seeing him for the first time. In the altered light, that instant, everything had looked different: the old man's face had been hard, icy, cruel. He had held the knife poised in her direction, and his tiny eyes had glittered like razors in the candlelight.
The bed was wide and almost filled the little room. They lay naked, the two of them, drugged with the heat of the evening, staring at the lantern light that flickered from the table by the wall. Deborah's hair, unfastened, was spread beneath her like a cape, black against the whiteness of the sheet. Around them lay their seven cats: Dinah and Tobias by Deborah's head, Habakkuk, or 'Cookie,' at her feet, Zillah with her face buried just behind Sarr's ear, 'Riah and Rebekah on the corner of the bed, and Bwada half beneath it on the wooden floor, yet well within reach of Sarr's caressing hand.
They lay silently, listening, waiting for Freirs to leave for the night. They could hear him downstairs in the bathroom, noisily brushing his teeth, rinsing his mouth, zipping up his toilet kit, and blowing out the kerosene lamp. The thin wooden door opened with a rattle, followed by footsteps in the kitchen directly below them. Deborah leaned from the bed and watched his progress; through the chinks in the wide-plank floor, with its warped and tilted boards, she saw the faint gleam of Freirs' flashlight moving toward the back door. The door opened, closed, the latch clicked shut, and they heard footsteps descending the back steps. There was silence, broken only by a faint muttered 'God-damn!' – he had stepped on something in the grass – and then they were left alone with their thoughts.
'He was in a bad mood tonight, wasn't he?' whispered Deborah. 'I think it was over Carol. Every time he spoke of her his face got angry.'
Sarr half closed his eyes, settling back against the hard mattress as if it were of down. 'It's only what he deserved,' he said slowly. 'He went back to the city for one reason, and you and I both know what it was. His heart was filled with lust, and the Lord made him suffer for it.'
'He misses her, honey, it isn't any more than that. He's courting her, just the way you courted me.'
He appeared to consider this a moment. 'Well, maybe it's only natural to follow after someone your heart's set on… But he should never have followed her to that place!' His face had become hard again; he looked like the faded photograph of his father which glared sternly from atop the bureau.
'He was only going home.'
'He was leaving all the things we've offered him here, leaving it all behind like it meant nothing to him, like we mean nothing. And for what? For a mess of light and noise and show. 'Twas a mistake, going back there.'
Deborah was silent a moment. 'I guess so,' she said. 'But you know, honey, this place is quite a change for him. He's not used to our ways yet. He likes having people around.' She paused. 'Can't say I blame him, either.'
'Oh, I see.' A hint of smile played about his lips; without turning his head to look at her he reached over and cupped a breast in his hand. 'You're saying I'm not man enough for you anymore, is that right? And you want him instead?'
She giggled and edged closer to him, dislodging two of the cats. 'That's right,' she said. 'I'm getting sick of the likes of you. I'm thinking I'll take me a lover.' She rolled over and pressed her body next to his. He ran his fingers through her hair, brushing it away from the pale skin of her shoulders.
'Guess I should have listened to my mother,' he said, planting a kiss on her mouth. He looked into her face, then smiled. 'Glad I didn't, though.'
The cats moved out of the way, reluctantly, as they made love. The old bed creaked and trembled.
Afterward, even while still inside her, his eyes still closed and his breathing heavy, he was reaching out for the Bible on the night-stand. He slipped out of her just as his hands closed on the book's worn leather binding.
She sighed. 'You know, honey, this is the last night we can do this for a while.'
'Hmmm?' He lay on his elbows in the bed, already thumbing through the dog-eared pages, squinting at the columns of print in the flickering light.
'I said we can't do this for a while -' less you want another mouth to feed.'
He stared at her for a moment as if weighing the matter. Then, shaking his head, he returned to the Bible. 'There'll be time for such things,' he said. 'We owe so much now, you and I, and have so little ourselves… ' He paused again. 'Well, maybe the prophet can guide us.'
He handed her the heavy book and got up from the bed. Silently he walked to the corner of the room near the fireplace where the wall faced inward toward the house, unadorned with pictures and unbroken by a window. Moving the simple hand-braided rug out of the way, he knelt facing the wall, his bare knees upon the planks.
'Let's begin,' he said. He closed his eyes.
Deborah sat upright in the bed, feeling the hard wooden headboard against her back; it seemed only fitting, the hardness, when she held the Bible on her lap. It was open to Jeremiah, as was usual when they performed the ceremony known as 'drawing the sortes,' though occasionally Sarr would test himself by substituting a less familiar chapter. Deborah raised her gaze to the opposite wall, where below a tattered Trenton State banner hung an ancient crocheted design, the Bird of Paradise in the Tree of Life. Keeping her eyes upon the green and gold foliage, she flipped through the chapter at random and poked her finger toward the bottom of the page.
'Twenty-nine three,' she said.
He remained silent, rigid.
She read over the text and raised her eyebrows. 'Fraid I started off with a mean one,' she said.' 'By the hand of Elasah the son-'
'-the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent unto Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon
'Right.' She looked away, flipped the pages again. 'I wonder if Jeremy's been using those cards Carol gave him' – her finger stabbed downward – 'to tell fortunes with, the way we use the Bible. Eight fifteen.'
' 'We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!' Frankly, I think Carol swallowed a white lie about those cards. The Dynnod's not for telling fortunes.'
'How do you know, honey?'
'I read about it back in college. One of my religion courses.'
'I thought the cards were just a game invented by some novelty company.'
'The cards are, yes. But the pictures on them are a whole lot older.'
'What are they for, then?'
'They're supposed to bring on visions.'
Deborah stared blankly at the ceiling while her fingers selected another passage. 'Hmmm. Well, I guess Carol didn't know any better.' She looked down. 'Forty-four seven.'
' 'Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls, to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling… ' '
'Right.' She chose another. 'Thirty-seven four. Speaking of sucklings, Lotte Sturtevant's belly is so big now that all of us think it's going to be a boy. Twins, even. Now, if I were to have a son, say-'
' 'Now Jeremiah came in and went out among the people… '*
'-he could help me with the housework when he was little, and you with the farm work by the time he was half grown. You've been saying you could use another hand. And there's-' She looked down. 'Um, eleven six. There's just no end of things that need doing around here.'
' 'Then the Lord said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them.' ',
'Right.' She flipped farther back. 'I expect all that rusted machinery in the barn is going to have to be cleaned or sold or -forty-nine sixteen.'
' 'Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down.' '
'And have you noticed how the caterpillars have gotten under those eaves? There's a regular mess of them, last time I looked, and the other day Jeremy complained they're nesting in his building. Five thirty. And the woods by his windows need clearing-'
' 'A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land.' '
'The land, yes. All that land's just going to waste right now. Ten twenty-two.
' 'Behold, the noise of the bruit is coming, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities
