She looked at him. “You had a question, though. And I forgot what it was.”
“It’s about whether you believe it all. Or whether it’s just, like, community.” Manon’s voice was gentle. “Well,” she began. “You know that the church is important to black people, right? Because for a long time we weren’t allowed to meet anywhere else. They were afraid that if we got together we’d start a rebellion or ask for our freedom, or for the right to vote or something. But they couldn’t keep us out of church, because it was their religion, too. So the church was the only place where we were free to be ourselves.”
“I didn’t know that,” Jason said. If that had ever been mentioned in class he hadn’t been paying attention. He hated history. But they probably hadn’t mentioned it. They never seemed to teach anything that mattered to people.
“What I meant to say,” Manon went on, “is that the part of church that is community is very, very important. But there’s community with the Deity as well.”
“So you believe in God?”
“Oh yes.”
“And Jesus?”
“Certainly.”
“And Adam and Eve? Jonah and the whale? Noah?”
Manon hesitated, looked at Nick. “Well. I don’t know.”
“If an engineer can interrupt, here,” Nick said, “I think stories like Noah and Adam have a different purpose from some of the other Bible stories. They were intended for moral instruction.” He looked at Manon pointedly. “Those stories were to teach us how to behave, and to make us think, but I don’t know that they were intended to be taken literally.”
“I don’t think I believe in God,” Jason said.
There was a moment of silence. He felt Arlette stir on the bench next to him.
“Why not?” she said.
“Because,” Jason said in swift anger, “if God exists, he killed my mother. And your Gros-Papa. And lots of other people rolling along the bottom of that river.”
Suddenly Jason couldn’t stand to sit there any longer, looking into the others’ shocked and concerned faces, so he rose and mumbled an apology and almost ran from the breakfast tent. He wandered out into the parking lot in front of the church, where the empty trucks waited to carry the Samaritans and the other teams to their final days’ work. Waves of heat were already rising from their metal as they baked in the morning sun.
Jason stalked around the trucks as anger simmered through his veins. Then he opened the door of a cab and sat behind the steering wheel. Keys dangled from the ignition, and for a wild moment Jason considered starting the truck and roaring away, fleeing the camp and the people in it. But no. There was no place to drive to. That was why the key was in the ignition—there was no point in locking a vehicle when there was no place for a thief to drive it.
He was stuck in Rails Bluff, until Nick figured out a way to escape.
Words boomed from the loudspeakers: “Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house.”
Jason swung his legs out of the truck cab, slid onto the grass. His anger had passed, had turned to a dull throbbing ache in his throat.
He turned around the back end of the pickup truck, with its Tommy Lift tailgate down, and found Arlette standing there, a bit awkwardly, off-balance with one ankle crossed over the other. Jason stopped dead. He felt his ears flush with the memory of his rudeness.
“I thought I’d see if you were okay,” Arlette said.
“I’m, uh, tres Men,” Jason said. “I’m sorry if I was angry.”
“I brought you the rest of your breakfast,” Arlette said. She held up a bundle wrapped in a handkerchief.
“I thought you’d need it if you’re going to be working today.”
“Thanks.”
He approached her and took the bundle. Beans and fish all mashed together.
Well. It was a nice thought. And probably he would be hungry enough, sooner or later, to eat it.
“I’m sorry you’re mad at God,” Arlette said. She took a step forward, her hip resting against the tailgate of the truck. “I think I need God, myself. I want to think that there’s something that connects me with the rest of the universe. Some spirit. Something.”
Jason thought about galaxies whirling in the velvet dark. Threads like lace glowing in the sky. A cluster of a million stars that he could hold in his hand.
Arlette looked at him with almond-shaped eyes. “Haven’t you ever felt something connect you with everything else?” she asked.
“Yes,” Jason said. His pulse was a roar in his ears. “You,” he said. He took her in his arms and brushed her lips with his. Her slim waist burned against his palms. He kissed her again, and again, and then for a long time.
Arlette drew away.
“No,” he said. “Don’t stop.”
Her lips tilted in a delicate smile. “There must be twenty people watching us. And if we go on any longer there are going to be a hundred.”
“I want to be with you,” he said.
“Later,” she said. The smile turned mischievous. “Maybe.” She turned, looked at him over her shoulder. “Enjoy your breakfast,” she said, and skipped away. Jason stood for a moment, then looked toward the camp.
Twenty people, he thought. More like fifty.
Let them watch, he thought.
“Looks like your daughter’s getting down with the white boy,” Manon said. Nick watched from under the kitchen awning as Arlette and Jason embraced by the pickup truck. Anxious-father vibes bounced around in his head, and he told them to be reasonable. They didn’t listen.
“Well,” he said heavily, “I’m not going to worry too much about it.” And failed to convince even himself. Manon turned to him, fire snapping from her eyes. “Not worry?” she said. “You know what kids are like at that age. Hormones going crazy, and there’s nothing to do in this camp, nothing but… Damn it, Nick!” She blinked out at the sunlit field, where Arlette was drawing away from Jason.
“Arlette’s too young for this,” Manon said. “She’s my baby.” Her eyes were shiny.
“You were going to send her to France for the summer,” Nick said. “Did you figure she’d only meet nuns over there?”
“She’d be chaperoned,” Manon said.
“She’s chaperoned here, honey,” Nick said. He couldn’t resist smiling. “She’ll never be more chaperoned in her life.”
“Nick,” Manon said, “that boy is white.”
Nick said nothing. Anxious-father voices sang an aria in his head. It’s not about race, Nick told himself, it’s really not. It’s about a boy touching his daughter, that’s what it’s about.
“Oh hell, Nick,” Manon went on. “This is Arkansas, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I know.” And if it was a black boy kissing a white girl, there would be fifty people here ready for a lynching, whatever Reverend Frankland might say about it. And even as things stood, there might be hell to pay, anyway.
Arlette turned from Jason and began to move away across the field. The tension in Nick’s chest eased a trifle.
“Certain things you don’t do here,” Manon went on. “Not where a hundred people can see you. Not if you’re young and—” She blinked tears. “Not even if you’ve been raised to think these things don’t matter.”
Nick stepped closer to her, put his hands on her shoulders from behind. Her muscles were taut as wire.
“I’ll talk to Jason if you like,” he said. He had the sensation that he was arguing with himself as much as with Manon. “And you can talk to Arlette. But Arlette’s an intelligent girl. I think we can trust her.” He began to massage Manon’s shoulders, trying to break the tension he felt in the muscles.