"He's been out at the reservoir," Ralph said. "Him and that electrician, Brad Kitchner, have been looking at the power plant." He rubbed the side of his nose. "I was out this morning. Figured all those chiefs orta have at least one Indian to order around."
Mother Abagail cackled. She did like Ralph. He was a simple soul, but canny. He had a feel for how things worked. She was not surprised that he had been the one to get what everybody now called Free Zone Radio going. He was the kind of man who wouldn't be afraid to try epoxy on your tractor battery when it started to split open, and if the epoxy did the job, why, he'd just take off his shapeless hat and scratch his balding head and grin that grin, like he was an eleven-year-old kid with the chores done and his fishing pole leaned against his shoulder. He was a good sort to have around when things weren't going just right and the type of man who always somehow ended up on relief when rimes were flush for lust about everyone else. He could put the right sort of valve on your bicycle pump when it wouldn't mate to a tire bigger than the kind that went on a bike and he'd know what was making that funny buzzing noise in your oven just by looking at it, but when he had to deal with a company timeclock, he'd somehow always end up punching in late and punching out early and get fired for it before very long. He'd know you could fertilize corn with pigshit if you mixed it right, and he'd know how to pickle cukes, but he would never be able to understand a car loan agreement, or to figure out how the dealers managed to rook him every time. A job application form filled out by Ralph Brentner would look as if it had been through a Hamilton-Beach blender... misspelled, dog-eared, dotted with blots of ink and greasy fingerprints. His employment history would look like a checkerboard which had been around the world on a tramp steamer. But when the very fabric of the world began to tear open, it was the Ralph Brentners who were not afraid to say, "Let's slap a little epoxy in there and see if that'll hold her." And more often than not, it did.
"You're a good fella, Ralph, you know it? You're a one."
"Why, you are too, Mother. Not that you're a fella, but you know what I mean. Anyhow, that fella Redman came by while we were workin. Wanted to talk to Nick about being on some kind of committee."
"And what did Nick say?"
"Aw, he wrote a couple of pages. But what it came down to was fine by me if it's fine by Mother Abagail. Is it?"
"Well now, what would an old lady like myself have to say about such doings?"
"A lot," Ralph said in a serious, almost shocked manner. "You're the reason we're here. I guess we'll do whatever you want."
"What I want is to go on livin free like I always have, like an American. I just want my say when it's time for me to have it. Like an American."
"Well, you'll have all of that."
"The rest feel that way, Ralph?"
"You bet they do."
"Then that's fine." She rocked serenely. "Time everyone got going. There's people lollygaggin around. Mostly just waitin for somebody to tell em where to squat and lean."
"Then I can go ahead?"
"With what?"
"Well, Nick and Stu ast me if I could find a printing press and maybe get her going, if they got me some electricity to run it. I said I didn't need any electricity, I'd just go down to the high school and find the biggest hand-crank mimeograph I could lay my hands on. They want some fliers." He shook his head. "Do they! Seven hundred. Why, we only got four hundred and some here."
"And nineteen out by the gate, probably getting heatstroke while you and me chin. You go bring them in."
"I will." Ralph started away.
"And Ralph?"
He turned back.
"Print a thousand," she said.
They filed in through the gate that Ralph opened and she felt her sin, the one she thought of as the mother of sin. The father of sin was theft; every one of the Ten Commandments boiled down to "Thou shalt not steal." Murder was the theft of a life, adultery the theft of a wife, covetousness the secret, slinking theft that took place in the cave of the heart. Blasphemy was the theft of God's name, swiped from the House of the Lord and sent out to - walk the streets like a strutting whore. She had never been much of a thief, a minor pilferer from time to time at worst.
The mother of sin was pride.
Pride was the female side of Satan in the human race, the quiet egg of sin, always fertile. Pride had kept Moses out of Canaan, where the grapes were so big the men had to carry them in slings. Who brought the water from the rock when we were thirsty? the Children of Israel asked, and Moses had answered, I did it.