Chapter 3
They were in McCaber’s barn after school, their books scattered across the moldy bales of hay. Bethany had not wanted to come, she could still remember the poor hanging cat, and the little boys naked and touching each other. Now that she was fifteen, the naked boys seemed only funny, but the memory of the cat still made her sick. She didn’t want to be here anyway, with Jack and the three girls conjuring up dark talk of spirits and lost, incomplete souls. They were draped across the ancient bales of hay with the girls all over Jack so that Bethany turned away in embarrassment. Colin, sitting apart from the others, watching the girls play up to Jack, looked uneasy, too.
Why did she always let herself get roped into things? It was Colin, he could look so in need of her sympathy. Why couldn’t she learn to be firm with him. You’d think she was years older instead of only one. And why did Jack want them there anyway, when he hardly spoke to them at school? “Jack’s into it now,” Colin had said, leaning against the science room door while she rearranged her falling books. “He thinks there’s really a spirit, or he wouldn’t—”
“It’s that Beverly Parker’s changed his mind,” Bethany had answered crossly, “I heard her in gym, big woman on campus. She’s decided it would be exciting to have a Zagdesha, so now Jack’s falling all over himself.”
“But there is something,” Colin said defensively. “There’s the church in San Francisco that Dr. Claybelle was the head of.”
“I don’t know anything about the church in San Francisco.” She had stared at him defiantly, wishing he’d go on to the barn by himself, and wondering why talking about the Zagdesha made her so cross.
“Well there is a church there. And there are regular classes of instruction. They teach you to contact your Zagdesha.”
“Contact it how? Can you see it?” She was ashamed of her sarcasm, really.
“You—well I don’t know exactly.”
“And how come it doesn’t call you if it’s your other half? How come it doesn’t make you come to it?”
“You’re just like Ma. You can’t believe anything you don’t see right in front of your face.”
“You don’t even know how stupid that is!” She had flung herself away then, meaning to go on home, but the look on his face had made her stop.
“Will you come with me, then?” Colin had asked hopefully. The bumps on his face looked terrible; Bethany guessed it must be pretty awful to have skin like that.
“Just this once?” he begged. “They’re going to try an experiment.”
“What kind of experiment?” She wished he would leave it alone, leave her alone. But at last she had let him badger her into relenting, and now she watched the five of them on the hay, sorry she had come.
“Jack said you wouldn’t,” Ciel Rapp said. She had a pretty face, but weaselly under the makeup.
“Why not?” Bethany said belligerently. She knew she was embarrassing Colin.
“He said you’d be afraid.”
“What, of Jack? Afraid of Jack?” Bethany snorted.
“Of your Zagdesha,” Beverly Parker said. She had begun to set out black votive candles on a plank that was laid across two bales of hay. “He says you know it’s real and you’re afraid of it.” Bethany held her tongue, watching Beverly’s long blond hair fall like silk as she bent over the plank.
“Anyway, you don’t need to act so put upon,” Jack said coolly. “You didn’t have to come.” He stretched and made himself comfortable on the hay, leering smugly at busty May Farr as she took a glass bottle out of a sack, a bottle filled with red liquid. It looked as if it might be her parents’ liquor decanter.
“Jack said you’d help us,” May said. “We’re going to call the Zagdesha, we’re going to have a real seance and Jack said—”
“I said you had the power for it.” Jack gave May a look.
“I think it’s stupid,” Bethany said quickly, alarmed at his talking like that. “It’s a dumb thing to be fooling around with. There isn’t any such thing as half a spirit or soul or whatever.”
“Why would Dr. Claybelle bother if it wasn’t true,” Beverly said. “Why would he take his lunchtime to give us instructions? We had a real experience today, we could feel the spirits all around us.” Her voice was smooth as silk. Bethany stared at her. She hadn’t known about that. So that was where Colin had been.
“It was …” Ciel Rapp began. “It was like a promise. Almost like we were hypnotized; he did an incantation and he—it made you feel wonderful.”
Jack’s face showed no expression.
“Why don’t you have your seance there, then, if he’s teaching you?”
“We’re going to do it differently,” Ciel said, rubbing up against Jack. She began to giggle inanely.
Bethany felt her face go pink. “Come on Colin, let’s go”
“But—” Colin began, glancing at Jack. “You go on, Bethany. I guess I’ll stay a while.”
But when she got home she found Colin already sitting on the back porch, pale and edgy. “I thought you were staying,” she said. “I only went around through the village and stopped at the library; you must have come straight home.”
“They—they tried to do the ritual Aunt Selma and Dr. Claybelle taught us, but then they started to giggle. I don’t think they— well, then they started necking. Ciel laid down beside me and ran her hand up my leg.” He blushed furiously. “I left.”
Bethany was quiet.
Finally she said, “That’s just what you should have expected.”
He stared at her stonily.
“I’m sorry, Colin. I just think it’s dumb.”
He was quiet for a long time, then he went into the house, and she was sorry she had said anything. He didn’t mention it again, or act as if he’d ever heard of The Church of the Zagdesha until the morning he maneuvered them all past the mercantile on their way to church.
Bethany had risen that morning, as every Sunday morning, with a depressed feeling of distaste, due partly to church and partly to the navy crepe dress she was made to wear every Sunday.
She pulled on the dress and stared into the mirror with disgust. It wasn’t only the dress, it was all of her. She snatched her carroty hair back away from her face and clipped on Marylou’s barrette, but that only made her face look bonier. She flung the barrette to the dresser in anger. She didn’t want to go to church anyway. But Aunt Bett said Sunday was for the Lord. Bethany didn’t see why it couldn’t be for the Lord on the dunes, but Aunt Bett did not agree. She guessed if you liked church, if you wanted to go, that was fine. Aunt Bett took a quiet joy in the service, Bethany knew. But she couldn’t see that her own feelings had improved with exposure at all. Maybe some people took to regular religion and others didn’t. Maybe some people had to find their own way. There were a lot of ways of believing. There was something she felt, a huge encompassing something that she could almost touch sometimes when she was on the dunes in the wind and the wide, ever-changing sky rolled above her. Maybe the same power she had felt very strongly once or twice when she had touched the mind of another, almost a reverence, an awe at her own powers and what had given them to her.
She pushed back the lace curtain and stared out the window; the morning was white with fog; she could hear the horn from the point. The sea would be muffled and the dunes would be lovely, she could take a thermos and— Oh, she wished for Ollie suddenly. He had died a year ago, when she was fourteen, a quiet death in his sleep. Aunt Bett, to Bethany’s surprise, had let her dig him a grave under the apple tree in the back yard. And Aunt Bett had shed a tear for him, which had moved Bethany more than anything else could have.
She wished for Ollie to be with her, and for the pony, Joey, with a longing that made her feel desolate. Yet a hope rose within her. There was Mr. Grady to see today. She thrust the thought aside, not daring to encourage herself.