“Okay, okay,” George Christopher said. “But dammit, we can’t take in everybody—”
“And yet we must.” The voice was very low, not really loud enough to carry through the babble and the thunder, but everyone heard it anyway. A professionally trained voice. “I was a stranger, and ye took me not in. I was hungry, and ye fed me not. Is that what you want to hear at Judgment?”
The room was still for a moment. Everyone turned to look at the Reverend Thomas Varley. Most of them attended his community church, had called him to their homes to sit with them when relatives died, sent their children with him on picnics and camping trips. Tom Varley was one of them, bred in the valley and lived there all his life except for the years at college in San Francisco. He stood tall, a bit thinner since his sixtieth birthday a year before, but strong enough to help get a neighbor’s cow out of a ditch.
George Christopher faced him defiantly. “Brother Varley, we just can’t do it! Some of us are likely to starve this winter. There’s just not enough here.”
“Then why don’t you send some away?” Reverend Varley asked.
“It might come to that,” George muttered. His voice rose. “I’ve seen it, I tell you. People with not enough to eat, not even enough strength to come get chow when it’s offered. Brother Varley, you want us to wait until we got no more choices than the Donner party had? If we send people away now, they might find someplace they can make it. If we take them in, we’ll all be looking next winter. It’s that simple.”
“Tell ’em, George,” someone shouted from the far end of the meeting room.
George looked around at the sea of faces. They were not hostile. Most were filled with shame — fear and shame. George thought that would be the way he’d look to them, too. He went on doggedly. “We do something, and we do it right now, or I’ll be damned if I’m going to cooperate! I’ll take everything I have, all the stuff I brought up from Porterville today, too, and go home, and I can damned well shoot anybody who comes onto my place.”
There were more murmurs. Reverend Varley tried to speak, but he was shouted down. “Damned right!” “We’re with you, George.”
Jellison’s voice cut through. “I didn’t say we shouldn’t try to put up a roadblock. We were discussing practical difficulties.” Arthur Jellison couldn’t look the clergyman in the face.
“Good. Then we do it,” George Christopher said. “Ray, you stay here and tell me what happens in this meeting. Carl, Jake, rest of you, come with me. There’ll be another thousand people here by morning if we don’t stop them.”
And besides, Jellison thought, it will be easier at night when you can’t see their faces. Maybe by morning you’ll be used to it.
And if you truly get used to sending people off to die, will anyone want to know you?
The worst of it was, George Christopher was right; but that didn’t make it any easier. “I’ll have some of my people come with you, George. And we’ll have a relief crew out in the morning.”
“Good.” Christopher went to the door. On the way he stopped for a moment to smile at Maureen. “Good-night, Melisande,” he said.
One kerosene lamp burned in the living room of the Jellison house. Arthur Jellison sprawled in an easy chair, shoes off, shirt partly unbuttoned. “Al, leave those lists until tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. Can I get you anything?” Al Hardy glanced at his watch: 2 A.M.
“No. Maureen can take care of me. Good-night.”
Hardy pointedly looked at his watch again. “Getting late, Senator. And you’re supposed to be up in the morning…”
“I’ll turn in shortly. Good-night.” This time the dismissal was pointed. Jellison watched his assistant leave, noted Hardy’s determined look. It confirmed a guess Arthur Jellison had made earlier. That damned doctor at Bethesda Naval Hospital had told Hardy about the abnormal electrocardiograms, and Hardy was making like a mother hen. Had Al told Maureen? It didn’t matter.
“Want a drink, Dad?” Maureen asked.
“Water. We ought to save the bourbon,” Jellison said. “Sit down, please.” The tone was polite, but it wasn’t exactly a request. Not really an order, either. A worried man.
“Yes?” she said. She took a chair near his.
“What did George Christopher mean? Who’s ‘Melisande’ or whatever he said?”
“It’s a long story—”
“I want to hear it. Anything about the Christophers I want to hear,” Jellison said.
“Why?”
“Because they’re the other power in this valley and we’ve got to work together and not against each other. I need to know just who’s giving in to what,” Jellison said. “Now tell me.”
“Well, you know George and I practically grew up together,” Maureen said. “We’re the same age—”
“Sure.”
“And before you went to Washington, when you were a state senator, George and I were in love. Well, we were only fourteen, but it felt like love.” And, she didn’t say, I haven’t really felt like that about anybody since. “He wanted me to stay here. With him. I would have, too, if there’d been any way to do it. I didn’t want to go to Washington.”
Jellison looked older in the yellow kerosene light. “I didn’t know that. I was busy just then—”
“It’s all right, Dad,” Maureen said.
“All right or not, it’s done,” Jellison said. “What’s with Melisande?”
“Remember the play The Rainmaker? The confidence man plays up to the old-maid farm girl. Tells her to stop calling herself ‘Lizzie,’ to come with him and she’ll be Melisande and they’ll live a glamorous life… Well, George and I saw it that summer, and it was a switch, that’s all. Instead of going off to the glamorous life in Washington, I should stay here with him. I’d forgotten all about it.”
“You had, huh? You remember it now, though.”
“Dad…”
“What did he mean, calling you that?” Jellison asked.
“Well, I — ” She stopped herself and didn’t say anything else.
“Yeah. I figure it that way too,” Jellison said. “He’s telling you something, isn’t he? How much have you seen of him since we went to Washington?”
“Not much.”
“Have you slept with him?”
“That’s none of your business,” Maureen flared.
“The hell it’s not. Anything and everything around this valley is my business just now. Especially if it’s got Christophers mixed up in it. Did you?”
“No.”
“Did he try?”
“Nothing serious,” she said. “I think he’s too religious. And we didn’t really have many opportunities, not after I’d moved to Washington.”
“And he’s never married,” Jellison said.
“Dad, that’s silly! He hasn’t been pining away for me for sixteen years!”
“No, I don’t suppose so. But that was a pretty definite message tonight. Okay, let’s get to bed—”
“Dad.”
“Yes?”
“Can we talk? I’m scared.” She took the chair next to his. He thought she looked much younger just then, and remembered her when she was a little girl, when her mother was still alive. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” she asked.
“About as bad as it gets,” Jellison said. He reached for the whiskey and poured himself two fingers. “May as well. We know how to make whiskey. If there’s grain, we’ll have booze. If there’s grain.”
“What’s going to happen?” Maureen asked.
“I don’t know. I can make some guesses.” He stared at the empty fireplace. It was damp from rain coming down the chimney. “Hammerfall. By now the tidal waves have swept around the world. Seacoast cities are all gone. Washington’s gone. I hope the Capitol survived — I like that old granite pile.” He fell silent for a moment, and they listened to the steady pounding rain and rolling thunder.