FOUR

THE VILLAGE

Bethany's SIN, the roadside sign read, in white letters against a background of green. And below that; POP. 811. The sign looked immaculately clean, gleaming with the morning sun; Evan Reid remembered the contrasting sign that had marked the LaGrange town limits: pocked with bullet holes, bleeding rust, bent crazily out of shape by an errant car fender.

Good damned riddance to that place, he thought bitterly, as the dark blue station wagon swept along a blacktopped highway overhung by the spreading green arms of elm trees, toward the life that lay ahead, toward the village of Bethany's Sin.

"We're here!" Laurie said from the backseat, pulling herself up between the man and woman in front to see. Her face was filled with the honest excitement of a six year-old who has seen the sun streaming out from behind swollen - bellied storm clouds; it was finally summer, after a long and terrible time of freezing weather, and her expectant eyes were as blue and soft as the Pennsylvania sky. She had been absorbed for most of the morning in a coloring book, but when they'd reached the green and rolling hills, the forests shadow-dappled and surely filled with the white bearded elves of bedtime stories, Laurie had laid aside her Crayolas and let her mind drift. Beside her on the seat, her rag doll, Miss Prissy, nodded silently with the movement of the car.

What was especially good, she thought, watching a crow turning lazy circles in the sky, was that Mommy and Daddy hadn't been mad at each other for a long time.

"Not there quite yet," Kay Reid said, turning her head to glance back and smile at her little girl. She had the same blue eyes as Laurie, set in an attractive oval face framed by auburn hair that fell softly onto her shoulders. "You'd better be putting away those crayons, though; it won't be long."

"Okay." Laurie began lining them up in the green and-yellow box, her golden hair blowing in the air that circulated through the open windows.

Kay looked across at her husband; she knew he was weary from the driving, and concerned about threads showing in a couple of places on the left front tire. Almost home," she said, and he smiled a little bit. Home: the word sounded strange because she'd said it before, in different times and places; now it was like one of those words that lose meaning after you repeat them over and over again.

There had been no permanence in those other places she'd called home, neither the cramped upstairs apartment with its clattering radiator pipes nor the shingle-roofed house that had always seemed thick with the reek of the steel mills. Those had both been places of suffocation, gritty no matter how often Kay cleaned and vacuumed, bad places for a little girl to grow up in, hopeless places in which to try to heal strained scars. No. Don't think about that. Her mind sheered away from the black drop-offs of memory. She watched him, saw his eyes follow the white line in the center of the road. What is it I see there? she wondered. Hope? Or fear? She thought suddenly how much older than his thirty-two years he looked; how the lines had spread around his deep-set gray eyes and around the mouth, how minute traces of gray had prematurely speckled the temples of his unruly sandy - brown hair. It was the creep of stress and pain, of anxious times when the world with its dark, outstretched claws seemed to be closing in on them, confining them, trapping them.

He felt her gaze on him. "What is it?"he asked.

"Just nervous," she said, and smiled.

"No need to be. Everything's going to be fine."

Rising up from the forests on either side now were white picket fences, mailboxes, and driveways leading to unseen houses. Around the next curve was a white painted brick wall, a black wrought-iron gate with a scrolled D at its center, the roofs looming over the woods behind. As they drove past that house, Kay could see black and white and dappled horses grazing in a distant pasture; some of them lifted their heads to watch the station wagon sweep by.

They came to an intersection with a blinking yellow caution light; there was a Gulf station with a banner proclaiming TIRE-SALE - Have to remember that, Evan thought as he stopped at the intersection - and across the street from it a large sign with an array of medallions and lettering: THE LION'S CLUB** THE

CIVITAN** THE ROTARIANS** WELCOME YOU TO Bethany's SIN. And then they were driving along a street lined with elms and oaks; there were spacious, well-kept green lawns and dignified-looking brick and stone houses. More picket fences and gates and driveways, quiet streets, the hint of a breeze ruffling leaves overhead. A mailman in shorts, carrying a shoulder bag, making his rounds; a young blond woman in denims pushing a baby stroller; a summer-tanned teenage boy mowing a lawn, sweat glistening on his bare shoulders. A yellow Volkswagen, newly waxed, passed them going in the opposite direction. On the block ahead, a dark brown Buick was turning into a driveway. Evan suddenly felt ashamed of his station wagon; he wished it looked better. It was riddled with dents and nicks from five years of hard use and seemed like a vehicle from another world in this neat, everything-in-its-proper-place residential neighborhood; if there were a roadside sign in that other world, it would read JUST SCRAPING BY - POP. 3.

They passed a McDonald's on the right, and then the street they were on, Fredonia, carried them directly into the main part of the village. Quaint little stores were ringed around a street called, appropriately, the Circle; it was a beautifully planned community, Kay thought, glancing around at the shops: Eve's Florists, Bryson's Gifts and Crafts, the Lamplighter Restaurant, the Talmadge Rexall drugstore, the Perky Pot coffee shop. But what was loveliest of all to her, and filled the air with the sweet scent of summer flowers, was the small park in the Circle's center; peonies and marigolds and daisies, three different varieties of roses, violets of deep, sun-splashed color, were all planted in orderly rows at the village's heart.

There was a stunning range of hues, from pale white to flaming red to dark purple, the colors reflected in the window glass of the shops.

Streets led out from the Circle in all directions, like spokes from the center of a huge wheel.

"it's soooooo pretty," Laurie said, pulling Miss Prissy up into the window to see. "And it smells so nice, too. Are we near our new house yet?"

"Almost," Evan said, following the curve of the Circle past the blue-and-green-striped canopy of the Village Thrifty Delicatessen, past a swapshop bookstore called Chapter One. He turned onto Paragon Street and drove away from the center of the village, passing the sheriff's office, a red-brick building with white-trimmed windows and door, and the modernistic glass-and-marble Wallace Perkins Public Library. Evan and Kay had visited Bethany's Sin three times: the first in April, when she'd gotten the job at George Ross Junior College, the second in May to hunt for an affordable house, the third during the first week of June to make final arrangements. Though it was smaller by far than the surrounding villages on Highway 2l9 - Spangler, Barnesboro, Saint Benedict, and Carrolltown - Bethany's Sin had a refreshing character that both Evan and Kay found appealing. The lawns were as green as emeralds, the streets free of litter, the houses cozy and inviting.

Fringes of woodland were allowed to grow wild within the village limits, so that there would be a block of homes right on the edge of the forest, or a vale of pine and wild honeysuckle separating one street from the next. And lining the streets, like summer's sentinels, were the trees, looming high over the Bethany's Sin rooftops to throw kaleidoscopic patterns of shade.

As he drove, Evan checked a map Marcia Giles had made for him on their last visit. Bethany's Sin stretched barely two miles from north to south, but there were many turn-offs and narrow, meandering streets that Evan hadn't yet learned to navigate; they passed the old flagstone Douglas Elementary School on Knollwood Street, turned right on Blair Lane. He looked down at the map again: Blair connected with Cowlington Street, then a left on Deer Cross Lane and up a small hill onto McClain Terrace. It would gradually become familiar to him, but now it was a maze of houses and greenery. Off beyond Deer Cross Lane, Kay saw a couple of shaded tennis courts and a covered-over barbecue pit; there was a concrete jogging track, on which a solitary figure in red running shorts was loping around the far turn.

They reached McClain Terrace, as immaculate and fresh-looking as all the rest of the village. Perhaps the houses were a little newer and smaller, but Kay didn't mind; they were going to live in one of them, and that made all the difference. She mentally checked off the names on the mailboxes: Haversham, Kincaid, Rice, Demargeon. And then there was one with no name on it yet.

Evan swung into the driveway. "Here we are, troops," he said.

The house was two-storied, white with dark green trim and a dark green front door. Elms grew in the front yard, and there was a walkway to the door, lined with monkey grass. Though the backyard wasn't visible from the street, Evan knew it sloped gently downward to where a chainlink fence ended the property; beyond the fence there was a concrete drainage ditch and then the wild green tangle of the forest, unbroken until almost Marsteller, the nearest town, over two miles west. As Evan stopped the car, he was thinking about what Mrs. Giles had told him: It's a very quiet neighborhood, Mr. Reid, and in your line of work I know how highly you must value peace and quiet. In this day and age it's a vanishing commodity. He cut the engine, took the keys out of the ignition; the key chain had been made heavier by two after he'd come to terms with Mrs. Giles, over in her real-estate office on Kinderdine Street.

"Are there deers around here?" Laurie asked him as he lugged two heavy suitcases out of the back of the station wagon.

"Mrs. Giles says they've been seen a couple of times," Kay told her. "Here. Why don't you put Miss Prissy in this box and carry it in for me, okay? Be careful now, '" there's glass in it. She took the cardboard box. "How about wolves? Any of them?

"I doubt it," Evan said. "We're not far enough north."

Kay took the keys from Evan and carried a box filled with kitchen utensils up the three steps to the front door; a brass knocker reflected golden sunlight. She waited for Laurie and her husband and then slipped the key into the lock, turned it to the left. There was a quiet click! And she smiled, then opened the door and held it for them.

Evan stood in the doorway, a suitcase gripped in each hand; there was an entrance foyer with a parquet floor, and off to the left a large, high-ceilinged living room carpeted in beige. It still looked bare, even with the new sofa and the coffee table and chairs they'd brought over from LaGrange in a U-Haul. Pictures were needed on the walls, knickknacks on the table; but that would all be done in time, he told himself. Right now it looked as good as anything in the home-decorating magazines Kay had begun buying as she feverishly counted the the days until they were to move in. God, he realized suddenly, this entrance foyer and the living room combined are probably about the same size as that entire house in LaGrange, under the towering smokestacks, where the siding was the color of rust and the rain on the roof sounded like gunshots.

"Well," Evan said, his voice giving life to the room as it floated up the white-banistered staircase and echoed back down again, I think we're home." He turned, gave Kay and Laurie a half-smile because smiles still did not come easy, and then carried the suitcases across the threshold. He set them down in the living room and stood for a moment looking out the picture window onto McClain Terrace while Kay and Laurie went back to the kitchen; he knew the layout of the house by heart now , after negotiating those stairs with lamps and mattresses and pasteboard boxes that held the accumulated odds and ends of a ten-year marriage: paneled den, a small dining area and kitchen in the back, a porch with stairs leading down to the backyard; upstairs, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a half. Plenty of closet space. Even a full basement. The doorway beneath the staircase led down into it. Evan looked at the houses across the street and wondered who lived over there; he heard Kay talking in the kitchen, and Laurie giggling at something she said.

There would be time later to meet the neighbors. Right now there were two more suitcases in the car. He went outside, hearing the distant breeze making its way lazily through the overhang of branches. Shade-dappled sun fell upon him, warming his shoulders as he reached into the back of the station wagon and pulled out the battered cases. Here were their lives, he thought; packed away into suitcases and pasteboard boxes, folded over, tucked into place, pushed down deep and covered over with newspaper so they wouldn't rattle. It had been a long, hard road from LaGrange; the memory of that terrible place was like the jab of an ice pick in his soul. Let it go, he told himself; let it go because that part of our lives is finally over. It's going to be good now, here in Bethany's Sin, everything as it should be. I'1l make it be good. He glanced across the lawn at his house and felt proud for the first time in a very long while. Evan saw curtains being pulled aside in a window at the back, where the kitchen was, and Kay peered out and waved to him. He gave a little broken back pantomime and shuffled toward the door with the suitcases, and he saw her smile before she let the curtains drop back again. He heard a lawn mower start up perhaps two streets over, the drone of insects rising in harmony with it.

And then the flesh at the back of his neck crawled, as it did whenever he sensed things without form or name, and he turned his head to gaze across the street. The houses there were sun-splashed hulks of wood and stone. Each one a little different, trimmed in dark brown, blue, painted white and forest green and burnt umber; but each one similar to the others in its silence. He narrowed his eyes slightly. Had a curtain been pulled aside at a window in the brown-and - white house two doors up the street? No, he decided after another moment; nothing had moved over there. And when he started for the house again, he caught the figure out of the corner of an eye.

Someone sitting in the shadows of a front porch next door. Staring at him, hands clasped in the lap, chin slightly upraised. Across the roof of the porch the shadows of tree limbs were intertwined like the bodies of pythons. Evan knew it had been the gaze of that figure, fixed on the back of his neck, that had given him a brief, needlelike chill.

Evan took a step forward. "Hello!" he called out.

The figure, wearing shadow robes, did not move. Evan couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman; his eyes slid toward the street, to the name on the mailbox: DEMARGEON. "We're just moving in," Evan said; the figure remained motionless, and Evan imagined himself trying to carry on a conversation with a department-store dummy. He started to put the suitcases down and step toward the Demargeon house but suddenly the figure moved, turning noiselessly in its chair; as Evan watched, the entire chair swiveled and began to glide smoothly forward. Then the figure vanished within the house and there was the noise of a door closing quietly. He stood for a moment, still gripping the suitcases, staring at that front porch; it hadn't been an ordinary piece of porch furniture that figure had been sitting in. It had been a wheelchair.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Evan said under his breath. He shook his head and turned back for his own doorway. But before he reached it there was the quick honking of a horn and a black, shining Buick swerved to the curb. The woman inside waved and cut the engine, sliding out from underneath the steering wheel

"Good morning," Mrs. Giles said, coming up the walkway toward him. She was very tall, almost as tall as he, and looked skeletal, as if she'd gone a little too far with her faddish liquid-protein diet. The last time he'd seen her she'd been wearing a blouse and skirt, but now she wore a short-sleeved navy blue jumpsuit; bracelets dangled noisily from her wrists. "How long have you been here?"

"Not very long. We're still unloading the station wagon."

"I see." She had darting dark eyes that reminded Evan of some kind of insect, a high forehead crowned with light brown hair that held ribbons of gray. She was smiling, her face full of even white teeth. "How was your drive?"

"Fine. Please, come inside. Kay and Laurie are in there exploring." He followed her through the doorway and set the suitcases down near the stairs. "Kay!" he called. "Mrs. Giles is here!"

"Okay; be right down!" Kay's voice floated from the master bedroom.

Evan ushered the woman into the living room, and she sat down on the sofa. "I can only stay for a minute," she said as he took a seat in a chair across from her. "I wanted to come by and officially welcome you to the village, also to ask if there's anything I can do to help you get settled."

"Thank you," Evan said, "but we're almost in. There's still some furniture on our shopping list - "

"You might try Broome's Furniture over at the Westbury Mall; it's not far from here."

"We'll probably take our time about it. There's no hurry."

"Indeed," Mrs. Giles said, "there isn't. I think you'll find that you've made an excellent investment; there's no point anymore in renting apartments when you can put your money into solid property.

At least not around Bethany's Sin. there's a rumor circulating that International Chemco may be buying land near Nanty Glo for a new research facility; if that's true, Bethany's Sin's going to be sharing in the area's growth, and all property owners are going to benefit -

Listen to me go on! Isn't that how I talked you out of renting that apartment in Johnstown?"

Evan smiled and nodded. "I believe it is."

"Well," she said, and shrugged, "progress would be nice, but just between you and me, I hope the village won't ever become much larger than it is right now. There's a character and a mood here that I would hate to see altered by the crush of huge industrial complexes; I expect you had enough of that in LaGrange. For myself, I couldn't have stood that nasty air and the noises - ah, here's that pretty little girl with the golden hair..." She had glanced over as Kay came into the living room, holding Laurie's hand. "How do you like having your own room, dear?" she asked the little girl.

"it's very nice," Laurie said.

"But she thinks the bed's too big for her," Kay said. "I've explained that when people get their own bedrooms they can expect to sleep on full-sized beds. Anyway" -  she smoothed Laurie's hair

- "now there's room for Miss Prissy, isn't there?"

"Yes," Laurie said, "but she always sleeps on the same pillow as me."

Mrs. Giles smiled. "I think that can probably be arranged.

Well" - she glanced up at Kay - "I expect you'll have quite a lot to do before the beginning of the summer session."

"So much I don't know where to start. I'm driving over to George Ross in the morning to check with Dr. Wexler. Do you know him?"

"I don't believe I do."

"Then, on Wednesday morning, there's a conference for the new instructors and some kind of luncheon. Workshops after that. I'm glad I won't be thrown into it cold."

"Even if you were," Mrs. Giles said, "I'm certain you could handle the situation. You're a very intelligent woman, and this seems like a perfect opportunity for you. "

"It is," Kay said. "Of course, I'm nervous because I've never taught at a school anywhere as large as George Ross. But at the very least it'll be a good experience."

She glanced quickly over at Evan. "For both of us."

"I'm certain." Mrs. Giles stood up from the sofa. "I'd better be running along now; there are some calls I have to make at the office.

You have my number; if there's anything I can do for you, please call me. All right?"

"Yes," Kay said, "we will. Thank you."

Mrs. Giles moved out into the entrance foyer, with Evan behind her; she stopped and turned toward the little girl. "Such beautiful golden hair," she said softly. "It glows in the sunlight, doesn't it?

You're going to break some hearts when you get .a little older, I'll tell you that." She smiled into Laurie's eyes and then stepped through the open door.

"Thanks for stopping by," Evan said as he walked her out to the car. He looked over toward that front porch; a shaft of sunlight now lay like a fork of lightning upon the porch's flagstone door. "By the way," Evan said as they reached her Buick, "I saw one of my neighbors this morning, just before you drove up. There was someone sitting on that porch over there. In a wheelchair, I think. Do you know who that was?"

Mrs. Giles looked over at the Demargeon house, one hand on the door handle. "Harris Demargeon," she said, her voice taking on a darker tone. The tone, Evan thought, of calamities and accidents. A hospital-and graveyard tone. "Poor man. Several years ago he was involved in a...rather nasty accident over on the King's Bridge Road, to the north of Bethany's Sin. There's a roadhouse up there called The Cock's Crow, and they're not above selling a few beers to minors on a slow Saturday night. A drunken young boy in one of those painted vans hit his car, almost head-on. The poor man's paralyzed from the waist down."

"Oh," Evan said. "I see." An image dashed through his mind like a multicolored comet: a red semi with ALLEN LINES on the cab door, crashing over a freeway median. Kay screaming. "I tried to speak to him," he told the woman, "but evidently he felt like being alone."

"He stays to himself." She opened the car door. Pent-up heat rolled out. "I'm sure 'll be meeting Mrs. Demargeon; she's a good friend of mine." She slid beneath the wheel, turned the key in the ignition. "In fact, they bought their house through me." The engine roared to life. "Good luck to you and your wife, Mr. Reid,"

she said. "We're so happy to have you in Bethany's Sin."

"Thanks again," Evan said, and when he stepped back from the car, she pulled away and disappeared at the far end of McClain, turning left toward the village. Some thing caught his eye as he turned back toward the house, and he looked again in order to locate it. Through the jigsaw of elm branches cutting the sky, there were the gables of a slate-colored roof; Evan judged it to be just this side of the Circle. A large building or house of some kind, though he hadn't noticed it before. Now, for some reason, he felt transfixed by it. Felt his heartbeat increase. Felt the blood bum like bile in his veins.

Heard, as if in a mist-shrouded dream, his own voice screaming inside his head: Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop...

The elm branches, moved by the breeze, intertwined themselves into leafy new patterns; shade fell across his eyes, and for an instant that gabled roof was out of sight.

"Evan!" Someone was calling. Someone close. Some one. Kay.

"Evan, I'm putting coffee on! Do you want any? Evan, what's wrong?"

He tried to turn his head toward her, but his neck was stiff. His shoulder was throbbing.

"Evan?" There was a familiar panic in her voice now.

Answer her, he told himself. Turn toward her and answer her.

"Evan!" Kay called from the doorway. She could see his back, could see his head tilted slightly upward and to the side, in that strange way he had of staring at things, of sinking his soul into things, of becoming one with them. She started down the steps and across the lawn.

But before she reached him he had turned and smiled, his eyes clear of any disturbance, his brow calm. "It's okay," he told her. "I was just...letting my mind drift, I guess."

Kay felt her lungs heave. Thank Christ, she told herself. Thank Whoever listens to my prayers about...that thing. "Come inside." She held out her hand to him, and he nodded and took it. "You're hot,"

she said.

"Is that an invitation to something?"

"No," she said, leading him toward the open door, "I mean it.

Your body feels hot. Are you okay?"

"Sure," he said. "Why wou1dn't I be?" She didn't answer.

When they reached the house he realized how badly he was sweating; perspiration covered his face and neck in tiny blisterlike beads. Funny, he thought. Damned funny. But not funny enough to make him laugh, for his face burned and felt swollen.

As if seared by a huge, a1l - consuming fire.