By the time Clyde got out of the tent, almost all the people had fled to their cars. He helped Desiree carry Maggie and all the baby support systems to the station wagon, then walked back to the parking lot near the shelter and, stepping into his role as lawman, began directing traffic. The partygoers, so cheery and gentle on foot, had all gone crazy as soon as they had got behind the wheels of their cars, honking wildly at each other as they fought to escape the lot. Clyde took to whistling through his fingers and waving his arms dramatically, and when they recognized him, they stopped honking and accepted his authority.
After a few minutes Dr. Knightly strolled up, dressed in a slicker, which apparently concealed a generous store of Camels in some dry place. He hunched over and got one lit, then thoughtfully arranged himself downwind of Clyde. “I came early, so I’ll be the last one to get out,” he said. “I’d rather drive backward on a freeway at midnight with no lights than go bumper-to-bumper with these people.”
“You ever live in one of their countries?”
“Aw, shit, Clyde,” Knightly said, and shrugged. “Yeah, Turkey for a while. Did some time in China, too. Green Revolution stuff. Travel gets real old after a while.” He sucked deeply on his cigarette, as if the mere memory of these travels made him eager to hasten his own death from cancer. Or, Clyde thought, perhaps the memory of driving in those countries had made him fatalistic. Knightly took to worrying the toe of his boot into the ground. “I’m not much good at this,” he said by way of warning, “but I do want to thank you sincerely for what you did for Fazoul. It is not out of the question that you might have saved his life.”
Clyde chuckled. “Nishnabotna cops ain’t that bad.”
“I don’t mean to say they would have killed him, Clyde. I mean to say that if Fazoul had been provoked any more, he might have become irrational and done something that would have landed him in jail—then got him deported.”
“How’s that come to saving his life?”
Knightly was taken aback by this question and stared down at the coal of his cigarette for several moments. “It’s a tangled thing, Clyde,” he finally said. “I sometimes forget how tangled it must seem to someone like you, a lifelong Forks County boy. Let’s just say that the Vakhan Turks are one of those ethnic groups that don’t have a homeland of their own, so in order to come here and study, they have to carry passports from other countries in that area. If they get into a mess here and get themselves deported, they will be forcibly taken back to a country that may not want them. Which might have them on a list of people who, if they ever show up at a border, are to be taken straight to a windowless cell somewhere and never let out alive.”
Clyde had only a small number of oaths in his arsenal, of which “I’ll be darn” was about the strongest; and as it did not seem adequate here, he said nothing at all.
“That’s why these people have done you the very exceptional honor they did today,” Knightly said. “By the way, Khalid was perhaps the greatest warrior in the early history of the Muslim world—right up there with Saladin. They called him the Sword of the Faith. So there’s also a play on words at work here. Just thought you ought to understand that.”
By the time the traffic jam had cleared out and Knightly had given Clyde a lift back to the station wagon, Maggie had crashed in her car seat, and Desiree was looking a bit drowsy herself—she was engaged in the practice of “resting her eyes,” which Clyde had never been able to distinguish from sleep. Clyde drove them home. Desiree was awakened by the sound of the garage door rumbling open and got Maggie tucked into the crib while Clyde changed out of his full-dress uniform and into a plain old deputy’s uniform.
“What happened in that tent?” she said, gliding into the dark bedroom smelling like milk.
“Ceremony. Like church, I guess,” Clyde said.
“So what did you think of the two picnics?” she said in a clearer voice, cocking her head in a mischievous way to let him know that this was very much a leading question.
“If I tell you all of what I think about the difference between Republicans and Muslims,” he said, “we’ll never get to sleep. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kevin Vandeventer drove his new Camry from O’Hare back to EIU, a trip of two and a half hours, and spent most of the time talking to himself. Here he was, a newly minted Ph.D. who would never have to teach a gut biology course, wearing a new suit, driving a decent enough car back from a trip to D.C., where he had entrée to a number of embassies and was on a first-name basis with fairly significant personages at State, USIA, and Ag. But as the Vivaldi pounded away at him from the Camry’s fine stereo, he wondered why he felt that strange discomfort—something eating at him, as if he had done something really bad but couldn’t quite make out what it was.