Rhonda put her hands on her hips. “Is he making any more sense? Does he know where he is?”
“I don’t think so,” Travis said. “It’s all Bible stuff, mostly. Sometimes he calls me Paxton.” He laughed. “Or Lorraine. Which I guess is his wife?”
“She died in the Changes,” Rhonda said, and her tone snapped the smile off the boy’s face. “As for Paxton, well…” The last time she’d seen him, he was pale, wet, and unconscious, and Deke was carrying him off to Dr. Fraelich’s clinic.
Rhonda risked coming another foot into the room. “Harlan!” she said sternly. “Pastor Martin!”
Harlan gave no indication that he heard her. “Is not the life more than meat?” he said. “Is the body more than raiment?” His voice was scratchy, but still strong. These backwoods preachers didn’t tire easily; she’d seen Harlan do week-long revivals, bringing the fire and brimstone two hours a night.
“Time for you to wake up now, Pastor. You can’t be carrying on like this all day.” He kept babbling, his eyes focused on nothing. Rhonda stepped back and said to Travis, “Are you sure he’s not producing?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean, you don’t think so?”
“I mean, no ma’am. I check him every hour, but I haven’t found any new blisters, and there’s nothing coming through the cream.” After they’d gotten him into the Home last night the boys had plastered his blisters with antibiotic cream-standard procedure. “I guess he’s still drunk on the dose from last night.”
“I suppose,” Rhonda said. Harlan had produced more vintage in a burst than any charlie she’d ever seen. A regular Texas gusher. It made sense that he’d need time to recover and recharge. She had to admit she wanted him back online and producing steadily.
“Just keep talking to him,” Rhonda said. “I want someone here when he comes to. He ain’t going to be happy.”
“Uh, when’s that going to be, you think?”
Rhonda let her voice go sweet. “You getting tired sitting here, honey? You need to go home for a while, maybe stretch out on the couch?”
The boy brightened. “That’d be great, Aunt Rhonda. I could sure-”
“Sit down, Travis.” God Almighty the boy was dim.
She went to the door and the boy said, “Uh, ma’am? It’s payday, right? I was wondering…”
She turned to face him, raised an eyebrow.
The boy said. “I was just wondering about the bonus…”
“Not until you’re eighteen,” Rhonda said. “Until then, no bonus. You just sit here and call me when he starts producing. Oh, and hon? If I see that game thing in your hand again while you’re on the clock, I’ll have Everett break it over your big chub head.”
She threw the mask in the garbage and stalked back to the lobby. More of her employees had arrived. They were all looking at her, eyes like hungry orphans. “All right,” she said. “Line up.”
They queued up outside her office. She sat at her desk, signing and tearing out the checks one by one. Everett stood beside her, handing out the bonus, the small black plastic baggies from the cooler.
Clete tucked his check into his back pocket without looking at it, but he opened his bag right there and took out the little plastic vial. The frozen vintage occupied only the bottom two centimeters of the container. “Is that it?” he said.
Rhonda’s hand froze in midsignature. “Excuse me?”
Clete said, “This is less than last time. At least tell me it’s from Harlan. I saw what that stuff did to Paxton.”
“Watch your mouth,” Rhonda said. “That’s the Reverend Martin to you.”
“Come on, Aunt Rhonda.” He looked at Everett. “You were there. Am I right?”
Everett said nothing.
“I’m just saying,” Clete said. “If this is all we’re getting, at least share the good stuff while it’s fresh. Another few drops of Elwyn or Old Bob ain’t going to do me much good.”
Everett placed a hand on Clete’s shoulder. “Say one more word,” Everett said quietly. “Go ahead. One more.”
Clete pushed his hand away and backed up. “I was just asking, Everett. Jesus, relax already.”
“Take your bonus and get out of here,” Rhonda said. She looked around at the other men. “This ain’t Hardee’s drive-thru. There are no choices, no specials, no family value packs, and nobody gets more than their fair share. Any of you have a problem with that?”
Clete looked sour but didn’t speak. The others behind him in the line studied their hands or looked away.
When the last of the men had taken his check and bag and made his way out to the parking lot, Everett shook his head, smiling, and said, “Hardee’s. Heh.”
“Can you believe that?” Rhonda said, but she was smiling too, now. She pushed back in her chair and stood. “All righty. After you get the cooler away, let’s go see the Reverend Hooke. Maybe we’ll be able to settle our bet.”
“You think so?” Everett asked.
“You never know,” Rhonda said.
Everett asked her if she wanted to take the long way through town. Rhonda said that sounded like a good idea and rolled down her window. He always knew when she was in a mood to greet her people.
He drove like a skilled accompanist. Without her saying a word he knew when to slow down so she could wave and say hello, when to roll past the people she wanted to avoid, and when to pull over. They saw the Robinson twins-one sister an argo and the other a charlie, walking down the sidewalk in matching yellow dresses like two sides of a funhouse mirror-and rolled on by. (You didn’t start a conversation with the twins unless you had nowhere to go and packed a lunch.) A few charlie teenagers were hanging around the Icee Freeze, and Rhonda called them by name, letting them know that she was watching them even if nobody else was. She couldn’t do the same for the beta children, though; when she passed a covey of young blank girls coming out of the Bugler’s she just said, “How you doing, girls?” and moved on. Blanks all looked alike to her, but the young ones had even started dressing alike with those long skirts and white scarves.
At the north end of town Everett circled back south by going down Main, gliding past the old wooden houses that used to be at the center of town before the highway went through in the fifties. She exchanged greetings with half a dozen people, the car moving slower than a parade float.
Rhonda looked over at Everett and said, “What are you grinning at?”
“This always cheers you up,” he said.
“It’s just part of the job,” she said. But it was true; she got a lift from being with her people. And she had a knack for working with folks, a gift she hadn’t fully employed until after the Changes. “Now pull over at Mr. Sparks’. We need to chat.”
Mr. Sparks, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and dress pants despite the heat, slowly pushed a wheelbarrow heaped with mulch across his lawn. Everett stopped the car and the old man came over, smiling. The Changes had skipped him, and at eighty-two he looked as fit as ever. “Goodness gracious, Mr. Sparks,” Rhonda said. “You make me tired the way you work.”
“Oh, it’s not working that makes me tired.”
“Well, you better keep your shirt on, or you’ll have young girls swooning around you.”
He laughed, a dry chuckle. The talk turned to clips of Roy Downer’s press conference that had been shown on the local news last night. “It’s a relief to hear that there was no evidence of foul play,” he said. “Not to say suicide isn’t a terrible thing…”
“I know just what you mean,” Rhonda said. “You don’t have to explain to me.” They talked for a few more minutes, Mr. Sparks trying repeatedly to get them to come inside for some coffee cake, but Rhonda begged off. “I better not keep you. I’ll see you at the next council meeting, all right?”