The big children are showing the little ones how to fold the planes and set them dancing. Meanwhile, they help themselves to his lemonade, drinking straight from the pitcher. A little girl, her cheek bulging, offers him a sticky jawbreaker with her fingerprints on it from a filthy brown paper bag. He fears he might be ill. At which point Priscilla Tindle shows up in a breathless tizzy, wearing only a torn nightshirt. “Oh dear Jesus! Thank Heavens! I’ve been looking all over for you!” she gasps, tears in her eyes. “Come! We have to go!”
“Woman, why weepest thou?” Wesley asks with a faint self-mocking smile, winking over her shoulder at Connie. Connie can see that her gown is ripped down the back and she is wearing nothing underneath it.
“The police have been at the studio!” she cries. “They came to arrest poor Wesley! Hurry! You must save him!” The children gather behind her, pointing and giggling. One of the little boys sails a paper plane in that direction, but it veers away shyly. It immediately becomes a game like pin the tail on the donkey and they are all trying to hit the target with their paper planes. She turns to them. “The police are trying to put Jesus in prison! We have to stop them! Tell them he took a bus out of town! Tell them he ascended into Heaven! Anything! But don’t let them find him!”
After they have all scattered, Connie, somewhat shaken (he was not made for life’s rough and tumble), wanders his backyard collecting books and pages. He has decided to postpone his truth-in-fiction sermon. He is too disconcerted to carry on, and summer is anyway too frivolous a time for it. Besides, let’s be frank: those in his pastorate prefer a simple — and brief — communion service with a few Christian homilies tossed in, caring nothing for these bookish disputes, which just put them to sleep. He is, as Wesley himself has reminded him, only talking to himself.
The drive back from the lakes is a disaster. Debra makes the mistake of trying one last time to talk Colin into leaving the camp with her, taking a sudden turn onto the highway as she’s crossing it, and Colin in panic tries to leap out of the moving car; she has to hit the brakes and grab him. She tries to pacify him in the old way, but he slaps furiously at her hand, shrieking wildly. “Don’t touch me! They won’t let me into Heaven!” She promises him, crossing her heart, that they’ll go straight back to the camp, just please don’t try to jump out of the car again. She drives very slowly, her heart pounding, tears in her eyes, one foot on the brake, Colin glaring at her in terror and gripping the door handle all the way back. As soon as they reach the camp gates, he does jump out of the car, tumbling onto the road, then leaping up and running toward all the people rushing their way, gripping his crotch, screaming hysterically that she’s been doing terrible wicked things. “To this!” My God, has he opened up his pants? She sinks into the car seat, leans her head against the wheel. She only wants to die. “It’s the police!” people are shouting outside her window. “They came to arrest you! Darren kept them out, but they’ll be back! You can’t let them see you!” She doesn’t move. She doesn’t care.
“The Virgin Mary told her that the cancer was eating her mind. If she could kill the cancer in her mind before it was too late, the cancer in her body would just melt away.” Concetta Moroni is in Gabriela Fer-rero’s kitchen with her friends, Bianca and Gina and Francesca. The kitchen smells like a chicken coop with a kind of perfume on top, but they are all used to it by now. The five of them have gathered, as they often do in one kitchen or another, for a late afternoon coffee, drawn together today by the shoe store man who hung himself in his shop window, which Concetta witnessed (she gasps and crosses herself each time that terrifying scene pops back to mind) and Gabriela, picking up her prescription, saw just afterwards, when they were cutting the poor man down, and then Francesca saw the body when they brought it to the hospital. They all agree that it was the bank’s fault, and Concetta expresses her pity for poor Mrs. Cavanaugh, having to live with that cold heartless man who only knows about money and is holding the whole town to ransom. “Mrs. Cavanaugh said the Virgin Mary telling her that was like a dream even though she was wide awake, and I said, no, it was a miracle, a visitation.” Her friends all nod at that, though Gabriela says maybe it’s all that morfiend she’s taking. Gina, who is the mayor’s secretary, wants to know how you cure mind cancer. “Like you cure all cancer, Gina,” Concetta says. “Prayer. The only thing that works. If God wants you to die, there’s nothing you can do, but you can always ask. Mrs. Cavanaugh and I may go to Lourdes to ask up close.” She opens a little silk pouch and shows them the woman’s rings, including her wedding ring, which Concetta is supposed to sell to raise the money for their trip to Lourdes because Mr. Cavanaugh refuses to give her any. Bianca tells about a friend who went to Lourdes and got her hearing back, and Francesca says if the Virgin is visiting Mrs. Cavanaugh here in West Condon, maybe they don’t have to go to Lourdes. Francesca works as a receptionist at the hospital and is therefore their expert on medical knowledge, and she says that the best thing for mind cancer is hot compresses.
“Look at all those wires and panels and dials those sound guys have set up. Looks like an execution chamber in here.”
“Yeah, not that I ever seen one. Nor won’t never, I hope, knock on wood. Ifn they was any wood around to knock on…”
“You can use my head, Duke. Nothing up there right now but wet sawdust. The way they’ve set us out on the floor like this is scary. I’m so nervous I have to pee every five minutes. I just only hope I can remember the words tonight.”
“I ast about the setup and ole Elmer lifted up his Stetson to reset his hairpiece’n declared it was time fer us to step out inta the crowd’n be somebody.”
“Elmer?”
“Elmer Jankowski. Happens that’s Will Henry’s real monicker, wudja believe? One a them recordin’ fellers let the cat out. Always figgered Hank Williams backwards couldn’t be his genuine tag.”
“Oh. I see. Funny. Well, I’m changing my name, too, Duke. We gotta fix the sign out front and be sure it gets spelt right on the record label. I’m changing it to Rendine.”
“That’s my name.”
“I know. I don’t mean it like a married name. It’s just who I am now. Who you made me. It’s like that song of yours, the only good thing that’s happened. I wanta mark it somehow. Patti Jo Rendine. It’s the only name I want now for the rest of my life. And nobody knows it’s your real name, not even those record company guys. Just only you and me and your mama. You can think of me like a kinda cousin. A kissin’ cousin.”
“Well, purty lady, gimme a smack to show me whom you am. Yep. I reckanize you now, Patti Jo Rendine. Gimme me another, dear cuz, jist fer ole times’ sake.”
“Mmm. That feels almost too good to feel good, Duke. I always thought I knew too much about love and the disappointments of love, but I’ve never known anything like this. And thanks, I do appreciate your not being mad about the name.”
“Mad? Patti Jo, you’re the best doggone thing happened to the fambly since great granpappy Rendine figgered out howta make likker outa swamp moss. But, y’know, them record fellers said ifn one of our songs take off, they wanta git us round to other radio stations’n agent us inta gigs in bigger places. We may hafta load up the ole Packard’n hit the road. You gonna be ready fer that?”
“Well…sure…”