Mrs. Tilghman rushed to join. “A menace. My daughter coulda drownded.”
Soon he was surrounded and could progress only by slow steps and the shuffle of the circle. Mrs. Hopper, petite as a mouse, thundered like an elephant. “She's making them think about things they shouldn't be thinking about,” she said. Mrs. West wagged her finger, even though her boy was already in fifth grade. Mrs. Paddock, Mrs. Harper, and Ms. Grimalkin formed a Scottish coven, bubbling with trouble. Gull-eyed as her son, Mrs. Mansur appeared slightly crazed and desperate to find a single right word. They howled at him. Cornered, they protected their cubs.
No fathers were present, for the few lucky enough to have jobs could ill afford the hours away from the mill to yell at a school administrator, and none were inclined to flaunt any authority in these hard times. Those waiting for the steel industry to rise up from the dead dreamt at home abed or nursed the day's first boilermakers at the union hall. But though they absented themselves, the fathers bristled at the threat to their children as soon as the mothers told them about the episode above the Mon River. Some secretly knew that their sons and daughters were ripe for such a pied piper, were too thick or simple to resist, would say yes to any hint of magic. The fathers wound the string on these children when the mothers were not looking. Their corrections were more oblique—the distraction of football or hunting or fishing with sons, the utter confusion of what to do about their daughters while they were still young enough and beholden. The glory days before their children thought them helpless idiots. Time would come when the fathers would be reduced to stealth, bribery, and angry hectoring at their children to stay put and not float away a moment too soon. Fathers know from the beginning the string will snap, and they mourn a bit each passing day. Mothers keep their eyes fixed on their children in the bright blue sky and are dumbfounded when they break their hearts.
The mortified children chafed at their parents’ involvement, shrank under the mothers’ complaints. Five of the six disciples bore the double burden of an uncertain faith and the inadvertent trouble they had caused. They hid in their mothers’ shadows, more fearful of scorn from their peers than of anything the adults might say. After the police had stopped them on the bridge, the followers betrayed Norah one by one. Lucas Ford and Dori Tilghman recanted. Sharon Hopper fell to tears and did not know what to believe. Mark Bellagio held out the longest, trusting the empirical sensory evidence and his long training to accept the possibility of miracles. But even he was cowed when his parents began talking about sacrilege and blasphemy and the gall of anyone claiming to be closer to God. “Those Quinns,” his father spat out. “First the goddamn crazy daughter, and now the granddaughter, mad as a bumblebee.”
On the school green, promises were made and an accord was reached. After allowing an appropriate amount of parental huffing and puffing, Taylor agreed to talk with the student and, later, her grandmother. “On my calendar,” he said, “as soon as you let me into the building.” In the interest of peace, he consented to meet with all interested parents one evening that week, hear their grievances, and explain what steps he would take regarding Norah Quinn. With each capitulation, he scanned the horizon beyond the mob, carefully watching the other children and faculty arrive. He wanted nothing more than for the parents to stop shouting at him and to simply go away, and the thought of a larger rabble filled him with dread.