Dawn touched the edge of the world.
They sat around Larry's kitchen table, drinking coffee. It was ten to five when Fran came up the hall and stood in the doorway. Her face was puffy from crying, but there was no limp as she walked. She was, indeed, cured. "She's going, I think," Fran said.
They went in, Larry with his arm around Lucy.
Mother Abagail's breathing had taken on a heavy, hollow rattle that was horribly reminiscent of the superflu. They gathered around the bed without speaking, deep in awe and afraid. Ralph was sure that something would happen at the end that would cause the wonder of God to stand before all of them, naked and revealed. She would be gone in a flash of light, taken. Or they would see her spirit, transfigured in radiance, leaving by the window and going up into the sky.
But in the end, she simply died.
There was a single final breath, the last of millions. It was drawn in, held, and finally let out. Her chest just didn't rise again.
"She's done," Stu muttered.
"God have mercy on her soul," Ralph said, no longer afraid. He crossed her hands on her thin bosom, and his tears fell on them.
"I'll go," Glen said suddenly. "She was right. White magic. That's all that's left."
"Stu," Frannie whispered. "Please, Stu, say no."
They looked at him - all of them.
Now you must lead, Stuart.
He thought of Arnette, of the old car carrying Charles D. Campion and his load of death, crashing into Bill Hapscomb's pumps like some wicked Pandora. He thought of Denninger and Deitz, and how he had begun to associate them in his mind with the smiling doctors who had lied and lied and lied to him and to his wife about her condition - and maybe they had lied to themselves, as well. Most of all, he thought of Frannie. And of Mother Abagail saying, This is what God wants of you.
"Frannie," he said. "I have to go."
"And die." She looked at him bitterly, almost hatefully, and then to Lucy, as if for support. But Lucy was stunned and far-off, no help.
"If we don't go, we'll die," Stu said, feeling his way along the words. "She was right. If we wait, then spring comes. Then what? How are we going to stop him? We don't know. We don't have a clue. We never did. We had our heads in the sand, too. We can't stop him except like Glen says. White magic. Or the power of God."
She began to weep bitterly.
"Frannie, don't do that," he said, and tried to take her hand.
"Don't touch me!" she cried at him. "You're a dead man, you're a corpse, so don't touch me! "
They stood around the bed in tableau as the sun came up.
Stu and Frannie went to Flagstaff Mountain around eleven o'clock. They parked halfway up, and Stu brought the hamper while Fran carried the tablecloth and a bottle of Blue Nun. The picnic had been her idea, but a strange and awkward silence held between them.
"Help me spread it," she said. "And watch out for those spiny things."
They were in a small, slanting meadow a thousand feet below Sunrise Amphitheater. Boulder was spread out below them in a blue haze. Today it was wholly summer again. The sun shone down with power and authority. Crickets buzzed in the grass. A grasshopper leaped up and Stu caught it with a quick lunge of his right hand. He could feel it inside his fingers, tickling and frightened.
"Spit n I'll let you go," he said, the old childhood formula, and looked up to see Fran smiling sadly at him. With quick, ladylike precision, she turned her head and spat. It hurt his heart, seeing her do that. "Fran - "
"No, Stu. Don't talk about it. Not now."
They spread the white lawn tablecloth, which Fran had glommed from the Hotel Boulderado, and moving with quick economy (it made him feel strange to watch her supple grace as she bent and moved, as if there had never been a whiplash injury and sprained back at all), she set out their early lunch: a cucumber and lettuce salad dressed with vinegar; cold ham sandwiches; the wine; an apple pie for dessert.
"Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," she said. He sat down beside her and took a sandwich and some salad. He wasn't hungry. He hurt inside. But he ate.
When they had both finished a token sandwich and most of the salad - the fresh greens had been delicious - and a small sliver of apple pie each, she said: "When are you going?"
"Noon," he said. He lit a cigarette, cupping the flame in his hands.
"How long will it take you to get there?"
He shrugged. "Walking? I don't know. Glen's not young. Neither is Ralph, for that matter. If we can make thirty miles a day, we could do it by the first of October, I guess."
"And if there's early snow in the mountains? Or in Utah?"
He shrugged, looking at her steadily.
"More wine?" she asked.
"No. It gives me acid indigestion. It always did."
Fran poured herself another glass and drank it off.
"Was she God's voice, Stu? Was she?"
"Frannie, I just don't know."
"We dreamed of her, and she was. This whole thing is part and parcel of some stupid game, do you know that, Stuart? Have you ever read the Book of Job?"