“Obviously, you are not in a reasonable state of mind to discuss these issues,” the governor says. “It is you and your town police officers who are breaking the law out here. I suggest you go home and leave this to me and to the legal state and county authorities who are here.” He turns to his senior state police officer. “We will permit these people to hold their service on the hill on the condition that they vacate the premises when the service is concluded.”
“You’re making a mistake, Governor,” says the banker in a voice clearly heard. “Look around. There are too many weapons out here. I realize you’re completely and willfully ignorant of everything that’s been happening here, but surely even you can see that much.”
“Nonsense, Cavanaugh. You’re becoming hysterical.” The state police have stepped aside and the cultists are on the move, singing their Brunist battle hymn, but the governor holds up his hand and they pause. He turns to the sheriff. But the sheriff is not there. He has been called away to his squad car for a message from his dispatcher. The helicopters are wheeling away. Captain Romano has also withdrawn. He calls the banker over. The reporters press forward with questions, but Lieutenant Testatonda keeps them at bay. It is Monk Wallace back at the station. Romano asks Wallace to repeat the message. Cavanaugh holds the walkie-talkie to his ear: “Some folks has heard a explosion out to the power plant. May be that dynamite again. They still don’t answer the phone. Might be some dead people out there.” “Better get those units you’ve alerted moving now,” the banker tells the chief, “but try to keep quiet about it, so we don’t stir a panic and block our own way out of here. And ask Monk to phone the bank, tell them to lock the doors.” He turns and strides down the hill toward his car. The chief is already on his way, barking out orders to Wallace on his walkie-talkie, cameras and reporters trailing after. He’s thinking about his young nephew, who just hired on at the power plant. Officer Testatonda spies his daughter Ramona among the spectators and he jerks his thumb at her to follow him.
“Ted…? What’s happening?” the governor asks, his bravado evaporating. The reporters want to know, too.
“You win, Kirk. The hill’s all yours.”
Darren feels himself on a plane of existence beyond anything he has known before. Nothing seems quite real in the old sense, and yet everything is endowed with a kind of dazzling super-reality. The glittering hill above them beckons like a mother opening her arms to receive her children; the very sun, now emerging, is at his command. When he lifted his hand a moment ago, it was not merely to hush the assembled faithful; he knew he had the power — like Moses, like Jesus — to change reality itself. And now, in response to that gesture, all the obstructions to their goal are melting away. The governor and his lackeys are leaving as well, the prying cameras and insidious journalists, all fleeing as if for their very existence. Not all vanish peacefully. Some burly Romanists barrel right through the gathered believers, issuing threats, promising to return, but they too disappear, pushed along into oblivion by the Christian Patriots and Darren’s Defenders. Young Abner Baxter has been knocked down by one of them, muddying his tunic, and he is grimacing with panic, his headband slipped down over one eye and exposing his scar. Darren helps him to his feet and suggests he could go back and guard the camp if he wished, for it is their home and it is vulnerable now (the occupants of several trailers that have pulled out down there are noticeably absent here at the Mount; they will not be missed), and Young Abner, chewing his little red tuft of a moustache, seems eager to do that. Darren, prying himself away from Colin, takes Young Abner aside and slips him his revolver. Young Abner says he already has a rifle but Darren tells him he may need more than that, for the powers of darkness are restless and afoot, and Young Abner takes it and thanks him and hurries away. One must sometimes destroy the demonic, Darren thinks, to save a soul and open a corridor for God’s grace. And later tonight:
a moment of holy fire. He has spoken with Young Abner’s father about it and the word has spread. When the summit is theirs and they are standing inside the cross of the tabernacle and the sky has darkened, should that time arrive — should time still be—they will offer to the uninitiated baptism by fire. Colin has been begging for it, and he will be satisfied. Others have approached him as though he were the conduit to this form of grace. Today is the day. He knows this. All those paired sevens causing him to wonder whether the date would be a week of Sundays or two weeks of Sundays. It’s all so much simpler than that. It’s today’s date. 7/7. God has spoken with thunderous clarity. Reverend Baxter watches him, awaits a sign. Darren nods and Abner Baxter nods. “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord!” Abner calls out to all. “Arise and walk! Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon ye! Arise and walk as children of light!” And solemnly yet joyfully, full-throated, their way prepared by the Lord, together they climb, unimpeded, their Mount of Redemption. Dark, Darren thinks. Light… Ecstasy!
“Oh the sons of light are marching to the Mount where it is said
We shall find our true Redemption from this world of woe and dread,
We shall see the cities crumble and the earth give up its dead,
For the end of time has come!
“So come and march with us to Glory!
Oh, come and march with us to Glory…!”
With the electricity off in the beauty shop and her client’s hair only half done, Linda calls the power company, but no one answers. They never do, it’s so frustrating. So she calls the police. It takes forever, but finally Lieutenant Wallace answers and tells her he doesn’t know what the problem is, but he’s working on it. Just what you might expect! Even as she slams the phone down, it rings. It’s Tessie Lawson at the sheriff’s office, asking for Lucy Smith, who has just walked in, and she hands her the phone. “What did you say?” Lucy asks. But the phone goes dead. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Linda says, taking a listen. Lucy is confused. “I think she said he said I should go home right now and stay there, but maybe she said he said he was going home, and I should stay here. I just don’t know what to do!” “Well, why don’t you come with me,” Linda says. “I’m going to pick up some money at the bank, if they still have any, and do a little quick shopping. We can stop by the sheriff’s office and ask Tessie personally. Would you like to come along, Mrs. Abruzzi?” “No, dear, I only wait for you here and read your magazines.”
On her way to the corner drugstore for her second breakfast, the real one, Angela Bonali pauses for a moment in front of Linda’s Beauty Salon to study the hairstyles pictured in the window. Perhaps that’s what she needs to lift her spirits: a new hairdo. Something different. Life-changing. She remembers a phrase from a book she read (she wrote it down in her diary): “Loose tendrils of hair softened her face.” How do you get that in a hairdo? The trouble is, most heroines have blond hair, light and silky, or at worst flowing auburn hair — it’s the men who have stubborn black hair like hers. Women in books whose hair is said to be like shining glass or polished wood or the black of a starless night tend to be half-men or loose or wicked. Inside, she can see Signora Abruzzi sitting in the dark with her thin dry hair in curlers, her beaky nose in a magazine. She’d go in and turn the lights on for her, but that’s the old tattle who got Angela in trouble during her dark ages. Hard to imagine Widow Abruzzi ever eliciting moans of ecstasy, but then that’s true of anyone that old. It’s just awful how the body lets you down. You only have a moment, and when it’s gone… She shudders, crosses herself, and hurries on.