*
Nick spent the rest of the afternoon floating. A glorious sense of well-being had fallen on him, and he felt almost free of gravity, bounding over the torn surface of the Arkansas bluff like an Apollo astronaut skipping over the surface of the moon. He had come through fire and water to find Manon and Arlette, through snakes and a hail of buckshot, past madmen armed with guns and a city choking on poison gas. They were alive, and he was alive, and they were alive together.
He had seen Manon’s smile and the glow in Arlette’s eyes when she looked at her birthday present. He was happy, and he wanted to bask in his happiness.
But he couldn’t. Manon and her family were in mourning, and Nick had to conceal his joy, had to pretend that sorrow flooded his heart instead of delight. His was a difficult happiness to conceal; he had to try to remember not to let a ridiculous grin break out on his face, or make too light-hearted a remark.
He helped Manon with her work, happy just to be around her. Supper had to be prepared, in an improvised kitchen, for something like a hundred and forty people under the instruction of an elderly white lady who had once been in charge of a school cafeteria. The old woman was very careful of her calorie counts: she ordered rice, vegetables, and fish to be weighed out very carefully.
“Twenty-two hundred calories per day for everyone except the people who have work assignments,” Manon explained. “Five thousand for nursing mothers, or for folks searching the swamps, raising food, or toting bricks. Milk only for growing children, since we don’t have many dairy cattle in the area.”
“That’s not a lot of calories,” Nick said.
“It’s enough to get by, they tell us. But we’re all going to be fashionably thin when we get out of this.”
Nick looked at her, and his hand twitched with the impulse to pat her butt. “I always thought your weight was fine just where it is.”
A smile twitched at her lips. “That’s one of the things I liked about you.”
Nick hadn’t told anyone that he and Manon were divorced, so he’d been given a place to sleep in the married men’s camp. Married men were assigned to the same work units as their wives and their children, which allowed families to meet during meals. The group that Nick shared with Manon, rather oddly called the Thessalonians, ate last of all, after the lady Thessalonians fed everyone else.
Even the late, scanty meal did not dim Nick’s joy. He was with his family. That was all that mattered.
After supper was over, just as the sun was touching the western horizon, the PA called everyone to a religious service. The church was too small to contain everyone, so they all sat to one side of the steel church building, on the grassy sward between the church and the young men’s camp.
The chorus— massed voices combining the choirs of all the local churches— opened with a rousing version of “Lord Help Me to Pray.” Arlette and some others bounced up to clap along, but most people seemed too tired.
After the song ended the Reverend Frankland bounced up on a box, beaming left and right. “Heaven-o!” he said, and his people chanted “Heaven-o!” right back at him. He thanked the massed choir, promised more music for later, and began by welcoming Nick and Jason to Rails Bluff, and asked them to stand so that people would know who they were. Nick rose, feeling awkward, and saw Jason standing about a hundred feet away. People shouted out, “Welcome!” and “Glad you could make it, brothers!” Nick waved, mouthed the words “Thank you,” and sat again.
Then Frankland spoke of the deaths of Gros-Papa and the others, murdered in Toussaint just a short distance away, and asked for a moment of silence to pray for them.
“Who told him about your daddy?” Nick whispered to Manon after the silence ended. “I never mentioned it.”
“Someone else in the family, I suppose.” Manon said. “Or maybe your friend Jason. You’d be surprised how fast word spreads in this place.”
“What’s he saying now?” Nick wondered, because what Frankland seemed to be saying was that Gros-Papa’s death had been predicted in the Bible, specifically in Matthew, Chapter Twenty-Four.
“Did he really say your papa was in the Bible?” Nick whispered.
“Hush,” Manon said.
“Which means we must beware!” Frankland proclaimed. “The world outside Rails Bluff is becoming a more and more dangerous place. The other day some of our people were shot at, and now we receive news of a mass murder almost on our doorstep. We must venture out only with care, brothers and sisters. The earthquake predicted in Revelations Six has come to pass. And following the earthquake, as predicted in Revelations Chapter Eight, has come the poisoning of the waters— even the President of the United States admits that the waters have been poisoned— and has commanded the people to flee the lakes and rivers.
“‘Woe!’” Frankland said, pitching his voice a little differently to make it clear he was quoting, “‘woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth.’” He looked at a list in his hand. “Let me give you the news of the Last Days.”
He then gave the day’s headlines— the evacuation thrown into chaos by earthquake, cities knocked flat, homeless people wandering the earth in search of food and shelter, the stock market dropping into a bottomless pit, investment and savings wiped out, radiation drifting over the South, armies poised in the Middle East, ready for war.
And to each piece of news Frankland related another piece of the Bible, discussing each of the day’s events in connection with prophecy.
Nick listened in amazement. He turned to Manon to ask if this happened every night, but her sharp glance warned him not to speak. So he looked out over the crowd, to see if they were as astonished by this as he was. Some were listening with great attention, but most seemed only tired and bored.
Jason, sitting amid a group of strangers, had a scowl on his face.
Frankland finished with a lengthy prayer for the well-being of loved ones outside Rails Bluff. “We’ll have lights out in twenty minutes,” he said. “Everyone please be in their beds by then, except for those who are on guard duty.”
The choir cut in then, moaning out a melancholy arrangement of “I Don’t Know Why I Need to Cry Sometimes” as everyone stood to leave. “Is that normal?” Nick asked Manon, pitching his voice low so that strangers couldn’t hear him over the sound of the massed choir.
Manon glanced around before answering. “Normal for this place,” she said.
“The man’s off his rocker.”
Manon bit her lip, then took his hand between her two hands. “Baby,” she said, “whose food is your child eating?”
Nick looked at her, then gave a slow nod. He looked down at Arlette, standing between them, and put his arm around her.
They were safe, they were together, they were getting their calories. For this, Nick could put up with an eccentric interpretation of current events.
He saw Jason approach them through the dispersing crowd. The boy seemed more amused than anything.
“Boy,” Jason said, “that was pretty trippy.”
“Ssh,” Manon said, and gave him a look. “Not so loud.”
Nick put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Look,” he said, “we’re eating the man’s food. So we take his sermons seriously.”
“If he wants me to be all that serious,” Jason said, “he can give me bigger portions.”
“Hush,” Manon said. Her look was severe, all that commanding David heritage gazing down her nose at the boy.
Jason hesitated for a moment, then said, agreeably enough, “Yes, ma’am,” though his response seemed more a result of calculation— perhaps even politeness— than intimidation.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw Arlette give Jason a shared look of— of what? Not encouragement, exactly, but complicity. The alliance of a pair of adolescents against the absurdities of the adult world.
Nick was more sympathetic to Arlette and Jason than they knew.
“Listen,” he said. “We’re guests here, okay. We just do as we’re told till we figure out what’s what.”
Jason shrugged. “I won’t make trouble,” he said.
“Good,” Nick said. “Make sure you don’t.”
There are crackers with guns here. Due caution is necessary. That was the message he tried to put into his voice.
Jason said goodnight and made his way to his camp. Manon and Nick walked with Arlette to the string boundaries of what Frankland called the young ladies’ camp, and kissed her goodnight. Her arms went around Nick’s neck.
“Goodnight, Daddy. I’m so glad you’re here.”
A bubble of happiness rose in Nick’s heart. “Happy birthday, baby,” he said. “Sweet dreams.”
He kissed her cheek and sent her off into the soft May night. The voices of the choir hung magically in the air. Joy whirled through Nick’s senses. He looked at Manon, saw on her face a thoughtful little smile.
“Yes?” he said.
She shook her head. “Nothing, baby.”
“Are you all right?”
She took a long breath, let it out. Shook her head. “I guess so.”
Nick put his arm around her waist, a motion that felt so easy, so natural, that he was almost surprised at himself. She accepted it, rested her head briefly against his shoulder, then gently detached herself.
“Married women’s camp,” she said. “It’s right here.”
“Can we talk?” he asked. “About what’s going on here? Why is this camp so empty? Where did everyone go?”
“One of the ladies told me there were many more people here after the first quake. But the government evacuated most of them.”
“Leaving only Frankland’s hard core?”
“I suppose so.” Manon looked uncertain. “But more people came in after the second big quake, including my family. So now it’s about fifty-fifty.”
“Can we talk about what we’re going to do?”
Her eyes were serious. “Not yet,” she said. “Wait till you’ve been here a day or two.”
“Okay.”
“Sleep well, Nick.” She reached out, touched his hand for a moment, then withdrew, walking into the married women’s camp.
Nick stood for a moment and savored the touch on his hand, the memory of Arlette’s kiss. The choir’s distant chant quivered in his soul.
And then he made his way to the plastic sheet that served as his bed.