It was the taste of her new life. It was not the ashes taste with which she had endured for so long.
Dawn was alarmed that their mother now spoke with such emotion, and something like a schoolteacher’s certainty, you could not comprehend what she might mean. She hoped that something terrible would not happen in Cleveland which was sixty-five miles from Mad River Junction for Edna Mae had been saying for days that they would remember what happened there for the rest of their lives.
There was something ominous in this. Edna Mae had even been on the telephone making plans—Edna Mae, who had not willingly spoken on the phone in years . . .
Dawn had only a vague idea what was planned. Prayer vigil? Burials? Holy innocents?
Badly Dawn wanted to stay in Mad River Junction. Her two days off from Home Depot she’d planned to use for a private purpose. Yet, she could not let Anita and Noah go alone with their mother on this mysterious trip that required staying away overnight—being “put up” in the homes of strangers.
And how unlike Edna Mae this was, to wish to spend time with strangers. Even Christian Pentecostal strangers.
Dawn had promised her father that she would help take care of the younger children. Luther had extracted such a promise from both Dawn and Luke at the time of his arrest but Luke had broken the promise and left his sister behind.
Fuck you then, I am strong enough. I can do it by myself.
“IT IS ONLY A RUMOR. Unverified.”
Volunteers first heard on the bus that the vigil and burials might be televised on a “Christian-friendly” national news channel. Reverend Trucross was excited that such publicity would surely bring more volunteers to Cleveland and donations to the Holy Innocents Right-to-Life Action League.
In Cleveland there were many more of them arriving in buses, minivans, cars. They knew one another at once, by sight—a wild joyousness spread among them like wildfire. In public places, in parks and on sidewalks they knelt and boldly prayed. Loudly they prayed. They chanted. They surrounded the Cleveland County Planned Parenthood Women’s Surgical Clinic and (some of them) would have to be dragged away by law enforcement loudly praying, chanting. Some of them said the rosary in loud voices. It was boasted that their prayers were loud enough to be heard in Hell.
In public places they held aloft posters proclaiming SEPTEMBER 13 NATIONAL DAY OF REMEMBRANCE FOR PREBORN HOLY INNOCENTS MURDERED BY ABORTION. Eagerly they offered pamphlets to anyone who came near—Respect for Life: Your Baby Is Waiting to Be Born. Of a dozen pamphlets pressed upon strangers though ten might be found discarded on the ground yet two might be kept and (possibly) passed on to others. They marched with picket signs depicting the badly mutilated bodies of infants above such captions as NO BABY CHOOSES TO DIE and I DIED FOR MY MOTHER’S SIN.
The lurid magnified pictures of infant corpses were not well received by the majority of strangers who saw them. In parks and on sidewalks people walked hurriedly past with averted eyes, or spoke harshly or pleadingly to the volunteers, but in the roadway motorists had no choice but to slow their vehicles as picket-bearing volunteers inched out into traffic. They had been cautioned by their leaders not to interfere with traffic and not to be “aggressive” but the most fervent disobeyed precipitating a barrage of horns and shouts—“Get out of the way!”—“Go to hell!”—“You are terrible, sick people.” Police arrived, to drag them out of traffic and onto the sidewalk. Though they were threatened with arrest, no one was (yet) arrested.
Such reactions the volunteers took in stride for they’d been prepared. Many of them had participated in prayer vigils in the past and encouraged the newer volunteers not to be frightened or discouraged. Jesus had not despaired in worse circumstances. Everyone knew they were doing God’s bidding. Even their enemies knew—atheists, Socialists, abortionists knew. At the Planned Parenthood clinic, everyone on the staff knew. In such places there were friends and allies who could not speak out for fear of reprisals as there were friends and allies among law enforcement. And often it happened, so wonderfully, an individual would stop to stare, to be moved, to be drawn into conversation, to take away a pamphlet, even to press money into a volunteer’s hands.
Bless you. You are doing the work of the Lord.