“Good,” he said. “I want you to buddy up with someone who will show you the ropes and keep you out of trouble. And that someone will be Haynes over there.” He pointed to a skinny, freckled boy in a baseball cap. He lowered his voice, bent to Jason’s ear. “Now Sam Haynes lost his parents in the quake, okay? So what I want you to do is look after him, all right?” He put a hand on Jason’s shoulder.
“Okay,” said Jason, confused by this brisk, over-efficient manner of intimacy. Mr. Magnusson straightened, shouted out. “Haynes! Heaven-o! I want you to meet Jason here.” Sam Haynes was a few years older than Jason. Jason shook his hand. Haynes didn’t seem to have much to say. “I want you to show Jason the ropes,” Mr. Magnusson said. He picked up a roll of large-sized plastic garbage bags, tore a bag off the roll, then handed it to Jason. “This is your ground cover. You sleep on this.”
Jason looked at the bag. “Right,” he said.
“You two go have fun now.”
Jason slung his telescope over his shoulder and prepared to follow Haynes to whatever fun might be found in this place.
“Hey!” Mr. Magnusson called after him. “Adams!”
Jason turned around. “Yes?”
“What’s that thing on your shoulder?”
Jason looked at the Astroscan and decided he was already fed up with this place. “It’s a portable nuclear reactor.” he said.
Mr. Magnusson hesitated. His eyes narrowed, as if he was trying to decide whether or not to size up Jason for a liar. Jason tried to assume an expression of earnest good intentions.
“A nuclear reactor, huh?” Magnusson said. “Like the one in Mississippi that blew up?”
“Well,” Jason said, “not as big.”
Mr. Magnusson hesitated again. He propped his wiry arms on his hips. ” That one ain’t going to blow up, right?”
Jason tried to exude authority. “Not if people don’t mess with it,” he said.
“Well.” Mr. Magnusson chewed his lip. “You don’t let anyone touch it, then.”
“I won’t.” Jason decided he’d better ease away before his guide had time to think about this, so he gave Mr. Magnusson a little wave and headed into the camp.
Haynes wasn’t much company. He didn’t seem interested in whether Jason had a nuclear reactor, or indeed in anything else. He just pointed out a place under an awning, near his own, where Jason could stretch out his plastic bag to sleep on.
“Or you can pick any place that’s empty. Plenty of empty places.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “I noticed that.” The camp seemed more than half-deserted, as if it had been laid out and equipped for a much larger group of people.
“When do we eat?” Jason asked.
“Soon, I hope.” Haynes dropped onto the grass, then flopped onto his back. He pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes. “Let me know when we’re called.”
There were about a dozen Samaritans altogether. They and another group called the Galileans were called to dinner a couple hours later. The meal consisted of a modest piece of baked fish, some mixed vegetables out of cans, and a large scoop of white rice, all served on a compartmented plastic tray that, Jason suspected, had been plundered from a local school. Water to drink, though younger kids got a small glass of milk. During the meal a gospel choir practiced beneath a nearby awning, sometimes swinging into a gorgeous mass harmony before the conductor, dissatisfied with something, stopped them and made them start again.
Jason ate his meal in less than five minutes and asked the others if he was allowed more. He wasn’t. He had eaten better when he was a refugee.
Mealtime lasted fifteen minutes, after which the Samaritans took their trays to a galvanized trough, washed the trays, rinsed them in another trough, and stacked them for the next shift. After this, Mr. Magnusson marched them back to the young men’s camp.
After that it was another long wait, till it was time for church.
It was a long empty road between the A.M.E. camp and Shelburne City. Reverend Morris’ old Ford could be seen for half a mile, even in the fading light, and that was enough. Micah Knox pulled in front of Morris in a pickup truck he’d borrowed from Jedthus. Another one of the Crusaders pulled out behind the Ford, then tapped its bumper from behind. And then, when everyone had stopped to examine the accident, Omar drove up in his cruiser, parked opposite the Ford, and stepped from the car.
Most unexpected was the lack of surprise in Morris’ eyes. There was a strange silent confirmation in those eyes, as if Omar was only attesting to the truth of the reverend’s opinion of him when he raised his pistol and fired it five times through the window.
After that, the pickup rammed the Ford broadside until it tipped over into the bar ditch and rolled onto its roof. Gasoline was poured into the interior and set alight.
An accident. That’s what would go on the report. Failing light, an old man in an old car, on an old earthquake-torn two-lane blacktop. He must have lost control.
Omar would let someone else find the wreck, report the accident, fill out the papers. He would be miles away.
“Beautiful!” Knox said. He stomped up and down the asphalt in his heavy boots, uneven teeth bared in a grin. “Just like in Hunter.”
“There are more witnesses in the camp,” Omar said.
“Beautiful!” said Knox. Firelight danced in his shotgun eyes.
Omar arranged for charges to be dropped against the boy who had been in the car with the driver David had killed. He turned him over to Knox and one of his friends to be driven back to camp, and he was never seen again.
No one would miss him. He’d been released from jail, the camp wasn’t expecting him back, and that was that.
He had gone where the woodbine twineth.
Omar used the shooting incident that day, plus the earlier shooting at Ozie Starks’, as leverage with the parish council and got permission to fence off the two refugee camps. That night he arranged for chain link and barbed wire, fence post diggers, and extra personnel. Extra cars. Extra guns. They would start the ball rolling first thing in the morning.
Nick spent the rest of the afternoon floating. A glorious sense of well-being had fallen on him, and he felt almost free of gravity, bounding over the torn surface of the Arkansas bluff like an Apollo astronaut skipping over the surface of the moon. He had come through fire and water to find Manon and Arlette, through snakes and a hail of buckshot, past madmen armed with guns and a city choking on poison gas. They were alive, and he was alive, and they were alive together.
He had seen Manon’s smile and the glow in Arlette’s eyes when she looked at her birthday present. He was happy, and he wanted to bask in his happiness.
But he couldn’t. Manon and her family were in mourning, and Nick had to conceal his joy, had to pretend that sorrow flooded his heart instead of delight. His was a difficult happiness to conceal; he had to try to remember not to let a ridiculous grin break out on his face, or make too light-hearted a remark. He helped Manon with her work, happy just to be around her. Supper had to be prepared, in an improvised kitchen, for something like a hundred and forty people under the instruction of an elderly white lady who had once been in charge of a school cafeteria. The old woman was very careful of her calorie counts: she ordered rice, vegetables, and fish to be weighed out very carefully.
“Twenty-two hundred calories per day for everyone except the people who have work assignments,” Manon explained. “Five thousand for nursing mothers, or for folks searching the swamps, raising food, or toting bricks. Milk only for growing children, since we don’t have many dairy cattle in the area.”
“That’s not a lot of calories,” Nick said.
“It’s enough to get by, they tell us. But we’re all going to be fashionably thin when we get out of this.” Nick looked at her, and his hand twitched with the impulse to pat her butt. “I always thought your weight was fine just where it is.”