They have all been over to see Clara, one at a time, keeping a vigil. She is much changed, a frail and shriveled shell of herself. Ludie Belle said she looked to be a “pore thing on the down-go,” reckoning her condition to be more problematical than just her present dismay. Bernice is back and has brought along a nurse friend from the hospital to help out, and the nurse said the same and said she must see a doctor. While she was visiting Clara, Mabel looked in on Elaine. The poor child is nothing but a skeleton. The startled look in her big eyes startled Mabel. If she is carrying a baby and not a devil, that baby is not getting nourished. Of course, if it is a devil, starving it might be the right thing. She didn’t know what to say — to Elaine or to Clara, or to Bernice or the nurse either, who said that if the girl really wanted to go, they probably couldn’t stop her. Mabel tried to be cheerful, but she only broke into tears. And prayer. They have all wept and prayed. Since yesterday they have not stopped praying and weeping, for they feel the hovering presence of death and the end of things, and praying is the only thing they can do. As for the weeping, they can’t help it. Mabel’s cards have been foretelling as much, but no one has wanted to believe it. Mabel has not wanted to believe it and has not always told them what the cards were really saying. The acting sheriff, Calvin Smith, was there where it happened because he’d been with them on the Mount and had run back when they did. He said it looked to him like the motorcycle gang intended to blow up the camp but Ben stopped them and it cost him his life. Ben was a hero. A hero and a saint. They have always known that. He apparently shot one of the bikers; the rest were killed in the explosion. Their gang leader died, that devilish middle son of Abner Baxter, the one responsible for what happened to little Elaine. His body was the one without a head, but his motorcycle got left behind when the others ran away. Calvin said that this was the dynamite stolen from the mine. It was a big blast, so he hoped it was all of it.
There are only five of the old regulars here in Mabel’s sitting room this rainy Monday afternoon, all that’s left — plus Bernice, who comes and goes from Clara’s house trailer across the way, and Lucy Smith, who can stay because Calvin is investigating the explosion. They say a second explosion happened at Ben’s old abandoned farm house. A dark fellow thought to be one of the motorcycle gang was killed. Maybe they had been camping out over there. Calvin says there were three or four dozen of them around here yesterday, but they have been scattering and leaving the area. He has been in touch with all the neighboring sheriffs. Two of the bikers had been detained for speeding, but they had paid their fines and, not knowing about what had just happened, the officers had let them go. That won’t happen again. These are things that Lucy tells them. She is paler than usual today and her eyes are red and her hands can’t stop fidgeting. “Calvin’s very brave,” she says softly, beginning to tear up. “But I’m not.”
The thunder and lightning have eased, but the rain keeps pounding down, and sometimes the thunder comes back, too. Unexpectedly, like a blow to the heart, scaring everyone. Rain like this makes Willie’s rheumatism worse and Mabel always gets a bad feeling in her sinuses and bowels. The camp is getting soggy, everything feels damp and sticky, puddles wherever you look. Everything on the other side of the creek is now an official crime scene and no one can go there. They have stretched a tent over the place where it happened. There’s a big hole there, like a bomb has fallen. State troopers have arrived, their sirens howling all night long, and the newspaper reporters and TV cameramen are back, swarming around the tent and the black charred place in the mine road where the sheriff’s car was found. The reporters are almost as frightening as the motorcycle gang, and for all who were here, they bring back the nightmare of five years ago. When it was also storming, as though this were God’s way of decorating His catastrophes. Lucy’s husband and his deputies — mostly Christian Patriots who have been protecting the camp all along, plus these new Defender people — have so far managed to keep these outside forces out of the rest of the camp, but they are also letting some of Abner Baxter’s people in. They are at great risk, Calvin says, and must be protected. It’s the Christian thing to do. He is the sheriff now, what can you say? Most of them are camping out in the lodge or the parking lot, though tents have also begun appearing throughout the camp, especially down by the creek. A lot of them have guns. Abner isn’t here yet, but they say he’s waiting at the edge of the camp for the right time to enter. When Billy Don ran back to get the stretcher, he left the sickbay door unlocked and the Blaurocks have moved in there with their pesky children. “It’s like they’ve walked in right over Ben’s dead body,” Ludie Belle says. They have to be quiet about these gatherings in case the Blaurock woman gets wind of them and barges in uninvited, for that’s the kind of person she is. She claims to have seen Jesus walking around and to have talked with him. That’s almost impossible to believe, but Darren says it might be so. One should not expect human logic in divine actions.
“I remember when Ben first come,” Wanda Cravens says in her thin nasal wail. “There in that Eye-talian house. He was like a kinda miracle. He sung Amazing Grace.’ Him and Betty Wilson. It made me cry.” Wanda hardly ever shows any emotion. Things just happen to her and she lets them and doesn’t seem to care. But she’s crying now, just a little. Mabel was also there that night when Ben and Betty sang. Ben said he had read about them in the newspaper. Things were not going well, everybody was feeling depressed, but his comforting presence lifted spirits and his singing touched them all. It was very beautiful and Betty’s voice had never been prettier. He was like a gift. They knew everything would be all right after that. A song sung well can do that. Through the years, Ben anchored them with his singing. When the Cleggs were back visiting in April, Mabel noticed that Betty was still carrying the torch. She will be much affected when she learns what has happened. Betty is out on bail now, but both she and Hiram are facing trial for stealing that McCardle woman’s money — mostly for the church, though maybe not all. She called Clara long distance to tell her that it was all just an honest mistake and everything would be put right, but they needed some help to pay for lawyers because their accounts were frozen. Clara said the church would do what it could, though she made it clear to Mabel later that she was not happy with what the Cleggs had done and felt let down by them. But she also asked everyone to pray for them, because that’s Clara’s way. She is a woman of charity and peace and of deep abiding faith, sincere and giving. She is the best person Mabel has ever known. It hardly seems possible all this could be happening to her. And she drew to her side two of the best men the whole world has known. Both victims of horrible deaths. Her son, too, in the war. There is talk now about burying Ben in the grave opened up for Giovanni Bruno’s symbolic burial across from Ely. Both men side by side on the Mount of Redemption, flanking the entrance to the new temple. But Clara isn’t interested. She doesn’t want to talk about the tabernacle temple.