the room all ready for her?'
Deborah nodded. 'If she's really going to use it.' This had been designed to get a rise from him, and it did.
'She'd damned well better!' he said, exasperated. ' 'Tisn't a whorehouse I'm running!'
'Oh, easy, honey, it's not for us to decide. Don't forget, they're not our people.' She paused, musing. 'Wonder if she'll be pretty. It's hard to picture what Jeremy likes.'
'I can tell you what he likes,' said Sarr. 'Have you ever seen the way he looks at you?'
'What he does with his eyes is his business.' Still smiling, she raised her fist. 'But let me tell you something, mister. What you do w ith your eyes is my business! Now get along down to the Geisels and buy that wine! She ought to be here any minute – should've been here hours ago. Get moving!'
He pretended to cower before her, the sight all the more comic because of his huge size. 'I'm moving,' he said. He loped off toward the house to get his wallet. The screen door slammed.
I wonder what's keeping her, thought Deborah. Probably overslept herself. A good match for Jeremy.
She looked at him. He was no longer asleep. She smiled; he smiled back.
The screen door slammed again, and Sarr emerged. With a wave he disappeared down the road.
The road was proving difficult to follow. It gave another twist, a living thing, hostile to the tires digging into its dusty back, and she had to wrench the wobbly steering wheel to keep the car from going off onto the shoulder or even crashing into the thick underbrush. The front wheels suddenly dropped into an unseen gully with a jarring clang of metal. Applying the brakes, she proceeded more slowly; fearful lest the dust and the bumps and the potholes damage Rosie's car. She pictured herself explaining how it had happened, Rosie's baby smile turning somber, and the empty way she'd feel if he dismissed her. How had she ever gotten herself into this? It was like a carny ride one couldn't get off. Grimly she continued down the road, jaw set, imagining with something close to hunger the comfort of the bed that awaited her at the farmhouse.
Her eagerness to see Jeremy had long since yielded to a certain resentment. What a fool she must look, to have gone to so much trouble just for him! Better to assert herself from the start; if he thought she'd driven all this way simply for the privilege of cuddling up to him, the boy was in for a surprise. Did he take her for one of his horny little students? She would show him just how wrong he was.
On the radio a man was prophesying fair weather; it seemed like magic that his voice remained so steady, so unaffected by the pounding and the bumping of the car. The time, he said – 'Bible time' -was four thirteen.
God, she was late! And perhaps there was no one on this back road after all; perhaps it would simply grow narrower and narrower until it finally disappeared amid the undergrowth and swamp. What if she was simply getting deeper into wilderness and would never be able to get out without abandoning the car? Everything's going to come out okay, she repeated to herself. Meanwhile the radio was whispering the far less sanguine words of Jeremiah: 'And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the Lord: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.'
She was almost ready to turn the car around when, up ahead, half obscured by dust and the waves of rising heat, she saw a dark figure stalking grimly toward her like a moving shadow.
It circled the car warily as she slowed to a stop. She saw a gaunt, rather handsome face staring down at her, eyes wide and shy above the fringe of beard. She knew immediately who it was. 'Sarr,' she said, almost breathless with relief. 'At last!'
Mrs Poroth put the beekeeper's mask back in the closet and sat herself morosely on the narrow bed. She was worried. She had seen the woman. It was her, the one whose coming she'd dreaded. She had recognized the red hair and the intense, almost ascetic face, like that of an unwitting Joan of Arc. A holy victim.
Removing from the drawer in her night table a tattered yellow pile pressed flat between two sheets of cardboard, she untied the ribbon that held the sheets together and gazed down once again at the Pictures. Hesitantly she reached for the one on top – a landscape drawn entirely in white upon a grey background – and turned it over. She sifted through the rest of the pile, not shuffling them, proceeding with no established order, merely allowing her mind to roam free as she scanned Picture after Picture. Her gaze fell immediately on the image of the book, an obscene fat yellow volume, covers bulging, bloated, almost, as if barely able to contain the mass within. The moon drawing, too, caught her eye; but the moon that would appear in the sky tonight, she knew, would be nothing like the cruel, slim crescent shape in the Picture, with the star trapped between its tips. The one that shone tonight would be full.
Laying aside the Pictures, she closed her eyes, fell stiffly back on her bed, and tried desperately to think of a connection.
The hum of insects was beginning to drive him to distraction. His ears tingled to the buzz of a mosquito, it seemed about to pierce into his brain, and yet behind it he could hear the reassuring drone of the hornets and bees and those flies with heads like jewels. What was there in that sound? He cocked his head to listen, and, for a moment, believed he understood: it was the hum the world made as it went about its work, serenely preoccupied, all gears meshing smoothly, the mechanism utterly dependable.
Now there was another sound behind it, another motor – and in the distance a small white Chevrolet came lurching slowly up the dirt road toward the farm. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two kittens padding across the lawn to investigate, tails eagerly aloft. He got up from his chair and walked hurriedly around the side of the house to the driveway, just as Deborah was emerging from the back door. She joined him at the bottom of the steps, and by the time the little car had pulled up next to the house, he and Deborah were waiting side by side, cats gamboling at their feet, as if the two of them were the farm couple and he Deborah's lawful husband.
