They rested by the stream and, at Jeffrey’s insistence, Kimberly sang to them, a sad, haunting song from The Fantasticks. Everyone was touched by the song and applauded when she finished, even Will.
Kimberly buried her face in her hands. “Please,” she whispered, “it’s nothing really.”
On the way back, in the late afternoon, they stopped at the Milford family graveyard. An old iron fence surrounded the plot, where nearly a hundred headstones stood, many of them worn with age, their inscriptions almost unreadable. Will knelt beside his wife’s grave, absently brushing away snow and leaves. Devin knelt beside him, and dropped an arm across the old man’s shoulders. The old man tousled Devin’s hair, a gesture Devin often did with Billy. Standing a few feet away, Billy watched the rekindling of love between father and son. He ran over to them to be a part of it.
Alethea watched all this, feeling somehow detached, knowing only that life was fragile and these moments precious. As they returned to the camp, huge thunder-heads were blowing in from the west. No one else seemed to share her mood—they bustled about, busy with this chore or that—but to Alethea the huge dark clouds seemed to dwarf them, to mock their human concerns; their little band, each with his or her loves and sorrows, courage and hope, seemed tiny and helpless, silhouetted against the great brooding sky.
In the face of infinity, Alethea thought, all we have is our love.
Chapter 16
Andrei, in full uniform, paced his Virginian communications center impatiently while technicians prepared for his broadcast. He had much on his mind that afternoon. His intelligence reports showed continuing unrest across Heartland. Party loyalists in several cities had clashed with pro-Bradford partisans. The general strike had faltered but there had been outbreaks of sabotage—the public bus service in Cincinnati had been disrupted by slashed tires, power outages were caused by bombings in southern Illinois towns. A police station in St. Louis captured by the PPP had been retaken peacefully, but there were reports that Marion Andrews planned a new appeal to the party cadres. And since his dramatic television appearance, Peter Bradford had not returned Andrei’s phone calls.
The need was for Peter to use the Heartland Defense Force to restore civic peace with minimal force rather than for Andrei to unleash the SSU. Of course, the next question was whether Andrei could then control Peter and his troops, but that was the risk inherent in his new policy.
“Ready, sir,” the director called.
Andrei straightened his coat and stepped before the cameras. Across America, a dozen SSU commanders awaited his instructions.
“Gentlemen,” he said crisply, “your role in America is entering a new stage. Effective immediately, you will no longer be responsible to PPP officials. You will take no action that does not have the specific approval of this Command. As of this moment, you are on full readiness alert, but restricted to your barracks. You may defend yourselves, but you will not otherwise involve yourself in local conflicts. Any deviation from this order will result in immediate termination of command.”
The cameras switched off and Andrei turned to Captain Selovich, who stood in the shadows. “Get me Major Gurtman on the telephone,” he ordered.
The call was quickly placed. Andrei remembered Gurtman from their one meeting: a very tall, thin East German, cold and capable.
“Major, I trust you saw my broadcast,” Andrei began.
“Of course, sir.”
“Good. I wished to speak with you directly because of the special conditions in your area. What is the situation now?”
“The situation is serious, sir. The people of Milford are armed. They are protecting the two fugitives, Devin Milford and his son. I urgently request permission to retake the town and capture the fugitives.”
“Permission denied.”
Helmut Gurtman struggled to hold back his anger. “May I ask why, Colonel?”
“The townspeople may be armed, but at the moment they have no one to shoot, except perhaps each other. As for the Milford boy, it is not the role of the SSU to pursue missing children, no matter how impassioned their mothers may be. As for Milford himself, I will ask Peter Bradford to see to his recapture, using the defense force if necessary.”
Helmut Gurtman was beside himself. To be confined to his base while the occupied townspeople ran rampant was an outrage to everything he believed as a military man. And to have his former mistress’s family leading this rebellion added insult to injury; it was almost more than he could bear.
“Sir, one further question,” he said stiffly.
“Yes?”
“We may defend ourselves—fire back if fired upon?” Andrei nodded wearily. “Yes, Major, I thought I made that clear: you may fire back if fired upon.”
“I thank the colonel,” Gurtman said coldly.
When the Milfords and their visitors returned from their walk, Dieter Heinlander invited everyone to the exile camp for dinner.
“We should go,” Devin told Jeffrey. “These are people you should know. They’re the ones who’ve really suffered and yet hung on to their dignity.”
“Can we film?” Jeffrey said.
Devin shook his head. “Don’t ask me, ask them,” he said.
At dusk, they crossed over the hill to the exile camp, where they were greeted with hugs and cheers. Dinner was a huge, savory stew—“Don’t ask what the meat is,” Dieter warned—and after dinner they all gathered in the barn. They sang for a while—‘You Are My Sunshine” and “This Land Is Your Land” and “On Top of Old Smokey” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “We Shall Overcome,” a grab bag of gospel songs and love songs and protest songs from better days—and in time the singing gave way to political talk.
One man said he’d buried his guns ten years before but now he was ready to use them.
Another man protested that violence only began more violence.
A woman defended Peter Bradford and his support for Heartland, but others denounced Peter as a puppet and a traitor.
The talk flowed back and forth like that; some wanted to take up arms, others to turn the other cheek, and there seemed to be nothing on which everyone could agree.
There were cheers when Ward Milford declared, “The trouble is we’ve been spineless for ten years. I stood there and did nothing while those bastards stole our land, even burned our house. I took it. But I’m not going to take it anymore.”
Then another man quickly defended Peter Bradford. “I’ve got no love for the Russians,” he declared, “but maybe Bradford’s right, maybe this new country, this Heartland business, is the fastest way to be rid of ’em.”
“Dammit, we’re Americans!” one man cried.
Another demanded, “What the hell difference does it make, anyway?”
Devin was seated quietly on the floor, against a bale of hay. Amid the general clamor, his voice was gentle. “I think I know the difference it makes,” he said.
The people around him raised their hands for silence.
“I think deep inside, we all know,” Devin continued. “We don’t want to be afraid anymore. Fear is driving us away from being Americans. Fear of pain, fear of suffering, fear of death. When I ran for president, I was afraid if no one followed my lead, it would prove I was wrong. When they sent me to prison camp, I was afraid I’d lose my… my understanding, my clarity. When I was released and came back here, I was afraid that someone would notice me, ask me to participate—to live.”
He was speaking so softly that people began to inch forward, so they could hear. Ken was quietly filming the scene.
“Thank God for this town,” Devin continued. “Thank God for an Exile from this camp, a black doctor who saved my life. Thank God for an Episcopal minister who lost his faith in the church, but not the people. Thank God for my father and my sister, who reminded me about our ancestors. They showed me that tragedy and nobility are the same thing, that the human condition demands that we endure the pain and simply live our lives.