He had his rehearsals here. Slowly, his head bowed, the Bible held firmly against his chest, he would circle the garden. His eyes would sweep over the ground near his feet, over the bruised leaves and bared roots, the grass stubble and the mud that oozed between stones. Lilies of the valley grew thickly near the wall where trails of crumbled mortar, smears of river damp and moss, were visible under the vines. Violets, chickweed and the buckhorn plantain flourished. There was privet still alive from a feeble attempt before his time to divide the garden with hedges, and a rose which the wind burned to the ground every winter sprawled over a rotting willow stump, its canes nearly leafless from disease, struggling to bloom. Chafers would feed upon the buds, yet he would stay his hand, verifying, once again, the destructive course of nature. Orange yellow when it flowered, it was a climber, and he thought he recognized its fragrance. A neighbor of his mother grew it, or she had… like a dream of gold along her fence—Rève d'or … and golden honeysuckle up the trellis of her porch, with strident morning glories too and clematis as purple as the robe of a king; and there were pearl-white lily trumpets, forsythia and lilacs like so many fountains, four o'clocks and bleeding heart, begonias spilling out of baskets swung from chains, straw flowers, daisies, pink hydrangeas that she sometimes fertilized with nails to make them blue, weedy magenta phlox and columbine, verbena, floppy red petunias, bachelor buttons, zinnias, round transparent pennyroyal to dry and press between the psalms, rose geraniums in pots along the rails, gentians, pinks, sweet peas, nasturtiums of the clearest orange… he peered at all this thick sweet beauty through the pickets, frightened somewhat, for they kept a dog, and at the rough sweet lawn, so cool and moist, the walk around it edged with snowy ageratum and violet alyssum, pansies pink as lips, stonecrop squeezing between the bricks, while in the beds behind them there were sky-blue asters on hooping stems, pale and methodical, as perfect as if they had been grown by spiders; and hidden by high grass and goldenrod and stock he would watch the woman, Mrs. Kermit Hazen — Maisie was it? did she live beyond her operation? Fidel was the dog — stretching her garish yellow print across her rump and show the roll of her stockings when she bent to cut the stems and pile the flowers in her dusty apron. Tears would form in his eyes, running the figures of the flowers and the woman together, and he would press the fence slats cruelly into his cheeks. She'd have planted marigolds nearby and through the fence he would reach one, uprooting it roughly and rubbing his face with its pungent leaves before he went into the house and gave his cheek to his aunt to kiss so she would sneeze.
As he walked he meditated on some passage of scripture or some thought he'd found in St. Jerome or Augustine, trying to penetrate and reformulate it. Finally words would begin to rise, his throat would move, he would begin to mutter and his fingers drum on the book. Although he had taken the same steps many times — indeed he had minutely organized them and given each a symbolic character — and though his downward glance seemed vacant and his posture affected, he did not miss the movements of life at his feet. Indeed he fed his soul on these sensations and there they mingled with his thoughts on equal terms, for Jethro Furber felt that Nature was the word of God as certainly as scrpiture was — his task, therefore, to watch and listen, to interpret and bear witness. We should all be watchmen, and we should pray that God will open our eyes to evil and burn our hearts to admonish the ungodly. Think, he often said, how the demons howl. Their voices are rough and crude; they live in fire; they scream; they sever their words as their heads are severed; but is not the justice of it sweet? In the same way the worst of this world signifies the best of the other. While saying this his voice would rise, his hands flutter, his eyelids squeeze rapturously together.
Rancorous ivy. On the other side of the wall, at the edge of the river, the sand burned. The river lay afire. Kingfishers fell like spots across the eyes and laughter was yellow. Every Sunday Omensetter strolled by the river with his wife, his daughters, and his dog. They came by wagon, spoke to people who were off to church, and while Furber preached, they sprawled in the gravel and trailed their feet in the water. Lucy Omensetter lay her swollen body on a flat rock. Furber felt the sun lapping at her ears. It was like a rising blush, and his hands trembled when he held them out to make the bars of the cross. May the Lord bless you and keep you… He closed his eyes, drifting off. They would see how moved he was, how intense and sincere he was. Cause His light to shine upon you….He would find the footprints of the dog and the imprint of their bodies. All the days of your life…. The brazen parade of her infected person. Watchman. Rainbows like rings of oil around her. Watchman. Shouldn't we be? I spy you, Fatty, behind the tree. He wanted to rub the memory from his eyes. Glittering. Beads of water stood on her skin and drop fled into drop until they broke and ran, the streaks finally fading. Her navel was inside out — sweet spot where Zeus had tied her. She was so white and glistening, so… pale, though darker about the eyes, the nipples dark. Open us to evil. He made a slit in his lids. Burn our hearts. Shawls of sunlight spilled over the back of the pews. Nay-ked-nessss. The droplets gathered at the point of her elbow and hung there, the sac swelling until it fell and spattered on her foot. Nay… nay. To enclose her like the water of the creek had closed her. Nay… Proper body for a lover. Joy to be a stone. Please, the peep-watch is over. Please hurry now. Hurry. Get out of my church.
Though surely not now. With the baby scarcely born she should be home beside it; yet she likely had it cradled in her arm where it would root for her teats in the loose open folds of her dress. Always blue or yellow for some reason, it was lacy around the throat and fell like a golden fountain from her chin. Joy to be a thread. Lord. And all the other mothers, even all the men, smiled, wishing her breasts were their own. Dee dum dee dum. How'd it gone? While his mother lay sleeping, Big Jack had come creeping… Guilty of nessss. Um… some, something to tipple from her mountainous nipple. Cover her nay… No, that wasn't right. Shaymmm. He had mixed the days. So far apart. Years apart. Yet alike. Yet the same. The sky was the same clear blue. There'd been the same sweet breeze — everything as crisp as lettuce. Not years, of course. Seasons. Exactly two. And they were scuffling and shouting down there beyond him, out of his reach.