The Devil Dances (19 page)

Vivian became animate. “Mary told me about this, too! She said Abraham is allowing music and dancing tonight.” She grabbed my hand and stood up. “Dance with me, Nick!”

I really wasn’t the dancing type any more than I was the suit type. I loathed it, in fact. Had I actually gone to my senior prom—instead of going out with my friends that night to get drunk, stoned, and feel up girls at this punk club down in the Bronx—I’m sure I would have wallflowered all night like some pathetic loser. And don’t give me that look; this was the late 1970’s, remember. You try to dance in a robin’s-egg-blue tuxedo and a ruffle-fronted, super-fly-style shirt.

I made plenty of noises of protest as Vivian dragged me into the middle of the melee of young couples, then turned to face me, taking my hand in one of her own, and setting the other on my shoulder.

“Vivian, I really…”

“Oh, be quiet,” she said sternly. “Follow my lead.” She pushed gently against me and we took a step back, turned, and then repeated the motion. I watched out of the corner of my eye as the boys did the same with the girls, pushing them a few steps back, then turning. It reminded me of some medieval ball dance, or something from Revolutionary France. Step, step, turn, step, step, turn. Simple, really, a caveman could do it, but I realized after some time that the way we were positioned on the green, all the couples were making a kind of giant spiral even as the fiddle and flute intensified, and the air filled with music and fecund summer meadow-smells. There were spirals on the god’s altar, I remembered, among other symbols. Very soon we were on the inside, and with each turn, it brought Vivian and me closer to the eye of the giant symbol we were forming in the middle of the town square with the other couples.

She was smiling and leading me on. I had to struggle to keep up. I wanted to say
stop
, that this whole thing was wrong, but suddenly it seemed too much. I realized I was tired of always being suspicious, always mistrusting everything and everyone. I just wanted to have fun with my girl. The music invigorated me. The evening was washing away, becoming colder, but the cold enlivened me.

“Isn’t this fun, Nick?” she said to me with a broad smile.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.” I smiled back, feeling happy and content for the first time in my life.

We danced, turning faster and faster, hemmed in on all sides by the other couples. It was then I realized that a lot of the couples were feeling each other up, like at the clubs that Vivian and I visited. I watched the boys palming the girls’ asses, the girls rubbing their breasts against the boys’ chests. I knew it wasn’t normal, not in this setting, but it sure as hell was damned hot.

I felt a momentary spike of confusion, followed by a growing concern. I wanted to enjoy myself—I felt I deserved it—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were off-kilter somehow.

“Vivian…” I began, begging her to stop, but she changed things up then. She shifted both hands to the back of my neck, angling my head so she could kiss me, crushing her lips against mine even as we continued to turn in a tight circle like dervishes, turning, turning, even as the fiddle and flute found their crescendo.

Something crunched underfoot. I glanced down at our quickly shifting feet and saw the small, mangled body of a barn swallow being trampled by us. Something hit me in the shoulder, and when I turned to glance at it, I realized it was another swallow. Another smashed into the ground behind Vivian, and within seconds at least two dozen small, very dead avian bodies began pummeling the ground around us. My heart lurched up into my throat at the sight, though I don’t think Vivian noticed, and I
know
for a fact that no one else did, not the way everyone was lost in groping and kissing on the green.

I broke away from her, trampling dead birds as I maneuvered out of the circle of couples. Suddenly everything was frosty cold, windy and nightmarish. The night seemed both black and unfriendly. I didn’t recognized anything at all. The clouds had covered the moon and the only light came from the hellishly burning paper lanterns. I turned and pushed past a young couple lost in a serious game of tonsil hockey, stumbled over a few more bird bodies, and then ran for the barn.

And people wonder why I don’t dance.

I was sitting in the loft, my back against a hay bale, watching the grove like a poor man’s sentinel and listening to the last of the music playing down in the square, when I become aware of a presence closing in on me. I’d never liked being taken by surprise. I scuffled up in the hay and sawdust, then saw the flickering light of a lantern as a young man ambled toward me. His face was carved in shadow, but as he lifted the lantern, I recognized the horsey face and silver glasses. “It’s you. Isaac.”

He gave me a dour nod before moving closer. “And you’re the daemon.”

I brushed hay off my black jacket. “I haven’t seen you since that day at the festival.”

Isaac bit his lip. “I’ve been staying with Abraham and his family.” When he saw I didn’t follow, he added, “I don’t come from here.” With his free hand, he made a little spiral to indicate this place, Zion. “I come from a smaller Ordnung up in Ohio.” Now that he spoke more, I recognized the soft, flat, Midwestern drawl lurking just beneath his Pennsylvania Dutch accent.

“Swartzcopf?”

“No, Andy Weaver Amish. But this spring, I and a few others were invited to join the Swartzcopf, if we were willing to submit to the Ordnung.” Like the first time I’d seen him, he wore no jacket, and his shirtsleeves rolled up so when he shrugged his strong, bony shoulders, the muscles and sinews rippled through his bared forearms. “New breeding stock, you understand.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?” When I didn’t immediately answer, he asked to bum a cigarette.

I handed him one from my pack, along with my lighter. “Does that happen a lot? Breeding stock being imported from other Ordnungs?” I nearly grimaced when I said it. It sounded so impersonal, like Clydesdales being shipped to other parts of the country, but Isaac took no offense.

“Yah, well. It was a good opportunity to see something new.” He moved past me to the edge of the barn loft and glanced out at the festivities still going on. He sucked down the cigarette hungrily. I saw no joy in his face. He sat down on the very edge of the open loft. I sat down beside him. “My Ordnung was so small the kids weren’t coming out right, like. Being born sick and deformed. The girls would sometimes go into town in disguise, find English to mate with. How pathetic is that?”

I shrugged. “I guess you do what you need to do.”

“Yah.” Isaac didn’t sound pleased with his lot in life.

“If you’re unhappy, why don’t you leave?”

He snorted smoke out his nostrils. He removed his black hat and raked his fingers through his blond, pageboy hair so it shushed thickly in the silence. “I did run away. Twice. But going out there into the English world with no money? Barely any education? Can’t find a job? Unless you get yourself a good halfway house, it’s nearly impossible. This place is all.”

We sat in silence for some time and smoked side by side. Distantly, an owl hooted, a lonely, haunted sound.

Finally, I said, “So why did you lure me here, Isaac? Is it to get you out? Did you see an opportunity?”

Again, Isaac’s hair shushed in the dark, though this time I could barely see the gesture. He was all angular darkness and glinting glasses and burning cigarette butt to me now. “Ain’t about me. It’s Caleb.”

“The young man who died.”

He was silent a long moment. “You gotta find out why. And why Grandmother Knapp died as well. I know the two are connected.”

I got a funny feeling somewhere between my shoulder blades. That always told me I was onto something. “Any particular reason why Caleb means so much to you?”

Isaac instantly lifted his head. “My reasons are my own.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You ran away twice with him, didn’t you?”

He rubbed at his eyes. “
Wonnernaus
, English,” he said defensively, which was a polite way of telling me to mind my own business. “Just find out what happened.” Finished with his smoke, he grabbed at a thick, knotted rope used to pull open the now-locked trap door in the loft, and scrambled down it like a monkey, hand over hand, muscles bunching. I thought about following him down, then decided against it. Playing Tarzan had never been my strong suit. I took the stairs like a reasonable adult and came out behind the barn.

I was a little surprised to find Isaac standing there with his hands in his pockets, staring off into Mulberry Grove as if hypnotized. “It’s there, isn’t it? The thing that’s been hurting the girls?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned to me, and his face was stark with fear. “And it’s afraid of you. I know. It’s been quiet the last few days. The girl I’m courting stopped having bad dreams.”

“You’re courting?”

He lifted and dropped a shoulder. “Have to, if I’m to stay in the Ordnung. But she’s sweet,” he added like he had to convince me. “I like her. Her name’s Ruth.”

The woods crackled faintly. It might have been deer. But Isaac still shifted a little closer to the wall of the barn. He worried his bottom lip again and said, “You have any more cigarettes?”

I let him bum another Camel off me, my last one. Together we smoked it, passing it back and forth between us, while we stood vigil in front of Mulberry Grove. When it was almost gone, I said, “I won’t let it hurt you. Or your girl. I’m not human, but I’m not a monster, either. I’ll see this to the end.” I thought about that promise, and how easy it was to make. I only hoped I could keep it.

He nodded as he stomped out the finished smoke, then stared down at it a long moment while wisps of smoke drifted off the ground. “I should go back. Ruth will wonder what’s happened.”

“You’re bed courting her tonight?”

“Bed courting her. Bedding her.” He stayed stoic a long moment before saying in a whisper, “Can I ask you for something?”

“Shoot.”

He told me what he wanted. I wasn’t very surprised. I’d heard variations on his request for most of my life. It was something to get him through the night, so to speak, to help him do his proper duty by Ruth. After all, it was the reason he’d been asked to Zion.

“How can you tell?” I said. “About me, I mean?”

Isaac gave me a droll look. “You haven’t stopped looking at my ass yet, English. You make me think of Caleb. He was like you. He knew what he liked.”

I felt more than a little sorry for him as I went to him, scooped him up in my arms, and drove him backward into the side of the barn. The impact made the both of us grunt. Isaac wrapped his long legs around my waist. I gripped a handful of his silken, too-long hair, and kissed him, shoving my tongue down his throat. He tasted like sweetness and tobacco. I thought about him and Caleb, how they would never be together again, not in this lifetime, anyway. I thought about me and Vivian. I wondered what it would feel like to lose her, to know I would never spend another night in her arms.

In the dark, Isaac traced the sides of my face with the callused palms of his hands. I pressed my body against his, pinning him to the barn wall. He was heavier than he looked, but I managed it. I carried all the heavy boxes at the shop. I also got into a lot of fights with the other-creatures. Overall, I had pretty good upper body strength. As he kissed me, softly and warmly, my hunger for him grew. I slid my hands down his back, cupped his ass, and drew him tight against me.

“You feel good, English,” he told me. “You make me feel safe.”

I adjusted his weight and lifted him higher so he could undo our trousers and apply a little spit in appropriate places. He fisted my hair and I grunted against his mouth as we came together, afraid I was hurting him, afraid I might frighten him, but when I didn’t fuck him fast enough for his own liking, he started moving against me, like he couldn’t get enough. “Harder,” he growled against my lips and I went harder, raking his back against the wall until we both came with a lunge. It didn’t take long, and since we were both guys, we didn’t need to take the scenic route. Really, in the end, the destination was all.

For moments afterward, I cradled him protectively in my arms while our breathing returned to a normal pace. He made cute little whimpering noises against my mouth. He was a nice guy, Isaac. He made me think of my partner, Peter, and Josh, Vivian’s brother. As far as I was concerned, there weren’t enough nice guys in this world.

“You fuck good. I like being with you,” he said.

I licked his lips, gently and lazily, tracing the seam there, and said, “I like you, too. And my girlfriend would love you. She likes big, sweet guys.” Then I realized what I was saying. Just because he liked guys didn’t mean he liked a crowd. “I mean… if that’s something you’re into. If it’s not, that’s okay.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “If we can do another round of this, then yes.”

The music down in the square had stopped. I knew the young men were driving their young women home. I knew that, later tonight, a dozen couples would be busy bed courting. I let Isaac down and we made ourselves presentable again. Taking his hand, I led him to the Knapp farmhouse and up the back stairs.