Their own encampment was a target last night. Each attack by old man Suggs’ raiders has been more savage than the one before and last night’s could have been bloody. His father had moved them defiantly onto the forbidden campground and many others had joined them. From town, from other campsites, from Chestnut Hills, Randolph Junction. Ready for whatever. Martyrdom maybe. But when a tip about the upcoming raid reached them, Young Abner suggested that they abandon the field for a few hours, hide their vehicles, return after the danger had passed. He had read about something like this in a Bible story. A tactic for a smaller force to frustrate an attack by a larger force without losing any ground. His father, his dander up, preferred a head-on collision, but the majority sided with Young Abner, and so they all melted away into the woods around. It worked. As soon as the raiders had given up and gone home, they were back and setting up camp again. There will be reprisals and there will not always be advance warnings, but last night was a kind of victory for them. And for him. Just desserts for the adversity he’s been through.
He knows that, like Timothy, he must endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ Jesus and be strong in Jesus’ grace, for if you suffer for righteousness, you will be blessed. But what he was put through was totally unfair. It hurt more than anything had ever hurt before. Then that humiliating scene up at the camp in front of everybody. They were so stupid, so uncaring, so wrong about everything. After that, the wounds on his head began to fester and he was sick for a while, and even now there is a nasty itch there that reminds him of his brother’s cruelty. Baptism by the knife: He seems to remember hearing Nat say that and then laugh. Punishment was visited upon the entire family and many of their friends after that, they were all expelled from the camp and sent out into the fields, and for a time he was blamed. His father was especially upset about the girls’ underpants, and he suffered anger and ridicule. He felt like Daniel in the lions’ den. What if Daniel had got thrown to the lions in girls’ underpants? What then? Would they have laughed and scorned?
Over time, however, they began to see his side of it. How he was victimized. Lured to the field. Ambushed. Tortured. Made to wear the underpants. Last night, Jewell Cox blamed it all on Clara Collins’ pride, and Roy Coates said the girl was just asking for it. Young Abner should not have let her talk him into such wickedness, old man Coates said, but you could see how you could be tempted to whip the brat. He felt like whipping her himself. And his father, after pouring out his wrath on Nat and Paulie, acknowledged that the expulsion had strengthened them. There were more followers now, more true believers, more baptisms by fire. Many of these people had given up everything to make the journey here; they were faithful Brunists and did not deserve this treatment. His father above all. “He’s the West Condon bishop and he ain’t done nothing!” Ezra Gray declared last night, full of fury, rattling his wheelchair, and Jewell said, “Nat and Paulie is only boys. They must of fell under the evil influence a thet ex-con Palmers, or whoever he was.” “They went bad a long time before that,” his father said grumpily, his face scowling up like it used to do before meting out the family discipline. This was out under the tent, after the failed raid on their encampment, after they’d set everything up again and were feeling good and congratulating him on his shrewdness. It was when he proposed tonight’s counterattack on the Wilderness Camp. His father was hesitant, but Roy and Jewell backed him, and pretty soon they had volunteers. More than they needed. There’s a big ceremony out on the Mount of Redemption tomorrow, and they’ve not been invited. Has to do with those temple-building plans that have so outraged his father. The thoughts of those in the camp will be on that; good time to catch them unawares.
The plan is to cut off the phones and electricity. It might have been easier to do at the old mine, where the lines come from, but there have been workers over there on the mine hill all day — a lot of digging going on — and old man Suggs probably has people guarding the machinery, which is lit up. Hard to get up there unseen. So they accepted Young Abner’s idea of sneaking into the dark side of the camp. The barbed-wire fence has been extended past where Nat entered, but there’s a gap further down through which they’ve come, crawling through the thick growth of honeysuckle and high weeds. Young Abner has spent a lot of time mapping the camp out, knows its soft points. He’d like to do something awful to the girl, whom he thinks of as having betrayed him — whip her where it hurts — but the trailer parking lot is too exposed. At least with the lights on. The Coates boys, Royboy and Aaron, pushing at each other, have got into some kind of stupid argument and can’t seem to keep their mouths shut in spite of everybody shushing them. Their father Roy gets fed up and gives Aaron such a fierce clout across the ears that he yelps out, and Young Abner has to blow his owl whistle to cover it up. Aaron mutters something and gets another blow from his father on the back of his head that sends him sprawling in the wet grass and this time he shuts up. They creep toward the creek. They can make out one or two of the post lamps through the trees. Maybe we should just knock out the bulbs, Royboy whispers, but Isaiah Blaurock shakes his head, puts his finger to his lips, and slips away into the trees, heading toward the center of the camp. Nobody moves. Dead silence. Even the Coates boys are holding their breath. Nothing happens for what seems like hours. A couple of their group have quietly backed out the way they came.
Suddenly there’s a loud pop and fizz like a firecracker going off. Then darkness. It had seemed like darkness before, but they’d actually been able to make out something of the ground at their feet, the trees beyond, and he realizes the pale light they’d had before was from the camp lamps reflected in the drizzle. They’re gone now and it’s pitch black. “I cain’t see nuthin,” Royboy Coates complains and a shot rings out. “Dad, I’m hit! Oh shit!” It’s Royboy’s brother Aaron. “Oh! Oh! Help!” He’s crying.
They all open fire. Young Abner is shooting, too, but he doesn’t know what at. Just into the night, where the streetlamps used to be. He’s blowing the whistle, as if anyone shooting will think he’s only an owl. Somebody passes him silently on the way out. Isaiah. Tugs on his sleeve. Roy Coates stumbles by, his wounded son over his shoulder like a sack of meal. “C’mon! Let’s get goin’!” he grunts. Young Abner’s already on his way, the rest following his lead as more shots crackle in the night.
No one has slept all night. Except Willie Hall, who seemed not to know what happened. When told of the overnight attack on the camp, he cried out, “Lordy lord! The enemy hath smoten our life clean down to the ground! He’s made us t’dwell in the dark like as those as has been long dead!” For some reason this recital seemed to cheer everyone up, and though somewhat shaken still by the explosive rattle and complete loss of power (the phone lines are out, too, as they’d discovered upon trying to reach the sheriff), they began to get on with the dawning day. Which is possibly the most important date in Brunist history. Or maybe not. Darren is beginning to see weak points in his calculations. Moments when he generalized or extrapolated or slid over difficulties. He was only trying to help. People expect too much. He may have made an error. He is looking for alternative interpretations of what he has collected so far, just in case.