Miss Pearl drove these thoughts away and returned to her Bible: “And the LORD said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job?”
Seated at the corner of one of the long kitchen tables the schoolchildren huddled behind, Kate wrote “Job” in pointed letters, after “Satan,” “Lord,” “God,” “Uts or Uz.” She wondered if God was a proper name and why Miss Pearl was biting her lips while looking at the window’s white specters. So blonde that a sunbeam inflamed her, with eyes like star fruit and cheeks of a soft pink pallor, the pastor’s daughter seemed to her more beautiful than the snow covering the angelic curves of the hills.
“What world are you in, Katie?” the teacher asked, finally embarrassed by the fixity of her gaze.
She was aware of the youngest Fox sister’s sleepwalker-like absent-mindedness, which sometimes could be easily turned by the least thing into an agitation of the mind. Kate blushed and was smiling now as if to apologize.
“In no world, Miss Pearl, it’s the snow . . .”
The other students, having lost their concentration, put down their chalk or their Birmingham metallic pens. Harriett Mansfield, the youngest from the horse ranch, Lily Brown who seemed at sixteen to have already lived several lives, two still innocent little geese-keepers, ten-year-old goat herders let free for a few hours of study, Samuel Redfield in the back of the room, his hair dripping, nodding his head in a silent laugh. That one she suspected of hiding painful secrets. Dressed in a pair of overalls with wide straps and dyed Genoan blue, the adolescent fidgeting oddly in his seat seemed to prefer the warmth of the stove than learning to read and write. She managed never to be alone with him in the classroom and turned her head when his eyes would grow wide while he opened that mouth with lips redder than a calf’s heart freshly sliced in two. Sundays at service, dressed in his late father’s heavy and broad black clothes, he voluntarily devoted himself to do the collection or pass out hymnbooks. The reverend assigned him even minor tasks with the ringing promise of a silver dollar on his birthday.
Miss Pearl closed her Bible; a little embarrassed, she looked for a way to harness their attention.
“—God had so much confidence in his creature that he abandoned him to the devil. From this testing, Job will emerge the victor. He who had been rich and had integrity will lose everything, he will become frightfully poor and suffer, but in the end, by the sole force of his faith, he will prevail over the powers of evil . . .”
Young Harriett raised her hand and, in the rush of that gesture, knocked off her own wool bonnet. Her copper-colored curls flounced like a fox’s tail.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but does the devil really exist? Does he walk around, like they say, disguised as a prowler, or an old woman, or a billy goat?”
“Satan would not exist without the Lord! Let’s leave him alone and reflect instead on the fate of Job. It was with resignation that the patriarch endured the death of his seven sons and three daughters crushed by the collapse of his house, he endured every calamity without ever denying his master. God also restored his possessions and gave him even more children . . .”
Arms crossed at the end of the table, Kate imagined the house on Long Road so weighted down with snow and ice that all the roof beams gave in, making the walls collapse and in their falling, killing in a single blow her sister Maggie and her dear mother and maybe even her father, kept away from the farm by the inclement weather. Would she ask Heaven for another family to replace them? Could one change families in this way without despair? The memory of Abbey, their little brother who had died in Rapstown—no gift of a good God would be able to heal them of that.
“Class is dismissed for the day,” Miss Pearl said wearily. “Bundle up, it looks like it could go on snowing for the next thousand years . . .”
Night fell on the little ice castles born of cold and wind. A farmhand from the Mansfield ranch came on horseback to get young Harriett, as did Mr. Fox, sober for once in his stirrups, to fetch his daughter: Kate raised herself up with an arm and sat sideways on Old Billy’s rump. The other students ran along under the awnings of buildings or ventured into the fresh snow to reach their homes in downtown Hydesville.
His face imprinted with a wild exultation, young Samuel Redfield paused momentarily in front of the disappeared roads. He bent down to stir this expensive treasure, eating some snow and spreading it all over his face. Without looking for anyone coming to help, he considered the heights of Long Road, then stepped into the footprints of the last horse with a joyous refrain on his lips:
A nice young ma-wa-wan
Lived on a hi-wi-will
A nice young ma-wa-wan
For I knew him we-we-well
When Heaven and Earth Shall Tremble
Torrents of rain swept by a gusting wind crashed down on Monroe County. It was one of those random nights crossed with omens between two seasons, one just coming to an end before the next has quite begun. In the upstairs bedroom opening onto the staircase, Kate, seated on her bed, watched the glimmers from the woodstove that sporadically revealed three steps of the staircase and the landing. Through the sheer intensity of her concentration on this scene, an immaterial figure began to float in the thick shadow. The clock struck eleven. There were no other lights on and the house was empty: mother and father were keeping watch in the barn over their only cow, a beautiful Devon dairy cow who was certain to calve this night. Maggie, curious about everything, had demanded to assist them at the happy event for educational purposes. Wasn’t she now a young woman, after all, with her pointed breasts and all she unreservedly revealed on bath days?
Her younger sister tucked the blanket under her chin. Kate’s body had not yet begun to develop, but unusual phenomena were inside her, impatient or annoying sensations all throughout her body, altering her every feeling and mood. Waves of sky beat down against this wooden house like Noah’s ark at the time of the Flood, and she relished her solitude even while spiders of fear traveled a long shudder across the skin of her arms and down her thighs. The image of Abbey, their little brother dead in his bed, forcefully came back to her: at that moment, she had found herself just as alone as now, a little before dawn; her parents had gone out to feed the animals. Maggie, also sick, was asleep on the other side of the house in the childhood bed of Leah, who, more than twenty years their elder, had just left their farming life for good and with no regrets. That was in Rapstown, many years ago. Mother had left Kate in charge of taking care of the little one, for just an hour. His fever had risen the night before and now he seemed to be getting better, his skin fresh and eyes