Fitcher's Brides (27 page)

The music began again.

“It is good to open oneself up to the beauty of God this way,” said the mother.

“Yes,” answered Vern, “it brings us all closer to Heaven.” She glanced at Lanny as she said it.

“That's right,” the mother replied. “That's just so right.”

Her husband said, “The reverend has attended the dances from time to time, but he so rarely dances himself.”

She couldn't fathom what criticism this implied; perhaps the man meant simply that Elias had no partner before her. Was he inviting her to change that? “I cannot say, sir, how he goes,” Vern replied. “It was my own opinion of dancing I expressed, not my husband's.”

“Oh.”

“We have not—he and I—had much time together since I arrived, and dancing has not even been discussed. He's had so much planning to do. The date and all—”

Lanny's mother pressed her hands together and bowed her head a little. Father and son followed. “The end time is nearer every hour, isn't it?”

“Sometimes,” Vern said, “that's very hard to forget.”

The couple exchanged perplexed glances, as if unable to decide what she could mean by that.

Then the father took his wife's hands and asking, “One more dance, Mother?” led her toward the middle of the barn.

“And for you, Mrs. Fitcher?” Lanny asked. “It's going to be a Virginia Reel this time.”

“Please, Lanny, I'd like that very much.” They moved to take their places as the dancing began anew.

 

As the night wore on, the Gibbons family introduced Vern to others in the barn, most of whom were happy to have her in their company. Some spoke of Judgment Day with an implicit understanding that she was on intimate terms with Fitcher about it and so might tell them things. They talked about what they hoped to find afterward or, whether they felt themselves prepared to face God. Most seemed to feel they had banished their sins and cleansed themselves. They owed their cleansing to her husband. It was Reverend Fitcher who had shown them the path they must follow. Everyone knew far more about the end of time than she did, as they all seemed to know more about her husband. The former they shared, but whatever they knew about Elias Fitcher as a person, they kept to themselves. Certainly the dance was not the place for confrontation, and she didn't want to confront anyone for fear that she would lose the friendliness she'd just gained. There would be plenty of time to winnow his secrets. After all, he must be gone for weeks yet.

Having danced herself to near-exhaustion, Vern finally wandered back to the house and her room. Though her legs ached, she felt wonderful.

The room was dark. The candle she'd left burning beside her Bible must have guttered—it was too new to have burned away. She fumbled her way to the mantel and found the container of matches, then knelt and sparked one, putting the flame to a bit of kindling in the hearth. From that she lit a spunk, which she used to light the oil lamp on the mantel and the candles around the room. Afterward, she removed her dress.

From the bed she scooped up the keys. She stopped, paralyzed. The egg wasn't there.

She knew she'd placed it beside the keys. It could not possibly have rolled off. She carefully patted the covers all around, as if the egg might have sunk through them. She got on her knees and peered under the bed. There were clumps of dust there but no egg. She stood, turning, glancing at every surface, none of which supported the egg. She thought:
What will I say? How can I tell him I lost it?
He would not understand—after all she'd sworn to keep it with her every moment everywhere. She'd been so careful with it, how could it not be here? Someone had come into her room while she was gone. She realized now that she should have taken the keys, if only to lock her door. Of course Elias had entrusted someone to keep an eye on her—maybe that Notaro fellow. She hadn't seen him since before she'd taken ill, but maybe that was because he was spying on her.

He would tell Elias what she'd done—how she'd gone out for an evening of pleasure and left the egg and keys in her room for anyone to take. She felt shamed, though she'd done nothing to be ashamed of. Why did she feel as if she'd betrayed him by enjoying herself?

Finally, overcome with a sense of doom, she tucked one foot beneath her and sat on the bed in her chemise. She knew she would never be able to sleep now. She lifted her pillow to hug.

The marble egg rolled out from beneath it.

“Oh, God, oh, thank God,” she sighed. She clutched it in both hands and pressed it to herself. It was safe. She was safe. Yet its appearance did not answer the question of how it had come to
be
under the pillow. She vividly recollected the bed as she'd left it; the egg could not have rolled there on its own. She looked across at the door. From now on she must be more careful. There were agents at work here, whoever they were, whatever their purpose.

 

In the morning, after closing her door, she fumbled through the ring of keys until she found the one that locked it. The glass key attracted her attention again, and she wondered again what lock it could possibly fit. Somewhere in the house lay the answer, but she did not want to be in the house today.

Outside, the air smelled as if it had been washed of its sins. Today she would explore the boundaries of Harbinger.

The dining hall was half-filled again. Some of the people she had met last night were there and she greeted them with a formal nod. She took a plate of buckwheat cakes and apple butter, sat silent and ate. Afterward, she assisted in grilling cakes for the next shift of diners, then in cleaning. Where she'd felt ostracized in their company only last night, the dance had changed her. Vern now thought of herself as an integral part of a larger process. She greeted Sarah, who told her, “You look better today, dear. It's good you rested.” Rather than contradict or explain herself, she agreed. “I'm very good today, Sarah, thank you.” She decided she had misapprehended a clumsy smile from Sarah for something coarse and troubling—that was the degree to which she'd been confused. She'd give them all benefit of doubt now. They were all parts of God's plan, these people. They only wanted to be saved.

Later, when no one was looking, she took a Johnnycake that had been made for the afternoon meal and folded it up in some paper and put it in her pocket with the keys. Then she ventured out onto the back porch. People were wandering across the open lawn, back to the fields or the village or the orchards. Whoever remained in the house, she still hadn't discovered. Someone must, as things were always dusted, always polished.

With her hands in her pockets, she went down the steps and across the yard herself. She clutched the egg and the keys. She would not leave them behind again.

She walked past her shop, past the ironsmith's and to the barn where she'd danced last night. Rather than continue past it to the church, where there might easily be a swarm of people, she turned, walking between the livestock pens and henhouses that lay beyond. Chickens clucked and strutted around a narrow yard dusted with a scattering of feathers. A smokehouse stood apart from the livestock. Thin bluish smoke rose from it.

A man in a dirty apron was standing just beyond the smokehouse. He was rolling a cigarette, his hands dark with charcoal. He glanced up in surprise at the sound of her approach. Over the little paper as he rolled it, his eyes followed her. Otherwise he might not have noticed her at all. Vern wondered if he would report her whereabouts to Elias. Whatever she did, wherever she went, it seemed that someone was sure to see her; but the way through the village was labyrinthine, and with luck it would disguise her destination, too. Even if the smoker reported that he'd seen her, he wouldn't be able to swear where she was heading. The next lane took her past an abattoir, which stank of blood and offal. Beyond it stood an empty corral. The far side of the corral consisted of a six-foot-high board fence, and Vern turned there. The fence hid her until she had topped a low rise, and the lane had become a ragged path.

The path led down to a series of rolling rises—too small to be called hills—of cleared pasture. Soon enough she encountered grazing cattle. Farther away there were sheep, though she didn't spy a shepherd.

Eventually the pasture gave way to woods. At the edge of it, Vern paused to look back. Only the church steeple and the top of the barn located the village beyond the grazing sheep. Harbinger House seemed too tiny to be threatening. The pyramid at the top shone like a spike of silver.

Once in the trees, she had no trouble following the path. It was more of a cart path, rutted by wheels. She soon heard a kind of roaring as well as a metronomic metal squeal. The source of both appeared soon enough—a stone mill set on the banks of a nearby stream. Its wheel produced the rhythmic noise. Elias had said they had their own mills for flour and flax. As she approached the mill, the path divided. The left-hand fork looked as if it wound back in the direction of the village. The right fork led past the mill and deeper into the woods, and she followed that one. When she could no longer hear the squeaky wheel, she stopped and listened to the sound of the woods—the calls of birds, the buzz of insects, and overhead the occasional creak of a branch, the shush of leaves in the breeze. It was cooler in the woods, but it was also pleasant. The woods smelled alive.

She contemplated the possibility of finding a way out of the enclosure, an escape from Harbinger and back home, but with less urgency now than before.

The path narrowed to a trail, still identifiable, but obviously not used for carts or anything with wheels. She didn't even see horse's prints in the soil. Off to her left, she caught occasional flashes of sunlight on the surface of the stream.

She felt as if she walked for miles. The path snaked around outcroppings of rock, and the ground was never smooth, always broken with stones and roots. She tripped a few times, and wished she'd worn something other than soft slippers. She needed boots for this. After a while she unwrapped the sweet cornmeal Johnnycake and ate it.

By now she had lost sight of the stream, so she was surprised by the sound of distant splashing. The ground grew more rocky underfoot. She had to be careful of how she went.

The path split again. She followed it to the left, toward the noise. Beneath the splashing, another noise grew, a kind of hollow roaring.

Within a minute she had climbed up a rocky rise and was stepping out onto a broad promontory. The view if not the climb robbed her of breath.

She stood above a sheer drop hundreds of feet to the floor of a canyon. The stream she had glimpsed emerged from the rocks off to the left of the promontory. It was much larger than it had appeared through the woods. The falling water created a spectacular waterfall down to a wide pool, and another stream, which snaked along the floor of the gorge below. Where the cascade fell it made a rainbow, a great banded sheet of color hovering in the air.

This had to be the same gorge they had crossed on the way to Harbinger. Somewhere around the bend would be the bridge itself. She must be beyond the wrought-iron fence, but there was no point in fencing this off. Nobody could have climbed up or down from here.

She stood on the promontory a long time. The waterfall to her felt like God, like something huge and beautiful—more like God than anything at the house; even the Hall of Worship with its windows and great ceiling, its skull and pulpit, was dwarfed by the grandeur of this.

She wondered how God could choose to destroy a world so beautiful. It saddened her to imagine all this, outside the perimeter of Harbinger, being obliterated. The sadness made her long to see her family again. She felt then that she must get home. She must see Kate and Amy, Papa. Even Lavinia. Yes, even the gorgon.

Vern turned and clambered back down the rough slope too fast. Her foot slipped and she fell, scraping her hands. Sharp rock jabbed her hip. She scrambled up immediately, angry with herself for being so stupid, in such a panic. Exercising more caution, she made her way back to the path and went on. Her palm had a stone in it that she pried out, then licked the blood away to see the puncture. It wasn't too terrible.

The path seemed to parallel the gorge. She hoped it would take her outside the fence by the time she'd reached the bridge. But already the distance between path and gorge was widening. The path, weaving around natural obstacles, was leading her away from it. Worried, she tried to make her way through the woods, but the bushes snagged at her clothing. Her wide skirt wasn't intended for wildernesses. Thorns pricked her legs, snagged her stockings. She tried to avoid them, but they grew everywhere. Off the path, the woods seemed to be full of them, blending into the underbrush, a cunning barrier.

She tried to make her way so as to avoid them, but kept the edge of the cliff always in sight.

Ahead were stripes of darkness, trees behind trees, receding into dim distance, but Vern's attention remained fixed upon the location of the gorge. She would not stray too far from it.