Carol had arrived at last, but more than four hours late, and he could see, even through the dusty windshield, that she was in a bad mood. Well, he would just have to hold her awhile and make her feel better. Turning the engine off, she wiped a hand across her shining forehead and climbed silently from the car. For Deborah, now rushing forward to welcome her, she managed a smile, but it looked forced, strained; and for him, hanging back, there was no smile at all, not even a hello – though he got a greeting he would not quickly forget.
'I swear I could strangle you!' she said, slamming the door shut as the kittens fled back across the lawn. 'How could you tell me this place was only an hour or so away?'
His first reaction was simple embarrassment that she should speak to him that way in front of Deborah. Her mood also unnerved him; it was going to be that much harder now for the two of them to get romantic – which was presumably what they both wanted. Hesitantly he reached in through the window for the tote bag on the seat. 'Here, I'll get this.' It was heavier than he expected; he felt the awkward weight of a bottle and some bulky parcels.
He was about to start for the outbuilding, but she took the bag from him. 'That's okay, I've got it,' she said, already calming down. She turned to Deborah, who, behind her back, had been giving her a cool, appraising glance. 'I'd really like to go wash up. I feel like I've just run a marathon.'
'Come on inside, then. The bathroom's just off the kitchen.' Deborah led her up the back porch steps, the two of them chattering about the unseasonable heat. Seen together like that, buxom brunette and slim redhead, they looked like some Victorian allegory of darkness and light. After all those nights alone on the farm, he was glad that one of them was his.
He drifted back to his room, casting his eye over it one more time before she saw it. The roses on the night table were a nice touch, he decided. Too bad the windows in the back didn't let in more light.
Finally, bored, he walked back up to the house. Voices came from the second floor, but not, as usual, from the Poroths' bedroom. Dismayed, he hurried upstairs to find the two of them, just as he'd feared, in the small spare room in back intended eventually for a child's bedroom. They were talking about the pictures that covered the walls – a series of nursery rhyme cutouts and lithographed Bible scenes chosen with the room's future occupant in mind. Deborah was holding a wrapped-up bottle. Carol's tote bag already lay upon the bed, a fresh towel beside it.
'Jeremy,' said Carol, beaming, 'do you know, this is just like the room my sister and I had when we were growing up! I swear, I had some of these same pictures.'
'Oh, really?' He stood in the doorway, hoping his face didn't betray his disappointment. 'I guess all that's really needed is a crib.'
Deborah was watching him closely. He couldn't tell if she was gloating or feeling sorry for him. 'Well,' she said, 'call me if you need anything. I've got to get back downstairs now – there's something in the oven.' She held up the bottle. 'And thanks again for the wine.'
'Carol,' he said when she was gone, 'you don't really intend to stay here, do you?'
Her eyes widened. 'Where else would I stay?'
He sighed. Already things were going wrong. Out there, beneath the sun, the world was turning serenely, yet inside here a piece of it had turned away from him. 'The fact of the matter is, I thought that you'd be staying out there with me.'
'That's certainly not what I had in mind,' she said. 'And I don't think the Poroths would approve of an unmarried girl spending the night back there with you.'
'Their opinion doesn't matter.'
'Of course it does, Jeremy. We're guests in their home.'
'I'm not a guest. I'm paying rent.'
'Yes, but I'm a guest,' she said firmly, 'and I wouldn't want to offend them. And anyway, though it probably sounds silly to you, I just don't do that sort of thing.'
He'd deserved that, he realized. There was nothing dumber than trying to argue a girl into bed, and that's exactly what he'd been trying. Now she had blown him out of the water. 'It's okay,' he said. 'I understand.' Maybe he could still change her mind.
'And look,' she said, 'I'm sorry about that little outburst of mine, back in the yard. I didn't mean to take it out on you. I guess I just got nervous driving Rosie's car.'
He shrugged. 'Didn't bother me. Honest. I'm just sorry you had such a rough trip.' Glumly he eyed the room's low ceiling, the wide plank floorboards covered by a throw rug, the shallow, smoke-stained fireplace taking up most of one side. How could she actually think of staying here? It was so damned claustrophobic. Around him shapes were thumbtacked to the pale blue papered wall: faces grinned from the ramparts of a cardboard castle, a white- robed priest made solemn gestures before an altar fire, a cow danced dreamily round a startled moon. He waved his hand toward the room at large. 'Well, anyway, welcome to the Land of Nod.'
'It seems very comfortable.'
He sniffed. 'A little stuffy, though.' Frowning, he went to the other side of the room, where a tiny dormer window looked out upon the yard. Just inside the panes, hanging by a length of string from a hook above a lintel, a hollow, ruby-red witch ball of hand-blown glass revolved slowly in the sunlight. Large as an overripe apple, it was designed to keep evil spirits at bay; inside it lay a sprig of angelica, the herb beloved of the Holy Ghost. Across the room, from a trick of the light, a glowing disk the size and color of a rose appeared to float upon the wall above the bed.
From behind him came the muffled sound of a zipper. He caught his breath and looked around, half expecting to see Carol stepping lightly out of her jeans, but she was busy rummaging through the open tote bag; a hairbrush and a pair of slacks already lay upon the bed. Inside the bag he glimpsed a fat yellow book with ornamental covers but failed to recognize it. She reached inside for the volume, then seemed to think better of it and shoved it back among the clothes. God, he thought, she's even brought some kind of prayer book! With a sigh he turned back to the window. Unfastening the latch, he pushed open the two sets of panes, letting in a breeze from the yard. The leaves of the apple tree whispered with it just outside the window, and the witch ball stirred lazily on its string. Past the garden the dusty white Chevy sat dozing in the driveway. In the distance he could see his own building, the afternoon sunlight shining fiercely on the shingles of the roof, and, beyond it, the smokehouse and the old black willow that grew against the barn. She would have a pleasing view if she stayed up here tonight – a better view than he would have from down there on the lawn.
And he would be alone down there.
But she still might reconsider, the optimist in him decided. In fact, he felt confident that she would. Far from discouraging him, her behavior back in the yard made him feel curiously protective: here she was, supposedly a resourceful corn-fed country girl, yet she'd apparently managed to get herself lost two or three times on the ride out and had obviously had trouble navigating the final stretch of road. Whatever she liked to fancy herself, she was certainly no pathfinder. He realized that in the short week he'd been living here, he'd begun to feel at home.
'Come on,' he said, 'let me show you where I live.'
Their footsteps clattered through the hall and down the stairs, the floorboards echoing as they passed.
Behind them in the little room, deserted now, the ball of ruby-red glass spun like a planet in the sunshine. The image it cast on the opposite wall was aglow with rosy light, its center filled with swirling bands of red.
Gradually, hour after hour, the sun would settle earthward; the rosy light would travel ever higher up the wall. At last, trembling with the final rays of sunset, it would strike the lower corner of a Bible lithograph, then a line of badly painted foliage, a rock, a patch of moss, a bit of long white robe… until, like some intense supernal spotlight, it would shine directly on the center of the picture, on a bright configuration with the contours of a star: the altar fire.
Inevitably, for a moment, the star and rose would merge.
Afterward, the sun would settle further; the spotlight would move on. Yet for that single moment, beneath its rays, the fire would have flickered, glowed, and come to life. For an instant the flames would leap higher, burning with a vastly deeper hunger, now shifting, now spreading, devouring picture, planet, all.
Lazy clouds drifted above the tops of the surrounding trees; wisps of shadow swept the grass. Freirs sat slouched next to Carol on a rock by the banks of the stream, beneath the shade of one of the willows that grew along the side.
To his uneasiness the two of them had once more fallen silent, and now barely stirred except to brush away an occasional fly or flip a stone or twig into the water – water so clear that it was impossible to tell the depth. Along the opposite bank, where the woods began, the pine trees shifted restlessly in the afternoon heat, but the
