The cellar was the most primitive area of the house, with a floor of hard-packed earth and stone walls lined with crude wooden shelves. The ceiling was low, like the roof of the cave – too low for Sarr to stand upright – and the air, redolent of vinegar and spices, was noticeably cooler than anywhere else in the house. Raising the pitcher, Deborah poured the leftover milk back into a large metal canister near the foot of the stairs and refitted the lid. On a shelf against the nearby wall – above a row of empty pickle jars which she hoped, by summer's end, to fill – lay a cardboard egg carton. Down here, in the cool darkness of the cellar, hens' eggs remained fresh for weeks; each day she'd add new ones to the carton and take the older ones for meals. Today, she noticed, there were only three eggs left on. the shelf; she had used the rest for lunch. But with the hens laying as well as they had been, she knew she could count on four more by dinnertime.
Back upstairs, taking the little basket that hung on the porch where the cats played, she headed toward the barn, Zillah and Cookie trotting at her heels. Sarr, sleeves rolled up, was bent over a thick growth of weed at the margin of the cornfield, slicing at it with a sickle. Freirs was back in his room, seated at his writing table; she could see him dimly through the screens. It was a shame, she reflected, that someone as smart as he was spent so much time on spook books and showed so little interest in religion; in all the weeks he'd been living here he'd never once asked them how services had gone. Well, next week he'd be able to see for himself, because they were going to be held here at the farm, right outside his door.
This morning's worship had been a satisfying one. True, they'd had to hold it in the hot sun; Ham Stoudemire's trees were lately so infested with tent caterpillars that anyone standing in the shade risked getting one down his neck. (She would have to make sure San-checked all their own trees this week, as well as the eaves of the barn.) And a few of the Brethren had made some rather odd remarks about 'the stranger' they were harboring here – how silly! (Just as well, probably, that she and Sarr hadn't told the others he was a Jew.) And too, there'd been the memorial prayer for old Hannah Kraft – that, of course, had been a sad note; poor Minna Buckhalter had been so upset…
But Deborah had been pleased to see that stuck-up Lotte Sturtevant looking so red-faced and puffy; she wouldn't look that way when she was with child. (And why had the woman insisted on coming at all? Perhaps that awful Joram had made her.) She had also enjoyed the singing; the morning's heat had brought out the spirit in everyone.
'Saved by the blood of the Crucified One,
Ransomed from sin and a new work begun… '
Swinging the basket in time, she rounded the corner of the barn and walked inside. Sunlight slanted on the pitted metal surface of the truck parked just within the doorway. A pair of fat bluebottles with heads like gemstones buzzed in the light. Along one wall the line of antiquated farm implements rusted on the hay, their spiked wheels and jagged iron jaws giving them the look of medieval instruments of torture.
'Sing praise to the Father and praise to the Son,
Saved by the blood of the Crucified One.'
The hens were quiet today. Usually when she entered all four of them glared impatiently down at her from the high chicken-wire coop, squawking for their food bucket, but today only one of them peeped through the wire. She could see the dark red rooster pacing agitatedly behind it.
Climbing the heavy wooden ladder up to the platform where the coops lay, she reached above her to unfasten the latch at the side.
She froze; it was already unfastened. Around her head the bluebottles buzzed crazily.
Lifting herself to the platform, she saw, in an instant, the reason for the quiet: amid a small mound of feathers at the back of the coop, their yellow legs thrust at odd angles in the air, lay the plump and headless bodies of three hens.
Deborah maintains that Bwada did it. As she points out, the cat was known to be adept at turning handles, latches, etc., amp; just because she's run off, there's no certainty she's dead. 'Remember,' Deborah said, 'she's used to eating what she catches in the woods.'
That's where her argument breaks down – because the hens had not been eaten. They would certainly have made Bwada a succulent meal, yet their bodies had scarcely been touched. Only the heads had been taken.
Sarr claims he's heard of weasels doing this amp; came up with a dozen stories to prove it. While only a few days ago he was ready to believe that Satan had entered the cat, now he refuses to believe that his beloved old Bwada could have done such a thing. 'She may have fought with the other cats,' he said, 'but that was out of jealousy. She'd never stoop to this.'
I'm willing to suspect anything right now. Having just read some
Frederick 'White Wolf Marryat this afternoon, I'm not even so sure I'd rule out wolves, were- and otherwise, as a possibility. My Field Guide to North American Mammals lists both red amp; grey foxes amp; even coyotes as surviving here in New Jersey. No wolves left, the guidebook says. But of course it may be wrong.
Why would any animal – Bwada, wolf, or weasel – make off with heads like that? Simply out of sheer meanness? It just doesn't seem natural.
As if she were out to convince me just how nasty she really is, Mother Nature had one more shock in store for me. When I came back here to this building tonight, after talking long into the evening with Sarr amp; Deborah, I reached out in the darkness, closed my hand over the doorknob – amp; crushed three fat green caterpillars. They left a foul-smelling whitish liquid on my hand.
'Guess what I have in my hand,' Rosie, grinning, held something concealed behind his back. Across the room the air conditioner fought a noisy war against the summer night.
'Is it for me?'
His grin widened. 'Now I ask you, have I ever come here empty-handed?'
'Is it something to wear?'
He shook his head. 'Uh-uh, no more clothes, young lady! You're better off choosing your own.'
'Is it something to read?'
'In a way. But don't be misled, it's not a book.' He paused. 'Give up? Here. Something to play with.'
He drew forth an object wrapped in brown paper. Tearing that off, Carol saw that it contained a small cardboard box and recognized the green and gold design on the front. Dynnod, the letters said, in swirls of acanthus leaves and roses.
'Oh, of course. They're the same cards I took out for Jeremy. Gee, thanks, Rosie. They're beautiful!'
Actually, she was rather let down; she'd been hoping he'd brought her jewelry. And she seemed to recall that there'd been something a little unpleasant about these particular cards.
'You never explained how these work,' she said, slipping the cards from the box and once again looking in vain for some instructions. 'They're for telling fortunes, right?'
Rosie nodded. 'Only you tell them through a kind of game,* he said, 'and the winner gets his or her wish. Here, sit down. I'll show you how to play.'
The rules were confusing. There were only twenty-two cards, but in order to win the game it was necessary to memorize them all, since the object was to guess which cards were held by one's opponent. Carol found her gaze returning again and again to the smiling man and woman on the card marked The Lovers, and though she tried her best to concentrate, her thoughts kept straying to Jeremy.
'You're not paying attention, Carol,' Rosie said for the third time. 'You have to study all the cards. Now this tree's the da'fae because green is daeh, and we call the fire tein'eth because teine means red… '
'I'm trying,' she said, already tiring of the game. There didn't really seem to be much point to it: it was difficult to score because each card held a different value which also had to be memorized, and so far as she could understand there was no clear way to tell when the game ended and who had won.
'The cards,' he kept saying. 'You have to keep looking at the cards.'
At the end of an hour Rosie simply laid down his hand, announced, 'It appears you've beaten me, young lady,' and proceeded to read Carol's fortune in the cards that she held. As fortunes went, it seemed, in part, too bland – prophecies of friendship, hard work, a second visit to the country – and, in pan, too silly: 'There's a test in your future,' he said, studying the card marked The Mound.
'A test of what?'
He tapped the card and looked up, grinning. 'A test of will. Can you move mountains?'
No, Carol decided, she just couldn't see the point of it all. It wasn't the sort of game she'd care to play again.
