Ceremonies

'Honey, are you sure Matthew gave you your money's worth?'

Sarr looked up from the astrological column in that day's Home News: Full moon tonight, and unexpected sights beneath it. 'Huh?'

'Matthew Geisel. Did that old man try to cheat you?'

'That's no way to talk about Brother-'

'Because this thing's not even full,' Deborah went on. 'See? It's five or six inches down.' She pointed to the wine jug that stood upon the table. Suddenly her expression changed; she looked at him suspiciously. 'Hey, have you been into this?'

Scowling, he went back to his paper. 'And what if I was? It's hot out there.'

She sighed and shook her head. 'Gonna get yourself sick, you are, walking in the sun with a belly full of wine. It's a wonder you left any for the rest of us.'

He grunted noncommittally, already looking forward to finishing off the jug at dinner, along with the wine that Freirs' skinny redheaded girlfriend had brought out. The Brethren didn't hold with drunkenness, but as sins went it was a minor one. No sense getting into an argument over a few tart swigs of rhubarb wine. He looked up. 'Want me to rinse off those greens?' he asked. 'Or feed the cats?'

She was having none of it. 'All that's been done,' she said. 'Dinner'll be ready in a minute. Go see where they are.'

'Last time I looked, they were still out there trying to make friends with Zillah and Toby. She seemed to give up on Zillah – without getting scratched, praise the Lord – and then she started in on Toby. Picked him up just like a baby.'

'And he let her?'

'He seemed to like it.'

Deborah shrugged and began methodically slicing a tomato. 'Probably thought she was his mother, with that hair of hers. You don't suppose that's the real-colour, do you?'

Sarr smiled. He was tempted to say something about women and cats, but held his tongue. 'Oh, I don't know,' he said. 'Here she is. Why don't you ask her?'

He was amused to find the subject dropped. While Carol, then Freirs, filed into the bathroom to wash for dinner, Deborah busied herself at the stove. Suddenly she paused and turned to face him.

'By the way,' she said, 'aren't you forgetting something?' She nodded toward the porch. 'May as well get it over with before you wash up.'

Sarr winced. It was time for the body count. He had almost forgotten. With a sigh he heaved himself from the chair. 'Ah, yes. 'Twouldn't do to neglect the dead.'

Pushing through the screen door, he stood with hands on hips and watched the cats gathered round a bowl heaped with dry commercial cat food mixed with last night's table scraps; a water dish stood nearby. Moments later the two remaining kittens, charcoal Dinah and coalblack Habakkuk, came scampering up the back steps to join the other five. Bwada raised he silver-grey head to glare at them as they crowded in beside her. She gave a warning hiss, but they ignored her and, purring softly, proceeded to gobble up as much food as they could in dainty but determined bites.

While they ate, he went grimly about his task. It was not a pleasant one, even when blunted somewhat by the drink. Each evening around mealtime, now that summer was here, the cats had taken to bringing in dead things, corpses of animals they'd caught during the day: field mice, moles, shrews, birds – even, once, a slender green garter snake. It was doubtful that they saw those creatures as food (though Bwada, on occasion, had been known to make a meal of one – as if she weren't fat enough already). Usually they just laid the bodies out upon the kitchen steps for the Poroths to see. Sarr believed the offerings were meant as tribute – a kind of ceremony.

Tonight, thank the Lord, they had returned with relatively little plunder: he saw only two mangled field mice and, almost out of sight within the shadows by the wall, the not-quite-lifeless body of a young robin, one delicate brown wing still trembling.

A good thing Deborah hadn't seen this. How she raged and carried on about the birds! Frowning, he stooped to pick the mice up gingerly by the tails. With his other hand he grasped the robin by the legs and walked down the back steps to a pair of garbage cans that stood beneath the porch. His head was swimming slightly from the wine, but he knew his intoxication only brought him nearer to the essential mystery. Placing the bird on the hard ground and looking away, he crushed its skull beneath the heel of his boot. As he did so, he thought he felt a tiny soul flutter past his face and up to heaven.

Wrinkling his nose, he lifted the lid from the nearer can and was immediately sickened by the foul odor of rotting flesh that welled up from its depths. Quickly he dropped the three bodies into the can and clamped the metal lid back on. It was a process he'd had to repeat, with little variation, nearly every night, but he still had not grown used to it.

Before returning inside, he paused a moment, leaning against one of the square white posts that supported the roof and gazing out at the farmland as it stretched away past the outbuilding and the brook to the distant line of woods. He spent a lot of time here on the porch, especially at the end of the day, staring alone and silent at the land. It was a sight that never failed to move him; familiar as it had become, he still felt like a stranger.

It was a paradox, really. During the day, at the height of the sun, while he sweated over some intractable root or turned the soil of some outlying pasture, though the land resisted him with all its strength, he nonetheless felt himself its master. But at moments like this – at dusk, when the world was at peace and he could survey his domain in lordly comfort from the back steps of his house – it somehow seemed to him that the land wasn't really his at all and that, with no human figure to mar the landscape, the farm reverted to what it had always been: a living thing, belonging only to itself. The waving grass and newly planted fields seemed to keep their own counsel; there was a consciousness at work in the lengthening shadows by the apple tree, outbuilding, and barn. True, he had purchased all these himself only last fall; the deed, signed, dated, and notarized, lay upstairs in a desk drawer. But how foolish he'd been to think that he could actually own this land, land which had been here so long before him and would be here so long after his body had crumbled beneath it. He was just another visitor, though thankful even for that; enough that he'd been given tonight's scent of roses and marsh water and pine, the faint evening breeze that even now brushed his face, and the darkness stealing leaf by leaf over the great trees.

Suddenly, disturbingly, another scent was mingled with the roses: the scent of decay seeping up from the garbage cans, a reminder of what lay waiting for everything that walked or crept upon the earth. Turning away, he hurried back into the house.

When he emerged from the bathroom after washing and rewash-ing his hands – faintly troubled, as he was every night, by the inevitable thoughts of Pilate – the odor of death seemed to linger in his nostrils, gradually mingling with the smell of roasting meat that filled the kitchen. Deborah was still at the stove, stirring one large black pot while keeping watch on a smaller one. The others were already seated, Freirs, as usual, toying with his napkin ring. The wine had been opened, the four glasses filled. It looked tawny and sweet; Sarr wished there were more.

'It's lovely, the way you've fixed this place up,' Carol was saying. She ran her hand appreciatively along the smooth, age-stained wood of the little dining table, set with four straw place mats. It was the same table that, a week before, had borne the star of cottonbread. 'This kitchen's around ten times the size of the one in my apartment, and I'll bet it's twenty degrees cooler in here.'

Bending over the stove, Deborah called back, 'There's a certain person I know who believes the city's hotter because it's so much closer to you-know-where!'

Sarr forced a smile, but he felt a flicker of annoyance. 'Oh, I wouldn't put it like that, exactly,' he said, crossing the kitchen, 'but Lord knows there's precious Utile comfort there.' He pulled back his chair and sat down heavily. 'It's a matter of science, I suppose -something to do with the pavement and the brick. Hardly the sort of place I'd care to live.'

There, the gauntlet was thrown; no use blaming it on the wine. He hadn't meant to speak out that way, but it was too late to take it back. He suspected he was going to have an argument on his hands, because Freirs had stopped toying with the wooden ring.

'Sure,' said Freirs, 'it is a bit hotter in the city. But that's why God gave us air conditioners.'

Sarr heard the laughter of the two women, and his smile vanished. He had always been uncomfortable with jokes, especially jokes about the Lord. He began to frame a reply, but paused, for Deborah had come from the stove carrying a large, steaming bowl of barley soup. Placing it on a hand-painted tile in the center of the table, she