MADNESS, BLINDNESS, ASTONISHMENT OF THE HEART

Scarecrow Joe wasn’t up early; he was up late. All night, in fact.

This would be Joseph McClatchey, age thirteen, also known as King of the Geeks and Skeletor, residing at 19 Mill Street. Standing six-two and weighing one-fifty, he was indeed skeletal. And he was a bona fide brain. Joe remained in the eighth grade only because his parents were adamantly opposed to the practice of “skipping forward.”

Joe didn’t mind. His friends (he had a surprising number for a scrawny thirteen-year-old genius) were there. Also, the work was a tit and there were plenty of computers to goof with; in Maine, every middle school kid got one. Some of the better websites were blocked, of course, but it hadn’t taken Joe long to conquer such minor annoyances. He was happy to share the information with his homies, two of whom were those dauntless board-benders Norrie Calvert and Benny Drake. (Benny particularly enjoyed surfing the Blondes in White Panties site during his daily library period.) This sharing no doubt explained some of Joe’s popularity, but not all; kids just thought he was cool. The bumper sticker plastered on his backpack probably came closest to explaining why. It read FIGHT THE POWERS THAT BE.

Joe was a straight-A student, a dependable and sometimes brilliant basketball center on the middle school team (varsity as a seventh-grader!), and a foxy-good soccer player. He could tickle the piano keys, and two years previous had won second prize in the annual Town Christmas Talent Competition with a hilariously laid-back dance routine to Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman.” It had the adults in attendance applauding and screaming with laughter. Lissa Jamieson, the town’s head librarian, said he could make a living doing that if he wanted to, but growing up to be Napoleon Dynamite was not Joe’s ambition.

“The fix was in,” Sam McClatchey had said, gloomily fingering his son’s second-place medal. It was probably true; the winner that year had been Dougie Twitchell, who happened to be the Third Select-man’s brother. Twitch had juggled half a dozen Indian clubs while singing “Moon River.”

Joe didn’t care if the fix was in or not. He had lost interest in dancing the way he lost interest in most things once he had to some degree mastered them. Even his love of basketball, which as a fifth-grader he had assumed to be eternal, was fading.

Only his passion for the Internet, that electronic galaxy of endless possibilities, did not seem to pall for him.

His ambition, unexpressed even to his parents, was to become President of the United States. Maybe, he sometimes thought, I’ll do the Napoleon Dynamite thing at my inaugural. That shit would be on YouTube for eternity.

Joe spent the entire first night the Dome was in place on the Internet. The McClatcheys had no generator, but Joe’s laptop was juiced and ready to go. Also, he had half a dozen spare batteries. He had urged the other seven or eight kids in his informal computer club to also keep spares on hand, and he knew where there were more if they were needed. They might not be; the school had a kick-ass generator, and he thought he could recharge there with no trouble. Even if Mill Middle went into lockdown, Mr. Allnut, the janitor, would no doubt hook him up; Mr. Allnut was also a fan of blondesinwhitepanties.com. Not to mention country music downloads, which Scarecrow Joe saw he got for free.

Joe all but wore out his Wi-Fi connection that first night, going from blog to blog with the jitter-jive agility of a toad hopping on hot rocks. Each blog was more dire than the last. The facts were thin, the conspiracy theories lush. Joe agreed with his dad and mom, who called the weirder conspiracy theorists who lived on (and for) the Internet “the tinfoil-hat folks,” but he was also a believer in the idea that, if you were seeing a lot of horseshit, there had to be a pony in the vicinity.

As Dome Day became Day Two, all the blogs were suggesting the same thing: the pony in this case was not terrorists, invaders from space, or Great Cthulhu, but the good old military-industrial complex. The specifics varied from site to site, but three basic theories ran through all of them. One was that the Dome was some sort of heartless experiment, with the people of Chester’s Mill serving as guinea pigs. Another was that it was an experiment that had gone wrong and out of control (“Exactly like in that movie The Mist, ” one blogger wrote). A third was that it wasn’t an experiment at all, but a coldly created pretext to justify war with America’s stated enemies. “And WE’LL WIN!” ToldjaSo87 wrote. “Because with this new weapon, WHO CAN STAND AGAINST US? My friends, WE HAVE BECOME THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS OF NATIONS!!!!”

Joe didn’t know which if any of these theories was the truth. He didn’t really care. What he cared about was the expressed common denominator, which was the government.

It was time for a demonstration, which he of course would lead. Not in town, either, but out on Route 119, where they could stick it directly to The Man. It might only be Joe’s guys at first, but it would grow. He had no doubt of that. The Man was probably still keeping the press corps away, but even at thirteen, Joe was wise enough to know that didn’t necessarily matter. Because there were people inside those uniforms, and thinking brains behind at least some of those expressionless faces. The military presence as a whole might constitute The Man, but there would be individuals hiding in the whole, and some of them would be secret bloggers. They’d get the word out, and some would probably accompany their reports with camera-phone pictures: Joe McClatchey and his friends carrying signs reading END THE SECRECY, STOP THE EXPERIMENT, FREE CHESTER’S MILL, etc., etc.

“Need to post signs around town, too,” he murmured. But that would be no problem. All of his guys had printers. And bikes.

Scarecrow Joe began sending e-mails by the dawn’s early light. Soon he’d make the rounds on his own bike, and enlist Benny Drake to help him. Maybe Norrie Calvert, too. Ordinarily the members of Joe’s posse were late weekend risers, but Joe thought everyone in town would be up early this morning. No doubt The Man would shut down the Internet soon, as He had the phones, but for now it was Joe’s weapon, the weapon of the people.

It was time to fight the power.

“Fellas, raise your hands,” Peter Randolph said. He was tired and baggy-eyed as he stood in front of his new recruits, but he also felt a certain grim happiness. The green Chief’s car was parked in the motor pool parking lot, freshly gassed and ready to go. It was his now.

The new recruits—Randolph intended to call them Special Deputies in his formal report to the Selectmen —obediently raised their hands. There were actually five of them, and one was not a fella but a stocky young woman named Georgia Roux. She was an unemployed hairdresser and Carter Thibodeau’s girlfriend. Junior had suggested to his father that they probably ought to add a female just to keep everybody happy, and Big Jim had concurred at once. Randolph initially resisted the idea, but when Big Jim favored the new Chief with his fiercest smile, Randolph had given in.

And, he had to admit as he administered the oath (with some of his regular force looking on), they certainly looked tough enough. Junior had lost some pounds over the previous summer and was nowhere near his weight as a high school offensive linemen, but he still had to go one-ninety, and the others, even the girl, were authentic bruisers.

They stood repeating the words after him, phrase for phrase: Junior on the far left, next to his friend Frankie DeLesseps; then Thibodeau and the Roux girl; Melvin Searles on the end. Searles was wearing a vacant going-to-the-county-fair grin. Randolph would have wiped that shit off his face in a hurry if he’d had three weeks to train these kids (hell, even one), but he didn’t.

The only thing on which he hadn’t caved to Big Jim was the issue of sidearms. Rennie had argued for them, insisting that these were “levelheaded, Godfearing young people,” and saying he’d be glad to provide them himself, if necessary.

Randolph had shaken his head. “The situation’s too volatile. Let’s see how they do first.”

“If one of them gets hurt while you’re seeing how they do—”

“Nobody’s gonna get hurt, Big Jim,” Randolph said, hoping he was right. “This is Chester’s Mill. If it was New York City, things might be different.”

Now Randolph said, “‘And I will, to the best of my ability, protect and serve the people of this town.’”

They gave it back as sweetly as a Sunday School class on Parents’ Day. Even the vacantly grinning Searles got it right. And they looked good. No guns—yet—but at least they had walkie-talkies. Nightsticks, too. Stacey Moggin (who would be pulling a street shift herself) had found uniform shirts for everyone but Carter Thibodeau. They had nothing to fit him because he was too broad in the shoulders, but the plain blue workshirt he’d fetched from home looked okay. Not reg, but it was clean. And the silver badge pinned

over the left pocket sent the message that needed sending.

Maybe this was going to work.

“So help me God,” Randolph said.

“So help me God,” they repeated.

From the corner of his eye, Randolph saw the door open. It was Big Jim. He joined Henry Morrison, wheezy George Frederick, Fred Denton, and a dubious-looking Jackie Wettington at the back of the room. Rennie was here to see his son sworn in, Randolph knew. And because he was still uneasy about refusing the new men sidearms (refusing Big Jim anything ran counter to Randolph’s politically attuned nature), the new Chief now extemporized, mostly for the Second Selectman’s benefit.

“And I will take no shit from anybody.”

“And I will take no shit from anybody!” they repeated. With enthusiasm. All smiling now. Eager. Ready to hit the streets.

Big Jim was nodding and giving him a thumbs-up in spite of the cussword. Randolph felt himself expand, unaware the words would come back to haunt him: I will take no shit from anybody.

When Julia Shumway came into Sweetbriar Rose that morning, most of the breakfast crowd had departed either for church or impromptu forums on the common. It was nine o’clock. Barbie was on his own; neither Dodee Sanders nor Angie McCain had shown up, which surprised no one. Rose had gone to Food City. Anson went with her. Hopefully they’d come back loaded with groceries, but Barbie wouldn’t let himself believe it until he actually saw the goodies.

“We’re closed until lunch,” he said, “but there’s coffee.”

“And a cinnamon roll?” Julia asked hopefully.

Barbie shook his head. “Rose didn’t make them. Trying to conserve the gennie as much as possible.”

“Makes sense,” she said. “Just coffee, then.”

He had carried the pot with him, and poured. “You look tired.”

“Barbie, everyone looks tired this morning. And scared to death.”

“How’s that paper coming?”

“I was hoping to have it out by ten, but it’s looking more like three this afternoon. The first Democrat extra since the Prestile flooded in oh-three.”

“Production problems?”

“Not as long as my generator stays online. I just want to go down to the grocery store and see if a mob shows up. Get that part of the story, if one does. Pete Freeman’s already there to take pictures.”

Barbie didn’t like that word mob. “Christ, I hope they behave.”

“They will; this is The Mill, after all, not New York City.”

Barbie wasn’t sure there was that much difference between city mice and country mice when they were under stress, but he kept his mouth shut. She knew the locals better than he did.

And Julia, as if reading his mind: “Of course I could be wrong. That’s why I sent Pete.” She looked around. There were still a few people at the counter up front, finishing eggs and coffee, and of course the big table at the back—the “bullshit table” in Yankee parlance—was full of old men chewing over what had happened and discussing what might happen next. The center of the restaurant, however, she and Barbie had to themselves.

“Couple of things to tell you,” she said in a lower voice. “Stop hovering like Willie the Waiter and sit down.”

Barbie did so, and poured his own cup of coffee. It was the bottom of the pot and tasted like diesel … but of course the bottom of the pot was where the caffeine motherlode was.

Julia reached into the pocket of her dress, brought out her cell, and slid it across to him. “Your man Cox called again at seven this morning. Guess he didn’t get much sleep last night, either. Asked me to give you this. Doesn’t know you have one of your own.”

Barbie let the phone stay where it was. “If he expects a report already, he’s seriously overestimated my abilities.”

“He didn’t say that. He said that if he needed to talk to you, he wanted to be able to reach out.”

That decided Barbie. He pushed the cell phone back to her. She took it, not looking surprised. “He also said that if you didn’t hear from him by five this afternoon, you should call him. He’ll have an update. Want

the number with the funny area code?”

He sighed. “Sure.”

She wrote it on a napkin: small neat numbers. “I think they’re going to try something.”

“What?”

“He didn’t say; it was just a sense I got that a number of options are on the table.”

“I’ll bet there are. What else is on your mind?”

“Who says there’s anything?”

“It’s just a sense I get,” he said, grinning.

“Okay, the Geiger counter.”

“I was thinking I’d speak to Al Timmons about that.” Al was the Town Hall janitor, and a regular at Sweetbriar Rose. Barbie got on well with him.

Julia shook her head.

“No? Why no?”

“Want to guess who gave Al a personal no-interest loan to send Al’s youngest son to Heritage Christian in Alabama?”

“Would that be Jim Rennie?”

“Right. Now let’s go on to Double Jeopardy, where the scores can really change. Guess who holds the paper on Al’s Fisher plow.”

“I’m thinking that would also be Jim Rennie.”

“Correct. And since you’re the dogshit Selectman Rennie can’t quite scrape off his shoe, reaching out to people who owe him might not be a good idea.” She leaned forward. “But it so happens that I know who had a complete set of the keys to the kingdom: Town Hall, hospital, Health Center, schools, you name it.”

“Who?”

“Our late police chief. And I happen to know his wife—widow—very well. She has no love for James Rennie. Plus, she can keep a secret if someone convinces her it needs keeping.”

“Julia, her husband isn’t even cold yet.”

Julia thought of the grim little Bowie funeral parlor and made a grimace of sorrow and distaste. “Maybe not, but he’s probably down to room temperature. I take your point, though, and applaud your compassion. But …” She grasped his hand. This surprised Barbie but didn’t displease him. “These aren’t ordinary circumstances. And no matter how brokenhearted she is, Brenda Perkins will know that. You have a job to do. I can convince her of that. You’re the inside man.”

“The inside man,” Barbie said, and was suddenly visited by a pair of unwelcome memories: a gymnasium in Fallujah and a weeping Iraqi man, naked save for his unraveling keffiyeh. After that day and that gym, he had stopped wanting to be an inside man. And yet here he was.

“So shall I—”

It was a warm morning for October, and although the door was now locked (people could leave but not reenter), the windows were open. Through those facing Main Street, there now came a hollow metallic bang and a yelp of pain. It was followed by cries of protest.

Barbie and Julia looked at each other across their coffee cups with identical expressions of surprise and apprehension.

It begins right now, Barbie thought. He knew that wasn’t true—it had begun yesterday, when the Dome came down—but at the same time he felt sure it was true.

The people at the counter were running to the door. Barbie got up to join them, and Julia followed.

Down the street, at the north end of the town common, the bell in the steeple of the First Congregational Church began to ring, summoning the faithful to worship.

Junior Rennie felt great. He had not so much as a shadow of a headache this morning, and breakfast was sitting easy in his stomach. He thought he might even be able to eat lunch. That was good. He hadn’t had much use for food lately; half the time just looking at it made him feel throw-uppy. Not this morning, though. Flapjacks and bacon, baby.

If this is the apocalypse, he thought, it should have come sooner.

Each Special Deputy had been partnered with a regular full-time officer. Junior drew Freddy Denton, and that was also good. Denton, balding but still trim at fifty, was known as a serious hardass … but there were exceptions. He had been president of the Wildcat Boosters Club during Junior’s high school football years, and it was rumored he had never given a varsity football player a ticket. Junior couldn’t speak for all of them, but he knew that Frankie DeLesseps had been let off by Freddy once, and Junior himself had been given the old “I’m not going to write you up this time but slow down” routine twice. Junior could have been partnered with Wettington, who probably thought a first down was finally letting some guy into her pants. She had a great rack, but can you say loser ? Nor had he cared for the cold-eyed look she gave him after the swearing-in, as he and Freddy passed her on their way to the street.

Got a little leftover pantry space for you, if you fuck with me, Jackie, he thought, and laughed. God, the heat and light on his face felt good! How long since it had felt so good?

Freddy looked over. “Something funny, Junes?”

“Nothing in particular,” Junior said. “I’m just on a roll, that’s all.”

Their job—this morning, at least—was to foot-patrol Main Street (“To announce our presence,” Randolph had said), first up one side and down the other. Pleasant enough duty in the warm October sunshine.

They were passing Mill Gas & Grocery when they heard raised voices from inside. One belonged to Johnny Carver, the manager and part owner. The other was too slurry for Junior to make out, but Freddy Denton rolled his eyes.

“Sloppy Sam Verdreaux, as I live and breathe,” he said. “Shit! And not even nine-thirty.”

“Who’s Sam Verdreaux?” Junior asked.

Freddy’s mouth tightened down to a white line Junior recognized from his football days. It was Freddy’s Ah fuck, we’re behind look. Also his Ah fuck, that was a bad call look. “You’ve been missing the better class of Mill society, Junes. But you’re about to get introduced.”

Carver was saying, “I know it’s past nine, Sammy, and I see you’ve got money, but I still can’t sell you any wine. Not this morning, not this afternoon, not tonight. Probably not tomorrow either, unless this mess clears itself up. That’s from Randolph himself. He’s the new Chief.”

“Like fuck he is!” the other voice responded, but it was so slurry it came to Junior’s ears sounding as Li­fuh hizz. “Pete Randolph ain’t but shitlint on Duke Perkins’ asshole.”

“Duke’s dead and Randolph says no booze sales. I’m sorry, Sam.”

“Just one bottle of T-Bird,” Sam whined. Juz one barf T-Burr. “I need it. Annd, I can pay for it. Come on. How long I been tradin here?”

“Well shit.” Although he sounded disgusted with himself, Johnny was turning to look at the wall-long case of beer and vino as Junior and Freddy came up the aisle. He had probably decided a single bottle of Bird would be a small price to get the old rumpot out of his store, especially since a number of shoppers were watching and avidly awaiting further developments.

The hand-printed sign on the case said absolutely NO ALCOHOL SALES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, but the wussy was reaching for the booze just the same, the stuff in the middle. That was where the cheapass popskull lived. Junior had been on the force less than two hours, but he knew that was a bad idea. If Carver caved in to the straggle-haired wino, other, less disgusting customers would demand the same privilege.

Freddy Denton apparently agreed. “Don’t do that,” he told Johnny Carver. And to Verdreaux, who was looking at him with the red eyes of a mole caught in a brushfire: “I don’t know if you have enough working brain cells left to read the sign, but I know you heard the man: no alcohol today. So get in the breeze. Quit smelling up the place.”

“You can’t do that, Officer,” Sam said, drawing himself up to his full five and a half feet. He was wearing filthy chinos, a Led Zeppelin tee-shirt, and old slippers with busted backs. His hair looked as if it had last been cut while Bush II was riding high in the polls. “I got my rights. Free country. Says so right in the Constitution of Independence.”

“The Constitution’s been canceled in The Mill,” Junior said, with absolutely no idea that he was speaking prophecy. “So put an egg in your shoe and beat it.” God, how fine he felt! In barely a day he had gone from doom and gloom to boom and zoom!

“But …”

Sam stood there for a moment with his lower lip trembling, trying to muster more arguments. Junior observed with disgust and fascination that the old fuck’s eyes were getting wet. Sam held out his hands, which were trembling far worse than his loose mouth. He only had one more argument to make, but it was a hard one to bring out in front of an audience. Because he had to, he did.

“I really need it, Johnny. No joke. Just a little, to stop the shakes. I’ll make it last. And I won’t get up to no dickens. Swear on my mother’s name. I’ll just go home.” Home for Sloppy Sam was a shack sitting in a gruesomely bald dooryard dotted with old auto parts.

“Maybe I ought to—” Johnny Carver began.

Freddy ignored him. “Sloppy, you never made a bottle last in your life.”

“Don’t you call me that!” Sam Verdreaux cried. The tears over-spilled his eyes and slid down his cheeks.

“Your fly’s unzipped, oldtimer,” Junior said, and when Sam looked down at the crotch of his grimy chinos, Junior stroked a finger up the flabby underside of the old man’s chin and then tweaked his beak. A grammar school trick, sure, but it hadn’t lost its charm. Junior even said what they’d said back then: “Dirty clothes, gotcha nose!”

Freddy Denton laughed. So did a couple of other people. Even Johnny Carver smiled, although he didn’t look as if he really wanted to.

“Get outta here, Sloppy,” Freddy said. “It’s a nice day. You don’t want to spend it in a cell.”

But something—maybe being called Sloppy, maybe having his nose tweaked, maybe both—had relit some of the rage that had awed and frightened Sam’s mates when he’d been a lumber-jockey on the Canadian side of the Merimachee forty years before. The tremble disappeared from his lips and hands, at least temporarily. His eyes lighted on Junior, and he made a phlegmy but undeniably contemptuous throat-clearing sound. When he spoke, the slur had left his voice.

“Fuck you, kid. You ain’t no cop, and you was never much of a football player. Couldn’t even make the college B-team is what I heard.”

His gaze switched to Officer Denton.

“And you, Deputy Dawg. Sunday sales legal after nine o’clock. Has been since the seventies, and that’s the end of that tale.”

Now it was Johnny Carver he was looking at. Johnny’s smile was gone, and the watching customers had grown very silent. One woman had a hand to her throat.

“I got money, coin of the realm, and I’m takin what’s mine.”

He started around the counter. Junior grabbed him by the back of the shirt and the seat of the pants, whirled him around, and ran him toward the front of the store.

“Hey!” Sam shouted as his feet bicycled above the old oiled boards. “Take your hands off me! Take your fucking hands—”

Out through the door and down the steps, Junior holding the old man out in front of him. He was light as a bag of feathers. And Christ, he was farting ! Pow-pow-pow, like a damn machine gun!

Stubby Norman’s panel truck was parked at the curb, the one with FURNITURE BOUGHT & SOLD and TOP PRICES FOR ANTIQUES on the side. Stubby himself stood beside it with his mouth open. Junior didn’t hesitate. He ran the blabbering old drunk headfirst into the side of the truck. The thin metal gave out a mellow BONNG!

It didn’t occur to Junior that he might have killed the smelly fuck until Sloppy Sam dropped like a rock, half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter. But it took more than a smack against the side of an old truck to kill Sam Verdreaux. Or silence him. He cried out, then just began to cry. He got to his knees. Scarlet was pouring down his face from his scalp, where the skin had split. He wiped some away, looked at it with disbelief, then held out his dripping fingers.

Foot traffic on the sidewalk had halted so completely that someone might have called a game of Statues. Pedestrians stared with wide eyes at the kneeling man holding out a palmful of blood.

“I’ll sue this whole fuckin town for police brutality!” Sam bawled. “AND I’LL WIN!”

Freddy came down the store’s steps and stood beside Junior.

“Go ahead, say it,” Junior told him.

“Say what?”

“I overreacted.”

“The fuck you did. You heard what Pete said: Take no shit from anybody. Partner, that deal starts here and now.”

Partner! Junior’s heart lifted at the word.

“You can’t throw me out when I got money!” Sam raved. “You can’t beat me up! I’m an American citizen! I’ll see you in court!”

“Good luck on that one,” Freddy said. “The courthouse is in Castle Rock, and from what I hear, the road going there is closed.”

He hauled the old man to his feet. Sam’s nose was also bleeding, and the flow had turned his shirt into a red bib. Freddy reached around to the small of his back for a set of his plastic cuffs (Gotta get me some of those, Junior thought admiringly). A moment later they were on Sam’s wrists.

Freddy looked around at the witnesses—those on the street, those crowding the doorway of the Gas & Grocery. “This man is being arrested for public disturbance, interfering with police officers, and attempted assault!” he said in a bugling voice Junior remembered well from his days on the football field. Hectoring from the sidelines, it had never failed to irritate him. Now it sounded delightful.

Guess I’m growing up, Junior thought.

“He is also being arrested for violating the new no-alcohol rule, instituted by Chief Randolph. Take a good look!” Freddy shook Sam. Blood flew from Sam’s face and filthy hair. “We’ve got a crisis situation here, folks, but there’s a new sheriff in town, and he intends to handle it. Get used to it, deal with it, learn to love it. That’s my advice. Follow it, and I’m sure we’ll get through this situation just fine. Go against it, and …” He pointed to Sam’s hands, plasticuffed behind him.

A couple of people actually applauded. For Junior Rennie, the sound was like cold water on a hot day. Then, as Freddy began to frog-march the bleeding old man up the street, Junior felt eyes on him. The sensation so clear it might have been fingers poking the nape of his neck. He turned, and there was Dale Barbara. Standing with the newspaper editor and looking at him with flat eyes. Barbara, who had beaten him up pretty good that night in the parking lot. Who’d marked all three of them, before sheer weight of numbers had finally begun to turn things around.

Junior’s good feelings began to depart. He could almost feel them flying up through the top of his head like birds. Or bats from a belfry.

“What are you doing here?” he asked Barbara.

“I’ve a better question,” Julia Shumway said. She was wearing her tight little smile. “What are you doing, brutalizing a man who’s a quarter your weight and three times your age?”

Junior could think of nothing to say. He felt blood rush into his face and fan out on his cheeks. He suddenly saw the newspaper bitch in the McCain pantry, keeping Angie and Dodee company. Barbara, too. Maybe lying on top of the newspaper bitch, as if he were enjoying a little of the old sumpin-sumpin.

Freddy came to Junior’s rescue. He spoke calmly. He wore the stolid policeman’s face known the world over. “Any questions about police policy should go to the new Chief, ma’am. In the meantime, you’d do well to remember that, for the time being, we’re on our own. Sometimes when people are on their own, examples have to be made.”

“Sometimes when people are on their own, they do things they regret later,” Julia replied. “Usually when the investigations start.”

The corners of Freddy’s mouth turned down. Then he hauled Sam down the sidewalk.

Junior looked at Barbie a moment longer, then said: “You want to watch your mouth around me. And your step.” He touched a thumb deliberately to his shiny new badge. “Perkins is dead and I’m the law.”

“Junior,” Barbie said, “you don’t look so good. Are you sick?”

Junior looked at him from eyes that were a little too wide. Then he turned and went after his new partner. His fists were clenched.

In times of crisis, folks are apt to fall back on the familiar for comfort. That is as true for the religious as it is for the heathen. There were no surprises for the faithful in Chester’s Mill that morning; Piper Libby preached hope at the Congo, and Lester Coggins preached hellfire at Christ the Holy Redeemer. Both churches were packed.

Piper’s scripture was from the book of John:A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. She told those who filled the pews of the Congo church that prayer was important in times of crisis—the comfort of prayer, the power of prayer—but it was also important to help one another, depend on one another, and love one another.

“God tests us with things we don’t understand,” she said. “Sometimes it’s sickness. Sometimes it’s the unexpected death of a loved one.” She looked sympathetically at Brenda Perkins, who sat with her head bowed and her hands clasped in the lap of a black dress. “And now it’s some inexplicable barrier that has cut us off from the outside world. We don’t understand it, but we don’t understand sickness or pain or the unexpected deaths of good people, either. We ask God why, and in the Old Testament, the answer is the one He gave to Job: ‘Were you there when I made the world?’ In the New—and more enlightened— Testament, it’s the answer Jesus gave to his disciples: ‘Love one another, as I have loved you.’ That’s what we have to do today and every day until this thing is over: love one another. Help one another. And wait for the test to end, as God’s tests always do.”

Lester Coggins’s scripture came from Numbers (a section of the Bible not known for optimism): Behold, ye have sinned against the LORD, and be sure your sin will find you out.

Like Piper, Lester mentioned the testing concept—an ecclesiastical hit during all the great clustermugs of history—but his major theme had to do with the infection of sin, and how God dealt with such infections, which seemed to be squeezing them with His Fingers the way a man might squeeze a troublesome pimple until the pus squirted out like holy Colgate.

And because, even in the clear light of a beautiful October morning, he was still more than half convinced that the sin for which the town was being punished was his own, Lester was particularly eloquent. There were tears in many eyes, and cries of “Yes, Lord!” rang from one amen corner to the other. When he was this inspired, great new ideas sometimes occurred to Lester even as he was preaching. One occurred to him this day, and he articulated it at once, without so much as a pause for thought. It needed no thought. Some things are just too bright, too glowing, not to be right.

“This afternoon I’m going out to where Route 119 strikes God’s mysterious Gate,” he said.

“Yes, Jesus!” a weeping woman cried. Others clapped their hands or raised them in testimony.

“I reckon two o’clock. I’m going to get on my knees out there in that dairy field, yea, and I’m going to pray to God to lift this affliction.”

This time the cries of Yes Lord and Yes Jesus and God knows it were louder.

“But first—” Lester raised the hand with which he had whipped his bare back in the dark of night. “First, I’m going to pray about the SIN that has caused this PAIN and this SORROW and this AFFLICTION ! If I am alone, God may not hear me. If I am with two or three or even five, God STILL may not hear me, can you say amen.”

They could. They did. All of them were holding up their hands now, and swaying from side to side, caught up in that good-God fever.

“But if YOU ALL were to come out—if we were to pray in a circle right there in God’s grass, under God’s blue sky … within sight of the soldiers they say are guarding the work of God’s righteous Hand … if YOU ALL were to come out, if WE ALL were to pray together, then we might be able to get to the bottom of this sin, and drag it out into the light to die, and work a God-almighty miracle! WILL YOU COME? WILL YOU GET KNEEBOUND WITH ME? ”

Of course they would come. Of course they would get knee-bound. People enjoy an honest-to-God prayer meeting in good times and bad. And when the band swung into “Whate’er My God Ordains is Right” (key of G, Lester on lead guitar), they sang fit to raise the roof.

Jim Rennie was there, of course; it was Big Jim who made the car-pool arrangements.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 639