water here beside them was nearly cold enough to freeze one's fingers.
Carol leaned over, trying to see her reflection, but the current was too swift. Sunlight glimmered from the water's surface, picking out dead leaves and bits of debris being carried downstream. In the shadows one could see other things, smooth and pale and snakelike, twisting among the rocks at the bottom.
She seemed preoccupied. Freirs watched her out of the corner of his eye with a yearning he couldn't quite remember feeling since the days before his marriage. He wished she were staying more than just one night; he hadn't realized, till now, how lonely he had been. It was something of a surprise, in fact: she looked so wonderfully tight sitting here beside him in her old plaid shirt and slim-legged jeans, her skin so pale in the sunlight, her hair so red against the grass.
And she herself hadn't been immune to the feeling. By the time the two of them had left the farmhouse, she'd seemed very happy to be here with him today. Deborah had been singing in the kitchen. Outside, the air had grown cooler. Butterflies were dancing on the lawn.
'God,' she'd said, 'it feels like coming home!'
But something had unaccountably changed her mood; without warning she had suddenly become less friendly, just when he'd begun to feel close to her.
It had happened in his bedroom. A silence had seemed to fall between them, there among his books and papers. Somehow she had had a change of heart. He had seen it when she'd first walked through his doorway; he'd seen a vague expression of distaste come over her – had she actually wrinkled her nose? – and a certain wariness when she'd looked from bed to rear window and window to bed, as if measuring the distance.
He had tried to keep the conversation going, something he was usually adept at, but maybe in the past week he'd gotten out of practice. They'd talked about a hike they hoped to take, and where to search for animal tracks, arrowheads, edible wild plants. But it had been no more than filling in the blanks. She'd seemed restless and distracted the entire time and was soon suggesting that they go back outside. She hadn't even wanted to sit down – had flatly refused, in fact, to sit beside him on the bed. You'd have thought she was a virgin, the way she'd behaved.
He wondered if maybe the fault lay with the bed itself: with its presence, its very concreteness. Women, he knew, were practical at heart – quite ruthlessly calculating, some of them, certainly the one he'd married – but there were always a few romantic souls who managed to forget that making love was also a matter of bed space and damp sheets and where to put the elbows. Maybe Carol was one of these, her head spinning round and round with flower-scented fantasies until, with a jolt, she stumbled against the hard physical reality of his narrow iron bed. Maybe she preferred to think they'd do it in the air, like angels.
He'd given it one try, at least. He'd felt fat and dull and sweaty, but he'd kissed her just the same, leaning toward her as she looked at the woodcuts in a paperback grimoire and planting a firm kiss at the side of her mouth. She'd been surprised, of course – her eyes had gone wide and she hadn't exactly fallen into his arms – but she hadn't pulled away.
But then, like a kid on his first date, he had failed to follow it up. Instead, he'd made some lame remark about the Brethren and their attitude toward sex – 'very Old Testament,' he'd said – and the two had lapsed back into awkward conversation. The moment had been lost.
Afterward, more tense now, and with more blank space to fill, they'd strolled aimlessly around the farm, Freirs pointing out the various outbuildings and fields just as Sarr had done for him and, beneath a demeanor almost as reserved, watching her reactions with the same anxious curiosity.
She had not been impressed. At first the place had seemed, paradoxically, both novel and familiar, but her initial enthusiasm had apparently worn off, and she was no longer moved by the mere sight of rural landscape. Casting a critical eye at the broad, uncultivated lands beyond the stream, the old wooden outhouse rotting beneath its tangle of vines, the mass of the encroaching woods, the farm machinery rusting in the barn, the north field overgrown with weeds, she had pronounced the farm 'in very poor repair.'
She'd been right, of course, yet somehow the comment had irritated him. What did she expect? After all, this was Sarr and Deborah's first year here. He realized that he'd come to feel a certain loyalty to them.
How to change the mood? How to bring them closer once again? He'd wondered about it all through the remainder of their walk -and now, sitting here beside her on the sun-warmed rock while streams of shadow spread across the lawn, he still wasn't sure what to do. Drop his pants? Recite a poem? Whip out some imaginary pocketknife and carve their initials on the nearest tree? A directly physical approach was out of the question – he could hardly just reach out and grab her, here among the insects and the rocks – and he'd long since run out of things to talk about. What, after all, had he been doing with himself for the last week, except sitting on his ass and taking notes? He had already tried to describe for her the Gothic excesses of The Monk, but though she'd seemed interested enough -'My God,' she kept saying, 'to be so afraid of nuns' – the novel's horror had quite suddenly and unexpectedly begun to pall on him. Subterranean dungeons, inquisitors, and chains all seemed rather foolish and insubstantial out here in the sunlight, with dragonflies dipping innocently above the stream and the smell of pine trees wafting from the woods on the opposite bank.
And anyway, Carol was beginning to seem distracted. 'I hope he'll understand,' she said abruptly. 'Sarr, I mean. I should have offered him a lift. I didn't know he'd be away this long.'
Freirs shrugged, just as happy that Carol hadn't gone off alone with Sarr before reaching the farm. That would have made her even later, and… well, he didn't like the idea of the two of them sharing anything without him. Anyway, why bring him up now?
'He mentioned something this morning about buying wine,' Freirs said. 'There are some people over on the next road who make it out of rhubarb and dandelions and things.' The thought reminded him of dinner; he looked back to the house – just in time to see Sarr himself walking up the back steps, a large jug swinging heavily from his arm.
He turned back to Carol without mentioning it, but she too had been looking toward the house. She stood, brushing off her jeans. 'He's back,' she said. 'They'll probably be getting dinner ready soon. I'd better head on over to the house and wash up.'
Freirs stood and followed her slowly back across the lawn, past his own ivy-covered building. Somehow it looked quite unlovely now. 'Do you still want to see that field guide?' he asked hopefully. 'The one that has the recipe for cattails?'
'After dinner,' she said, not even turning. Suddenly she laughed. 'Speaking of cats… ' Beside them, attracted by the direction of their walk, loped two of the younger cats, an orange male and a tortoise-shell female, perhaps anticipating dinner.
'Where are all the others?' asked Carol, crouching to extend her hand toward the female. With the usual feline ambivalence it dodged her attempt to pat it on the head, remaining just beyond arm's reach; but the orange male crept warily up and, tail lashing, permitted her to stroke its neck.
'The older ones tend to go off by themselves,' said Freirs, watching Carol's fingers sliding through the animal's silky hair. Lucky little bastard. 'They spend all day creeping through the long grass like tigers on the prowl. One of them's a big silver female – you'll see her tonight – who actually roams around in the woods, just like a wild animal. Sarr says she eats what she kills there.'
At that moment, up ahead, Deborah appeared at the back door and stepped out onto the porch, her apron white against the long black of her dress. She was carrying a large ceramic bowl. At her side a thin, wicked-looking bread knife hung like a ceremonial sword. Crouching, she set the bowl carefully beside a smaller one at her feet. The dangling bread knife touched the floor and caught the sinking sun. Brushing back a lock of hair, she stood and waved a greeting to her guests, then tilted back her head and yelled what sounded like a single mystical demon- name: 'Bekariabwada!… Bekaria bwaaaadal'
From the long grass behind them three blurred shapes, a charcoal, a tiger-stripe, and a silver grey – Rebekah, Azariah, and Bwada – streaked across the lawn and up the back steps. And sure enough, one of them, Freirs noticed, bore something small and struggling in its teeth.
The city feels deserted this evening. It is the start of a three-day weekend, and even some of the poor have managed to escape. The rest sit in their doorways and curse the heat.
The Old One doesn't mind the heat. In fact, he is in an extremely good mood. As he waits outside the building where the women live, he hums a little song.
The sun sinks toward the river like a dying rose. Lines of jagged shadows creep farther down the sidewalk. One by one, as the darkness descends, he flexes his pudgy little fingers.
