T Klein: Ceremonies

The morning passed, gave way to noon. Shadows of clouds swept over their bodies, then a sun so fierce it would have wakened any normal sleepers. Insects circled buzzing around their faces, settled on their eyes; a dragonfly hovered as if with evil intent above Carol's half-open lips. Freirs' plump belly rose and fell without a break in rhythm as flies crawled over his skin and mosquitoes feasted on his sun-warmed blood. Two cats crept forward to peer inquisitively at him, and a pale, glistening slug crept in stately slowness over his wrist and down the other side into the grass. His glasses gleamed beside him in the sunlight. The glimmering brook murmured unheard at their feet.

In the distance, up the sloping lawn, the screen door swung open, then shut with a bang. The old man approached them softly, peering at their sleeping forms. Briefly he knelt beside Carol, making curious passes over her face. Getting to his feet, he stood gazing down at them again, his eyes darting back and forth between a heavy-looking rock and Freirs' head.

Suddenly he froze, listening; his expression changed, face hardening into a smile as his eyes scanned the edge of the woods along the far side of the brook. Casually, almost as an afterthought, he brought his foot down on Freirs' glasses, crushing them into the ground. Then, finding a series of stepping stones, he stepped delicately across the brook and disappeared among the trees.

It was a mark of the Brethren's restraint, their sense of decorum and protocol, as much as of their religious devotion that, though all of them were soon staring with curiosity and alarm at the twisting thread of black smoke in the distance, they continued singing as if nothing were wrong, pressing on through the traditional sixteen hymns. Even when the service was over and the Bible shut, few of them made any move in the direction of the Sturtevants' house, preferring to stay and give Adam Verdock and his daughter (who, of late grown used to death, seemed to be bearing up better than her father) what small comfort they could. Too much curiosity wasn't seemly; there were those among them who'd even objected to the presence of the local newspaper in their homes, arguing, with considerable zeal, that what God intended men to know was already set down in the Bible and that other printed words were mere distractions.

And so, in the end, when the assembly at last began to break up, it was only the more avidly curious among them – those such as Bert and Amelia Steegler, Galen Trudel, Rupert Lindt, and Jan and Hannah Kraft – as well as those closest to the Sturtevants – Joram's brother Abram and his wife, the van Meers and the Klapps, Matthew Geisel, Klaus Buckhalter, and a dozen or so more, including Ham Stoudemire, whose wife, Nettie, would be in attendance as midwife – who actually walked, in a party, toward the Sturtevant farm.

The house itself, a broad, white-shingled Colonial with low single-story wings on each side, was set well back from the main road at the end of a pathway bordered by tall shrubbery. The first things the party encountered, after ascending the path, were the Sturtevants' three young boys, normally a rowdy, outspoken bunch, standing in uneasy silence by the front of the house. 'Father won't let us inside,' the oldest boy explained somewhat fearfully. 'We have to stay here in front. Aunt Wilma's in there, though. So's Sister Nettie.'

This last had been addressed to Klaus Buckhalter, whose wife, Wilma – Lotte Sturtevant's older sister – was already inside, helping Nettie Stoudemire with the birth.

Buckhalter conferred briefly with his nephews, then turned back to the group. 'I think Abram and I had best go up alone.'

The others hung back as the two men climbed the front steps and knocked, almost timidly, at the door. After some moments, it was opened by Buckhalter's wife. She looked as if she'd been weeping.

'You can all come in,'she said. 'It's done now… She's alive.'

'And the child?' asked Abram.

She shuddered and shook her head.

Frowning, the two men entered the house, Wilma standing at the door as the rest filed nervously in behind them. Ahead of them, at the top of the stairs, the midwife stood wringing her hands.

'Is my brother up there?' asked Abram.

Wilma pointed, trembling, in the direction of the yard. 'Back there.' She turned and started up the staircase; as if by unspoken agreement the women in the group filed upstairs behind her, continuing toward a doorway at the right, from which issued a series of low moans. Left to themselves, the men stood awkwardly in the downstairs hall, then followed Abram toward the back of the house.

They found Joram seated in a rocking chair in the middle of the glassed-in back porch. He was rocking furiously, as if possessed, and seemed barely to notice them. His face, they saw, was drawn, weary, but his eyes, which stared at nothing, had a wild look. Behind him, outside in the yard, they could see a round pit filled with ashes from which a few dark tendrils of smoke still rose.

At first it seemed that Joram was addressing them, but then they all saw that he was in fact talking to himself. 'God is merciful,' he was saying as he rocked back and forth, over and over like a litany of comfort. 'God is merciful, merciful… '

Abram grasped him by the shoulder. 'What is it, brother?'

Slowly the man in the chair looked up, and recognition dawned in his face. 'He touched her belly,' he said, 'and she gave birth to-' A fit of trembling seized him. He shook his head. 'Thank the Lord it didn't live!'

Rupert Lindt stepped forward. 'Joram, what are you talkin' about? Who touched Lotte's belly?'

Joram turned to look at him. He was silent a moment, as if trying to recollect. "Twas the one from the city. The one livin' out at Poroth Farm.'

The men eyed one another in silence, the same dark look growing on all their faces.

'I think it was the air,' Joram was saying. "Twas the Lord's pure, holy air that killed it. It wasn't meant to breathe as we do… '

And the men looked at one another, and nodded, there on the porch with the ashes just outside, while upstairs, at the other end of the house, out of Lotte's hearing, Wilma Buckhalter sat huddled with the womenfolk and told them, weeping, of the terrible thing that had been born a few hours before and that Joram and the midwife had burned in the back yard – a thing with tiny yellow claws and the beginnings of a tail…

The two men were working in the shadow of the hill. The younger, still in his teens, was crouching over a small grey box-shaped instrument, an emanometer, used to measure radon gas. From a strap by his side hung a similar device for the measurement of methane. The older of the two, a tall, stoop-shouldered man with thinning black hair, was pacing around the base of the hill taking readings on radiation with a scintillation counter. A camera and a light meter dangled around his neck.

'No,' he said, sounding far from surprised, 'it's the same over here. Just background count.' Squinting, he peered up along the length of the cone. It towered forty feet above the forest floor – not so high as most of the older trees, but in this section, where the trees were short and vegetation sparse, its top protruded well above them all. 'Think I'd better get a couple more pictures.'

He backed into the sunlight, holding the light meter before him. Checking the dial, he raised the camera and focused on the top of the mound. The younger man stood watching him. Moments later he called out, 'Dr Lewalski? We've got a visitor.'

The other lowered his camera and turned where the younger man was pointing. At the far side of the mound stood a short, somewhat paunchy old man with glowing pink skin and a halo of fine white hair.

'Oh, don't mind me!' the old man cried. 'I'm just passing through.' He stood staring at them for a moment and made no move to go. 'You two prospecting for uranium or something?'