1989

The town reached out into the country and the country edged into the town. Between, the stubbled cornfield lay like a coarsely woven shawl, lapping its fringe into both regions. September Hunt's eyes took it all in, admiring again the undulating, ragged horizon unfolding itself before her under a bright November moon. It whirled in changing frames through the Toyota's windows. The wind, agitated, swung the small car like a toy on the narrow road between the Ohio fields. Set thrilled in the power of what seemed a larger force than herself, a Gothic power, a reason to do something wild because the gods themselves were on the prowl. But this was Set's mind, romanticizing the weather, inoculating the winds with spirits.
     "Darby, will you check to see that the scalloped potatoes are okay? The juice hasn't set up and I don't want to spend the rest of my life touring under the odor of onions and potatoes when that stuff seeps into the carpet. A friend of mine actually lived with a tipped crock pot in her car for two days. Baked beans. Just decided to let it go. Too tired, I guess."
     The young man beside her gave a wry laugh and unhooked his seat belt so that he could stretch his view to the back seat. "They appear to be holding up admirably and will, no doubt, be the hit of this - this - gathering, shall we call it," he said with sarcasm. "Church basement potlucks aren't exactly my cup of tea. "
      He pronounced his words with an air of affectation. "But I suppose I'll endure." When he locked his seat belt back into place, his face, too, registered pleasure at the changing horizon of ochre and brown. In the distance, beyond a field where the uncut corn still rattled and shifted in the wind, the first flickering lights of Shequonur appeared.
     "Well, you can stand it for one night. Besides, afterwards, the prize will be ours, and I know you don't want to miss that." She looked askance at him. "As it is, since you forgot the tablecloth, we'll be forced into a late arrival at the church. Tastefully late, of course." Set smiled. "He has to be one of the finest speakers I've ever heard. And in this setting. It's perfect, it's rustic. The little old ladies in their polyesters. They're so darling and receptive. I find the innocence of the congregation refreshing." She finished in her philosophic tone.
     "And he's got a nice set of buns."
     "For Pete's sake, do you have to taint this event with innuendo. Let us proceed with the dignity which this glorious topic deserves. Dr. David Owen on Christian Epiphany. After that we can discuss his physical attributes." For Set, this evening brought together the rough and refined, the rural and sophisticated, a blend of the incongruous which touched her sense of drama. It was a kind of poetry in living. Now as Pachebel's Canon in D was passed magnificently through its third round on the tape deck, she drove wildly into the wind. She raised her right hand with a flourish from the steering wheel, pointed, touching the windshield, and shouted into the car's interior, "O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there. Darby, you really must read Hopkins. He's heavenly." The distant flickering lights had become more than pin points and Set now was inspired by their dazzling illumination against the cornfield.
     Dar leaned forward, squinting, more intent. "And there seem to be a few more fire-folk than usual at the estate. What are all those lights, anyway? They appear to be . . ." He paused, narrowing his eyes. "They are, all those lights are at the house, Set. Good God, now what? I know I closed the gates before we left." Darby Lambert had lost his easy derisive tone and spoke now with concerned irritation. Shequonur was his responsibility and he did not take this responsibility lightly. As its caretaker and manager, the estate was virtually his, at least, temporarily. And now his keep, his citadel, his walls, showed evidence of trespassers. Where there should have glinted only three electric candles--those he had carefully arranged in the deep windows' ledges--there flashed many lights.
     Set stepped hard on the pedal and swung into the graveled drive past the two stone monoliths which held the gate. The gate that should have been closed. Through the branches of the old cedars and the wide-trunked oaks which edged the winding drive, Set and Darby saw clearly now car lights. They were arranged in a haphazard circle, two on the lawn and two on the gravel, around a van. The driver's door stood open. Above the whistling wind which whipped through the ragged cedar branches, a car horn rang in unrelenting monotone. Set braked the car, sliding in the gravel, and Dar had his door open before the motion stopped.
     "What in the name of God do you think . . . ?" But his words caught in his throat when Set gestured toward the van's door. A man's form slumped irregularly foward, its left side pitched awkwardly out of the vehicle, its head almost touching the metal step. The right side of this figure was held in place at the steering wheel where the man's jacket sleeve had caught on the gear shift. His shoulder lay heavily against the center of the wheel, pressing the horn into its empty, hard whine.
     Car doors opened behind the lights and several silhouettes moved toward the van. At first Set did not notice the movement behind her. A man had emerged from the dark wooden entry of the conservatory attached to the massive house structure. It was David Owen. And behind him walked a woman with auburn hair, someone Set and Dar had seen in the front of the church during the lectures.
     Now for Set time slowed to the pace of an altered film, human figures lifting their hands and legs mechanically and deliberately, inching toward the van where the man lay sprawled and hanging from the wheel. Owen pulled the body backward, gently, and up, which caused the head to flop backward against the cloth seat. A high-pitched scream split the night. The silhouettes shifted. Set's film instantly fast-forwarded when the bite of the scream contrapuntally joined the horn's blare. From the man's mouth a thin dribble of dark blood emerged and a deep groan rumbled from his throat. David Owen lifted the body from the van, attempting to hold his head securely against further injury. The man was muscular, weighty.
     It was the Reverend Nathan Sowders.
     David shouted but his voice was hoarse. "Get back. For God's sake. Stand away." He placed his ear at Sowder's mouth, "Nate, can you hear me?" His voice trembled; his knees bent in the gravel, He pulled Sowder's head back, placing his own mouth over the injured man's. Lifting his dark head from the figure, David struck three strong blows to the man's chest then he placed three fingers at Sowder's neck. He dug the heels of his hands into Sowder's chest, pumping and releasing. Behind him a thin woman in a fake fur coat trembled, leaning against the arm of a girl. "Teresa, call the emergency squad. Hurry." David spoke to the woman.
      "Lori, I can't, I can't do it. You go," the woman said to the young girl, who now looked about frantically. Dar grabbed her hand.
      "Come with me. The phone's just inside the door."
      Set watched with increasing horror. She felt catatonic, unable to shift her eyes away from the grim scene before her--the heavy rag doll figure in the gravel with the strong man pumping his weight into the doll's chest. But then she forced herself, pulling her eyes up around the circle to see who watched with her.
     Several feet behind the prone figures stood a man and woman. The woman held herself in an upright position, her hands folded in front of her, her head tilted oddly aloof. Set had seen her two pews ahead last night at the church. Enid Fout. Her husband moved in closer to Owen. "Do you want me to go a few rounds with that?" the husband said. His voice was gruff.
      "No, I've got a pulse now. He's breathing. Bob, get a blanket out of my car. Kathy, open the trunk for him." David Owen did not look up but turned his head slightly to his right where a sweet-faced woman knelt, a look of terror in her eyes. She rose and moved toward the low, gray car, a Porsche parked on the lawn near the wide trunk of a swaying oak. The red-haired woman made a motion now as if to help Kathy. She stepped with determination toward the car, but Kathy paced ahead of her so quickly, the red-head paused and appeared to reconsider. Then she turned to the circle of light. When she entered a shaft of car beam, her face all but disappeared and Set could not see her expression.
      Darby's wiry frame loomed from the shadows that swallowed Shequonur's massive entry. He came close to Set, but spoke in general to the whole group. "The squad will be here right away. They're fairly efficient." But his last words were lost in a crescendo of hysterical cries. Lori Sowders had gone down on her knees beside her father. "Mom, his face, his face is gray. And that blood. It's . . . it's coming from, it's in his mouth," she screamed.
      "For God's sake, get her up and out of the way," David snarled. Kathy, who had returned from the car, attempted to gently lift the teenager from the gravel, but the girl yanked her arm away and sprawled her body across her father. The form stirred and moaned. Immediately, Bob Fout was at Lori's side, trying to edge her up but she fought him and finally he lifted her entire body from the ground. As Fout carried her away under the trees, her screams cut the air. Set watched Teresa Sowders to see a mother's reaction, but this mother did not look toward Lori or Fout while they struggled.
      Two teenagers, a boy with acne scars pitting his face, and a plump girl chewing gum nervously, both of whom had been standing back from the inner circle, moved into the grove of trees where Fout held Lori. And while Set watched the teenagers reach out for Lori, another shadow materialized. Set thought at first the extra shadow was a fallen branch in the weedy grove. But there it was, more than a branch, or it was a branch that rolled over the lawn in the wind. A small shadow, a slender form. Out of the trees, as if she were a spirit, appeared a woman in white. She came quickly, barely stirring the leaves beneath her white shoes. Although she moved rapidly, there seemed no agitation in her slight body, or distress in her delicate muscles. The blank expression on her face did not change when the circle's light washed over her fragile frame.
      Even as she had been fixated by the bleeding man, now Set could not take her eyes from the woman who had come out of the trees. She must have been about sixty years old but walked with the agility of a girl. Set watched her move directly to the center of the circle, passing with little motion, stepping between twigs like an Indian, passing the erect Enid Fout, coming to the center. Except for two points of color, she was white from head to foot. A white net tipped her gray hair, her white dress blossomed with cream and green embroidery across the bodice, and her blocky white shoes sprouted heavy white laces. She turned up thick brown soles in the leaves, kneeling beside Nathan Sowders.
      "It's Ivy Gilchrist," Dar whispered at Set's ear. "I haven't seen her in months. She lives in the cottage behind . . . ." But Dar was cut off by Set's nudge in his ribs. She wanted to hear what Ivy was saying. Instead she heard David Owen's voice. "Ivy, I think he's trying to say something. He said something, something. Can you talk to him?" Owen appeared tortured, his refined face twisted in agony.
      Ivy Gilchrist leaned close to Nathan Sowder's mouth, her hand pushing away from his forehead the light, wavy hair, which lay in peculiar clumps, hair-sprayed mounds. Although her voice was breathy, she articulated clearly next to his upturned ear, "What is it, Nathan? Tell us. Can you . . . can you say something?" With her ear almost touching his white lips, she waited for a sound. A weak groan rolled soft in his throat. That human rumbling joined the night air with a third strain. But perhaps it had been there all along. Set could not remember. A distant, dull roar increased, more insistent, closer. She recognized it when, through the swaying cedar branches, she saw the round, lighted, slow gyrating eyes of a monstrous machine. The corn picker must have been operating all the time, but Set had not noticed it--until it stopped. Its metal sides coughed abruptly and the air emptied. Instantly, the circle stood naked, exposed in the night, the dark suddenly darker, more quiet and cold, while the round eyes beamed through the trees.
      A man appeared in the oaks and cedars, limping, taking powerful crippled dives toward the earth with each step. "Bob, what's goin' on here?" he shouted when he was near enough to be heard. "Just noticed the lights when I made that last swing. Would have come sooner if I'd known anything was amiss." Bob Fout met him partway.
      "It's Reverend Sowders. Me and Enid were out here to bring some prayer materials to Dr. Owen and when we came on in, we found the pastor, there, in bad shape. He looks real bad, Ora."
      The farmer hobbled across the lawn and toward the circle, all eyes turning on him for a few seconds, eyes with the dull, unblinking stare of cows in pasture. Bending his arthritic knees with as much agility as he could muster, he knelt beside the woman in white. "You alright, Ivy?" One knobby hand was on her shoulder.
      But Ivy bent near Nathan Sowder's face. David had stopped his cardiac manipulation and was touching the carotid artery, monitoring the slow pulse. "Shhh. I hear you," Ivy said. "I hear you."
      The white lips moved. "He wasn't . . . here." The words came faltering and choking, so dismally quiet that any noise in the gravel might have blurred the fact that this was language. Enid Fout stepped forward, but her feet made no sound. "He . . . wasn't . . . " Set leaned in while Darby looked over her shoulder. "Here. He wasn't . . . here." The persistent words merged with the sound of wind in the high cedar branches.
      "Now, don't try to talk, son," Ora said. "Save your strength. We got help comin'. You're gonna' be alright, boy."
      "Who wasn't here, Nathan?" David said quietly. "Can you tell me who you mean?" But then Owen paused. Finally he pulled his hand away. He no longer touched Nathan's neck. There was no need. The pulse had stopped, the white lips opened in an awkward smile, the upper teeth protruded like a grotesque ivory necklace in his mouth, and the stiff, blonde hair puffed stupidly with each gust of wind. Where the red stain had been wiped from the Reverend's mouth, there appeared a tiny rivulet of blood. David Owen swabbed the gaping mouth necklace with his handkerchief.
      "The blood is on your hands, David Owen." Enid Fout stood dark and tall, her words delivered without passion or inflection. Still, they were loud words, in no sense timid. The pained cow eyes of the entire group focused on Enid. But she did not repeat herself; it did not matter, for they had all heard.
      "You hush up, Enid. This is not the time." Bob Fout had left Lori in the little trees and now faced his wife at the circle. Some might have called his tone savage, but Enid did not flinch.
      What Set heard then could have been the cry of a wounded animal, a deer caught in a cruel toothed trap, or a raccoon struggling against a hunter's grasp. Teresa Sowders had fallen on her husband's still chest, crying a sound more than sorrow, a sound that crested with a pitch of fear. Lori came forward from the trees just as the loud staccato blare of an emergency vehicle thundered up the gravel drive.
      David Owen rose and faced the Fouts, but Set knew he was looking at Enid. His face registered a blank stare of resignation, but somewhere in a twitch of his mouth, as if he was about to speak, Set thought she saw sadness. But the twitch turned to tight lips. "You don't know what you're saying, Enid," David said. Then he turned away from the body of Nathan Sowders and looked weakly at the faces in the small circle. He appeared tired. Kathy Schmidt came near him and gave a questioning look.
      "I'll get Reuben to help out here, David. Mr. Lambert, may I use the phone here, please?"
      "Of course, anything you need is yours."
      "Do what you want, Kathy. It's over. We can't do anything for him. I'm very tired." Owen turned his back on the body while East Worthy's emergency squad probed and lifted. Blankets at the head, IV set in the skin, efficient management of time. Two men and a woman handled Nate Sowders carefully, finally lifting him through the back doors of the white van. For several seconds, Kathy watched Owen walk toward the dark glass walls of the conservatory, then moved to Teresa and Lori Sowders who were clinging together. The mother cried softly and the daughter stroked her mother's dry hair. Finally, the red-haired woman also came close to the weeping couple. Her skin shone startling white in the light of several cars. She bent forward toward mother and daughter. When she spoke, her voice held a deep sympathy, but a sympathy which revealed no terror or shock at the horrific events which had just transpired. "May I help you in any way?" she asked with a graceful hand extended to the daughter. Lori did not vocally respond to this query, although she turned a grateful young face toward the woman. Instead, she spoke into her mother's blank stare.
      "Mom, he's with the Lord now. You know he is. The Lord must of wanted him home." Lori, had gained control, had become the protector. "We gotta go home now, Mama. He'd want us to do that now. He's in the hands of the Lord." She edged her mother toward a blue Ford, its headlights still beaming through the night.
      Enid and Bob Fout moved swiftly toward mother and daughter. "Here, Lori, you let us help you and your mother into the car. I think it might be best if either Enid or I stay at the house with you tonight." Lori turned toward Robert Fout and began to form the word "No" with her lips; but she seemed to reconsider, and made no reply when Enid slipped a large arm under Teresa's arm. Teresa allowed herself along, shuffling toward the car. Set heard Enid speak again as the quartet slipped beyond the car lights and were swallowed by darkness.
      "Only the Lord knows what happened here tonight. His eye is on the sparrow." A car door slammed. Bob Fout's shadow dissolved in a station wagon shadow.
      September Hunt and Darby Lambert walked together without speaking across the scattered gravel where the old Indian blanket lay. It was folded in a neat square. Alone on the gravel. It was faded red with black triangles, so Set could not tell if blood stained its rumpled wool. It had propped the Reverend's head and when she picked it up, her stomach rolled over in a wave of nausea. The lights of the car circle had dissolved into the night, following the cacophonous wail of the van. But there had been no need to alert the surrounding highways to the passage of the form which lay rocking in its sterile cab, IV bags slopping against plastic with each bump. Nathan Sowders was beyond danger and everyone who had stood in the circle knew the horn was unnecessary. Only two white circles of light remained blinking between the oak and cedar branches. The corn picker's eyes still rolled. The three electric candles Dar had plugged in for the beginning of the Christmas season at Shequonur shone meekly from behind their glass in the tall windows.
      "Set, are you going to be alright? You appear ill," Dar said. They sat still a few minutes in the Toyota before she pulled it off the lawn to its spot behind the building. Her face was stiff. Her drama was gone. The fire-folk in their citadel had become a real horror, and were much less pretty than a Hopkins poem. But, most of all, the sweet, vegetable oder of onions, which filled the car, made her already-assaulted senses reel.
      She didn't answer him. She parked by the stone kennel, opened the car's back door and peered into the back seat. The crock pot had tipped, not completely over, but enough so that a thin trickle of milk, reeking with onions and potatoes, had drained into the carpet. It was like the red trickle from the Reverend Nathan Sowder's mouth. Forever after, Set would associate the smell of onions with death.