“Hi,” Jason said.
“Hey there,” said Arlette. “?a va?”
He'd just come back from the river, and his clothing, the stains of which he had been mostly unable to remove by pounding, were still damp from having been washed. The crotch of his jeans was particularly damp and uncomfortable, and the wet seams scraped painfully along his thighs.
At least he thought he smelled okay.
Arlette sat crosslegged on the grass on the shady side of the church, supervising a group of small children at play. She wore a blue kerchief over her hair. Her birthday-present earrings dangled from her ears, though she wasn't wearing the necklace— too valuable, he supposed, for a place like this, or too showy.
“Locusts!” shouted Frankland over the PA. “Locusts with the faces of men! Right there in Revelations Nine!”
Arlette's eyes widened. “What happened to your hands?”
Jason looked down at his wounds. “I never cleaned a fish before.”
“That looks awful. Didn't your guide help you?”
“He didn't seem to care.”
“Cochon. Let me get you some bandages.” She rose smoothly, without using her hands, from her crosslegged position, took one of his wounded hands, led him into the back door of the church. There was a small storeroom there, free of the smells and sounds of the infants in the main body of the church. The room was filled with items taken from the church when it was converted to a refugee center: boxes of Sunday School texts, files, religious literature, a dusty box of sheet music atop an old upright piano. Arlette walked to a small table behind the side door, dropped Jason's hand, and found a plastic box marked with a red cross under a small table.
Jason watched as she browsed through the contents of the box. Frankland's amplified voice went on about locusts going about the earth slaughtering its inhabitants.
“At least you didn't ask me about my nuclear reactor,” Jason said.
“Mais non. Je reconnais des telescopes quand j'en vois un.” She raised her hands to mime a telescope, peered at him through her curled fingers for a laughing moment, then dropped into the box again.
She began to apply dressings to his hand. “Why are you talking French?” he asked.
“I'm supposed to be in France right now, at school. I don't want to get out of practice.” She watched as he tugged at the inseam of his jeans with his free hand. “You don't look too comfortable in those clothes.”
“They're still damp from washing. Hey.” A thought occurred to him. “Don't you have washing machines here? You were folding clothes yesterday— why did I have to wash my clothes in the river?”
“We don't have that many machines in working order— we have to pour the water into them with buckets— all we try to do is keep the towels and diapers clean. When eighty men get catfish all over themselves—” She grinned. “It's the river. Give me your other hand.”
“Where do the girls wash?”
“The same place. When the men aren't there.”
Arlette peeled tape off the roll, eyed it, and cut it precisely with a small pair of scissors. “I don't understand,” said a loud grownup voice, “why I can't leave.”
Arlette and Jason fell silent as the voice boomed through the side door. Jason caught Arlette's eye, saw her surprised look, then a confirmation of his own first instinct.
Listen. Be silent. If you don't call attention to yourselves, maybe they'll forget you're here.
Jason and Arlette knew these things. How to listen, how to hide, how not to be observed. Jason shuffled sideways, put the open door between himself and the outside. Arlette slipped farther into the storeroom to make room for him.
The voice that answered was Frankland's. “I never said you couldn't leave, Brother Olson. What I said was—”
“What you said was that me and my family couldn't have any food! And that's after we brought a trunk full of canned goods and a box of vegetables into this camp!”
Jason looked at Arlette. We brought food into the camp, he thought.
“That food is gone, Brother Olson,” Frankland said. “It was gone within a couple days of your getting here. It is my job to feed the people in this camp, and with God's help I will do that. But it is not my responsibility to feed the people who leave.”
“I have kin in Mississippi,” the first voice said. “They can look after us. And if you can just give us a few pounds of that catfish— heaven sake, you got tons ...”
“Mississippi!” Frankland said. “You've heard the news! The place is a poison desert!”
Olson's voice was stubborn. “All I need is take my boat down the river. Won't take more'n two, three days. All I ask is food and water for that time. My guns for protection. The boat's my own. That's less'n I came with, and you won't have to feed us forever. It's a bargain for you.”
“Think of your children, Brother Olson!” Frankland said. “You're going to expose them to—”
“Reverend,” Olson said, “I'm a Lutheran, okay?”
“I understand, brother, but—”
“Lutherans don't do the end of the world,” Olson said. “I think what happened is an earthquake, not the Apocalypse. My family will be a lot safer once they get out of the earthquake zone.”
“I will not let you endanger your family! I won't!”
“What are you telling me?” Olson roared.
“I won't let you kill your children!” Frankland shouted. “I won't let them go!”
Olson was beyond words. A chill shivered up Jason's spine as he heard Olson give a low growl just like an animal, and then there was a chiming metallic thump as something heavy hit the steel wall of the church. Frankland was shouting something incoherent, but Jason couldn't make it out because Frankland's recorded voice had just reached a crescendo in its sermon on the giant locusts of Revelation. Then other people were shouting, and there were more thumps.
Jason felt Arlette's hand close around his. He looked into her wide eyes as turmoil raged outside. He could feel a drop of sweat trickling down the back of his neck.
“Cast him forth!” Frankland's voice was raised in rage. “Take him outside! Let him wander in the wilderness!”
“He'll take your children, too!” Olson shouted as people hustled him away. “He'll take your children!”
Jason and Arlette stood frozen in the storeroom. Arlette's grip was like steel bands wrapped around his hand.
Jason licked his lips. “I'm getting out of this place,” he said.
Arlette's eyes were wide as they turned from the open door to Jason. “How?”
“I don't know yet. But there's no way I'm going to stay here. That's for sure.”
Frankland's voice boomed over the loudspeakers. “And thus do the locusts do the will of Abaddon, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit.”
The camp was abuzz after Olson’s ejection. A hundred and fifty people had nothing else to talk about. Nick heard details from Jason and Arlette. He also heard the campwide rumor that Olson had just been driven in a truck to the far side of Rails Bluff, then set free to wander without food, water, or weapons.
Olson’s wife and children, in the married women’s camp, were at the center of a weeping, wailing cluster of friends and kinfolk. Nick led Manon, Arlette, and Jason away from the sight, wandering out of the camp onto the borders of the field beyond. The cotton had been plowed under here, and food crops planted, but only a few tiny green shoots had risen from the thin soil. The loudspeakers’ words were reduced to a distant rumble.
“I’m going to get out of here, Nick,” Jason said. “I’m getting back on the river.”
Nick frowned, scuffed at the soil with his shoe. “We need to work out a plan,” he said.
Jason looked at him in surprise. “You sound as if you want to come along.”
“Yes.” Nick frowned. “I don’t think this place is stable. I don’t think it’s healthy.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction of Sheryl’s artwork. “Have you seen those banners? The people here think all that stuff is going to happen, and happen real soon. And what I’m afraid of is that if it doesn’t happen on its own, they’re going to do their best to make it happen.”
Arlette looked up at her father. “What about Aunt Sarah and Uncle Louis and—”
Nick looked at her. “I think it will just be Jason and me, baby,” he said. “You and your mother are safe here for the present. What we need to get out is a message, not necessarily people. If Jason and I can get down the river—Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, a towboat with a working radio, somewhere— we can tell the authorities what’s happening here, and they’ll start shipping in food and medicine, and put someone other than a crazy preacher in charge.”
“Nick.” Manon’s tone was grim. “You’ve seen all the guns around here. What if Reverend Frankland decides he doesn’t want the government putting him out of business?”
Nick looked at her in surprise. He had been concentrating so hard on plans to get away that he hadn’t considered what might happen once he got his message to the authorities. “Do you really think he would?”
“The government have been here already. They took hundreds of people out of this camp. But my guess is that Frankland didn’t want them to go, and he’s decided that no one else is going to leave. Not even the ones who aren’t his hard core, like Olson and his family. Olson came in because his business was wrecked after the second big quake, not because he was a believer.”
Nick nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I see that.”
Manon bit her lip. Anxious worry glimmered in her eyes. “And besides,” she added, “I don’t think the government has a very good record when it comes to dealing with religious fanatics.”
The deadly litany rolled through Nick’s mind: Jonestown. Waco. Ruby Ridge. He thought about Manon and Arlette caught in a crossfire between cops and Frankland’s guards, and he gave a shudder.
Manon stood straight-spined in the field, her chin tilted high. A princess in exile. “I want you to get your daughter out of this place,” she said. Or, most likely, commanded.
Nick pressed his lips together, felt determination well up in his soul. We are going to put together one hell of a plan, he thought.
“All right,” Nick said. “From now on, what we do is keep our eyes open. We need to find out how everything is done here. Find out where the supplies are kept. The guns. Food stores. Work out schedules for the guards.” He nodded. “We’re going to put together the best escape plan in the history of the world.”
Because the best plan, the most flawless plan ever, was the only thing that would keep Arlette safe.
*
Apparently Brother Frankland wasn’t talking much after Olson clouted him in the jaw, because the morning service was run by Garb, one of the other preachers. The service ran on for almost two hours, not counting a space of time that was taken up with a long, rumbling, but nondestructive aftershock. Garb made a lot of announcements about how Brother Amos’ baby was feeling a little croupy and could use some prayers; and how Sister Felicity’s arthritis was much improved after the congregation had sent a little of Jesus’ healing power her way. Jason drowsed through it but woke up to enjoy the music.
Garb’s actual sermon, when he got around to it, had to do with “God’s marching orders,” and the penalties inflicted for “falling out on the march,” especially during wartime.
At present, Jason gathered, it was wartime. Jason didn’t remember enlisting.
After another hymn, ominously entitled “Marching with Jesus,” Garb made an announcement that after today most of the salvage jobs in the area would be discontinued. After finishing today, all the salvagers were to bring their tools and equipment back to the camp along with any useful items they may have found.
Jason would have to tote feed sacks only one more day. That was a relief.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught Nick’s frown, and he realized that with the work details ended, they’d have no reason to be out of the camp. It was going to be a lot harder to escape if their movement was restricted.
Finally there was breakfast. “Religion,” Jason said over his beans and fried fish. “I don’t get it.”
Nick, sitting opposite Jason at the long table, seemed surprised by the question. “Say what?” he said.
“What’s the point?” Jason asked. “What’s it for?”
Nick exchanged glances with Manon and Arlette. “I’m an engineer,” he said. “I only have an engineer’s answer.”
“Tell me,” Jason said. He was aware of Arlette’s nearness, of the warmth of her sitting only a few inches from him on the bench.
“Religion is to help people behave better,” Nick said. “The whole point is—” He searched for a phrase. “Moral instruction. Moses taught duty. Jesus taught goodness. The rest— Heaven and Hell, the miracles, all that— is just to get people to pay attention. Some people won’t listen to instruction unless you give them a show along with it.”
Manon, sitting by his side, rolled her eyes and gave a kind of snort. “You men,” she said.
Nick gave her a tolerant look. “I said it was an engineer’s point of view.”
“Religion’s about community, you fool,” Manon said. The fool was affectionate, Jason thought, or meant to be affectionate anyway, though at the sound of the word there was a flicker in Nick’s eyes that suggested he didn’t much like hearing it.
Manon leaned toward Jason. “It’s about sharing,” she said. “It’s about a group of people being happy together, and grieving together, and praising God together, and experiencing all of life together. That’s the point of all those announcements that Brother Garb made, so that everyone would know what was happening in the community.” She nudged Nick. “It’s not as if we get together every Sunday for a lecture. About our morals, for God’s sake.” She looked at Jason. “It’s fun. We always had a big meal beforehand. Big meal afterward, with all the family for miles around. The preacher was our Uncle Joe till he retired, and he came for dinner with his wife.”
“You go to church because it’s family,” Nick said. “I went because it was a duty. The same reason I was an Eagle Scout. It was something a general’s son did.” He shrugged. “Scouting was more fun.”
“Your daddy turned every damn thing into a job,” Manon said.
“Do you believe it?” Jason asked her. Suddenly he was desperate to know. “Do you believe in God? Adam and Eve? Noah? All that?”
Manon seemed a little surprised, so Jason went on. “My mom believed anything, see. She believed in reincarnation, in astrology, in Buddha, in Jesus, in the Tao. She believed in a woman in California named Pharaoh Nepher-Ankh-Hotep who had a spirit guide named Louise from Atlantis. Someone once told her that the UFO people had a huge city on the back side of the moon. I remember she once told my dad about this— this was before the divorce— and he went, well, the astronauts went around the moon, they would have seen it. And my mom went, see, they did see it, and they had pictures, but there was a cover-up. And my dad asked her why they covered it up, and she went, well, they always cover up the flying saucers, just like they did at Roswell, everybody knows that. And my dad asked why, and she said it was because the government was secretly working with the UFO people and letting them abduct people in return for scientific knowledge. And my dad went, the government would never be able to keep a secret like that, it’s a huge secret, it’s the most important thing ever, and the government can’t even keep their five-thousand-dollar toilet seats secret, or the itching powder they tried to put in Fidel Castro’s beard .. .”
Jason ran out of energy. Manon gave him a curious look.
“What did your momma say?” she asked.
Jason looked at her. “She said, ‘That’s why they killed Kennedy.’”
Manon looked surprised. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“I don’t either. I don’t think my mom really understood what she was trying to say. She was making it up as she went along, I think, once she heard about the moon base. The point is, she’d just heard about the flying saucers on the moon, and if she was going to believe in that, she had to believe in all the other stuff, too. That was the way she was.” He looked down at his plate. “My parents got divorced right after that.”
Manon reached over the table, took his hand. “I’m sorry, Jason,” she said.
Jason shrugged. “Not your fault.”
She looked at him. “You had a question, though. And I forgot what it was.”
“It’s about whether you believe it all. Or whether it’s just, like, community.”
Manon’s voice was gentle. “Well,” she began. “You know that the church is important to black people, right? Because for a long time we weren’t allowed to meet anywhere else. They were afraid that if we got together we’d start a rebellion or ask for our freedom, or for the right to vote or something. But they couldn’t keep us out of church, because it was their religion, too. So the church was the only place where we were free to be ourselves.”
“I didn’t know that,” Jason said. If that had ever been mentioned in class he hadn’t been paying attention. He hated history.
But they probably hadn’t mentioned it. They never seemed to teach anything that mattered to people.
“What I meant to say,” Manon went on, “is that the part of church that is community is very, very important. But there’s community with the Deity as well.”
“So you believe in God?”
“Oh yes.”
“And Jesus?”
“Certainly.”
“And Adam and Eve? Jonah and the whale? Noah?”
Manon hesitated, looked at Nick. “Well. I don’t know.”
“If an engineer can interrupt, here,” Nick said, “I think stories like Noah and Adam have a different purpose from some of the other Bible stories. They were intended for moral instruction.” He looked at Manon pointedly. “Those stories were to teach us how to behave, and to make us think, but I don’t know that they were intended to be taken literally.”
“I don’t think I believe in God,” Jason said.
There was a moment of silence. He felt Arlette stir on the bench next to him.
“Why not?” she said.
“Because,” Jason said in swift anger, “if God exists, he killed my mother. And your Gros-Papa. And lots of other people rolling along the bottom of that river.”
Suddenly Jason couldn’t stand to sit there any longer, looking into the others’ shocked and concerned faces, so he rose and mumbled an apology and almost ran from the breakfast tent. He wandered out into the parking lot in front of the church, where the empty trucks waited to carry the Samaritans and the other teams to their final days’ work. Waves of heat were already rising from their metal as they baked in the morning sun.
Jason stalked around the trucks as anger simmered through his veins. Then he opened the door of a cab and sat behind the steering wheel. Keys dangled from the ignition, and for a wild moment Jason considered starting the truck and roaring away, fleeing the camp and the people in it.
But no. There was no place to drive to. That was why the key was in the ignition— there was no point in locking a vehicle when there was no place for a thief to drive it.
He was stuck in Rails Bluff, until Nick figured out a way to escape.
Words boomed from the loudspeakers: “Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house.”
Jason swung his legs out of the truck cab, slid onto the grass. His anger had passed, had turned to a dull throbbing ache in his throat.
He turned around the back end of the pickup truck, with its Tommy Lift tailgate down, and found Arlette standing there, a bit awkwardly, off-balance with one ankle crossed over the other. Jason stopped dead. He felt his ears flush with the memory of his rudeness.
“I thought I’d see if you were okay,” Arlette said.
“I’m, uh, très bien,” Jason said. “I’m sorry if I was angry.”
“I brought you the rest of your breakfast,” Arlette said. She held up a bundle wrapped in a handkerchief. “I thought you’d need it if you’re going to be working today.”
“Thanks.”
He approached her and took the bundle. Beans and fish all mashed together.
Well. It was a nice thought. And probably he would be hungry enough, sooner or later, to eat it.
“I’m sorry you’re mad at God,” Arlette said. She took a step forward, her hip resting against the tailgate of the truck. “I think I need God, myself. I want to think that there’s something that connects me with the rest of the universe. Some spirit. Something.”
Jason thought about galaxies whirling in the velvet dark. Threads like lace glowing in the sky. A cluster of a million stars that he could hold in his hand.
Arlette looked at him with almond-shaped eyes. “Haven’t you ever felt something connect you with everything else?” she asked.
“Yes,” Jason said. His pulse was a roar in his ears. “You,” he said.
He took her in his arms and brushed her lips with his. Her slim waist burned against his palms. He kissed her again, and again, and then for a long time.
Arlette drew away.
“No,” he said. “Don’t stop.”
Her lips tilted in a delicate smile. “There must be twenty people watching us. And if we go on any longer there are going to be a hundred.”
“I want to be with you,” he said.
“Later,” she said. The smile turned mischievous. “Maybe.”
She turned, looked at him over her shoulder. “Enjoy your breakfast,” she said, and skipped away.
Jason stood for a moment, then looked toward the camp.
Twenty people, he thought. More like fifty.
Let them watch, he thought.