Its hidden bulk, its accretion and unmovability. She knew about his long ago relationship with Consolata. But she could not have fathomed his personal shame or understood how important it was to erase both the shame and the kind of woman he believed was its source. An uncontrollable, gnawing woman who had bitten his lip just to lap the blood it shed; a beautiful, golden-skinned, outside woman with mossgreen eyes that tried to trap a man, close him up in a cellar room with liquor to enfeeble him so they could do carnal things, unnatural things in the dark; a SalomT from whom he had escaped just in time or she would have had his head on a dinner plate. That ravenous groundfucking woman who had not left his life but had weaseled her way into Soane's affections and, he suspected, had plied her with evil potions to make her less loving than she used to be and it was not the eternal grieving for their sons that froze her but the mess she was swallowing still, given to her by the woman whose very name she herself had made into a joke and a travesty of what a woman should be. Lone didn't, couldn't, know all, but she knew enough and the flashlights had revealed the equipment: handcuffs glinted, rope coiled and she did not have to guess what else they had. Stepping softly, she made her way along the edge of the stream toward her car. "Thy will. Thy will," she whispered, convinced that what she had heard and surmised was no idleness. The men had not come there merely to rehearse. Like boot camp recruits, like invaders preparing for slaughter, they were there to rave, to heat the blood or turn it icicle cold the better to execute the mission. One thing in particular she had quickly understood: the only voice not singing belonged to the one conducting the choir.
"Where is Richard Misner?" Lone didn't bother to say hello. She had knocked on Misner's door, then entered his house, to find it dark and empty. Now she had roused his closest neighbor, Frances Poole DuPres, from her sleep. Frances groaned.
"What in the world is going on with you, Lone?"
"Tell me where Misner is."
"They're gone to Muskogee. Why?"
"They? They who?"
"Reverend Misner and Anna. A conference. What you need him for this time of night?"
"Let me in," said Lone, and stepped past Frances into the living room.
"Come on in the kitchen," said Frances.
"No time. Listen." Lone described the meeting, saying, "A whole passel of menfolk planning something against the Convent. Morgans, Fleetwoods and Wisdom's there too. They going after those women out there."
"Lord, what kind of mess is this? They're going to scare them off in the middle of the night?"
"Woman, listen to me. Those men got guns with sights on them."
"That doesn't mean anything. I've never seen my brother go anywhere minus his rifle, except church, and even then it's in the car."
"They got rope too, Frannie."
"Rope?"
"Two-inch."
"What're you thinking?"
"We wasting time. Where's Sut?"
"Sleep."
"Wake him."
"I'm not going to disturb my husband for some wild-"
"Wake him, Frannie. I am not a crazy woman and you know it." The first drops were warm and fat, carrying the scent of white loco and cholla from regions north and west. They smashed into gentian, desert trumpets and slid from chicory leaves. Plump and slippery they rolled like mercury beads over the cracked earth between garden rows. As they sat in kitchen light, Lone, Frances and Sut DuPres could see, even smell, the rainfall, but they could not hear it, so soft, so downy, were the drops.
Sut was unconvinced that Lone's demand to rush out and stop them was called for but he did agree to speak to Reverends Pulliam and Cary in the morning. Lone said morning might be too late and took off in a huff to find somebody who didn't talk to her as if she were a child unable to wake from a nightmare. Anna Flood was gone; she couldn't go to Soane because of Deek; and since K. D. and Arnette had taken the house that Menus used to own, Dovey Morgan wouldn't be in town. She thought about Kate but knew she would not go up against her father. She considered Penelope but dismissed her, since she was not only married to Wisdom, she was Sargeant's daughter. Lone realized that she would have to go out to the ranches and farms, to people she trusted most not to let family relations cloud their minds. Working windshield wipers were an unavailable blessing, so Lone, rolling gum slowly around in her mouth, concentrated on being careful. Driving past the deserted Oven, pleased she had gotten the mayapples in time, she noticed there were no lights at Anna's place or, way back of it, in Deek Morgan's house. Lone squinted to negotiate the few miles of dirt road between Ruby's and the county's. It could be a tricky stretch because the earth was absorbing the rain now, swelling the roots of parched plants and forming rivulets wherever it could. She drove slowly, thinking if this mission was truly God's intention, nothing could stop her. Halfway to Aaron Poole's house the Oldsmobile halted in a roadside ditch.
Around the time Lone DuPres was trying to avoid the Early Melones sign, the men were finalizing details over coffee and something stronger for those who wished. None was a drinker, except Menus, but they did not object to lacing tonight's coffee. Behind Sargeant's barnlike building, where his trade took place, beyond the paddock where he once kept horses, was a shed. In it he repaired tack-a hobby now, no longer a chargeable service-ruminated and avoided the women in his family. A male cozy, it was equipped with a small stove, a freezer, a worktable and chairs, all standing on an unruinable floor. The men had just begun to blow in their cups when the rain started. After a few swallows they joined Sargeant in the yard to move sacks and cover equipment with tarpaulin. When they returned, drenched, to the shed they found themselves lighthearted and suddenly hungry. Sargeant suggested beefsteaks and went in his house to get what was needed to feed the men. Priscilla, his wife, heard him and offered to help, but he sent her back to bed, firmly. The scented rainfall drummed. The atmosphere in the shed was braced, companionable, as the men ate thick steaks prepared the old-fashioned way, fried in a piping hot skillet.
The rain's perfume was stronger north of Ruby, especially at the Convent, where thick white clover and Scotch broom colonized every place but the garden. Mavis and Pallas, aroused from sleep by its aroma, rushed to tell Consolata, Grace and Seneca that the longed for rain had finally come. Gathered in the kitchen door, first they watched, then they stuck out their hands to feel. It was like lotion on their fingers so they entered it and let it pour like balm on their shaved heads and upturned faces. Consolata started it; the rest were quick to join her. There are great rivers in the world and on their banks and the edges of oceans children thrill to water. In places where rain is light the thrill is almost erotic. But those sensations bow to the rapture of holy women dancing in hot sweet rain. They would have laughed, had enchantment not been so deep. If there were any recollections of a recent warning or intimations of harm, the irresistible rain washed them away. Seneca embraced and finally let go of a dark morning in state housing. Grace witnessed the successful cleansing of a white shirt that never should have been stained. Mavis moved in the shudder of rose of Sharon petals tickling her skin. Pallas, delivered of a delicate son, held him close while the rain rinsed away a scary woman on an escalator and all fear of black water. Consolata, fully housed by the god who sought her out in the garden, was the more furious dancer, Mavis the most elegant. Seneca and Grace danced together, then parted to skip through fresh mud. Pallas, smoothing raindrops from her baby's head, swayed like a frond.