The lemonade, like the rest, was perfection.
Lola settled into a wicker chair opposite them, her expansive frame overflowing it. “Well?” she beamed, throwing her big arms wide to take in the surging tangle of asparagus fern and morning glory that spread across the porch, along the roof line, down the steps. Beyond, in her front yard, flowers the size of hats rivaled in their lushness the corn that stood tall and ready for harvest, the potatoes, yams and carrots bursting from the soil, the trees sagging under the weight of apples, plums and pears. “Not bad for a little Maryland girl with just a spade and hoe.”
“It’s incredible,” Cal said.
“I mean, I was always good, but this-most of it’s been in just the last two weeks. Can you believe that?”
“Oh, yes,” chimed Goldie. “Were any of your neighbors equally fortunate?” asked Doc.
“Well, not at first. But then I’d pop round, putter a little here and there, and. . ”
“The same results.”
“Let’s just say, I don’t think we’ll be hearing our stomachs growling any time soon.” Her summer-radiant grin appeared and Cal was again struck by the joyfulness of this woman, and her power. Enthroned amid bounty, she seemed like the ghost of Christmas present atop the cornucopia in the Dickens tale, like some primeval spirit of nature.
Which would be cause for celebration in the general run of things, if not for the bodies they had encountered on the road, the predators that roamed free. . and what awaited them to the south.
Cal rose from the glider, set his empty glass on the tray. “From what I’ve seen, ma’am, I wouldn’t be counting on assistance coming any time soon. Things are getting pretty hairy out there. You might consider being concerned about folks coming ’round who might covet what you’ve got.”
She waved it away with an airy laugh. “Oh, we’re such a little flyspeck, I suspect most folks’ll just sail on by, won’t even know we’re here. . ’cept nice ones, like you.” Her eyes came to rest on his, full of easy certainty, and somehow, despite all his fears and knowledge, Cal felt reassured.
As the afternoon sun waned, Cal attempted to settle up with Lola Johnson for the foodstuffs, but she insisted they stay the night. Ed Spadaro had been off in Omaha when “the conniption” had happened, prior to which he had entrusted her with keeping an eye on his bed and breakfast.
“It’s moving into the off-season,” Lola noted. “Not that we get much of an on-season, really. We’re quiet folks, and our charms, what little they might be, are subtle.” She added that her perquisites included fixing the rates, which, if she chose, could just damn well be gratis.
In the end, they agreed and gratefully settled into their rooms at the Priory. Under cover of darkness, they spirited Tina into one of the suites. That night, they bathed for the first time in weeks, ate hot food and slept in clean, crisp sheets.
With the exception of Tina, their dreams held no ordeals.
Cal awakened to sunlight glinting through the window and the songs of bobolinks. He stretched, well rested, feeling none of the knots and aches that had plagued him in recent days.
In the clarity of half-wakefulness, his mind drifted over the bounty of Lola Johnson’s garden and how she had felt so certain that the grasping, avaricious ones would pass right on by Stansbury, not give it a second glance-as if she intended not to witness it but somehow to cause it. As she had caused the peaches and pomegranates and sweet potatoes in gardens all over town to swell and grow delectable. As she, if only unconsciously, had brought an equal vitality to her neighbors themselves.
There is a power to the west and the south that caused all this, Stern had said on that fiery rooftop in Manhattan. And everywhere that power had touched, it had sown nightmare and malaise.
Scared and angry and crazy, Tina had added, and that had fit the picture of the merciless force that had shredded the world as conscious and evil-undeniably evil.
But then, how did Lola Johnson fit into that picture? How did this town?
They didn’t.
Floating dreamily, his thoughts flowing free, Cal contemplated the events of recent days, remembered the storm that had come upon New York so suddenly, when his sister had first felt the call that was drawing her, drawing them all, southward.
What if this force were like a storm, and nothing more? A storm might wreck a house if you opened a window and let it in. Or it might nourish a crop to feed a community.
But the storm itself was a force of nature, pure and simple; it held no awareness, no moral sense. It all lay in how it was directed, what channel it was guided through.
By others.
And, if that was the case, then the power that caused all this and the sentience that was scared, angry, crazy. .
Might be two entirely different things.
Which allowed the possibility of Lola Johnson’s channeling that storm to grow and nurture and heal, a benevolent power that worked her will. That might continue to heal even a wayward traveler, a lost one-
Rising with urgency and hope, Cal pulled on his clothes and hurried down the hall to his sister’s room.
But she was unchanged.
Colleen was in the room with her. Cal had noticed that Colleen was growing closer to Tina, a deeper bond forming, one that might well hold anguish for them both in the days to come. Looking at the two of them now, he put on a gentle smile.
“We’re moving on,” he said.
He found Goldie sitting on the veranda, polishing his Springfield musket-a hopeless effort considering that its metal parts were rusted through and the stock was as dessicated as driftwood.
“Where’s Doc?” Cal asked.
“Loading the last of the jackpot from Mama Nature, I mean, Mrs. Johnson. I hope you like plums. Me, I was holding out for eggplant, but I lost the toss.”
Cal settled beside him on the step. “Thanks for bringing us here.”
Goldie stopped polishing and looked evenly at Cal. “I saw it for what it was. You couldn’t. Mama wouldn’t let you.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that out.”
Goldie gave him a lopsided grin. “There’s hope for you yet.” He returned to his polishing, whistling a snappy rendition of “Whatever Lola Wants.”
“Goldie,” Cal spoke tentatively, “for some folks, what happened was a good thing.”
Goldie stopped whistling, though he kept his eyes on the musket. “For some. I suppose, if pressed, I myself could offer a testimonial.”
“What do you think it means?”
Goldie rubbed a spot on the barrel harder, making no change in its pitted surface, glaring at it as if his will could make it resolve into something shining and unsoiled and new.
“What it means,” he answered after a long silence and would say no more.
In the first twenty-four hours of what Shango had come to think of as the Darkness, the National Guard had established a depot in Lynchburg, partly to collect stock from the horse farms in Albermarle County and mostly to render whatever aid was possible to those in the mountain country beyond. In Albermarle County, there was a stockbreeder named Cadiz (or Gadiz or Cattes, the survivors at the Angels Rest Retirement Community pronounced it several different ways), an ex-Reservist and survivalist who was of the opinion that everyone should have been ready for catastrophe and who wasn’t about to let the National Guard confiscate his stockpiles of food and water to feed lazy and inefficient parasites who had not been as prudent as he.
As the days and weeks of darkness and hunger progressed and fewer and fewer messages came down highway 95 from Washington, this had developed into what Mrs. Close at Angels Rest called “a situation”-exacerbated by the usual local politics and personalities-culminating in the cessation a week ago of any visits to Angels Rest by the National guardsmen.