*
Shadows were starting to lengthen. Nick got behind the wheel and crunched away down the gravel drive. “I can get us to Memphis from here,” Viondi said. “We don’t have to backtrack. Just turn right.” He slotted a Lonnie Mack tape as Nick made the turn. “My token white guy,” he said.
They drove down a winding two-lane blacktop. There were few buildings, and no people. Pines clustered thick on all sides.
Lonnie Mack’s voice grated from the car’s speakers.
Viondi adjusted the seat to recline more, leaned back with his hands pillowed on his stomach. The bottle of beer had made him drowsy. “So,” he said, “what do you call a whore with a runny nose?”
Nick looked at him suspiciously. “What?”
“Full.”
Viondi’s laugh boomed out in the car. Nick shook his head. “That’s the third most disgusting joke you’ve told today,” he said. Lonnie Mack’s guitar stung the air.
The car took a leap, left the road for a second, and Nick’s eyes shot to the road, his hands clenching on the wheel. Had they just blown a tire? Hit something?
Nick looked into the rearview mirror to see if there was a dead animal in their wake, but there was nothing.
The Olds made a sudden lurch to the left, then to the right. Blown tire, then. Nick’s foot left the accelerator.
“What happened?” Viondi said, sitting bolt upright.
Nick looked up in surprise as he saw that the pines on either side of the road were leaping, branches waving madly as if in a high wind. Then one of the trees ahead on the right exploded— there was a puff of bark and splinters partway up, as if it had been hit with an artillery shell, and the top half of the tree tipped, began to fall toward the road.
“Lookout!” Viondi shouted, one big hand reaching for the wheel.
Nick flung the Olds to the left and stomped the accelerator. He felt himself punched back in his seat as the car took off. Splinters spattered off the windshield. Viondi gave a yell and leaned toward Nick as he tried to get away from the tree that was about to crash through his window. Nick’s heart pounded in his ears.
Boughs banged on the trunk as the tree crashed to the ground just behind the car. “She’s a natural disaster!” sang Lonnie Mack.
“What’s going on?” Viondi shouted.
Nick tried to get the car into the middle of the road. Trees shot by on either side, and suddenly they were in a clear space, green soybeans in rows on either side of the road. Nick took his foot off the accelerator. Nothing could fall on them here.
And then the earth cracked across, right in front of them, a crevasse ten feet across. Nick yelled and slammed on the brake.
The last words he heard were natural disaster, and then the Olds pitched into the crack.
*
The choir mourned softly in the great space of the National Cathedral. Judge Chivington lay in state in his great mahogany coffin, and around him was a golden pool of light cast by floodlights overhead. Television cameras hunched inconspicuously in the cathedral’s darker recesses. The President sat in the front pew, with the First Lady on one side and the judge’s daughter, her husband and children, on the other.
The stock market, he was given to understand, was going to hell in a handcart. The Fed chairman’s bizarre smile of the previous week had been analyzed and, probably, laid down to indigestion. The G8 summit was going to fall flat, all the President’s initiatives going the way of all the President’s initiatives, and his mark on history would be that of a caretaker, a Grover Cleveland or a Gerald Ford, someone fated to occupy the President’s Office in between the crises that made or tested greatness.
Damn it, Chivington, he mentally addressed the coffin, why did you have to leave? Why now?
A shudder ran through the pew beneath him, and the President looked up, wondering if a big truck had just passed. He felt an unease in his inner ear.
The voice of the choir dimmed— the President saw chorister eyes glancing around—and then the choral director gestured emphatically, getting his crew back in hand, and the massed harmonies strengthened. The President felt a strange vibration in the palm of his hand where it was gripping the pew.
From overhead there was a chime. It hung in the air for a long moment, producing a discord in the choral sound below. Another chime rang out, a deep metallic bellow.
The President felt the First Lady’s gloved hand close on his arm, and he heard her whisper in his ear. “What’s going on?”
He shook his head. Another peal sounded. The choir’s voice faltered again.
The President looked up in surprise. The cathedral bells were ringing, softly at first, then with greater and greater insistence.
“Can they turn those off?” the First Lady hissed.
The President shook his head again. This wasn’t a regular bell peal, the sounds were too random. Something else was happening.
Another shudder ran through the building. Near the catafalque, a stand of media lights tottered and then fell with a crash. The choristers were singing as loud as they could to cover the growing chaos.
In wonder the President gazed upward as the bells sounded, ringing as if they were mourning the end of a world.
*
The fairest opportunity that was presented (to our knowledge) of judging of its force and direction, was from an ostrich egg which was suspended by a string of about a foot in length from a first floor ceiling, which was caused to oscillate at least four inches from point to point. We are informed that the steeple of the State House, which is supposed to be 250 feet in height, vibrated at least 6 or 8 feet at the top, and the motion was perceptible for 8 or 10 minutes. A number of clocks were stopped, and the ice in the river and bay cracked considerably. Some persons, who were skaiting, were very much terrified, and immediately made for the shore. In the lower part of the city it appears to have been most forcible, some people abandoning their homes, for the purpose of seeking safety in the open air.
Annapolis, Jan. 23,1812