garbage… Afterward I must have gone right back to sleep, because I don't remember anything else. I recall I had a dream about a man with snow-white wings, I thought it was my father come back as an angel. I don't know exactly how long I slept, but it must have been for some time, because when I woke up I was shivering, my hands were clenched like fists inside my pockets, and the day had gotten darker.
I'd thought it was a child's cry that woke me, but there weren't any children in the park, and not many adults left either. It was late afternoon. I shook myself awake and hurried from the bench. Lord, how my body ached! Just after I passed the trash can, I heard a tiny little cry, so faint it sounded miles away. But something made me stop. I looked around, and sure enough, 'twas coming from the bag.
'Well, Deborah knows the rest. Inside there were the remains of a sandwich – wax paper with some icy crusts of bread, a bit of meat -and six or seven newborn kittens. Dead. Frozen, I believe, though a couple looked broken like-'
'Honey, please!'
He nodded, the vision fading. 'I'm sorry, Deb. You're right. I'm acting like a fool. Enough to say it was a sight not fit for Christian eyes. But then I noticed a bit of movement, and I reached down and found that one of the bodies, a little grey thing underneath the others, still had a tiny breath of life left in it. I picked it up – it was so small I could hold it in one hand – and very softly it began crying, crying… '
The sound of it came back to him, and the chill from off the river. He could feel once more the stiffness of his limbs, the pain of the wind against his numbing fingers, the exhaustion of that journey. Suddenly he felt very tired.
'The shops there were still open,' he said at last. 'That's just about the only thing we have in common, the people of the city and the Brethren, we're none of us too proud to work on the Lord's day. But the shopkeepers in that hellish place had hearts like flint, and nary a one would give me a penny's worth of milk – not that I could have paid for even that. So I asked God for forgiveness and took the milk anyhow, a carton from a supermarket shelf. I saw to it that the creature got nourishment, warm from my own mouth. No one was looking, or if anybody was, no one seemed to care. Except for me. I cared. And I cried. God help me, that's the only time in my life I've ever stolen anything – that Sunday in that city of yours. Ten years it's been, and then some, and I've yet to set foot there again.
'They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. I'd hoped to bring a jewel home, and now somehow I'd found one – the last innocent thing left amidst all that corruption. I kept her inside my shirt, pressed up against me, all the way back to the bus station and all the way to Flemington. She was almost dead by the time I got her home, but I knew my mother'd nurse her back to health.'
Carol lay down her fork. 'And did she?'
'Sarr's mother can do anything,' said Deborah, returning to the table with the salad. 'She has the healing gift.'
'I won't deny it,' said Sarr. 'She can make things live and grow when she's a mind to.'
'So the story has a happy ending after all.' There was relief in Carol's voice. 'And the kitten?'
'Haven't you guessed?' Sarr bent forward and lifted Bwada onto his lap. Squatting there uncertainly with her ears bent back, claws digging into his trouser leg, the animal looked fat and sullen and dangerous, but as soon as Sarr began to scratch the silver fur between her ears she blinked contentedly and relaxed, settling herself on his lap with an almost inaudible purring.
The others looked on, grinning; even Deborah seemed pleased -Deborah, who had heard the tale before and who bore little love for Bwada, the one cat of the seven that was Sarr's alone.
But Sarr himself shared none of their content. Now lapsed into reverie, he was years away and thrice as many miles, remembering in Bwada's purr the susurrus of wind as it raced beneath a frozen grey sky through that desolate circle of trees; and as the cat sound swelled and deepened, taking on what almost seemed a note of warning, he heard once more the old man's peculiar little song.
I'm among loonies, Freirs was thinking. These people are all insane! Every time somebody farts they think God is giving them a sign.
All through the story he'd been watching Carol's face. She'd been listening with rapt attention, and at certain points – whenever Poroth had prayed or called on God – she'd gotten positively starry-eyed.
But maybe it wasn't God that made her starry-eyed. Maybe it was Poroth.
Well, what else did I expect? he told himself. He's a hell of a lot bigger than I am, and in a hell of a lot better shape, and that soft, low voice of his would probably make any woman think she's a little girl again being tucked into bed by her daddy.
He wondered if Poroth talked so much whenever a new woman was around. Or perhaps it was the influence of the wine; that home-brewed stuff had been surprisingly potent. His own head was still swimming with it.
And of course there was that brooding quality he had – something, Freirs knew from experience, that women seemed to like. It was so easy to mistake for real depth.
Maybe this was all a bad idea, he told himself. Maybe I should never have asked her out here in the first place. Clearly Sarr's the master here. This is his world.
'No, I'll not deny it,' he was saying to Carol. 'I still feel the attraction of the lights. But I'm a wiser man today -1 know it sounds prideful, but it's true – and I know the path we've got to follow. We've got to give up the ways of man and the ways of the city: the corruption, the idleness, the love of worldly gain. And you should too. You should come back to the only constant things: the land… and God.'
That bastard. ^ 1 thought Friers. He's using God to make time with my girl!
'Now I'm not saying we have it easy here, Deborah and me, and I'm not saying we have a lot of anything but work. But we're living the way the Lord wants us to, living just like people in the Bible.' Poroth's hands took in the kitchen, the farmhouse, the fields and woods beyond. 'Our only aim, really, is to abide by what the prophet said: 'Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein.' '
Carol nodded as if she understood. 'Yes,' she said, 'that's Jeremiah. I kept hearing passages from him on the radio today. He must be big in these parts.'
Deborah seemed to find this irresistibly funny. Her husband did not. 'He's the prophet of our sect,' he explained.
Freirs spoke up. 'And a good thing, too. I sometimes think that's the only reason they let an unbeliever like me stay here – because they liked my name.'
Carol barely seemed to hear; her eyes were still on Sarr. 'The one thing I don't understand,' she said, 'is where you're hiding your church. I drove all over Gilead and didn't see a single one.'
'Oh, we don't go to church,' said Deborah, getting to her feet. 'We hold our meetings in the Brethren's homes. Later this month we'll be holding one here, and you're welcome to come out and see for yourself.'
'We take our call from the Gospels,' added Sarr.' 'Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.' '
Carol nodded. 'I see. That's Matthew, isn't it?'
'Hey,' said Freirs, surprised, 'you're pretty good!'
She looked slightly embarrassed. 'Didn't I tell you? I went to parochial school for twelve years.'
Freirs' eyes widened. 'No kidding! I knew you were Catholic and all, but – well, I guess I'd always pictured you as just a nice corn-fed country girl from some little red schoolhouse in the sticks.' He tried to remember if she'd said anything about parochial school over dinner the previous week. Probably he'd done so much of the talking that she'd never had a chance.
'There's a lot you don't know about me, Jeremy,' she said. She turned to Sarr. 'You see, I may go about things a bit differently, but I've tried to live in the Lord's way too.'
Freirs regarded them sourly. They sound like they're on speaking terms with God, he thought. But I'm not so sure I'd want to meet the Poroths' version on a dark night.
Leaning back in his chair, he peered out the window above the sink. It was certainly dark enough out there tonight. The moon seemed to be hidden behind a cloud, with only a pale streak above the trees to mark its presence. A line from a poem came back to him: On the farm, the darkness wins. Though no doubt the Brethren would argue that the darkness here was the darkness of God.
Beside him Deborah was clearing away the salad plates; the Poroths ate their salad European-style, just before dessert. 'Hey,' she said, nudging him gently on the shoulder, 'come back and join us. I went to a lot of trouble over what's coming.'
