Jeremy. I know you hate scenes. We'll pray for each other, all right?'
'Are you okay?' I asked, turning to Deborah. 'I'm going out now, but I'll stay if you think you'll be needing me.' She stared at me with a slight smile amp; shook her head; when I glanced pointedly at her husband, she just shrugged.
'Things will work out,' she said. I could hear Sarr mumbling one of his insane prayers as I shut the door.
I walked back here through a cloud of fireflies, like stars, the stars themselves frosting the sky like bubbles in a water glass. Inside here the bubbles in my water glass, left unemptied by my bed all week, were like the stars…
I realized I was shaking. If I have to tangle with him, big as he is, I'm ready. I took off my shirt amp; stood in front of the little mirror. How could Deborah have allowed me to touch her yesterday? How can I face Carol tomorrow? It has been days since I've bathed, amp; I've become used to the smell of my body. My hair has wound itself into greasy brown curls, my beard is at least a week old, amp; my eyes… well, the eyes that stared back at me were those of an old man, the whites turning yellow as rotten teeth. I looked at my chest amp; arms, plump amp; flabby at thirty, amp; I thought of the frightening alterations in Sarr, amp; I thought, What the hell is going on? I smoothed back my hair amp; got out my roll of dental floss amp; began running the thread through my teeth, but it had been so long since I'd done it that my gums began to bleed, amp; when I looked back into the mirror I had blood dripping down my lips like a vampire.
I made a resolution as I stood there. When Carol and Rosie leave after this weekend, I'm going back with them.
Poroth stood on the back porch, lost in imaginary arguments with himself as he stared out at the night, the cats miaowing plaintively at his feet. He felt an angel perched on his right shoulder, a demon on his left. Lord, he whispered from time to time, give me strength. He had erred, losing his temper like that over dinner; he'd been a fool. He had yielded to despair, and that, his mother had always said, was the devil's oldest weapon. But he hadn't lost his faith, he reminded himself; God watched and loved him, just as before; there was still hope. If only he wouldn't tremble so…
He regretted that he'd ever lent an ear to his mother's bizarre notions about dragons and ceremonies and intruders from outside, and that he'd ever allowed her to show him those hellish pictures: that small black shapeless thing like the one he had seen on the cards, and that black face peering from the tree, and the squat unnatural contours of that mound… The myth was just too alien to take seriously, of course; it conflicted with everything he'd been brought up to believe. And yet its power was undeniable.
By rights these visions should have meant no more to him than a half-heard fairy tale from some country far away. His mother's gods and demons were, after all, not his; her virgin was nothing like the Virgin. To think that poor prim red-haired Carol, who'd be here from the city tomorrow, could have any mythological significance! And that her cosmically decreed counterpart might be right here on this farm in the person of Jeremy Freirs! Preposterous! He would have laughed – and someday, perhaps, he might be able to. He gazed out over the lawn, where the light was on in Freirs' room. He could see the plump little figure scribbling away at his studies or meditations or letters or whatever they were. Well, God would set his mother right soon enough. ..
A jet passed overhead, the customary Friday night visitation, a memento of the modern world he'd rejected. Straightening his shoulders, he turned and walked back into the house.
The house was silent, except for the ticking of the clock. Shutting the kitchen door, he paused after turning down the lamp. He hated to think about going upstairs. Up there was Deborah, with whom he'd taken holy vows to share his life, and if the devil was hiding in her somewhere – his devil, Satan, the devil he knew – well, one didn't flee, one stood and fought, cleansing the woman the way he'd seen his house and barn cleansed last Sunday.
Why, then, did he hesitate? Had his mother's stories really gotten to him: her talk of eggs and dragons, and beings that changed shape? Had those pictures of hers had their intended effect? Maybe not; but he knew he wasn't ready to face his wife yet, not after that scene tonight in the kitchen. To lie so close to someone and know that in her heart she was your enemy… It took more courage than he had right now. Lord, he said again, give me strength.
If only he could prove his mother wrong. If only she'd said something that might actually be verified. There was one thing, perhaps…
In the living room he lit the lamp and crouched before his little cache of books. Byfield's almanac was still on the top of the pile from the evening Freirs had asked him about Lammas. Sure enough, in the back of the volume was a section of lunar tables, page after page of spidery fine print. Taking both book and lamp over to the rocker, he settled back to read.
His mother had said yesterday that there'd be two full moons this month; well, that much he'd known already, as any farmer would-any farmer, at least, here in Gilead. But she'd also said that the occurrence was a rare one, at least when the second moon in question turned full on Lammas Eve. This happened more seldom, she had hinted, than mere chance might have led one to expect.
Running his finger down the columns, he squinted at the listings for July thirty-first. The tables were difficult to follow; there were footnotes to refer to, quantities for leap years to be added or subtracted, and rows of tiny figures that seemed to swim together in the flickering light. But as near as he could make out, his mother had been right. In fact, he saw now, if the tables were correct, in the past hundred years there'd been only two occurrences of the full moon on the final night of July: in 1890 and again in 1939…
The wide plank floorboards echoed as he paced back and forth. He was still reluctant to go upstairs – more so than ever, in fact, considering how his mother's words had just found some small measure of scientific support. And those crudely drawn images she'd shown him were still buzzing around in his head like a horde of insects that, once inside his skull, had no way of ever getting out. The luridly colored figures seemed less alien now, the more he thought about them, and no longer quite so impossible: the rose with lips and teeth; the black shape called the Dhol; the odd two-ringed design…
If only he could turn his mind to some passage from the Bible, he would be comforted, he was sure. But the Bible was upstairs, next to Deborah, and though he knew all the words in it perfectly, he needed before him the reality of print.
His eye fell on the ornate binding of the poetry collection Freirs had been reading, still lying out upon his desk. Sighing, he sat back in the rocking chair and opened the book. He remembered how he'd struggled through it years ago, underlining passages, writing comments in the margins, as if these words of mere men deserved the scrutiny he'd given to the words of God.
Still, there was a kind of comfort here in the old familiar religion of his childhood. The volume fell open to a poem he'd studied at the Bible school in town. Christmas meditation, he'd written in careful schoolboy script at the top. It was Milton, he saw, good, dark, steady, pious Milton: 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity,' a celebration of the birth of the Savior. He read it through, lips moving with the words, barely thinking about what they said, soothed just as he'd hoped to be – until with a jolt he saw what he'd been reading. He went through the stanza a second time.
… from this happy day
Th'old Dragon under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,
Swinges the scaly Horror of his folded tail.