Climbing the Mount of Redemption, Young Abner Baxter has at last caught a glimpse of Elaine, standing behind an old lady sitting stiffly under a raised tent flap. He can’t see much of her but he knows it’s Elaine because the one eye he can see is staring right at him, and in a way that no one else ever would or could stare at him. He is momentarily stopped in his tracks by the intensity of that staring eye, and then, in a blink, it vanishes. Franny doesn’t know what he’s looking at, frozen there like that with his loose mouth gapping open, but she can guess. She has read some of Elaine Collins’ letters to him. What they’re up to is a bit odd, but then most people’s relationships with other people are odd. Just look at her mother and father. And it might be useful. When her father came home from out here that awful night, he had changed into a different person, humble, repentant, almost tearful — like a little boy, Franny thought at the time, shocked by him and by the thought. For months her father had been railing against Clara Collins, calling her a vain deceiver and a false prophet, and suddenly she was a perfect saint who had helped him to see the light. The Bruno house was a Romanist den of iniquity, and yet he’d just come from there, praying with all the others. He had raised a little army to march against those Bruno people and suddenly they were all marching together. The change scared her and made her think something awful was going to happen. And of course it did. Only the next day on the march here, carrying a dead body, did they come to understand that their father had struck the girl with his car and killed her. Franny knew it wasn’t right, but all she could think at the time was: Was that all? Her mother, despondent and heavy with a child she was about to lose, was also frightened half out of her wits, and sank into a depression she’s still in. And now, after all the bitter years on the road, here they are again. He speaks admiringly of Clara Collins as a woman of spirit and great vision, but those two do not see things the same way and never will and so they’re in trouble again. In one of the string of stupid high schools she was in during their travels, they read a play about two lovers from warring families called Romeo and Juliet, so maybe, she thinks, Junior and Elaine will do their own little Romeo and Juliet thing and somehow make them all loving in-laws. Franny smiles, thinking of Romeo and Juliet frantically switching each other while yelping out their love lines, lines the teacher made Franny recite in class just to make a fool out of her. Amanda sees her big sister smile and thinks she might be laughing at her in her tunic, which is too big and drags the ground. Later she will tell her father that Franny was laughing at them all and made her cry. Franny’s always scolding and belittling her and calling her a sniveler and daddy’s pet. Well, she is daddy’s pet, and that’s just too bad for Franny. Though she didn’t understand everything, she knows her father has just done something very good and brave and everyone loves him for it, and it makes her happier than ever to be back here, walking up the sunny hill beside him, holding her tunic hem up above her pretty bare ankles, with people taking her picture. Her brother Junior sometimes gets in the way and she’d like to give him a kick in his fattest part, but at least he’s never cruel to her like Nat and Paulie, who often hurt her or scare her and make her cry, calling her a fraidy-cat and a tattle and a dummy. Paulie sees none of this for his eye is on the mine entrance across the way. He can see Nat watching him and he wants to be with him and Houndawg and all the others. They call him Runt and he knows that that’s a compliment, just because they’ve given him his own special name no matter what it is. He’d rather be Runt than Paulie Baxter any day. He does a little hop and gives them a wave, hoping his brother waves back. Nat’s eye is indeed on the hill but focused on no one in particular, certainly not his kid brother. He is reading the lay of the land. Scouting the territory. Sorting the combatants. Who a lot of these people are he doesn’t know, but it’s easy to line them up. There are all those turkeys up on top belonging to old lady Collins and then there’s his old man and his naked white feet and his fist in the air down below. He’s a failure, but you wouldn’t know it. There’s the usual dumb swarm of gawkers and hecklers, some jerks with cameras. Disposables. A sheriff has turned up, so Nat has kept his distance. He has no papers on the bike, which he picked up on the run, and no license to ride it; he can’t risk getting asked. Cubano says he knows someone who can fix that, but he’s a long way from here. And finally there’s that burly guy who came with the sheriff who seems to have them all on a string. Nat recognizes him. Mine owner. Longtime enemy of his old man, like most rich guys. He sensed the way they stiffened up when they saw each other. So the enemy list is growing. Nat points his finger at various targets and makes popping noises with his tongue. Like the heroes in
War of the Gods, he has holy work to do here, and pals to help him do it. Though they have joined up just by crossing paths, they’re close. They have signed blood oaths, which they call baptisms of blood (water and light are for pussies), tattooed their bodies with Bible phrases like “Terror of God” and “Destruction Cometh as a Whirlwind” and “My Name Is Dreadful,” and have run missions of assault and plunder against the godless, who are just about everybody, considering themselves agents of divine retribution. And redistribution. Above the skull just over his left armpit, Juice has added the Brunists’ mine-pick cross in a circle, signifying his commitment. The Warrior Apostles: Nat trusts them and they trust him. Totally. Otherwise, you’re dead, man. Littleface is standing beside him while the others explore the mine buildings. The doors all have padlocks on them, but they can come back some night when no one is around. Growing up, he thought he’d be working out here, down a stinking hole, the rest of his life, they all would, like their old man. Funny how, if you don’t watch out, your life gets made up for you without you knowing how it happened. Littleface has a head too big for his face. It’s just a black ball of thick snarled hair with a small patch of pale flesh like a baby face in the middle, narrow beady eyes that sometimes look like they’re crossed, a nose like a finger knuckle, a mouth barely big enough to work a spoon into. Almost no ears at all, just little buds. What’s left, he says, after getting them torn off by some badasses who were coming after his brother and got him instead. He looks like a cartoon. Which is how he got his name. From a villain in a Dick Tracy comicstrip. “Look out for Dirty Dick,” he likes to say, meaning the law. He wears an old army shirt with epaulettes under his leather vest and rides a bike no cleaner than he is, but one, rehabbed from a previous owner like Nat’s, that is always in prime condition and finely tuned, tinkered with daily. Houndawg’s best pupil. Everybody is everybody’s pal in this gang, it’s all even stevens, but Littleface is Nat’s closest friend, having joined up with him the same day he appropriated Midnight. He saw Littleface tearing out of a liquor store with bottles in his arms and a wad of money in his fist and jumping on a bike that wouldn’t start. Nat wheeled over, grabbed some of the stuff so Littleface could hop on behind him, and they roared off into the nearby hills where his family was camping out and they holed up there for a while. They hit it off right away. It was like they’d known each other all their lives, and Littleface said maybe they had met before in another life. “We don’t die,” he explained to Nat, “we just go into another body.” Nat said that he’d seen something like that in a comicbook, but that he held more to the idea that when people died they lost their bodies but otherwise stayed the same, and that way they could sometimes come back to earth like in Eternal Forces Comix when Legions of the Holy Dead join the living in the battle against Evil. “I know that’s how it’s supposed to be,” Littleface said, “but I can remember some of my past lives. Maybe it’s, you know, like a bit of both. Like maybe some people aren’t bad enough for hell or good enough for Heaven, but have to come back and try again in a different body.” That made sense to Nat and he began thinking about other lives he might have led. They found another bike for Littleface and they’ve traveled together ever since, picking up Houndawg, Juice, and Cubano along the way. Houndawg is older and has taught them a lot; Cubano calls him El Profesor. Nat and Littleface call him B.O. Plenty, the name of another Dick Tracy villain, but not to his face. Juice is the wild one, a believer who joined up with them after turning up at one of Nat’s father’s tent meetings and recognizing Littleface from their days as strikers with a biker gang called the Crusadeers. “Weird!” Juice said, punching Face’s shoulder when he saw him, and Face nodded and said: “Some things are meant to be.” “Dirty Dick’s cleared out,” he says now. “Do we go back over there?” Nat shakes his head. Something is going to happen, but not right now.