Ceremonies Read online

  He wished he weren't wearing the chinos and blue workshirt, imitation L. L. Bean that here just looked phony and college-boy. Plus his goddamned gut hanging out. What Poroth and the others were wearing, that uncomfortable-looking black and white getup, a virtual uniform – was apparently what real country people wore. Beneath his shirt Poroth's broad back was probably as well muscled as any of the people Freirs knew who hung around $600-a-year health clubs or spent their leisure hours pumping iron at the Y. Though now that he looked at it closely, the shirt itself was sweat-stained and none too clean; was this the way the man attended church?

  Poroth patted the metal flank of his beat-up green truck as if it were a farm animal. 'She probably isn't what you're used to,' he said regretfully. Freirs expected him to qualify this, to add some assurance of the truck's homely virtues, but the other merely swung himself up into the driver's seat and waited for Freirs to climb in beside him.

  The pair of youths had just pulled out from the parking lot and disappeared up the road in their own truck, and once more the loudest sound to break the quiet was the regular metallic scrape from across the street where the mechanic labored over his engine. The man paused above some unseen part; then, as Poroth gunned the pickup's motor, he looked up, his face betraying neither friendliness nor interest. His beard looked somehow incongruous above the grease-stained overalls, a man out of the Bible attempting to pass for modern.

  Poroth drove fast, either from a desire to impress or a simple impatience to be home. Thanks to the truck's height, Freirs enjoyed a commanding perspective of the road ahead. With every uneven-ness in the surface the two of them bounced on the springy black seat like cowboys on horseback; several times Freirs found himself reaching out almost surreptitiously to steady himself against the dented metal of the dashboard. He stole a glance at Poroth, whose skin, while rough, seemed surprisingly pale for one who spent most of his day working in the sun. Against the dark beard his face seemed all the paler. The beard, and the man's sheer size, made it difficult to tell his age. In the photo he'd looked as old as forty, but Freirs now suspected he was as much as a decade younger, perhaps as young as Freirs himself. He tried, in his imagination, to erase the beard from Poroth's chin and to do the same for the long, obviously home-cut hair. What sort of person would Poroth be in the city? Stick him in a three-piece suit, or on the subway with a briefcase beneath his arm, or sipping at a beer in some restaurant near Abingdon Square… No, it didn't work, he just wouldn't fit; he was too tall, too broad of shoulder, too obviously meant for outdoor labor. His very features were too stern, his brow thrust too far forward. There seemed no urban counterpart for him.

  Poroth still hadn't asked him anything about himself, his interests, his impressions – none of the chat that Freirs would have offered a Sunday visitor. Had he done something wrong? Maybe Poroth had resented his snoozing in the graveyard.

  'When you saw me resting back there,' he said, speaking loudly over the sound of the truck, 'I hope it wasn't also the resting place of some relative of yours.'

  Surprisingly, Poroth didn't answer right away, and he gave Freirs a quick, unsettling look. 'Well,' he said at last, 'the fact is, pretty much everyone around here is related in one way or another. It's like a tribe – you know, a limited area with a few extended families. A sociologist would have a field day.'

  Freirs heard the complicity in Poroth's voice – he'd been speaking as one educated man to another – and remembered what Deborah had written: Both of us have attended college outside the community. Clearly Sarr didn't want him to forget it.

  'Sounds incestuous.'

  Poroth shrugged. 'No more than any other tribe. Our order's pretty strict. And there are also Brethren living outside of Gilead, so it's not as if we only marry each other. My wife's from Sidon, over in Pennsylvania – an even smaller settlement.'

  'You met at college?'

  'No, we'd met years before that, at a Quarinale, a kind of planting festival. But we didn't get to see each other again till college. I was at Trenton, Deborah spent two years at Page. It's a Bible school.' He paused. 'We've only been back here for six or seven months. Deborah's still learning to fit in.'

  'Is fitting in important?'

  'Very.'

  Freirs felt a stir of interest. 'I guess she and I will have a lot in common, then.'

  Poroth darted him a glance. 'In what way?'

  'We're both newcomers around here.'

  The other mulled this over, frowning. 'I guess you're right. There are some strong personalities in Gilead, and a few people haven't really accepted her yet. It's all a bit new to Deborah. At this point, she's still trying to get all the families straight. There are faces to remember, names and relations-'

  'Yes, I saw a lot of those names on the tombstones back there. Sturtevant, van Meer

  'That's right. And Reid, Troet, Buckhalter, a few stray Verdocks-'

  'That was the stone I fell asleep by,' Freirs said. 'Troet.'

  'Ah, yes.' Poroth kept his eyes on the road. 'Actually, they were a distant branch of my mother's family. She's a Troet too. But that branch is gone now.'

  'They all seem to have died at the same time.'

  Poroth nodded. 'Some kind of fire, I think. The Lord works in strange ways.' He fell silent; then, as if realizing that this was insufficient: 'Fire's always been a hazard in the country. These days, though, people around here live pretty much the way everyone else does, and they die of the same things other people do – heart attacks, cancer, an occasional accident… all the usual things. Of course, they may live a few years longer, what with working hard, breathing clean air, eating food they've grown themselves.'

  'Well, I plan to do plenty of hard work this summer,' said Freirs, settling back, 'but it'll be more the mental sort. Still, this looks like a healthy place to do it.' He patted his belly. 'Maybe I can even lose a little weight.'

  Poroth smiled. 'I should warn you, Deborah's a good cook. I hope you're one who struggles against the temptations of the flesh.'

  Freirs laughed. 'No better than the next man, I guess! You know what they say about the best way to get rid of a temptation.' He laughed again and looked over at Poroth, but the other was no longer smiling.

  They had already passed through a lane of brick houses, square and unadorned, notable only for the absence of children's outdoor toys, junked auto bodies, and whimsical lawn decorations that Freirs had seen in front of other rural homes he'd passed today. Many of the houses were bordered by plots of land in earthen rows, dotted here and there with little shoots of green. Children tended garden beside their elders; they waved to Poroth as he went by, eyeing Freirs uneasily. A house was under construction, bearded men clinging to the framework like sailors in the rigging of a ship. They, too, waved, their faces impassive.

  'I see there's no restriction against working on Sunday,' said Freirs.

  'Far from it. We believe that labor's holy, and all days are sanctified by it. "For thou shall eat the labor of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee."

  'Amen,' Freirs said automatically, though Bible talk merely bored him, like words from a foreign text that had lost, in translation, some essential meaning. But at least he'd found a reason for the state of Poroth's clothes; every sweat ring was presumably a badge of honor.

  They had been following the road over a slight rise of land, Poroth gunning the motor to maintain their speed. Now, on the farther side, they passed a sprawling red farmhouse and a barn that looked pegged to the earth by the broad silo beside it. Cattle grazed up and down the slope.

  'Prosperous-looking place,' said Freirs.

  'Verdock's dairy,' said Poroth. 'More relations. Lise Verdock is my father's sister.'

  The cattle all faced the same direction, as if in prayer. A few were moving idly among the others in what seemed slow motion; the rest were as immobile as creatures on a billboard. Freirs, smelling grass and manure, breathed deeply. This stuff was supposed to save him.

  'They
stand tail to the wind,' Poroth was saying, 'so when they all look east like that, it means good weather.' He nodded toward a more imposing house beyond the dairy farm, at the top of a long tree-lined drive. 'Sturtevant,' he said. 'Brother Joram has considerable influence in these parts.'

  'And does your father have a farm out here too?'

  'No, he died ten years ago this fall. And he was never a farmer; he ran the Co-operative. So did his father and his father. Now the Steeglers run it – Brother Bert and Sister Amelia. Bert's mother was a Stoudemire, which makes him… let's see, a third cousin once or twice removed.' He grinned. 'See, it gets complicated.'

  'Maybe I should just regard everybody as one big happy family.'

  Poroth seemed to consider this a moment. 'Yes,' he said at last. 'Yes, happy.' He nodded, though it seemed as much to himself as to Freirs.

  Freirs watched the scenery roll by, the dark fields corduroyed by rows of early corn. So Poroth was taking to the land again after generations in town. That made him, in a way, as unfamiliar with farming as Freirs was himself. It was somehow good to hear.

  They turned right and continued downhill, a shade more steeply now. At the bottom, Poroth swung the truck abruptly to the left, the road following a shady, swiftly flowing stream half hidden from view by trees along its banks. Through the open window Freirs could hear the contented percolation of the water as it passed among the rocks with a sound like something singing to itself.

  'Wasakeague Brook,' said Poroth, raising his voice to be heard. 'A branch of it runs past our land.'

  They kept to the brook as it wound by straggly orchards, cornfields, and an occasional ancient-looking farmhouse, the sort where strangers knocked on wintry nights and fires blazed within. It felt like a scene in some book from his childhood. 'Boy,' said Freirs, 'I feel as if New York's a thousand miles away.'

  Poroth eyed him quizzically. 'And is that a good feeling or a bad one?'

  'Good… I think.' Freirs smiled. 'I'll let you know at the end of the day.'

  The road cut through a stand of beech and cottonwood. Branches snapped against the truck's hood; leaves flattened themselves against the windshield. Freirs moved back from the window as the foliage rushed past.

  'As for me,' Poroth said suddenly, 'a thousand miles away's exactly where I like it.' He sounded like a man with something to get off his chest. 'Even two thousand would suit me just fine.'

  'Oh?' Freirs was still concentrating on the flashing branches. 'Wouldn't that make getting in and out a little inconvenient?'

  'Yes, I imagine it would! But you see, I don't go in and out. I saw the place for the first time around ten years ago, and I've never set foot there since.'

  Uh-oh. For a moment he'd forgotten where he was: among the apple-knockers. Garden State variety. These people voted against cities at election time and probably preached against them too.

  'Sounds like you had a bad experience.'

  'Memorable, anyway. I'll tell you about it sometime.'

  'And how old were you then?'

  'Let's see, I would've been… just seventeen.'

  So Poroth was actually younger than he. Hard to believe – and hard to believe a young man of normal curiosity could grow up so close to New York without ever hopping on the bus to see what it was like.

  'It's a big world out there, Sarr. Don't you think you ought to give it another chance?'

  Poroth shook his head. 'I've already seen the world – as much as I want to see, anyway. I spent seven years out there. How many have you spent around here?'

  'Why, none, of course,' said Freirs, with a shrug. 'It's hardly the same thing.'

  'I disagree,' said Poroth. 'You've only seen one side of the world. I've seen both. But I'm home now, and it feels right.'

  'Home for good?'

  'Yes, sir! I intend to die right here in Hunterdon County.'

  'And Deborah,' Freirs said carefully, 'does she feel the same?' He already suspected that she didn't.

  'No, Deborah's a bit more… adventurous than I am. And not so quick to judge, I'll grant her that. She's visited the city a few times, and I can't pretend she shares my feelings about it.'

  'I guess it was Deborah, then, who put the ad in the library.'

  Poroth looked blank. 'What library?'

  'The Voorhis, where I'm doing my research. That's where I saw your ad – on the bulletin board.'

  Poroth took his eyes from the road and turned a suspicious glance on Freirs. 'You mean the notice that Deborah wrote out?'

  'That's right. On some kind of recipe card, I think.'

  He shook his head. 'Impossible. I put it up myself – at the bus depot over in Flemington. I wasn't sure, at first, that we'd want anyone from too far away.'

  'You mean, from New York?'

  'At the time, yes. You see, we'd never done this before – it seemed safer to start with someone who already knew the area. The ad was kind of an experiment. I figured someone passing through Fleming-ton might see it at the bus stop.' He paused. 'That's where I thought you'd seen it.'

  'Nope. I'd never been to Flemington in my life, before today.' He was as much in the dark as Poroth but found something curiously enjoyable in the other's bewilderment. 'All I know is, I saw it in New York. I guess somebody just decided to move it.'

  'Sure, but who?’

  Freirs shrugged. 'Some do-gooder, maybe. Or maybe it was fate. Unless you've got a better idea.'

  Poroth, staring distractedly down the road, fingers drumming on the steering wheel, said nothing.

  He was still silent when, minutes later, the trees thinned out. Ahead of them the road forked to the right and led onto a crossing. Halfway up a hill above the opposite bank, guarded at the back by a line of aging cedars, stood a small stone cottage, squat, slate-roofed, and overgrown with vines. Battalions of flowers separated the house from the surrounding expanse of lawn. Additional rows had been planted in front, forming a series of terraced steps that led down to the stream.

  Spanning the stream, and constructed of the same stone as the cottage, rose the arch of an old stone bridge only wide enough for one car to pass over at a time. Its railings were low and no doubt insubstantial, mere slats of wood; you'd hear them bend and crack before your car went off the edge, but they wouldn't keep you from falling. Freirs inadvertently held his breath as the truck rumbled across, but Poroth drove without pause or hesitation – perhaps, even, with a touch of bravado.

  On the other side, unexpectedly, he slowed, following the road as it encircled the hill, the cottage from this vantage point looking like a kind of outpost meant to warn those farther inland of encroaching civilization. The flowers that surrounded it were sleeping sentries, ready at any moment to snap to attention.

  'Nice-looking little place,' remarked Freirs, as they were passing.

  Poroth nodded. 'My mother's. I expected to see her out in the garden. She's usually there this time of day.' He scanned the yard, looking for a sign that she was home, and seemed vaguely troubled when he found none. Or perhaps that business of the ad was still on his mind.

  'What are those things?' asked Freirs, nodding toward a trio of upright boxes on legs, like midget armoires, that stood in the yard on the side farthest from the stream.

  'Beehives,' said Poroth. 'She even had 'em when we lived in town. My father and I used to get stung all the time.' He shook his head, remembering.

  As the road wound inland now, Freirs looked back. Just before the house was lost from view behind a wall of boxwood, he glimpsed something in one of the upstairs front windows – something that, for all the intervening distance, looked singularly like a face, frowning at them from the darkness.

  Mrs Poroth, more than nine years a widow, stood at the top of the stairs, watching the truck till it disappeared up the lane. Sunlight slanted through the small square windowpanes, setting in relief the rock-hard features, the strong, almost hawklike nose and masculine jaw, the tiny sharp lines where the corners of her mouth turned down as if with grief. And she h
ad cause for grief. The vision had been confirmed; her prophecy had proven correct. Many a woman would have wept.

  On a normal Sunday afternoon in spring she'd have been outside, silently absorbed over her lilacs and rosebushes. But today, after the hours of worship that had filled the morning, the songs and invocations to the Lord, offered up this week at the home of Brother Amos Reid, she had returned to her cottage and stationed herself by the window, waiting pale and troubled for her son's truck to pass, determined to see the visitor it would be bringing before he saw her.

  And she had seen him.

  Like one in a dream, she made her way with slow, unthinking footsteps down the ancient staircase and through the lengthening shadows of the front room, moving absently toward the door. Stepping outside, she gazed unsmiling at the garden. A haze had passed before the sun; the countryside lay bathed in amber light. Honeybees poked drowsily among the rows of blossoms spread across the south face of the hill. Framed as she was within the doorway, her hair still black, though touched of late with streaks of charcoal grey, and her shapeless black dress reaching almost to the floor, she seemed the only truly dark thing in the landscape.

  There was too much to think about now, events too grave to contemplate; her mind refused, for the moment, to grapple with them and turned instead, from force of habit, to the mundane concerns of earth and leaf and weather. She surveyed the ranks of blossoms with a practiced eye, the flower beds extending down the slope past scattered clumps of rosebushes and lilacs to the banks of the stream. The season had, so far, been a warm one, just as she'd foreseen, and all the signs now pointed to a summer of unusual severity. The tulips and hyacinths had already begun to wither on their stalks, and the lavender, she knew, would be opening too early, perhaps within the week. She would have to harvest it soon.