Jason watched as she browsed through the contents of the box. Frankland’s amplified voice went on about locusts going about the earth slaughtering its inhabitants.
“At least you didn’t ask me about my nuclear reactor,” Jason said.
“Mais non. Je reconnais des telescopes quand j’en vois un.” She raised her hands to mime a telescope, peered at him through her curled fingers for a laughing moment, then dropped into the box again.
She began to apply dressings to his hand. “Why are you talking French?” he asked.
“I’m supposed to be in France right now, at school. I don’t want to get out of practice.” She watched as he tugged at the inseam of his jeans with his free hand. “You don’t look too comfortable in those clothes.”
“They’re still damp from washing. Hey.” A thought occurred to him. “Don’t you have washing machines here? You were folding clothes yesterday—why did I have to wash my clothes in the river?”
“We don’t have that many machines in working order—we have to pour the water into them with buckets—all we try to do is keep the towels and diapers clean. When eighty men get catfish all over themselves—” She grinned. “It’s the river. Give me your other hand.”
“Where do the girls wash?”
“The same place. When the men aren’t there.”
Arlette peeled tape off the roll, eyed it, and cut it precisely with a small pair of scissors. “I don’t understand,” said a loud grownup voice, “why I can’t leave.”
Arlette and Jason fell silent as the voice boomed through the side door. Jason caught Arlette’s eye, saw her surprised look, then a confirmation of his own first instinct.
Listen. Be silent. If you don’t call attention to yourselves, maybe they’ll forget you’re here. Jason and Arlette knew these things. How to listen, how to hide, how not to be observed. Jason shuffled sideways, put the open door between himself and the outside. Arlette slipped farther into the storeroom to make room for him.
The voice that answered was Frankland’s. “I never said you couldn’t leave, Brother Olson. What I said was—”
“What you said was that me and my family couldn’t have any food! And that’s after we brought a trunk full of canned goods and a box of vegetables into this camp!”
Jason looked at Arlette. We brought food into the camp, he thought.
“That food is gone, Brother Olson,” Frankland said. “It was gone within a couple days of your getting here. It is my job to feed the people in this camp, and with God’s help I will do that. But it is not my responsibility to feed the people who leave.”
“I have kin in Mississippi,” the first voice said. “They can look after us. And if you can just give us a few pounds of that catfish—heaven sake, you got tons…”
“Mississippi!” Frankland said. “You’ve heard the news! The place is a poison desert!” Olson’s voice was stubborn. “All I need is take my boat down the river. Won’t take more’n two, three days. All I ask is food and water for that time. My guns for protection. The boat’s my own. That’s less’n I came with, and you won’t have to feed us forever. It’s a bargain for you.”
“Think of your children, Brother Olson!” Frankland said. “You’re going to expose them to—”
“Reverend,” Olson said, “I’m a Lutheran, okay?”
“I understand, brother, but—”
“Lutherans don’t do the end of the world,” Olson said. “I think what happened is an earthquake, not the Apocalypse. My family will be a lot safer once they get out of the earthquake zone.”
“I will not let you endanger your family! I won’t!”
“What are you telling me?” Olson roared.
“I won’t let you kill your children!” Frankland shouted. “I won’t let them go!” Olson was beyond words. A chill shivered up Jason’s spine as he heard Olson give a low growl just like an animal, and then there was a chiming metallic thump as something heavy hit the steel wall of the church. Frankland was shouting something incoherent, but Jason couldn’t make it out because Frankland’s recorded voice had just reached a crescendo in its sermon on the giant locusts of Revelation. Then other people were shouting, and there were more thumps.
Jason felt Arlette’s hand close around his. He looked into her wide eyes as turmoil raged outside. He could feel a drop of sweat trickling down the back of his neck.
“Cast him forth!” Frankland’s voice was raised in rage. “Take him outside! Let him wander in the wilderness!”
“He’ll take your children, too!” Olson shouted as people hustled him away. ” He’ll take your children!”
Jason and Arlette stood frozen in the storeroom. Arlette’s grip was like steel bands wrapped around his hand.
Jason licked his lips. “I’m getting out of this place,” he said.
Arlette’s eyes were wide as they turned from the open door to Jason. “How?”
“I don’t know yet. But there’s no way I’m going to stay here. That’s for sure.” Frankland’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers. “And thus do the locusts do the will of Abaddon, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit.”
The camp was abuzz after Olson’s ejection. A hundred and fifty people had nothing else to talk about. Nick heard details from Jason and Arlette. He also heard the campwide rumor that Olson had just been driven in a truck to the far side of Rails Bluff, then set free to wander without food, water, or weapons. Olson’s wife and children, in the married women’s camp, were at the center of a weeping, wailing cluster of friends and kinfolk. Nick led Manon, Arlette, and Jason away from the sight, wandering out of the camp onto the borders of the field beyond. The cotton had been plowed under here, and food crops planted, but only a few tiny green shoots had risen from the thin soil. The loudspeakers’ words were reduced to a distant rumble.
“I’m going to get out of here, Nick,” Jason said. “I’m getting back on the river.” Nick frowned, scuffed at the soil with his shoe. “We need to work out a plan,” he said. Jason looked at him in surprise. “You sound as if you want to come along.”
“Yes.” Nick frowned. “I don’t think this place is stable. I don’t think it’s healthy.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction of Sheryl’s artwork. “Have you seen those banners? The people here think all that stuff is going to happen, and happen real soon. And what I’m afraid of is that if it doesn’t happen on its own, they’re going to do their best to make it happen.”
Arlette looked up at her father. “What about Aunt Sarah and Uncle Louis and—” Nick looked at her. “I think it will just be Jason and me, baby,” he said. “You and your mother are safe here for the present. What we need to get out is a message, not necessarily people. If Jason and I can get down the river—Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, a towboat with a working radio, somewhere—we can tell the authorities what’s happening here, and they’ll start shipping in food and medicine, and put someone other than a crazy preacher in charge.”
“Nick.” Manon’s tone was grim. “You’ve seen all the guns around here. What if Reverend Frankland decides he doesn’t want the government putting him out of business?” Nick looked at her in surprise. He had been concentrating so hard on plans to get away that he hadn’t considered what might happen once he got his message to the authorities. “Do you really think he would?”