Selection Event (38 page)

“Martin,” she whispered, “after you got me in your car that first day, I never had a chance, did I.”

“Not a prayer.”

“But I should remember you had been alone for a year and I was, at the time, the last woman on earth.”

“Yet I maintained the highest standards.”

“You did. And one payoff is that I have a surprise for you. You have to put your clothes on first. You'll like it,” she assured him, “even if you're dressed.”

In the kitchen, she pulled out a chair and had him sit. Then, in front of him, she placed a bowl of blueberries in milk. “It's fresh milk,” she said. “From a cow.”

“Milk from a cow? Where?”

“April found a milk-cow. A Jersey, I think she said. She gave us two quarts. I have it in a jug in the river to keep cool.”

“This is wonderful!” He offered her the first spoonful and admired her lips as they moved to enclose the spoon. “How is April. I haven't seen her much.”

“I helped her and the girls start a garden, and she works in that a lot. She's rearranged the house to suit them, and I heard that May or June, whichever, was asking Winch if he could make them a bicycle generator so they could have some electricity to play some rock and roll.”

“Of course he said yes.” He held another spoonful of milk and berries for her.

“Of course.”

“Did April say anything about August?”

“Just that he was spending a lot of time with Joshua.”

“Catrin, tell me what I should do.” He put the spoon down. “Charlie and Rusty asked me this morning and I didn't know what to say.”

“Well, what do you want to do?"

“I want to stop worrying about what's going to happen next. I want to stop wondering if we even have a problem. Or beat them all with studded whips.”

Catrin was absently moving her finger around the squares of the blue-checked tablecloth. “Why don't you ask Joshua those questions. Even if he doesn't answer you directly, you might get a better idea of what his answers would be if he did. You just want to know what he's going to do, regardless of what he believes.”

He looked into her eyes. “Catrin, if I had only met you ten minutes ago, I'd ask you now to marry me.”

They sat at the table in silence, holding hands, while outside, jays fluttered past the windows in flashes of blue and gray and the sun, now past noon, began its descent toward the sea.

“Queen of my heart," he said.

....

Martin gave a message to April to pass on to August and Joshua. It asked Joshua to meet him the next day an hour after sunrise, where the river flowed into the ocean.

Martin rose early and fed Land, and then, out of a bowl of warm water, bathed the child first and then himself. “I'll be calm,” he assured Catrin with a smile. “No confrontation. Nothing is going to be settled — I'm just asking what's going to happen next. I'm collecting information.”

She put one hand on the back of his neck and kissed him.

....

Wearing loose white pants and a white shirt, Joshua stood on the beach in the yellow morning light with seagulls, dozens of them, turning in gyres around and above him. Mist still hung on the surface of the ocean and the waves were smaller than usual and muffled sounding. Joshua held himself arrow-straight, chin high, facing the sea breeze, with his hair ruffling back. Posing like a movie star, Martin thought.

Every gull on the beach whirled above him in a great turning column. Martin had never seen them do this. It made him uneasy.

In his approach Martin thought he was being silent, but as he neared, Joshua said, without looking at him, without turning, “It took you longer than I thought to ask to speak to me. The air is refreshing, isn't it.” The gulls overhead cried out as they rode the wind and swooped in widening circles around them.

“If you expected me to speak to you,” Martin said, “what did you expect me to say?”

“Ah,” he said, turning and showing Martin his knowing smile, “I am not a mind-reader.”

“I want to know what you want,” Martin said. “People are asking me and I don't know what to say. So what do you want, Joshua? We're out here alone, no one can hear us, and later we can both deny anything we say. So give it to me without rhetorical spin, without bullshit. Why are you hanging around us? What do you want from us?”

“Very little,” he said, his smile slipping away. “Invite a delegation of us to dinner, let us break bread together, let us freely speak our beliefs to all of your people. Then we will return to the mountains and wait an interval of time for any who want to join us. When those who want to join have joined, I will take my flock elsewhere.”

“What kind of 'interval of time'?”

“A week. Two weeks at the most. The spirit,” he said warmly, “is sometimes slow to recognize its destiny.”

A gust of wind caught the surrounding seagulls and several of them came near enough that the men could have reached out and touched their black-tipped wings.

“If none decide to go with you, what then?”

Joshua shrugged. “So be it. But,” he said, “do not be surprised if even you yourself recognize our Higher Power and decide to serve new purposes."

“How large a delegation do we invite?”

“Five.”

“The one who kidnapped Missa isn't to be one of them.”

“I understand that. We will bring no weapons other than the power of our words, and we will leave before midnight.”

“I'm sure of that,” Martin said. He wanted to get this over with. “Tomorrow evening then, come to my house, at sunset. You will say what you have to say after dinner, and we'll have it over by 10:00.”

“Eleven-thirty.”

“Ten.”

“As you wish.”

“And you leave after a week.”

“Twelve days.”

“If your diety can create the universe in seven days, he can do his magic here in a week. Then you leave.”

Joshua's eyes had narrowed and he'd raised one eyebrow. Then his face softened its expression and he extended his hand. Martin shook it. “Seven days it is. And tomorrow evening,” Joshua said pleasantly. “Your eyes will open.”

“They'll be open before I get there.”

Joshua strode away, up the bank of the river toward the green mountains. Most of the seagulls were gone now, but a few of them waddled nearby, searching the smooth sand for anything edible.

As he left the beach, Martin noticed a few remaining kernels of corn that had been strewn about in a wide circle. So that had been what had brought the gulls. Mr. Charisma. It was a good effect. What effects, Martin wondered, should he expect tomorrow night?

Chapter 72

Diaz sang as he rode up through the wilds of Georgia and across Alabama, where freeways were now overgrown to the point that they were little more than narrow parallel trails. The 90-mile-an-hour wind that blew his hair back smelled of rain in the forest, wet bark, damp leaves, and water-splashed rocks. He sang one of the fifteen verses he wrote to a song while in Key West, living, as it turned out, in Hemingway's house.

“Gunna hit the lithium trail, get my mind right, get strapped down tight, gunna trash the manic grail, awright!”

Outside Decatur, just after dark, he pulled over, lit a can of Sterno and began roasting some hard marshmallows he'd found in Birmingham. The smell as they bubbled up brown and black made his mouth water. He was passing it several times under his nose, savoring the smell when he glimpsed movement across the feebly burning Sterno.

“Hi, dude.” It was a rag-dressed man, wearing a brown floppy hat and carrying a walking stick. He stepped out of the brush and into the dim light from the Sterno.

“Howdy,” Diaz said. “Have a seat and a marshmallow.”

“Shore.” He squatted and looked into the tiny flames. The skin around his face was grimy and his callused hands were cut and scratched. “Nice bike. Where you from?”

“Everywhere. My name's Diaz. On my way to Missouri, got a woman waitin' for me there, then to California where I got some friends to see.” He handed the man the stick with the hot marshmallow on the end.

The man studied it, smelled it, and then put it in his mouth. “You a Mexican or a Puerto Rican?”

“I'm a poet.”

“That's what I thought.” He reached up and pulled off his hat. At the signal, two men noisily pushed through the brush, one behind Diaz, the other coming up on the side. They both held pump shotguns. Moments later, a woman with short dark hair came out of the darkness but stayed behind the men.

The man sitting in front of Diaz put his hat back on. “We plan to keep America for Americans,” he said, and took out a .38 and shot Diaz in the chest.

Diaz fell back on his elbows, feeling like he'd been kicked. He was amazed that it didn't hurt all that much. But he could tell from where the hole was that his ticket had been definitively punched.

“Jesus christ,” he said, “why'd you do that?” The words were harder to speak than he thought they'd be. His throat felt filled with slime. Blood, he knew, without thinking.

“You didn't have to do that,” Diaz heard the woman say. “What's the matter with you?”

“He's a Mexican, you can tell by the name,” the man said calmly, having already put the .38 away. He was digging through the marshmallow bag now, taking out another one and poking the end of the stick through it. “Shoulda stayed in Mexico.”

“Never been to Mexico,” Diaz said, feeling like he was going to choke. “I had plans....” His heart was doing funny things now, jumping around, then not jumping much at all. “This is... really stupid, man.”

“How did you wanta die?” the man asked, turning the marshmallow over the weak flame. “Ever think about it? Did you wanta die fighting?”

Diaz choked when he tried to speak. Blood fountained out of his mouth. What he wanted to say was,
“No, I didn't want to die fighting. I wanted to die in some babe's arms, like how I was born.”
 

Diaz concentrated on the light of the fire. Darkness irised down around it. One last poem he wanted to write, about the transformation of gummy muck into heat and light—

Chapter 73

“I thought the sooner the better,” Martin said.

“Might as well get it over with,” Winch agreed, looking both troubled and hopeful. “So a week from tomorrow night, they'll be gone.”

“That's what he said.”

It was afternoon now, and they stood at the edge of the pasture, leaning on the fence, watching the horses browse through the tall grass. The day turned out to be warm, with a cool breeze from the ocean. Small yellow butterflies looped out of the grass where the horses grazed.

“How's Jan-Louise?” Martin asked.

“She's better. Quiet, you know. But better. She doesn't call herself names anymore. Does the bargain include her showing up tomorrow evening?”

“I suppose it does.” Martin regretted it.

“She'll be all right,” Winch said. “I'll go let the newcomers know.” He took his arms off the fence. “A week and a day. Thanks for working it out, Martin.”

He nodded, hoping he knew what he had done. It seemed easy enough. That was what had him worried.

....

Outside, on tables in front of Martin's house, they had set out bowls of huckleberries and blackberries they had gathered. The radishes, celery, lettuce, and corn came from Catrin's garden. Half a dozen fish that Rusty had caught baked on a grill, and a pot of black bean soup sat steaming beside three big loaves of bread that Jan-Louise had baked. On platters were arrayed several kinds of steamed squash seasoned with fresh garlic. Dora had scavenged a half-dozen kinds of juices from the stores in town and they sat in pitchers like colored markers among the food.

Roy had refused to have anything to do with the dinner. “I had a package of moldy weenies I was going to give you to take to Josh, with my warmest disregards, but your dog ate them. I'm sure Josh could have found a place for each and every one of them.”

To the banquet, Joshua and four of his followers, Leona among them, brought a pillow-sized bundle of venison pieces, still warm, heavily wrapped in foil, which they spread across the end of one of the tables. Everyone stared at the banquet tables, awed by the amount of food in one place at one time. None of them had seen so much food since before the disaster.

“Welcome to our village,” August said to Joshua. Dora was near him, her fingers clasped over her stomach, nodding and grinning.

“It is so nice to be here, with such friendly people,” he said with his smile. He was dressed in clean khaki pants and shirt with a black necktie, his hair, as always, looking as though it had been styled ten minutes before. His followers were also neatly dressed, all of them wearing faded blue work shirts and baggy painters' pants, the white now grayed from being washed in cold streams.

“I understand that some of you may feel some distrust of me and my people, but know that we will not be offended if you do not eat of the food we have brought as an offering to the exchange of friendship.”

While the others were talking and filling their plates, Martin noticed that Charlie was sniffing a piece of venison he'd put on his plate. Then he moved near Joshua, who circled his arm around the boy's shoulders, “You put any blood on this?” Charlie asked him.