Outside Roy Coates’ hospital room, she finds his wife Thelma sitting on a chair, looking off into the distance with her usual doleful expression. Thelma says that Roy got shot and stomped on and their son Aaron has been arrested and they’re coming to take Roy away to the prison hospital as soon as he’s fit to be moved. She’s afraid for both of them because they are talking about murder, like with Abner and Junior Baxter. “Mostly they arrested the men and let the women go,” she says. Bernice says she missed all that because of Mr. Suggs, and Thelma says, “Well, you was smart to do so, Bernice, and I dearly wisht I could say the same. I hear tell you got him to home now.”
“They was trying to kill him here.”
“That’s what Maudie says. She’s a good soul, Maudie, even if she is a Babtist.” Thelma tells her in her flat sad monotone that the Cox boy got killed, and that brave McDaniel fellow and Franny Baxter’s new husband—“She’s a widder now, and she ain’t even hardly married yet!”—and also Mildred Gray. “When the police started up the hill and them Eye-talians started down from the top, Ezra was hollering out his holy curses on them all, and Mildred she said, ‘It’s okay, Ezra, I’ll go take care of it,’ and she left his wheelchair and picked up a gun from the ground and started walking up toward the Eye-talians with this spooky smile on her face, and they all shot her at once, like they was at the carnival, shooting at one a them tin rabbits on a pull-chain. Meantimes, the church camp it caught on fire just like that boy Darren foresaid it would, and Abner he prophesied it, too, so I guess it was a thing ordained. When I seen the smoke, I was afeerd for Clara who had stayed back with Mabel and some a them, but either they got out in time or more likely they was taken prisoner. That’s what they’re saying. Them army heliocopters fired a lotta rockets into the camp on accounta they thought they seen some bikers over there, but so far as I hear tell only one biker got killt and he was maybe probably already dead, but two of Wanda’s little ones got bombed on. The governor tried to blame that on the biker boys, but Maudie says it was them heliocopters of his done it. They searched all over but couldn’t find Wanda. I’m sure I seen her up on the Mount just before everything turned so bad, but then she just plain disappeared.”
“Maybe she was already dead and that was her ghost.”
Thelma nods bleakly. “Nor else she got raptured suddenly, though she don’t seem the likeliest choice. They arrested Junior Baxter over to the camp. They say he killt some people, I don’t know who. The Baxters, they are in a ruinous state. Two boys run off and into deadly mischief, at least one of them dead and his head gone missing, the oldest boy in jail and Abner right in there with him, and little Amanda kidnapped and made to do wicked things — some say they witnessed her bare nekkid on the back of a motorbike and others say they seen even worse things. Poor Sarah, she is a lost soul, she don’t even know what’s happening, though I do hear Franny and Tessie has took her in, so that’s a blessing. And our church, you know, the one in town, it also got burnt down, clean to the ground.”
“I heard. I must of seen it just before.”
“You was over there?”
“Just passing by on the way here.” Driving in from the mine yesterday morning, Bernice spied the little Baxter girl walking on the side of the road in the last of the drizzle in her black dress, no raincoat or umbrella, so she pulled over and offered her a ride. The girl is simple, and perhaps she was lost. No, she said, her dress was too hot, and now it was all wet. She wanted to go home and change. Home? She only smiled like she always does. It might have been more proper to take her back to her mother, she was not a child to be left alone anywhere, but on the car radio they were reporting that the power was out in the town of West Condon and the phones as well and it might be sabotage. If that was so, the road behind her was going to fill up with people rushing back, so her best option was to take advantage of her head start and get on into town. She decided to drop Amanda off at the Church of the Nazarene, hoping there was someone there who could take care of her. On her car radio they were reporting trouble at the hospital and the high school, so it made her trip in all the more urgent. She told Amanda to stay there and she’d pick her up later, not knowing the trouble she was dropping the poor child into.
“Also Lucy Smith was in the bank when it blowed up and she is dead or nearly,” Thelma says, continuing her drear litany. “And Linda Catter is passed on and they say they killt the barber, too.” Thelma’s voice has risen as though she is about to cry. And then she does cry. “Ain’t nobody left in town to cut your hair,” she wails. She gulps and wipes her nose and turns her teary gaze away. “God never does nothing wrong, Bernice,” she says, the words catching in her throat, “and He always does the right thing. He’s always loving, fair, honest’n pure, like the preachers say. He knows everthing and He’s more powerful than anything else or anybody who’s ever lived nor never’s gonna live. I believe that. I got to. But sometimes, when things happen, it’s all so hard to take in. Our brains is just too puny. And the question is”—she’s sobbing now—“why didn’t He make them bigger?”
“I know, Mr. Suggs, that there is some things you can’t remember. When the Devil shot you with his ray gun, he was trying to melt your brains, and he come near to doing that, but your brains is strong and they did not give up and they will not give up. And meantime we got all the best doctors in the world working on an anecdote against them rays. At the Fourth of July parade — you was there, but you probably don’t recollect this, not now, but some day it will come back to you — the governor called you a patriarch of the people just like Abraham and said that you was one of the country’s greatest Christians and bravest patriots, and he would not let Satan have his fiendish way with you, and that is why he put the secret service in charge of protecting and rehabitating you. And, oh yes, did I tell you? The governor he is a Brunist now. He is a believer. Because of how brave and dignified you were, he come to realize you must be on to something important, so he confessed his sins, or a bunch of them anyways, right there on Main Street, and Clara herself baptized him. And Ben Wosznick, he took time out from defending the camp against all them hosts of ungodly Baxterites and sung a nice song about you. About how Mr. Suggs filled all them thugs fulla slugs and got lotsa hugs.” She has worked hard on this, but Mr. Suggs looks skeptical and has one finger up as though to wag it. “Course it’s not one of his best songs.”
“Well, the governor’s not stupid,” is what Maudie said yesterday. “He can see which way the wind is breaking.” After all Bernice’s help at the hospital, Maudie wanted to have a coffee with her before she went back home to Mr. Suggs to thank her for all she’d done. “You made a big difference this afternoon, Bernice, and we are all beholden to you,” she said, and Bernice said she was just as beholden to Maudie for saving Mr. Suggs’ life. According to Maudie, that things got so out of control was at least partly the governor’s fault for not acting sooner and then for overreacting in careless and arrogant ways, but TV news was exposing all that and he was backing down from his highhat ways and, thanks to the negotiations of the smart young city manager, Mr. Minicozzi, was beginning to come across with the disaster relief funds needed for the town’s recovery. Mr. Minicozzi is in charge of West Condon, Maudie explained, because the mayor ran off with the city payroll. “They don’t know where that bandit is and nor the money neither, but at least they caught his dopey sidekick, who thought he was on his way to Brazil, but didn’t even have a passport, nor know what one was.” They reminisced over lost friends like Francesca and poor brave Mr. Beeker and the beautician Linda Catter and the kindly pharmacist Doc Foley, who Maudie said was almost like part of the family. “Dr. Lewis, he is just desolated,” she said, and Bernice thought about that old Bible word and how it fit so many things. Maudie also talked about Mr. McDaniel, who, Bernice learned, was the man in the runaway backhoe. He was an occasional Cornerstone Baptist like Maudie and Maudie said she took a fancy to him when he first turned up in town to work for Mr. Suggs, mainly because of his handsome black beard. “But then I noticed he never ever smiled, not even when he shook hands with the preacher or someone showed him their baby, and I figured there was a dark streak in him that could spoil things just when they might get interesting.” Bernice is sorry he or anyone else got killed, but it means he can’t turn up at Mr. Suggs’ bedside and contradict her account of things, an account in which he can also now play a bigger part. A sign God still has his eye on her and on her needs.
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