“One of ’em will preach pretty soon,” she said. “That’s what everybody’s waiting for.”
“I’ve seen enough preaching,” muttered Len. But he stayed. The wind was icy, blowing down the canyon from snow fields on the high peaks. Everybody was wearing cowhide or horsehide coats against it, but the New Ishmaelites had nothing but their shrouds and their goatskins to flap about their naked legs. They did not seem to mind it.
“They suffer terribly in the winters, just the same,” said Joan. “Starve to death, and freeze. Our men find their bodies in the spring, sometimes a whole band of them, kids and all.” She looked at them with cold contemptuous eyes. “You’d think they’d give the kids a chance, at least. Let them grow up enough to make up their own minds about freezing to death.”
The children, bony and blue with the chill, stamped and shouted and tossed their tangled mops of hair. They would never be able to make up their own minds about anything, even if they did grow up. Habit would have got too big a start on them. Len said, “I guess they can’t afford to, any more than your people or mine.”
A man stepped out of the group and began to preach. His hair and beard were a dirty gray, but Len thought that he was not as old as he looked. New Ishmaelites did not seem to get very old. He wore a goatskin, greasy and foul, with the hair worn off it in big patches. The bones of his chest stood out like a bird cage. He shook his fists at the people of Fall Creek and cried:
“Repent, repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand! You who live for the flesh and the sins of the flesh, your end is near. The Lord has spoken in flame and thunder, the earth has opened and swallowed the unrighteous, and some have said, This is all, He has punished us and now we are forgiven, now we can forget. But I tell you that God in His mercy only gave you a little more time, and that time is nearly gone, and you have not repented! And what will you say when the heavens open, and God comes to judge the world? How will you beg and plead and cry out for mercy, and what will your luxuries and your vanities buy you then? Nothing but hell-fire! Fire and brimstone and everlasting pain, unless you repent and do penance for your sins!”
The wind made his words thin and blew them far away, repent, repent, like a fading echo down the canyon, as though repentance was already a lost hope. And Len thought, What if he knew, what if I was to go and shout it at him, what’s up the canyon there not half a mile away? Then what good would it all be to him, his dirty goatskin and the murders he’s done in the name of faith?
Get out. Get out, crazy old man, and stop your shouting.
He did, at last, seeming to feel that he had made sufficient payment for the gift. He rejoined the group and they all moved off up the winding road to the pass. The wind had got stronger, whistling cruelly past the rocks, and they bent a little under it and the steepness of the climb, their long hair blown out in front of them and their ragged garments lashing around their legs. Len shivered involuntarily.
“I used to feel sorry for them, too,” Joan said, “until I realized that they’d kill us all in a minute if they could.” She looked down at herself, at her coat of calfskin with the brown and white outside and her woolen skirt and her booted legs. “Vanity,” she said. “Luxury.” And she laughed, very short and hard. “The dirty old fool. He doesn’t know the meaning of the words.”
She lifted her eyes to Len. They were bright with some secret thought.
“I could show you, Len. What those words mean.”
Her eyes disturbed him. They always did. They were so keen and sharp and she always seemed to be thinking so fast behind them, thoughts he could not follow. He knew now she was challenging him in some way, so he said, “All right, then, show me.”
“You’ll have to come to my house.”
“I’m coming there for dinner anyhow. Remember?”
“I mean right now.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
They walked back through the lanes of Fall Creek.
When they reached the house he followed her inside. It was quiet, except for a couple of flies buzzing on a sunny windowpane, and it felt warm after the wind. Joan took off her coat.
“I guess my folks are still out,” she said. “I guess they won’t be back for a while. Do you mind?”
“No,” said Len. “I don’t mind.” He took off his own coat and sat down.
Joan wandered over to the window, slapping vaguely at the flies. She had walked fast all the way, but now she did not seem in any hurry.
“Do you still like working in the Hole?”
“Sure,” said Len warily. “It’s fine.”
Silence.
“Have they found the answer yet?”
“No, but as soon as Erdmann—Now why ask a question like that? You know they haven’t.”
“Has anybody told you how soon they will?”
“You know better than that, too.”
Silence again, and one of the flies lay dead on the floor.
“Almost a hundred years,” she said softly, looking out the window. “It seems such an awful long time. I just don’t know if we can stand it for another hundred.”
She turned around. “I don’t know if
Len got up, not looking straight at her. “Maybe I better go.”
“Why?”
“Well, your folks aren’t here, and—”
“They’ll be back in time for dinner.”
“But it’s a long time till dinner.”
“Well,” she said, “don’t you want to see what you came for?” She showed him the edges of her teeth, white and laughing. “You wait.”
She ran into the next room and shut the door. Len sat down again. He kept twisting his hands together, and his temples felt hot. He knew the feeling. He had had it before, in the rose arbor, in the judge’s dark garden with Amity. He could hear Joan rummaging around in the room. There was a sound like the lid of a trunk banging against the wall. A long time went by. He wondered what the devil she was doing and listened nervously for footsteps on the porch, knowing all the time that her folks would not be back because if they were going to come she would not be doing this, whatever it was.
The door opened and she came out
She was wearing a red dress. It was faded a little, and there were streaks and creases in it from having been folded away for a long time, but those were unimportant things. It was red. It was made of some soft, shiny, slithery stuff that rustled when she moved, and it came clear down to the floor, hiding her feet, but that was about all it hid. It fitted tight around her waist and hips and outlined her thighs when she walked forward, and above the waist there wasn’t very much at all. She held out her arms at the sides and turned around slowly. Her back and shoulders were bare, white and gleaming in the sunlight that fell through the window, and her breasts were sharply outlined in the red cloth, showing above it in two half-moon curves, and her black hair fell down dark and glossy over her white skin.
“It belonged to my great-grandmother. Do you like it?”
Len said, “Christ.” He stared and stared, and his face was almost as red as the dress. “It’s the most indecent thing I ever saw.”
“I know,” she said, “but isn’t it beautiful?” She ran her hands slowly down her front and out across the skirt, savoring the rustle, the softness. “This was real vanity, real luxury. Listen, how it whispers. What do you think that dirty old fool would say if he could see it?”
She was quite close to him now. He could see the fine white texture of her shoulders and the way her breasts rose and fell when she breathed, with the bright red cloth pressing them tight. She was smiling. He realized suddenly that she was handsome, not pretty like Amity had been, but dark-eyed handsome even if she wasn’t very tall. He looked into her eyes and suddenly he realized that
