*
“Charlie?” It was his neighbor, Bill Clemmons, the father of the girl who’d talked to him yesterday— or was it the day before? Or the day before that?
“Yeah, Bill?” Charlie, sweating in the driver’s seat of the BMW, gave his neighbor a smile. “What can I do for you?”
“You doin’ okay, Charlie?” His neighbor seemed concerned. Looked at the empty wine bottles in the car.
“I’m fine, Bill. Thanks for asking.”
Bill had a smear of white on his nose, zinc oxide against the sun. “I didn’t know if you’d heard,” he said, “they’ve got a refugee center down at Cameron Brown Park. They’re pitching tents and distributing food.”
Charlie kept the smile plastered to his face. Never let them see you down, that was his motto.
“Thanks for telling me,” he said. “Did the radio mention when they’re going to get the phones fixed?”
Bill shook his head. “They’re workin’ on it. The phone companies are bringing in lots of workers from out of state. But transportation is so busted up that priority is being given to food and shelter.”
“Well,” Charlie said. “I guess there are plenty of homeless people.”
“You think you might head on down there?”
Charlie shook his head. He could not see himself at a refugee camp, living in tents, holding out his begging bowl for rice as if he were a starving African farmer. This was not a place for the Lord of the Jungle.
All he needed was a place that would cash a check.
“I’m doing fine, Bill,” Charlie said.
“You sure, Charlie?”
Charlie winked at him. “You bet.”
“Well,” Bill said, “I guess you know best.”
*
“Pastor Frankland?” said Farley Stipes. “We have a little problem— I caught a boy trying to steal some food.”
After the discouraging hour with Father Robitaille, a difficulty like this was just what Frankland needed. He felt his heart lighten. “What did you do?”
Farley was one of the Christian Gun Club kids, sixteen and red-haired and very proud of his white armband. “It was Elmore— Janey Wilcox’s boy. He’s not even ten years old, and he was trying to get a candy bar from that stack of stuff we brought back from the Piggly Wiggly, all that junk food we ain’t sorted through yet. So I ain’t done nothing other than told him to wait for you. Doris Meachum is watching him.”
“Does Janey know?”
“Oh yeah. She’s really sorry, pastor. She wants to talk to you.”
“I’ll speak to her right away,” Frankland said. “Why don’t you see if you can’t find Sister Sheryl? And then we want to round up all the kids— all of ’em, I think, to hear our message.”
This was the kind of pastoral problem that Frankland liked: simple, straightforward, with a moral to be absorbed by all.
So he talked to Janey Wilcox and explained the situation. Janey was anxious and eager to please and full of apology. When Sheryl arrived, Frankland briefed her, and then the two of them rounded up all the children they could find.
While the boy Elmore apprehensively stood by, Frankland wished the children a hearty heaven-o, and he explained to the children— and to the couple dozen of adults who had turned up to watch— that things were different now. Some of you children, Frankland said, thought that maybe it was all right to take a cookie or a candy bar when you wanted it. And maybe in normal times it was okay, but these weren’t normal times. There was an emergency, and there were a lot of people who needed to be fed, and only a limited supply of food. They had gathered all the food they could find to assure that all of God’s people were fed. So it wasn’t just anybody’s food anymore, this was God’s food. And people shouldn’t steal from God.
And Frankland turned to Elmore Wilcox, whose eyes were beginning to fill with tears. And Frankland told the boy that he was sorry, but he was going to have to punish him for stealing God’s food. And that Elmore shouldn’t think that this was because Frankland hated him, or that anyone hated him. Everyone here loved Elmore, God and Frankland included. But everyone here had to see that people shouldn’t steal God’s food.
Now, Frankland went on as Elmore trembled, he was not going to punish Elmore himself, because he was a strong man and didn’t want to cause injury. So his wife Sheryl would give Elmore his punishment.
They bent Elmore over a chair and Sheryl gave him twenty whacks with a belt. And then Frankland and Sheryl hugged the wailing child and assured him of God’s love, and gave him back to his mother. Frankland went in search of Hilkiah, because this would furnish a reason to put an armed guard on the food supply.
“Well,” he said, “I think it’s time to raise that slab.”
“I’ll get the winch, pastor.”
Frankland glanced over the encampment that surrounded the church. It was still clearly a work in progress. “I think we need to reorganize,” he said. “Put the married women with children in the church— that’s the safest place. Have the food supply nearby. Separate areas for the men and the women without children.”
Because otherwise, Frankland thought, the teenagers were going to pair up and start sneaking off for reasons of which the Family Values Campaign would not approve. Probably the adults, too. Best just to keep the sexes apart.
While Hilkiah brought up a triangle, a block, and Frankland’s pickup with the winch, Frankland found Sheryl and talked over the camp’s rearrangement.
“Teddy bear,” Sheryl said, “we can move the tents around all we like, but what we really need is food.”
“Maybe I’ll get the boys out to that Wal-Mart tomorrow.”
“We’ve got enough food for maybe six weeks as it is. If we can get catfish from the growers, that’ll stretch our time. But at twenty-five hundred calories per day for each adult, and five thousand if they’re doing any kind of hard work, we’re going to be stretching it to get through the end of June. And if your people keep bringing in more refugees, then the situation will get worse.”
“I can’t leave refugees out there to die, sweetie pie.”
“I know that.”
“I can talk to the farmers. If they can plow under some of their cotton and plant foodstuffs ...”
“They won’t be ready in time, teddy bear,” Sheryl said. “The soy is already in the ground and it won’t ripen till fall.”
Frankland frowned, hitched up his pants. “It’s not their bellies that are important,” he said. “It’s their souls.”
“Well,” Sheryl conceded, “that’s true. But if mammas can’t feed their babies, that’s gonna make ’em crazy.”
Frankland considered it. “Cut back on the number of calories. If people are just lying around camp, they won’t need as much. Just give the full ration to the scavenging and rescue parties.”
“That might work for a while, but—”
“A while might be all we need, with the Lord’s help. The Tribulation will last seven years, but there’s no guarantee that any of us will survive it. If we can just give them all a good start.”
“Pastor? Sister Sheryl?” Hilkiah said. “I could use your help with this slab.”
The winch whined. The slab rose from the sod by the steel ring that Frankland had planted in it when he laid it there. Sheryl and Frankland helped move the slab to the side of the concrete bunker.
And there, below, were the guns in their cases. Rising from the pit came the smell of the heavy grease that Frankland had used to coat the rifles. His heart lifted. He looked at Sheryl.
“We’ll get the food, darlin’,” he said. “The Lord will reward us, I’m sure, for planting his kingdom here in Arkansas.” He smiled. “Like Brother Hilkiah says, “Trust in God and the Second Amendment.’”