The Cydonian Pyramid (15 page)

L
IA WOKE UP TO THE SMELL OF BACON
. A
LTHOUGH SHE
could not bring herself to consume animal flesh, she enjoyed the sweet, smoky smell.
If I ever eat meat,
she thought,
it will be bacon.
She sat up and looked out the window. It was still dark, not quite dawn. Ronnie’s truck was parked crookedly by the side of the driveway. She thought about his hand on her knee. She wanted to tell Maria but feared she would not be believed. Maria tended to overlook Ronnie’s shortcomings, and Ronnie would be angry with her for telling.

She dragged the dresser away from the door and went downstairs. Ronnie was sitting at the kitchen table, eating bacon.

“Morning, kiddo,” he said. It was the same thing he said every morning. But on this morning, his voice was raspy and his eyes were cupped by dark circles.

Maria saw Lia in the doorway, scooped some oatmeal into a bowl, and placed it on the table.

“Ronnie is not feeling well,” she said.

“Touch of flu,” Ronnie said.

Maria snorted. Ronnie bit off a piece of bacon and chewed it slowly, his eyes on Lia.

Later that day, Lia was in the henhouse collecting eggs when she turned and found Ronnie standing silhouetted in the low doorway.

“How’s it going?” he said.

“You’re feeling better,” Lia observed, consciously using the contraction.

“Maria made me some of her magic tea. It’ll either cure a hangover or kill you. Also, I ran into town and had a little breakfast bump. Hair of the dog.”

Lia had tried Maria’s hackberry tea last winter when she had come down with a cold. It had tasted like sour dirt, but it had soothed her throat. She was not sure what a “breakfast bump” was, but she suspected it had something to do with beer. As for “hair of the dog,” she had no clue.

Ronnie ducked his head and stepped into the henhouse. The hens nearest him began squawking and ruffling their feathers. Lia wondered what he had done to them in the past to make them so nervous.

“If you come closer, I’ll throw an egg at you,” Lia said.

Ronnie gave her an incredulous look, then laughed loudly.

“You’re a pistol,” he said.

“I am not.”

He laughed again. “Okay, you’re not a pistol. By the way, your boyfriend? He’s gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everybody in town is talking about it.”

“Talking about what?”

“The Feyes. They left town.”

“I don’t believe you,” Lia said. Last night, the last thing Tucker had said was,
See you!
He had said nothing about taking a trip.

“It’s true,” Ronnie said, grinning.

Lia did not understand why he seemed so happy about it. She wanted to throw the egg she was holding — anything to erase that unpleasant smirk.

“Where did they go?” she asked.

“Nobody knows. The Reverend left a letter with the sheriff saying that he and Emily were going to some hospital and the kid was staying with relatives. Henry Hall said he saw the kid riding off in the Reverend’s car with some guy he didn’t know. They had a whole trailer full of stuff, and they closed the house down, so I wouldn’t expect him back anytime soon. Oh, and some new guy is supposed to be coming to town to take over the Reverend’s church. Weird, huh?”

Lia was speechless. She didn’t want to believe what Ronnie was telling her.

“Do you know when they’re coming back?”

Ronnie shrugged. “Maybe never. Why? You miss your boyfriend already?”

Lia threw the egg but missed. The egg splattered on the door frame.

“Whoa!” Ronnie said, backing out of the henhouse. “I just thought you’d want to know.”

“Go away,” Lia said. She was afraid she might start crying, and she would not do that in front of Ronnie.

A second later, Ronnie stuck his head back in the doorway and said, “By the way, Maria said to tell you to clean the gutters when you’re done here.” He ducked back quickly, before she could throw another egg.

As Lia stood on the ladder, scooping leaves and sludge out of the gutters, she could not stop thinking about Tucker Feye and his parents. It felt wrong, that they should leave so suddenly. She cleaned the section of gutter she was able to reach, climbed down, moved the ladder over, and climbed back up. She did not enjoy scooping rotting leaves out of the aluminum trough, but she liked being up high. To the east, just beneath the sun, she could see the top of Hopewell House peeking above the horizon. She thought about the Gate on the roof of the old hotel, wondering if it was still there. She thought about the other Gates she had seen, one at Hardy Lake, and the other above Tucker Feye’s home.

With Tucker gone and Ronnie being meaner than ever, she had little reason to remain in Hopewell. Entering one of the Gates would be a huge risk, but staying here with Ronnie might turn out to be worse.

“Lahlia!”

Lia looked down. Maria was standing at the base of the ladder with her hands on her hips.

“What on earth are you doing up there?”

“I’m cleaning the gutter,” Lia said.

“Why?”

“Ronnie told me to.”

Maria compressed her lips and looked around. “Ronnie!” she yelled. Ronnie was nowhere in sight. “I swear, that boy! Come down off that ladder before you fall and break your neck.” Lia climbed down. Maria said, “I suppose if Ronnie told you to jump off a cliff you’d do that too.”

Ronnie appeared from around the side of the house.

“Hey, Ma. What’s up?”

“Did you tell Lahlia to clean the gutters?”

“Well, I might have mentioned they needed cleaning.”

“That’s right. And you were supposed to do it.”

“I’d have gotten around to it.”

“You seem to have recovered from the flu,” Maria said.

“Magic tea,” Ronnie said with a sideways wink at Lia.

“Cleaning gutters is a man’s job.” Maria glared at her son, then transferred her glare to Lia. “Dishes need washing,” she said, jerking her chin toward the kitchen.

Maria entered the kitchen just as Lia was drying the last plate. She surveyed the clean dishes and immaculate counter and nodded in approval.

“Raspberries need picking,” she said. Maria was fanatical about making sure every last ripe berry was collected.

Lia fetched a colander from the pantry and started out the door.

“Lahlia . . .” Maria’s voice went soft.

Lia turned to look back at her.

“Did Ronnie try something with you?” Maria asked.

Lia did not speak for a moment, then said, “He put his hand on my knee.”

“Is that all?”

Lia nodded.

Maria compressed her lips, as if that was no more than she had suspected. “Your body is changing.”

Lia had, of course, been aware of that. Since arriving in Hopewell, she had grown taller, and her shape was changing. She was a Pure Girl no longer.

Maria said, “Boys will be boys. Best you avoid him. If he bothers you again, you let me know.” Maria turned away. “Now, go pick those berries,” she said over her shoulder.

Lia went out to the raspberry hedge. As she plucked the soft ripe berries from the prickly canes, she imagined how her life would be if she stayed in Hopewell. Could Maria protect her from Ronnie? Did she need to be protected? Ronnie had not really done anything other than touch her leg. Was that so bad? She had made it clear to him that she did not like being touched. Perhaps that would be enough. More likely he would find another place and another time to put his hand back on her knee, and more.

What would Yar Song do? Yar Song would
do
what Yar Song had
done.
She had returned to Romelas to become a Yar.

Lia set the half-filled colander on the ground. She walked up the long driveway to the road and turned south, toward Tucker Feye’s house.

There was no Gate.

Lia knocked on the door. No one answered. She peered through the kitchen window. The refrigerator was empty, its door propped open. The house had an empty feel to it, matched by the empty feeling in her gut. Ronnie had been telling the truth. The Feyes were gone.

She backed away from the house and looked up at the roof, willing the Gate to appear. Nothing. She found a ladder hanging from hooks on the side of the garage, dragged it over to the house, and leaned it against the eaves. She climbed onto the roof, sat at the peak, and waited.

She remained on the roof until the sun touched the horizon, but the Gate did not come. Wearily, Lia climbed down and began the long walk back to the Beckers’ farm.
Sooner or later,
she told herself,
the Gate will return, and I will leave this place.

H
ANDS OF DAYS PASSED
. T
HE CORN GREW TALLER; THE
calves grew fatter. Lia visited the Feye house whenever she had a chance, but the Gate did not appear. Arnold became more skillful with his crutches and spent his days following Ronnie around to make sure he performed his tasks with adequate rigor. Under Arnold’s watchful eyes, Ronnie grew surly and peevish. He began going into town and eating his supper at the Pigeon Drop Inn. Lia could not blame him for not wanting to eat with his father. All they ever did was argue. But she wished he would not come home drunk. She blocked her bedroom door with her dresser every night, although Ronnie did not try to enter her room again.

Lia was deadheading the rosebush by the side of the house one afternoon when she overheard Arnold and Maria talking on the porch.

“Nedra Schulz says there’s a new preacher at the Holy Word,” Maria was saying. “Maybe we should go on Sunday.”

“I’ve heard about him, saw him in town,” Arnold said. “He’s a firebrand, preaching against cell phones and numbers and such. Getting people all stirred up. Says there’s some sort of plague coming.”

Numbers? Plague?
Lia stopped working and listened intently.

“That preacher is as nutty as Emily Feye!” Arnold added.

Now that Lia thought about it, Emily Feye had displayed symptoms straight out of
The Book of September:
the distant stare; the inability to communicate; the strange twitches, tics, and spasms; the number puzzles she had worked during church services. Could Tucker’s mother be a victim of Plague?

“Besides, what kind of preacher names himself after a month?” Arnold said. “Father September. Bah!”

Father September!
Lia’s heart began to pound. Father September was the founding father of the Lah Sept. The father of Tuckerfeye! But
this
Father September could not be Tucker’s father, and that meant that Tucker was not
the
Tuckerfeye. He was just a boy with a similar name, not the son of the Father, destined to die.

“Nedra says he cured Tammy Krupp’s bad knee,” Maria said. “And he made Mrs. Friedman walk. Nedra says it was a miracle.”

“Miracle?” Arnold leaned over the porch railing and spit — his ultimate expression of disgust. “Tammy Krupp’s been milking that so-called bad knee for years. Only
miracle
is that she’s decided to stop complaining about it for a change. As for the Friedman woman, if God puts you in a wheelchair, you should darn well stay there.”

Lia stepped around the corner of the house.

“Does Father September have a son?” she asked.

Arnold looked at her in surprise. “Where did
you
come from?”

Lia shrugged.

“Little pitchers have big ears,” Maria said, quoting one of her favorite sayings.

Arnold said, “The new preacher has no son that I know of, and if he did, his son would be as old as me. Father September is eighty years old if he’s a day.”

Eighty!
Lia knew that was a big number. Even bigger than Arnold’s number, and he was as old as the hills.

After rushing through her afternoon chores, Lia walked into town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new preacher. Her entertainment table in the Palace of the Pure Girls had contained images of Father September: a tall, severe-looking man with black eyes, bushy black eyebrows, and a long black beard. In the images, he was always shown wearing a yellow robe, supporting a model of the Cydonian Pyramid with one hand and carrying a silver
arma
in the other. She wanted to see if the man calling himself Father September matched that image.

When she reached the church, Lia hesitated. The thought of finding herself face-to-face with the real Father September was terrifying. As she stood by the corner of the church, trying to find the courage to enter, the doors opened and a pair of men emerged, both wearing yellow T-shirts.

She immediately recognized the deacon who had forced her to drink poppy tea.

She ducked behind the corner of the building and clapped a hand to her throat. The memory of that awful day flooded her body. Her heart was pounding so hard, she could feel it in her ears, and her legs had gone rubbery, as if seeing the deacon had infused her with the tea. After a moment, she peeked back around the corner. The men were standing on the steps, talking. They hadn’t seen her.

Lia backed away, then turned and ran until she had left downtown Hopewell behind. She walked home in a daze, trying to understand what she had seen. Unanswerable questions tumbled through her mind. By the time she reached the farm, she was thinking more clearly, but the questions remained. The deacon must have arrived through a Gate, but why? Was he the only one, or were there others? Were they looking for her? Would they recognize her? Would they even care that she was there? More likely, she thought, their being here had something to do with Father September. And if the new preacher was the
real
Father September, that would mean that the Lah Sept had its origins here, in Hopewell.