An unpleasant, sweetish aroma was beginning to drift up from the white enamel case now, a smell that reminded me of the time our freezer went on the fritz while we were spending a week on the Cape. Perhaps, I thought, it was the smell of spoiling meat that had driven Mr. McVey over to Mrs. Carmody's team.
"-expiation It's expiation we want to think about now! We have been scourged with whips and scorpions! We have been punished for delving into secrets forbidden by God of old! We have seen the lips of the earth open! We have seen the obscenities of nightmare! The rock will not hide them, the dead tree gives no shelter! And how will it end? What will stop it?"
"Expiation!" shouted good old Myron LaFleur.
"Expiation ... expiation ..." They whispered it uncertainly.
"Let me hear you say it like you mean it!" Mrs. Carmody shouted. The veins stood out on her neck in bulging cords. Her voice was cracking and hoarse now, but still full of power. And it occurred to me that it was the mist that had given her that power-the power to cloud men's minds, to make a particularly apt pun-just as it had taken away the sun's power from the rest of us. Before, she had been nothing but a mildly eccentric old woman with an antiques store in a town that was lousy with antiques stores. Nothing but an old woman with a few stuffed animals in the back room and a reputation for (that witch ... that cunt) folk medicine. It was said she could find water with an applewood stick, that she could charm warts, and sell you a cream that would fade freckles to shadows of their former selves. I had even heard-was it from old Bill Giosti? - that Mrs. Carmody could be seen (in total confidence) about your love life; that if you were having the bedroom miseries, she could give you a drink that would put the ram back in your rod.
"EXPIATION!" they all cried together.
"Expiation, that's right!" she shouted deliriously. "It's expiation gonna clear away this fog! Expiation gonna clear off these monsters and abominations! Expiation gonna drop the scales of mist from our eyes and let us see!" Her voice dropped a notch. "And what does the Bible say expiation is? What is the only cleanser for sin in the Eye and Mind of God?"
"Blood. "
This time the chill shuddered up through my entire body, cresting at the nape of my neck and making the hairs there stiffen. Mr. McVey had spoken that word, Mr. McVey the butcher who had been cutting meat in Bridgton ever since I was a kid holding my father's talented hand. Mr. McVey taking orders and cutting meat in his stained whites. Mr. McVey, whose acquaintanceship with the knife was long-yes, and with the saw and cleaver as well. Mr. McVey who would understand better than anyone else that the cleanser of the soul flows from the wounds of the body.
"Blood ..." they whispered.
"Daddy, I'm scared," Billy said. He was clutching my hand tightly, his small face strained and pale.
"Ollie," I said, "why don't we get out of this loony bin?"
"Right on," he said. "Let's go."
We started down the second aisle in a loose group-Ollie, Amanda, Cornell, Mrs. Turman, Mrs. Reppler, Billy, and I. It was a quarter to five in the morning and the mist was beginning to lighten again.
"You and Cornell take the grocery bags," Ollie said to me.
"Okay."
"I'll go first. Your Scout is a four-door, is it?"
"Yeah. It is."
"Okay, I'll open the driver's door and the back door on the same side. Mrs. Dumfries, can you carry Billy?"
She picked him up in her arms.
"Am I too heavy?" Billy asked.
"No, hon."
"Good."
"You and Billy get in front," Ollie went on. "Shove way over. Mrs. Turman in front, in the middle. David, you behind the wheel. The rest of us will-"
"Where did you think you were going?"
It was Mrs. Carmody.
She stood at the head of the checkout line where Ollie had hidden the bags of groceries. Her pantsuit was a yellow scream in the gloom. Her hair frizzed out wildly in all directions, reminding me momentarily of Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein. Her eyes blazed. Ten or fifteen people stood behind her, blocking the IN and OUT doors. They had the look of people who had been in car accidents, or who had seen a UFO land, or who had seen a tree pull its roots up and walk.
Billy cringed against Amanda and buried his face against her neck.
"Going out now, Mrs. Carmody," Ollie said. His voice was curiously gentle. "Stand away, please."
"You can't go out. That way is death. Don't you know that by now?"
"No one has interfered with you," I said. "All we want is the same privilege."
She bent and found the bags of groceries unerringly. She must have known what we were planning all along. She pulled them out from the shelf where Ollie had placed them. One ripped open, spilling cans across the floor. She threw the other and it smashed open with the sound of breaking glass. Soda ran fizzing every which way and sprayed off the chrome facing of the next checkout lane.